Found this funny shot of Alva on Rocket’s MySpace. He’s an old dude in Cornwall, England and has a bunch of old ads and skate photos posted. Are you skill skating?

its when tony come over to england to tour some of the local parks the year i think was 1978. he skated ROM @ KNEBWORTH PARKS this is him meeting some of the local skater dudes of the time if my history serves me well dude’ ill look into some more for you dude k….its all kriptonics and bengy boards back then…i had road rider 4s and a santa cruz 5 ply wide ply deck with ACS 500 trucks………it used to rip dude

Is the rainy season over here in the Northwest? I feel sorry for you guys in the Midwest, aren’t you in four feet of snow right now? We’re in the middle of a really nice stretch of weather out here, making these indoor spots less of a draw these days. Dave Viera sent in a couple recent shots of local favorite Johnny Turgesen skating inside a nicely color coordinated facility.

Battle Ground Washington. Man that place is like a pinball table. There must not be anything else for kids to do in a 20 mile radius. We went there for a short session on Sunday and the place was packed. We drove by a GSD protege on the sidewalk on the way there and he ended up showing up at the skatepark. Filthy. The park has a solid coating of dried dust and mud from the landscaping and new walkways surrounding the park. The walkways are adjacent to the skatepark concrete and have joints formed in them to discourage skating, but they aren’t big enough to slow you down much. The bike guys at the shallow end of the bowl were getting very sour about multiple skaters being in the bowl at a time. They couldn’t get a run in. I tried to explain that saying the word “Bowl” in a low voice wasn’t going to make people wait for you to drop in. Later, some kid on a bike tried and eventually landed a backflip flyout of the shallow end. He was pleased with himself. Hey, I’ve got pics of the same three guys I always shoot! Check ’em out.

Every time I see this cover I read Parrot instead of Pad Rot. Apparently Pad Rot was a spinoff from the zine Endless Grind over “editorial differences.” Who knew that zines could sink to such levels of professionalism? Pad Rot was based out of Barrington Illinois. I can’t make out the writing to read the initials or possible name of the writer, but they must have known Skate and Annoy becasue they were also Illinois based, and Pad Rot lifted our Hate Page concept, complete with the Nash logo. I assume it was a tribute.

This week’s Shot of the Week is Benji Galloway hitting a backside tailslide at a pool in Woodside, CA during the summer of 2007, taken by Davoud Kermaninejad. I hear Benji just won the Florida Bowl Riders Cup, at Cocoa Beach Skate Park. Check out this shot.

It’s not really a slide if your wheels are turning. This is called the “Coco slide” but since it’s more akin to typical stunt driving found on late 70’s TV cop shows, I’d say this should be renamed the Starsky & Hutch. Who is Coco? The guy in the video is named Jim.

– Thanks to Tito for the tip.

Look out for this amazing entry into the heated surfing simulation battle from On Shore Boards. No seriously. I mean look out for it, because if one of these things catches you in the ankle, your walking days are over. These guys are so into simulating surfing, they made a guy ride a board into a water puddle. Now you and I both know that a company with such amazing technology is going to stick around for the long haul. They obviously have a lot of business savvy since somehow managed to squeeze three patents out of combined pre-existing technologies. Just in case they aren’t around in a year or two, I’ve got some highlights for the archives.

No that’s not a still from the first Bones brigade video, it’s 20 years later and Lance is hitting that spot for Elwood clothing’s 1st and Hope video, which came out some time last year I believe. Has anyone seen this? It looked like a good concept for a video, instead of the usual scattergun barrage of tricks planned and practiced and over and over to make it for the video (shot on 16mm film), it features a group of friends skating together in various spots, meeting people along the way. There are a few old distinguished names in there like Eric Dressen, Lance Mountain, Matt Hensley, Ray Barbee and Salman Agah. EXPN has a nice write up with more background and some production stills. So yeah, this is old news by a year.

The second hope is Athletes for Hope, which is an organization of some of the more famous names in sports whose purpose is to “educate, encourage and assist athletes in their efforts to contribute to community and charitable causes, to increase public awareness of those efforts, and to inspire others to do the same.” Basically, it’s a bunch of famous athletes trying to get other professional athletes to pull their heads out of their self-centered asses and help out the less fortunate. That’s an admirable goal. Skateboarding’s most famous philanthropist Tony Hawk is one of the founding members, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved in Oprah’s Big Give charity/reality show. The trailer shows a brief glimpse of someone spinning a McTwist on a vert ramp. Actually, that’s just a guess since you don’t get to see the full rotation.

People are always hitting me up for my sticker collection, which isn’t for sale. Some people have actually gotten bent out of shape about the sticker gallery, saying that it makes it easy for people to flood the eBay market with counterfeit stickers. I have no empathy for that, stickers are just little pieces of colored vinyl. They don’t need to be kept behind glass in a museum – No photos please! Every once and a while I get some scans of stickers via email to add to the gallery. A few kind souls have even mailed me the actual stickers. (I swear I’ll get them posted!) Sometimes people just want to trade, like Flickr user theoneholyghost, who has an extensive collection of doubles that ranges from 80’s to the 90’s. He’s got 50 photos with at at least 10 stickers to a photo, and these are the doubles in his collection! Then there’s Mobb Skates. You may have seen their logo, which looks like but is unaffiliated with the old Christian Hosoi line. I just got an unsolicited envelope full of stickers from Mobb and no explanation. I guess they are trying to save me.

You’re the one for me, fatty? The Baltimore Sun reports that Extreme™ kids are less likely to be lard asses, in so many words. Actually, the article titled Ramped-up exercise states a Hopkins study finds that kids who skateboard or rollerblade stay fit longer than those who play organized sports. You don’t see too many gargantuan pro skaters, whereas in football and even baseball it’s not uncommon to see massive guts. Actually, there are some large beer guts in our crew, but we’re not pros. The study also says you need to engage the the activities at least four times a week, which explains it more. Further empirical evidence is provided in these screen captures from a Rob & Big episode where Rob puts on a fat suit.

– Thanks to Stephanie Murdock for the tip.