Ryan Hass writes:

Here is the answer to prefab in New England.  Back in 2000-2003 these parks were springing up all over the place.  Asphalt footers, huge cracks and terrible seams are par for the course.  Not to mention these objects are usually dropped into place with little or no thought about layout.

Suh-weeeet!

As a followup to our earlier coverage of the Jacksonville Beach, Florida skatepark, here’s some more info on Spohn Ranch and their prefab concrete option. Aaron Spohn got his professional start building ramps for the X Games in 1992. According to their official correspondence, Spohn Ranch has some sort of ongoing partnership agreement with Pillar Design Studios as well as an organization called the Action Park Alliance whom they bill as “skatepark operations professionals.” (Uuuugh! That’s a topic for a different post altogether.) Spohn Ranch also builds metal, wood and alternative surface prefab ramps, but I’ve highlighted the concrete offerings. (Updated)

Skater and Annoy got mentioned in an issue of the German action sports magazine Slack. My German vocabulary is limited to what I picked up from playing the original 2D version of Castle Wolfenstein on my Apple II back in 1982. See post title for demonstration.

Dieses News-Portal ist aus einem Skate-Zine aus den 80er-Jahren hervorgegangen, was an manchen Stellen deutlich zu spüren ist. Die exklusiv gestalteten Comics und zum Teil bissigen Kommentare über die Darstellung von Skateboarding in den US-amerikanischen Medien lässt den schnoddrigen DIY-Charakter durchscheinen. „Skate and Annoy“ hat seine Wurzeln in Portland/Oregon und fühlt sich in erster Linie dem Transition Skating verpflichtet. Ihr denkt, ihr seid old school? Dann zieht euch erst mal rein, wie die Jungs aus dem Betonpark-Mekka die weichgespülte Skate-Welt sehen…

Let’s see… we’ve got the 80’s, comics, some DIY stuff and Portland Oregon. It also mentions “old school” so that means they think we are a bunch of Barneys. How did they find us? Must be all the Claus Grabke coverage.

Sorry this has taken so long. I set it out weeks ago, but none of the decks really excited me too much, so it’s been tough building the enthusiasm to actually sit down and do it!!

This month the column is brought to you by the sounds of The Jam. All Mod Cons actually. Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler are currently touring with 2 other guys as From The Jam. They play all of The Jam classics, and in Jam style, not the hippy crap style that Weller does these days. From hat I hear they put on a kick ass show. I’ve got a ticket for the Chicago show, so we shall see.

eBay Watch: December 2007

These week’s Shot of the Week is Damien’s aptly titled 2006 picture of a Corvallis Oregon pool about to bite the dust. Check it out.

Cal Streets has an impressive collection of vintage skateboarding ads from the 70’s. This particular 1977 advert for Lan Skateboards is from volume five of eight. (Update: They’ve since changed the organization of the gallery, so that link has been removed.) Those were they days when if you needed an ad concept all you had to do was have a possibly underage and definitely under-enthusiastic girlfriend in a risqué product shot. – “Come on Larry, let’s get this over with. I have to get back to my class at cosmetology school.” There is some funky stuff in there for sure.

The entire archive is full of gems from the past. On the plus side, Cal Streets transcribed some of the ad copy and included the publication and date. I found the site because someone contacted us looking for an obscure piece of skateshop history called the accu-drill. They included a picture link that led me there. now that we are on the subject, we have a column called eBay Watch, but we don’t have a warehouse full of old skateboards. you’d be surprised at how many requests we get.

One bone to pick, Cal Streets has “refurbished” their adverts, some at the sake of the integrity of the printed piece. As a result you occasionally get some super saturated colors and some unnatural looking areas that look retouched. Aside from that, it’s pretty excellent man. Check out Cal Streets vintage ad archives.

UPDATE: Check out the vintage ad gallery on Skate and Annoy.

MC hipped me to this interview but declined to post it for some reason. He said it wasn’t skateboard related, and I had to remind him that we also cover rock and/or roll on occasion. I am here to tell you that you should check out the Mark Mothersbaugh interview on Fecal Face Dot Com conducted by Andreas Trolf. Andreas is an admitted fanboy, but he also tackled the tough questions like WTF is up with all the DEVO songs in TV commercials. As a fanboy myself, I was afraid that the answer and indeed the whole interview would be as unsatisfying as Smooth Noodles, but after reading it I am pleased to pronounce that I remain as devolved as I ever was. We are all Devo. The shot above is Mark is standing front of one of the handmade rugs he is currently exhibiting. It’s good stuff. There was something a bit odd about them, and I didn’t realize they were rugs just by looking at the pictures. You may have seen Mark as a recurring guest doing sketches on the kids show Yo Gabba Gabba. Strangely, that didn’t come up in the interview, or maybe it isn’t so strange as Andreas probably doesn’t have little kids.

Get in the mood for the Mark Mothersbaugh interview by watching Freedom of Choice before those greedy bastards at Viacom have it removed. There’s skateboarding in that video, so there.

Check out the Travis Bickle looking rugrat in these catalog shots for Knuckleheads Clothing. These guys are also sponsoring that weird skate demo at the motorcycle show. Hey, I’ve got rugrats too. They sure would look good in some of that. Hint. Hint.

We’ve covered the one percenters today, so in the interest of being fair and balanced, let’s talk about Boy Scouts. While there is a history of skateboarding and Scouting in the USA, BBC News reports on “a revamp of the scout movement will allow boys and girls to earn badges for skills such as skateboarding, making a fruit salad and racing quad bikes.”

The official requirements for the Street Sports merit activity badge requires a six month investment in the activity if you’re a regular scout (ages 10-14), but they actually get easier if you are an Explorer. Looks like you just have to skate for 25 hours and show improvement. Maybe they should make you skate for 25 hours straight, or 25 spots in 25 days.

– Thanks to Guy Duncan for the tip.

Seriously, these things come over the wire abbreviated and all I saw were the phrases “Skateboard Demo”, Bacon, and “sponsored by Nash.” It’s not the crap skateboard manufacturer Nash, but the Nash Motorcycle Company out of Vancouver Washington. They are sponsoring some sort of motorcycle-centric event at Stone Edge Skatepark in Florida as part of Daytona Bike Week 2008. Looks like Stone Edge has a lot more wood than concrete. Yes. This is motorcycle/skateboard crossover day. I looked all over the Nash Motorcycle site and I couldn’t find an Executioner model, but I did find something that looks like a Nash skateboard part! Benji probably isn’t getting any free motorcycles out of this seeing as how he got screwed out of the TV.