This is Cookie phot of BJ is from a Minnesota DIY spot, sent in by William Morrill.

Whats up dudes, just contributing a photo of a front hurricane @ a spot me my friends made in Minnesota. Its a fun quarter with some vert and hand made pool cope. You can drink beers and sk8 all day there with no hassles..

Beer? Skateboarding? No hassles? Sounds horrible! William’s got time to send in pictures because that spot is probably under three feet of snow right now. Check out the uncropped version.

Aumsville’s skatepark reopened the day I posted the story about it being closed, after being closed for about a month. I spoke with City administrator Maryann Hills this morning, who confirmed that the park had been reopened with the same rules as before, which means lights go out at midnight. Mrs Hill cited vandalism in the bathroom and an assault at the park as the specific reasons why the park was shut down. There is some sort of security camera present, although she was reluctant to give out the details. However, when I asked if it was internet enabled so skaters could use it to check rain conditions, she said it was not currently, but went on to described somewhat passive plans to add that in the future if someone would basically take care of it all for them. Checking up on Tasha’s information from a few days earlier, Mrs Hill mentioned that a precondition to reopening the park was information being given to the police for pressing charges against an individual or individuals. She assumed an arrest or some sort of cooperation had taken place since the park had re-opened. She also reiterated that the park will close again if there are further incidents. The phone call ended on a happy note when Mrs Hill very pleasantly told me to have fun skating. The photo of Danimal above is from the same 2004 night session that the picture of Damien was taken.

These are dark times for Aumsville skaters.

Hey Kilwag, where’s the coverage of Aumsville’s recent closure? SOMEONE NEEDS TO GET SOME SHOTS OF THE FENCE around the park and all the signs up. It says Aumsville is closed indefinitely!!! Those little wanna-be gang banger chumps got that place closed. That place has the shittiest locals of all time. The park is a true Oregon original.

Tasha from Aumsville City Hall said the skatepark was closed due repeated vandalism, including setting fire to the bathrooms and clogging the toilets. They also had problems with people sleeping in the bathrooms as well. (Here’s a tip: If you need to sleep in a public the bathroom, don’t try to burn it down…) Maintenance, repair costs and general aggravation got to be too much so they shut it down indefinitely. Tasha was just the gal who answered the phone, but she said they were hoping someone would call the police with a tip so they could find the guilty parties. She mentioned a plan for video cameras on the site, but she wasn’t sure if the park would reopen until after they make arrests. Aumsville is a pretty small town, and the cops are pretty heavy handed there in my past experience. If the problem was so recurring, how hard could it have been for them to catch someone in the act? Locals, are you gonna let those kooks get away with ruining your scene? It’s too small for you not to know who it is. You guys made your own bed, now you have to sleep in it – even if it is in the bathroom you are trying to set on fire.

The official city administrator was out of the office today. I’ll try and follow up on Monday. If anyone could send in a picture, we’d appreciate it. This shot is from October of 2004.

Here’s a still from the music video for the 2003 track Heartbeats from the Swedish band The Knife. It’s got some vintage skateboarding footage, about 15 seconds or so looped repeatedly. Those kids in the striped shirts look kind of cool going downhill together. I thought they might be up to some editing trickery at first.

[Source: Drawer B]

Man, getting hacked and a having to essentially take 24 hours off from the web site due to work (real job in the real world) really set me back here. I feel like I lost this whole week. This week’s very, very late Shot of the Week comes from Dylan Davies. It’s Warren Jones doing a backside flip over a the seven set at the Vancouver Plaza in Vancouver BC. Check it out.

I’m not a fan of the photo sequence in skateboarding. I prefer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment approach, which means I miss a lot of shots. I was following Gizmodo with some interest for news of a new camera from Casio called the EXILIM Pro EX-F1. It’s a high resolution (six megapixel) camera that has a burst rate of 60 frames per second at full resolution. In case you don’t know your megapixels, 6mp is good enough for any skate magazines cover without a crop. Basically, it’s got a buffer for 60 frames, you can cram them all into a one second burst of 60fps or spread them out as far as 12 seconds, or 5 frames per second. You’ve probably seen the strobe light flashes of a still photographer in real life or at the very least in skate video. I believe those huys are usually shooting around 8fps, or maybe a few more. Here’s another interesting thing about this camera, it’s got a feature called pre-record that buffers a few frames before you even hit the shutter button, just in case you are still a little slow predicting the action. Ever seen a video grab printed in a magazine? Sounds absurd, but it’s been done before. The It’s also got a high speed movie recording option at 300 fps, 600 fps or 1,200 fps, although at lower resolutions. Surely this camera has a sky high price to match it’s impressive technological capabilities, right? Wrong. It should be available later this year for a MSRP of $999. The fact that there are hordes of skate photographers out there has not been lost on Casio. They’ve got video and still skateboarding on the product web site.

A generic sports and healthy lifestyle website called Realbuzz.com has their Top 5 greatest (defining) moments in skateboarding listed as

1. Rodney Mullen flat-ground ‘ollie’ – 1982

2. Bob Burnquist’s 98.0 ‘perfect run’ – 2001

3. Danny Way jumps the Great Wall of China – 2005

4. Tony Hawk’s 900 -1999

5. Shaun White enters summer X Games – 2005

Really? Shaun White? He’s a talented mofo for sure but creating one of the defining moments of the sport just by deciding to compete? Absurd! You can head on over to Realbuzz.com for their long winded justifications if you want. The only one I can kind of agree on in the list is number one. However, if you put in number one, you have to trace it back to the obvious precursor, which was Alan Gelfand inventing the damn “Ollie” in the first place. Did the Mutt actually do it on flat ground first? I guess it wouldn’t surprise me. As for Bob Burnquist’s 98.0 perfect run, nothing against Bob, but who cares? Tony Hawk’s 900? Ok, I can cut them some slack there, but I think the more accurate description would have been more encompassing. Check out my top 5 defining moments after the jump.

[Photo: Skateboard trophy on far left is 60’s vintage for the “International Skateboard Championships” as found on Hawaiian Surf Auction]

This ‘n That from Andy Evans, circa 2007. This video focuses on the UK skateboarding scene, but has skaters from all over Europe and the US.

Censorship is Weak as F##k: A Skateboard Art Retrospective:

Censorship is Weak as F##k is a collaborative retrospective featuring over 40 skateboard graphics designed by Marc McKee and Sean Cliver. The show features work the two have done for World Industries and its subsidiary brands from the formation of the company in the late 1980s to its mid-90s rise to industry dominance. The collection of original skateboards demonstrates, literally in graphic detail, how World Industries set itself apart from its competitors by using a totally uncensored approach in its graphic program, relentlessly featuring one controversial subject after another, covering issues such as religion, pornography, gun control, sex, profanity, racism, drug use and violation of copyright law, all on the bottoms of its skateboards.

Trying to pass off that entire period of World Industries as a battle against censorship is a bit of a stretch, but they certainly were infamous, and they certainly did shake up the industry. Besides, with the way these things sell on eBay, this may be your only chance to see some of these decks in person. I’ll tell you what’s weak as F##k… There’s nothing like having to register and log into a bullshit corporate site like MySpace just to be able look at a few pictures. Surely there is a better way. Looks like an art show I’d like to see though.

[Source: Juxtapoz]

I’ve got a son that’s just over two years old. Since he could walk he’s been climbing all over the skateboards that I leave lying around the house. He’s got fingerboards that he likes to play with like other kids play with toy cars, which he has too. I just started taking him to the Saturday morning 14 and under time slot at our local indoor spot, the Department. I get odd looks when I bring him there, but I’m not pushing him to be the next Tony Hawk. He likes playing around on skateboards, and he likes watching kids skate. If we are there for an hour, he’ll maybe spend 10 minutes max actually trying to skate on his own. It’s mostly a way to get him out of the house and give his mom a little break once a week. Why am I telling you this? I found this discussion about stage dads in skateboarding, AKA skate dads. It was instigated by a sponsor me video, or more accurately, a sponsor-him video for a 10 year old kid supposedly put together by a friend of the kid’s dad. It’s pretty funny because it’s got all this aggro heavy music with swearing as a soundtrack for a little kid’s video. I guess that’s what happens when you get a guy who calls himself Skull Crusher to do your video. And just to prove that no matter how young you start them, someone will always be starting younger: there’s another video of a one year old kid monkeying around on a skateboard. Yeah, he’s hanging 10 on the nose, hardwood floors and not eating it.