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.

Kickbacks? That’s the only thing I can think of that would convince a physical education program to buy Waveboards for PE classes. Let me try a different approach:

In my day we had to push uphill five miles on a dirt road to get to the waveboard track and the U-shaped slide. Kids these days are spoiled in their PE classes with alternative sports. Not working for you?

OK. Seen above, Angela’s friends stage an intervention and try to divert her from her quest to run off and join a very low paying circus for social outcasts. I’m not sure if these are better than the flat boards with caster wheels that they use for crab races on rainy days.

Where did I get these pictures? Why, from the Ledger’s article titled Physical Education Rides the Wave Of New Recreational Technologies. Jealous? You can even buy print copies for yourself!

Whatever your stance on Nike’s presence in the skateboarding industry, you’ve got to hand it to them for the commercials they made and actually aired on broadcast TV the first time around. They are great from a skating and an advertising perspective. I’ve been trying to get ahold of these and post them, but someone else has already done all the work, so why reinvent the wheel? My personal favorite is the running one because it brings back the times when people literally thought you were a freak if you were over 12 and still skateboarding on a public sidewalk. Of course now you’re a freak if you are over 30 and the hassle often comes the skaters instead of the non-skating public. So you can still be a rebel and participate in one of the world’s most popular sports.

[Source: Transworld beat me to it.]

The Death video parts that pop up on the Interwebs seem to get people talking. This Patrick Melcher spot is no exception. I thought he was on Black Label but apparently he chose Death, no matter how angry that makes Wham! (80’s time warp again, bad kind.) This video has something for everyone unless you are a humorless twat. Street, tranny, break dancing, rails and even slalom… I wish all video parts were like this one. I included the Richie Jackson spot at the end as well, just to jog your memory.

– Thanks to JF for the tip.

Mad Magazine is too highbrow for little kids, so they rolled out Mad Kids for the youngsters. I checked out the PDF preview, figuring it would be all Spongebob-y, and it is, but the cartoon ladies that Don Martin draws still have impossibly large gravity defying breasts. Tony Hawk is on the cover #9, where they gave him the Photoshop bug-out treatment. What is that move anyway? He’s also got an interview inside. OK maybe he’s not mad at kids, but mad for the kids! (And not in a creepy NAMBLA way…)

– Thanks to Danimal for the tip.

Hell, I think this is Art Steve Art. I can tell them apart now but back then… This was from an NSA sanctioned vert and street contest held outdoors in Indianapolis Indiana. It was either 1988 0r 1989, I can’t remember. The Godoys had a reputation for being trouble makers, so I thought it would be funny to pose a shot of Art getting choked by a security guard, who was only too happy to oblige. The effect is kind of ruined by the huge grin on the security guy’s face. Art didn’t seem to be into it, but agreed to play along, I think mostly to thank us for printing a long Godoy interview in a print issue. We were one of the few zines that wanted anything to do with them. Now I’m thinking this might have been Steve actually. Only one of the brothers was there. You know who was there though? Rich from EPM, although I didn’t find this out until last year some time. Anyway, any comedic/editorial brilliance on my part was wasted as I never used this shot for anything until now. Check it out.

I saw this video a few years ago on the web and completely forgot about it until it showed up again embedded in Kristian Svitak’s profile on the 1031 skates site. I don’t know who or when, but it’s good for a chuckle. The stunts are amazing!

Stop the presses! The days of slipping, banana peel-style off the top of your deck are over. Ferrari has made an important advance in friction technology. Apparently, the grip tape on this Ferrari branded skateboard is also coated with some sort of magical anti-slip material, which would make it even gripier than regular old grip tape. I hope they didn’t use spray-tack on griptape, otherwise my patent dreams are over.

The Ferrari skateboard features a seven-layer Canadian maple board and stretches 79 cm by 20 cm. The Grip Tape on the upper surface (with Ferrari logo) is coated in an anti-slip material to improve grip. A stunning Ferrari red finish, the Italian tricolour and the Prancing Horse logo adorn the underside. The skateboard also has black 54 x 36 mm polyurethane wheels custom moulded with a red stripe. The Ferrari skateboard comes in a stylish red nylon carry bag too.

Ferrari has been slapping their logo and PMS color matched red paint on host of mediocre non-automotive devices such as laptop computers for several years now. Further diluting the brand name with a mediocre skateboard must have seemed like a good idea to them as well. Who makes those trucks and how hard are those wheels? Who cares, because it comes with a stylish red nylon carry bag! Count me in. I’m sure this $169 bargain will be available from the Ferrari Store for a long, long time, but just in case it isn’t, there are pictures after the jump. Seriously, who is this aimed at? I guess this would be the skateboard James Spader would have ridden in Pretty in Pink.

[Source: Be Sportier]

Sure, the skateboarding community at large doesn’t have any respect for longboarders, for whatever short-sighted reason, but the longboarders are probably ambivalent to the rest of us right? It’s all good, and karma bro, right? Check out Five Reasons Why Skateboards Stink and Longboards Rock over at New Zealand’s Skurfboards.com. Really? In New Zealand? Is there a big enough scene down there where they can afford to discriminate against each other? People, please try to refrain yourselves from neanderthal comments on this, either here or that site. I don’t care what size board you ride anymore than I care what shoes you prefer, unless you wear Keds™, cause then you’re a complete kook and I don’t want you reading this web site. And to think I used your photo as our 5th ever Shot of the Week, and this is how you repay me? I have no one-time email acquaintance in New Zealand, you’re dead to me! Speaking of New Zealand, you should watch Flight of the Conchords on HBO.

It’s time to throw out your 2007 calendars. Sure, you could buy a skateboard calendar, but unless you got one from your grandmother for Christmas, you might as well head on over to Bailgun Magazine and download their 2008 calendar in PDF format, available in English or German. It’s one of those calendars that has a huge picture and then all the numbered days for that month, so it’s not useful for writing down important dates like “TODAY! Ryan Sheckler signing autographs at the mall!” The red numbers are Sundays, and the action is all tranny, but it’s not to be confused with this all-tranny calendar.