Police in Bournemouth England raided a garage and confiscated an illegal motorized skateboard offshoot. From the Timesonline (UK) article titled The skateboard that can top 45mph – and is illegal The G-Wheel is widely advertised on the internet for about £499, but its sale is illegal in the UK. Tests on the seized machine revealed 15 serious faults, including an ineffective rear brake. Trading Standards officers say that the exhaust pipe can become dangerously hot and the plastic petrol tank leaks fuel over the pavement. As the sour looking Sheila in middle can attest, the Wheelboard first appeared in Australia a few years back, and now can be found in Brazil and a host of other places importing them from China. I’ve even seen one on the outskirts of our local skatepark a few times, but the guy never had the stones to take onto the tranny, like his Brazilian brother at the top did.

Apparently, the Discovery Channel did a short feature on the downhill longboard scene in Canada, more specifically, the Rayne Longboards team and operation. I tried to find out some information on the context of the piece (what show was it on?) but the web site was mum. But they do sell a pintail longboard for some reason. That and those twisty boards. They would also like to recommend a jumping skateboard, or a Flowboard alternative skateboard. Turns out they’ll sell you anything but an actual, regulation length skateboard. Sorry, I got distracted. Watch the video for Discovery Channel’s take on downhill, including some extended Coleman slide action in the rain. Cliff needs to work on that web site. – Oh yeah, thanks to Skategeezer for the tip.

I didn’t have an appropriate cultural time machine sound bite reference for these boards like I did for the Max Headroom deck. I dunno, maybe I should have used “You can touch this.” A lot of 80’s and and even 70’s era boards have been reissued, but you don’t see too many from the dark ages. Or maybe you do, but I don’t. Here’s two circa 1991 from Foundation with the skinny from Swank himself: Not a huge deal. Just some fun stuff. Eighteen years in business. That in itself is crazy. I like the mid modern shape to ride. It has a nose and tail and a melow concave. The OG seem to be popular to people from that era just to have one. I have been signing a handful. Very close to OG mold. The OG mold was a Prime wood and had a bump on the top for the arch of the foot. Brainchild of Rocco. Watson still has mold from back in the day. That place is a fricking museum. These are made here at WL in San Diego, USA. We have made some wide decks over the years but they mostly sat and my sales…

Laurens Groenveld 566 consecutive kickflips beats the old world record of 563 held by someone who has already been long forgotten. He did the last 26 on a borrowed board after breaking a kingpin. All this while just trying to qualify for the Dutch leg of the Krux Kickflip Challenge. So says the guys in charge of the Norwegian skate site Tackyworld. I guess Laurens will be the heavy favorite at the Dutch Championships on the 9th of December in Amsterdam. Do you care? We would care more if NHS would send us some product. Right now it just looks like we’re on the Press Release Flow Team. Hey, that’s a great name for a skateboarding industry news site. I guess I meant to say Press Release Flow Team™.com

Not sure how I feel about this one. Although one of the twelve nominations, the skateboard was not one of the 2007 inductees to the National Toy Hall of Fame (Housed at Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY). This year’s winners are the Atari 2600 Game System, Raggedy Andy, and the Kite. Roller skates, and by extension, inline skates are already members, and so is the bicycle. Raggedy Anne was already in the Hall of Fame. Did you know the Hall used to be in Salem, Oregon? Yeah, me either. Dr. Brad, this G.I. Joe is for you! [Source: Priced Nostalgia – pissed that My Little Pony didn’t get in! ]

Old Man Army lost a soldier named Grover a couple of weeks ago, and they put together a tribute: He had a massive head injury due to a skating downhill a long time ago. He had massive brain seizures on a daily basis and it pretty much forced him to stop skating a few years back. Grover would still always show up at the park to yell at the riders and basically just heckel them..showing his support for our crew. He drank a bottle of vodka and passed out. Since he was passed out he couldn’t take his medication and died while having a huge brain seizure.. Anyways, the Chandler crew came out in force to say goodbye to our long lost friend Grover.. Brain seizures kept him from skating, but he was still down for the session. That’s a love of skateboarding. Here’s a couple of pictures and the forum post if you want to pay your respects. Video tribute in the forum link or after the jump.

It’s that time of the week again, making up for lost time and pushing the envelope of freshness dating. The Los Angeles Times has a nice historical piece on the Signal Hill Speed Run that has a lot of interesting tidbits of information. For instance, I had read that one year a previously non-skating longshoreman showed up to enter, but I wasn’t aware that he blew off his daughter’s baptism to compete. This article also goes into more detail on some of the hair raising crashes that took place. The amount of mayhem that took place is pretty amazing. In today’s litigation heavy insurance risk climate, that race wouldn’t have made it past the second run of the first year. Yes, this is skateboarding. The picture on the left is John Hutson from Thrasher Magazine of January 1981. The shot of Hutson was actually taken at a different race on the Laguna Seca road racing course in 1980, (Signal Hill officially ended in ’79) Hutson was a first place finisher at both. The shot on the right was poached from Vetter design. Check out the L.A. Times article Board out of their minds. Free registration may be required. [Source: SkateDaily]

A certain someone I know loves those ridiculously tacky nature shirts with airbrush styled wolves and eagles and bears. He’s been known to frequent many a skate spot wearing a shirt covered in similarly styled killer whales frolicking all over it. Some one at Element either shares his sense of humor or has the same bad taste. They have collaborated with The Mountain on a series skateboards and t-shirts. Seriously? I mean is this a goof or what? What’s next, a collaboration with the guys who make… I don’t know, “No Fear” t-shirts? See if you can make sense of this.

Speaking of the S-Board, there’s also a thing called the Hurricane Board that appears to be trying to avoid patent infringement by switching the rotating connection link in the center into a wiggly spring instead. I say “appears” becasue the web site looks like it has had all the content removed. The “inventor” is a Virginian named No Un Kwak who may not know Kang Sin-ki, but I’m sure he’s seen his work. For some reason, the YouTube videos have embedding disabled. Silly Kwak.

Appearing as Corey Webster: Sebastian Stigar. As Chrissy: Ida Elise Broch. As Hook: Espen Klouman Høiner Yeah, I looked up that “ø” code, although he looks more like a James Spader in Pretty in Pink than he does like Hook in Thrashin. What’s the point? Oh yeah, some Swedes Norwegians have remade Thrashin into a snowboarding movie. The hero of the movie is a hotshot skater who moves to the mountains where nobody skates, so he has to take up snowboarding to fit in. Then he falls in love with the village badass’ girlfriend, who beats him up. Wait, the village tough guy beats him up, not the girl. Actually, this is sounding more and more like Better Off Dead. I don’t know what kind of crazy aspect ratio this film was shot in, but the trailer seems really wide. It helps with the skate stunt double since they never show him from kneecaps up. Hey, want to fit in at your school? A good way to blend in with crowd and not draw any undue attention to yourself is to skate through the hallways at school busting kickflips. This may be just another one of those sports genre Romeo…