Florence, Alabama via TimesDaily.com: Council may kill obscure ‘scooter’ law The city council will consider repealing a little-known and hardly enforced ordinance that bans sports, games and wheeled toys from city streets when it meets today. The issue gained attention two weeks ago after Mayor Bobby Irons shelved an amendment that would have banned skateboards from city streets and sidewalks. He is working with the city attorney on an alternative ordinance. Although still in progress, his alternative resolution would define geographically where skateboarding would be restricted. Now if they’d just just kill off those obscure scooter riders. Ba-dum-bump! Ha! Yeah, I know. It’s a lot of work for a one liner. Here’s a link about an up an coming hot young talent on the inline skating circuit (There still is one?) who originally stared of on a skateboard. While I’m at it, Rocketboy on the right is from Rocketman Enterprises, not to be confused with Handstand Man.

Clearing off the hard drive here. Tony Hawk was on MTV’s TRL (OMG Totally AWESOME!) where they interviewed him afterwards. Apparently “The Birdman bigged it up to Ryan Sheckler…” Err… yeah. Then he Gave Ryan some advice (stop crying when you don’t win?) on the Life of Ryan. Fat BMX reports that Rick Thorne interviews Tony Hawk for another social networking great white hype TRIG.com, except they don’t provide a link. However, Mr Thorne assures the readers that you should sign up for Trig.com because “it’s smokin’ My Space and I think It’s good 2 keep U wit tha times.” I’m sure he’s not getting anything from them. Let’s see… Some kids interviewed Tony Hawk at a Toys R Us store but Courant.com wants you to pay to read it now that it’s more than 30 days old. I wonder if those download fees are offsetting the loss in ad revenue? A couple weeks ago the gaming sites were a buzz about the possibility that Tony might be considering a balance board type controller for use in a skateboarding game on the Wii platform. I guess you need to keep the “I”‘s lowercase when typing in Wii or else it…

Jesus Mousepads! Get your Jesus mousepads here! Holeyware is a Café Press store, so it’s not like these are actual mass produced items for sale. Still, it’s nice to know you can buy a mouse pad with Jesus on a bad 80’s skateboard. I mean if he’s really old school, shouldn’t he be on a 70’s deck or even a 60’s plank with steel wheels. Actually, your Lord and Saviour is from the New Testament, so he’s really more New School, like this Jesus on a hand rail action figure. I think my source for this post is actually upset about this.

In a moment of weakness I must have blacked out and sleep walked over to a computer where I bought this 1965 magazine advertisement for Mademoiselle Shoes. I don’t know what magazine it came from because the jackals that dissect these old magazines and sell individual pages online don’t bother to catalog this information. In fact, I think the page size may have been trimmed at the very edges to remove any identifying marks. After all, there are no staple marks visible, although it could have been perfect bound. I can’t tell for certain because the purveyor is curiously absent minded to any of my questions that aren’t “What else do you have for sale?” I paid $13 plus shipping. My wife is annoyed and insists I’d better frame it or else it will be a waste of money. Of course framing it will cost more than the advert. Click to enlarge. Bonus points if you can reference the title of this post in it’s original context and the song it was sampled in. No cheating.

Jason Corley sent in a couple shots of Santa Ana California spots circa 1984: I was just cruising around the site and thought you might appreciate a photo of what was probably the best natural ditch in Orange County back in the day. This is/was Flower Street. Located at the end of Flower Street in Santa Ana, CA. I took this one morning back in 1985. This is what the main section of this amazing ditch looked like. Thing was that it split into a “Y” at one end and further down the ditch maybe 60 yards was a smaller height transition with a long roll in, about 8 feet of flat ground that when coming down the roll in you could carve the smaller bank and then have access to a natural extension that just reached vert. I feel so lucky to have been able to slate this gem from 1983 to around 1987. Santa Ana also was home to the killer Lloyd’s Bank about 1/2 mile away. I also attached a shot of Lloyd’s Bank, the front portion. Not my best trick but I was 13 years old…

I was reading a story in the San Jose Mercury News about a girl who died after falling off the tenth floor of a parking garage that said her crew skated. She wasn’t skating at the time. Anyway, on the side of the page there was an advert for an email marketing company called Constant Contact that caught my eye because there was a skateboard flipping around in the box. It ended up with a still of the new millennium Business Skater Dude. Somewhere, if he was dead, Judge Reinhold would be spinning in his grave, seeing as how he was the 80’s archetype in the movie poster for Vice Versa. Vice Versa is one of those body exchanging movies like Freaky Friday. And while we are on the subject, it wasn’t the only body switching movie to come out 1988. 18 Again! came out the same year but is more notable (for us at least) for having a simulated live performance and soundtrack appearance by legendary funny punks The Dickies, who also have a skateboard model out now, albeit about 20 years too late to do them any good. George Burns was in that movie. I think he may…

I can’t believe how remiss I’ve been in posting the news that aside from reuniting to play Riot Fest last year, Naked Raygun has continued to perform in Chicago as well as embarking on a West Coast tour, something they rarely did in their heyday! They’re in Portland Oregon on December 1st at the rather smallish Dantes. Tour dates are up on the Naked Raygun site. If you want to get a video fix, check out EPM’s post. Raygun is arguably the definitive punk band to come from Chicago, although the Effigies, Articles of Faith, and Big Black also come to mind. The concert images above are from a not-so-secret secret performance by the band under the name Holyy Lazarski Nahane back in November of 2006. And now on to schilling product: Naked Raygun skateboards available.

Odd timing that I came across this news item immediately after posting the the Cool Girls story. It’s 10 days old but I’d still like to mention it. When you think 70’s skateboards, you’ll most likely envision a plastic banana board and some sort of fiberglass deck. The Logan Earth Ski has got to be near the top of iconic 70’s skateboards that weren’t merely toys. Never being more than casually aware of 70’s skateboarding history, I always assumed that the brand and company was completely the handiwork of 70’s skater Bruce Logan. It turns out his whole family was involved, and mother Barbara and brother Brian were the ones that mostly ran the company. Barbara recently passed away after battling breast cancer at the age of 79. She was apparently well liked in the industry. You can read the death notice that includes a little bit of history in the North County Times. Gravity also makes a board that is more of a tribute to the original Logan Earth Ski as opposed to a straight re-issue.

The Los Angeles Times has an article on the company Cool Girls Skateboards titled No coasting for this skateboard firm. I’ve seen Cool Girls advertised in some magazines and it’s come up on other web sites. I was willing to cut them some slack on their somewhat cheesy and unoriginal graphics that look like they were designed by somebody trying to figure out how to sell stuff to little girls at Target. Why was I cutting them slack? because I assumed they were owned by women who were trying cut out a niche for themselves in a male dominated industry. The web site sure makes it seem that way. Turns out I was pretty much dead wrong. The owner, Frank Davern got into the business by accident from a side venture where he had women reporting on music and trends. I find it kind of creepy, pretending to be a bunch of women in order to sell skateboards to girls, but it’s just business right? It’s not so much unlike when other skateboard companies launch a brand that pretends to be a separate entity. Davern is selling a lot of boards online, but can’t figure out why his boards aren’t…

So this little video is making the rounds pretty quickly. MC said he saw it on Skate Daily but I can’t find the link. (Yes I can.) I don’t know if it’s real or not, there are a couple spots where it looks fishy and at least one frame grab I made appeared to be missing the skater when he should have been visible. It’s hard to tell because you can do some damn good fakes nowadays with a cheap computer. If it isn’t fake then someone managed to capture good goof and one great one in a short time span. Update: Most likely fake as it was used in a Sprite advertisement. Unfortunately I only saw edited versions before making the post. Thanks JB.