The New York times has a thing for putting skateboarding in the fashion section lately. I was going to blow of this article titled “Skateboarding Rolls Out of the Suburbs,” but the skateboarding and hip hop blogs are hyping it and you know we follow the trends around here. There’s not much to it besides the fact that black kids can now skate without being harassed by their peers. You get to see a photo of Pharrell Williams doing a street plant as well as read this choice quote from him:

“I was rapping and it was getting me nowhere, so I went back to my roots… …When I’m with rappers in the studio, they say, ‘I used to skate, too,’” Mr. Williams said. “I can only just say I was one of the ones that was willing to speak up about it.”

Wow man, that took a lot of courage to come out as a skateboarder in public in hopes of jump starting a failing rap career. He’s a regular Rosa Parks. On the plus side, they also briefly quote Stevie Williams and Steven Snyder, the former Alva rider and long time Chicago favorite now working at Uprise. Sift through the Chi-Town Shred archives if you want to see some vintage 80’s action. Snyder’s in there too. These type of articles are becoming as popular as the “Olds dudes still shredding” pieces. The article requires a free registration, but it loaded for me when I hit the “forget your password?” link. It’s also up in it’s entirety on the Concrete Wave forum.

BK has a great shot over at SkateDaily this week.
Has Sheckler ever made the cover of Tiger Beat? Man aren’t you glad you weren’t trying to skate whatever that park is that Bryce was at?

Kyle Dion from New Line Skateparks graciously provided the renderings from tonight’s Ed Benedict presentation for us to share. I posted them at Skaters for Portland Skateparks

The dozen or so guys that showed up for the meeting seemed pleased with the design.

You can comment on the plaza design on the Portland Parks website through 11/30/07. They will pass those comments on to NewLine Skateparks.

Dan Garland has been awarded the Percent for Art commission. He showed his ideas. We’ll try to get some images from him.

So we covered the 70’s marketing tie in, now it’s time for something that reeks of the 80’s. This Max Headroom / Coke themed skateboard by Variflex is available as a Buy it Now now for $169.99. It’s got appeal for the skateboard collector crowd as well as another equally zealous group of people who collect Coca-Cola advertising material. Max Headroom pushing New Coke! As an example of the exploitation skateboards of the 80’s, this mint board is excellent, if not totally radical. It’s got the full set of plastics with nicely accented risers and a lapper. Geez, did that sentence actually just come from my brain to fingers? Please shoot me. Max Headroom’s popularity lasted slightly longer than that of “New” Coke. More pictures after the jump.

Oh how I long for the days when you could impress your half shirt and bell bottom wearing girlfriend by high jumping over your MG while wearing a hockey helmet. Check out the full advert after the jump.

In Oregon, the Lake Oswego Observer reports
that a kid named Kosh McClure was hit by a train while skating and lived to tell the tale.

Kosh McClure didn’t know how close he had come to dying until he awoke on a sidewalk on State Street. “I was laying on the ground and I couldn’t see,” McClure recalled. “Everything was really fuzzy. Everyone was like, “You got hit by a train!'”  As he recovered this week from a near-death experience, McClure and his mother, Jodi Roderick McClure, counted their blessings. The 15-year-old Lake Oswego High School sophomore spoke calmly about what it’s like to be hit by a locomotive.

And no, he wasn’t wearing a helmet, so that finally debunks that myth, huh kids? But the man won’t leave him be. The Lake Oswego police chief mentioned that Kosh should have been wearing a helmet by state law, and his case has been referred to juvenile court for a city ordinance regarding hazardous riding. That will teach him. Amazingly, some people are blaming the markings on the street and not the skater. Check out Train vs. Skateboard.

Fuel TV’s Insane Cinema series is running a feature called Skate Girl that focuses on the trials and tribulations of being a female skater, as well as a little history. It’s a pretty good feature, but not without it’s flaws. They interview Peggy Oki, who probably wasn’t too hard to track down, but nothing about other famous female pioneers like Ellen Oneil and Pat McGee. Also, it’s hard to comment on this film without mentioning something that is either funny or sad, depending on how you look at it. This documentary on the struggle of female skateboards to be taken seriously is continuously interrupted by little station bumps in the corner of the screen that are, more often than not, jiggle girls like bikini clad bimbo in the shot above. That has to be bittersweet for the girls in the viewing audience. An interesting side note, the credits reveal the the skate photographer is none other than Lisa Whitaker, the stunt double from the old Capri Slims skateboarding commercial we featured earlier.

Rob React has a small set of “Old School Boston Skateboarding” pics up on Flickr. Turns out he was part of the old “Limozine” crew. The spot above was known as Turtles. I have two old copies of Limozine that I need to add to our 80’s Zine Archives.

[Source: Drunken fist]

One of the things on my long list of “eventuallys” for this site is a gallery of dead skateboard magazines. I have a milk crate in my basement with some old skate rags, and I thought I had a few gems that would surprise people. Well I don’t have anything compared to Vintage Skateboard Magazines. It’s a work in progress without a lot of bells and whistles. What it does have are covers of skateboarding magazines from the 60’s to the 80’s from the US, UK, France, Australia and Japan. Some of the UK issues have scans of inside pages as well. There’s a lot of interesting documentation there, my only beef is that the scans aren’t larger. If it were up to me, every page would be available, but then again maybe it’s a good thing it isn’t up to me since our gallery isn’t even up yet. Check out the varied and often wacky past of skateboard magazine publishing at Vintage Skateboard Magazines.

It’s time for the annual Grind for Life awards benefit/contest/demo/party. If you are anywhere near the neighborhood of Cocoa Beach Florida you should consider making a day of it. Dan Hatcher writes:

Hey everyone, if you missed this one last year, you must have heard about it by now. Nearly 1500 attended last year so you don’t want to miss out this year. Saturday Nov 17 —

Along with the pro demos, free stuff, food and music from local rock band “Arkaydia” we will also be hosting an all ages flow course contest. Gates and registration open at 10am and contest will start around 11sm. Hope to see all of you there. This is a great event for a great cause and tons of fun!

The mission of the Grind For Life organization is to provide financial assistance to cancer patients and their families when traveling long distances to doctors and hospitals. They also educate and inspire cancer patients and their families about cancer survival and recovery. You can view the whole flyer after the jump or get more info from Grind for Life and the Cocoa Beach Skatepark.