Are you sick of Oregon Trifecta coverage? You’d think we would be. After I made a flippant comment (Who, me?) about the conglomerated Extreme™! sports nature of the Banquet web site, I heard back from the site’s content manager Cody Whitman:

We started banquet as a resource for filmmakers and photographers (we sell downloads of DVD’s and are in the process of helping photogs sell stock photos) and this is why there are a variety of sports on our site. It is true that “conglomerate” sites don’t make sense in a lot of ways within action sports (or whatever the hell you want to call them), but in some respects they do. We are all filmmakers, photographers and writers as well as participants in our respective sports and whether you are shooting skating or skiing there are commonalities. We understand the differences between the cultures, clearly there is no such thing as a shared lifestyle across these sports or even within them for that matter. But the truth of the matter is skating is a three man sport, the skater, the photog and the filmer…. Maybe there aren’t similarities between a skater and someone riding motocross but there are between the people creating the media surrounding those two sports. And we are trying to be an outlet for those people.

So Cody has a point there. Banquet is not really aimed at the individual audiences that enjoy those activities, but more so at the kinds of people that enjoy documenting them, or want to buy and sell that documentation, I guess. So enjoy banquet’s photo and written coverage as provided by Kyle Bunker, who took all the photos above. I think Screech pukes at every contest.

Lincoln City
Portland, Pier Park
Battle Ground Washington
Bonus: Colin Bane’s Oregon Trifecta editorial

The latest installment of G.V.K. Watching this video made me realize I have had the same friends for 20yrs +. Good or bad im not quite sure. At the very least this is proof that we are washed up vert skaters. So all we need is a vert ramp so we can go and have a place to talk about the good old days and (re-live) the glory we never had. To be totally accurate this footage is from the end of our low fidelity careers. This footage is from Boulder but the crew lived in Steamboat, Colorado, circa 90-93. Not much vert anywhere, especially Steamboat. We would literally go months with out skating, get antsy head to Boulder (3 hours) to see a show. Most of this footage is from a session before a Ramones show.

This is part of our never ending quest to bring you the best street skating coverage. Sure he stands upright and is riding switch, but he’s got no style! Animal retard or genius? Is that a third eye? You be the judge, after the jump.

Looking for something to do in the Salt Lake City Utah area this weekend that doesn’t involve the Dew Tour? Check out the informal invitational Bomb the Beehive contest and BBQ on Friday September 21st at the South Jordan Skatepark, about 20 mins south of downtown Salt Lake.

The Dew has prelims on Thursday and Street/park finals on Sat night and vert on Sunday, so not only is it a second chance for the guys who don’t make it but two days before finals for any of the vert guys who want to make it down. Been getting a good response including Benji G and Mike Peterson both who said they’ll be around for it.

It going to be more of a fun event, an old style BBQ jam with a self judged format. Way its going to work is a BBQ and bowl session starting around 5pm then there will be a determined “judged session” from probably 7:15-8 where after wards everyone skating is given a ballot with all the names on it and circle the three names who skated the best with one being a tie breaker. Whoever gets the most votes wins, speaking of which its not huge prize money but $1000 for first. Its supposed to be more of a fun event than a full on contest scene.

I don’t understand the Beehive reference either. Looks like this is quite the weekend for BBQ, at least if you are in Seattle or South Jordan.

The Marginal Way project is having thier annual BBQ and fundraiser this weekend, but their generator gave up the ghost, so be a local hero and contact them if you have a temporay generator hookup for the event. If you can’t bring a generator, bring your board and support the scene.

Oh yeah it’s that time again, the end of the summer Marginal Way Skatepark 2nd annual BBQ. Come down and see the progress of the park. we have been doing some cool stuff over the past year. hopefully this next year we can continue to make more rad shit. the BBQ is going to be fun food, skating, game of CRETE (our version of SKATE) and music. Plus our pal Quincy Quigg illustrated a cool new shirt for us that will be for sale during the event. come down and see what going on at your local Seattle DIY park and help us celebrate and make some money for the start of Fall 07.

Marginal Way Skatepark BBQ
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2007 1:00PM
SKATEBOARDING, MUSIC, FOOD
GAME OF C.R.E.T.E (REGISTER AT 10 AM)
SUPPORT SEATTLE‚S D.I.Y. SKATEPARK

..for their cheese! Haw, har! But seriously folks, Dreamland just broke ground on a small skatepark in Lake Delton, Wisconsin. Secretary for the village of Lake Delton, Kimberlee Czuprynko is trying to organize a demo for opening day in Spring of 2008, but she’s been met by silence from everyone she’s contacted. Midwest companies, this is your chance to step up. Beer City and Character Skateboards are the closest neighbors I can think off the top of my head. The folks at Midwest Bowlriders might have a few ideas. Maybe even Indy’s Toast Skateboards could get in there. Lake Delton is excited about the new park. They’ve been updating the village web site with progress pictures (in annoying pdf documents) almost every other day since construction began. They’ve even been keeping tabs on how many members of Deamland crew are in town. If you think you can help with the grand opening, contact kimberlee at charter dot net or 608 254-2558 ext 225. More info: Skatepark site, Press release with park plans.

Grover’s Video Korner often reaches for greatness, but Rory Sheridan is like Icarus flying too close to the sun. Ok, that’s a bit much, but his Behind the Griptape skateboarding exposés are damned funny. They can be a little too drawn out, but as the second episode shows, he’s honing his craft and they are getting tighter. Good scripts, some decent acting, skateboards and copious onscreen beer bongs. What else could you ask for? Watch the videos after the jump.

[Source: South of the North]

Be careful what you wish for. If you spend the time and money to make something worthwhile online, you want people to read it. If you get too many people reading, it can become quite expensive and time consuming to maintain. I used to spend a lot of time on Concrete Disciples and Sleestak. As I started to develop Skate and Annoy more, I gradually chose to spend more time creating on SNA and less time reading other sites. Maintaining these things can be a bitch, just ask the guys who do it. Adding forums generates a headache of a different level of magnitude. Imagine every jackass commenter you see on this site multiplied by 100 or 500. Flame wars, server overloads, spam posts… I know, cry me river right? I haven’t been following it in detail, but I know Jeff Greenwood over at Concrete Disciples had some health issues for a while, and I think he’s turned over the reigns of CD for the most part. A while ago they made the decision to contract an online advertising agency to help generate ad revenue and pay for the heavy usage the site gets. At first there were a lot of “crossover” ads for action sports related companies, you know, lifestyle stuff. Buy your surf trunks here, etc… I was over there the other day and got a little bit of a shock when I pulled up a page and found geographically targeted ads trying to sell me a car in Portland, as well as ads for Verizon. Basically, non skateboarding related in any sense. It kind of bummed me out a little, but I know they aren’t “selling out”, they just need to pay the bills.

A comment in yesterday’s post about the Skate-Ball ramps got me thinking about an eBay auction I saw a few years back. The parts for a complete fiberglass skatepark were listed with a $30,000 opening bid, and as I recall, nobody bid the minimum. I saved the images because I thought they were interesting. These were relics of the 70’s rotting away in a desert somewhere, and for some reason I find that stuff fascinating. Someone spent the time and money necessary to make the molds for these giant prefab pieces, and maybe sold a few and then lost a bunch of money. Fiberglass seems like it would be not quite the best surface for a skate park. A little web investigation reveals the park in these pictures was likely Thrasher Land park in Glendale Arizona. At some point in time they tried to incorporate modern street skating elements into the park, and the end result makes Frankenstein look suave. The domain name (thrasherland.com) is parked at a hosting company and the phone number has been reassigned. A web forum reports that the whole facility has recently been razed. It’s amazing that they weren’t demolished in previous decades. So what do you do for the sake of history? Sk8parklist.com appears to be the only skatepark directory with actual pictures of the park, but even then, they barely show the telltale blue ramps. Concrete Disciples has a listing with no pictures. How can you not take pictures of giant prefab blue fiberglass ramps? It’s not like you run across them all the time, or even, ever.

This Tigard Times article on the skatepark from July had some background on the park. Also check out some of the old info including a plan drawing at the Tigard City website skatepark page.

A story has been circulating about how the changes to the original design came about. The Tigard City government folks have been pleased with the professionalism of the Dreamland crew and the progress of the skatepark. When Dreamland said they could save a couple of the big trees on the site by altering the design, they were pretty much given the go ahead to make what changes they saw fit.

This is how it has been done in the smaller towns and has been a great boon to skaters. Design/Build just makes sense. Those guys get on site and discover lines as they build. If they can improve flow by altering the design, they should.