Ralph Lloyd-Davis has a blog called Skateboarding Now and Then that is an amusing exercise in pointing out some of the differences in skateboard business and culture over the years. Typically it’s two images, a “now” and a “then” with a title. In the case above, the post is titled “Happy Couples” with Rob Dyrdek as the common element. The “thens” are usually from the 80’s or 90’s. Sometimes it’s just one image and a link to a video on YouTube or another feature on a different site. The format of Skateboarding Now and Then leaves a little to be desired. For instance, when external videos or pages are used as they should be embedded or screen captured instead of just linked. Jumping out of the web page to see the punchline of the joke kind of ruins the flow. The posts aren’t updated very frequently, but maybe a little extra web traffic will help stoke Ralph to kick it up a notch. He’s got a good thing going and I’d like to see it fleshed out a little more. I’m not sure what else Ralph Lloyd-Davis has going on, but his name does turn up as an author on the UK skateboarding site Cross in the Crossfire. Ralph, if you are reading, Now and Then would be a good feature here on Skate and Annoy. Think of all the glory… Check out Skateboarding Now and Then.

From Skull Skates comes word of the 22nd Annual Jaks contest at China Creek on Saturday, September 8, 2007 from 12:00pm – 6:00pm. China Creek skatepark is located at Broadway and Clark in Vancouver BC. Skull Skates has video of some past China Creek events on their JAKS page, as well as a few recently added new decks.

The San Francisco Skateboarding Association is holding a Golden Gate Park Horseshoe Pits clean up and Junk Jam on September 15th 2007. It looks like they have a bunch of projects either in the pre-fetal stages or already on the books. Much to the horror and disappointment of every skatepark advocate and teenager in a 50 mile radius, Potrero del Sol/La Raza Park skatepark was designed by Grindline and will be finished by Dreamland some time in 2008. Those poor, unlucky bastards. No word yet on if there are any mafia ties being investigated. Perhaps the large street presence threw invertigators, I mean investigators, off the track.

Nobody has been able to successfully incorporate skateboarding into a fictional movie as a major plot device without making it corny. The 1978 movie Skateboard was probably the first attempt. It stars teen heartthrob Leif Garret in his pre coke binge and DUI days and also features Tony Alva as Tony Bluetile. Here’s a short clip of the archetypal sketchy outsider trying to hustle some teenage kids to form a skateboard team and make a quick buck. It’s very amusing, more so if you imagine our own Grover from GVK as the lead. The last time he tried to talk some teenagers into his van to go skateboarding he had to register his name with the neighborhood as an “offender.” Watch the clip after the jump.

In January we mentioned Grant Britain on some obscure educational network TV program. He’s back on the air again with “A lecture by renowned skateboarding photographer Grant Brittain about his life and work.” I’m not sure if this is the same thing as the last one, but I sure would like to see this. After all, he is our current SOTW.

1958 RCA Deluxe picture from Eric’s Vintage Television Sets

Eco Skateboards has an project placed on iFreelance.com titled Hip looking website for an environmentally friendly skateboarding company:

I need a cool looking flash website design done for an environmentally friendly skateboard company. To give you a little background on our company, we are a skateboard producer located in Canada called Eco Skateboards. The philosophy behind the company is really organic and natural, we love bright colours and happy looking designs! We are looking for something with our logo integrated into it.

What is their budget for a hip website developed in Flash no less? Between $250 and $499 with two weeks to deliver. I don’t know if the skateboards are made in China, but at that price the web site will have to be made in India.

Joesf Heffner (AKA nweyesk8 in our comments) sent in these pics of a mobile skate shop he’s seen traveling around to skateparks in the central part of western Oregon. It’s less than ample stock is being hauled around in the back of large RV style trailer. That’s an awful lot of hardgoods they need to sell just to cover gas. The skateshop-out-of-the-back-of-my-car is not a new phenomenon, but at this level it’s a big slap in the face to the local skate shops. There’s always the chance that Grinders is servicing a bigger geographic area that doesn’t have local shops, but it’s a pretty safe bet that’s not the case. If it is, then good luck with that operating model. Your first order of business ought to be selling the huge trailer for a small used panel van that runs on home brew biodiesel. You might have a fighting chance then.

Insert joke about shitty bowls here. Oops! Shoulda made this photo of the Kent Washington skatepark a Shot of the Week.
[Photo: Tony Davies via Sleestak]

Ready for another online zine? Tweaker appears to be a UK based skate zine and not a Midwest USA zine for meth heads. Tweaker is one big Flash application that mimics a real magazine, but with a few multimedia tweaks, if you will. The traditional folded over letter-sized paper aspect ratio is preserved, and corners peel up when you mouse over them. Some of the photos can bring up an overlaying sequence, some pages have video embedded and some pages can scroll. I’m not a fan of Flash-based simualtions of printed magazines, but in this case I think it might work. It’s more immersive because it not only looks like a printed zine, but it has the ability to do things print can’t do, or at least not until they get digital paper perfected and available cheaply. One example is embedded video out takes from Winstan Whitter’s “Rollin’ Through The Decades” documentary in an article about a famous street spot. Tweaker is in beta right now so it’s a little buggy and slow. For instance, you can flip a page with the video playing and it will continue to play even after the page turning effect is over. It looks cool, but the sound can interfere with next page. There’s a mixture of street and park skating, old and new, plus a little bit of the now mandatory artsy-fartsy content. The fact that they bothered to make the beta version live confirms my opinion that this thing is going to be very labor intensive to publish. I hope they figure out a way to make it work. Check out Tweaker.

[Source: The Goat]

OMG! UR SO HOT! The blogosphere is on fire with hottest skateboards on the web this week – the Dead Rappers series from Jeremy Fish and a soon to be released Wii controller-looking board from Black Market, a company that seems to be doing a second rate impersonation of World Industries circa 91. Actually, this Wii deck is BM’s best work to date. A bunch of gaming sites are tittering all over it. Speaking of tittering, I just said BM!

[Source: Wii – Kotaku Dead Rappers – everyone]