That’s right. If you can’t make it out to one of his skatepark opening appearances you can still get his chicken scratch on a 8×10″ photo from Target.com. If you have even more money burning a hole in your pocket you can get a 16×20″ version too.

Last week we had something new, so for this week lets go with something old. Streets on Fire from Santa Cruz Skateboards was a pivotal skate video to say the least. Natas Kaupas’ part pushed the boundaries of what could be done on a skateboard. I’m sure if you ask anyone what they thought of this video when it came out they will mention Natas’ part. There’s some good backyard ramp action, and with one of the best soundtracks ever, this video is in my Top Ten. Featured Skaters: Steve Alba, Claus Grabke, Jeff Grosso, Jeff Hedges, Jason Jessee, Natas Kaupas, Jeff Kendall, Corey O’Brien, Rob Roskopp, Neil Blender, and Christian Hosoi. run time: 40 min 46 sec – Check it Out

This video follows the Four Star team on a two week tour of Tokyo, Japan. Four Star has some of the best skaters, and of course the Gonz is there, which makes the video that much better. Throughout the entire video he is riding that land barge of a board. This is definitely one of the better videos to come out during 2005. It gets the fire burning below to get out and skate. Featured Skaters: Brian Anderson, Mike Carroll, Mark Gonzales, Rick Howard, Eric Koston, P.J. Ladd, Guy Mariano, and Max Schaaf. Run time: 36 min 59 sec – Check it out.

This pool was up and running for just about forever and a day. There were rumors of $200 tickets being given out but that was likely just subterfuge as nobody seemed to actually know anyone personally who had gotten a ticket. The pool was in a motel that was being torn down. Seems like that was going around this summer. In any case, there are action photos to be seen as well. I’m trying a different approach to the thumbnails for the sake of uniformity and saving a little production time. Sometimes they are close to full frames of the enlarged versions, sometimes they just highlight interesting parts. Please let me know in the comments how you think it works out. Check it out.

Seriously. I had a hard enough time with Defender, so when Defender Stargate came out it was just too overwhelming. That’s how I feel with the video games these days. Too many button combinations to remember to be able to freaking enjoy playing. That’s why simple games like Guitar Hero are the best. Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is available fro two platforms, Nintendo DS and more importantly in this case, The Nintendo Wii. Why? Because with the gyroscope motion sensitive controller you can use the involuntary muscle spasms and body movement to your advantage when pretending to skateboard. There’s a video showing how it works here. It’s actually kind of cool. That one guy might be related to Weird Al.

A paintball goofball is trying to trade his Ramones skateboard for video games. You may know him as Paintballkilla14, but he also wants you to know he is a Christian. If catches wind of this, he will hopefully represent his religion better than the kids on the Fusion Affect team represent their shop. Anyway, trade your video games for Paintballkilla14’s skateboard here. If he’s into playing paintball he might not be completely fat yet. It’s a pretty high adrenaline activity.

Let’s see, maybe 1992 doing the backpack tour through parts of Europe and I took this horribly exposed slide under the Eiffel Tower or La Tour Eiffel as they like to call it in country. In Paris (duh!) we lucked out in arriving at a rare time when the pools underneath the tower were drained, but we felt like jackasses because we neglected to bring our sticks. See the poorly scanned full frame enlargement after the jump.

Portland transplant Marek Litinsky is back in Czechoslovakia working for the KGB selling used skis. Don’t ask me, apparently it’s enough money to make it worthwhile. While reports have been almost non-existent, he had this to say: I also entered national championschip in bowl and ended up third. so I had money for a party. I love Czechs. Pilsner Urquell on tap for $1.50 with tip…. The picture above was featured in the print version of the the Czech skate mag called Board. I couldn’t find a link to a story or anything but you can Czech out a larger version here. Nice shirt Marek. Czech, Czech, Czeck. One-two, Czech, Czech. It’s fun to say and type. Photo credit: the Unknown Czech.

This is Brian Crane at the deceased Beaverton vert ramp back in ’00 or ’01. He was in a band called Avalauncher. One New Years eve he played in a one off band billed as the Pretendents, a Decendents cover band. We showed up and drank the last of the beer and rocked our asses off. It was great. A transplant from Milwaukee Wisconsin, Brian stopped going to the regular vert sessions when he lost his job or went back to school or something. We did see him briefly later with some fancy home made stash boxes made out of exotic hardwoods that he was crafting. Maybe the pseudo vert ramp conditions at Pier Park will see him come out of the woodwork again.

Meet some modern-day pioneers who turned Oregon into one of the most well-known skatebarding (sic) destinations in the world. – I’m guessing that means Dreamland interviews? Episode 1803 of an Oregon Public Broadcasting show called Oregon Field Guide will be broadcast Thursday October 19, 2006. It repeats at 2:30am and 6:30pm on Sunday. What is skateBARDing? UPDATE: Watch it here.