From 2001 in the heyday of the “Michael Jordan of Skateboarding” hype. This is a kids book which looks to be a dumbed down and probably cleaned up version of Hawk’s bio. For the kids… You know? Did you know that he made skateboarding a bona fide sport almost by himself?

Officially dead, and never to be resurrected. Pictures on the way, but I need to finish the Newberg Trifecta and wait for MC to get a roll of film developed.

Aieee! It’s taking longer than I thought, getting the names and results. I wasted a lot of time building tables from PDF’s only to have the World Cup Skateboarding post the results in the meantime. Massive picture flood coming tomorrow. I’m going to do this thing one day’s event at a time this year. The picture above is just to tide you over. Sleestak local and Libtech rider Jesse Nelson aka Messy Smelson.

Not blowing out anything here man. This was found on a public forum over at a place called F R O N T S I D E G R I N D The home of old school Kiwi skating circa ’73-now! Follow the link for more pictures of a pretty unique looking find. Not sure what’s up with the site besides the forum as the top level domain appears to be a generic webhosting thing. Photos from a post by a forum user named CPS.

There’s nothing getting passed by 240 lbs of skater on 57 inch longboard going 29mph. It happened to me. I ws on a respectable longboard at Mt Tabor getting speed wobbles so I stood up, and all of the sudden I get passed by Steve Grover on a turn with generic bearings and wheels about about 2/3rds of my diameter. Portland park locals know to stay out of his way in the bowls, but now you’ve got to look out on the hills too! Photo courtesy of Ryan Hass.

It’s ok if you can’t tell where it is right?. Oh oh, I know where that smudge is. If you want to know where this pool is, just wander around wearing a diving mask smeared with Vaseline until you recognize something. More pics coming when this spot is dead. UPDATE: See this mystery skater unmasked!

Reader MC pointed out that there was a Gratuitous Tony Hawk Appearance (aren’t they all?) in my post on Flyaway Helmets and concussions. It’s buried at the end and not really that visible, so I separated it. The article is from the October 05 issue of Thrasher covering the Skaters for Public Skateparks convention in Hailey Idaho, where Tony made a surprise appearance in connection with his foundation.

Not that kind of concussion. Yeah, you aren’t cool if you wear a helmet. If you have to wear one, you want to try to look cool right? There are a couple ways to approach this, but before I get sidetracked. This post was supposed to be about yesterday when I watched my friend Steve take a hard slam that rung his bell but good. In the middle of an otherwise ordinary session he bailed in a medium sized bowl and did the classic “land back on your board to Wilson” which resulted in his head slamming back into the bottom of the concrete transition. I could tell by the way he hit that his helmet wasn’t going to help much. Keep reading to find out how to look cool in a helmet and how to get a concussion while wearing one.

There’s a kick ass web site called spamusement.com whose description is “Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!” Tony Hawk just happens to appear as a reference in one of the cartoons. At this point he has entered the collective subconscious of the non-skating public and has become a pop culture reference. This cartoon isn’t one of the best or worst from that site. There are some that are laugh-out-loud funny. I highly recommend it. This one is currently 164 out of 323 which would date it at approximately 2005 according to the copyrights on the web site.

Kicking off the inaugural post of Gratuitous Tony Hawk Appearances is Deck Dogz, an Australian movie out on DVD. Here’s Tony greeting the protagonists towards the end of the flick.