Huge news for PDX. Cal Skate has been a fixture in the Portland, Oregon skate scene since 1976. Other shops have come and gone, some loved, some not so much, but Cal Skate has always endured. Chris Nukala has been hanging around or working at this shop since he was 8 years old, and now he is officially the new owner. Former owner Howard Weiner was instrumental in promoting skateboarding in Portland. One local shop famously wouldn’t get behind the Skaters for Portland Skateparks program because the first park wasn’t going t one built near their shop. Not the case for Howard… Chris has been and will continue to be an advocate for skateboarding in Portland, above and beyond measures that just affect his shop. Did I mention he’s a music promoter too? I’ve known Chris since he was probably 14 years old. We would sometimes take him to contests and even “sponsored” him for a bit. He was always so eager when it came to skateboarding. It truly couldn’t have happened to a more deserving or hard working individual. Congrats to Chris, and congrats to all of us in Portland.

Source: Willamette Week

I thought this was AI slop at first but this appears to be a real OJ Wheels product that you can actually buy. Add to cart, you’ll see! I’m a sucker for good wheel packaging and the novelty of it all. These are interesting. They look good but that print is going to be gone after a few short sessions and I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do with the tray… oh yeah, a “rolling” tray. Very silly, but I’m glad they made them.

Yes sir, this is a groundbreaking development. The Cami Tres Assi (3 Aces) board was a ghost for decades, but in the past few years they’ve become regularly available providing you can pony up roughly $175 or so, not including shipping. This is the first one I’ve ever seen in orange or white. I don’t think a lot of thought went into most plastic skateboards as far as color options. Many times in a product’s life span it probably came down to what resin was available in time to ship the next batch. Even accounting for color shift in the photograph, the board on the left definitely looks orange. So that means this wonder was produced in Red, yellow, black, orange, and white. So far I’ve only seen the wheels in yellow and red.

Ronald Chapman ( Chappman, not Chatman ) asked if this advert for Pipp products as featured in the Vintage Skateboard Magazine Ad gallery was for sale. I told him I wasn’t going to take apart an old skate magazine to sell an ad individually. I wish everyone felt that way actually. I was curious though, the advert wasn’t that interesting so I asked him why he wanted it. The simple answer is that he has the two products featured in the advert, and they are definitely more interesting in real life.

The legendary China Banks spot AKA Bridge to nowhere is schedule to be torn down in 2026 according to an article in SFGate. I guess the (non-skating) locals haven’t liked it since it opened in 1971. It bums them out because it casts a shadow and takes up space, or maybe they just aren’t fans of brutalism. You’d think there’s be some sort of argument for keeping it as historical landmark. 2025 hasn’t ended yet and 2026 is already bringing me down. Get your session in while you can.

Photos courtesy of not asking Thrasher, but we’re cool, right?

I was completely unaware of the Skuda brand of skateboards until I started posting ads from som UK-based magazines in the Vintage Skatemag Ads gallery. Like most overseas brands of the 70’s, they never had any market presence in the crowded USA market. Both of the Skuda ads I’ve seen so far are for some pretty nice looking wooden decks, but it looks like they also made some plastic decks.

Photos courtesy of Jon Welton (red) and Adrian Wink (white/yellow) Update: added couple more.

I really enjoyed having a booth at Cal Sk8’s skate swap. I brought too much stuff and wasn’t quite prepared for the space. I was there for about 10 hours, which included about 3 hours total in setup and tear down. My booth was not a huge moneymaker after all expenses were paid, but it was still worth it for the total experience. I met some cool people and saw a lot of old friends. I only have one regret, and that’s the fact that I sold both sets of my 70’s era Sidewinder Wheels.

Thanks to Steve Quirke for these pictures of this skateboard made by EM, a company in New Zealand. These trucks are brutally primitive, ye the board is still quite beautiful as a whole. Nothing forged here, just some metal bending. What about those wheels? They look like a very hard composite material. I need to dig up some of my reference materials to figure out if this was from the 60’s or possibly even 50’s.

Valterra may have been a second rate skateboard company but they did make some memorable boards. Someone in the art department had a pretty good sense of humor. The Total Blast deck from 1989 really pops in some of these color ways. This is simultaneously pretty bad and also pretty good, depending on your mood.

While digging around on Julien’s auction site after the insane $115K Tony Hawk auction found a separate collection of listings titled Vintage Grails of the 70’s and 80’s and decided to see if there was anything interesting. It was quite a chore to sift through the 332 lots, and just as the tedium was about to win I spotted the thumbnail of what looked like a pretty cool old G&S team shirt from the 70’s and a Nash… hold on, that’s a Skate and Annoy shirt! The auction lisitng only says Nash because the topless lady had Nash logo pasties covering her nipples. At the time that illustration was used as the intro to a Nude Bowl trip I made in the late 80’s. The Nash logos worked great in this context because at the time we felt like Nash boards were cheap and exploitive, so it made sense with the graphic. Was there more than meets the eye on this graphic? Sure. Were we also essentially adolescent, immature young males at the time? Definitely. What cracks me up is someone at the auction house had to place this shirt on a mannequin and professionally photograph it. WHOSE COLLECTION DID THIS COME FROM????!!!!!