If I didn’t know better I’d think this was a gag from GVK. The ad copy is absurd. “The ol’ Mersedes Bends Skatboard Factory?” Seriously? Even if “skateboard” wasn’t misspelled, that would still be a bit much. Twenty dollars will buy you the hottest skateboard you’ve ever seen. Star wheels designed by freestyle champ Ed Nadalin normally sell for $79.95 each (yes, each) but through this ad you can get a complete set for only $12. That’s an amazing 97% discount! Pre-designed configural CAMBER-FLEX? They make a big deal about including sealed bearings, so you know it must be 1976, and it is. Volume 3, Number 1, which is the October 1976 issue of Skateboarder Magazine. My best friend in grade school nada plastic board with a Mercedes logo relief on top, but no name visible anywhere. It always impressed me as a kid. We all called it the Mercedes Benz board. I’m surprised Skateboarder agreed to print this advertisement, it would be the same thing as Thrasher running an ad for Nash…. Oh wait, they actually did that all the time.

A Gift Of Mud: Episode 1, featuring Mark Scott, Tavita Scanlan, Dave Tobin, Jessica Starkweather and Mark Conahan. From Elias Parise

It just takes a little getting used to, and for the next day you can’t skate in a regular sized spot without a little residual hunch, but it’s a lot of fun. MC’s basement ramp video after the jump. It’s a little out of focus, which is either because of the low light, or the fact that I didn’t have my glasses. Nothing to do with ineptitude. Nothing. It’s all “eptitude.”

It may actually take decades to respond to reader mail, a Jim Gray can attest. I recently found an envelope from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, mailed to Skate and Annoy sometime in 1988, only to be fully examined in an entirely different millennium. Do I regret not reading this letter from Darko Kolesar, AKA “Gricko” from Zehun, Yogoslavia? Do I lament the lost opportunity to create a cross-cultured, transcontinental friendship, let alone the chance to establish an outpost behind the Iron Curtain? Would I have loved to have a copy of the Yugoslavian skate zine Body & Soul in my collection? Do I wonder what Yugoslavian skate rock sounded like in the 80’s? Do fell like a dick? Yes. UPDATE: A response from Gricko! Thanks to everyone who helped track him down. Read the Darko chronicle appended to the post!

This is a fake Schmitt Stix ‘Totem’ complete. The original graphic from 1986 was designed by John Lucero and is pretty rare. This fake one sold on eBay for £6,23 after 6 bids, a complete bargain! Thanks to John William Davies for the tip and Chandra Ruegg for the pictures.

Some really fun session footage in the dessert of Moab. I swear I’ve referenced the old Element Skateboards (I think ) advert of someone skating on the rocks in the desert before, but I can’t find it on S&A anywhere. I can’t even remember who it was. I want to say Danny Way, but that doesn’t seem right (Because it isn’t right, thanks to Brock and Scotty who pointed out is was in fact Jeremy Wray.) Anyone out there remember who it was? In any case, check out this video from Loaded. Everyone likes to go on and on about ditch skating, but there’s skating on natural ditches in here that looks excellent. In fact, so much of the terrain looks excellent, as long as you have big soft wheels. After you’re done with this video, check out some natural rock terrain skating that you’ve probably never seen before over on Negative Ion, just scroll left when you get there.

SFGate has posted some pictures in a feature called Four decades of skateboarding in San Francisco. It’s part of their Let’s Go to the Morgue! series where they dig up old photographs from the San Francisco Chronicle. Better versions of the picture, along with a little commentary are on the SFGate blog. The earliest photo dates back to 1964, and the last one is from 1994.