Tesseract from Loaded Boards.

Laminated to the bottom of the board is a layer of cork which provides vibration damping and (as we learned to our surprise during testing) a significant level of durability. The granular, non-directional structure of the cork helps prevent abrasive damage from propagating (in contrast to a traditional wood or bamboo veneer with long, oriented fibers).

I’ve got cork floors in my kitchen, which ended up being a very poor choice. It’s just not durable to abrasion or water. I can’t imagine why Loaded added cork in the first place, and how they quantify the accidentally discovery of damage resistant properties, but I am highly skeptical. (Big surprise, right?) It seems like the first curb you bottom out on is going to shred the bottom of that thing. There’s also going to be a lot of tear and pinch potential where the trucks mount. I hope Loaded did more thorough testing with cork than Powell did with Bonite™ construction. Aesthetically though, it looks sharp, like something out of Metropolis magazine.

UPDATE: This post dates back 2013 and a lot of the content and comments have to to with Skatemaster Tate (Gerry Hurtado) who didn’t really have an internet presence at the time. Gerry did eventually surface in the online skating world through social media (actually commenting on this site too) as well as having a skateboard released through Flood Control and a flexi-disc release in an issue of Pure Fun. Sadly, within a week of being diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer, he passed away on October 13th, 2015.

I’ve been sitting on some recorded rebroadcasts of SK8 TV from around the turn of the millennium. I’ve been hesitant to post them online because I figured between Viacom and Stacy Peralta, I wasn’t in a hurry to get kicked off of Youtube again. In my head, these belong to the 80’s but according to IMDB, the first air date was in 1990. SrArcade has a channel and blog mostly dedicated to restoring and playing old video arcade games, but he’s also uploaded a healthy chunk of the old Nickelodeon show. There are 51 uploads to date, each a segment instead of a whole episode, but all of them are included in one playlist for easy viewing. It looks like his masters are a lot cleaner than my VHS dubs – dubbed to digital 8, and then again to mini DV – that’s how long I’ve been sitting on them! Nickelodeon has made some of their vintage shows available for download in the iTunes store, but SK8 TV wasn’t one of them. I wonder if Stacy was shrewd enough to be able to retain the copyright on these episodes. If not, why they aren’t being rebroadcast or sold as a DVD set? That show was corny as heck, but it had it’s moments, and nostalgia sells. I’d look forward to watching the hell out of SK8 TV on the couch with my kids on a Saturday morning. SrArcade has had some of these up for a year, so maybe they’ll last. If not there’s another guy selling individual episodes as a download. Say hello to Matthew Lillard and Skatemaster Tate.

On a recent east coast sweat safari,the GVK’s had a 6 hour layover at Reagan International in D.C., so we hopped the Metro and headed to see the sights. As we exited the Metro station Jack spotted a rad little skate spot with a federal government-sized skate stop. This did not deter him from trying to skate it, even though it was really close to the guard tower. One of the guards actually said, “He’s pretty good. How old is he?” I’m always surprised with what Jack gets away with from airport terminals to the Holocaust museum. If you and I tried to ride the places he rode, House Speaker John Boehner would have us thrown into Git-mo. Barge and Destroy – GVK

In this episode of I Can’t Make This Stuff Up, author Tyler Stallings reviews a photography show titled “Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982;”

Two Los Angeles-based photographers captured the action: the beefcake photography of Bob Mizer and his peers from the 1940s-1960s published in his Physique Pictorial magazine, and Craig Stecyk’s photo documentation of the DogTown Z-Boy skateboard team for SkateBoarder magazine in the 1970s. Each focuses on a redefinition of masculinity in relationship to the swimming pool towards a new vision embracing hedonism. This shift in values associated with the masculine–from a man as hardworking breadwinner for his family to the single, unattached, self-obsessed, and leisure-seeking man–accompanies a cultural shift from the early 1950s to the late 1970s from an economy based on production to one based on consumption.

Do you remember the catalogues that came with the old JFA records? Most of them also offered JFA skateboards in various sick shapes. I always wanted one of those, but they don´t pop up that often nowadays and I am pretty sure that I don´t want / can´t afford an original one.

LaSalle Park, currently under construction by Evergreen Skateparks. I want one of those things in my town.

One more in our series of indoor commercial architecture waiting to be barged. This one from Addicted to Retail shows the Ayres store by Dieguez Fridman in Buenos Aires. Free t-shirt skateboard (deck) to the first photo (or video) of this place being skated. That’s legal in Argentina, right? No Photoshopping please. My apologies if you sent me this tip, It’s lost in my email.

Skaters in London are fighting to save the legendary and historical spot known as Southbank. The Southbank Centre wants to build retail shops to help fund some other renovations and redevelopment. The plan calls for building a nearby skate spot that would actually be 10% larger than the existing floor plan, but the community of skateboarders aren’t having it. Ironically, Southbank Centre management and supporters of the new development are accusing the skateboard community of bullying the public image of Southbank Centre through manipulation of the press and PR. There are some great quotes an article in Metro.

– Photo credits, the senior Mrs Kilwag. Yes, my mom is in London. She even signed the petition.

Man, I just hate those popsicle stick shaped boards, they’ve got no shape and no style. Mumble, grumble. Nothing you can do will make your popsicle skateboard worth remembering. Unless…

This is an old photo from an Element Eden art board show in Toronto called Smile on Your Brother. Amber B’s “Neo Popsicle” is a triple entendre – popsicles, popsicle stick shaped skateboards, and Neapolitan ice cream. I’m smiling even though I’d much prefer the traditional bomb pop. 2009???? Can you tell that I’m clicking “publish” on some old drafts?

[Source: Swellblog]

I found Stoic skate zine on in the portfolio of Illustrator Alex Gorodskoy while looking for something that was probably screen printing related. It’s a killer looking zine with nary a traditional photograph in it, instead they have been replaced by drawings of photos, or constructions. You can see the whole issue on.. Issu. Every other time I’ve been to Issu lately, their server seems to be overloaded. So you might have to check back if it won’t load immediately.