I met a guy lurking outside of the Street League contest in Portland. He said he could show me something I hadn’t seen before. I told him “Not, here. Not now, especially with my kids present.” No, no… I took a glance and said “I don’t know man, I’ve seen hubcaps on skateboards before.” But then I took a closer look, and he explained that these were bearing covers. If you look closely, you can see that these are indeed unlike any other bearing cover that you’ve seen. I’m still unclear as to whether Sk8rNutz are a complete assembly that include the bearings, but they are definitely more useful than Sk8nutz. Sk8rNutz vs. Sk8Nutz, a subtle distinction in product names, but not in product. If you are going to spend a hundred dollars or more on ceramic bearings, these look like they might do a good job of protecting your investment.

Adidas Skateboarding is celebrating 15 years of having Mark Gonzales on the team with a video featuring photogs and videogs waxing nostalgic about him and the of course, a whole lot of skateboarding. As you should expect, it’s highly entertaining. Here’s to another 15 years of the Cult of Gonzales.

Nike SB is now one of the major sponsors of Street League Skateboarding. Next stop is Portland, Oregon this Sunday. Nike’s team put on a little demo yesterday at the world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. This morning this big skateboard was parked out back.

A few shots of the event after the turn.

Rip Skates was a (crappy) budget brand from Surrey Skateboards, a skateshop in the UK that exists since 1977. The shop in Surrey closed down, but you can still visit them online and buy their new stuff or check out the cool pictures of the good old days. The graphic on this deck looks great, the ‘monster clown’  killing the vert skater and destroying his ramp reminds me of some of the old Deathbox designs. Was it a reference to the death of vert in the late 80’s? Anyway, it was very unlikely that you would have become a good street skater with this complete! For sale on Gumtree for £5.

The 3rd annual Mt Tabor Challenge is this Sunday in Portland, Oregon. Open class requires an “old school” tuck. There’s also classes for Masters, Groms, and bikes (no pedaling). Details on PDX Downhill. If you’re not familiar with Mt. Tabor, it’s a fairly mellow but fun closed route that isn’t very technically challenging, unless you start at the very top and have to dodge pedestrians and cars after threading the needle (gap between gate and pole) to pass through the parking lot at the top third of the course. Even if you start lower, you can still get going fast enough to get hurt though. Full flyer and illustration of the tuck after the jump, plus bonus footage of last year’s event courtesy of KC. Yes, there is a Major Media event happening the same day.

Web host issues. Ebay Watch and GVK are affected/unavailable in the mean time. Working to get this resolved. Hopefully back soon.

UPDATE: Everything is as it should be. Please leave a comment here if you something isn’t working for you. Thanks for your patience.

In June there were (at least) 2 fake Brand-X decks for sale. The left one is a copy of a 1986 Sean Goff model that was designed by Steve Krajewski, it even says ‘Sean Goff model’ on the top right. The right one was based on the 1987 XEX-model by Bernie Tostenson. It’s actually the same like the one from last month, only in another colourway and I think it could have been made from another company  too, because the design looks slightly different.

Just shy of a year after we first featured this stair roving skateboard, the creator is back with a Kickstarter project to help bring it the masses. It looks like he added some sort of weird stabilization bar linking the trucks together. I’m not sure what the addition is for, but I’m sure this makes an already heavy board more unwieldy and prone to rattling. You’ve got to admire his determination though, just don’t let him know the whole thing would be made moot by a set of soft oversized wheels. It may just be the Wheelie Board of this decade, something you’d never buy when it came out, but years later you’ll recall it fondly while trolling through some guy’s obsessive skateboarding web site. I’m goin got get on my Long Rider right after I start my own Kickstarter project to fund backing this kickstarter project so I can get a Stair Rover for the “museum.” I’m going to put it right next to the Tarantula Trucks. (Crap, I still owe that guy a review…)

Sneeze magazine has a short but interesting interview with Chad Muska about his first ever pro graphic, which came out on Toy Machine in 1995. It’s interesting from a historical skateboard personality perspective, but maybe more so because it touches on the business and shift from screen printing to heat transfers that was on the horizon when this board came out, and how it changed the industry. Originally published in 2012, I’ve never seen an actual copy of Sneeze, but apparently it’s “poster-sized.” If you poke around on the site you can see some press sheets that are pretty large.