Spotted on a public tennis court in Seattle, not to far from the college.

I dropped the ball on this one, but this weekend the Smithsonian has got a lot going on in conjunction with Go Skate day. It’s called Innoskate, a public festival hosted by the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center and IASC, celebrates skate culture’s widespread innovative spirit. June 21 and 22 at the National Museum of American History on the National Mall.

Lots of incredible stuff will be donated into the permanent collection of the National Museum of American History. Tony Hawk’s first deck is grabbing the headlines, but other stuff from OG skater gals Laura Thornhill, Patti McGee, Robin Logan and Cindy Whitehead will be given as well as some pretty high-level skatedecks from the collection of Nick Halkias. Chris Pastras and Ryan Clements will be on the mike and demo skaters include DC and Baltimore locals as well as Chris Haslam, Kyle Berard, Brian Andersen. The session conversations will be really interesting (the one between Tony and Rodney should be one for the history books) and the skating demos will be strong—all in all I think this is a great debut for the Smithsonian

If you can’t make the event, they will be broadcasting Innoskate live on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The shot in the top frame of a newly completed skatepark in the UK looked pretty clean and made me want to find out more about the spot. In the course of looking it up I saw that the builder Four One Four Skateparks, are using the CNC process to cut transitions and horizontal some supports, especially on bowl corners. It’s interesting that they use a stepped completely horizontal approach in those bowl corners. Notice that where the surface meets the back braces are not perpendicular. Instead they rest on two adjacent corners. I’m not sure if that makes in difference in the longevity of the bowl, but it’s got to make the design and assembly process a hell of a lot faster. I’ve always held wooden bowl builders in high esteem, and this approach means any monkey could assemble it. It’s a case of nostalgia vs. progress, but I can’t imagine there are that many ramp builders out there with access to big enough CNC machinery. Some of the shots on the site make it look like the surface isn’t included in the CNC process though, so there’s still room for John Henry on the ramp building floor. This park is part of “building 2” at Adrenaline Alley in Corby, England.

A college somewhere in Seattle. Kind of funny that they’d rather bolt on a bunch of chunks of aluminum and spray paint a stencil on this ledge than let someone skate it.

Kevin sent in some pics in response to the post on the backyardskate project. Same idea, bigger scale.

UPDATE: added a picture of the finished bump.

This week’s Shot of the Week (Who am I kidding? It should be “Shot of the Month”) is from Lorrie Palmos. Nostalgia is great, but moves like this never go out of style.This shot made me smile while wading through a sea of noise on Facebook.

Skate scavenger (excuse me, sKavenger) hunt in Portland this Friday in Portland. More info at shift2bikes.org. Let’s get bent out of shape about it!

The original ‘Alice’ from artist Jim Phillips is very sought-after and easily sells for a few big ones, but the counterfeits are quite popular too nowadays. Also, the graphic must have been spotted by various manufacturers in the past, who appear to have put very different efforts in copying the original Santa Cruz model from 1989. So go ahead and waste your time looking  for the differences!

Hey there, I’m building a concrete nipple/pump bump at my house & figured I want it symmetrical so constructed a crude rotating aluminum pipe screed, figuring it should all work in theory but wondering if anyone done anything similar & of any problems in doing it this way. Pouring it this weekend so figured I’d put it out there for any useful hints or tips. Thanks

Check it out on Backyard Skatepark