I wonder what’s happening with the Gene Pool? Slowly but surely.

I’m not fan of Excel (or Powerpoint for that matter.. Cue rim shot.) but at the very least, in 1995 they were well ahead of the curve paying respect to Dogtown.

– Thanks to Matthijs for the tip

I thought there might be a skateable pool behind the fence, so I held my phone up and angled it over the top. I guess 1 out of 2 ain’t bad, and it is technically skateable now.

Placed to Ride recently finished a park in Peñuelas, Puerto Rico. It’s on the south side of the island about a half an hour drive from Ponce, the second largest city in PR. PTR’s Stefan Hauser also has an interview on EuropeSkate.

This one actually looks pretty good too, able to go uphill, but certainly not as powerful as a Gnarboard. This is probably the nicest looking electric skateboard to date, it doesn’t look like a longboard with a brick strapped to it. It’s the first ever to use regenerative breaking too. Breaking recharges the batteries a little bit. Hella expensive (Yes, I said “hella”) though. Boosted Boards has raised $297,763 do date on Kickstarter. Their promo video is heavily biased towards green transportation vs. skateboarding fun.

As seen on eBay. It looks like someone broke a decorative boomerang and decided to make a skateboard out of it.

– Thanks to Matthijs for the tip.

This week’s Shot of the Week is Tom Kilroy at the recent Oregon “Fecta.” Photo by Shawn Reinert. The real photo is after the jump. The closeup is just here to emphasis the timing of the shot.

Tom Sims died last week from a heart attack. My first snowboard was a Sims, because it was in the 80’s and quite frankly, there weren’t a lot of other choices out there. Sims put out some of my favorite skateboard graphics courtesy of Bernie Tostenson, so why would any self-respecting skater choose another brand? The Sims name was trusted and it legitimized the sport to a certain extent, at least through my eyes in that time period. As his clout in the skateboard industry waned, he picked up more steam in snowboarding, and that seems to be how the mainstream media is focusing on. The images above were poached from a gallery on ESPN. They’ve got a story and a video up too, mostly focusing on Tom’s influence in snowboarding. Interesting fact, Sims was instrumental in bringing the halfpipe to snowboarding competition, otherwise it would have been endless slalom races.

These stickers were made a while ago by former BMX pro Taj Mihelich in protest of rules for the sake of rules. These days, when he’s not undermining the will of society’s gratuitous sign makers, he’s bringing you the skaterack, among other things. Larger after the jump, but you should check out the anecdote about the origin of these stickers over at Taj’s blog on Transworld.

A new skatepark coming together in Kona, Hawaii:

We are raising money for the next phase of what will be a close to 30,000 sf. Dreamland skatepark in Kona, Hawaii right next to the ocean. The Dreamland crew were here last month and completed their first phase of what will be atleast 4 phases total as money becomes available. This is a design/build project by Dreamland skateparks – We just have to raise the funds. Anything helps and ads up to anyone that donates it would be greatly appreciated.

More info at Kona Skatepark web site for the 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization. Nice to hear Dreamland in the news again. 50-50.com has a few more Kona photos and more news for other parks in Hawaii if you’re curious.