My first skateboard was a yellow plastic rRoller Derby banana board bought from a Sears catalog outlet in Midland, Michigan. I was in grade school in the 70’s, and soon after, all my neighborhood friends had skateboards, including Gene & Gary Wang, who lived across the street, as well as a kid names Allan Lockwood (I think?) For a while my driveway had intricate slalom courses drawn in chalk, complete with tank installations and pill boxes, firing at us of course. What can I say, I was a prepubescent male. When the driveway became too confining, we developed a sort of Rollerball-lite game that involved pairing up into teams made up of one kid on a bicycle towing another kid on a skateboard behind some jumprope tied to the back seat of the bike. The objective was to circle the block, trying to make the other team wipe out. It was great fun until I sent a skateboard flying at Alan, who got his glove caught on the back of his tow bike and wad dragged on his rear end for 20 feet before he came loose. He had a giant friction burn on the side of his ass and hip that hurt like the devil, and that was the end of the public enthusiasm for bicycle skateboard chariot races. If we had had these bespoke skateboard tow ropes we probably would have felt like gladiators and might have kept at it. The packaging makes some dubious claims: “Control your speed – Makes skateboarding safer!”

– Thanks to Terence Sideras for the pic.

UPDATE: This is actually from the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.

Hey kids, remember the Morfboard, Morfboard 2, and Morfboard copiers like the Flybar? Well you can add the Switchboard to that esteemed group of wacky boards, and this one might be best engineered version yet. It’s one skateboard with special mounting plates that allow you to swap out trucks and accessories in a snap. Is it necessary? Maybe. Is it possible? Yes! Who is it made by? Switchboard! But is it this Switchboard? Possibly. The logo is different and the product is conspicuously absent from the skateboard training products section and skateboard trucks section, so who knows. Someone in Poland knows. (Daj mi buziaka.)

Two unrelated bands, two unrelated songs, two unrelated skateboards. This post has been in draft mode so long that the Night Birds have since disbanded, but fortunately The Wimps appear to be still active, and not to mention, actively embracing skateboarding hot-dogs.

This bootleg is one of the funniest crappy/80’s bootleg deck I have ever seen. The Thrill Seeker graphic looks like He-man getting busted attempting to devein a giant shrimp. He-man doesn’t look happy at all and the shrimp seems scared a hell. It was found on ebay, but it didn’t sell. I’m not surprised, because the seller listed it as a “Conan the the Barbarian” deck, so all the true Masters of the Universe fans missed this one. He looks a little overstuffed, like a bright pink Stretch Armstrong. Turns out you can get a licensed Masters of the Universe He-Man decks via a collaboration between Super 7 and Element. Despite being licensed, it still looks like a bootleg or at best, a toy store board. Trying to find better pictures of the He-Man deck turned up more carppy boards from Sk8 Bali.

– Thanks to David ODK for the original post idea that I just couldn’t leave be…

Cleaning out the hard drive again… Where was this? I don’t remember, but the when of it was in 2017. Skateboarding Taco by Tripper Dungan. The mustache creeps me out. The sign on the wall said:

A graduate of the Las Vegas Acadamy of Performing and Visual Arts. Dungan finds inspiration from the cartoons from the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s, as well as victorian taxidermy and psychedelic art. He has been featured in galleries across the nation and in international art magazines like Hi-Fructose.

A quick check of Tripper’s website also turned up a skateboard sculpture.

It looks like someone tried to copy the Santa Cruz Jessee Neptune model from 1988, but he or she wasn’t as good as Jim Phillips and didn’t know much about Roman mythology either. The spear and the helmet makes the ‘God of the Sea’ look more like a Viking dressed up as Neptune. Not the first time this graphic has been butchered. Sold on eBay (in 2014) for $18.58 after 6 bids.

Way back in August I texted my friend Mark Conahan to ask him if he’d like to go to a newish skatepark that opened in June that was about a half hour away. Mark instead suggested we go to one that neither of us had been to, a brand new park in Sandy, Oregon that was maybe 45 minutes away. I drive through Sandy on the way to Mt Hood several times a year, and I didn’t even know they had a skatepark. A hurried web search turned up the park district page with exactly one picture showing a close cropped view of a kid skating. It didn’t look too impressive but it did appear the park was finished so I figured why not check it out? Three of us loaded up the car and drove out there. When we pull up we found the the entire thing under construction! There’s no mention of this anywhere on the parks page. In fact the new park is due to open sometime in November (Update: Nov 2nd!) and the page still isn’t updated. We nosed around a little, took some pics, and then decided to check out the town’s local skate shop since we were already out there. The new park looks like it’s going to big and fun, and BDK Boardshop turned out to be quite a surprise!

The Volcano ( or Le Volcan as it is named in France, where it resides) was originally designed by Oscar Niemeyer and opened in 1982. These pictures are from Atelier Cambium, a firm involved in an extensive remodeling project that looks like it involved digging up everything underneath and around it in order to reimagine the space. At first glance it looks like a fun skate spot, although you’ll need big soft wheels to navigate some of the bricked areas. However, If you look closer you can see they have applied a short railing in certain areas to keep people off the walls. Why they want people off the walls? Some will likely say insurance and liability reasons, although I don’t know how big of a problem that is in the EU. I suspect it’s in order to keep the space from being used in more creative ways that tend to annoy the stuffed shirts.

Source: Atelier Cambium

Along with social media posts, Surfer Today has confirmed that Patti McGee passed away on Oct 15th at the age of 79 due to complications from a recent stroke. Patti was the world’s first female professional skateboarder, and the first female to appear on the cover of a skateboarding magazine. Many people remember her iconic cover of Life Magazine as well, likely the first appearance of a skateboarder on the cover of a non-skateboarding magazine. Patti appeared on the TV game show What’s My Line? in 1965 as well as other TV programs with Mike Douglas and  The Johnny Carson Show, as well as a Bell Telephone commercial. She was the first female inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. Juice Magazine has an interview with Patti conducted in 2017 by Steve Olson. By all accounts she was a lovely and inspiring person to all who knew her. A true legend.

Photo: Patti McGee

Aruma Split Garden in Indonesia was designed by RAD+ar (Research Artistic Design + Architecture). Despite its name, the primary function appears to be the restaurant underneath the roof garden. Looks like fun, unfortunately the opposite side of the transition is a dead end. It would be interesting to see this concept replicated in a skatepark either symmetrically or with some sort of return to conserve momentum.

Source: ArchDaily – Thanks to Mark Conahan for the tip.