This clip of Tony Hawk skating in the desert somewhere is pretty amazing. I’m guessing (and pulling it out of my ass, really) that this is from the new Birdhouse video The Beginning maybe? As for the skating spectacle and cinematography, it’s great regardless of your personal feelings on Tony. And really, let’s talk about our feelings. Are you ashamed that you have personal feelings about Tony Hawk? Do you wear a hat made out of tin foil to keep him from discovering them via telepathy? I’m going to be really bummed out if I find out those dust storms are computer generated. Also of interest is Jeep product placement, which I’m sure he got paid for. Who knows, maybe it’s for an upcoming Jeep commercial. As for the web site it resides on, Shred or Die, don’t get Mark started on the name. As far as the site goes, it looks like another crossover action sports social networking attempt, and Hawk is all over that place. I’ll say one thing for them, they did a good job on the video controller compared to the rest of them, YouTube included. They have an instant replay feature and the holy grail for skate video internerds, the frame advance. No more monkeying around with the clumsy slider to get to that critical frame. Thanks to Nik for the tip.

The folks over at Old School Skateboarding are having their second annual private skate bash at Windells on October 14th. They’ve rented the whole place out for five hours. You can check out the facilities, but make sure you contact OSS for details. Kids get in at a discount, and it’s a better alternative to this.

Google maps has a new feature called Streetview. Dave Tobin tipped me that it was live today. Coverage is pretty good in Portland. Go to google maps, pick streetview and drag the little man to the spot you want to look at. Holly Farm is right by the road so you can see a couple of folks hanging out and one guy skating.

I can’t wait for Google flyover.

I can’t stop watching this video of a Primo slide to back flip. Ok, it’s very light on the slide, in fact, I think it’s just called a rail stand? Freestylers help me out here. Freestylers? I don’t know who this shorty character is but he reminds me of the high school wrestling team. Check it out after the jump.

[Source: Wiskate via the Skateboard Mag]

Everybody sing!

Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it in dew
Cover it in chocolate
and a miracle or two?

The candyman Handstand man!
The Handstand man can
The Handstand man can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good!

I’m not going to begrudge anyone from trying to make an extra buck off of a web site, but the Handstand Man is really, uh, pushing it. He’s got one claim to fame, and it’s a burly one to be sure, he’s ridden a handstand down the infamous Signal Hill. That’s gnarly, but he won’t show it to you unless you pay $14 for the DVD. He has some still photos for sale, but has graciously provided a few “free” pics for downloading as well as a couple of video clips you can watch for free, as if that is some kind of rarity. Let’s see, anything else? Most of the pics don’t show his face and he performs most of his stunts in track pants, sometimes even white sweatpants! The whole site is a trip:

“The ballsiest skateboarding action sequence I have ever filmed!!”
As quoted by James, the video cameraman who filmed the stunt.

Hey kids! head on over to the Handstand Man, and look for his new model out on Skatekings – HA! I kid, but if ever there was a perfect match…

UPDATE: NEWS FLASH!!!!! The Internet is full of jokers! It has come to our attention that the Handstand Man was actually being impersonated in some of the comments. Those comments have been tagged accordingly. We fell for it. I even looked up some the email address and IP’s to see if he was being spoofed because some of the responses seemed over the top. Anyway, the real Handstand Man is not such a bad guy when he’s not calling you gay or inviting you to throw the first punch. The copyrighted images are still being replaced with these lovely artist’s renditions, and Brad is making a few changes on his web site as well. PLEASE! Let us never speak of this again.

[Source: South of the North]

Tim Hubbard sent in a link to more Dunedin opening day pics. Thats Josh Black inverted, and an unknown rider carving over some very chunky stairs. Tim also included a link to Punk On Board which is a mish mash of Florida skateboarding, punk rock and art both past and present. The linka are all over the place, and seem to be in conjunction with another site called Art Gone Bad. It’s not the easiest thing to navigate, but just keep clicking. There are snapshots from a Skateboarder Magazine photo session at a backyard ramp, a weird looking life size paper mache mosh pit circa 82, Mike Weed freestyle action, Monty Nolder at Grigley’s ramp, vintage McGill, backstage at the Warped Tour with Anti Flag and the Buzzcocks, Joan Jett looking tuff as nails and all kinds of good stuff if you dig around for it. If I lived in Florida I’d be hanging out with this guy, provided I was punk enough.

This web comic from The Book of Biff is followed by a tale of woe featuring bike on skate action. There but for watching where I’m going, go I.

Juice magazine has a chunk of an older Jim Murphy interview with Ian McKaye where Ian talks about his skateboarding past. I always thought that Ian was in the Dogtown and Z-Boys documentary because Minor Threat was so important to so many skateboarders but he was idolizing that Dogtown stuff just like we were. Sounds so familiar. He mentions that he and Henry took a bus trip out to California to skate. That’s like, 2600 miles which would be several days on a bus right? Pretty hardcore for a 16 and 17 year-old. I wonder how they got around the release forms. The interview was in issue 50. You might be able to order a back issue from them if you want the rest of the interview.

Ian still runs Dischord records and the prices are very reasonable and the service is excellent.

Want to turn into a professional skateboarder like Ryan Sheckler? Who doesn’t? Now you can avoid all the “paying your dues” BS and get the inside scoop in the Go Pro Book from the good folks at Skateboarderpro.com. It covers such topics as:

How do you become a professional skateboarder?

How do you get sponsored?

How do you make a good “Sponsor Me” video?

Where do you send “Sponsor Me” videos?

Where do you even start?

GO PRO is the one and only STEP BY STEP method that can show you EXACTLY the right plan of action you can start TODAY to take you on a direct path to getting sponsored!

GO PRO defines a precise daily, goal oriented system that you can work at your own pace to achieve “levels” that position you in exact ways so that you can become “Sponsor Material”.

I can’t wait for the informercial. It turns out they can even help you get a college scholarship. And to think I dropped out of college because of skateboarding.

Are you sick of Oregon Trifecta coverage? You’d think we would be. After I made a flippant comment (Who, me?) about the conglomerated Extreme™! sports nature of the Banquet web site, I heard back from the site’s content manager Cody Whitman:

We started banquet as a resource for filmmakers and photographers (we sell downloads of DVD’s and are in the process of helping photogs sell stock photos) and this is why there are a variety of sports on our site. It is true that “conglomerate” sites don’t make sense in a lot of ways within action sports (or whatever the hell you want to call them), but in some respects they do. We are all filmmakers, photographers and writers as well as participants in our respective sports and whether you are shooting skating or skiing there are commonalities. We understand the differences between the cultures, clearly there is no such thing as a shared lifestyle across these sports or even within them for that matter. But the truth of the matter is skating is a three man sport, the skater, the photog and the filmer…. Maybe there aren’t similarities between a skater and someone riding motocross but there are between the people creating the media surrounding those two sports. And we are trying to be an outlet for those people.

So Cody has a point there. Banquet is not really aimed at the individual audiences that enjoy those activities, but more so at the kinds of people that enjoy documenting them, or want to buy and sell that documentation, I guess. So enjoy banquet’s photo and written coverage as provided by Kyle Bunker, who took all the photos above. I think Screech pukes at every contest.

Lincoln City
Portland, Pier Park
Battle Ground Washington
Bonus: Colin Bane’s Oregon Trifecta editorial