A tutorial on removing your bearings can be found at About.com which is a New York Times venture. About’s treatment of Skateboarding is squeaky clean. Marketers to youth and school teachers should find the site useful, making it easier for them to rap with the young people. Amazing that this Steve Cave character gets paid to rewrite the book of skateboarding making sure everything is spelled correctly. I’m waiting for the Time Life how-to series. Are there skateboarders out there who haven’t figured out how to use an axle to remove a bearing? I wonder if About.com can help? Which brings to mind an amazing skate repair tip I watched at Pier Park one day. A kid was looking for spare bearings because his were totally seized. Mike Swim took one of the kid’s non-rolling bearings and applied a little PBR. No shit, it freed up the previously frozen bearing. You can’t learn nothin’ in school they don’t teach you on the streets.

Boy, 14 injured at skate park – Coventry,UK Emergency medical technician Steve Mason said: “We were told that the lad had been trying an audacious stunt but unfortunately came off his skateboard. … Lads, if you must try those audacious stunts, you would do well to employ protective devices.

A couple of months ago we posted about blind skateboarder Jennifer Tissot, and now we have another. The Chicago Sun Times has an article with a title straight from Cliché Headlines 101 about another blind skateboarder. What else, but “Skater’s blind ambition.” Duh! The article is pretty straight forward and short. 14 year old Tommy Carroll who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, went blind in both eyes at the age of two. He enjoys other sports like cross country running, and is on a local skate team, Agent Skateboards. Check out the team. If that is the Jerret Barry (Jarret Berry?) then Agent has the lock on Extreme™! minority team members. One of the more interesting notes (besides Tommy, the blind skateboarder) is that his parents are the ones who “helped steer him into skateboarding, figuring it was something he could master.” That’s a pretty progressive attitude, considering a lot of parents of seeing children don’t want their kids skating. The best part of the article is the video link that actually shows Tommy carving around, doing a nose pivot on the coping and even catching air. Thanks to Mike Timble for the tip. [Photos and video capture: Chicago…

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? Sort of. It turns out they all aren’t wife-beating child-haters. Portland has had at least one Police officer firmly entrenched in helping skateboarders move forward with the now completed plan to revamp Pier Park. (Name MC?) There’s also an officer in the Cayman Islands who lets kids skate on his backyard mini ramp, and there is also an outreach program in Lee-On-The-Solent or Hampshire ( I know! It’s a UK town or district, I can’t tell with all the wacky names they have) where Bobbies attend skate clinics with kids at local skateparks to reinforce positive interaction with police and kids. [Photo: Left and bottom – Solent News Photo. Top – Brent Fuller for the Cayman Compass ]

So this was going to start as a post about a New York Times article titled Out From the Cold, Snowboarder Tries to Duplicate Success that was basically about how Shaun may be a superstar on the snow, but he’s been a failure on the ramp, at least in terms of his struggle to win the X-Games vert event and be taken seriously as a skateboarder. [Source] That’s a bit of an overstatement really. Does not winning the X-Games makes you a failure? Not in my book, but apparently you’re not even a real skateboarder until you win the X-Games. In ‘Flying Tomato’ now a champ for all seasons, the Boston Herald Quotes Shaun after finally winning one this weekend: “This means the world to me,” choking back tears after his run. “I’ve always wanted to be a skateboarder. I’m finally doing my thing.” Uh yeah. I guess it was emotional for him. We can cut him some slack since he’s doesn’t appear to be nearly as big of a douche bag as the Sheckler, and he’s already paying a penance by not having any control over being constantly referred to as the Flying Tomato. Links to a couple more…

Australia’s Herald Sun has an article titled Skaters shun parks for concrete jungle that talks about how kids still don’t want to be confined to skateparks. While Melbourne is upping it’s skateboard deterrent budget to $50,000 a year, the city of Boroondara has an annual budget of $100,000 a year for skatepark development. 100k Australian is only about $86,000 in US dollars, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. One of the popular street skating spots that kids keep barging is called Docklands, which near as I can tell is a redeveloped waterfront plaza that used to be, well, docks. The article mentions YouTube videos of Docklands, so I did a cursory search. There appears to be a nicely finished pedestrian park as well as a bunch of more industrial areas that appear to be abandoned or in disuse. You can watch a couple vids after the jump.

The Tuscaloosa News has a fascinating article titled LIVING ON THE EDGE – Skate park attracts enthusiasts, competitive boarders. Critical analysis of this thought provoking and controversial article after the jump.

For those keeping track, and I’m guessing that’s about three other people, I’ve resurrected the Broken Kingpins column name in Skate and Annoy. This time around, instead of covering all the roster hopping and product release junk like we used to in our ancient print issues, I’m using it for all the miscellaneous links that don’t merit their own post. Besides, there are about a million other web sites that can tell you who has new shoe models and who got kicked off of what tour. [Photo: Denver Post / Andy Cross]

The Dallas Morning News has a surprisingly lengthy article on the older crew of skateboarders in Dallas that are still getting some, not only in local skateparks, but in less than legal pools as well. The article, titled These guys haven’t slowed down, talks a little about balancing their adult lives and responsibilities with skateboarding, and is thankfully short on the “Rad Dad” rhetoric. Here’s a good quote: Now he wears a tie every day. But underneath the suit, he remains a skater punk. Mr. Stubbs says he has had to explain more than once to co-workers and clients why he has pus oozing through his slacks. Reminds me of my friend Shawn who went out to skate on his lunch break, ate shit and had to spend the rest of the day explaining the holes in his fancy work pants and bloody knees. Now he carries an extra pair of work pants in his trunk. Not a prophylactic, but prophyl-slack-tic, as in “slacks.” Ba dum bump! Take my wife! Please! Uh, yeah. What else? The Sonya Hebert/DMN photo above has a quality that makes it seem more like an advertising shot from a prescription drug company or a financial…

Dateline: Englewood Florida. Headline: County wipes out good, clean fun Overmonitoring, irregular hours and high fees mar new skate park Eric Ernst wrote a piece for The Herald Tribune about micromanaging the fun out of the new Englewood skatepark that Team Pain built. Here in Oregon, most of our parks are free, open from dawn to dusk and unmonitored. And for the most part, this works out great.