The San Francisco Chronicle has an article on Zach Wormhoudt of Wormhoudt Inc. titled Chairman of the Board. Get it? “Board” as in “skateboard.” Ah ha ha ha! Get it? Get it? Oh stop, you’re killing me. Oh wait, you don’t get it? Wormhoudt’s father built Santa Cruz’ infamous Derby Park which is the world’s oldest surviving skatepark. Everyone is a critic, as evidenced by this quote from the article:

“I have nonskater friends who say, ‘You have the greatest job in the world!’ My friends who are skaters say, “I don’t envy you.’ “

It’s a decent article. Check it out.
Update: Links fixed.
[Photos Top: Chronicle/Mike Crane and Mike Kane, Bottom: Wormhoudt Inc.]

Ben Pappas – who used to earn $15,000 a month as a teenage skate star in the US – was dragged from the water by police divers off Victoria Pier at Docklands.

Homicide detectives had been looking for Pappas, 29, since the body of his former girlfriend, Lynette Phillips, was found at Dights Falls in Abbotsford eight days earlier.

[Source: Herald Sun, Australia] Update: Link fixed, plus more links after the jump.

Portland Police are upset that a skateboard shop also sells (expensive) spray paint, as they see skateboarding and graffiti culture intertwined. The cops say The Office is tacitly encouraging graffiti by selling the spray paint. The Office says their paint is expensive and therefore typically used by commissioned artists rather than your garden variety high school delinquent. I hate taggers and I hate graffiti, but I like stencil art. Normally I wouldn’t bother to report on this but I thought The Office’s manager, Kevin Nimick, made a good point:

“I don’t want to go head to head with the police,” says Nimick. “But they’re just trying to have a place to direct blame for Portland’s graffiti. Why not ban the sale of handguns, if they’re worried about people getting shot?”

More skateboards and spray paint after the jump. [Source: Portland Mercury]

Taylor, with his short haircut and businesslike demeanor, doesn’t fit the profile of the average skateboarder, who’s often a teenager with stylishly long hair and a devil-may-care attitude. Taylor’s more the Tony Hawk type, a guy in his 30s who can make money doing what he loves.

He doesn’t fit the stereotype, but they still used This dude’s rad boards ‘feel right’ as the headline for an article about Drifter Skateboards, a small D.I.Y. skateboard manufacturer. Hmm… sounds familiar. Other than that, this article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is OK, just brief. Hold on… of all the interesting parts of the process involved, they chose a picture of owner Ryan Taylor shrink wrapping an unidentified object. Someone fire that photo editor. Those graphics remind me of a certain Blockhead era. Update: Drifter web site.

ANNE Brunell is a skateboarder with a difference. When pregnancy made it impossible for this paralympian and mother of two to wear her artificial legs, she relied on her trusty skateboard to get around. Despite being born without her lower legs, Ms Brunell has made the most of every opportunity with vigour, passion and a laugh.

Today she will be one of 30 women inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women by Women’s Affairs Minister Jacinta Allan to commemorate International Women’s Day.

Be nice in the comments. [Source: Herald Sun ]

Dateline: Asheville, North Carolina. Asheville Citizen-Times has a reporter on the scene covering this important story. This is stuff of Pulitzer Prizes! The headline: 45-year-old skateboarder backs up traffic.

The Express-Times has short interview with old Zorlac pro and current Syndrome Distribution honcho Rob Mertz. The article, titled “Skateboard to top not pipe dream” is a short fluff piece, but it does contain an amusing fact – the town mayor was the one who encouraged him to follow his dream of being a pro skateboarder. If like me, you’re still skating as grown man with a family of your own, you can probably relate to hearing this kind of thing from your extended family, and in this case, from Rob’s mom:

All the years, miles and bruises later, Nancy Mertz still worries. “He skates every day on his lunch hour. You know he’s 41?” she sighed. “This is why they have hair dye; I turned gray early.”

More Mertz links after the jump.

Dave Cawdrey was a former pro skateboarder in Seattle during the 90’s. I didn’t get to the Pacific Northwest until late 1998 so I never really heard about him, but maybe you have. Dave is now living out the rest of his brief life in Bend Oregon. I say “brief” because he suffers from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). This Seattle Times article is a long, sad but good read about his life before and after diagnosis in 2000. Skateboarding is a recurring element in the story. Dave’s physical deterioration contrasts the physical development of one of his sons, who has taken up skateboarding. It’s an atypically poignant case of a father living vicariously through his son. It’s a tear jerker for sure. After reading about Dave and his family’s situation, it makes me want to puke when I see guys like this that think they have it bad and want to have everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Here’s a link to a short bit on a BBC program titled North West Tonight about older skaters. It’s mainly an interview with the founder of the UK’s Middle Age Shred. The video quality isn’t great, it looks like they forgot to deinterlace it. The skating is mostly blah, and when it isn’t the camera work is bad. It does have an impossibly hip sound track considering the stuffed shirt that hosts the program. There is some cool 70’s era footage with a bitchin’ T Rex lead in. If you look close you can see an Old Man Army Falling Down deck – good graphic… From Arizona to Manchester, old men are on the rise. Catch the video and some more old man news after the jump.

It’s always amusing when an article in the mainstream business press uses the word “dude” in a skateboard-related feature, right? Well, predictable, yes. This is an old piece of news, but I’m cleaning house. This New York Times article titled The business of board sports: It takes hardcore credibility, dude isn’t solely about Jaime Thomas, but he is the focus. It talks about how marketing and brand recognition are different animals for “board sports” companies, and how Nike and others have found it hard to crack. It’s an OK read, but not much your average Skate and Annoy reader doesn’t already know. The dollar figures are pretty impressive though, and there’s a not-so-gratuitous gratuitous Tony Hawk appearance. Because Tony’s quotes are in reference to selling the Hawk brand to Quicksilver, it actually make sense, unlike Rob Dyrdek’s appearance in Forbes. Read It takes hardcore credibility, dude at International Herald Tribune. Look how I got all artsy on that title graphic.