Category Archive: Media Watch
Sandy West – The Runaways Wild Thing
There’s a lot of staged vintage celebrity skateboarding photos, but somehow this one was new to me. It’s a 1977 picture of Runaways drummer Sandy West taken by Michael Ochs. Sandy was known as the Runaways Wild Thing. She died in 2006 from lung cancer. An alternate shot, plus a bonus pic of bassist Jackie Fox on a balance board after the jump.
State God of California
You’re looking at a cartoon by B. Kliban that was featured in a 1982 edition of Playboy Magazine. The old gods are not impressed, but can be easily bought. Eat me, indeed.
Scott Starr R.I.P.
Friend of the site and undervalued hero of the skateboarding and surfboarding historical community, Scott Starr passed away some time this month. Scott put a tremendous amount of effort and his own money into collecting and preserving old skateboarding and surfing films, which included having them professionally digitized when his finances permitted. His numerous accounts on Youtube wouldn’t last long due to obscure, questionable or pointless copyright claims. The only thing that seemed to matter to him was preserving these films and TV appearances, some of them dating back to the 60’s. I used to email him fairly regularly about things I’d seen or heard about, and he was a willing fountain of knowledge. I also bought a handful of 60’s era comic books from him that featured skateboarding content, you can find many of these on S&A. Scott had some health and anxiety issues he battled with, keeping him out of the public eye and probably contributing to that fact that he is not more widely known to later generations of skateboarders. I consider him an important person in the lexicon skateboarding in popular culture. I don’t know that there is anyone else out there doing the kind of…
Tracy Morgan for Brand-X?
Details are slim to nonexistent on this, but you are looking at Tracy Morgan appearing on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, while decked out in an outfit that is assuredly based on the Brand-X Weirdo model. I’ve got a message in to Brand-X and will share what I learn. You know the Weirdo has a special place in our hearts here. UPDATE: It’s an old appearance from 4/01/19 and you can watch it here. The clip available online is not the full interview and the topic of his outfit does not come up.
Vintage, Radical, and Colorized
Good golly this was way too easy to do. This is from an Adobe tutorial on how to mostly automate colorizing a black and white image. This one has the obvious look of something that has been colorized but I imagine if you spent more than 3 minutes with it you could achieve more believable results. NIce to see ole lance “Check out my eyebrows” Mountain used in the pic, assuming the appropriate people got paid for that. I’m sure this picture of him has appeared in print and is probably easy to find in situ. Minions go forth!
John Cena’s Old Fashioned Skateboard
John Cena appears in a new commercial for Thomas Ashbourne and a premade Old Fashioned cocktail. He rides a skateboard and of course, wears a sparkly gold helmet.
Gotham is bonkers, yo!
I saw these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cake toppers in the binder on display at the bakery inside my local grocery store. I took some poorly lit photos but then found out you could buy the whole set online anyway, so I just poached these pics. These cakes look… uhm… appetizing?
California Oceanside Welcome Center Skate Culture Upgrade
So it turns out California is somehow famous for skateboarding. Yeah, I know, I don’t understand either, but the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce wants to rectify that an exhibit in thier newly revamped welcome center. You can see the two page spread on page 5 of the Spring 2022 issue of Best of Oceanside. – Thanks to Steve Spurlock for the tip.
Liebergs Children’s Store
You’re looking at a 1965 newspaper ad in the Alhambra Post-Advocate for Liebergs Children’s shop, a store that closed around 1991. – Thanks to Butch Gary Ayala for the pic.
The Wheel Real Ghostbusters
The Real Ghostbusters in this context refers to the UK based Marvel comic series that ran from 1988-1992 for 193 issues. Issue #53 dates to 1989 and features I was going to try and buy one cheaply but I managed to find the entire issue online at a sketchy website that threw up some security warnings so I won’t post the link here. There is no real additional skateboard art other than the cover because the story is a written one that appears in a feature called “Winston’s Journal,” which is kind of a bummer, but’s a cheap way to fill pages. Check out the cover, and the story, plus a bonus shot of a crab on a skateboard from an advertisement for Tom & Jerry comic book in the same issue. And for the heck of it, a bunch of Ghostbusters skateboards from the late 80’s to present day. – Thanks to David Maes for the tip











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