Skateboarding must be dead or dying. What else would explain the drought of marketing tie-ins for a major Hallmark holiday like Valentines Day. In 2008 my son got one lousy sticker of a tiger wearing hearts and riding a skateboard. What about all the Extreme™ valentines of the not too distant past? I feel like Charlie Brown. Here’s hoping for a more Extreme™ Easter.

Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with skateboarding, other than a few incidental shots each episode, but as far as mindless entertainment goes, it’s regularly good for a few laughs, so I guess I was wrong about the Rob and Big show. Plus I always liked the theme song from the Courtship of Eddies Father. Or maybe I had a crush on Mrs. Livingston. Hello, Mr Eddie’s father. Let the hate mail commence.

Worn Free will sell you a reproduction of t-shirts worn by famous rock ‘n’ roll personalities including this rad shirt worn by Joey Ramone The website has notes for each of the shirts which make interesting reading if you are into punk rock trivia. Some of the shirts are cool but forty bucks seems kind of steep. I’m tempted to make my own personal bootleg transfer.

OK, Officer Salvatore Rivieri doesn’t just hate skateboarders. He hates radio controlled cars, or maybe street artists or most likely himself, because he’s been driving that ridiculous go-cart police car for at least a year. Another video has surfaced of officer Rivieri serving and protecting. Apparently this guy has a very short fuse. Here’s hoping he gets an attitude adjustment via painfully boring and embarrassing anger management counseling, or better yet, an old fashioned pink slip. What a dick. – Thanks to Eric Cherry for the tip.

John Aguilar’s sister went to South Africa and all she brought him was a lousy newspaper. There’s an article from the December 1st 2007 edition of the Weekend Argus titled Flying high on the vision of one man. It’s about Dallas Oberholzer’s mission to bring skateboarding to rural South Africa. Our interview with Dallas was published in 2005. Looks like he’s still at it. Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read the article online. It’s a very positive story. You can read the scan after the jump. Hey James… Stuff it! I think I heard that goat just yell “Draa-aa-aa-aa-aapping in!”

Finally got a decent capture of this old Wonder Woman episode. I’m distilling most of the non-skateboarding parts out of edit. There are bits out there on the Interwebs&trade, but this will be the most complete. Wait for it. It’s worth it.

Green skateboards and now green skateparks? In Portland there are two new skateparks breaking ground in 2008. Both proposals mentioned a need to minimize the environmental impact, mostly concentrating on water runoff. Seems like a minor part of the project to me, as none of these parks are located near waterways. But what do I know? I’m not one of those science doohickeys. Coincidentally, Airspeed Skateparks has the contract for one of those new parks and they are also featured in the newest issue of Concrete Wave Magazine. The article titled The New Cooldown – Skate Green: Design and Build Smart is available as a PDF download. There’s more to this green skatepark than you might imagine. Aside from skateparks the article also talks about sustainability in skateboards, clothing and shoes. – Thanks to Don Whitaker for the tip.

There are quite a few bamboo based boards out there. According to some sources (more on that in a few) the skateboard industry has surpassed the hardwood floor industry as the number one world consumer of hard maple trees. lets put that into perspective. If properly cared for, a hardwood floor can last 100 plus years in house, while a skateboard isn’t going to last a year unless you’re just using it for transportation. Now consider that a maple tree takes 28 years to mature for use commercially. Sustainability is big in industry right now. It’s even creeping into skateboarding, mostly through the red headed stepchild of skateboarding, longboarding. I’ve seen a few of them up close and they don’t look quite ready for prime time, at least as far as short boards go. It sure would be great if a decent shortboard could be made out of bamboo. There’s a TV program on the Science Channel called Invention Nation where a bunch of hippies the show’s hosts travel the country in a biodiesel powered van and investigate cottage industry inventors of green technologies. It’s a short bus, but it’s green, not yellow. Comet Skateboards was featured on the Less…

What is that sassy wench trying to tell you? Isn’t it already completely obvious that hot chicks collect skateboards and eat cheeseburgers? Sometimes a skateboard can be the central element of a commercial, but more and more they are becoming just a small part of a bigger concept, getting lumped in the background with a bunch of hobbies whereas they used to be more of a crazy radical lifestyle commentary. So here’s two currently running commercials that feature skateboarding, one from Gatorade and one from McDonalds.

Tony Hawk is so famous he even made it on Celebrity Baby Blog, where they point out that he’s expecting his fourth child with his third wife. That means another appearance on MTV’s Cribs must be in the works since the first two wives got theirs. Do you want to watch video of tony Hawk rubbing his wife’s belly? (No.) He’s surprisingly jovial considering the freelance TMZ cameraman/celebrity stalker is a complete moron. “Are you happy with how the elections turned out?” Seriously? There’s more, but it’s for fanboys only. I believe this is exactly kind of crap that Paying in Pain is warning you about. – Thanks to… my wife(!) for the tip.