There’s a new trailer for Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park movie. Lots of skateboarding and local Portland shots. Not a bad trailer actually, kind of makes me want to see the movie, no matter what Grover says. I think his badmouthing of Elephant was the reason we were “out of the loop” when the movie was in production. I actually got a call for assistance from Van Sant’s assistant, who it turns out was related to a friend of the family. We talked and everything seemed fine until… nothing. I was puzzled until I realized Grover made fun of Elephant in a GVK that was current at the time. Who knows, they probably just didn’t need anything. – Thanks to G N for the tip.

Granted, the site is named Hypebeast, but they are reporting that the Disney corporation has Christian Hosoi to design some limited edition skate decks and apparel. No actual confirmations yet, so maybe it was just an excuse to make that cool graphic. Old Walt must be (rock and) rolling in his grave, except for his cryogenically frozen head. – Thanks to JF for the tip.

You’re not turning me on, your embarassing yourself! or That ski hat makes you look stupid in your bikini! – maybe something like that. I’m sure you can do better. Best caption wins a noprize! Hawt skater gurl Available from iStock Photo.

Ok first off, this is not the best illustration. There is a lot of stock photography with business guys shouting, but not so much of skater dudes shouting. Imagine the megaphone in the skater’s hand instead. Jacksonville Florida city officials held one of those “feedback” public skatepark meetings where they unveiled plans for the city’s new skatepark. The crowd of 50 or so skaters became angered when they realized the city was going to railroad through precast concrete obstacles from a company called Pillar Design Studios out of Tempe Arizona. Pillar looks like it is one of those landscape architecture firms dabbling in skateparks. They appear to have quite a few skateparks under their belts, just don’t look for any actual pictures of them on their web site. I’d find that disconcerting if I was a skateboarder living in a town that was about to hire that firm. They have a few links to external sites with sparing amount of pictures. I followed one at random and it showed a bunch of prefab Woodward metal ramps. Pillar also does motocross and bike only parks(?) as well as “Action Sports Facilities” with go cart tracks!

Just because Tony Hawk has financial stake in ShredorDie.com doesn’t mean he has turn over every embarrassing bit of memorabilia, but it looks like he has to some extent. I was sent to Japan to be on a show called “Incredible Kids” (or something like that) when I was 14. They asked me to demonstrate tricks, but to change some of the names to be “Japanese friendly.” I was just excited to be overseas on my own, so I went along with it. Tony says he was 14 at the time but he looks more like a 12 year old Macaulay Culkin in some of these shots. It’s pretty entertaining stuff. Part of the show has Tony attempting a few launch ramp gap jumps over an increasingly large number of audience members. No, the distance doesn’t get any greater, they just stuff more people in between. It’s pretty crazy how young he looks. It’s even crazier that these people think helmets will help them if Tony comes up short. Tony even grabs for the jumps. Nowadays he’d ollie it or 360 air over it. Check out the takeoff ramp. It looks like one of those old Firestone metal frame and…

I’ve been watching Fuel TV more and more lately. I have the DVR set up to pick up “skateboard” in the title and descriptions, that way I don’t have to sift through all the extraneous wakeboarding, motocross, BMX and snowboard programing. I’ve blown it off for a couple years because I figured it would all be watered down X-Games drivel that I just don’t want to sit through. There is still a little bit of that in their skateboard programming, but for the most part it seems like they are in tune or at least sympathetic with the “lifestyle,” as if someone in programing actually skates. It’s mostly street oriented but they do throw in the tranny and vert occasionally. In general they have a respect for the history of skateboarding, meaning they don’t offhandedly dismiss everything that happened over two years ago. It’s not perfect by any means though, but surely acceptable for a daily dose of skateboarding on your TV. Of course, these are probably the “good old days” of Fuel TV, akin to when MTV started and used to actually play music videos. In five years Fuel TV could end up being a hugely popular channel full…

Here’s a still from the music video for the 2003 track Heartbeats from the Swedish band The Knife. It’s got some vintage skateboarding footage, about 15 seconds or so looped repeatedly. Those kids in the striped shirts look kind of cool going downhill together. I thought they might be up to some editing trickery at first. [Source: Drawer B]

Kickbacks? That’s the only thing I can think of that would convince a physical education program to buy Waveboards for PE classes. Let me try a different approach: In my day we had to push uphill five miles on a dirt road to get to the waveboard track and the U-shaped slide. Kids these days are spoiled in their PE classes with alternative sports. Not working for you? OK. Seen above, Angela’s friends stage an intervention and try to divert her from her quest to run off and join a very low paying circus for social outcasts. I’m not sure if these are better than the flat boards with caster wheels that they use for crab races on rainy days. Where did I get these pictures? Why, from the Ledger’s article titled Physical Education Rides the Wave Of New Recreational Technologies. Jealous? You can even buy print copies for yourself!

Tony Hawk’s Big Spin has been open for a while now. It’s got to be surreal having your own amusement park ride. There’s no Michael Jordan’s Big Dunk ride out there, but you would think he would have been able to sign the contract if he wanted. Here’s two YouTube videos with two different takes on the ride. One is a guy who obsesses on amusement park rides and the other is a couple of snotty kids who just like to hear themselves say “I hate Tony Hawk.” Check ’em both out after the jump. – Thanks to Tito for the tip.

Whatever your stance on Nike’s presence in the skateboarding industry, you’ve got to hand it to them for the commercials they made and actually aired on broadcast TV the first time around. They are great from a skating and an advertising perspective. I’ve been trying to get ahold of these and post them, but someone else has already done all the work, so why reinvent the wheel? My personal favorite is the running one because it brings back the times when people literally thought you were a freak if you were over 12 and still skateboarding on a public sidewalk. Of course now you’re a freak if you are over 30 and the hassle often comes the skaters instead of the non-skating public. So you can still be a rebel and participate in one of the world’s most popular sports. [Source: Transworld beat me to it.]