If you give a monkey a typewriter and an infinite amount of time, it will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. It looks like someone is looking to hire a blog monkey to write about skateboarding: I am seeking someone to write 35 unique 200-250 word Blog Articles related to skateboarding (art of skateboarding, current famous boarders, the skateboard itself and/or its parts). Your bid should be for writing ALL 30 Articles, not a per Article price. Writers must have complete command of the English language, including sentence structure, spelling, grammar, and must be able to write from a North American perspective. Having used a skateboard and/or at least familiar with the skateboard “lingo” is a must. As the articles are to be used to achieve high rankings in search engines, we require unique, high quality, well-written, keyword-rich, spider-friendly Articles. Keyword density should hover around the 5% mark. I can’t wait to see the web site this these articles get used for. I’m sure those high search engine rankings are going to be used for the love of skateboarding and not to try and sell us some crap. Are you applying for this job? The Minneapolis Star Tribune promises…

Read the whole comic here.

The New York times has a thing for putting skateboarding in the fashion section lately. I was going to blow of this article titled “Skateboarding Rolls Out of the Suburbs,” but the skateboarding and hip hop blogs are hyping it and you know we follow the trends around here. There’s not much to it besides the fact that black kids can now skate without being harassed by their peers. You get to see a photo of Pharrell Williams doing a street plant as well as read this choice quote from him: “I was rapping and it was getting me nowhere, so I went back to my roots… …When I’m with rappers in the studio, they say, ‘I used to skate, too,’” Mr. Williams said. “I can only just say I was one of the ones that was willing to speak up about it.” Wow man, that took a lot of courage to come out as a skateboarder in public in hopes of jump starting a failing rap career. He’s a regular Rosa Parks. On the plus side, they also briefly quote Stevie Williams and Steven Snyder, the former Alva rider and long time Chicago favorite now working at Uprise. Sift…

Speaking of finding balance: Dear Online Publisher, We have just launched a new boardsport specific affiliate network featuring: Cool advertising campaigns targeted at snowboarders, skateboarders, surfers and freeskiers Higher earnings potential by sharing revenues with advertisers based on the shared performance of their ad creative combined with your site Full control over everything on your site, choosing the campaigns and tracking their performance to monitor earnings The first campaigns are live! We focus on boardsports ensuring you get specific advertising that fits your content and appeals to your users We negotiate commissions for you ranging from 5% to 15% NOKIA Air and Style / Freecaster.tv – big air event in Munich in December Boardsport Warehouse – a large online retailer of snowboarding, surfing and skiing equipment Oxbow – the legendary French surf/snowboarding clothing brand Rider Discount – large French online retailer of surf, snow and skateboarding gear Lucozade – the official sports drink of the UK Snowboarding Team Blah blah blah. Awesome.

So we covered the 70’s marketing tie in, now it’s time for something that reeks of the 80’s. This Max Headroom / Coke themed skateboard by Variflex is available as a Buy it Now now for $169.99. It’s got appeal for the skateboard collector crowd as well as another equally zealous group of people who collect Coca-Cola advertising material. Max Headroom pushing New Coke! As an example of the exploitation skateboards of the 80’s, this mint board is excellent, if not totally radical. It’s got the full set of plastics with nicely accented risers and a lapper. Geez, did that sentence actually just come from my brain to fingers? Please shoot me. Max Headroom’s popularity lasted slightly longer than that of “New” Coke. More pictures after the jump.

Oh how I long for the days when you could impress your half shirt and bell bottom wearing girlfriend by high jumping over your MG while wearing a hockey helmet. Check out the full advert after the jump.

In Oregon, the Lake Oswego Observer reports that a kid named Kosh McClure was hit by a train while skating and lived to tell the tale. Kosh McClure didn’t know how close he had come to dying until he awoke on a sidewalk on State Street. “I was laying on the ground and I couldn’t see,” McClure recalled. “Everything was really fuzzy. Everyone was like, “You got hit by a train!'”  As he recovered this week from a near-death experience, McClure and his mother, Jodi Roderick McClure, counted their blessings. The 15-year-old Lake Oswego High School sophomore spoke calmly about what it’s like to be hit by a locomotive. And no, he wasn’t wearing a helmet, so that finally debunks that myth, huh kids? But the man won’t leave him be. The Lake Oswego police chief mentioned that Kosh should have been wearing a helmet by state law, and his case has been referred to juvenile court for a city ordinance regarding hazardous riding. That will teach him. Amazingly, some people are blaming the markings on the street and not the skater. Check out Train vs. Skateboard.

Fuel TV’s Insane Cinema series is running a feature called Skate Girl that focuses on the trials and tribulations of being a female skater, as well as a little history. It’s a pretty good feature, but not without it’s flaws. They interview Peggy Oki, who probably wasn’t too hard to track down, but nothing about other famous female pioneers like Ellen Oneil and Pat McGee. Also, it’s hard to comment on this film without mentioning something that is either funny or sad, depending on how you look at it. This documentary on the struggle of female skateboards to be taken seriously is continuously interrupted by little station bumps in the corner of the screen that are, more often than not, jiggle girls like bikini clad bimbo in the shot above. That has to be bittersweet for the girls in the viewing audience. An interesting side note, the credits reveal the the skate photographer is none other than Lisa Whitaker, the stunt double from the old Capri Slims skateboarding commercial we featured earlier.

I caught this Cocoa Pebbles commercial with Barney skateboarding by accident. The transmission switched to another commercial before this one was actually finished, but I got most of it. If anybody has the full version, please let me know, because there isn’t enough coverage of Barneys skateboarding…

One of the things on my long list of “eventuallys” for this site is a gallery of dead skateboard magazines. I have a milk crate in my basement with some old skate rags, and I thought I had a few gems that would surprise people. Well I don’t have anything compared to Vintage Skateboard Magazines. It’s a work in progress without a lot of bells and whistles. What it does have are covers of skateboarding magazines from the 60’s to the 80’s from the US, UK, France, Australia and Japan. Some of the UK issues have scans of inside pages as well. There’s a lot of interesting documentation there, my only beef is that the scans aren’t larger. If it were up to me, every page would be available, but then again maybe it’s a good thing it isn’t up to me since our gallery isn’t even up yet. Check out the varied and often wacky past of skateboard magazine publishing at Vintage Skateboard Magazines.