OMG! UR SO HOT! The blogosphere is on fire with hottest skateboards on the web this week – the Dead Rappers series from Jeremy Fish and a soon to be released Wii controller-looking board from Black Market, a company that seems to be doing a second rate impersonation of World Industries circa 91. Actually, this Wii deck is BM’s best work to date. A bunch of gaming sites are tittering all over it. Speaking of tittering, I just said BM!

[Source: Wii – Kotaku Dead Rappers – everyone]

A couple of months ago we posted about blind skateboarder Jennifer Tissot, and now we have another. The Chicago Sun Times has an article with a title straight from Cliché Headlines 101 about another blind skateboarder. What else, but “Skater’s blind ambition.” Duh! The article is pretty straight forward and short. 14 year old Tommy Carroll who lives in the suburbs of Chicago, went blind in both eyes at the age of two. He enjoys other sports like cross country running, and is on a local skate team, Agent Skateboards. Check out the team. If that is the Jerret Barry (Jarret Berry?) then Agent has the lock on Extreme™! minority team members. One of the more interesting notes (besides Tommy, the blind skateboarder) is that his parents are the ones who “helped steer him into skateboarding, figuring it was something he could master.” That’s a pretty progressive attitude, considering a lot of parents of seeing children don’t want their kids skating. The best part of the article is the video link that actually shows Tommy carving around, doing a nose pivot on the coping and even catching air.

Thanks to Mike Timble for the tip. [Photos and video capture: Chicago Sun Times]

Dan Hughes has a bunch of shots of the new Dreamland addition to the Bellingham skatepark. It’s an addition to the old park, so I suggested that Dan do a color overlay to show the old part vs the new. He sent the above image of the old section.

The new stuff is the bowl on the right (top photo) and the ditch on the left (hence all the construction shots of same). The old stuff isn’t that old, it’s just CRAP! Kinked like you wouldn’t believe, dead ends and rough. However, kids in Bellingham Rip like noone’s business.

The new stuff is Dreamland smooth and lots of nice flowing lines.

I like that bowl better than Glenhaven, but not better than Pier.

Reminds me of this but worse if possible, look at that kinked transition!

I was on the fence about a short post on this reality show on TLC called L.A. Ink where a hot gal runs her own tattoo parlor. She’s got a (nonfunctional) skateboard ramp in her shop and a boyfriend that skates, or something like that. Now that Mike Vallely has shown up on an episode the skateboarding link is less tenuous. There’s a split second of skate footage and band footage. Mike looks like a crazy old biker. Highlights include Mive V’s quote:

There’s all these people who talk about ‘keeping it real.’ Keeping it real is joke! Keeping it real is keeping it real mediocre.

Also interesting to nobody but me is the the fact that I went to high school with one of the tattoo artists on the show, Hannah Aitchison, who, if she remembers me at all, will likely think of me as the annoying kid who thought he was punk rock. She dropped out a year early to go be an adult, something I’ve only just gotten around to doing.

There are other tattoo parlors with skateboard ramps. Portland’s own Urban Soul had a ramp and a skateshop, but soon found that all the annoying groms that just wanted to hang out and ask to see boards and not buy anything put a serious damper on their real livelihood, tattoos. – Thanks to Eric Cherry for the video.

Yeah that’s the legendary Natas Kaupas hawking those incredibly crappy looking plastic sunglasses. Head on over to the Skateboard Archives and check out the, uh, print media archives. It’s a very loose collection of old skateboard magazine covers and assorted pages within those magazines. The real treasure is the funky old advertisements for long defunct or soon to be huge companies. There are lots of shots of pro skaters in questionable poses, a ton of vert riding with pads and helmets, obscure hard goods manufacturers (Rannalli Trucks anyone?) and all kinds of good stuff mostly centered on the 80’s and early 90’s. Also interesting are all the mail order shops with completes going for $99 and up. On the downside, the archives are not well organized or very consistent. The detail pages are not quite big enough to read everything, but it’s still a fascinating trip in the Way Back machine. Right, Sherman? Check out The Skateboard Archives.

One of the best WTF marketing crossovers, Zenetti, a company that makes tacky fancy rims for shallow people obsessed with automobiles and the bling lifestyle, now has a skateboarding team.

Zenetti the automotive leader in wheel design has teamed up with Dominic DeLuca of the world famous skate shop & streetwear boutique; Brooklyn Projects; to form the wheel industries first ever official skate team. This is not your typical sponsorship scenario, where a company just giving a skateboarder a set of wheels, poses for a picture and you never hear about them again. This is an official skate team with a complete partnership, including magazine features, show appearances and advertising campaign. We have some of the top skate professionals in the world representing our brand and feel that our partnership will help elevate the industry and spark a new trend. These athletes were hand picked by Dominic and Zenetti for their trendsetting style as well as the fact that they embody what Zenetti stands for as a brand; superior performance, cutting edge style, and class.

They hope the team will “help elevate the industry and spark a new trend.” Which industry? Who knows? Is the new trend to use demographic specific “celebrities” to advertise things that most people in the demographic (kids) can’t afford or possibly can’t even legally use? Check out the team. Braydon Szafranski looks like he escaped from and old SNL skit with two wild and crazy guys and Terry Kennedy is too cool to even look at the camera. His sponsor must be so stoked to pay him a bunch of money to be embarrassed to promote their products. I hope these guys get a lot of money from Zenetti, who deserves the financial sucker punch.

[Source: Skate Life]

Earth Patrol Media shows us what happens when second (and third) string skateboard company moguls get in to the Dew Tour. Unfortunately, they were unable to abscond with the effigy of Ryan Sheckler, or burn it. Can you believe they want to sell you Dew Tour skateboards for $80? These are not completes mind you, just the deck. It’s ironic that the graphic on the deck is a bunch of robots. Maybe they’ll make one with lemmings next time. Check it out.

This skateboarding cow is from a series of advertisements for McDonald’s in China that features exercising cows. A few advertising blogs have spotlighted it, but they don’t appear to know anything about it (other than who made it) and never seem to point back to the source of the image. It took me a few days to find someone who reproduced it larger. Check it out after the jump.

If you are going to have a crappy job, it might as well be at a skateboard magazine. Actually, I’m just assuming it will be a crappy job, but historically, photogs in second string magazines are not the best paid. No ding on Slap, I actually haven’t seen an issue in years, but it’s obvious that Thrasher is the flagship of that publisher. Submit your photos and you could win a six month paid position with real photo assignments. It will likely be low paying, but it’s temporary and it would be invaluable experience if you actually wanted to take a crack at doing it for a living. For some reason they are also accepting video submissions for a photo job, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. They are looking for young photographers with technical knowhow, so I’m out on both counts. Hey kids! Now’s your chance.

This website says she’s a self-proclaimed skatepunk. This is from a fashion supplement to Wired Magazine. Does she really have an empty pool in her backyard? I take all the scorn back, can I come over April?