The July 1st issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News reports that Tony Hawk has inked a deal for a signature bike line with a company called Dynacraft. Tony Hawk will be joining Dynacraft’s illustrious lineup of brands that include Hot Wheels and Barbie. You can buy these performance machines at such fine cycling outfitters as Amazon.com and Target. What’s that? concerned about the quality? Not to worry, according to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News

Tony Hawk bikes will be completely different than anything Dynacraft has distributed in the past,” said John Bisges, managing director at Dynacraft. “They will have higher end components, updated frames and the most cutting edge graphics ever. We are all extremely excited about this new bike line, and are certain it will be a big hit when we showcase it to customers at this year’s Interbike show.” The line will be available in retail stores beginning in spring 2008.

I’m placing bets that Tony Hawk bicycles will likely be a BMX facsimile. Maybe we can expect a Matt Hoffman to start hawking toy skateboards in retaliation. Get a closeup of some previous Dynacraft “cutting edge graphics” after the jump. Update: Not just one bike line, but two! “Huckjam” gets it’s own series of bicycles.

Any series that features Joe Strummer (and the Mescaleros) singing over the opening credits has already got a leg up in my book. In this case, HBO’s John from Cincinnati uses Johnny Appleseed from the album Global A Go-go. Why do we care? Because the same credits also feature some skateboard footage and one of the actors is sponsored am Greyson Fletcher, son of famous surfer Christian Fletcher. You can watch the nicely done credits and see a little ancillary skateboarding from the show after the jump. Bonus: Guess which local Portland skate company scored product placement?

When not teasing other people who write about skateboarding, I’m poaching their work. Concrete Wave has made their current issue available for viewing online at a site called Banquet Action Sports Video Community. Even though it says it is the full issue of Volume 5 number 5, it’s actually missing about seven or eight spreads in the back of the magazine that contain an artist spotlight and a lot of the smaller ads. Personally, the back is one of my favorite parts of the mag. I like checking out the small companies to see what interesting or weird new products have come out. The interface is OK, you can click on a page to make it larger, and most of the larger ads act as web links to the companies in question. One annoying thing is that linked ads have a pulsing glow that distracts from the reading experience of the page next to it and prevent a clear view of the ad itself. A better way to implement that would have been to activate the glow on rollover only. Come to think of it, a better way to implement it would have been to make the whole thing a downloadable PDF. The web links could work and you wouldn’t have to wrestle with a proprietary interface. In any case, it’s still useful for being able to read most of the current issue of Concrete Wave if you are too cheap to buy it or just want to check it out. I believe they make each issue available this way, but they don’t seem to keep an archive. Check it out.

[Source: About.com]

From The Turkish Daily News (where else?) comes your guide to skateboarding in Turkey. It’s not really a guide but more of a fluff piece titled “Skating not just leisure but a sub-culture” that talks about the cost of equipment, and how you can actually buy skateboard gear and fashions in Turkey now. No great surprise there. They also have a separate breakdown of skate spots in Istanbul titled “Skating fun in Istanbul. Surprisingly, one of the hot spots listed is the New Mosque. A quick search for skatebording and Istanbul on the Interweb™ turns up a web site called KayKayci.com that carries the tagline (in English) of “This is Turkish Skateboarding.” The rest of the site is in Turkish (?) and doesn’t appear to have any photos whatsoever, unless maybe you have to log in to see the content. I also found one video on YouTube, which you can watch after the jump. I wonder if Foundation skateboards are big over there. Think about that moon and star logo, now where have I seen that? Turkish Skateboarding brethren, let’s hear from you.

Top 6 Reasons to Skateboard according to About.com.

1) Skateboard to Try Something New
2) Skateboard for Fitness
3) Skateboard to Make Friends
4) Skateboarding Teaches Stick-To-It-Iveness
5) Skateboard to Build Confidence
6) Skateboard for Fun!

Hmm… I don’t see “to meet cute girls” or “because it’s more punk rock than baseball” on that list. Get all the Warm fuzzy details here. Thanks to John Aguilar for finding this.

Grove City, Ohio? I thought this was a weird rendering of a concept when I saw it on The Concretins. But photos of people skating the thing can be found on this site.

It needs to be bigger. Someone needs to get a shot of 4 people hitting inverts on the various walls of this thing at the same time.

– Thanks to Kathleen for the tip

Update: From Kilwag – I had to make an addition to Mark’s post. Usually I’m hands off but in this case, for the sake of continuity and timeline, I’ve added a cartoon titled How Electric Skateboards Really Work after the jump.

Pretty cool overview of Oregon skateparks at SkateOregon with a photo of each one. Dang there are a bunch of them.

As seen in the May 2007 issue of People Magazine, this advert for the Chevy Cobalt features street skating prominently. Some publicist or team rider over at Powell ought to be getting a fat check for this product placement. Usually company logos are not so readily identifiable. As for the Devil Dogs lyrics to Brand New Chevy… Devil Dogs? Never heard of them, but according to Last.Fm “People who like The Devil Dogs also like New Bomb Turks, Radio Birdman, Supersuckers…” Really? OK, Sounds good, but going against their credibility is the fact that they released the song in 1989, which would not have been an especially noteworthy year in the annals of American car design. Is anyone in this day and age excited by new Chevrolets, Corvettes even? I doubt the Devil Dogs would find the Cobalt that inspiring, but I’m sure the publishing rights inspired their bank accounts. Enlarge the advert after the jump.

A copy of TokyoLOCO from 1999. I’ve seen other Japanese magazines and websites like this. Chock-full of shots of what people are wearing on the street. I think people over here do that too and call it cool-hunting but I think here, people use it as research to try to find something to market. They don’t just serve up the images. The New York Times had a column called Street Fashion that would point out a certain trend through a series of photos but I’ve never seen a whole American magazine like that.