More viral advertising featuring skateboarding. This one in a commercial from Nokia, masquerading as a company called Great Pockets. The joke being that you could buy custom tailored clothing with huge pockets to carry all your electronic gear, or of course you could just ditch all that gear for the Nokia N95 phone. Watch this kid try to skateboard while leaving a trail of battered consumer electronics after the jump.

Old people skateboarding certainly has been done before. (See Granny Skates for CarMax) This is a pretty good commercial from the UK, although I was disappointed that the old guy was a stunt man. For some reason I thought he was actually going to get on a board. Maybe the happy music made think it was going to be one of those touchy-feely “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” public service type of commercials. Instead it’s an ad for something called 118 118 which, near as I can tell has something to do with a phone directory or phone service. The park is Something called BaySixty6, which is apparently sponsored by XBox, whatever that means. I guess Playstation has a park too, why not. What do these sponsorships mean? Are they permanent? We know who sponsors the park, but what about the stunt rider? Whoever he is, he rides for Vans and Quicksilver. Check out the old school varial in the action sequence. Nowadays it seems like all the pros forego the the varial for the shove-it instead.

Blackanthem Military News has a short piece on Marines who skateboard called “Lords of Devil Dogtown.” They don’t really make a connection with “devil” and “Dogtown” in the article, so I’m assuming “Devil Dog” has some special significance to Marines or military persons in general. Blackanthem.com seems to be geared for and staffed by U.S. servicemen and women, but the disclaimer at the bottom of the page says they are “not affiliated, endorsed, authorized, or associated in any way with any government, military or country.” OK, sure. Skateboarding in the U.S. military is nothing new. In the eighties I used to skate with a lot of guys from a nearby Air Force base in Rantoul Illinois. A couple of them became good friends for a while. heck, I’ just had the good fortune to get back in touch with one of them. I imagine there were lots of skaters serving during the 70’s as well. Some military bases even have skateboarding facilities on site, although ostensibly they were for the families of servicemen. I remember a few of those 80’s servicemen told me that skateboarding was frowned upon at the base, and they could find themselves in hot water if they got injured skating because it would interfere with their duties. Cut to the new millennium, skateboarding seems to be accepted in the military. There’s guys on the news skateboarding in Iraq, for cryin’ out loud. [Photos: Lance Cpl. Kyle Davis, Cpl. Raymond Peterson III and Lance Cpl. Kyle Davis by Cpl. Brandon L. Roach]

Your kids can overcome their allergy problems using Children’s Claritin, without making them jittery or drowsy. Must not be any good for making meth either. As always, if you can identify the rider or the skatepark, please leave it in the comments. Watch the commercial after the jump.

13 years of highbrow Maximum Rock and Roll punk journalism has come to an end. Chicago’s Punk Planet is ceasing publication due to “bad distribution deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of subscribers.” You can get Punk Planet at my local hippie grocery store for cryin’ out loud. Those hippies must not be paying their bills. So it goes without saying (except I’m saying it anyway) that Punk Planet’s other title, the skateboard/culture magazine Bail, will officially die as well. Although I haven’t seen a new issue of Bail in what seems like years already. It’s got to be hard to keep an independent magazine in print. As one star fades out, another is in ascendance, so go on over to Razorcake.org and help them make it.

[Source: Time Out Chicago]

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.