A party bag decorated with some sort of anthropomorphous sponge character. They got his back foot in the right place but went ahead and drew him stinkbug.

This quick wall in the street area at Glenhaven remided me of some photos of Glen Woodruff from the first issue of Skateboarder when they revived it in the seventies (Vol. 2 No. 1).

Ben Pappas – who used to earn $15,000 a month as a teenage skate star in the US – was dragged from the water by police divers off Victoria Pier at Docklands. Homicide detectives had been looking for Pappas, 29, since the body of his former girlfriend, Lynette Phillips, was found at Dights Falls in Abbotsford eight days earlier. [Source: Herald Sun, Australia] Update: Link fixed, plus more links after the jump.

Seen on the streets of Portland, Oregon. Bucky Lasek I think. Hey if they’re giving money away…

Portland Police are upset that a skateboard shop also sells (expensive) spray paint, as they see skateboarding and graffiti culture intertwined. The cops say The Office is tacitly encouraging graffiti by selling the spray paint. The Office says their paint is expensive and therefore typically used by commissioned artists rather than your garden variety high school delinquent. I hate taggers and I hate graffiti, but I like stencil art. Normally I wouldn’t bother to report on this but I thought The Office’s manager, Kevin Nimick, made a good point: “I don’t want to go head to head with the police,” says Nimick. “But they’re just trying to have a place to direct blame for Portland’s graffiti. Why not ban the sale of handguns, if they’re worried about people getting shot?” More skateboards and spray paint after the jump. [Source: Portland Mercury]

Taylor, with his short haircut and businesslike demeanor, doesn’t fit the profile of the average skateboarder, who’s often a teenager with stylishly long hair and a devil-may-care attitude. Taylor’s more the Tony Hawk type, a guy in his 30s who can make money doing what he loves. He doesn’t fit the stereotype, but they still used This dude’s rad boards ‘feel right’ as the headline for an article about Drifter Skateboards, a small D.I.Y. skateboard manufacturer. Hmm… sounds familiar. Other than that, this article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is OK, just brief. Hold on… of all the interesting parts of the process involved, they chose a picture of owner Ryan Taylor shrink wrapping an unidentified object. Someone fire that photo editor. Those graphics remind me of a certain Blockhead era. Update: Drifter web site.

ANNE Brunell is a skateboarder with a difference. When pregnancy made it impossible for this paralympian and mother of two to wear her artificial legs, she relied on her trusty skateboard to get around. Despite being born without her lower legs, Ms Brunell has made the most of every opportunity with vigour, passion and a laugh. Today she will be one of 30 women inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women by Women’s Affairs Minister Jacinta Allan to commemorate International Women’s Day. Be nice in the comments. [Source: Herald Sun ]

The first time I went to college I lived in a dive of a house with 14 people called Ten Shitty Guys. The McDonalds monopoly game was new-ish at the time and we pooled our game pieces in the house to try and win. One day we thought we won $1000 or something like that, so we marched down to McDonalds to try and get paid. Turned out that there was another Monopoly based promotion going on somewhere else with game pieces that were almost identical. We won a prize all right, first place jackasses. Here’s a 2006 (I think) commercial for McDonalds Monopoly game promotion with a Best Buy connection, and (implied) vert skating…

411 is really good. well the good issues are. not the ones w/ crappy pros like prod and colin mckay OK, so there are detractors, like the Dok said in his iTunes review above, but a lot of people are happy about the fact that you can now buy 411VM episodes on iTunes at $1.99 an episode or $11.99 for a season of 8. I don’t know if each iTunes episode is equivalent to an existing 411VM DVD in length, it doesn’t make it clear. I can think of worse ways to spend $12. It beats buying headphones to watch a crappy movie on an airplane. [Source: Playlist]

Streetsurfing has been a huge success in American schools and now pupils in Dorset are among the first in the UK to try it out as part of their PE lessons. You’re kidding right? A huge success? Hey, I’ve got a Monorail I want to sell you, but maybe that’s more of a Shelbyville idea… More schools that teach skateboarding in PE, as well as this one in the UK that teaches kookboarding.