That’s right. Stop sassing them and say “Sir” and “Ma’am” and you just might be rewarded with a new skate park. A November 17 article in the Pitsburgh Tribune-Review titled Retired teacher puts a lot of stock in skate park tells the story of James Peach. He bought some Standard Oil stock after the war (occupation of Japan) and at age 78, in a fit of grieving and good will, turned it over the county of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania on the condition that the money be spent on the local skatepark project. Turns out that the original $900 investment was worth $161,000! I hope the park they build looks better than it does in the plan above, but with an advocacy group named Westmoreland Street Park Alliance, I wouldn’t hold my breath..

It depends on where you find it, this is either called GR8 TaT2 Maker or I-Tattoo There’s nothing like pretending to be an adult. If you’ve got a toy skateboard, you might as well have a toy tattoo gun. Next in line is the Lil’ Addict Heroin Kit™. Seriously, these kids look like little meatheads already. The kid on the right looks like he’s wearing a hair helmet. As soon as they get done with the fake tattoos they are going out to the back yard to off road in their battery powered mini Jeeps. Get Inked!! Vibrating Electronic Pen! Safe and Easy! Uses Washable Markers! Contains: 30 Stencils 3 Markers No, there’s no skateboard in the actual product, just in the advertising. I like how the copped the SK8 spelling for GR8. Tip of the keyboard to Gizmodo.com where I poached this from.

Doing business in communist China is easier than in Santa Cruz, said a local surfboard, snowboard and skateboard maker. Coupled with the first sentence of “Local skateboard maker toys with leaving S.C.,” you’d be left with the impression that Novak is contemplating moving (all) Santa Cruz Skateboards production to China. After all, the over regulation and complaints from gentrifying neighbors are some of the same alleged reasons that Clark Foam, the world’s largest manufacturer of surfboard blanks shut down. However, according to the interviews, Novak is only considering moving to an adjacent town. Do you believe him?

Lots of injured skateboarders making the news, mostly by the hands (or wheels) of others. Also, some unfortunate deaths. There’s a web site called MyDeathSpace that seems to just be a repository of obituaries. It might be in too poor of taste for even us.

He told a Melbourne Supreme Court jury the group were taping themselves picking up a live snake and skateboarding down a steep hill while weaving around traffic. “We were pretty inspired by the movies (Jackass) at that time,” he told the jury. Unfortunately they also got the idea from the Bumfights video series to light a homeless man on fire, killing him in the process. Please people, if you have an IQ of pile of dung, please take up scooters or something else instead of dragging us down with you like these murderers in Australia did. Most of us can watch movies and TV shows without being prompted to torture people.

It’s crap like this that leads to skateparks getting closed down, insurance rates rising, etc. Morons! Take responsibility for your own actions. Apparently these two geniuses have never seen or heard of an overhead electric powered trolley car, train, or bus, or even bumper cars at the fair because they climbed up onto a train and got too close to the wire, then suffered electrical burns. Then they sued because they thought someone should have held their hand and told them not to. I don’t know who is more retarded, them or the jury that awarded the verdict. My appologies to retards for even placing you in the same category as these half wits. Klein and Birdwell… …They were skateboarding when they decided they wanted to see the view from the top of the boxcar, according to their lawsuit. Klein was shocked by the catenary wire, which hung 6 feet above the car… …Birdwell was burned while he tried to help his friend. Read all about it on Delaware Online, and the Eagle World News.

The marketing juggernaut for Tony Hawk’s Project 8 video game is already ramped up. Fileshack.com is a site devoted to all imaginable types of downloads concerning video games. In this case they they have a bunch of behind the scenes footage in the development of Tony Hawk’s Project 8. Project 8? How about behind the scenes footage of the guy who green lighted that name getting fired? I don’t think this footage is proprietary to the site though. You’ll have to endure multiple attempts and guilt trips from Fileshack.com to get you to sign up for an account and to get faster downloads. Whatever. Let me download it or not, quit making me jump through hoops. They have a bunch of videos on Project 8 (Genius!) available. The still above are from a motion capture session. Check it out.

MC scanned the Willamette Week’s version of a picture he provided for their article on Pier Park skatepark titled Finding Dreamland. You can find his original in color here and the article on line at the Willamette Week Online. I love pictures with numbers inside dots. Reminds me of old textbooks and museums. The black and white scan also adds a heavy 70’s vibe to it. Dreamland has been getting a lot of Oregon press these days.

My subscription ran out. A while ago. I haven’t bothered to renew it, and they let it slide for a couple of months. Now they want me back. On the same day I received two offers to renew my subscription. One from Thrasher, and one from a magazine subscription place that already knew I had a subscription. The Thrasher direct price, was of course lower per year by about $7 than the magazine subscription company. I don’t care about that, but I do find it kind of sleazy that Thrasher sells their subscription info to third parties.

And a whole lot of corn syrup! Now that I have a kid I have to start paying attention to these so-called fruit snacks, which are usually nothing more than a nominal amount of fruit inside a wad of something slightly less soluble than horse hooves. Mr Jelly Belly Fruit Snacks! Check out the packaging and pointless comments after the jump.