Skateboarding as a school activity has been done before I think. The article at deseretnews.com is pretty standard, with the exception that the program was instigated by 60 year old man who had just learned to skate from a former student who now owns the company Skate Pass LLC. I’m not sure how much actual skating the teacher is doing, so we’ll take that with a grain of salt. The succinct title of this post is a quote from a 5th grade girl in the program.

I quote from the press release: “In the 80’s there was no bigger skateboard company than Powell Peralta. . . . One of the key factors to Powell’s dominance as a skateboard powerhouse were the ground-breaking graphics. Using extremely dark and detailed hand drawn image of skulls, snakes and dragons, PP was the first skate/street company to throw such taboo images into the mainstream. . . . Today designer Danny Drake has teamed up with George Powell to reissue a collection of 8 of the most memorable graphics in skate history on updated bodies. These PP items are an extremely limited edition and are only available in “The Rail” at Nordstom”.

Maxtor makes hard drives. Kids these days with their Myspaces and digital cameras and the pirate MP3s need a place to store all their Interweb desktops. Maxtor thinks they can sell them a networked storage drive. They’ve created a web site with a fake family to show off the product. The daughter’s name is Tirin, and she has a dream (other than a real name) and that is to make her own skateboarding website…” Hey Tirin, as this site will prove, any jackass can download Wordpress and make one for free. Duh. I swear I’ll make a real skateboarding post soon.

Updated: Instead of just tipping my hat to EPM’s post on Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized video, I decided to turn it up to 11. The vid caps above are from no less than three four different Institutionalized appearances on video: The straight video, a Beavis and Butthead appearance, a fake live appearance in a club on Miami Vice!, and the video for Institutionalized 93 – the remake. More vid caps and links to the vids after the jump.

One good Devo post deserves another. The Wipeouters are described as a reformation of a pre-Devo garage band, although you have to take that with a grain of salt because those guys tend to make up a lot of their historical information. Juice Magazine did a piece on them around 2001, which appears to have been when they peaked. Yesterday’s Devo video got me interested, so I dug up this Wipeouters video for Twist-N-Launch on Youtube, complete with a skateboarding little person.

Classic Devo and classic skateboarding, circa 1980. Maybe the first music video to feature skateboarding if you don’t count Skater Dater. The DVD compilation The Complete Truth About De-Evolution has been out since 2003, so it’s not surprising that this clip turned up on You Tube. Peep it via Earth Patrol Media, who had the good sense to spot this. Yes that’s Stacy Peralta up top. Some other pros are in it as well, but I can’t remember who.

A coworker had these on the desk yesterday. Good enough reason to start a new category since I’ve got a backlog of food packaging with skateboards on it in my basement. These cookies look like they are made out of Play Doh ®. Seriously! See the proof after the jump.

A sensible reply to an irrational argument.

Parks & Recreation, the official magazine of the National Recreation and Park Association, an organization whose goal is to advance parks, recreation and environmental conservation efforts that enhance the quality of life for all people. The target audience is park professionals, urban planners, and concerned citizens. Kent Dahlgren, Executive Director of Skaters for Public Skateparks and long time Portland OR scenester wrote an article for the magazine titled “Taking It To the Street.” The article is not available on the NRP web site, but we have some highlights, complete with the requisite grunge typeface. How extreme.

According to (the complaining resident), the out-of-towners look “rough-and-ready.” They’re not wearing khakis and polos… Oh god. Here we go again. This joker is pissed cause he bought an overpriced house that sits on top of his neighbors and overlooks the West Linn skate park. His neighborhood association says they don’t like it. Well that means it’s time to move. The park sits in the midst of a pretty uptight neighborhood, that’s for sure. It’s time to get the folks over at Skaters For Public Skateparks to trot out the noise level studies again. Will they try to get it torn down? Seems implausible, but there’s a lot of collective wealth in those subdivisions. This guy has a lot of nerve posing for a picture in the skate park and giving his name, which is William Relyea. What a tool. Check out the story in the Aug 23, 2006 issue of the West Linn Tidings or read more commentary here.