Phone companies love skateboarding. Might even be a real action photo and not a posed shot. What’s up with that claw hand? Somewhere in L.A.. – Thanks to Kilwag’s mom for the pic.

This is the cover of the 2015-2016 CharmTV sponsorship brochure. CharmTV is a local channel all about Baltimore, which explains why I found out about this via that Skatepark of Baltimore advocate Stephanie Murdock. And here I thought Simon Woodstock was living on the west coast.

When I first watched this video I thought was one of those acid tracer scenes where the same sequence is repeated with a start time a few frames later, over and over again, but it’s actually multiple sequences composited together. It’s pretty impressive, and it ought to be considering the spent over 480 man hours on the editing alone, not to mention shooting the original sequences. It’s pretty flawless except for the 47 second mark where a skateboarder (Cory Juneau) appears out of thin air without dropping into the bowl. The behind the scenes video is pretty interesting too, despite the severe levelness of the director’s voiceover. He’s so stiff and awkward, especially when trying to sell the Nokia Lumia 930. It’s almost comical, considering Windows Phone’s faltering performance in the market. True story: I was at a BBQ the summer with a bunch of Microsoft employees. As an Apple fanboy it was interesting to hear the shop talk. When they started talking about the phone platform it was as if someone let all the air out of the conversation. Guys who can basically get Windows phones for free were giving up on them, with no foreseeable relief in the…

Well it’s here. The hoverboard park of the future, as well as details about the board and the park. It’s both amazing and quite a letdown at the same time. What you can do with this Lexus built hoverboard is pretty amazing. In some ways it’s the promise of Back to the Future delivered… with one huge exception: You are limited to riding on a predefined track. In spite of all the talk of innovation and and achieving the impossible, it’s basically a maglev train that you push with your foot, with a few oversized Hot Wheels style jumps thrown in. Is it anything new? Not really. Is it freaking cool? Yes. Lexus spent over a year and who knows how much money developing this concept. Is it better than the Hendo hoverboard? That’s a tough call. The Lexus version is more fully realized, from a demonstration point of view, and the nature of the fixed track means you aren’t going to slide out constantly like a snowboard on ice with no rails. In that respect, the Lexus version is more like a skateboard, however the Hendo’s ability to pick an infinite number of paths (as long as it’s on…

In Stan Lee Presents – The Condor, Tony Valdez loses his parents and the use of his legs. Then, with the help of robotic legs and nanobots from the family business, he turns from professional skateboarder into the skateboarding crimefighter known as the Condor. The reviews for this straight to DVD release are not good. It already aired on Cartoon Network at least once, but you can watch it for free on Hulu while it lasts or rent it from YouTube. It’s horrible, unintentionally funny, and the main character is almost totally unlikeable. 10 minutes into the plot, the publisher of the “biggest extreme sports magazine” invites Tony to spend the night so she can make him a superstar. There’s quite a bit of PG-13 sexual innuendo, micro short skirts and heaving cleavage, but the overall quality of the animation, story and voice acting is so poor that it’s only going to appeal to a much younger, somewhat confused audience.

Two comics that were originally sent to me as fuzzy low light photographs by MC. They’ve both turned up online. At the top is Baby Blues, from January, 2013. The second Calvin and Hobbes strip originally ran May 2nd, 1987. Bill waters has a new book out and unfortunately, a bunch of dead links on his website.

Aldens was a mail order catalog based out of Chicago from 1899 (not a typo) to some time shortly after 1982. This is a page from their 1978 Christmas calendar with three skateboards. I can’t ever remember seeing an Alden’s catalog despite living in the Chicago suburbs during their last gasp. Two of the models are familiar plastic boards, the Free Former (forerunner of the bidirectional popsicle stick!) and the GT Coyote II. There’s got to be thousands of Free Formers in landfills across the country. The Spinner is made from oak or kapoer [sic] which might actually be kapur. Good luck finding anything about Spinner Skateboards on google.

Andrew sent me a picture of this box some two years ago, but it was pretty blurry so I resolved to try and find one in a store, but never did. In the meantime I found some good scans online via Mr Breakfast and Flickr user Jason B. This is a limited edition box of “Rockin’ Xtreme Colors!” Fruity Pebbles with “amped up fruity take!” On the back you get a full color illustration of the Bedrock Extreme Skate Park. – Thanks to Andrew Wahl for the tip

This Frog House ad marks the last of the adverts from the Summer 1975 issue of Skateboarder Magazine, billed as Volume 2, Number 1. This was the first issue after Skateboarder took a few years off when the industry lumped in the late 60’s. There were only 38 ads in that issue, but V2 #2 would see a sizable jump in number of pages. I’m about 2/3 of the way through posting all the ads in the December 1986 issue of Transworld Skateboarding. After that I think I’m going to tackle a 90’s issue of Thrasher.

I wasn’t sure if this Miller beer commercial ever aired on TV, and I can’t remember how I found out about it, but I held off on posting it to see if I could record it off TV for the official S&A archives. I eventually forgot about it when it never showed up in anything I watched. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been looking through draft posts lately and this one got my attention. The original video has been deleted but a quick search turned up a replacement. According to the new and apparently original source, it didn’t air because it was shot on spec circa 2006. Devo and skateboarding in a beer commercial? A beer company would probably balk at even the hint of targeting an underage audience. How dare they assume responsible adults drink beer and skateboard! Still, stranger things have happened in the TV commercial world. This post originally had another commercial for Panasonic (What? I don’t know) that had some high profile names skating a ditch, but I can’t find it anywhere.