It’s been 7 years since I posted the last MG auto advert from 1977. In 1978 it seemed like they couldn’t get enough of the high jump over a car concept. At least part of the photo shoot for this ad took place in the crazy mogul field at Carlsbad skatepark shown on the right.

You’re looking at the cover of Skateboard Champion, #112 in Edward Packards Choose Your Own Adventure series. And most skateboarder do, choose their own adventures. The kid on the cover chose spandex shorts; a complete set of plastics – noes bone, rails, lapper; tie dye graphics; and counterfeit Nike shoes. The wistful expression on his face? I think the girl in the baseball jersey on the deck just broke up with him. It’s quite a backyard vert ramp though. It looks very 80’s but the book was actually published in 1991, which also looked very 80’s for a while. [Photo: Gamebooks.org]

Random web advertising with skateboards. On the left, Betabrand offers dress pants made out of sweatpants-like material, perfect for toting your longboard. On the Right, Metromile offers car insurance by the mile and rad dudes by the dozen. Neither of these skateboard riding (or at least carrying) consumers appear to be part of a larger branding campaign.

I probably should have saved this for a Monday. (At least you’re not this guy…) [Source: Perez Hilton] – Thanks to Mrs. Kilwag for the tip.

Disposable, the definitive book on the skateboard graphics is about to be released 10 years after it’s original print date. There is no difference in this edition from the previous edition, but this also marks the first time the book has been in print for 4 years. How do you celebrate this? Well you could buy the book (everyone should have it), or you can buy the Disposable Nike Dunk Disposable shoe. If pre-Hosoimas commercialism has got you down, you can read this Chris Nieratko interview with Sean Cliver on Vice. I’d send you over to Cliver’s blog, but it looks like he hasn’t updated it in a couple of years. He’s active on Twitter though.

It’s been a long time since I’ve made a Saturday Starrs post. This is a clip from the 1967 film Blue Surf-ari, archived and digitized by noted surf/skate historian and photographer Scott Starr.

LMNADE is a design-driven lifestyle brand specializing in fashion and hard good products that focuses on vintage beach/boardwalk culture. “Roll, Bounce, Skate.” – The Lmnade brand is aimed at young women who want to roller-skate, skateboard, and bounce? They actually have a couple of cool novelty boards and some cruisers, plus roller skirts. To promote the product they use lots of lifestyle girls doing everything with a skateboard that you could think of, as along as all you can think of is sitting on them and holding them, and not you know, actually skateboarding. You know, I often think about trying to add female voice to the staff here at S&A, but seeing as how I keep posting stuff like this, I don’t know that anyone would want to.

Retailers are sending out Christmas mailings already. Target has a few skateboard related images in their catalog; A giant skateboard prop for Shaun White’s clothing line, and a posed photo of a little kid who looks like he just released a tail grab. he’s getting some awesome footage of his knees. I want that giant skateboard. I do not want the chest harness. I a also not looking forward to a GoProbe, with or without harness.

The Disney book Learn to Draw With Phineas and Ferb comes packaged with a random eraser in the shape of a character from the show. This particular pressing features Perry the platypus, who has appeared on a skateboard in the series. Someone must have “thought of the children” and decided to make sure he had a helmet on this time.

Adam Shomsky has a Youtube channel filled with high frame rate slow motion videos of skateboarding and “other random stuff that looks cool in slow mo, like fire.” A writer over at Wired used an open source physics video analysis tool called Tracker (Insert Tracker vs. Indy joke here.) to break down the forces at work in an ollie. The resulting animated gifs are vaguely interesting and sort of hypnotic, especially if you like looking at lots of vectors and symbols overlaid on skateboard videos. Check out The Physics of Doing an Ollie on a Skateboard, or, the Science of Why I Can’t Skate.