If you like skateboarding, then you just might be ready for an Evinrude boat motor, later on in life, when you grow up. You know Evinrude owners are born, not made. Right? It’s not like a choice. When you get to college, it’s OK if you experiment a little. Nobody is going to judge you if you try riding a Razor scooter. If you’re worried, just keep it on the DL. 1989 advertisement for Evinrude motors, complete with Gonz skateboard after the jump.

Off the Lip Radio interviews surfers and skaters in a studio in Santa Cruz, California. You can listen to them on the radio (KSCO 1080AM in the Bay Area, Tuesdays at 7PM) or listen to them online at OffTheLipRadio.com. TheSurfChannel.com also compiles and streams in studio videos of the broadcasts. I decided to check out Jeff Kendall being interviews in his capacity of VP over at NHS, although it mainly had to do with his skating days at Santa Cruz. The bit about being interviewed for a job/let go from the team at the same instance is pretty interesting. This show format is bit slow, and they switch guests in the middle, coming back to Jeff later. I’m not sure why they do that, because it’s distracting. Maybe they feel it’s better for the radio format. (Skip to the 6:55 to get to the start of Jeff’s interview.) And if you’ve got a half a day to kill, you can check out other interviews with Steve Olson with Rich Novak, Rob Roskopp with and without Rich Novak, Keith Meek, Keith Meek and Scott Foss, Don Bostick (World Cup Skateboarding), Jimbo Phillips, Steve Caballero, Jane Mckenzie and Judi Oyama, and of course, Rich Novak. Want more? there are other assorted skate related episodes as well.

Way back in the 80’s Kendall came through our small town in Illinois for a demo, and he wasn’t available for a Skate and Annoy interview, or had to leave in a hurry, or some other drama that we made up, so we got mad at him and slagged him off in the next print issue of Skate and Annoy. ( I’m pretty sure this is the umpteenth time I’ve told that story here.) We were real mature. Once again, we’re sorry Jeff. Watch a real Jeff Kendall interview after the jump.

Hobby King wants to sell you a Quanum Nova RC helicopter so you can shoot skate videos and other Extreme™! footage. They’ve got a demo video, but curiously, the skate footage appears to be mostly stable shots with little tracking.

– Thanks to Rich for the tip.

This is the cover of Education Update – Volume 56, Number 9, published in September, 2014:

With practical optimism and guidance, teachers can turn teens’ risk-taking behaviors into cognitive assets.

I was really into the band Cognitive Assets when I was in my straight edge phase. the cover illustration really does an excellent job of capturing the true essence of skateboarding, which is to be simultaneously alarmed, inspired, and confused.

– Thanks to Burly Caps for the tip.

Craig Snyder has been working on this book for 7 years, and it seems to be growing. As of now it clocks in at around 850 pages and more than 1000 images. If funded successfully (by Kickstarter) it should be published in November of 2014. Incredibly, this is only volume one, focussing on the 70’s. If successful, volume 20 will cover the 80’s and beyond. In case you’re wondering about the authenticity, there are some big names behind the incentives, including face to face time with Paul Schmitt, Mike McGill, and some guy named Alan “Ollie” Gelfand that you might have heard of… Check out olliebook.com for more info, or you can watch the Kickstarter video (features skateboarding but ironically no ollies) after the jump.

For fun it’s a wonderful toy
It walks downnstairs
Alone or in pairs
And makes a Slinkaty sound
A Spring
A Spring
A marvelous thing
Everyone knows it’s….

Everyone knows it’s “Slinky” and not “Slurpee.” Spotted at a local 7-11, Mountain Dew and Slurpee X-treme cross marketing.

Moms Demand Action is not really upset that you can;t bring a skateboard into Krogers, they’re upset that Krogers has a pro open carry stance. This is just one of several ads featuring a gun toting shopper standing next to someone doing something that Krogers won’t allow. You can sign the petition here.

– Via John Grigley on Facebook

Eli Reed dealing with the age old problem that every street skater encounters at least once a session: Random girls in bikinis laying in the middle of your run up.

[Source: High Snobiety]

I had more than a handful of these “Stylin’ Skateboards” from Topps. The first time I saw them was in ’91 or ’92. I think it was B-Rad who showed it to me first, and it blew my mind. I asked where he found it, expecting it to be something a friend brought back from a trip to Japan or some kitschy novelty shop in New York. Instead, he nodded his head over his shoulder towards the Wall Mart at his back in a semi rural (at the time) Steamboat Springs, Colorado. This sales sheets shows them packaged in little boxes, but the ones I saw came in sealed plastic bags with heat-pressed seams. Each bag came with some crappy candy sugar wads pressed into the vague shape of a skateboard wheel, though more likely just generic pellet molds. Also in the package, a really crappy plastic fingerboard made out of soft plastic. I believe you had to snap the wheels in place yourself. The second generation fingerboards (more on that later) were fun for a few minutes, but the real reason to keep buying these things was for the paper stickers that came with them, each a slightly mutated version of what someone in Topps marketing thought represented skateboarding culture. Lots of “rad dudes” and cow skulls, like Life’s a Beach meets Zorlac, but turned into a Nickelodeon cartoon for kids. I think these things sold for a dollar and change each. A while back I saw an unopened case up for bid, but they wanted something in the neighborhood of $100 for it. Second generation fingerboards? Yes. Slightly more maneuverable than the hard, keychain versions that first appeared in the 80’s, you know, the kind that featured paper graphics in a clear shell. Stylin’ Skateboards were at the opposite end of the brittle spectrum. The loose tolerances of the truck and wheel assemblies combined with the soft plastic made for the first fingerboards that you could more or less turn instead of just sliding. The larger size was more to scale as well, but ultimately the cheap plastic was too soft to get any meaningful use out of a toy version of… well, a larger toy. Somewhere in my basement I have at least one of these unopened. One day I’ll dig it up.

MTV’s Punks and Posers from a time (1985) when they actually played music videos, blah blah blah. I think this aired at 11:00 at night originally, I taped it to VHS when I should have been finishing my computer science homework. I watched the hell out of this. It’s Got the Dickies and GBH (yawn) but also a rare appearance by the band Plain Wrap, which I had completely forgotten about. I bought their album when I saw it at Record Swap, based on seeing this video. That vinyl still resides in my basement, need to dig it up. If you are at all familiar with 80’s LA Punk there should be a few other faces you recognize as well. Interviews talking about “punk”… so lame, yet so entertaining. There is some incidental skateboarding in the video as well, so it’s actually topical to this web site, and yes.. It’s a stretch. I was stoked to see this again after so many years.