About a year and a half a go I was at KPub waiting to place an order for some very delicious Korean food when a video for an unknown (to me) Kpop band showed up on the TV screen on the wall near the counter. I assume it’s Kpop, maybe it’s Jpop or some other pop. These dreamy boys cavorted in skateboard related scenarios, complete with subtitles. I have no idea who this band is or what the song title is. I believe there was more “skateboarding” in the video but I didn’t catch very much of it once I decided to try and capture it.

UPDATE: Video identified thanks to Steven Aycock. Band: Ateez. Song: Wave. Skatepark?

Is that and anthropomorphic hot dog wearing sunglasses and smoking? Yes. You can get print from Rory Blank. He’s got lots of other stuff too, shirts, zines, stickers…

UPDATE: I thought that sale looked familiar, Rory is the same wizard that brought you “People of Earth” AKA Alien riding a skateboard with his penis.

This started as another David ODK post that I rescued out of drafts and embellished. It’s an Italian special edition Commodore C64 computer that came in a box with a skateboard! David found the board on Etsy back in 2015, and I had a screen cap from Facebook that showed a box with no info whatsoever. It was hard to tell if it was real or not, but it is real. Regular googling and reverse image searches came up with nothing but a thousand pictures of vintage skateboarding video games. However, some finessing turned up a decent image on 20thcenturyvideogames.com.

Reggie and Me #111 came out in January of 1979 and has not one, but two skateboard storylines, although one is a short half pager. I might actually be finally starting to appreciate the Archie Comics group… I thought I was vaccinated but I guess not. There’s just so much skateboarding through the years in their titles. No other publisher has given skateboarding that much love, despite how it’s usually the same storyline. I’m surprised Reggie had his own title, he’s sort of the antagonist whenever he does make an appearance. Nobody likes Reggie.

It’s not lame at all! it’s from Last Place Comics by Zack Cranor. 10 panels after the jump, or follow this link. Hey, stop that!

Two unrelated bands, two unrelated songs, two unrelated skateboards. This post has been in draft mode so long that the Night Birds have since disbanded, but fortunately The Wimps appear to be still active, and not to mention, actively embracing skateboarding hot-dogs.

Any time I go in to a resale or vintage store I make a beeline for the magazines and grab anything from 1965-1966 as well as the random publications from late 70’s. The very first thing I picked up at Vintage on Third in McMinnville was copy of Hot Rod Show World 1978. Despite no obvious association, something about it was calling to me. Sure enough, there was a two page spread on skateboarding, as well as a ton of hot rods and predictably, hot rod women.

The rabbit holes I fall into… A reader sent in a picture inquiring about a 70’s skateboard he found that had a “Jordy” logo screen printed on the bottom. I felt pretty cocksure that I’d be able to track down an old advert or something. It seemed to me to be an English brand, or otherwise European, but boy did I strike out. Well maybe instead I hit a foul ball over the back fence? I did discover a lot of pictures related to an Italian TV show called Striscia la Notizia that is a satirical TV news program. A quick google image search revealed that it’s like the Daily Show with cleavage, and lots of it. I spent hours on this post. Hours… Dive into obscure Jordy-related Italian skateboard history with me, it’s slightly more interesting than you think!

Cleaning out the hard drive… I spotted The book Skateboard Party on a 2017 poster for Battle of the Books at my kid’s school. It’s book two of The Carver Chronicles, by Karen English, Illustrated by Laura Freeman. The book was published in 2015. Here’s the synopsis:

Richard can’t wait to show off his flat-ground Ollies at a friend’s birthday party at the skate park, but a note home from his teacher threatens to ruin his plans. He really meant to finish his assignment on howler monkeys, but he just got . . . distracted. If only he could focus on his schoolwork, he wouldn’t get into this kind of trouble! Can Richard manage to put off getting the note signed (and facing the consequences) until after the party, or will the deception.

Just a heads up: The Dead Kennedys do not make an appearance in this book.

Les Bidasses en Vadrouille is French movie made in 1979, and was the first of several starring the French band band Martin Circus. The title translates to “The Soldiers on the Move,”and it looks like they were “soldiers” in at least three titles. Here’s a translation of the plot synopsis:

After the big maneuvers, four young soldiers, René, Sylvain, Gérard and Alain, arrive at the end of their military service and take a two hundred kilometer ride with a latest model AM17 assault tank nicknamed “the Invincible” in order to reach their base. Forced to clean the machine, the soldiers will cause panic in a market and involuntarily commit a hold-up.

Part of this zany journey involves an extended skateboard (planche de skate) sequence.

– Thanks to Doc Skaterock for the tip