Sandy West – The Runaways Wild Thing

There’s a lot of staged vintage celebrity skateboarding photos, but somehow this one was new to me. It’s a 1977 picture of Runaways drummer Sandy West taken by Michael Ochs. Sandy was known as the Runaways Wild Thing. She died in 2006 from lung cancer. An alternate shot, plus a bonus pic of bassist Jackie […]

State God of California

You’re looking at a cartoon by B. Kliban that was featured in a 1982 edition of Playboy Magazine. The old gods are not impressed, but can be easily bought. Eat me, indeed.

Scott Starr R.I.P.

Friend of the site and undervalued hero of the skateboarding and surfboarding historical community, Scott Starr passed away some time this month. Scott put a tremendous amount of effort and his own money into collecting and preserving old skateboarding and surfing films, which included having them professionally digitized when his finances permitted. His numerous accounts […]

Tracy Morgan for Brand-X?

Details are slim to nonexistent on this, but you are looking at Tracy Morgan appearing on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, while decked out in an outfit that is assuredly based on the Brand-X Weirdo model. I’ve got a message in to Brand-X and will share what I learn. You know the Weirdo has […]

Vintage, Radical, and Colorized

Good golly this was way too easy to do. This is from an Adobe tutorial on how to mostly automate colorizing a black and white image. This one has the obvious look of something that has been colorized but I imagine if you spent more than 3 minutes with it you could achieve more believable […]

John Cena’s Old Fashioned Skateboard

John Cena appears in a new commercial for Thomas Ashbourne and a premade Old Fashioned cocktail. He rides a skateboard and of course, wears a sparkly gold helmet.

Gotham is bonkers, yo!

I saw these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cake toppers in the binder on display at the bakery inside my local grocery store. I took some poorly lit photos but then found out you could buy the whole set online anyway, so I just poached these pics. These cakes look… uhm… appetizing?

California Oceanside Welcome Center Skate Culture Upgrade

So it turns out California is somehow famous for skateboarding. Yeah, I know, I don’t understand either, but the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce wants to rectify that an exhibit in thier newly revamped welcome center. You can see the two page spread on page 5 of the Spring 2022 issue of Best of Oceanside. – […]

Liebergs Children’s Store

You’re looking at a 1965 newspaper ad in the Alhambra Post-Advocate for Liebergs Children’s shop, a store that closed around 1991. – Thanks to Butch Gary Ayala for the pic.