Yeah, this is old, but still good. I can’t believe this went down at D.O.S. and we didn’t know about it. Well actually, I can. From the D.O.S. website:

This went down a long time ago, but who knows how many people actually saw it. Dave England and some buddies made this for a website and it got passed around the interweb for a minute. Beach was the perfect dude to try and ride something like this. The first time they did it, they blew all the balloons up with their mouths. 10 hours and they ended up with a quarter of the balloons shown. Round 2 they got an air compressor.

The best thing (aside from a bowl full of balloons) is all the popping noises. I imagine the longer they rode the sketchier it got. Truly unique and fun stuff. Check out the vid after the jump.

This guy didn’t make the cut. He was lying around the site for a while but they didn’t en up using him. I think he was originally going to be flipping off the T.Rex. Looks like he’d fit right in with our crew.

Dreamland is putting finishing touches on the new Tigard skatepark. The crew has been uh, testing out the various features. I spotted some paint scrapings on the back of the T.rex head this morning. If you’re getting tired of dinosaur pictures don’t click.

First off, this is not commentary on the quality of the teams listed on the graphic, so cool your jets. I got an email update about the 4th annual Ellensburg contest and demo on October 6th. It included a flyer with a picture of the Ellensburg, Washington skatepark. I glossed over it at first but for some reason I took a second look and thought, “Man, what a bummer it would be if that was what I had to look forward to skating on.” The contest has a ton of sponsors with more than one skate shop involved, so there must be a vibrant scene. The moral of this story is that you make your own fun. It’s something to keep in mind. If we have any readers in the Ellensburg area, send in some pics from the event and we’ll put them up – poor photography or not. The full version of the flyer is after the jump. I believe I found out about this from a Skateboard Mag email.

Ignition TV has recent (I assume) footage from the grand opening of the Mission Valley YMCA’s new (to them) vert ramp. A bunch of vert dogs were there, Bucky Elastic, Bony Hawk, the French Canadians… There were other people present on deck but they didn’t make the cut, perhaps due to space limitations. Although posted on Metacafe, the clip’s producer is Ignition TV, who is the, uh, leader in action sports fro you mobile phone. You can chose by sport and brand on their web site, so you know that’s Extreme™! Mission Valley’s vert ramp was donated to them by the X-Games. We had one of those X-Games retired ramps in a suburb of Portland for a while, where it mostly sat as a platform for kids to practice flip tricks off of the flat bottom onto the cement. There was a small community of vert riders who would session a couple times of week and chase the kids off the flat. Ask MC about it. They banded together to meet and talk with the park district to ensure and volunteer upkeep, but the district wasn’t interested. As more and more concrete parks opened out here, the already underutilized vert ramp saw less and less use. It eventually started to rot, and so it was removed. Now, if you want to skate a vert ramp you need to go to California. The New York Times has an article about how most of the X-Games competitors and vert enthusiasts in the US tend to live in one area of California. If you think it’s all old men, SignOnSanDiego.com has an article about the aging base of X-Games competitors and a young up and comer named Alex Perelson. [Source: Skate Daily] If you still need to get your vert fix, you can watch the video after the jump. Those guys are doing some amazing things, but to the general skateboarding population they are kind of like the freestyle skaters of the 80’s – most people wonder why they bother to still have contests.

Looks like it’s all poured, some curing concrete under that plastic. Fence work in progress. Click here to see it bigger, Neil, you shouldn’t look, you’ll just get riled. Crappy little Tualatin is just down the road.

Tim Hubbard sent in a link to more Dunedin opening day pics. Thats Josh Black inverted, and an unknown rider carving over some very chunky stairs. Tim also included a link to Punk On Board which is a mish mash of Florida skateboarding, punk rock and art both past and present. The linka are all over the place, and seem to be in conjunction with another site called Art Gone Bad. It’s not the easiest thing to navigate, but just keep clicking. There are snapshots from a Skateboarder Magazine photo session at a backyard ramp, a weird looking life size paper mache mosh pit circa 82, Mike Weed freestyle action, Monty Nolder at Grigley’s ramp, vintage McGill, backstage at the Warped Tour with Anti Flag and the Buzzcocks, Joan Jett looking tuff as nails and all kinds of good stuff if you dig around for it. If I lived in Florida I’d be hanging out with this guy, provided I was punk enough.

Hood River Oregon is starting another phase starting Oct 12th. A local firm of skaters have been hired to design and build a “Camcorder” style bowl that will spine into the main skate area. Projected finish time is going to vary due to winter weather conditions approaching the Columbia Gorge region. Stay tuned for more details as they arrive- but for now- check out this sweet design they are working on- some tweaking is going to occur. Finished bowl will be 3ft to 4ft to 5ft, with progressive big transistions are the goal. No Pool coping was discussed, but the older advanced skaters asked for the 5ft part to have something with Pool coping. In summary, the Hood River Parks and Recreation have received a $50,000 dollar grant to continue improving the skatepark. Local skaters have voiced their opinion and a skater owned design firm is being contracted to do the work. Stay tuned.

I ribbed them about the lack of photos we got from the grand opening of the new Dunedin Florida park, and David Adams replied that they are too busy skating to take pictures. Fair enough. He did, however, take the time to scan and send in this 1979 postcard of the now defunct Clearwater Florida skatepark, which he said was the last park of it’s kind (until Dunedin) in the west central Florida area. (Did you know there’s cement parks in North Port and Sarasota?) The caption reads “GBM in full take off mode! Awwwk Awwwwkk!!” David also mentions that Ed Womble, George McClellan and himself were on the Clearwater Skatepark team back then, and are still skating today. If you take a look at this postcard, your first reaction might be “Yuck!”, but man, wouldn’t it be fun to go back in time and skate one of these sprawling concrete landscapes? I wouldn’t want all my parks to be like this, but you make your own fun, and I see fun written all over the place. If you’re in the mood for something newer, Chuck Dyer has some shots from opening day of Dunedin.

I thought we would get a lot more pictures from the Dunedin Florida skatepark opening, but so far all I have is a few from local Ed Womble, which includes a shot of Monty Nolder. You guys must have a poser’s scene down there, you don’t deserve a good skatepark! Haw haw! I kid! Check out the pictures after the jump.