An article form the Economist: The new waterway is part of the biggest water-diversion scheme in the world: the second arm of what is known as the South-North Water Diversion Project. This is designed to solve an age-old imbalance. The north of China has only a fifth of the country’s naturally available fresh water but two-thirds of the farmland. The article goes into detail about the gross mismanagement of China’s water supply for industrial and agricultural uses, and how this canal is not really going to do much for the country as a whole, especially long-term. All you care about is that it won’t be skateable after October 31st, because that’s when the water starts flowing. – Thanks to Gene Sato for the tip.

A very short documentary on Marginal Way Skatepark. I think this is the whole thing and not just a trailer. I would have liked to see more, even though the story is very simple, I feel like the filmmaker barely scratched the surface. I’m not sure what happened to the official web presence of Marginal Way, it seems to be limited to this Facebook group.

Rue Linois, near the Charles Michel Metro. Looks super fun, especially for found terrain. Even the ramp is banked.- Thanks to Pig-City for the photo.

There are a lot of driveways like this in Portland. I snapped this while cruising garage sales this summer. Looks like a fun spot.

On a recent east coast sweat safari,the GVK’s had a 6 hour layover at Reagan International in D.C., so we hopped the Metro and headed to see the sights. As we exited the Metro station Jack spotted a rad little skate spot with a federal government-sized skate stop. This did not deter him from trying to skate it, even though it was really close to the guard tower. One of the guards actually said, “He’s pretty good. How old is he?” I’m always surprised with what Jack gets away with from airport terminals to the Holocaust museum. If you and I tried to ride the places he rode, House Speaker John Boehner would have us thrown into Git-mo. Barge and Destroy – GVK

Spotted on a bike ride over the weekend. Pretty good unintentional driveway spot. Another view after the jump.

Two photos of a spot that amazingly enough was not built for skateboarding. Storm water management done the right way, somewhere in Austin, Texas. – Thanks to Brianna Vance for the photos.

I went to Pacific City, Oregon towards the end of the summer. Remember summer? Fer sure dude. I had to get some radical sandboarding action in. On the way home through Tillamook I spotted these banks on a building that was a real estate agency, if my memory serves me correctly. Tillamook is a bit of a ghost town. At least it is at 8:00 on a Sunday night. I recently switched from eating Tillamook yogurt to Chobani. I “ate locally” for long time but I wanted to ditch some of that sugar.

Portland skateboarders foiled a possibly deadly assault on a woman, knocking out the ice pick wielding assailant with a skateboard and holding him until police arrived. Good job citizens. Were these skaters the PDX equivalent of the Red Angels of Dragnet City? (Noprize anyone?) Nope, they were skating a recently built concrete ramp outside of River City Bicycles, where the owner of the shop had the ramps built specifically “for learning tricks on.” While he doesn’t specify whether it was built for skateboards or bicycles, he credits the “quarter pipe” with saving the woman’s life. OK, we can give him that. There’s room for bikes and skaters to get along in Portland (BIke lane! Bike Lane!) especially if you keep building spots for us… As long as you look up the definition of quarter pipe. Is it just me, or does that look like banks and not tranny? – Thanks to Shawn F and Sam for the tip. [Source: BikePortland]

Mother nature wants you to skate launch ramps. Don’t ask me where it is, because it’s within a five block radius of my house.