It’s good to see that skateboarding on gravel is finally catching on. This picture is part of a feature called Day in Pictures from the international version of the BBC News. You can see it larger here, but you’ll have to manually select picture number 5 once you get there. More skateboarding in Iraq after the jump.

Streetsurfing has been a huge success in American schools and now pupils in Dorset are among the first in the UK to try it out as part of their PE lessons. You’re kidding right? A huge success? Hey, I’ve got a Monorail I want to sell you, but maybe that’s more of a Shelbyville idea… More schools that teach skateboarding in PE, as well as this one in the UK that teaches kookboarding.

Here’s a link to a short bit on a BBC program titled North West Tonight about older skaters. It’s mainly an interview with the founder of the UK’s Middle Age Shred. The video quality isn’t great, it looks like they forgot to deinterlace it. The skating is mostly blah, and when it isn’t the camera work is bad. It does have an impossibly hip sound track considering the stuffed shirt that hosts the program. There is some cool 70’s era footage with a bitchin’ T Rex lead in. If you look close you can see an Old Man Army Falling Down deck – good graphic… From Arizona to Manchester, old men are on the rise. Catch the video and some more old man news after the jump.

Milton Keynes is pretty progressive when it comes to sports. Heck, they even have korfball facilities(?!). After achieving a high level of success with a street park built at the Central Bus Station, the city or village or town of Milton Keyes (UK) decided to build a bowl park, and apparently traveled back in time to the 70’s to do so. Then there’s the strange metal rods sticking up in the middle of the shallow. Bike racks? I don’t know. Must be street style. Seriously though, this is tragic. The bus station project was unique in that they added marble skate structures to an already popular skate spot that was not meant to be. That’s a great approach. Instead of cracking down on street skaters on public property, lets make the spot more attractive. It’s been done before, and I’m all for it. Feeling emboldened, they (Milton Keynes )… I’m at a loss for words to explain this. [Source: Crossfire]

As reported in the Evening Courier with the succinct title of Back my bid for new skate park, Daniel Murch is 10 years old and TCB! The rest of you, get on it! I wonder if any of your readers like me think a skate park should be built in Halifax. I’m 10 years old and I think skateboarding is good fun and exercise. Calderdale Council has provided a number of skate parks in the area but none in Halifax, where I live. This doesn’t make any sense because Halifax is bigger than any other town in Calderdale. I have written to the council and also to a number of local firms asking for sponsorship to help meet some of the cost, which is £70,000. I am starting a petition to present to the council. If any of your readers would like to help by signing it or collecting signatures they can contact me by e-mail at Dan@frizinghall.cix.co.uk. Daniel Murch

Or purses, as we like to call them. The Holidays are approaching, so it’s time to get your girlfriend a present. Or if you are a female reader uh, buy one for yourself of a cross dressing male friend. I don’t know if we have many female readers. I know Alexis Schemp isn’t one of them because we haven’t heard from her yet. So, Sophie Mason makes bags out of used skateboards. Cool. In the past there seemed to be something negative about skating, almost artless. Whether this was due to the media, society or generally bad experiences is irrelevant as we have the freedom to make our own judgements based on our own reasoning. At Focused we have come to realise that skating provides vivid examples of excellence and skill. Why does every arts & crafts practitioner need an artist’s statement? If you are going to quote John Cage, at least get rid of the free image hosting watermark on your front page. Oh wait, maybe it’s part of the statement. You can buy the bags and even sell her your broken decks, if you live in the U.K.. Check out Focused Bags.

Matthew Sefton has checked in again with this write up complete with pics and video of an event called Middle Age Shred Northern Mafia Jam, which took place in Leeds Works Skatepark, Saturday 28th October 2006. The blokes name in the picture is Trawler. He looks like he’d be a Burnside local, but Leeds is more U.K. action in case you haven’t gathered. Check it out.

There’s a company in the U.K. that makes boxes for packaging cell phones. I can’t understand who would need to repackage a cell phone, but the important thing here is that they offer a skateboarder theme as an option along side of such other extreme perennial favorites as skydiving. Mobilephoneboxes.com. If you really need to see it larger:

In the immortal words of Squirrel Bait, I don’t need no pig stomping on my buzz.

I don’t know who first said “I don’t know art but I know what I like.”, but I like it when someone manages to get the money to build something skateable and pass it off for art. Apparently Dreamland feels the same way. Matt Sefton (See Newcastle feature) contributes another piece, this time a short bit about an art show at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead England called Spank the Monkey. At this point there are no skate pictures up at either site, so you’re better off checking out Matt’s pics here on SnA.