The skate spot in Khunamokwst (pronounced KAHN-ah-mockst) park is officially open, although the ceremonial grand opening is May 16th. This little neighborhood gem was built by Evergreen Skateparks and funded through grants independent of Portland’s network skatepark system, which seems to be completely dead at this point in Portland’s fiscal history. Khunamokwst is located in the Cully Neighborhood of NE Portland, at NE 52nd and Alberta. It’s a small, low spot geared towards beginning to intermediate skill sets and anyone else who wants to have some fun.

No, this isn’t a leak from the set of the new Star Wars movie. It’s the airport in Tampa, Florida. Like other airports with good skate terrain, I’m sure TPA is not a bust.

– Thanks to Sparky for the photos

Don’t even think about it, OK? When you don’t want skateboarders messing up your planters with unsightly grind marks, or disturbing the Feng shui by loitering, this 20 foot long stencil ought to do the trick.

Hey, have you heard of Thrasher? Yeah, me either until just recently, but I guess they’ve been around for a while. I thought I’d throw them a bone by directing some web traffic their way. I hope they succeed. The images above are from the always entertaining Certified Pieces of Suck, and this compilation has some actual LOL moments. I only wish they’d tell you where they are located.

This is the second and last installment of Fun to Draw Skateboard Action book. Along with the familiar misnomers and weird physics, the second half of the book features a couple of filler pages with some “totally rad” action and an exercise to match the safety equipment with the part of the body that it goes on.

It’s Earth Day, so if you want to listen to your old 7″ singles you might consider picking up one of these 45 Dome Shots, a collaboration with Maple XO and John Cardiel. Earth day?? This should have been a collab for Record Store Day.

“Skateboard Action” was a popular title for kids books in the 80’s, as this is not the only book to use it. Skateboard Action from the Fun to Draw series was published in 1989 by Hamburger Press. The illustrations are by Ed Francis, so the blame for mislabeling has to go with the author Debra Rowley. It’s got 36 pages jam packed with goofy little fox on a skateboard cartoons and the typical 4 step drawing instructions you find in these things. The illustrator has the human figure basics down but occasionally has difficulty placing the figure in relation to ramps and coping. It’s as if someone went through a skateboard magazine and cut out the skateboarder from each photograph and the illustrator used them as a reference without knowing how they related to the real world. The illustrator’s take on aftermarket 80’s skate graphics and fashion is spot on and worth a chuckle. Part one of the installment after the jump.

This is an almost identical copy of the Vision ‘Street ghost’ deck from 1986, originally designed by John Grigley. The only thing the bootlegger changed was ‘Vision’ into ‘RB SKEBO’, whatever that means.

Here’s a gallery of photos I shot from Tigard 2009 and Pier 2009 contests, good times, enjoy…

Oregon Bifecta 2009.

Congratualtions son, your photo is going to be used on some product packaging! Millions of people will see it and you’ll be famous! You’re looking at DryNites sleep diapers for rippers and bed wetters aged 8-15. They were spotted (tee hee!) in the Prisma supermarket in Kuopio, Finland. It’s a serious problem that some kids have. These are no doubt super helpful, but they didn’t need to traumatize the kid on the package. He’s surely going to be ridiculed, no matter how many radical (or upside down) skateboarding silhouettes are on the bag. The product is sold in 21 countries, but the US isn’t one of them. There are lots of active lifestyle and bedtime pics on the DryNites sites, but I can’t be expected to go through them thoroughly searching for skateboards because I have to go to the bathroom.

– Thanks to Nicolas Bouvy for the photo