In my quest to bring you weird/crappy/cool boards I found this Variflex board called the “Later Gator.” It’s crappy, but something about the look in that Gator’s eyes is appealing. As the manufacturers and bootleggers of those boards were wont to do, they produced versions with multiple top graphics, which is where the gold in this post really is. There is a bespoke Variflex Gator top graphic which is boring, boring, boring. Contrast that with the Variflex V-Man, which is pretty great. SO great that I’m going to make myself a t-shirt.

Skate and Annoy makes a cameo appearance about 3:30 into episode #356 of The Nine Club, featuring Steve Olson & Steve Alba. Apparently Alba has a few boxes NOS Clouds that were manufactured by Rannalli. The Nine Club used an ad from the Vintage Skate Mag Advert gallery as a visual reference because not everyone remembers Rannalli. The best part is watching Olson crack up about the fact hat they were able to pull it up so quickly. I’d like to thank the Nine Club for leaving the website visible. Also, thanks to everyone who messaged me when they saw it. Honestly, I love documenting the weird, crappy companies more than I do the ones everyone loves and remembers. Moments like this, knowing that someone out there appreciated it makes it worthwhile.

I love it when worlds collide. You’re looking at a picture of director John Waters and Iggy Pop, likely taken around 1990, possibly promoting the film Cry Baby. And, you’re looking at it on Skate and Annoy because I love both of these guys, and Iggy is wearing a Powell Peralta Mike McGill t-shirt. You have to wonder how Iggy got his hands on that. I would love to credit this photo but all I can find are reposts. It looks like it appeared in a newspaper or magazine at some point. If you know the original source please let me know. On the right: It’s the 40th anniversary of the McTwist? I guest was last year. If you’re going to buy a skateboard commemorating the event you might as well get it from Mike McGgill. Ask Mark Conahan about his Iggy Pop story…

With that title you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a 90’s comic book, but Grrl Scouts Work Sucks v1 #1 was published in 2003 by Image Comics. Grrl Scouts is the creation of Jim Mahfood, and there have been a few volumes with different subtitles such as Girl Scouts: Stone Ghost, Grrl Scouts: Magic Socks, and even a volume 2 of Work Sucks. Near as I can tell the last one was published 2017. The web site listed in the colophon is defunct but now there is jimmahfood.com. I haven’t seen any of the other issues and this one is the only one that showed up with a skateboard key word search. The interior is all black and white, and there is some incidental skateboarding on the inside. During the part that concerns us, the girls are drug dealers and they consider hanging out at the skatepark to get some new customers. It’s never the skateboarders causing trouble, it’s always the hangers-on, usually the girls… amiright? Black and white comics can often be a hard sell, but the artwork in Grrl Scouts is so good that you lose yourself in the illustrations. Love the layouts. One thing that I…

It’s rare to find an Archie Comics Group story with skateboarding that doesn’t focus on Archie, Jughead, or poor Mr Weatherby. Laugh comics #309, published in December of 1976, has a story with a character named Li’l Jinx titled “The Board Game.” The comics seems to be aimed mostly at teens, but they have a small stable of characters made up of little kids as well.

When I first saw this article I was slightly shocked. If you’ve never been to Crater Lake, it is truly a beautiful, pristine, and stunning National Park. A skatepark would definitely be an incongruous intrusion. Yes, I was definitely against building a skatepark! It just made no sense, adding a huge skatepark essentially in the middle of nowhere. The view while skating would be amazing, sure. After I started reading a bit, it seemed a little silly, and when they mentioned sourced “organic concrete” it became more apparent that the article was actually satire. I thought it was real at first, not being familiar with the web site, which it turns out is a an odd mix of the Onion and a tourism site. Enjoy the article Crater Lake’s ‘Volcano Bowl’ Set to Open in 2026 as the World’s Largest Skate Park and if you get a chance, go visit Crater Lake.

California Raisins! They never get old…. On the left, as seen on r/shittytattoos. Looks like a repost, uncredited. If you find the original source let me know. On the right is a Doug Avery design on a fundraising t-shirt that friends of Andres bought to help him recover from a serious (if not gnarly!) motorcycle accident.

Welcome to another addition of random Chinese crap that shows up in your feed. This is Skateboard Spark Attachments – Uncharged, Rubber Fire Stunt Device for Shoes, Fits Ages 14+ – Outdoor Skating Flame Enhancer. The isn’t the first Outdoor Skating Flame Enhancer by a long shot. In the 70’s there were G&S Speed Sparks, in 2004 the Tail Devil spark skidplate was patented. Somewhere around the same time period, Spark Trucks came out, which I would ink to but I must have never published the review. They were trucks with Tracker-like geometry that had flits embedded in the hanger to cause sparking during a grind. Results were mixed, or maybe we couldn’t grind hard enough to make them impressive. 20 years late we have this rubber thing you slide on the bottom of your shoe. It’s a tenuous link to skateboarding, except they advertise it explicitly as skateboarding related on Temu. Maybe not with mentioning if not for the fact that there must be a fad in China somewhere that involves coating a rose in a flammable substance and using your rubber flint booties to light them on fire so you can…. I guess hand a flaming rose to…

About a year and a half a go I was at KPub waiting to place an order for some very delicious Korean food when a video for an unknown (to me) Kpop band showed up on the TV screen on the wall near the counter. I assume it’s Kpop, maybe it’s Jpop or some other pop. These dreamy boys cavorted in skateboard related scenarios, complete with subtitles. I have no idea who this band is or what the song title is. I believe there was more “skateboarding” in the video but I didn’t catch very much of it once I decided to try and capture it. UPDATE: Video identified thanks to Steven Aycock. Band: Ateez. Song: Wave. Skatepark?

Brand X is offering a limited release of 2 Sims wheels poured in the original molds with updated modern urethane formulas. The Sims Snakes are limited to 100 sets in each color, while the Comp IIs are limited to 25 sets per color. They are being billed as a Tom Sims Tribute, in premium urethane made 100% in California. These are perfect for any historical reenactors out there riding the various old school reissues but they come with an insanely high price of $200 and $250 respectively. I don’t know the economics of hand pouring urethane these days, but it seems highly inflated. Maybe it’s due to licensing fees, who knows. A quick check on Ebay at publication time shows you can get some originals in pretty good shape for about the same price.