An advert for Turf Lights printed in the October, 1990 issue of Transworld Skateboarding magazine. Doomed to fail because:

1. Totally unnecessary
2. Weird, off brand trucks used in photo
3. Predates cheap, durable LED lights
4. About as useful as original Elephant Brand wrench
5. Can’t actually see product
6. Can’t order direct
7. Full pads used to to advertise a “street skating” product
8. All of the above

– Thanks to Shawn Tribe for the pic.

There music videos featuring skateboards. “Super Skate” is a French single by Rika Zarai from 1978. It’s really retro, right down to the pads, skateboards and Dune Buggy. Then there’s “Boneless” (2013) by Steve Aoki, Chris Lake & Tujamo. The video blurs the edges between the 80’s, 90’s and present day. Boneless features 80’s graphics and fashion, late 90’s video game simulation, modern skateboarding, boardslides mislabeled “grindage.” I’d say this could be an intentional post-modern mashup, but the fact that there’s not a single boneless in a video for song called “Boneless” suggests that someone didn’t do their homework. In a completely different musical and visual direction, there’s the 2013 song “Honor Never Dies” by Hatebreed. I wish cartoon screaming over metal music would die, but I guess that’s still a thing.

1965 was a good year for skateboards in catalogs. Here’s a page from a Sears catalog featuring Sears branded skateboards, which are essentially Nash-style copies, some like the Spyder are so similar that the were likely made by Nash. The ad copy has some choice bits like “So sturdily built it supports an adult” and “Professional rink skate wheels of tough plastic.” The 35″ Hang Ten Surfer model has a Mahogany top layer. The Wipe Out Surfer has a walnut core with fiberglass rails (rails in the surfboard sense, not the skateboard, bottom of the deck plastics) Rubber trucks are listed as a selling point. We’ve seen plastic ones before…

[Source: Ad – Skateboard]

In the second half of the 80’s I bought a barely used set of Pro Designed knee pads from local Champaign-Urbana skater Martin Pelequin. “The Mertster” as he liked to call himself, was a colorful character to say the least, almost a miniature version of Steven Tyler in appearance and behavior. Skinny, and around five foot tall and some change, he definitely overbought these double capped kneepads that he had custom made with blue denim and leopard skin lycra. They looked and felt like hockey goalie kneepads on him, so he sold them to me. I rode these kneepads until the early 90’s when I loaned them to a friend in Chicago, ironically to play outdoor hockey. He accidentally left one behind and so I never had a full set again. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the remaining one. One of my cats peed on it at some point this millennia, and I’m still having a hard time sending it to a landfill. The cat has long since run away. I’ve got a couple pics of the Mertster after the jump.

Crazy expensive but beautifully designed and constructed by Focus in Rotterdam, these newly released tables come in two different sizes, and are constructed with the largest continuous surface area of recycled skateboard decks I’ve ever seen. The smaller one (200x90x77cm) aka DecksTop 33, is constructed with 33 skateboard decks while the larger (240x90x77cm) DecksTop 39 uses… well you know. They start at €2.726,45, but that includes the hefty 21% VAT tax. Man, that’s a lot of tax, but they probably have bitchin’ free health care and a decent education system. Someone is teaching their ID students well, that’s for sure.

I post a lot of crappy skateboards here, so it’s nice to have something really… pretty? I can’t say for sure if this was up to snuff when it came out, but it probably was, at least in some circles. The 70’s had a wide range in acceptable design and performance characteristics. This Whip True Glide model is a beautiful skateboard. The colors and the design really pops, though the flexible fiberglass deck likely doesn’t. It’s beautiful, but not $500 beautiful like the seller originally wanted. I like the top graphic, color combination that includes coordinated bushings, and the speckling visible on the bottom. Very sharp, very 70’s.

The Skateboard Kid was released in 1993, but views more like 1989. It’s the heartwarming story of a bullied kid who builds a motorized skateboard that gets hit by lightning and comes to life. If it sounds bad, like the storyline had little to no thought put into it, don’t worry, because the skateboard talks, has eyes from the RC car shell that was grafted on, and can use the speed controller as a sort of prehensile tail. And it flies… sometimes. And it plays baseball. And it features a wholly disinterested and possibly inebriated Dom DeLuise as the voice of the skateboard. This movie is so very bad. Somehow Timothy Busfield signed on as the lead, and respected producer Don Was produced and cowrote some of the awful (sometimes skateboard-centric) original soundtrack. Check out Skateboard Phreak, Thrasher, Skyboardin’, and Nosegrind. Make sure you stick around of the cringeworthy “music video” for Hard to Find by Trashkittens over the closing credits. At an hour and seventeen minutes, the skateboard scenes are a little bit too sparse to be as good of a bad movie as Thrashin’, which is definitely a production level above the Skateboard Kid. I don’t recognize any of the skateboarding cast or stunt doubles, it was the 90’s after all. New Concorde (Roger Corman) films must have made some money off it, because they made a sequel. You can watch the full video after the jump, for as long as it remains online. The youtube account owner claims “*No Copyright Infringement Intended” so that makes it legal, right?

– Thanks to BPA for the tip.

This Canadian box of Cheerios has been for sale by Masteraddams for a very long time now, unless he’s got a stock of them somewhere. In your box of Canadian Cheerios you could get one of six possible trading cards/sticker with illustrations of the Skateboard Gang characters from the mid 80’s toy series. The Skateboard Gang figures were attached to pull-back and go skateboards. They’re surprisingly expensive to acquire these days, routinely going for $15-$20, so collecting the whole set would be a hefty purchase.

We’re all adults here, aren’t we? The Black Bear Bar in Brooklyn has a bowl. You can skate for free if you’re over 21 and haven’t already been drinking. This seems like an idea that would float well in any town of a reasonably large population. There are bicycle shops and bike parks with a bar, why not skateboarding? This is a little reversed in priority, bar first, skateboarding second, but it’s still a good idea, provided there’s ample circulation to disperse the stink of good session. You might notice a couple of corporate logos in the photo above. Levi’s and Huf both had a hand in this, possibly it was used in demo somewhere and this is where the wood found it’s final home. That’s pure speculation though.

[Photo nitrohydro via NYSkateboarding. Source: Brooklyn Paper]

– Thanks to Tallboycan for the tip.

Up top, Jamaba Juice kids meal cups with a skateboarding orange. On the bottom, a Jamba Juice limited edition skateboard deck by Eric Burman given away free as a promotion at SkateLab.

– Thanks to Kevin Live for the tip.