Craig Snyder has been working on this book for 7 years, and it seems to be growing. As of now it clocks in at around 850 pages and more than 1000 images. If funded successfully (by Kickstarter) it should be published in November of 2014. Incredibly, this is only volume one, focussing on the 70’s. If successful, volume 20 will cover the 80’s and beyond. In case you’re wondering about the authenticity, there are some big names behind the incentives, including face to face time with Paul Schmitt, Mike McGill, and some guy named Alan “Ollie” Gelfand that you might have heard of… Check out olliebook.com for more info, or you can watch the Kickstarter video (features skateboarding but ironically no ollies) after the jump.

Evergreen Skateparks is working on a park in Browning, Montana on the Blackfeet reservation. The project is being sponsored by Jeff Ament. The park (Big o capsule replica included) is on track to be finished in mid to late October. Meanwhile, Evergreen is breaking ground on a skatespot near the Cully neighborhood in NE Portland on September 15th.

Another fine offering from the folks at Topps, T-Shirt Factory Iron On’s from 1988. They definitely carry on the tradition of Garbage Pail Kids, another Topps product. These iron-on transfers are maybe about 5×7 inches. I don’t actually have this, it was floating around at a party I went to. I did some due diligence when I spotted it and snapped some cell phone pics once I saw there was a skateboard graphic.

For fun it’s a wonderful toy
It walks downnstairs
Alone or in pairs
And makes a Slinkaty sound
A Spring
A Spring
A marvelous thing
Everyone knows it’s….

Everyone knows it’s “Slinky” and not “Slurpee.” Spotted at a local 7-11, Mountain Dew and Slurpee X-treme cross marketing.

Moms Demand Action is not really upset that you can;t bring a skateboard into Krogers, they’re upset that Krogers has a pro open carry stance. This is just one of several ads featuring a gun toting shopper standing next to someone doing something that Krogers won’t allow. You can sign the petition here.

– Via John Grigley on Facebook

Eli Reed dealing with the age old problem that every street skater encounters at least once a session: Random girls in bikinis laying in the middle of your run up.

[Source: High Snobiety]

Skate Hockey in the street has been going on since the 80’s but this might be the first documented occurrence of a Skateboard Air Hockey game, in the street… Spotted on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands by Doc Skate Rock. We need to coin a phrase for the practice of depicting unrelated sports on sporting equipment.

It’s certainly not the first gratuitous use of the word “longboard” as a qualifier. It really should be titled a “Downhill Skatepark” shouldn’t it? Does a board length under 3 feet preclude you from using this? Wasn’t this style of riding invented on “short boards?” When is someone going to build a Pigboarding park? You know, a skatepark built specifically for people riding Indy 215’s. Complaints about a stupid name aside, it’s cool concept. Don’t blame Landyachtz for naming it a longboard park, blame the city of Kamloops in British Columbia.

SkatersTape, it may not go up to 11, but is has the word “skater” right in the product name, so you know it’s going to work better than something like duct tape. It starts at $6 a roll, and if you buy in bulk you can get a case of 12 rolls at a discount for just $6 a roll. SkatersTape is so dedicated to passing the savings on to you that they’re using the same 2 recycled low res action photos on every page. If you forget where to buy it, just scan the handy QR code infinitely repeated on the roll, like a modern day version of the Gator graphic… Just squint your eyes. Do you remember Gator? Do you remember QR codes? “If you use skaters tape every time you skate, you can keep your shoes looking like new.” Could they make such a bold claim if it weren’t true? After extensive testing we found that SkatersTape did indeed keep our shoes looking like brand new shoes covered in obnoxious duct tape. But why stop there? Why not make an entire pair of shoes out of SkatersTape? How about a wallet to hold your credit cards so you can order more SkatersTape. Make an iPhone case to aid in scanning the QR code for the web site. While you’re at it, fashion a pair of skinny jeans so you don’t wear out the ass and knees when bailing on all those 20 stairs. OLD man GVK keeps his vert shoes on life support for years, and with SkatersTape he’ll be able to stretch that to decades.

– Thanks to MC for the tip.

I had more than a handful of these “Stylin’ Skateboards” from Topps. The first time I saw them was in ’91 or ’92. I think it was B-Rad who showed it to me first, and it blew my mind. I asked where he found it, expecting it to be something a friend brought back from a trip to Japan or some kitschy novelty shop in New York. Instead, he nodded his head over his shoulder towards the Wall Mart at his back in a semi rural (at the time) Steamboat Springs, Colorado. This sales sheets shows them packaged in little boxes, but the ones I saw came in sealed plastic bags with heat-pressed seams. Each bag came with some crappy candy sugar wads pressed into the vague shape of a skateboard wheel, though more likely just generic pellet molds. Also in the package, a really crappy plastic fingerboard made out of soft plastic. I believe you had to snap the wheels in place yourself. The second generation fingerboards (more on that later) were fun for a few minutes, but the real reason to keep buying these things was for the paper stickers that came with them, each a slightly mutated version of what someone in Topps marketing thought represented skateboarding culture. Lots of “rad dudes” and cow skulls, like Life’s a Beach meets Zorlac, but turned into a Nickelodeon cartoon for kids. I think these things sold for a dollar and change each. A while back I saw an unopened case up for bid, but they wanted something in the neighborhood of $100 for it. Second generation fingerboards? Yes. Slightly more maneuverable than the hard, keychain versions that first appeared in the 80’s, you know, the kind that featured paper graphics in a clear shell. Stylin’ Skateboards were at the opposite end of the brittle spectrum. The loose tolerances of the truck and wheel assemblies combined with the soft plastic made for the first fingerboards that you could more or less turn instead of just sliding. The larger size was more to scale as well, but ultimately the cheap plastic was too soft to get any meaningful use out of a toy version of… well, a larger toy. Somewhere in my basement I have at least one of these unopened. One day I’ll dig it up.