Do they sell t-shirts that say “I went to skateboard contest in Sweden and all I got was 3 weeks in a hospital and this lousy t-shirt.” Jeff Hedges went to Malmö for Vert Attack 8, and after a horrible slam he ended up stuck in Sweden for what seemed like a month while he waited for clearance from the doctors to get on a plane and head back home. There’s a nice interview with him up at the United Skateboard Photography Project. It’s a good read, better than “Hey man, what’s up? Whoa, crazy!” You can actually read it, and learn thing or two. Check it out.

[Photo: Fred Ferand]

SkaterTrainers are actually a decent idea if you’re into the whole “training” aspect of skateboarding instead of just going out there and doing it. If that’s your mentality (no judgement) then these might be for you. There are plenty of training devices out there for other sports like tennis and baseball, why not skateboarding? One thing setting these apart form other ollie trainers, you can actually sort of roll on these, as seen in one of the videos. So they have the ability to bridge the gap between stationary and moving. Still, $25 bucks seems pricey for four pieces of simple extruded rubber, but they have to pay for all the forms right? Shipping is free right now if you’re curious. I was really ready to lay into these guys when I first saw this a couple weeks ago, but I sat on the post too long and they’ve since removed some absurdly ridiculous content that used to be there. How about a page titled “Your bearings are dangerous” that offered to remedy the situation by selling you the absolute best bearings for a beginner. I think they were ABEC 3 or something. They had a couple other product pages like that with advice on the best wheels for beginners, which they were ready to sell to you. It was shameless, selling generic skateboard components under the guise of safety and performance. It was so over the top, I almost felt they were intentionally trying to be funny. They must have had a change of heart because all those pages are gone now. Not only are the links gone, but I had one page bookmarked and it’s not there anymore… I’m glad they repented, but it’s hard to for them to be credible after that. In the many video “product reviews” it’s amusing to hear “I got my first set of skater trainers” because it sounds like a potty training device. Product shots and videos after the jump.

– Thanks to Matthijs for the tip.

I’m not sure if this is an actual commercial or just a video segment from a program. A commercial with no voiceover? Mr Draper’s been hanging out with the beatniks again… Shanghai SMP Skate Park, and Land Rover, involved in some official capacity, driving a a Range Rover all over a skatepark. Much more successful than the Burnside Rally Race back in 2009.

Many ages ago, when Skate and annoy was but a mere print zine printed on a stolen copy machine with a circulation hovering between 200-300 copies per issue, Broken Kingpins was the name of the section that was sort of similar to Thrasher’s On Board Trash. During our golden Interwebs age I resurrected the name in a few a post titles that were a miscellany of unrelated skateboarding news items, right about the time I was trying to bury Antigravity Press and Earth Patrol Media through sheer number of posts… a war of attrition. Well, I tricked Mark into posting here on S&A off an on for years, and Rich will tell you there was never any contest (but we crushed him anyway!) From now on Broken Kingpins is a section of the web site where I post things that aren’t going to make it to the front page of Skate and Annoy because I don’t feel like commenting or they otherwise aren’t worthy of being on the front page. It’s not that the content, or video, or news item isn’t interesting or engaging, or put together by people whose full time job is to create highly polished skateboarding content (unlike Skate and Annoy…) It’s just that I don’t have the time/motivation/desire to think of something interesting to say about it, or possibly it’s just video footage upchucked by the bro network of pr. Because you know, the rest of the content here is so thoroughly engaging… right? RIGHT????? The new (old) Broken Kingpins is basically a bunch more stuff to waste more time looking at, a shallow attempt to gain web traffic. It’s in the top navigation now, and the last 10 posts can be found linked in the sidebar by title.

The photo above is one of several boxes of old skate parts (and literally, broken kingpins) that I have accumulated in my basement over the years. There’s some interesting stuff in there. BTW – If you’re a regular site reader/commentator on S&A, I could always use help “curating” these posts. Unlike the rest of the site, no photoshop skills necessary.

P.S. The competition between web sites? I kid! (fingers crossed behind my back) In any case, both of those guys actually skate more than me….

Well, not exactly the source. Smurfs are from Belgium, but these came from the Netherlands, although, maybe they were made in Belgium, at least the ceramic mug was made in Europe. I can’t imagine a PVC Smurf figure for even a European McDonalds would be made anywhere other than China. I got these both as separate purchases from the same seller, who was kind enough to put the figure in the mug and refund the extra shipping charge. $5 is a surfing excellent deal for shipping both of these from the Netherlands.

I used to watch Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job almost religiously, and I vaguely recall hearing that Dr. Steve Brule was getting his own show, but I sort of lost touch with it all. Here’s Dr Steve Brule in a “Check it Out” episode titled “Skateboard.” I’m still shocked that a someone like John C Reilly is so very much onboard with this that after playing a bit character in a very weird, very non-mainstream TV show he agreed to support an entire show alone. I guess that’s part of his appeal to me. Hey, Adult Swim! It’s great that you’re allowing video embeds, but please ditch the flash and get on the HTML5 or oEmbed bandwagon.

Still Life at Pancake Restaurant: Mixed medium. Orange juice and petroleum products, ceramic, flour, sugar, whipped cream. The artist juxtaposes mundane objects with Extreme!™ sports imagery. Unlimited editions available for $1.59 at the IHOP gallery.

Can’t afford a NOS Santa Cruz ‘toybox’ by Jim Phillips? What about this ‘Grosso toy’ full of pink plastics? We had some ‘Alice Grosso’s’ in the past, but this one looks pretty accurate and you can even read ‘Jeff Grosso’ on the box. Anyone ever heard of the FAS brand before? For sale a while ago sur leboncoin.fr.

Way back in 2008 I predicted that the appearance of a gold plated skateboard was inevitable, and I was right, although it took a while. Well, it’s finally here, and available for sale at SHUT for a cool $15,000. Maybe Lil Wayne is in the market. (Shit! Rad Collector already used that joke!) At first glance, this might seem to be just another bit of marketing excess gone too far, and it sure is, but the story behind it is a little more pure.

I’ve been instructed to tell everyone it’s in “Indiana” but we all know that’s not true. Looks pretty bitchen, dare I say boss?