Sk8face has been kicking around the web for a long time. I became aware of it back in 2008. I had just sort of assumed the project had fizzled out, but they’ve been working on it steadily. Now they are turning to Kickstarter to fund post production. If you’re scratching your head, Sk8face is a video documentary on skateboard graphics. The list of interviews is impressive. They’ve posted something like 35 micro excerpts on the Sk8face web site as well, including one with our Smithsonian friend Betsy Gordon.

As a young kid in the mid 80s I thought Hot Wheels cars were cooler and fresher than the ones from Matchbox and Majorette (Mattel already introduced Hot Wheels in 1968, but little did I know). This crazy thing here looks like the first skateboard you would give your kid to make him say farewell to his kiddie toys and let him go out to play in the real world.  Still, I don’t think I would have been too happy with this as a kid, because we knew about Hot Wheels, but we also heard about Powell, Vision and Santa Cruz, so I guess you can’t fool a kid with crappy skateboards! More pics after the jump.

Look at the difference in size between the front and the back truck, this really gives it the look of a racing car. Both trucks seem to have the old school truck pattern, but I think the deck is pretty recent though:

It’s like France central over here… These pictures from Skateparks de Paris are about two years old. Doesn’t look like they update that often… but hey, it looks beautiful. Here in America, we like to hide our skateparks away from any foot traffic, preferably adjacent to an empty baseball field on the outskirts of town. My chapeau is off to whoever approved this.

Progress report on the Eugene, Oregon skatepark from the Register Guard.

Although it may look like outtakes from Macho Taildrop, Le Skate Moderne is a short clip about a two of skaters in rural France who live on a farm. There’s not a lot of actual information, instead it seems to concentrate cinematography. I can’t tell if the clothes are costumes or not, it seems a little like an affectation. Also, these guys seem to have a pretty good sized crew for being out in the middle of the country. All in all though, it’s very well made.

– Thanks to Bevilacqua for the tip.

Whoo boy! So I’ve been busy in my free time since the winter holidays, working on the redesign of Skate And Annoy. It’s not quite done yet, but I’m getting sick of turning it on “maintenance mode” at night and weekends while I work on this. There are definitely a few bugs and some things that are not working too well, like the top navigation drop downs, which looks about as nice as a Nash Executioner. I’m embarrassed about them right now, actually. Also, for those of you on iPads and iPhones, I haven’t gotten to the responsive design layout yet, but it is definitely a priority. The biggest chunk of the work was in the back end, consolidating 4 themes, stylesheets and templates that were often redundant and were getting a little bit out of control. Speaking of css style sheets, don’t look at this one yet… At some point I got tired of managing it during development so I just started tacking things on at the end. It will be cleaned up and minified for faster downloads. What, doesn’t everyone who reads this site write their own php/html/css?

So love it or not, it’s here to stay for while. I think the last redesign was in 2010. Please feel free to leave (constructive) criticism as well as bug reports, and pardon our dust as construction continues.

Simon Woodstock with his ‘Sweet 16-wheeler’ in the Travel Lodge Pool at Lake Cunningham Skatepark during the Indy Truck 30 Year Rally. Lonnie Toft pioneered the 8-wheeler in the 70s and is still keeping the spirit alive with Toft designs..

[Photo: Bryce Kanights]

S&A reader Raddam sent some scouting photos of skateable spots in Instanbul, Turkey. He didn’t see a lot of transition there, but he did spot some worthy street spots.

Bob Casale, AKA Bob 2 from Devo died yesterday of heart failure at 62 according to brother Gerald, the source in various media outlets. Devo’s last album “Something for Everybody” is quite good, if you haven’t heard it. Photos of Bob 2 alone are hard to come by, and many obituary postings on the web are incorrectly showing Bob Mothersbaugh. This picture of Bob 2 comes courtesy of Raymond Ahner who photographed Devo in June, 2013 at a San Francisco music festival.

Three Sims boards in different colorways? No, the middle one is a Speedent, copied from the Sims ‘New Wave’ team deck from 1981 by Bernie Tostenson. The legit Sims images are from (left) eBay Watch March 2010, and (right) February, 2011.

The Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei turned up some history of Speedent:

‘Charles Yeh, CEO of Speedent Corp, has been exporting Taiwan-made sporting goods world-wide since 1975. The first line that Yeh introduced to the international market was skateboards …’

Considering the original date of this early graphic (1981-1982) and Speedent’s origins in 1975, I’d say that Charles Yeh was a pioneer of crappy bootlegs!