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!

Here’s an update from the North County, San Diego project we posted about in January.

Coming along. Sold our shirts that you helped track down for me, that got us a half a truck of crete and donations of a truck each by two separate town residents who now see how cool the project is. This snake run style of the park has 5 foot radius trannys and there are will be no freebie grinds handed out… Skates fast and lose legged and every trick is gonna be worked for. First session today was fun!

UPDATE: Swapped the bail pic for a make.

– Thanks to Ryan Moran for the photos

Dying Scene is reporting that Duane Peters went missing after being released from jail February 13th. Corey Parks is listed as the source:

PLEASE HELP US: @dpdisaster My son’s dad Duane Peters has been missing for the last two days. He was released from twin towers yesterday at 6:00 am and vanished. He is apparently NOT strung out on drugs of any kind, but in fact possibly suffering from some type of mental illness, dementia or schizophrenia, which would explain his recent behavior. He was released in a paper robe with no shoes, clothes, phone or money. His son Schuyler was waiting to pick him up and he literally mussed him by 5 minutes and he wondered down the street. We are all very worried, I have been in contact with his girlfriend and close friends and family NO ONE HAS SEEN HIM AT ALL. We have filed a missing persons report and Rob and I have been searching downtown around the mission and skid row with his photo all day. WE NEED HELP. Guys on skateboards and motorcycles cruising the streets, putting up flyers, PLEASE HELP US FIND DUANE!!! This is serious, something is wrong.

UPDATE: Eric VonArab reporsts via Facebook that Duane has been located in a hospital in L.A.. No other details known.

Photo above is a still from GVK’s Treasure Bowl episode.

Says Pete the cat, on his skateboard built for two. (Dang it, I posted this last year too.)

I can imagine that a lot of people (including myself) waited for a release like this by Wheezing Maniac, an obscure band out of San Diego that was featured on the soundtrack for H-Street´s Hokus Pokus video with two songs (“Dollar on a platter” and “Don´t come close”). Sadly, this is NOT an LP or CD release, but just a bunch of audio files that can be downloaded via iTunes and probably some other sources. It´s just my guess that this is the complete discography of the band, and hopefully it´s authorized.

I had a summer job before I went to college working at a Papermate Pens factory on the packaging line. During down time they had us opening up thousands of unsold disposable mechanical pencils that were packaged with promotional Q-bert erasers. I worked there with a friend, and most of the staff were temp workers. That factory was moving to Mexico at the end of the summer, so we were definitely short-timers who didn’t care about job security. The factory floor was really big, but no corner was safe from the arial bombardment of orange rubber Q-berts that my friend and I unleashed upon each other. One of the neighborhood kid’s dad worked for Gotlieb or Bally, and they had a Q-bert game in their basement, which was like unfathomable as a teenager. Decades later, here’s a vintage Q-bert on a skateboard. That’s pretty heavy 80’s action right there. Even so, someone shelled out $23 for this, and I thought it would have to be re-listed. So someone has a bigger problem than I do, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Blockparty was an event held last summer in Hamburg, Germany that featured Blockparty Entertainmen and the Hambrug Crew. They built an odd triangular track that even had a temporary fountain incorporated into it. Live DJ and a party too, plus a great Devo song used in the video.

– Thanks to Dennis Stoecker for the tip.

At the 1:37 mark in this CNN video covering a sniper attack on a power relay station, there’s a shot of a reporter with an awkwardly placed skateboard on his desk featuring a CNN Silicon Valley graphic. Looks like a plant to me, but now the documentation has been documented.

Rue Linois, near the Charles Michel Metro. Looks super fun, especially for found terrain. Even the ramp is banked.– Thanks to Pig-City for the photo.