Sometimes I get PR for industry events, and sometimes I take them up on their offer to attend the event under the guise of “covering it,” which usually means I get in free with my kids, and we all enjoy it for the most part. It’s fun, but I’m not paying for it, and I can take it or leave it each time. Sometimes I feel guilty, not for the big corporation, but for the freelance PR agent that gave me the press credentials and got essentially nothing from it. I hope that doesn’t affect your job performance review. To make up for it, here are some photos from the San Francisco stop of the Dew Tour. Thanks to Lorrie Palmos for sending these in. You might remember her from her long standing “Shot of the Week” that’s been up since June. It might be time to retire that part of the web site. (The SOTW curator spot is open!)

Blowing It starts off with a moving eight minute tribute fallen crew member Keita Farnsworth who died in 2012. The rest is dedicated to three years of good friends and good sessions. It’s amazing how many spots there are in the Oregon area. Watch Jake Arciniega Doug Weaver’s Blowing It after the jump.

Skateboards made from recycled aluminum. There’s no guarantee it was a beer can in a past life, but Beercan Boards sound better than “Diet Pepsi can Boards.” They’ve taken the old aluminum death plank board of yesteryear and upgraded it with a channel beam which I assumed was to give it stiffness, but it turns out that’s also part of the “TruckTrax” system that allows you to micromanage your wheelbase to your OCD heart’s content. Who needs that? Downhill guys, of course. The boards aren’t even expensive compared to their wooden brethren. Right now, the corporate site only features downhill boards, but Keystone Skate Supply also has some more traditional shapes. I don’t know if those are also traditionally priced because Keystone’s web site is kind of jacked. To help preserve the ends, Beercan boards have “bottle caps” made from 100% recycled milk jugs. In the event that you do wear it out, you can recycle your recycled board and get a new one for $40. I’ve never seen one or ridden one, but the concept seems pretty solid, especially given the target audience. If I had a beef it would be that those concaves look a little clunky. It’s all made from extruded aluminum, so the concaves seem to have a very defined bend point even though the side profiles can look more organic. Replacement tips are $20 a set, which seems steep, but they are custom to each board design and I haven’t priced out the machining cost of the molds. Of course there was a Kickstarter campaign, somehow we missed that one. The video is pretty flat. Interesting that they are trying to diversify a business that makes custom auto parts. I’m not getting a vibe that these guys actually skate. For instance, there’s no pictures of anybody actually skating on these things.

Here’s another video about the Detroit’s Ride It sculpture park, this one from the Tony Hawk Foundation, that just raised another 25k for the project. Portland’s own Evergreen Skateparks is there working on it.

This is Packaging from Tree Top Apple sauce that calls to mind a certain Hack Job.

It’s a lego vert session. What more do you need to know? It looks like it’s a combination of stop action and computer animation. Like all good skate videos, it’s got a slam section.

I saw these and tried to find some to add to my collection of skateboard related future landfill but they weren’t even available at usps.com. Then I discoveredthe reason why, they were recalled! An entire run of stamps for the U.S. Post Office is going to be destroyed because the designs promote unsafe behavior in kids! The Just Move! series features skateboarders without hemlmet and pads, an at bat baseball player without a helmet, soccer player without shin guards, and other assorted so-called unsafe behavior. Won’t someone please think of the children?!! Yes, please think of the children who will inherit a government whose postal system can’t stop losing money. Unbelievably, these concerns were raised by the President’s Council on Fitness. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

[Source: Postal Mag]– Via Tim Jamison on Facebook.

I bought this Australian stamp from 1990 on Catawiki for $1. It’s actually a postcard with a stamp and a postmark of Stanwell park. I guess the guy could be Billy Ruff, since he is riding a G@S ‘Clown puppet’ bootleg deck from 1987! The clown on the stamp doesn’t hold a puppet and  there are no names or brands, but still …

That’s Skreech on the cover of the latest Confusion zine. Apparently he’s turning over a new leaf after evaluating his life via Dragonslayer, so he’s going by Joshua instead of Josh. He didn’t ditch the “Skreech” moniker though. He’s no dummy when it comes to marketing. In addition to the Skreech interview, this shot of Elias Assmuth on a skateboard made out of a fingerboarding ramp got my attention. Radness! Those guys at Blackriver Ramps take their skateboarding every bit as seriously as their fingerboarding, or vice versa.

As seen at a Big Lots store, half off the last price marked = 25 cents. At first glance that RAD sticker looked like a straight copy of Read And Destroy magazine. It says “Epoxy Stickers,” but what would really be rad is Epoxies stickers.

– Thanks to John Egertson for the scan.