Glamour, France thinks Jessica Alba is a fashion icon and a cool girl. I think she looks uncomfortable posing with that skateboard. Somehow they managed to make sex symbol look awkward in most of the photos. I wonder if it’s because she did pushups, a la Salba before the photo shoot. Update: Photo recycled in US Weekly a year later.

[Source: Visual Optimism] – MC found it, but he’ll blame one of his daughters.

Back before everyone had a Facebook page or even and AOL account, I had a ‘zine called BODYSLAM. I pasted-up and photocopied five issues in the eighties. I made three issues in 2007 in a 2.5 x 4 inch micro format. Two were printed. Well I had 50 copies of that last 2007 issue and three new ones printed. If you want them, send me a self-addressed stamped envelope (two stamps for all four). Volumes 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 are 32 pages. Volume 6.3 is 16 pages. Details here.

Web host issues. Ebay Watch and GVK are affected/unavailable in the mean time. Working to get this resolved. Hopefully back soon.

UPDATE: Everything is as it should be. Please leave a comment here if you something isn’t working for you. Thanks for your patience.

I loved Ed Emberly’s drawing books as a kid, and I’m stoked that my kids enjoy them now too. MC must have been going through a box of childhood books, because he found this skateboarding thumbprint in an early pressing of Ed Emberly’s Great Thumbprint Drawing Book. he also has one called the Great Fingerprint Drawing book. I’m not sure if they are completely different or the Fingerprint version is an expanded version encompassing the the thumbprint version, but they are both still in print. The thumbprint version dates back as early as 1977, although I ‘d swear it was from the late 60’s. I had one of these as a kid too, it inspired me to make a comic strip of a thumbprint superhero. I was especially into his Drawing Book of Weirdos, as did MC if this comic is any indication.

In June there were (at least) 2 fake Brand-X decks for sale. The left one is a copy of a 1986 Sean Goff model that was designed by Steve Krajewski, it even says ‘Sean Goff model’ on the top right. The right one was based on the 1987 XEX-model by Bernie Tostenson. It’s actually the same like the one from last month, only in another colourway and I think it could have been made from another company  too, because the design looks slightly different.

As seen at a local Kmart while hunting for (kiddie) pools. $15 will get you a t-shirt and a crappy skateboard that is too small for any kid that would actually fit into that t-shirt. The skateboard is literally attached to the hanger. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Just shy of a year after we first featured this stair roving skateboard, the creator is back with a Kickstarter project to help bring it the masses. It looks like he added some sort of weird stabilization bar linking the trucks together. I’m not sure what the addition is for, but I’m sure this makes an already heavy board more unwieldy and prone to rattling. You’ve got to admire his determination though, just don’t let him know the whole thing would be made moot by a set of soft oversized wheels. It may just be the Wheelie Board of this decade, something you’d never buy when it came out, but years later you’ll recall it fondly while trolling through some guy’s obsessive skateboarding web site. I’m goin got get on my Long Rider right after I start my own Kickstarter project to fund backing this kickstarter project so I can get a Stair Rover for the “museum.” I’m going to put it right next to the Tarantula Trucks. (Crap, I still owe that guy a review…)

Sneeze magazine has a short but interesting interview with Chad Muska about his first ever pro graphic, which came out on Toy Machine in 1995. It’s interesting from a historical skateboard personality perspective, but maybe more so because it touches on the business and shift from screen printing to heat transfers that was on the horizon when this board came out, and how it changed the industry. Originally published in 2012, I’ve never seen an actual copy of Sneeze, but apparently it’s “poster-sized.” If you poke around on the site you can see some press sheets that are pretty large.