The shot in the top frame of a newly completed skatepark in the UK looked pretty clean and made me want to find out more about the spot. In the course of looking it up I saw that the builder Four One Four Skateparks, are using the CNC process to cut transitions and horizontal some supports, especially on bowl corners. It’s interesting that they use a stepped completely horizontal approach in those bowl corners. Notice that where the surface meets the back braces are not perpendicular. Instead they rest on two adjacent corners. I’m not sure if that makes in difference in the longevity of the bowl, but it’s got to make the design and assembly process a hell of a lot faster. I’ve always held wooden bowl builders in high esteem, and this approach means any monkey could assemble it. It’s a case of nostalgia vs. progress, but I can’t imagine there are that many ramp builders out there with access to big enough CNC machinery. Some of the shots on the site make it look like the surface isn’t included in the CNC process though, so there’s still room for John Henry on the ramp building floor. This park is part of “building 2” at Adrenaline Alley in Corby, England.

Avril Lavigne skateboards in a Chinese advertisement for Nong Fu Spring iced tea.

[Source: Slate.com] – Thanks to Eric Pitt for the tip.

You may remember the Element series of skateboard flavored iPhone cases. Well it turns out that Element (no relation) sort of lost interest in the project, so the original developers, including Billy Ruff, Stuf mag founder Skot Werner-Longo decided to go off and do it on their own. The result is the Ruff Case. The really nice but exorbitantly priced machined aluminum version has been replaced with a more moderately priced composite version. The back plate graphics are reversible these days, and way more reasonably priced than they were with Element. Also interesting, Jim Gray’s inkgenda is involved in printing some of these back plates, so this whole arrangement can’t get much skatier. Yes that is a word. Skatier. I am declaring it now. Jim must be really, really busy making those back plates, because he’s M.I.A. here on S&A. So what about Billy Ruff? There’s a short piece on him in Huck magazine that ends as it starts to get good. I don’t know what he’s been up to, but with a name like Ruff Case, it’s a safe bet he’s bankrolling a good chunk of this. Billy, where are you? Right now you’ll need an iPhone 5 to fit this case, but there is a Galaxy 4 version in the works too.

From the comic strip Biss, by Harry Bliss. See it in color here. Tommy looks like a middle aged man.

– Thanks to Mrs Kilwag’s mom for the tip.

Fashion spread with Chanel skateboard for a magazine called Grazia, Spain, with help from La General Surfera.

Source: Visual Optimism

A college somewhere in Seattle. Kind of funny that they’d rather bolt on a bunch of chunks of aluminum and spray paint a stencil on this ledge than let someone skate it.

Kevin sent in some pics in response to the post on the backyardskate project. Same idea, bigger scale.

UPDATE: added a picture of the finished bump.

Thanks to Mrs Kilwag for the photo. She did not happen to catch the price on this sculpture of a frog on a skateboard.