Santa Cruz has to be the king of novelty products, with all the giant foot-shaped boards, screaming hand oven mitts and the like. Now they’re adding some mostly brilliant executions of Simpsons themed skateboards. Bart’s board is great, the Roskop parody and Duff liquor store cruisers are pretty good too, but the Homer Simpson board is weak. To offset that they’ve included a Duff static wrap can cover, which they ought to sell singularly. Overall, though, an awesome idea, if only they had thought of it 15 years ago. Bart Simpson has to be the most popular cartoon character to be featured with a skateboard in it’s original context as well as with merchandising. It’s about time he got a real board.

In case you forgot like I did.

It may not be environmentally friendly, but it sure looks fun. Thanks to Brian Baade’s nameless friend Brian Forwood for the photo.

It’s summertime, summertime. I’m gonna head to the beach and do some beachy things. I spotted this on an ice cream truck while plying my kids with cold sugar on a stick after one of those music in the park deals. Actually the band was pretty interesting. An all female sax quartet called the Quadraphones. More jazz and less funk than I’d like but still solid. The frozen confectionary comes in a cup, but unfortunately the packaging doesn’t have the skateboarding character. The gal in the truck wouldn’t let me buy the window sticker either. Now who gets the noprize?

Mount Tabor hill in Portland is a popular downhill spot. It’s closed to auto traffic and pretty mellow on conventional once you’ve taken your first run. It’s open to foot traffic as well, but on Wednesdays it’s supposed to be specifically open for high speed travel, be it bikes or skateboards. It’s also the sight of the annual Adult Soapbox Derby, an event that doesn’t use the actual purpose-built soapbox derby track adjacent to the main downhill course. There’s a bit of a debate about off leash dogs. Portland is simultaneously progressive and very uptight at the same time. There have been some “outlaw” races on the hill, but this Saturday is supposedly the first sanctioned and permitted downhill race on Mt Tabor. The Portland Downhill Challenge will feature giant slalom and old school downhill. By “old school downhill” we’re talking late 70’s style with your feet placed almost side by side. Sounds like fun. That’s on Sunday, and the day before the promoters are sponsoring the second annual Portland Skate Scavenger Hunt.

You’re looking at massive portable and reconfigurable concrete bowl made by Spohn Ranch. In much the same way that you’ve seen Tony Hawk’s metal framed vert ramp carted along in pieces to assorted demos and Boom Boom Huck Jams, except it’s concrete, and more complex. It’s a pretty amazing from a technical standpoint, something that heavy than can be set up, then torn down and transported on regular roadways, to be set up again in a different configuration. The current incarnation is still in beta. As it is now, the waterfall and intermediary walls are poured in place on each stop, but plans are to get those fabricated and surfaced for reuse as well. The rough sketch for the bowl (shallow 7′ 6″ , deep 12′) was conceived by Chris Miller before being worked over in CAD to engineer it. The individual sections are laser cut, with 3/16″ of steel between every other section. It’s supposed to be precise enough to not feel the seem on rollover. A CNC cut floor template helps everything fit together. The coping is modular as well. The goal over the next 5 years or so is to build a giant library of sections to keep it fresh.

As rad as the X-Games park looks, all these giant sports spectacles are just big business at heart. They don’t really give back to the skateboarding community in any direct fashion. At best they just pad the pockets of some of the pros on the circuit (nothing wrong with that) and lend a little bit of respectability to our public image. I’m completely in favor of corporate responsibility. Building giant temporary skateparks for single events is incredibly wasteful. I say build it and leave it, or make it portable and reusable like this one.

Check out the Portable Concrete Bowl web site or Flickr stream for more info.

Since I can’t afford or seem to get the hang of buying old skateboards on eBay, I’ve taken to collecting skatesploitation records instead. It seems like there is handful of the same records that are well circulated. Sometimes they go for $50, but you can pick them up for $10-$15 if you are patient. So I don’t get too bummed if I don’t win an auction. The first time I saw this record I thought I’d be able to pick it up for a few bucks plus postage, but I was shocked when it went for over $100 in the last 24 hours. I thought it was a fluke until I lost another auction to a seemingly ridiculous high bid. There must be cutthroat market out there for really obscure funk bands. Here’s another listing of this record, this time with an opening bid of $89. I’ve seen it on record collecting sites for as high as $258! It sounds very 70’s but the popular consensus is that is was released in 1980 or 81. Well fortunately for my wallet, you can download the mp3. In the mean time I’ll be lurking around the Goodwills looking for stray copies of Skateboard B/W Closer by Chemistry. It’s mainly an instrumental with a few random and hilarious sounding chants. Do the skateboard after the jump.

[Image: Matlo 44]