January was a fun month overall. Normally we get the post Xmas letdown in January because everybody is all spent up, but not this year. We got plenty of high priced decks in every category with a number of decks going for over $2000. Alva decks of every description were going super high, and we had a couple of classic Chinese rip-off graphics. Plus a great selection of bargain decks too. Editor’s Note: This marks the first appearance of eBay Watch on the new back end for the Features section. It’s a work in progress and a bit buggy but I decided to push forward regardless. Right now you won’t see the comments in the “Recent Comments” on the sidebar. It’s segregated right now, but it will come together soon. Same thing goes for the search function, segregated for now, but when the whole site gets integrated… I’ll have to actually make features again.

Check out this photo of Powell Peralta rider Aldrin Garcia setting a new high ollie record of 45 inches on Tuesday. He almost looks like he’s doing a lien air off an invisible jump ramp, but as you can see in the video, it’s his tail tweaking out. Amazing stuff. UPDATED: Indeed a superior camera vantage point, notwithstanding the seven second PG-13 intro thanks to, uh, Barf.

I’m kind of taking the week off from posting on Skate and Annoy, but I’m not being lazy. I’m actually working on the back end of S&A, cleaning up some code and CSS, preparing to dump all the old static content into the the database. It’s annoying and slow going, but also long overdue. So watch this video of wacky germans who have invented a sport that combines streetstyle and freestyle skateboarding with the art of sitting on a stool. And not just any stool, it’s got to be a stupid expensive sport stool. Anything goes as long as you land on the stool. I thought it was a well executed parody, but a search on Youtube reveals way too many Hockern enthusiasts to be a hoax. Extreme sports stool! You will feel like loose stool after watching this video. [Source: Gizmodo] – Thanks to Seth Grossman and Aaron Polansky for the tip.

I’m swapping out hard drives and cleaning out an email attachments from a program I haven’t used in two years. (Eudora is dead! Long Live Eudora!) and I found these blurry cell phone snaps of some skateboard valentines from 2009.

Just checking in with kids. Over the course of 2-3 years these guys have progressed out of their pre-pubescent kick flips into some really mature skaters. Full of pubecences. It is easy to make a good video with good subjects. Enjoy GVK Out. This has nothing to do with the image above.