He’s one of the more admired figures in the history professional skateboarding who has been features countless times in magazines. In fact he’s still being featured in the skate mags. You can walk down the toy aisle and see his picture on the Del Mar Pool replica. A couple years ago he had a Shot of the Week here on S&A ( I’m sure his biggest honor to date…) The great thing is, you can still skate with this guy if you want to . I took this poorly exposed shot of him last year at the Dew Tour. He was sitting behind me and I happened to turn around when the arena sign was lit up with “Skate Vert.” It sounds like a command, but it’s actually just the event that was happening at the moment. Hear Tom ‘Wally” Inoye interviewed live at 2pm Pacific on Callin’ on Colin. If you miss it you can download the show when they archive it.

Darío Escobar is an artist born and living in Guatemala. He’s made a habit of deconstructing sports equipment, and has a fondness for skateboarding. The top image is a 2000 piece made from silver, tin, and aluminum applied to a skateboard. One of the coolest things on his official site actually happens to be a pair of inline skates.

– Thanks to Boy Ipoh for the tip

Magic Rolling Board dates back to 1976, and includes everything you’d think it would, like 360’s, gorilla grips, high jumps over sports cars, slalom, long jumps, downhill and even Ed Nadalin, star of the Jeans West commercial. I don’t know that this has ever been rereleased on video, much less DVD. Anyone? Make sure you pay attention at the 3:05 mark for some of the fanciest footwork you’ve ever seen. GOLDEN!

– Thanks to Simon Liver for the tip.

This mirrored discoboard is almost a year old. I spotted it over at YoBeat’s coverage of an old art show benefit for the Eugene skatepark. No word on who the artist was. It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from Eugene. There’s a sobering infographic on the Skaters for Eugene Skateparks web site. There’s about $370,000 in the kitty, but they’re still 400k in the hole. Eugene’s ABC affiliate has a video about the state of the union from last August on their web site. For some reason it takes a few minutes to load after the pre-roll commercial.

“Skateboard over and check out the lemonade stand. There is the puppy!” Words of wisdom from the box of the 1995 edition of Clue Jr: The Case of the Missing Toys. The rules fittingly state if you roll the dice and the skateboard comes up, you get to go anywhere on the board you want to. Unfortunately, none of the game pieces were skateboards.

– Thanks to Curtis for the pictures.

Sa Ka Roule has some cool pictures of what must be the French equivalent of a Hobie, Makaha, or G&S. There are some old ads, pictures of a vintage board with a possible crazy looking truck modification, and the inevitable nostalgia revival. Check it out.

Two of the best animated shows ever. What about Family Guy? Meh. It has its moments, but it’s not in the same class as these two. This is actually part of a panel from a Fururama comic book where the Futurama cast is trapped in a Simpson’s comic book by evil floating brains. I found this over at Insane Journal after getting sidetracked while doing an image search for Stella Stevens on a skateboard. It was a fruitless search, but I did find illustrations of Fry and Bart Simpson skateboarding together. There’s even a Back to the Future plug. Let’s analyze that. A real movie reference in a comic book that takes place inside the universe of a different comic book. Now if only there was a skateboard in The Venture Brothers.

Our Canadian readers are slacking. I was trying to find more info on the Jeans West commercial from the 70’s when I stumbled on this commercial for West 49, which near as I can tell is the Canadian equivalent of a Zumiez.

So far my alma mater is famous for two things, the birthplace of the fictional self-aware computer Hal 9000, and the place where internet browsers were invented. And now the University of Illinois is pushing the Corn board, a composite material made from the husks and stalks of corn plants. Think of it as a replacement for particle board. Something you could build houses and miniramps out of, and well, skateboards. Technically, longboards, and just the core. It seems like you could stuff just about anything in the core of longboards, even Bonite! I’ll be impressed when they can make a shortboard out of that stands up to Canadian Maple. Actually, I’m impressed by the recycling bit. It would be great to cut down on wood consumption, although I thought particle board was already made from discarded bits of wood used to make other things. Unless anyone is specifically cutting down trees to make particle board, it’s not really going to save anything. Is it really “green” to take something that would otherwise decompose and turn it into something that won’t? The Daily Illini (The “student” newspaper run by a privately owned media company) has an article with some of the development story and an excellent misrepresentation of Christian Hosoi as a “professional longboarder.” Hosoi has signed on to the company for a forthcoming signature model. I think I would have pooped in my Life’s a Beach Elroy Jetson shorts had Christian Hosoi signed to a skateboard company from the same town as the school I was failing because I was skateboarding too much.

– Thanks to OCD Kyle for the tip.