Well now. Isn’t this special? The Sole Skate is a brand new product with a slick new commercial. It’s almost as if there is some money behind the product. Who could that manufacturer be? Why none other than the same folks that brought us the Razor Scooter. Awesome videos after the jump. If you can believe it, one of the professionals actually kickflips one of these things. Aside from just mangling the traditional form of a skateboard, I give these guys credit for coming up with a braking mechanism that engages once your weight is no longer on the board. If you are going to ride an inferior copy of a skateboard, you don’t want it shark biting anyone in the ankles when you fall off it. – Thanks to John Aguilar for the tip.

Seriously, I don’t think MC capitalizes on this acronym enough. Mark’s been cranking out these comics once a day since the new year. You can see them roughly every other day here on S&A or on Antigravity Press, but what happens to the rest of them? They end up on MC’s All Access Pass. Two bucks a month gets you access to the unpublished strips you won’t see here. Not only that, but they are presented in a larger format. In fact, he recently decided to put the free strips up there too, so you can get them all in one place. Your subscription gets you access to the back catalog, and you can cancel it and get a refund for the remaining time at any time. I encourage everyone who enjoys H.O.M.O.S. (Tee hee!) to pony up a couple of bucks and give it a shot. There are some really funny ones in there. ALL ACCESS PASS!

In which I recycle things everybody’s already seen. This animation is excellent. – Thanks to Eric Cherry for the tip.

Yeah, I know it’s not Earth Day today, but it should be, becaue I’m going to be recycling a bunch of items that most of you have probably already seen. First up, this hilarious Skate Hipster Bingo card that I saw on Gone in an Instant, but everyone else and their mother saw on on Sleestak, as you can tell by the watermark. And nobody seems to be crediting the creator, which was Excess skate zine, although you’d be hard pressed to tell by looking at the Excess blog. I think there is actually more pictures of road bikes on that site than skateboarding. What’s up with the crossover? I heard something about fixies on one of Colin’s recent radio shows. The Kyle Bunker episode is a good one. Getting back to hipsters, I picked up a copy of Thrasher in the airport on my recent trip to Florida. It’s pretty much the only time I read the mainstream mags. it seemed like a third of the dudes in there were sporting mustaches or beards. I’m rocking a bad stache myself lately. It started as a goof but the reaction has been so enthusiastic (and not always positive) that I…

The Oregonian had a story about the Lincoln City skatepark today. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Lincoln City is up to phase V with the new skate track. Not a bad story although they seemed to be confused about a few things like calling the pool replica is one of the park’s easiest features when I think they meant the new reservoir bowl. [Photo: Thomas Boyd /The Oregonian] – Thanks to GVK and my mom for the tip.

Homeless folks inhabiting Miyashita Park in Tokyo are understandably upset about the fact that their local government has sold the park out from under them. Apparently there were no public hearings or notices before the sale to NIke became final. NIke has plans to turn it into a well-landscaped skate plaza. The park has a sizable indigenous homeless population that will likely be displaced, and they’ve gained some support worldwide, but it seems to me that everyone is pissed off at the wrong people. Don’t get pissed at the people who bought your home for a bargain, get pissed at the bank that foreclosed on you. According to a short video about the situation, Nike refuses to respond publicly to anyone concerning the park. Not the greatest public relations plan, but maybe it’s geared towards some sort of Japanese culture hook that I’m not hip to. Watch the vid after the jump. – Thanks to 100% Talkboarder for the tip. [Source: The Smoking Section]

It’s April and one of our readers who wishes to remain anonymous just broke ground on a backyard bowl. Congratulations! Oh man, you’re going to be blown away. Ask MC about his post pour stoke level. Check out this week’s Shot of the Week, and try to guess where it is.

Ha ha! No excuses this month because this one should be right on time! Midway through the following month is right when you should start looking for Baywatch, and I pretty much made it! Some months are a chore to write, and it feels like pulling teeth, but some months just flow easily, and that was true of March. I think there’s a really good selection of stuff this month, with some high priced items but balanced out by some interesting but cheaper decks too. But enjoy this one because April is looking absolutely terrible so far. I can’t remember a month with so few high priced decks and so many uninteresting mid priced decks! Really, it’s a barren wasteland out there so far this month! And it’s funny because I just had an argument with a guy on skullandbones who asked why there are so few good NOS decks on eBay these days. I argued that he just wasn’t looking hard enough, which was probably true in March, but judging by April he is right. I hope that this worrying trend ends quickly, because this is going to be a damned dull column going forward if things continue at…