Here are som 2021 additions to the the X-treme X-Mas ornaments collection, courtesy of Josh Baker (1-3) and Darren Haugen. Happy Holidays!

Hey! Swatches are still a thing, and they released a collection called Swatch x Peanuts. One of those watches featrues Charlie Brown on a skateboard. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it looks like they cobbled it together from an illustration where Charlie Brown is running and a separate illustration of a skateboard. – Thanks to Lin Holcomb for the tip.

The Real Ghostbusters in this context refers to the UK based Marvel comic series that ran from 1988-1992 for 193 issues. Issue #53 dates to 1989 and features I was going to try and buy one cheaply but I managed to find the entire issue online at a sketchy website that threw up some security warnings so I won’t post the link here. There is no real additional skateboard art other than the cover because the story is a written one that appears in a feature called “Winston’s Journal,” which is kind of a bummer, but’s a cheap way to fill pages. Check out the cover, and the story, plus a bonus shot of a crab on a skateboard from an advertisement for Tom & Jerry comic book in the same issue. And for the heck of it, a bunch of Ghostbusters skateboards from the late 80’s to present day. – Thanks to David Maes for the tip

Ok then, this should be it, the last round up of things to add to past posts about Alf. We’ve got two additional ALF skateboards and a third party sticker.

The Milwaukee Journal has an article on a documentary in progress about the Turf (AKA Surf N’Turf) skatepark. Much like the Nude Bowl, the Turf just won’t die, and keeps coming back decades after you thought it was gone forever. Opened in late 70’s then shut down and turned into a strip club, then reopened in the 80’s, then shut down again, raised and burried. Then dug up and skated briefly! Then filled in again amidst a community effort to have it saved. It seemed like a pipe dream, but somehow the City of Greenfield ended up buying the land from the department of transportation to save it from becoming offramp. Now, not only will it be dug up and refurbished as it existed, indoors in it’s heyday, it will also be surrounded by a new, modern and public skatepark outside. Stoked to be able to add this to our coverage of The Turf, and anxiously awaiting the premier of “Believe It.” [Photos: L-City of Greenfield. R- Peter DiAntoni]

With sadness I learned that founding member of the Surf Punks, Drew Steele has passed away after a battle with cancer. Against all odds, the Surf Punks had a huge influence on me as a teenager growing up in the Midwest. I first heard them on the Dr. Demento show, and saw them briefly mentioned in a blurb about “violent surf culture punk music” in Time magazine of all places. The picture above is from Drew’s Instagram feed shortly after Dennis Dragon passed in 2017. Bonus shot of the making of the iconic cover of My Beach featuring the first (?) skateboard-as-guitar after the jump.

It’s Indigenous Peoples day. Here’s more Joe Buffalo. This video by the New York Times is a little more stylized than perhaps it needed to be, but overall it’s very heavy. What else could you expect from the aftereffects of Kill the Indian; Save the Child and the boarder school assimilation programs?

We just added 15 new-to-you zines to the 80’s Skatezine Gallery. The new titles include Contort, Clueless and Skeezer from the Boston area, Skate Street and Clueless (moved) from Wisconsin, Social Disorder from Illinois, Crakpot from Oregon, Tight Transitions and Naughty Nomads from California, Asphalt Assault from Georgia, Freezine from Ontario, Canada and Vaffanskate from Italy. There are currently 57 complete issues in the gallery now.

Oh man… I love Obvious Plant in like a twin separated at birth. I myself already have a Sneppy T-shirt, but I can’t get behind these Sneppy themed “Skate Blords” because each one defaces an original Peanuts skateboard toy, which to readers of Skate and Annoy ought to be sacred! Still these are damned funny. The artist behind Obvious Plant makes fake, absurd, and often absurdly funny fake toys. Some of them are akin to bad knockoffs you find in cheap markets, while others are just subversive and weird. These toys are then clandestinely placed the shelves of real stores for the unsuspecting consumers and bewildered register operators. And because you can’t pay your mortgage with fake toys, Obvious Plant sells t-shirsts and the like, as well as the occasional one-off toy at collectable prices. Sneppy and “Wood Sock” both sold for $350, while “Cheppy Brown” sold for $550. These aren’t auction prices, these are list price. I believe the original versions of these peanuts toys date back to the 80’s or early 90’s. These are the plastic versions, and not the metal versions that look very similar. It’s hard to tell for sure because Peanuts merch often lists really…

Longtime astute readers of S&A might remember seeing a previous version of Betty & Veronica in a Wheel Zeal story in a Betty & Veronica comic from 1976. Archie series reuses stories and story titles all over the place. Heck, they even reuse comic book titles. The series from the 1976 issue is called “Archie’s Girls – Betty & Veronica.” This story appeared in issue of just plain old “Betty & Veronica” #138 from 1999. It is indeed a separate series because the numbering sequence is different. I’m not an expert on the Archie series by any means, in fact I’ve always loathed it, even as a kid. Digging into these skateboarding appearances in the Archie series has made me way more informed than I’d like to be. However, just because I hate Archie doesn’t mean I didn’t buy this comic book! In my online archeological dig I also managed to find an expired auction for the “original art” for this story.