Valterra may have been a second rate skateboard company but they did make some memorable boards. Someone in the art department had a pretty good sense of humor. The Total Blast deck from 1989 really pops in some of these color ways. This is simultaneously pretty bad and also pretty good, depending on your mood.

Nothing says “Cool Kid” like a skateboarding dog. This birthday card from 2011 came with a button. Apparently I didn’t have the foresight to snap the publishers print on the back. Congratulations to me on managing to make a post that took less than a half an hour.

This started out as what was supposed to be a quick post (you’ve heard this before…) after a sideways glance at the collectibles aisle in Target caught my eye. They only had one figure and the box said there were 4 total to collect. Well that turned out to be a lie… I suppose they meant in this series at least. This preview image doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s too much, and it gave me diabetes.

This is the third installment of the Denver the Last Dinosaur trilogy, a short drinking glass for a 1988 animated kids show. It looks a little bit like a shot glass in the pictures but it’s actually 4″ tall, like a juice glass. The 70’s were definitely the heyday of collectible character glasses. It’s a little bit surprising this show was popular enough to warrant carrying on the tradition so late in the 80’s. Maybe it was wishful thinking. I have no other info about any possible ties with this glass. Was it a fast food item? Was it a mail-in promo? Who knows. I do know that you should definitely watch  Kyle Mooney’s Netflix show Saturday Morning All Star Hits!  aka S.M.A.S.H.! It’s a spoof on 80’s and 90’s Weeknd cartoon programming and includes a parody of Denver called… Randy. Wikipedia sums it up succinctly: “…a show about an anthropomorphic teenage dinosaur who falls into depression and alcoholism following a breakup with his firefighter girlfriend, before heading to music college where he befriends a group of teenagers.” Same thing happened to me.

While digging around on Julien’s auction site after the insane $115K Tony Hawk auction found a separate collection of listings titled Vintage Grails of the 70’s and 80’s and decided to see if there was anything interesting. It was quite a chore to sift through the 332 lots, and just as the tedium was about to win I spotted the thumbnail of what looked like a pretty cool old G&S team shirt from the 70’s and a Nash… hold on, that’s a Skate and Annoy shirt! The auction lisitng only says Nash because the topless lady had Nash logo pasties covering her nipples. At the time that illustration was used as the intro to a Nude Bowl trip I made in the late 80’s. The Nash logos worked great in this context because at the time we felt like Nash boards were cheap and exploitive, so it made sense with the graphic. Was there more than meets the eye on this graphic? Sure. Were we also essentially adolescent, immature young males at the time? Definitely. What cracks me up is someone at the auction house had to place this shirt on a mannequin and professionally photograph it. WHOSE COLLECTION DID…

I found some bad skateboarding clip art on the interwebs and this is all I could think of. Glob, I’m bored.

A lot like 70’s era Dogtown, if you try to drop in on one of Portland’s Central Eastside bike lanes, the locals will throw kale at you… Errr.. Yeah, sorry. That’s all I got. I didn’t even know Portland had a “Central Eastside” district, but I’m obviously not upwardly mobile so that might explain it. The Central Eastside Industrial Council “is a business association focused solely on the Central Eastside Industrial District’s economic success, vitality, and livability.” CEIC includes Burnside and as such, they are not shy of including Burnside and skateboard graphics in their marketing materials. – Thanks to Chad Balcom for the tip.

Wendy the Good Little Witch #96 was published in 1990 and features skateboarding on the cover, including a “broomboard.” Unfortunately, there are no storylines inside that feature skateboarding.

Another post borrowed from the Blockhead mailing list. This time is twas about the 40th anniversary of reissue of the Rebel model. The reason I’m reposting it is because of the attached scan of a short newspaper article titled “Sierra College student skates into business.” It’s history. read all about it. I too wanted a job that was related to what I like to do.

There is confusion about these metal Roller Derby wheels. Roller Derby definitely made skateboards for a while. Some people think they are metal wheels used in (old timey) speed (roller) skating, while others think they might be for making the casting molds. The casting mold theory does not seem valid to me based on the shield already present (and worn) for the loose bearings. Holy cow, did you know you could still buy open bearing roller-skate wheels? From Sure Grip, of course. – Thanks to Dennis Allgeier for the pics.