Apparently this spot showed up in the bizarro Slovenian skate vid I highlighted last week. I missed it, but 26 Feels Old spotted it. Apparently the location is infected by fixies.

Well, I opened a can of worms with religion, so I might as well tackle present another hot topic, health care reform in the United States. Part two of a series from Austin Considine called Faces of American Health Care features a sobering look at former pro skater Lee Bender. Number two in a multi-part series: From the heartland, a look at a few of the real people adversely affected by our health care system today. Part two looks at Lee Bender, a former pro skater who was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Despite comparatively good coverage he faces over $36,000 in debt for treatment over the last 18 months. According to the World Health Organization, health care in the United States ranks 37th in the world, based on quality and access, among other things. Skateboarders take a risk every time they skate. Insurance or lack of, is in the back of many of the minds of skaters who are living on their own. I’m not sure how to do it, but our health care system definitely needs reform. Health insurance is a racket and costs are out of control. – Thanks to Max Macias via Facebook for the tip.

John Doe Zine has ainterview scheduled with iconic Dogtown artist Wes Humpston today, live at 1pm Pacific. Click on the link to listen to it streaming, or call in at 347 633-9578 for a chance to ask a question yourself. I don’t know how Rich and Jim do it, but they are getting some big names and cranking these things out. The John Doe Zine interviews are pretty hit or miss, but if enough people know about them in advance, they could get consistently better.

Nothing epic here just some average skating. It is the 3rd annual Fall Road Trip this year we went to the desert. Stage #1 Irrigon Pendelton Milton-Freewater. These parks were fun and wide open as you can see from the footage they were Ghost parks. Stage #2 Bend Madras And Redmond with the Sharps and the Kilwags The footage is boring but it was a great trip maybe you can join us next year. Grover out.

Three Dreamland design concepts have been unveiled for the newest Eugene, Oregon skatepark. One looks pretty straightforward, while the other two have unusual elements either in the park design or some strange sculptural elements. I’m not sure what’s going on there with the giant duck and the prehistoric swimming dinosaur. A dino-duck? College mascot homage? The intersting thing is that most of the square footage is covered by a bridge. You can find some background information, download some pdf’s of the layouts and take a survey on the designs at Downtown Eugene KVAL. If you just want to see the designs then stick around after the jump. I’ve also doctored up some overlays that do a better job of showing you what part is covered.

Yeah, well. here it is. Honestly I didn’t listen to very much of it. I was so sick of this by the time I got to editing it. Basically, Ponch spends the episode trying to convince the kids they should get off the street and skate someplace safe. Eventually they end up taking the kids to a skatepark, in this case, SkaterCross. Happens all the time, right? The classic case of skate harassment. It looks like Estrada and the other dude (who shall perpetually be known as “the other dude”) had actually spent some time on skateboards.

Your Mercury Wave is a 13 ply relief sculpture skateboard that has been chromed or somehow made to become mirrored. Or rather, it’s one of 110 produced by Mekanism Skateboards under the direction of Danish/Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. Mekanism rings a bell… oh yeah, Space Invaders. – Thanks to Julian Gilbert-Davis for the tip.

Mole men. Mo-oh-olemen. This is supposed to be a skatepark built in an old railway tunnel in Petersfield, England, but so far the only mention of of it I can find is that it was built by Nike 6.0 for some BMX contest. No, this is not the only underground tunnel skatepark in the UK.

Here’s some cool architecture in Croatia that looks like it might be skateable. Even more so if you were 20 stories tall. – Thanks to Sk8 D for the tip. [Source: ArchDaily]

Holy shit. The things I do for you people. I’ve been trying to get this damn episode of CHiPs ready for prime time on S&A for some time now. I rented the damn thing from the library. It got stuck in my computer’s DVD drive and absolutely would not come out. I got a new computer out of it, thanks to the Best Buy extended warranty. Seriously. The tech dudes said it would be too much work to take the iMac apart and get the drive out. Of course, the old one was only a week old. This was back in January, and I never got the disc back so I had to buy the whole season used off Amazon to avoid paying full retail for the replacement. I had a hard time digitizing this too. in the end, the only thing I could get for some reason was the Spanish voiceover. I’m not making this up. So enjoy the first installment of the “Neighborhood Watch” episode. Or rather, the skateboard related parts. I edited out the other unrelated bits like the drunk driving and insurance scam parts. Ponch and John cross paths with a troubled skateboarding youth caught in…