If you thought this was beautiful, wait to you feast your eyes on the best commercial in the entire world, ever. Yeah, that’s right, the results are in, and this commercial for the skate bike has won hands down. Check it out after the jump, with a bonus advert for the product as printed in a couple of 1984 issues of Thrasher. While you were out… Thrasher has brought the complete back issues online up to 1985. I wish they would go back to the old method of making it a single pdf download. For one thing, the image size was bigger and even the tiny print was legible. I guess they get more page views that way.

– Thanks to Matt Beasley and Ben for the tips.

Colin Walsh (rules) took his camera to the BCSA contest at Harrisburg, Oregon on the 4th of July. Check out the shots. Colin, looks like you’ve got some intermittent problems with the image sensor on your camera. It may be related to shooting into the sun. I know my D-70 gives me some weird green streaks in similar situations sometimes.

Three bits of iPhone related skateboard news at once. First up, Apple’s advertisement for the video shooting and editing (!) capabilities of the the new iPhone. Check it out here. Somebody built a nice miniramp for that hurricane wall studio setup. I wonder what happened to it afterwards. Next up, Made for Skate has launched an iPhone app version of their collection of skateboard shoe history. Aside from the massive historical archives at your fingertips, you also get free updates, a store locator, etc… If you are obsessively into skate shoes, this would seem to be your go to app. Not bad for two bucks. Made for Skate web site has been recently updated with new pictures from their ongoing exhibitions, and wallpapers for your desktop and phones. Lastly, there is an iPhone app called Go SK8 that is the high tech equivalent of those hand held golf counters or ball, strike out clickers that little league baseball umpires use. It does more than just keep track of your letters, it will also randomly pick your tricks. You can choose three different skill levels and three different terrain types (flatground, rails and transition) I suppose that would be a good way to force yourself to mix it up.

On Sunday we set the coping (Tedders Stone) at MC’s bowl… well, Mike Swm and Burke were the chief technicians. The rest of us were apprentice “hose boys” and the like. There was a lot more fiddling and adjusting than I thought there would be. It was pretty straight forward, but time consuming. The whole thing took about as much time as the bowl pour itself. I took a couple pictures before settling down to work, and then Grover got behind the lens. The finished bowl looks beautiful. The tile really adds a lot to the end result. Three days and it should be ready to ride.

Skateboarding has spawned some interesting cottage industries. I just found a guy making fingerboard skate obstacles under the name Stone Tech Ramps. The halfpipe, bowls and street obstacles are made out of some sort of resin that must be lightweight. You can see a kid above lifting up one of the massive bowls without a problem. The scale of the ramps vs. the Tech Decks have tipped further towards gigantic. There’s a wide variety of obstacles, and you can easily spot his earlier work where he didn’t quite have the casting method down. The stairs and would-be sharp edges have the appearance of rock left under a waterfall for 50 years. Prices are pretty high. That half pipe will run you $95 and one custom bowl has a buy it now of $165! Smaller obstacles start around $16. These are hand crafted, one of a kind toys, but still, that’s a lot of coin. Check out a hilarious “review” by a nonpartisan source. It’s a kid whose “friend’s uncle” makes these things. Stick with the whole thing, it’s great how he bashes the Tech Deck gear, using sounds as a benchmark. he’s a regular Billy Mays in training.

Dan Hughes’ Northwest Skater has an archive of the regional newsletter/zine Skateboard Northwest from 1978. Yes, that’s Mark Conahan on page three. Now that Dan has moved to Utah, will he change the name of his site? Did you know Dan is getting married? For those of you that know Dan, S&A obtained an exclusive sneak peak of the ceremony.

If you can believe it, this adult film uses skateboarding to sell itself, yet according to one review, if you blink you’ll miss the brief instance a skateboard actually shows up, and they make no mention of in the dialogue. It’s almost as if, (gasp!) the plot is entirely unimportant to the movie.

I was stoked on seeing last year’s roll in challenge, so I expected an invite if it ever happened again. Geez, what’s a fellow gotta do to be popular on the Skateboard Interwebs around here? I’ve even got a spot lined up. PDX Downhill has the photos and a rather long-ish video from this year’s participants. They start out on some mellow stuff but graduate to some gnarly spots. On second thought, I don’t know if could hang… Aside from the roll in footage, there’s also some good old fashioned street skating. Looks like it was a damn fun way to spend Go Skateboarding Day, or any other day. Check it out.

– Thanks to last week’s SOTW, Casey Morrow for the tip.

Skate Like A Girl is doing a West Coast tour. You can follow it the tour blog, or better yet, come out and see the action. Check the flyer after the jump.

I was digging around for more skateboard guitars and someone mentioned the Ben Harper video for Ground on Down, which led me to the SK8 lap guitar from Cole Clark Guitars on some sort of loosely affiliated Ben Harper web site that isn’t the official one. That lap guitar has the good sense to have Indy trucks coupled with a poor choice of World Industries wheels. And then there’s the Ben Harper longboard, with artwork created by someone you’d never guess… Winston Smith, the man behind the Dead Kennedy’s logo and accompanying photo collage artwork.