Empty your wallet by turning your old skateboards into wallets at $60 a pop:

Send us your deck & we’ll send you a wallet! Gorilla Vinyl’s Sk8 Deck Wallets are made from new & recycled skateboard decks. Each side is individually handcrafted and fitted to the wallets rectangular shape. The decks are planed and edge-sanded to their thinnest point to keep a sleek style, but still retain a strong durability factor.

I’d still have to see one of these in person to get a feel for it. Seems like a wallet made out of a skateboard deck would be either too thick to be useful, or too thin to be durable. Check it out on Gorilla Vinyl.

In the 70’s you could probably get away with wearing this shirt and being cool. You could get away with it now too, because it’s vintage, but you don’t really see the skateboarder on a t-shirt style these days, except for little kids. This shot came from Peter Diepes (Dietsches ?) OMSA blog that is primarily dedicated to pool skating.

Indianapolis skateboarders are bout to get the shaft. Marian College wants to buy manage and use the Major Taylor athletic complex, land that contains a skatepark that is in the middle of a velodrome. Originally they had intended to demolish the skatepark, but thankfully, the city nixed that idea as a condition of the sale. The velodrome is what the college really wants for their bicycle racing team… Hold on, bicycle racing in Indiana… it’s Breaking Away! Sorry. Next they came up with a scheme to convince the city to let them demo the park after all. It involved reducing the hours the park was open and charging admission, with none of the money going towards park upgrades. I can just hear it now… “Oh, nobody is using the skatepark and it’s expensive to operate. We need to tear it down…”

There’s a petition up to keep the skatepark free and open 24-7, just as it always has been. Physically, the park is not otherwise noteworthy except for the fact that it’s the only skatepark the city of 810,000 people has. The Major Taylor skatepark has a Myspace page put up by an ex-employee of the park, but so far no official spot to go for updates and mobilization. Ditch MySpace and set up a Blogger site or something. Good luck skaters. NOTE: After signing the petition, a page loads requesting a donation. The donation is not required, but if you do donate, please be aware that the money goes to the petition service and not the Major Taylor Skatepark fund.

– Thanks to Carl from Toast and others for the tip.

Louis, Louis, Louis do you love me? Sorry to get distracted by Bow Wow Wow, but I’m not sure how to approach this limited edition run of Louis Vuitton skateboards complete with case by Stephen Sprouse. They are only making three, so maybe that justifies the $8,250 price tag. Maybe not. Can’t afford that? Then pony up for one of the 70 $250 T-shirts! Style king of the week! (Don’t forget to use the funny voice.) Imagine the look on your crew’s face when you walk up to a crowded skate spot with your valet toting a nice big fancy box. He sets it on the ground, then with his white gloves, opens the case and gingerly, but very deliberately hands your board to you. “Your shredding stick, sir. Shall I wax the ledge for you? What scent to you prefer?”

– Thanks to Tony Bro for the tip, and the visual.

[Source: WWDRETAIL]

I got an email with some computer renders from Team Pain that made me think they were dabbling with some prefab skatepark elements:

Team Pain will be presenting their newest product line for the first time at the January 09 Surf Expo. Bringing a completely new feel to the show with some unique and artistic structures made from both hand poured concrete or solid steel! If you want to be one of the first to experience these new pieces, all you need to do is make it to the Expo and the course will be open to anybody who wants to skate.

I thought I’d get some more info before I made the post since there were bound to be questions. UPDATE: Added video.

The Northwest’s newest skate rock band STINKBUG is making it’s live debut Tuesday the 13 at the Ash Street Saloon in Portland at 9pm. Right now it’s a two piece featuring our own Heath on guitar and friend of the site Troy Sliter who just happens to be the Monday Cover over at Earth Patrol Media, as well as actor/skater in the first three Santa Cruz videos and one time product reviewer here.

Won’t your client’s logo look great printed on the skatepark? Or, we could take pictures of kids at the skatepark and then print the images on the skatepark, then we could get the kids to skate on it and take a picture of that… A method for printing digital images on concrete. Not much more info about this but I got it from Design Spotter.

Ars Technica reports that the developer of the THPS series of video games has decided to bail on the franchise, even though it was the their main source of bread and butter for a long time. Strange, considering Tony seemed so stoked on the next version. Must have been sales talk. I wonder how he’s taking the breakup. Is thi s the beginning of the end? Will he be back to parking lot demos in spandex at Six Flags? I doubt it. Does anyone remember the old Thrasher video game Skate and Destroy? It was pretty fun, but apparently never really took off.

– Thanks to Steve B for the tip.

December 2008. It was much the same as November. Some decks went for really big cash, some were below average, and there were some real bargains to be had if you were lucky enough or vigilant enough to spot them. Normally there’s a spike in December as loved ones bid on decks for collectors I the family. Let’s face it, they make the perfect gift! They are an unabashed luxury, and skaters often won’t pull the trigger themselves, deciding it’s too frivolous. What a nice surprise under the Xmas tree! However, that really didn’t happen this year. I’m wondering what January, February and March will be like. Normally they are big months because of tax refunds, but this year, who knows?

Editor’s note: We’ve made the enlargements pop up in front of the page instead of loading in the same window, thanks to Slimbox 2. This should make for a better reading experience. If it goes over well, I’ll go back and retrofit the past columns. Note to web developers, LightBox 2 doesn’t seem to play nice with long pages. It only took me 2 hours to figure that out. If you experience any errors, please drop an email with the details, including the operating system and browser type.

Check out eBay Watch: December 2008.

GVK found this gem:

During my endless search for good skate videos from my era, I ran across the dream video and job. This actually happened to a friend of mine and yours try and guess who. The guy in the video is a better skater than him. Who could it be?

We can’t host adult content on our site, not that I’d really care to anyway. The good part, or at least the part that relates to skateboarding is excerpted and safe for work. There’s some great, uh, dialogue in the movie, and it’s clear that while the male lead may be Woody Harrelson’s developmentally challenged, mongo pushing younger brother, he does skate, or at least used to at some point.