Not to be confused with an areola fetish. Google Maps is really fun! Now, which one is the real amusement park? – Thanks to Shawn F for the tip.

The previous issue (1058) of Rolling Stone had a feature on Skatopia. It would never occur to me to actually pick up a copy of that magazine, so I missed it. The web site has a photo gallery that you have to get ten pictures into before you can actually see any skating. they’ve also got “exclusive” footage from a trailer for Skatopia, The Movie that is supposed to be out in 2009. I haven’t seen the article so I don’t know how long, bad or interesting it is. I seem to remember Rolling Stone had an article about Dogtown that predated the documentary, but if you search for it now yo uhave to sift through endless Lords of Dogtown reviews and and soundtrack information. – Thanks to Michael Brooke and Larry for the tip.

There’s hundreds of pools visible from planes flying in and out of Midway and O’Hare International Airports in Chicago, problem is, 98% of them are above ground pools, as seen in the shot above that I happend to find on Google Maps. I suppose it’s inevitable with an airport as busy as O’Hare that the satellite would catch a plane coming in for a landing. Flying home (I can’t find the lyrics to the Vibrators song online) to Portland I took some aerial shots from the plane.

After spending most of the session at Northbrook, Neil asked if I wanted to check out Chicagoland’s oldest concrete skatepark located near by in Deerfield, Illinois. He said it was janky, but they used to call it home before Northbrook existed. I’ve never been one to pass up some jank and/or history for a quick photo or two.

One of the highlights of my trip was getting to skate with House of Neil again. The two of us started Skate and Annoy together, and it was his idea actually. We have a long history together. He had a surprise for me, and when I arrived he presented me with the skateboard he said I was riding the first time he met me.

I got back from vacation and found a free monthly neighborhood paper sitting in the pile of neglected mail. The cover story of the Sentinel is Skateboarders Without Borders. It’s about local D.I.Y. project that is not so much of a secret, but still, the article pretty much gives the exact location and shows a landmark photo that all but draws a map for you. On top of that, the author interviewed the current land owners. I heard there was a “bust” of sorts during construction but that there were no real consequences. If they weren’t already numbered, my guess is this spot is about to become extinct. I hope the guy in the interview used a fake name.

Lulu.com is an on-demand publisher. They will print copies of your book when someone wants to buy one. Kind of like a vanity press although no one has to pay unless they actually want the book. The Hopeless Old Men On Skateboards collections and Hugo and that Dumb Skateboard are available through Lulu and here’s another example. Otter Learns to Skateboard by Rhett Saugier is available as a soft-cover book for purchase or a free download. Although there are some good things about it, editing and art direction would have helped. Which illustrates how easy it is to get a book printed, even if you lack professional know-how.

I hooked up with House of Neil and his friend Mark to skate one of the newer concrete parks in Chicagoland. Northbrook is also a well off suburb, and they took a different approach to building a skatepark for their community. It’s part of a massive athletic complex that you pretty much have to drive to get to. There’s baseball fields, batting cages, soccer fields, a golf course and a fishing pond. You can even get pole on loan from the golf pro shop if you want to drop a line in. So theyt spent some money on this park, but how does it skate?

Our research department looked into the similarity between the skater sculpture in Naperville , Illinois and the one in Milton Freewater, Oregon. We found a few additional examples, but no catalog yet. Apparently sculptors are also over the handplant. L to R: Bronze Boy on a Skateboard by the people who brought you the Bronze Girl on a Skateboard previously mentioned on SnA, Ollie the laurels, Naperville, Illinois example, Skater Boi in Albuquerque, NM, Czech triumphal skateboarder, The Milton-Freewater skater.

My sister said there was a skatepark by her house. I asked her if it was concrete and she said it was. I drove over to check it out. There was a lot of concrete, a big slab of it sitting under some prefab ramps. Metal frames with some sort of black masonite-type surface that was delamming like waxy masoninte left out in the rain. I made my way past the high school lurkers with their longboards loitering under the shelter and entered the park. The slab of concrete was indeed massive, dwarfing the paltry selection of ramps. They had a nice miniramp though, maybe 4 feet tall and at least 24 feet wide. I dropped in and did a 50-50. My axles got unnaturally squirrelly and I almost wilsoned. The coping was slippery as snot. Someone had waxed the hell out of it. I rubbed my shoe on the coping and big cornflake size pieces came off. Absurd. I spent 10 minutes trying to clean off the coping and took a couple runs, but there were some slick spots on the surface from residual wax I’m sure. A shame. You don’t see many miniramps that wide. Kids on scooters…