The Gorge Games went off in Hood river last weekend. We didn’t cover it – Estes, this was your time to shine! Looks like it will be broadcast by Fox Sports Networks August 18 – 22. The Gorge Games featured slalom and and bowl-riding skateboarding, plus wind surfing and a bunch of other Extreme!™ sports you’re not interested in. It’s kind of like a localized X-Games for Hood River, Oregon, which if you didn’t already know, is supposed to be one of the premier spots for wind powered water sports. It’s a major event in Oregon tourism. I heard legendary skater Tom “Wally” Inouye was heavily involved in the Gorge Games this year. So far all I have is a little slalom coverage. The photo above is from a Flickr stream belonging to Carvethebowl. There’s also video footage after the jump where you can see one of the Fox cameramen following the action on a skateboard. The announcer is mildy amusing. It’s almost golf-style reserved, polite and quiet, except broadcast over a loudspeaker. – Thanks to Judy Oyama for the tip. That’s her on the left.

I came across this during an image search for a post on the Screaming Hand for my skatecomics site. This guy posted about it and points to AK37 as the source. I couldn’t find it on their site though. I wonder if they got a C&D from SantaCruz. They have some pretty cool designs which I would totally wear if I was a girl! Hmmm, they might make good presents for girls.

Depressing the clutch for a smooth shift into highbrow gear before we drop the tranny into lowbrow tomorrow for Friday T&A. Female skateboarder and artist Lia Hollaran has an exhibition  in New York City’s DCKT gallery titled, “Dark Skate”. Long exposure sessions in the dark of night capturing flowing traces of light. That or photographic evidence of neutrally buoyant luminescent Silly String. A video interview with Lia and more photos can be found at Huck. Thanks to Huck Magazine

Someone asked how to do an Andrecht invert in the comments a while back and I suggested that Rich Burton might have a sequence we could post. Sure enough he did, so we put together a little tutorial here. The trick is named for David Andrecht who first popularized the back-rail-grab invert.

The Baltimore Art Examiner reports that city workers “accidentally” destroyed a skate ramp known as the “Pants Ramp” that was part of a year long outdoor art exhibit called “Outdoor Lounge.” The City’s story might be more believable if it weren’t for the fact that the demolition took place at 3 am in the morning, and it was apparently the only part of the exhibit that was harmed. No word on if Baltimore favorite skater hater and golf cart driving police officer was somehow involved. Get the full scoop. If you can put aside the skate harassment angle for a second, it’s intersting that the Pants Ramp was designed as a prototype first hole of a putt-putt golf course where each hole would be skateable. Yes today is mix an match skateboarding with (slightly more) mainstream sports. – Thanks to Stephanie Murdock from S.O.B. for the tip.

Actually, it’s most of the time. I remember hearing about a Major League baseball player who also sang in a punk rock band (not Charlie Sheen), but I didn’t realize he was also one of the owners of Skate Lab, home of a world famous skateboard museum, as well as two skateparks and of course, a line of kids furniture accessories. It doesn’t stop there, he’s got the too-good-to-be-true skateboard comic-type last name of Radinsky. That’s Scott Radinsky. And how did I put that all together? Well the obvious way, the owner of a baseball blog contacted SnA to say they posted a Scott Radinsky interview.

Hi Skaters. When will you get sick of this? Before me or not? Earlier this year Howie and the boys had a little skate party. I went down with my video camera and caught some of the footage. If it looks like fun it’s because it was. U missed it. Party down Grover. [Update: Added Vimeo version of video, should look a lot better.]

Collectors are probably bummed, but guys who just want to ride their favorite old boards again will be stoked, as long those old boards are some of these Santa Cruz re-issues slated to ship in August. These images are from SoCal Skateshop. Get in line now, these will likely sell out fast, and then we can all comment on the ridiculous prices the reissues fetch on eBay. Olson is always mentioning how he didn’t get paid by Santa Cruz in interviews. They must have reached an agreement. Also, I think this pushes Duane Peters over the top as the guy with the most simultaneous decks out on different companies, a record that might have been previously held by Hosoi.

Two countries that are alike in so many ways… at least if you are mostly going by the fact that I’ve never been to either, but that doesn’t stop me from being vaguely connected to people there through the magic of the Interwebs™. After the jump catch two videos sent to me through various global dealing of Skate and Annoy. We’re huge, you know.

There are a lot of charity board auctions these days, and they tend to get lost in the shuffle. I checked out some of the offerings for Good Wood and found several that I liked, not all limited to the one I chose for this post. Winner for the “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?” category is Jeff Mullin’s Back to the Future deck. Hello McFly! Check out the Good Wood. It’s called Good Wood 2008 – “Give Back”, an auction-cum-party presented by Aww Sweet & Alldaybuffet at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. 50 artists will be auctioning off one-of-a-kind custom skate decks to support Stoked, an organization that mentors kids through action sports. On Saturday, July 26th from 7 to 12 pm, bid on a custom deck (all priced below $500), dance to beats by Brion ISAACS (33Hz and ShindigNYC) and help prove that “one teen at a time, counterculture WILL change the world.” Full flyer and info after the jump.