Not that anyone should be interested in the lives of aging, but once hot television starlets like Christina Applegate. It was in the news recently that her skateboarder boyfriend Lee Grivas has died. In every article I found the news states the same phrase, “26-year-old skateboarder Lee Grivas”. In reality he was an Alaskan fisherman… but skateboarder somehow got to supersede the title of fisherman in all the trashy journalism out there.

Perhaps we’ll see a sudden influx of value added to the H-Street Jason Rodgers model on eBay… I had that board, I never got to have relations with Christina Applegate. My only failure in the formula is that I never fished commercially in Alaska… that and a lot of pressure flips performed on that board. Forgive me. [Image: VA Skateboards]

I don’t know why MC hasn’t really publicized this, but he’s had a little side project going on for quite a while called The Skate Comics Depository. It’s a collection of his own H.O.M.O.S. work as well as highlights of other items related to skate comics. Even though I hate to encourage outside web authoring interests for our “staff” because it makes them uppity, you should check out SkateComics.com. I think I would have gone with the Skate Comics Suppository instead. In a related note, guess who just registered SkateZines.com?

Joesf Heffner sent in a few pics of a backyard project he is working on. Looks like a concrete quarterpipe with a little run up. Hopefully he’ll chime in with the approximate costs and time involved. Enlarge those pics after the jump.

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.]