In case you hadn’t noticed, there are some public service adverts in rotation on the far right side of the site. These banners are for non-profit groups dedicated to advancing skateboarding in some way or another. if you have a group that you’d like to have include in the rotation free of charge, see the guidelines. If you are asking yourself why we are doing this, it’s because we’ve taken a lot of pot shots at the industry and we’re heavy on the sarcasm here. Just by virtue of our name we attract a lot of negativity an some boneheaded comments (to put it nicely). This is an easy way to inject some positivity. Not to worry, we’re not converting the site to a skate church. The Good Sam Club graphic with the halo is just illustrating the point, and I couldn’t find a decent picture online of the Sam Cunningham “Good Sam” model anywhere.

Sure, it’s an old joke and an easy target, but The Hardest Part of Rollerblading from MTV’s The Human Giant is well executed and without malice. Aziz Ansari’s performance makes the clip. Give that man some sort of award. I thought he looked familiar, he also appeared in an epsiode of Flight of the Conchords, which is the funniest show on TV right now, with the possible exception of The Venture Brothers.

Skaters love iPods and Pottery Barn. Now they can listen to their iPods by plugging them into a X Games shelf that looks like a skateboard and has built in speakers. The shelf can be used for magazines or copies of CD’s that they probably didn’t buy in the first place. Did you just get kicked off your skateboard team? Wrap yourself up in a nice X Games blanket and stare at your X Games wall mural from the comfort of your X Games bed sheets.

[Source – Gizmodo]

Shoes are an important milestone in our short history as humans. From mobility, protection from the elements and the droppings of dogs. We wouldn’t be where we are without shoes, we owe our shoes for everything. Including the (alleged! – K.Ed) 14 hour work day in sweat shops making Adidas fashion footwear designed by Michael Sieben. I’m a starving artist myself so I give no discredit to Sieben’s capitalism.

Michael Sieben has been illustrating in the skate world for some time. From the pages of Thrasher adorning his artwork throughout numerous articles to the whimsical bottoms of Bueno skateboards (the gods of the interweb currently are smiting their website). Probably the most bizarre bit of advertising video can be found here. Image curtsey of Adidas.

Three pages of skateboard-related tattoos.
BME zine tattoo gallery.

Over a year ago Kilwag called for submissions or a SnA tattoo gallery. What ever became of that?

This edition of Saturday Starrs features Skateboarders from Hell which is a spoof of one of those old biker exploitation movies, although stylistically this is half 1950’s and half early 70’s. I can’t actually tell when this was made. The fashion on some the extras could be late 70’s or early 80’s. It looks like it was shot on 8mm film, but the titles look like really clean digital work. Maybe they were added years later, or maybe it was shot on old stock. I feel like I should know who some of the “actors” are. It’s kind of hard to tell via YouTube, and it’s further complicated by the presence of an advert for Tail Devils tacked on the end. Hopefully Scott Starr will shed some light on Skateboarders from Hell.

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.