More and more ordinary citizens are building concrete bowls in their backyards. This one in Southern Oregon is 9.4′ deep with a 5.4′ shallow end. I wonder what kind of credit this owner will get on his skate return…

Poached from the Stakbot. Click to enlarge.

San Jose’s Skate Ripper (Also called San Jose Skate Ripper) #1 comes to us from the collection of, (drumroll please…) John Drummond. There’s no physical date on it but there are some clues. Bob Denike is listed as 20 years old in his interview, and there’s a CASL contest at Del Mar where Lester, Gator (Mark Rogowski) and Tony Hawk are in the 3A division. Hawk wins it. It’s got to be be pretty damned early. Also, there’s an order form for Back issues of Thrasher magazine that doesn’t list any years, just months, so that would put it at late 1981 or early ’82. Another clue, already in publication are the zines known as Skate Fate, Skate Punk and Skate Scene (San Jose), not to be confused with Skatin’ Scene AKA Rad rat from Hazelton Iowa of all places. SJSR was put out by Craig S. Ramsay. SJSR was copied on legal size paper even though the content seems like it would have fit entirely on letter sized sheets. Consequently, there are quite large borders on the sides of the pages. The text was all typewritten an shrunk to a small size. I had to leave these scans at a larger size to make them legible.

The April 2008 cover of Seattle Metropolitan magazine features another skateboarding business dude used to illustrate the 14 hottest company to work for in Seattle. I quickly leafed through a copy at the airport, but I didn’t see anything else skateboard related in the article. Perhaps I missed it. I couldn’t bring myself to fork over $5 or $6 for this thing at the time and I forgot about it until I opened the cover image on my cluttered desktop. This issue isn’t on the newsstand anymore, so if by some odd chance anyone has a larger scan of the cover, please send it in.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from the archives of our own Mark Conahan:

We were at a permission pool in Montebello, California. I drove. Eric (Dressen) used to hang out with us before he was discovered by Tony Alva.

Check out the full frame Shot of the Week

Talk of Jeff Kendall been in our comments lately so I thought this was a good time to spotlight this Chinese counterfeit Jeff, excuse me, Jess Kendall deck and mention that House of Neil is compiling some more counterfeits as well as working on the April eBay Watch. What’s next? Les Mountain, Bob Roskopp or Jane Lucero? You’ll have to wait and see.

Yes, we’re finally breaking out silence. I’m sure Sam will add this endorsement right next to his other high profile endorsements from The Oregonian, The Portland Mercury, The Willamette Week, The Portland Observer and Just Out. See that picture on the right? That’s Sam Adams cutting the ribbon on Portland’s Pier Park skatepark in 2006. Sam has a proven record supporting skateparks in Portland (among other things.) If you want to see Portland’s 19 park system come to fruition, your best bet is to vote Sam Adams for Portland Mayor.

What about City Council? We’re leaning towards Jim Middaugh for City Council, whom we’ve heard is receptive towards more skateparks in Portland.

OK, so the St Lucie, Florida skatepark is actually the Fort Pierce skatepark. And who needs construction photos when it’s already finished? More pictures from Team Pain. Congratulations to Tito, who is on his honeymoon. That’s Adam Calderwood from team Pain’s concrete crew in the top photo.