It’s a Boston morning here on SnA. The St Charles River skatepark that was designed by Wormhoudt, Inc. will be built by Grindline. That’s an interesting combination to say the least. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. This separate design and build contractor has me stymied though. I realize it’s due to state laws, but just think of the extra concrete you could afford by hiring the same firm to design and build. It’s $40,000 square feet, and no, those funnels aren’t some sort of ill conceived public arts expenditure. They are the support pillars for the highway overhead. Here in Portland we have some expensive river front property under Interstate 5 that would be well suited for a massive skatepark. Right now it seems to only be used for hosting the Cirque Du Soleil once a year. Yeah, this is old news from December. – Thanks to Tom Miller for the tip.

Published in 1988, Limozine #3 comes to us from the Boston area. There are two mailing addresses, one in East Boston and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was put out by the three man team of Jamie Cumming, Sebastian Nichols and Matt Cumming, as listed in the masthead. It’s a fat 24 half letter sized pages. The photos are legible but the toner saturation (Sheesh – listen to this a-hole) is really low. My physical copy is really faint. It actually looks a lot better after being scanned and manipulated slightly. The layout consists of mostly large photos with typewritten captions. Very nice actually. Simple and clean. I featured a Limozine related link back in November of last year. SnA is thanked on the liner notes and I still have the letter I got from the Limozine staff, unsigned so I don’t know who I was corresponding with. I probably got the address from a zine listing in Contort. Featured Skaters (In order of appearance) Dan Estabrook, Dexter, Pete Verdoe, Bill, Jamie Ferguson, Sebastian Nichols, Bill Bennet, Andy Smith, Chris Robinson’s friend, Aaron. Unanmed locals. Spots: Devotion Banks, Upland, Cambridge pool, Z.T. ramp Honorable Mentions: Thanked on the contents: Skate…

What the heck is going on here? Mike from Old Man Army sent in a couple pics thoughtfully (and sensitively) titled Rainbows in the desert. It makes a lot more sense when you see them full frame.

When he was alive, my father worked for a blood sucking chemical corporation. His job essentially was to sell the little plastic pellets that other blood sucking companies use to make all kinds of things from TV shells to styrofoam cups. The last time anyone gave a crap about the planet was back in the 70’s. Remember the big green “E?” It was about that time that my father began to be involved in learning about recycling plastics. I think it all started when one of his clients got scared by the hippies. For many years they had been packaging their corporate death burgers in styrofoam containers, and it was my Dad’s job to manage that sales relationship, because he ultimately sold the plastic pellets. When the fast food joint went to paper packaging due to public pressure from environmentalists, the writing was on the wall. The Blood sucking chemical corporation decided to investigate and push recycling technologies to combat a potential loss of business. Fascinating huh? But what does this have to do with green skateboards? Every time plastic is recycled it becomes less and less usable in practical applications. It’s basically only a couple iterations away from ending…

This is not my beautiful web site. This is not commentary on the art of Mark Gonzales. This is not a love song. Darn it all if I did’t already include recycling in the title the first time I posted something about the Gonz’ performance art fencing getup. This time is was going to be in reference to the fact that I’m doing a lot of housecleaning on the old hard drives of Skate and Annoy, and as a result you’ll be seeing a lot of less than fresh news. Yes, these items will likely have appeared elsewhere first. For instance, I just had a URL for the image of this Mark Gonzales action figure from Caught in the Crossfire, forwarded to me from MC. Caught in the Crossfire has no search feature so I couldn’t get the info. Eventually I tracked it to this undated post. It looks like they originally got it from Skate Daily (big surprise) and they have no search feature either. This is a disturbing trend. So in keeping with the post-modernist theory that it didn’t happen unless it is archived on Skate and Annoy, I bring you this Mike Leavitt hand carved Mark Gonzales…

Checking back on the Lake Delton, Wisconsin skatepark we mentioned last fall, and it looks like Dreamland finished ahead of schedule due to a span of unseasonable good weather. Good news for locals right? Not so much. Dreamland finished work on October 30th, but shortly thereafter Wisconsin got back on track with a deep frost, and local contractors are unable to finish the parking lot and walkways. As is often the case in these situations, the park is officially closed until the work can be finished in Spring of this year. I have to have to believe it is being barged though. (It is. The police are handing out criminal tresspassing violations.) It’s in the 30’s this week in Lake Delton, and when I lived in the Midwest, that was prime winter skating weather. Although now that seems insane to me. Dreamland’s site isn’t updated with the final plan or pictures, but the semi official web site for the skatepark has info on the park (No bikes or scooters, directions, etc..) as well as gallery of pictures. Breaking news, looks like they are still fishing for donations to finish the surrounding area. Lake Delton is asking for gravel, fencing and…

I’m gradually amping up for an upcoming trip to Florida. You might say over-amping, considering the Florida links around here in the past few days. Or maybe just working on cultivating our niche-niche markets. Here’s a Morris Eaddy shot of Todd Morrow taken at the Dunedin Skatepark, Florida, back in October of ’07. Click to enlarge.

Who is up for being Skate and Annoy’s on the scene correspondent for this Skatepark of Baltimore fundraiser? We’re interested the skateable art part especially. There are no details on this March 15th event on the official SOB site, which looks like it hasn’t been updated since October of last year. Fortunately, Seth Levy sent us an email. What is it the third anniversary of? “Three years of not having anything built yet but maybe soon hopefully.” Stick with it! And we’re serious about wanting to get some coverage of the event if anyone is up for it.