Is the rainy season over here in the Northwest? I feel sorry for you guys in the Midwest, aren’t you in four feet of snow right now? We’re in the middle of a really nice stretch of weather out here, making these indoor spots less of a draw these days. Dave Viera sent in a couple recent shots of local favorite Johnny Turgesen skating inside a nicely color coordinated facility.

Battle Ground Washington. Man that place is like a pinball table. There must not be anything else for kids to do in a 20 mile radius. We went there for a short session on Sunday and the place was packed. We drove by a GSD protege on the sidewalk on the way there and he ended up showing up at the skatepark. Filthy. The park has a solid coating of dried dust and mud from the landscaping and new walkways surrounding the park. The walkways are adjacent to the skatepark concrete and have joints formed in them to discourage skating, but they aren’t big enough to slow you down much. The bike guys at the shallow end of the bowl were getting very sour about multiple skaters being in the bowl at a time. They couldn’t get a run in. I tried to explain that saying the word “Bowl” in a low voice wasn’t going to make people wait for you to drop in. Later, some kid on a bike tried and eventually landed a backflip flyout of the shallow end. He was pleased with himself. Hey, I’ve got pics of the same three guys I always shoot! Check ’em…

Every time I see this cover I read Parrot instead of Pad Rot. Apparently Pad Rot was a spinoff from the zine Endless Grind over “editorial differences.” Who knew that zines could sink to such levels of professionalism? Pad Rot was based out of Barrington Illinois. I can’t make out the writing to read the initials or possible name of the writer, but they must have known Skate and Annoy becasue they were also Illinois based, and Pad Rot lifted our Hate Page concept, complete with the Nash logo. I assume it was a tribute.

If you were thinking about donating a little something for the LC snakerun project now would be a good time, We’re going to shut it off in the next couple of days. $5, $10? Every little bit helps. Thanks to the folks who have donated already. Click the donate graphic on the Skaters for Portland Skateparks website.

This week’s Shot of the Week is Benji Galloway hitting a backside tailslide at a pool in Woodside, CA during the summer of 2007, taken by Davoud Kermaninejad. I hear Benji just won the Florida Bowl Riders Cup, at Cocoa Beach Skate Park. Check out this shot.

It’s not really a slide if your wheels are turning. This is called the “Coco slide” but since it’s more akin to typical stunt driving found on late 70’s TV cop shows, I’d say this should be renamed the Starsky & Hutch. Who is Coco? The guy in the video is named Jim. – Thanks to Tito for the tip.

My web host (IXWebhosting) sucks the big one. I’ve had repeated problems and headaches using them over the past couple of years. Yesterday we were down for about 16 hours before we got back online, and I had to spend almost four hours on the phone getting it fixed. Now that we are back online everything is glacially slow. IXWebhosting is preparing for a move at the end of the month and they are experiencing some major technical difficulties that they won’t come clean about. Expect the site to be spotty and unresponsive until I get switched over to a new host, hopefully by the end of the week. I apologize for the suckitude.