John Aguilar’s sister went to South Africa and all she brought him was a lousy newspaper. There’s an article from the December 1st 2007 edition of the Weekend Argus titled Flying high on the vision of one man. It’s about Dallas Oberholzer’s mission to bring skateboarding to rural South Africa. Our interview with Dallas was published in 2005. Looks like he’s still at it. Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read the article online. It’s a very positive story. You can read the scan after the jump. Hey James… Stuff it! I think I heard that goat just yell “Draa-aa-aa-aa-aapping in!”

Two mediocre shots of Dave and Damien from some recent sessions at the DOS bowl in Portland. Mediocre because of the photographer, not the skaters. Enlarge the action after the jump. They recently added lights to the bowl and now you can actually see back there. Where as it used to be like skating in a very dusty closet, it’s almost too bright now! With the fairly new birch layer and the sudden illumination, it’s like the bowl riders are now more than an afterthought there. Thanks guys! These shots were taken mid installation, so it’s actually a lot brighter now.

Gleaned this from a commenter (Curb Cobain, You’re killing me! Ha! Good one!) Check it out at Ghettopool Ripper, a new blog that just started, based out of Germany. (?)

Some guys are nomads and travel light. Some guys are pack rats. Someone over at Thrasher convinced Lance Mountain to give a little tour of some of the memorabilia he has collected over the years. It looks like Lance has a lot of stuff, most of it relating to other people and not just himself. I hope he’s got a lock and an alarm on that garage. Check it out.

Finally got a decent capture of this old Wonder Woman episode. I’m distilling most of the non-skateboarding parts out of edit. There are bits out there on the Interwebs&trade, but this will be the most complete. Wait for it. It’s worth it.

Strongest of the Strange from Pontus Alv, circa 2005. The video was filmed from 2002 to 2005, and is the handy work of Pontus Alv. This is one of my all-time favorite skate videos. It seems like they really put a lot of energy and time into the skating/filming/editing. Its not only long, but its filled with all kinds of terrain and styles of skateboarding. Various skits are thrown in throughout the video, which verge on the comedic art scene. Those of you that are afraid of seeing a penis should probably skip through the first section. We don’t want your fragile little brain to explode. More after the jump.

I take one day off from Skate and Annoy and I’m getting pummeled by this video of a Baltimore police officer berating and briefly abusing a kid. I think he’s just pissed because he got stuck driving around in that ridiculous glorified golf cart instead of a real police cruiser. He talks about the kids disrespecting the badge and the Police Department, when really he’s more disrespectful of both by being an overweight slob and a bully. Keep watching to the very end to catch the punchline. I actually first got this from Stephanie Murdock, president of Skatepark of Baltimore. S.O.B. (Their acronym, not my doing!) is a nonprofit organization trying to get an appropriately large, well designed and constructed skatepark built in city of Baltimore. She’s sent out a sort of a press release with some intelligent thoughts on the matter. I’ve included it with the video after the jump. Please, let’s try to discuss this constructively. If you can’t be constructive, at least be amusing.

Green skateboards and now green skateparks? In Portland there are two new skateparks breaking ground in 2008. Both proposals mentioned a need to minimize the environmental impact, mostly concentrating on water runoff. Seems like a minor part of the project to me, as none of these parks are located near waterways. But what do I know? I’m not one of those science doohickeys. Coincidentally, Airspeed Skateparks has the contract for one of those new parks and they are also featured in the newest issue of Concrete Wave Magazine. The article titled The New Cooldown – Skate Green: Design and Build Smart is available as a PDF download. There’s more to this green skatepark than you might imagine. Aside from skateparks the article also talks about sustainability in skateboards, clothing and shoes. – Thanks to Don Whitaker for the tip.

There are quite a few bamboo based boards out there. According to some sources (more on that in a few) the skateboard industry has surpassed the hardwood floor industry as the number one world consumer of hard maple trees. lets put that into perspective. If properly cared for, a hardwood floor can last 100 plus years in house, while a skateboard isn’t going to last a year unless you’re just using it for transportation. Now consider that a maple tree takes 28 years to mature for use commercially. Sustainability is big in industry right now. It’s even creeping into skateboarding, mostly through the red headed stepchild of skateboarding, longboarding. I’ve seen a few of them up close and they don’t look quite ready for prime time, at least as far as short boards go. It sure would be great if a decent shortboard could be made out of bamboo. There’s a TV program on the Science Channel called Invention Nation where a bunch of hippies the show’s hosts travel the country in a biodiesel powered van and investigate cottage industry inventors of green technologies. It’s a short bus, but it’s green, not yellow. Comet Skateboards was featured on the Less…