The August 7th 2007 issue of Time magazine had an article about the design of modern skateparks titled “It’s All in the Swoop.” Seriously? August of 2007 and I’m just now finding out about it? Come on people! Anyway, by “modern” they mean tranny, so if you’re looking for street plaza coverage you can save your breath and write a letter to the editor – theirs, not me. I didn’t write it, I’m just reporting on what’s out there. I suspect that delving into that as well would have taken up more editorial space then they had alloted. Quoted in the interview are Wally Hollyday, Mark Hubbard and Tim Payne. Mentioned in article are the firms of SITE Design Group, Dreamland, Team Pain and Grindline. An interesting point is raised by suggesting current skatepark design is also affecting playground and landscape architecture, even for non-skating spaces. There are a few pictures in the print layout that are not duplicated in the online version of the article, so they are preserved and presented after the jump. Both pieces mention a photo essay on the history and evolution of skateboarding but fail to provide a link to it beyond Time.com, and plugging the title into the search comes up blank.

– Thanks to John Aguilar for the goods.

Dear Sirs We are one exporter of landwing in Shandong,China. The landwing is new wind sport way. It can help the player of ln-line skating and snow skating to move by wind power on the land. We have two size Landwing as follow: Effective Area Size 2.8m2 297cm*140cm 3.9m2 340cm*155cm If you are interest this products. Please contact us freely. We can send some pictures for your reference. Hope your early reply. Best Regards Jinsheng Qu Weifang Ruifeng Artex Co.,Ltd.
Weifang,Shandong,China

Turns out by “snowskating” they mean skiing. Sure, the product is called “landwing” but the web site is Landsail.com.cn. It’s all in Chinese and I can’t read it anyway. Sometimes I feel sorry for these guys. This gentleman emailed me a bunch of rollerblade pictures unsolicited, and then took the trouble to send skateboarding shots when I asked if he had any. All for naught.

This commercial for Babybel Cheese has a lot of incidental skating in the background, designed to make you think the location is a skatepark. In the enlarged stills it’s very apparent that it’s just a public plaza with a few ramps thrown in to enhance the illusion. The dead giveaway is the full loop track at the top of the steps.

Thrasher Magazine was hacked this weekend by a group or individual called Indonesian Hacker, who first apologized and then really gave those right wing imperialistic fascist heathens at Thrasher a piece of his mind. Yeah, makes no sense to me either. Anyway, the site is back up. Antigravity Press got hacked last week. I’m going to back up Skate and Annoy tonight. – Thanks to Rayn Hass for the tip.

If you are in Portland, the show is on a Thursday night. You’ll be able to contribute to Howard’s campaign for city council. Howard will be speaking and collecting qualifying contributions. Click here to see the flyer larger, or here to see why you should care.

Really, this still image of Mr Orange (?) is about all you need to see from the M&M’s commercial that is still airing, unless you are wondering what Paul Weller would look like if he was a candy coated chocolate that came to life. And it’s vintage The The in the soundtrack. Speaking of the Jam, did you know Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler are touring without Weller as the appropriately titled From the Jam? Now that’s brutal honesty for you! I don’t know where/what/when Weller replacement Russell Hastings is from, but he looks the part and the reviews are good. Coming to North America and Japan in 2008.

I found this magazine online a year or so ago and tried to get them to send me a copy but never heard back from them. The whole thing had a sort of fishy, half baked feeling to it, as if they maybe made one issue as a test and were trying to see if it was a viable money making concept. The Pastor Tom cover made me chuckle because of the 8-wheeler on the cover and the tag line “Why every community could use a Tom Fain.” Really? Every community could use a guy who is seemingly completely out of touch with skateboarding culture?

I forgot to post a couple of comics. Here’s Tuesday and here’s Wednesday. I back-dated them.