MAD Magazine and skateboarding. Two pleasures of my youth, one of which I eventually grew out of. I don’t think I’ve actually seen a recent copy of MAD Magazine in 10 years. Are they still in print? (I guess so.) Actually, I’m assuming this is from MAD, maybe it’s from Cracked… In any case I pilfered it from Concretins who are mum on the details. Click to enlarge.

A little bird told me that all three of Portland’s locations of The Office just closed their doors abruptly, but not before carting out all the merchandise in boxes. The Office is/was a skate and snowboard shop that catered to the artsy fartsy crowd with art openings and even Euro spray paint for sale. All this after the 82nd street location recently installed a reportedly very impressive indoor skate facility. When asked for comments, the little bird said “They’re all snowboarders anyway, so what do you expect?” Their MySapce presence says “business as usual” but hasn’t been updated recently. Can anyone confirm whether the The Office is actually shut down? Update: Added a video of Ed Helms (Daily Show and currently on The Office) “interviewing” Tony Hawk.

In addition to the other hassles of running a semi popular web site, some lowlife is taking content wholesale from Skate and Annoy and reposting it without credit in order to populate a web site with skateboard related Google ads and dupe people into helping him/her make money. It’s a blog template that hasn’t been updated and still has “Company Name” and “Company slogan” as placeholders. It’s kind of flattering to find out some dirtbag thinks your content will help him make money. They are using our RSS feed and randomly sticking in the words “skate”, “video” or “DVD” to get search engine hits from people looking for skate videos. Now there are other scumbags that pull RSS content and pretend it’s theirs as well, but most of them pull bits and pieces from a multitude of sites instead of just copying everything from one site. So I apologize to our RSS feed readers (apparently, there are some legit ones) for the general funkiness of our feed in the last few days. I’ve been trying to combat the content thieves. If you are so inclined, you can find out how after the jump.

This clip of Tony Hawk skating in the desert somewhere is pretty amazing. I’m guessing (and pulling it out of my ass, really) that this is from the new Birdhouse video The Beginning maybe? As for the skating spectacle and cinematography, it’s great regardless of your personal feelings on Tony. And really, let’s talk about our feelings. Are you ashamed that you have personal feelings about Tony Hawk? Do you wear a hat made out of tin foil to keep him from discovering them via telepathy? I’m going to be really bummed out if I find out those dust storms are computer generated. Also of interest is Jeep product placement, which I’m sure he got paid for. Who knows, maybe it’s for an upcoming Jeep commercial. As for the web site it resides on, Shred or Die, don’t get Mark started on the name. As far as the site goes, it looks like another crossover action sports social networking attempt, and Hawk is all over that place. I’ll say one thing for them, they did a good job on the video controller compared to the rest of them, YouTube included. They have an instant replay feature and the holy grail…

I’ve mentioned the old Flyaway helmets once or twice before, mostly in the context of the re-issues, but without a lot of actual information. Concrete Disciples has a nice piece on the new Kanoa Flyaway helmets that is no so much product review as an endorsement. It does go in to some detail about the history of Flyaway which is interesting, including some good sized scans of original advertisements. They are the best looking helmet out there, but the new ones have no safety rating so I’m hesitant to shell out the extra cash (and it’s a lot) just to look marginally cooler if I am wearing a helmet, regardless of the amount of work that goes into making one. I know there is a lot of work required to make these. Grover made several prototypes a few years back, and it was quite involved. You can see the results of his efforts after the jump, or go onto the Concrete Disciples piece, which is where the photos above came from. Thanks to Rich for the tip.

Check out the big brain on Mike! Over at Northwest Skater You can find a discussion of a method for calculating the size of a transition radius using a three-foot straight edge and a short ruler. Basically you put the three-foot stick on the transition and measure the space under it at the center. Then use math to work out the radius from there. You need a straight stick because inaccuracy in your measurement will be magnified in your calculations but that isn’t probably a huge problem, I’ve seen those guys cut their transition templates with a chainsaw. They also provide a handy table that lists common radii for various values of h.

Apparently you’ll get your car towed if you skateboard near Dresden, Germany. So implies this sign. Want to hear a good song? Listen to The Master Race in Outer Space from the Vandals second LP. When in Rome.

I snapped this picture after a late night skate session with Dr. Brad, some time around 1988. I don’t think this air freshener had any special powers to combat pad rot. The copyright says 1958! Maybe that’s when the illustration was was first printed, but it seems a little early if you ask me.