Wow. What a totally shit month on eBay October was. I can’t remember covering a more generic month in the 5 years that I’ve been doing this. Guys that bought and sold in October, don’t take that as an insult, and admittedly there are a couple of beauties, but on the whole it was a blah month. If anything totally cool went off, then I missed it. Please, fill me in. Or am I totally wrong, and just getting burned out? Let me know. Any and all feedback is always welcome.

Check out: eBay Watch: October 2007

Tony Hawk appears on “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” tonight at 8pm (7 central). You can watch a few clips on the official Fox web site. Must be a celebrity edition for charity. Tony might be fond of game shows with question marks, as he was also on “Who wants to be a millionaire?” Is he smarter than a 5th grader? Who knows, but one thing is for certain, chances are he’s richer than your dad. Headlines like “Tony Hawk: The “Bird Man” with Hawk-like Vision” have got to make him cringe whether or not the web sites is “dedicated to redefining success.”

Calling all Ho-dads near and far. One week ago there was a meeting you should have attended. If you do not see your self on the tape consider yourself out of the club, and banned from future meetings. Pledges may attend next year for consideration of entry. Pledges must make themselves recognizable by wearing a pair of women’s panties on their head. – Signed The Boss of All.

Seth Berg sent in this picture of a Ryan Gray air in the square corner at Tigard. It’s not technically masterful, but it has a certain appeal. Enjoy.

The Back Athlete Sports Network (Yeah, I’m a subscriber) has an article titled Extreme Sportsman Carving His Own Way Through Life. I love the title “Extreme Sportsman.” It makes him sound so gentlemanly and brings to mind some old English guy dressed up for a safari with a pith helmet, pipe and Elephant gun. Blacula, I mean Blaxtreme sportsman Christopher “Crib” Butler’s interview is not very extreme. We do learn that in the 80’s his black friends accused him of trying to be white by skateboarding. Flying in the faces of stereotypes, he actually had to go to the ghetto to buy his first real skateboard! What was it? A Vision Kele Rosecrans. That makes him even more of a minority! Oh stop it, you’re killing me! Crib still skates, surfs and snowboards. Since 2007 he’s been shaping some nicely crafted longboards reminiscent of old surfboards under the name Malu Longoboards. For a brief time in the early nineties some of my friends and I thought we were “______.” I leave that term blank because “Extreme Sports” hadn’t been coined in 1992. We were skateboarding, bungie jumping, mountain biking, skydiving and motorcycle riding, etc. We called it “Live by the sword.” Thank god I got over that identity crisis. Then I found out what we were… a Demographic!

Higher resolution version here if you want to have it put on a t-shirt for tomorrow’s grand opening.

Grip tape stencil art from “Lefthand” in Duluth Minnesota. Get the punchline after the jump, or over at Stencil Revolution.

In the eighties I published a ‘zine called Bodyslam. I always meant to do another issue and got started a few times but for various reasons it never happened. Well Kilwag inspired me to do a micro version. a single 8.5 x 11″ sheet, two-sided, folded and trimmed down and stapled down to a 16 page micro-zine. This one features my miniaturized skatepark photos.

Download Bodyslam 6.1, print it out and assemble it yourself.

We have More detailed assembly instructions here

I also printed a few. I’ll carry them with me and leave a few at the local shops.