ESPN (or EXPN, make up your mind guys) has a short article called Skate Rock Refined that talks about the musical projects of some pro skaters. It leads off with Danny Way and Bob Burnquist’s band Escalera, and eventually gets around to Tommy Guerrero, Ray Barbee, Matt Rodriguez and Chuck Treece. Did you know that Barbee got his first guitar from Stacy Peralta? Check it out.

Speaking of rock and roll, Linda Stein was found murdered in her apartment. Who was she? Among other things, a former Ramones manager and ex wife of Seymour Stein, the founder of Sire Records, the Ramones record label for 11 of their 14 full length studio recordings.

So I went to Burnside on Halloween dressed as Space Ghost where I skated poorly for a while before settling down to one location to take a few pictures. The session had just heated up when I had to split to go be Halloween dad with my kid. While there was a lot of good action there, I missed most of it and I made it a point to only shoot people in costume. Enjoy.

The Portland weekly free paper Willamette Week, or W Week as it’s now called, has picked up on the issue of the City of Tigard’s skatepark rule that would seem to be contrary to the U.S. Constitution. This week’s Rogue of the Week is the City of Tigard. Way down at the bottom of the article they mention yours (ours?) truly…

At skateandannoy.com, bloggers have posted rants and cartoons mocking the rule, and a plea for $5 donations to make stickers opposing it. Our check’s in the mail.

I hate being referred to as a blogger, but if it helps get more donations then that’s OK. Currently we collected $35, which is about a third of what we’d like to be at. And actually, most of the donations are from distant geographical areas, so let’s step it up Oregonians! We’ll let you know if the WWeek follows through on their promise to donate. Thanks to D.T. for the plant and many others for the tip off.

€179 ($258 as of publication) will buy you a 4size magnet skateboard setup with shoes, the French Equivalent of the ex-Magnatron. It’s a bit more sophisticated than the Magnet Skateboard, the magnets are designed to be removable in case you have to walk across a field of hard drives and floppy disks at work or don’t want to get your feet sheared off in an escalator. They’ve even designed a special box that is supposed to make sure you never touch two of the magnets together. Apparently they are strong enough to be a pinching hazard. Hey man, did you break your finger landing that ten set? Nah, I did it putting on my skate shoes.

We love to tease About.com’s skateboarding section. Usually it’s good natured, but this time I have to resort to outright heckling. Steve Cave has published Indy Grab – Learn how to Indy Grab – skateboarding trick tips. OK not a bad idea, except for the fact that at no single point does he mention that an Indy air MUST BE BACKSIDE or else it’s just a regular frontside or stinkbug. If you are going to help kids learn about skateboarding, stop propagating inaccuracies. As defined in About.com’s skateboard dictionary:

Definition: Indy describes a specific type of grab, where the skater or snowboarder reaches his or her back hand down and grabs the toe side of the skateboard or snowboard between the rider’s feet. The Indy is the most common type of grab in skateboarding and snowboarding. When describing grabs, the word Grab is often dropped from the name. For example, performing an Indy grab while spinning 360 degrees frontside is called an Frontside Indy 360.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! There is no such thing as a frontside indy. Oh wait, I have a box of them next to the left handed smoke benders from my snipe hunting days.

Ok, we all know the original skateboarding skeleton t-shirt is from Powell. Retailers will seize anything popular to make an extra buck with holiday tie ins, which leads us to these two skeleton skateboarding shirts I bought for my two year old son. On top of that, he didn’t need to get out the white paint like GSD to get a pair of skeleton pants. These came from Babies-R-Us. Yes he wears them year round. They were $10 for a set of pants and hooded sweats, so I bought three sets in consecutive sizes so he won’t grow out of them for a year or maybe two. Hell, if they made them in my size I’d buy them for me. You can see that freestyle skateboarding is living (dead) after the jump.

United by Fate from Globe Shoes, circa 2007. United by Fate is series of short films Globe is putting together. They just featured Episode 2 with Chris Haslam, and as usual hes a blast to watch. Hes one of those guys that continuously pushes his skating to new heights. Check out Episode one and two after the jump.

It looks like Jim Phiilips’ second book of skateboard related art is finally out. The first one was a very good collection, but had more than I cared to see of his early non-skateboard related pieces. I understand it’s good to get a larger sense of history and the context of his style, but I could have done with a little bit less of the overtly hippy stuff and other works with a religious overtone. This new one focuses on skateboard art only, and covers recent work with Pocket Pistols, so The Skateboard Art of Jim Phillips looks to be more than just a rehash of the skate section of the previous book. His publisher must really like him to put this out when his previous book already does a fine job of documenting the skate art. Phillips’ style is such a a standout. While I’m not a fan of most of the monster stuff, I love his style and I’m drawn to his logo design. Even the stuff I don’t like, I still can’t help but stare at and study. I’m looking forward to this one.

[Source: Juxtapoz]