I have better detail photos in my camera but I wanted to share this. Click here to see it bigger. The verdict: it’s not great work, in fact some of it totally sucks. But it is kind of fun. The park has lost some dignity.

The town hired a non-skatepark contractor to put in wheelchair ramps and extend the park. The miniramp no longer ends in gravel. They did a good job adding a rounded hip to the end of the pump-bump. There is non grindeable metal coping embedded in the new stuff. The finish is bumpy and the shaping is pretty uneven. At least they didn’t mess up anything that was already there.

Transworld Skateboarding reports (See how I gave you guys credit there? It doesn’t even hurt.) that skateboarding will likely not make it into the 2012 Olympics. The got it from a subscription only web site about the business of the Olympics called Around the Rings.

Plans to bring skateboarding to the program for the 2012 Olympics are headed for a crash landing, sources tell Around the Rings…

…As part of a play to make maximum use of the BMX half pipe track, UCI was also willing to consider bringing skateboarding into the federation for a double-barreled shot at attracting younger sports fans for the Olympics.

UCI sports director Olivier Queguiner, who met recently with IOC officials to discuss the situation, now tells Around the Rings that the “no decision about skateboard” will take place during the UCI Congress in Stuttgart later this month. A vote of the UCI Congress is a must to bring a new discipline into the sport of cycling. Failure to act this year effectively kills the chance of adding skateboarding to London.

Around the Rings also claims that most pro skateboarders would rather have street skating in the Olympics instead of a vert event, I’m guessing because there are about 100 times more street skating pros in the first place. Regardless of your stance on having skateboarding in the Olympics, or your skateboarding terrain of choice, it’s kind of obvious that a halfpipe event will fit in better in terms of the whole Olympic style spectacle and judging. There are no events where competitors can use completely different terrain and be judged on the difficulty and style of their maneuvers. Street skating would be too hard for the uninitiated viewer to comprehend, unless they turned it into a gymnastics like exercise where there was one single runway and an obstacle at the end for every competitor to hit, as in the case with the vault in gymnastics. I’m pretty sure nobody wants to see or partake in that, although it’s a pretty funny idea for a video. “And here comes the dismount from the 15 step rail… Oooooh! It looks like he broke his ankle. He didn’t fall completely off his board, but “rolling up the windows” is certainly going to subtract some points. Ryan Sheckler has left the arena crying again, what a brave competitor.”

Look for the furor to start up again for the 2016 Olympics. Yes, this is one of the lamest intro graphics I’ve done. There’s a host of links to now, mostly moot articles on skateboarding in the Olympics after the jump.

Want to turn into a professional skateboarder like Ryan Sheckler? Who doesn’t? Now you can avoid all the “paying your dues” BS and get the inside scoop in the Go Pro Book from the good folks at Skateboarderpro.com. It covers such topics as:

How do you become a professional skateboarder?

How do you get sponsored?

How do you make a good “Sponsor Me” video?

Where do you send “Sponsor Me” videos?

Where do you even start?

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GO PRO defines a precise daily, goal oriented system that you can work at your own pace to achieve “levels” that position you in exact ways so that you can become “Sponsor Material”.

I can’t wait for the informercial. It turns out they can even help you get a college scholarship. And to think I dropped out of college because of skateboarding.

Exotic Magazine can be found in strip clubs in the Portland area (or so I ‘ve been told, if my wife asks.) It’s pretty much an excuse to advertise strip clubs, lingerie and fetish wear, and about two pages of articles. They have a cover girl who is featured in the centerfold calendar of all the adult events for the month. The September 2007 issue appears to have been shot at a very famous skate spot in Portland. I for one, want to protest the way in which the skater in the photograph is objectified and robbed of his identity by not showing his head, as if he is just a piece of meat. It really burns me up inside.

[Source: Sleestak]

Are you sick of Oregon Trifecta coverage? You’d think we would be. After I made a flippant comment (Who, me?) about the conglomerated Extreme™! sports nature of the Banquet web site, I heard back from the site’s content manager Cody Whitman:

We started banquet as a resource for filmmakers and photographers (we sell downloads of DVD’s and are in the process of helping photogs sell stock photos) and this is why there are a variety of sports on our site. It is true that “conglomerate” sites don’t make sense in a lot of ways within action sports (or whatever the hell you want to call them), but in some respects they do. We are all filmmakers, photographers and writers as well as participants in our respective sports and whether you are shooting skating or skiing there are commonalities. We understand the differences between the cultures, clearly there is no such thing as a shared lifestyle across these sports or even within them for that matter. But the truth of the matter is skating is a three man sport, the skater, the photog and the filmer…. Maybe there aren’t similarities between a skater and someone riding motocross but there are between the people creating the media surrounding those two sports. And we are trying to be an outlet for those people.

So Cody has a point there. Banquet is not really aimed at the individual audiences that enjoy those activities, but more so at the kinds of people that enjoy documenting them, or want to buy and sell that documentation, I guess. So enjoy banquet’s photo and written coverage as provided by Kyle Bunker, who took all the photos above. I think Screech pukes at every contest.

Lincoln City
Portland, Pier Park
Battle Ground Washington
Bonus: Colin Bane’s Oregon Trifecta editorial

The latest installment of G.V.K. Watching this video made me realize I have had the same friends for 20yrs +. Good or bad im not quite sure. At the very least this is proof that we are washed up vert skaters. So all we need is a vert ramp so we can go and have a place to talk about the good old days and (re-live) the glory we never had. To be totally accurate this footage is from the end of our low fidelity careers. This footage is from Boulder but the crew lived in Steamboat, Colorado, circa 90-93. Not much vert anywhere, especially Steamboat. We would literally go months with out skating, get antsy head to Boulder (3 hours) to see a show. Most of this footage is from a session before a Ramones show.

This is part of our never ending quest to bring you the best street skating coverage. Sure he stands upright and is riding switch, but he’s got no style! Animal retard or genius? Is that a third eye? You be the judge, after the jump.

Looking for something to do in the Salt Lake City Utah area this weekend that doesn’t involve the Dew Tour? Check out the informal invitational Bomb the Beehive contest and BBQ on Friday September 21st at the South Jordan Skatepark, about 20 mins south of downtown Salt Lake.

The Dew has prelims on Thursday and Street/park finals on Sat night and vert on Sunday, so not only is it a second chance for the guys who don’t make it but two days before finals for any of the vert guys who want to make it down. Been getting a good response including Benji G and Mike Peterson both who said they’ll be around for it.

It going to be more of a fun event, an old style BBQ jam with a self judged format. Way its going to work is a BBQ and bowl session starting around 5pm then there will be a determined “judged session” from probably 7:15-8 where after wards everyone skating is given a ballot with all the names on it and circle the three names who skated the best with one being a tie breaker. Whoever gets the most votes wins, speaking of which its not huge prize money but $1000 for first. Its supposed to be more of a fun event than a full on contest scene.

I don’t understand the Beehive reference either. Looks like this is quite the weekend for BBQ, at least if you are in Seattle or South Jordan.