The Examiner reports: “Skating a worldwide phenomenon.” Please click through for a thoughtful analysis of this late breaking news item.

Found after the Battle Ground grand opening.

So this post contains a YouTube video made from television broadcasts showing YouTube videos. Now if we could just get a video of this post broadcast on TV and re-recorded and posted on YouTube… The first bit is an Apple iPhone commercial and the second is Steven Colbert on The Colbert Report, both showcasing the skateboarding bulldog. Watch the vid after the jump.

When your alarm goes off at 7am, and your waking up to go skateboarding, you sit there for a few seconds- thats when the voice chimes in “ARE YOU CRAZY?” Well, that is the voice I heard when I woke up. Coffee becomes the savior, and so does a peak outside to see bluebird skys. That’s when I get it in gear and drive to the West Linn Skatepark.

Aside from being a place where you can buy skateboards online, Ward Boards has a couple of nice pages worth of photos that date from the 70’s through present day. The park in the top left (name?) reminds me a little of something else. It looks like it could have been a lot of fun or a complete nightmare. Let’s not forget the barrel jump shot directly underneath. That’s about the only aspect of 70’s skateboarding that hasn’t made a comeback.

Follow-up to the skateboarding chimp pictures the other day. MVP2 – Most Vertical Primate is the heartwarming story of a professional hockey player unjustly accused of biting an opposing team member and on the run befriending a homeless skateboarder kid and helping him to find a home, success as a skateboarder and… a sponsor! And the professional hockey player, is a clothes-wearing chimpanzee.

More viral advertising featuring skateboarding. This one in a commercial from Nokia, masquerading as a company called Great Pockets. The joke being that you could buy custom tailored clothing with huge pockets to carry all your electronic gear, or of course you could just ditch all that gear for the Nokia N95 phone. Watch this kid try to skateboard while leaving a trail of battered consumer electronics after the jump.

I’m keeping the same deal in May as I did in April. No Jessees, Grossos, McGills or Hawks. We’re all sick of looking at them, right? Instead there will be more unusual stuff. Maybe not as high dollar, but a lot less dull. This month also saw the Ray Underhill charity auction. Lots of pros and industry bigwigs auctioned off items of interest to raise money for Ray’s medical bills. Now, while this a worthwhile cause and I applaud all of the people who bid high on the auctions, these were often one of a kind items, or more common items that were signed, whose prices were far higher than normal because of the cause. So I won’t be featuring a ton from the Underhill auctions, just a few random items that grabbed my attention.

This month, the column is fueled by nothing. I’m late getting this out because with the weather actually being good I’m out there skating more instead of typing this. So I’m trying to keep this quick and to the point. Also, I want to mention the Art of Skateboarding site. I use it for some of my research, and although it’s not 100% reliable (who is?), it is an invaluable resource. You should check it out.

eBay Watch for May 2007