Everyone was worried that the pool coping at Pier would get trashed by bike use so for a while people were always giving bike guys a hard time about pegs. seven months later this showed up in the big bowl at Pier. I haven’t said anything in a while and things seem to be pretty mellow. I asked a bike guy aqbout the pasteup and he said it was a joke from the peg-enthusiast faction. It was pretty funny that they dug up a photo of Rick James. What? Is he the patron saint of BMX? I took two of them down during the Pier Park cleanup over the weekend – which is my excuse for not posting more by the way. I put in about 8 hours on the cleanup not counting driving over there twice. Today I skated.

The rest of the, err, staff seems to be on strike while I’m on vacation. So this is the best I can come up with. If you hear “Blondie” and “skateboarding” in the same sentence, you’re probably more apt to think of the band. The rest of today’s Blondie had nothing to do with skateboarding, and wasn’t funny anyway. What can you expect from a 77 year old comic strip? Click to enlarge.

I was going to title this post “It’s reigning Jesus” or “It’s raining (religious) men” but instead I used a quote from an article in the Anchorage Press titled “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” It’s a heartwarming tale of an 18 year old kid in Anchorage who is fighting the Alaskan weather and racial prejudice on journey to become a professional skateboarder. Sounds like a Hallmark movie. Oh yeah, the whole point of this post is Stephen Baldwin in Russia (!?!) holding a religious-themed skateboard [Source: Perez Hilton] and even better, (Is that possible?) a series of Jesus action figures engaged in Extreme!™ sports, not to mention panhandling (?!) , bull-riding, and in army fatigues(!!?!?!). All this plus a Jesus in skateboarding roundup, or hoedown, if you will, after the jump.

Portland designer Maple (not affiliated with Maple skateboards) makes earrings, bracelets, rings and purses from used skateboards. Sure, that’s been done before, but this is a slightly different take. It’s mostly geared towards gals, but I could see the bracelets going over well in some circles of skateboarding, like the Ipath crowd. The hexgaon shaped one looks cool. Is there a macho word for “bracelet?” Maple is at the mercy of finding used decks with dyed plies to make her craft more interesting. Extra bonus, part of the proceeds from some sales go to a skateboarding charity to be determined. Both owners of the SPS acronym ( 1 and 2 ) were being considered. Maybe Maple can fill in the blank. Check it out.

Oops. Too late. Our civilization is doomed if these are our future leaders. The video is called “mitch hittin himself wid a skateboard” [sic] and is described as “mitch tryin 2 be like jonny knoxville off jackass.” Oh wobble94, I don’t know where to start. Let’s hang out together.

Glenhaven opens tomorrow? Wait, how did that happen while I’m away in Florida? I am really dropping the ball as far as Oregon skatepark openings. First I missed Irrgon and now Glenhaven, which is only 15 minutes from my front door. EPM doesn’t have these problems. I guess it will be there when I get back. Get your super limited edition shirts at the event tomorrow. Hey MC! Sign me up for an XL… Oops, they only have large and medium. Must be a result of all the unsold memorabilia they have left over from the Pier Park opening. Maybe Conahan will have them both there. Buy a cool shirt, help us get a roof over a skatepark. Details.

Recently I posted some construction pics of a new upgrade to the old Bellingham Washington park. I remarked that the digging seemed to be a bit deep, considering than the plans on the city’s web site only showed a shallow street park. Reporter John Aguilar got the scoop. I had a little chat with Sage today. He said the deep end of the bowl would be around 10 to 10.5 ft deep and then a shallow end and a over vert pocket, and on the other side of the existing sk8 park is going to be the street course that is the actual concept image that shows in the city web site designed by Grindline. So the street area is the one in the city of bellingham web site , but as Sage said the bowl is the bonus hehe!! Very nice, indeed! Sometimes you get more than what you pay for. It’s not as sweet as it could have been, but it will certainly be better than the steaming pile of Purkiss-Rose that they have there now.