Posts about the blue fiberglass ramps that were used in Thrasherland and Skateball skateparks remain some of the most popular on Skate and Annoy. Stephen Smith was trolling the site and remembered he had saved an old flyer for the Great Bay Skatepark of Newington, New Hampshire:

I went there in the summer of 78 or 79 while on vacation with the folks from Nova Scotia. We got there at like 3 in the morning and all slept in the car so I could go skating as soon as it opened up. What a blast, great memories! Also while at the World Freestyle comp a few weeks ago , I chatted with old school East coast skate legend Bert Mathieson and he had skated there back in the day too. I got the flyer at the pro shop there.

As you can see, as well as “faster and safer,” the Great Bay Arena claimed to be the world’s first indoor fiberglass skatepark. I’m imagining a guy behind the counter at the pro shop mumbling to himself as he crosses off the incorrect session times and rewrites them by hand. He probably stole a coke that day because he was so annoyed.

Amazon Kindle has contributed to the advertising phenomena in which people go to a skatepark to engage in activities that don’t involve skateboarding. Usually it’s a TV commercial involving some radio controlled vehicle, or the next yo-yo abstraction. This time it’s a print ad in Time Magazine with a cute little girl sitting on the deck of a skatepark (which one?) enjoying a good novel instead of skateboarding. It’s perfectly reasonable, as long as she is reading the Secret History of the Ollie. The all caps text highlighted on the warning sticker works as an unexpected shout out to a certain truck company.

– Thanks to Tallboycan for the tip.

It looks like the long, protracted war is finally over as Skateboarding will be proposed for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, so it’s pretty much a fait accompli. The International Skateboarding Federation is excited about it. Who is in that federation, some notables for sure. Also, the Telegraph definitely thinks I’m too old to skateboard. On a positive note, four Canadian skateboarders are being honored for stopping a sexual assault and helping to apprehend the culprit.

(The image on the top left is from Mpora, who has a lot to say about the Olympic announcement but for some reason can’t bring themselves to actually link to it.)

A spare cordless drill and a few parts from the hardware store is all you need to make your own electric skateboard. Start with a round wire brush, right angle bit holder, flexible bit extension, and some nuts and bolts. Just ad a skateboard with large size wheels and you’re good to go. I’m curious how long a charge on drill would last. This seems more like a fun project to do with kids than a viable transportation solution. Much nicer than this one.

[Source: BoingBoing] – Thanks to MC for the tip.

70’s vs 80’s, hippies vs preppies.

Kei Kamara, former DP of Columbus Crew and recent high profile / scandalous signee to The New England Revolution taking his longboard with him on a flight to Boston. That’s right soccer/skateboarding fans…. more breaking MLS action here on Skate and Annoy. I never thought there would be another S&A crossover post that didn’t involve the best team in MLS, the mighty Portland Timbers, but here you have it. This is from Kei’s Twitter feed. You know, I actually felt a little bit sorry for Kei last year.

Check out these two designs from Swampco combing a cool late 50’s early 60’s aesthetic with some 80’s and 70’s style skateboard action. This is a fun collaboration with Mike Guerrero. A couple of the designs are available as t-shirts, and the complete series is available as a screen printed poster. Not shown are Ollie and Wall Ride.

I found a seller on eBay with a lot of well-done bootlegs for sale. They are all from the same brand ‘Choke’ and the quality of the graphics is pretty good. From left to right we have a fake Santa Cruz Jason Jessee,  S.M.A. Mike Conroy, Vision ‘Street Ghost’, S.M.A. Eric Tuma and a World Industries Jesse Martinez. I contacted the seller and he seemed to be a very friendly reader of S&A and a collector of bootleg decks! So here goes his story on Choke according to Omar:

‘Choke was a brand of skateboards sold in a department store in Spain called ” EL CORTE INGLES. ”  They were sold between 1986 and 1991 approximately . There were 3 different prices and 3 different qualities . They came complete with trucks and wheels,  bad axles and plastic wheels in cheaper models, and bootleg trucks of the Gullwing Super Pro and PU wheels (with a lot of sizes and designs) in the “best” models. Over the years I discovered that most of his designs table were copies of brands such as Vision , SMA, World Industries …’

Check out more details of the graphics after the jump. Some of the boards are still for sale on eBay.

Thanks a lot to Omar for the pics and story!

What’s a Rich Eisen? He’s a guy with a sports talk show who got a skateboarding lesson from a man who needs no introduction. Shortly after this clip was uploaded, an intern was fired for forgetting to turn on the deinterlace option.

Here’s an excellent time capsule of skateboard harassment from a local Springfield Illinois news channel concerning a proposed ban on skateboarding downtown. Local business and civic leaders speak out against “skateboard terrorists” in advance of the ban, which ultimately passed. The video was digitized from a decrepit old VHS tape, so there are tracking issues and the sound doesn’t always sync right, but it’s still a good watch. One of the skateboarders makes a reasonable request for a public skatepark to serve the needs of the population, and they did get one after only 25 years.

– Thanks to Nick Rudd for the tip.