What do you call that trick where you are pushing off on your skateboard and your back leg catches the rear wheel on your skateboard? Oh yeah, it’s called funny! One guy made a documentary about it. What a happy coincidence. Just yesterday I was trying to come up with an
excuse to post an old video of I have of House of Neil doing the same thing. The first vid is called “Crash, Burn & Replay: A Segway Documentary” It’s pretty good, even though it flirts heavily with overkill. The second one is a short but sweet star vehicle for Neil titled “The Legends of Stenchtown,” after the Stench Ditch, a seminal, hardcore, locals only, dare I say Extreme™ skate spot in Evanston Illinois, and home to the Stenchtown crew who revolutionized skateboard slams with style.

I’m preempting another “over it” post. This clip is being passed around the web like what’s his name’s girl that is giving that stuff out to all them graffiti guys. Danimal reviewed the Girl Yeah Right! video (on VHS no less) and now the invisible skateboard sequence is all over the Interweb™ again, so you might as well watch it here too. You can catch the invisible section after the jump, or watch the whole dang video due to the magic of Interweb™ piracy and our friend Chompy.

I try to refrain from commenting on shoe stuff as a rule, which is why we didn’t mention Lance Mountain jumping ship to Nike SB (oops, too late). Here’s an article in the OC Register showcasing the opulent wealth of Sole Technologies owner Pierre André Senizergues. It’s a feature that is kind of like MTV’s Cribs for a-holes. Eat the rich.

Pierre André Senizergues lived in a van when he arrived in California from France as a young man of 21. He spent his days in the sunshine, skateboarding at the beach. At night, he’d move from parking lot to parking lot until he found a safe spot to sleep. Now, 22 years later, he owns four homes, including two waterfront locations in Newport Beach. Along the way, he built a $200 million skateboard-shoe company in Lake Forest, Sole Technology Inc.

Old people and computers mix about as well as old people and skateboards. Utah’s KLS 5 TV news did a story on the nationwide trend of car surfing, or being pulled behind a car on a skateboard. They call it a nationwide phenomenon because they found four (yes, 4!!!) videos of car surfing on YouTube. Better call out the National Guard! Actually, the term “car surfing” refers to climbing out of your car and standing on top while it coasts, but the fact that there are some 700 plus videos of that on Youtube didn’t deter the aged staff of KLS 5 in Salt Lake City Utah from making up their own terminology and declaring it a trend. (Car Surfing Becoming a Dangerous Trend in Utah!) The guy in the top shot is actually wearing a lei while riding to the soundtrack of the Beach Boys Surfin USA. Of course, there is the obligatory Back to the Future reference. The main point of the news piece is to point out how dangerous car surfing is. They even bring in an “injury prevention specialists” to corroborate the obvious. Lei boy wipes out after his so-called friends start pelting him with sports equipment, and the guy in the bottom right really eats it really hard. You can watch them both after the jump. If you are one of our Utah readers who happened to catch this news report on tape, please get in contact, I’d like to get a copy for a project we’re working on. [Update: The Interweb™ ate my post! I fixed the missing content.]

You will notice some changes this month. Because it’s my column and I can do what I want, I’m dropping some of the usual big $$ boards because I’m sick of looking at them. No skull and snake McGills for example, no Jason Jessees (except for a reissue), no Roskopps (except for a reissue). If I get bored writing about tem every month, I’m sure that you get tired of seeing them. I might bring them back next month, but probably not. I’m going to try to feature some graphics you don’t see as much by some lesser-known skaters. Or team boards. They don’t sell for as much, but it makes life more interesting damnit. Check out April’s eBay Watch.

That’s right, Lib Tech is giving away a free skate trip to Sweden to everyone… or at least everyone who wins this contest, which is of the skateboarding talent variety. This ought to be interesting for Mason Huggins, now that he’s no longer on Lib Tech.

Contort was pretty much the king of East coast zines. Everyone who traded zines or went to Boston knew about Contort and Dan Estabrook. He and Contort were constantly being mentioned in Thrasher or Transworld. This is issue #2, when Dan was still doing it with a partner. It’s a pretty straight forward zine with just of hint of the more artsy Swank Zine-like approach it would later morph into. I got this as a “back issue” after meeting Dan when he came to visit his parents, who had moved from Boston to Champaign-Urbana Illinois so his father could take a position at the University of Illinois. Blah blah blah. Dan was rad, we had a lot of fun when he’d visit. Later I would go to Boston to check out his scene. Talk about plate of shrimp coincidences, there are a couple of pictures of our own Mark Conahan in this issue. I wouldn’t meet Mark until after the year 2000. Cue Disney theme song.. It’s a small world after all…