Grind Session was released for the Play Station (first one) in 2000. This is kind of cheating because it’s a commercial for a skateboarding game, but it’s notable for a couple of reasons. It’s one of the first times someone managed to get something that approached real skateboard culture on TV. Also, it’s probably the first time Black Flag was ever heard on network TV, not counting the background music in the movie Repo Man. But wait, there’s more. Is that a videogame likeness of Pig Pen skating Burnside on national TV?

Dateline: Asheville, North Carolina. Asheville Citizen-Times has a reporter on the scene covering this important story. This is stuff of Pulitzer Prizes! The headline: 45-year-old skateboarder backs up traffic.

This is day 11 of a commercial a day. I’m going to quit after day 14. Not for lack of commercials, I just can’t take the pressure. It’s the weekend man. I ‘ve got better things to do! Here’s a recent HP Computers commercial featuring the rapper Pharrell. He talks a bout having his own pro skateboarding team. I won’t get into that here because I’ve got a separate post planned about how much of a jackass he is when it comes to skateboarding. However, there is a bit of unintended irony in the way the skateboarders are presented that makes them look like puppets. Catch the commercial after the jump.

Sorry about the crappy phonecam photo. I didn’t bring a camera. My favorite detail is the new tombstone at the top end of the street section. It’s near the center of the photo and covered – maybe eight foot tall. Looks like everything is formed up. The tractor was gone.

The Discovery Channel has a series about GM’s car of the future (not to be confused with Chef of the Future) which is basically a radical (no pun intended) new platform for building cars. Why do we care? The basic chassis system is officially called “The Skateboard.” It’s powered by fuel cells and has no central motor, allowing different body configurations to be bolted on at will. Also, the steering is fly-by-wire, meaning the turning impulse is controlled electronically like a jet plane instead of mechanically. And yes, it looks like a skateboard. Catch the video after the jump. [Source: AutoblogGreen]

I thought I was going to run out of commercials to showcase, but lucky you, I dug up this old VHS tape I had in a box. Continuing the yogurt industry’s obsession. with skateboarding, here’s an ad from around 1999 or 2000 for Yoplait brand GoGurt, which is yogurt in a tube. Please excuse the clipping of the beginning which was due to not giving the VCR enough time to cue up properly. That was the best I could due at the time. I blame Y2K.

Northwest Skater has some new photos of the Irrigon, Oregon skatepark being built by Grindline. Brick coping, hobbit doorway, bumpy rock lip. Lots of unusual stuff going into this one.

This is the Three Sixty table from Sports Utility Furniture in Germany. Right now its for sale in at The Future Perfect in NYC, for an unknown price. I’ll bet it’s spendy. It had better be, because the rest of their current designs are very weak. I’m not a huge fan of gratuitous skateboard parts in furniture beacause it usually looks very forced, but in this case I kind of like it. Hopefully the glass is heavy enough to keep you from taking an old Chevy Chase prat fall if you put a hand down on it. I imagine you wouldn’t want to use too good of a bearing in those wheels. I wonder what their durometer is? Independent trucks too, that’s a nice touch. [Source: AGP design notes]