From Transworld Business: A momentous IASC meeting leads to a more united front among skate hardgoods manufacturers… …a who’s who meeting of skateboard hardgoods manufacturers met to discuss why blank skateboard decks have become so popular, what that is doing to the heart of the industry, and how the manufacturers could band together to effect change. Check out this quote from Dwindle’s Bod Boyle: If we have a generation of skateboarders who grow accustomed to what a blank-product costs and if they think a blank product is as good as branded product, then we really will open the doors to these huge retailers Hmmmm…. I seem to remember a similar conversation about manufacturing skateboards in China. That’s funny, Dwindle came in on the other side of the argument.

One Iowa City post deserves another. En route to Portland from Florida, I passed through Iowa City again on New Year’s day 2002. Coincidentally, Bone Man was there, and it was 1997 all over again. I crashed for the night, and the next day we went to check out the new skatepark. It was well below freezing so it’s mostly inaction shots.

The ‘Skate To School’ auction for The Patrick Kerr Skateboard Scholarship has 14 custom decks available for bidding until December 13th. Signed decks include: Dave Chappelle, Former World Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier, Ray Barbee, Shane MacGowan, as well as original painted decks by renowned skate artists. The The Patrick Kerr Skateboard Scholarship honors the memory of the 15 year old Patrick Kerr,  a LOVE Park activist who was killed on his skateboard by a hit and run truck after LOVE was closed to skaters. Check out the auction which ends December 13. I’ve heard that Chappelle skates. I wonder if he brought his stick with him when he went to South Africa.

This is a great shot. Beer drinking while skating a pool… but then factor in the bottle. The legendary Thrasher photog and Drunk Injun, MoFo is selling some prints like this 1983 shot of Jay Alabamy at Doris’ Pool. The prices are reasonable, plus it’s history. This is also a good place to mention his massive 28 page feature in the new issue (Vol. 5 No. 3,) of Concrete Wave. Six of these pages are available for download from the Concrete Wave web site. If the kiddies don’t know who he is, that’s a good place to start.

Between all the posts about BS involving skateboarding, I sometimes forget that most people just want to see pictures. Here’s a shot taken about this time of the year in 1997 at an indoor mini ramp at a skate shop in Iowa City, Iowa called “Smokin B’s.” I don’t think it’s around anymore. The only shop I found online was a place called The Full Kit. That’s Chris Swan on the coping with (future) Dr. Brad on deck. Bone Man was in town visiting his momma, so a couple of us converged from Illinois. Click the pic to see it enlarged. 1997 was 10 years ago. Does that count as back in the day?

ABC News has a crush on Vans Shoes. They have a two page spread on the 40th anniversary of Vans Shoes titled Skateboard Style Hits Middle Age. It’s a fluff piece obviously, but it’s got a brief history of the shoe and a gallery of some old ads that are worth checking out for comedy nostalgia, plus they have a Jeff Spicoli reference in the first paragraph. I’ve pulled out the highlights after the jump.

Originally this was to be titled Which one is the idiot?: The girl bombing mountain hills at night, dressed in black, or the person believing angels kept that girl safe? Last night I was driving on the winding mountain road by my house and a girl/young woman came sailing down the middle of the road – dressed all in dark colors – on a skateboard. She had no lights or reflectors. I could so easily have hit her. It was only by her angels watching over her that I didn’t. I thought, what an idiot. Please, please. Let’s not get into a religion debate here. Instead let’s band together to to make fun of Tara Taylor Quinn because she writes Harlequin Romances and had the poor fortune to write about skateboarding on a blog titled Story Broads (get it?).

This is not about whether or not you should wear a helmet. Even skateboarders who wear helmets are not under the illusion that they look cool. In an article titled A Bike Helmet With Skateboard Cool, the New York Times mentions that skateboard helmets exude a certain renegade cool and have panache. Aside from these attributes being at odds with each other, skateboard helmets just aren’t that cool. The article talks about Bell’s quest to design a cool helmet for mountain bikers who didn’t want to look like Lance Armstrong (which wouldn’t be that bad if you factor in Sheryl Crow). Highlights and the improbable conclusion after the jump.

Even if you don’t live in our neck of the woods, this interview with the board of Skaters For Portland Skateparks could be of interest to you. Sonny Robertson and Tom Miller founded the organization and are pretty much the reason the Pier Park rebuild is actually skateable today. Highly recommended if you wnat to know how it happened, and especially if you want to get the wheels spinning in your town.

I’ll try it on the streets sometime soon… and hopefully not end up embarrassing myself in the process. Yeah, except you bought it in the first place, so you’ve kind of blown it already. This thing even turns into a rolling bag carrier! More extreme pictures, including what looks like photoshopped skatepark action shots, plus links after the jump.