The concept of this picture turned out to be more interesting than the reality. Shoot an invert with a guy touching the bottom of a boar, flipit 180 degrees and make it look like the skater is balancing on the other guy’s fingers. It looks weird all right, like Grover has been shrunk down, but it’s all unaltered. See it rightside up after the jump. Skater: Steve Grover. Hands: Mark Conahan. Concept: Grover. Skatepark: Newberg.

I quote from the press release: “In the 80’s there was no bigger skateboard company than Powell Peralta. . . . One of the key factors to Powell’s dominance as a skateboard powerhouse were the ground-breaking graphics. Using extremely dark and detailed hand drawn image of skulls, snakes and dragons, PP was the first skate/street company to throw such taboo images into the mainstream. . . . Today designer Danny Drake has teamed up with George Powell to reissue a collection of 8 of the most memorable graphics in skate history on updated bodies. These PP items are an extremely limited edition and are only available in “The Rail” at Nordstom”.

Maxtor makes hard drives. Kids these days with their Myspaces and digital cameras and the pirate MP3s need a place to store all their Interweb desktops. Maxtor thinks they can sell them a networked storage drive. They’ve created a web site with a fake family to show off the product. The daughter’s name is Tirin, and she has a dream (other than a real name) and that is to make her own skateboarding website…” Hey Tirin, as this site will prove, any jackass can download Wordpress and make one for free. Duh. I swear I’ll make a real skateboarding post soon.

Skull Skates is not the exact same thing as PD’s Hot shop, but they are close enough. So Canada’s longest running skate shop turns 30, which is quite a milestone considering most skate shops last three years at best. These guys have made it to 30, and for 28 of those years Skull Skates has been running too. They are throwing a party to celebrate, along with the launch of the first ever Skull Skates designed shoe in colaboration with C1RCA. You’re probably not invited. Where’s the shoe? I don’t see it.

And Generalísimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Hold on. I just had a terrible thought. The Tony Hawk Foundation did actually donate $1000 to Skaters For Public Skateparks in Portland. If that’s a typo, and the money actually went to the original acronym owners Skaters For Portland Skateparks, then we are in trouble. In any case. The squashed design above will be available (un-squashed) on T-shirts and possibly skateboards on opening day, October 14th, 2006. MC made it. He’s also got some more good pics of the park progress as does the original SPS.

Rounding out three gratuitous Tony Hawk posts in a row is this chronologically challenged bit on his appearance at the grand opening of the Missoula Montana skate park. Now that we’ve got an insider or two (Photo Credits: Top left – Bryan Southard Bottom – Chris Swan AKA Bone Man), I don’t have to poach pics from the newspaper web sites, but I will anyway. More pics and links, including The Grind That Never Was after the jump.

Did I say smite? I meant smiles on Montana. Man, when Tony comes to your town, better stop the presses and shoot that frontside grind. Especially if you have a Darth Vader helmet at your local park. What a great name for a newspaper – The Leader & The Advertiser. Also, please applaud the fake highligter marker effect.

Excuse me. The caption reads “…tries out a move…” which begs a few questions. What move did he try, and did he indeed like the move? Was he able to return the move without a receipt? Did he buy the extended warranty in case he had the misfortune to bust a move? Links and more after the jump.

Updated: Instead of just tipping my hat to EPM’s post on Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized video, I decided to turn it up to 11. The vid caps above are from no less than three four different Institutionalized appearances on video: The straight video, a Beavis and Butthead appearance, a fake live appearance in a club on Miami Vice!, and the video for Institutionalized 93 – the remake. More vid caps and links to the vids after the jump.

Yup, new reissues from Powell. As normal they are all over the place. Sometimes they get it right (the Frankie Hill Bulldog for example, which looks awesome), but did we really need another Gelfand reissue, especially in ghetto camo? And the choice of a reissued Jay Smith snubnose is just bizarre. Good luck selling more than 50 of those. The others are just new colorways of existing reissues. The cutaway on the Cab might be new, but there have been so many reissues of that graphic, that it’s tough to keep up. And why not put ALL of the reissues under the Powell-Peralta brand? It sure would make the line more unified.