I’d be stoked too If I lived in a city with a good skate park. Oh wait, I do. Anyway, The City of Stoke On Trent (True!) in England is coming up on the first anniversary of their skate park called, what else, but Stoke Plaza? It looks pretty damn good (from the Internet at least.) I’m not much for today’s street parks, but this one has plenty of banks and an interesting layout that looks fun. Topping it off is an outlying system of skate paths, an interesting concept that appears to be gathering momentum among builders and advocates. These pictures are from the UK Sketchy Skateboarding website.

“Mellow Cat?” you ask? In the late 70’s it ran in Skateboarder Magazine, making it older than most people with a skateboard these days. I’m not sure if it ever really fit in with the times. Maybe it was a California thing. From what I remember there were always a lot of weird looking guys flying out of skateparks Mad Magazine style. We co-publish the Hopeless Old Men on Skateboards comics that are kind of the antithesis of Mellow Cat, except when he’s not pissed off there are sometimes similarities. Man, MC is going to be pissed when he reads this. In any case. Author Ted Richards might be getting a Mellow Cat book together. Sounds like a project for Concrete Wave Editions, but as an old hippie, maybe Richards doesn’t trust the Man anymore. What else is he doing? Richards appears to be a thriving Illustrator/Multimedia/Web Site artist. His site has an example of a Mellow Cat and some interesting production notes in case you don’t have any 25 year old copies of Skateboarder laying around. Mellow Cat – Poached from EPM

This late 2004 press release is old news but I can’t find the NHS press release from June of this year online. Basically, NHS is supposed to distribute new exclusive skateboard helmets, including a new Tony Hawk signature model that was promised way back in 2004. Let’s hpe it looks like the one onthe far right. I don’t have a pproblem with Bell Helmets making a skateboard helmet. They’ve been making them for motorcycles for years. If you are going to wear one, you might as well pick one that works.

Skateboarders Given Stylish Ride By Glow-in-the-Dark Compound Err.. Yeah. Whatever you say, Marketing Man. I hope RTP Inc. feels like they are getting their money’s worth from you. This line of skateboards is actually called “FU Boards”, which is exactly what I am predicting the buying public will say about this product. Thanks go to field reporter Rich from EPM for this tip.

Not Wet Willy’s, but these are some Champaign Illinois waterslide action pics from Fall of 1986 near as I can tell. Awesome hairstyle dude… Oh wait, that’s me. Can’t figure out the post title? Skip to the end.

August 2006 eBay Watch is up. Recognize those eyebrows? Anyone wanna buy some shoes for $1844? Anyone? Check it out.

Where is this waterslide called Wet Willy’s? Somewhere in Missouri. An earlier post sparked some interest so I dug around on the Interweb and found some very intersting non-action photos and a video on YouTube. Reminds me of a waterslide session we had in Champaign Illinois back in the 80’s. Until I dig up those photos you can see more from the two sources above. The top pictures are poached from Memory Machine and the bottom two are frame grabs from Workshop’s video.

OK. Finally it looks like things might be picking up over there. I’ve posted some more progress pictures. Looks like the permit problems have been resolved and the only thing holding them back is a work crew that is scattered to four corners of the Northwest. Opening date is supposed to be Oct 14. Check out the progress.

This Flickr thing is… another great way to waste time. This kid Any Wissman has a couple of cool skate photos posted there. I googled him to see if I could find a web site or something, and found his myspace page. (Nice self portrait!) Problem with all these so-called free Interweb communities and services is that they require you to jump through a bunch of hoops to contact people. You have to join, and that means another password combo to remember. Forget about retrieving it if you use fake info like I usually do. Oh well. Andy, if you are reading this and have some more photos like these, I’d like to put up a small feature on Skate And Annoy if you are down.

No, this not a new airline with a hub in Jersey, (oh wait, that’s Guido Air) it’s a Flkr post sent in by EPM. See the original here. Looks like a Lien Airwalk or maybe a Madonna on the faucet extension. Photo by UnoLobo