Skateboarding as a school activity has been done before I think. The article at deseretnews.com is pretty standard, with the exception that the program was instigated by 60 year old man who had just learned to skate from a former student who now owns the company Skate Pass LLC. I’m not sure how much actual skating the teacher is doing, so we’ll take that with a grain of salt. The succinct title of this post is a quote from a 5th grade girl in the program.

It’s true, I was there. His name was Jason Beaudry and he was assaulting that bank to wall with some wallrides. First, he started with a normal backside wallride. Oh yeah, get your bs wallride as high as you can and then move on to another trick.

But it’s not his fault. I’ve always wanted to do one of those sequence in one frame shots that mimic strobe photography at night. So here it is. It’s not Mike Poor’s fault that this isn’t much to look at. It’s one heck of a long railslide though. I had to shoot it several times because my Nikon D70 is only semi-pro, limiting the number of frames per second as well as the buffer of frames it can hold in one sequence. In any case, At least Mike had the presence of mind to add a little something to make it more fun. It’s something I didn’t notice until I looked at them later. This here is the teaser to make up for the delay in posting the Illinois road trip pics. This the same skate park in Champaign that I posted earlier.

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.