On the left we have the Street Art Stencil book from OllyStudio published by Lawrence King. It’s less a brief introduction to stencil artists and more a book of actual laser cut stencils you can use to make the artists more famous or get them into trouble. The skateboarding gnome is attributed to Bandit. On the right is a stencil as seen on the Twitter feed of Longboard Girls Crew @longboardgirls. It’s pretty good renegade stencil work but it’s hard to ignore the some obvious signs of Photoshop manipulation. Just look at the repeated patterns on the bottom right. Is the whole thing fake? Even if it is, it’s a good idea. My favorite type of street art is the kind that incorporates some element of the surroundings in the composition instead of just using it as a canvas. – Thanks to MC and @philosophersk8r for the tip.

If an artist or craftsman also happens to be a skateboarder, chances are they will eventually get around to making a skateboard in their chosen medium, as is the case with Nanda Soderberg. These glass skateboard decks are from an Instagram feed. I believe this is the third glass skateboard deck iteration we’ve posted. (See 1, 2) – thanks to Josh Rodenberg for the tip.

Well it’s here. The hoverboard park of the future, as well as details about the board and the park. It’s both amazing and quite a letdown at the same time. What you can do with this Lexus built hoverboard is pretty amazing. In some ways it’s the promise of Back to the Future delivered… with one huge exception: You are limited to riding on a predefined track. In spite of all the talk of innovation and and achieving the impossible, it’s basically a maglev train that you push with your foot, with a few oversized Hot Wheels style jumps thrown in. Is it anything new? Not really. Is it freaking cool? Yes. Lexus spent over a year and who knows how much money developing this concept. Is it better than the Hendo hoverboard? That’s a tough call. The Lexus version is more fully realized, from a demonstration point of view, and the nature of the fixed track means you aren’t going to slide out constantly like a snowboard on ice with no rails. In that respect, the Lexus version is more like a skateboard, however the Hendo’s ability to pick an infinite number of paths (as long as it’s on…

Jeffrey Ballard sent me an email with these pictures of some skate toys he retrieved while visiting his parents house last Christmas. He distinctly remembers getting them when was in 5th grade, which makes him… old, but not as old as me. The guy on top is still being produced in a couple forms. I’ve seen that form in a couple of sizes attached to parachutes. There’s a handstand guy too. On the bottom right there’s the first generation of commercial fingerboards every 80’s skater remembers. Clear plastic enclosing an offset printed board graphic. Super brittle and non functional, but sort of cool at the time. I remember thinking they could have done a better job the first time I saw one of these, but they were just toys. Tech Decks with $75 truck replacements were decades away. I think they made this type of fingerboards well into the new millennium, so maybe Jeffrey isn’t as old as I think. Then again that is a Dan Wilkes graphic on a Tracker board…

In Stan Lee Presents – The Condor, Tony Valdez loses his parents and the use of his legs. Then, with the help of robotic legs and nanobots from the family business, he turns from professional skateboarder into the skateboarding crimefighter known as the Condor. The reviews for this straight to DVD release are not good. It already aired on Cartoon Network at least once, but you can watch it for free on Hulu while it lasts or rent it from YouTube. It’s horrible, unintentionally funny, and the main character is almost totally unlikeable. 10 minutes into the plot, the publisher of the “biggest extreme sports magazine” invites Tony to spend the night so she can make him a superstar. There’s quite a bit of PG-13 sexual innuendo, micro short skirts and heaving cleavage, but the overall quality of the animation, story and voice acting is so poor that it’s only going to appeal to a much younger, somewhat confused audience.

Two comics that were originally sent to me as fuzzy low light photographs by MC. They’ve both turned up online. At the top is Baby Blues, from January, 2013. The second Calvin and Hobbes strip originally ran May 2nd, 1987. Bill waters has a new book out and unfortunately, a bunch of dead links on his website.

This video almost got relegated to Broken Kingpins but there’s some excellent dork session and bad joke telling in it. Enjoy some good stuff from Skidmark Magazine

Aldens was a mail order catalog based out of Chicago from 1899 (not a typo) to some time shortly after 1982. This is a page from their 1978 Christmas calendar with three skateboards. I can’t ever remember seeing an Alden’s catalog despite living in the Chicago suburbs during their last gasp. Two of the models are familiar plastic boards, the Free Former (forerunner of the bidirectional popsicle stick!) and the GT Coyote II. There’s got to be thousands of Free Formers in landfills across the country. The Spinner is made from oak or kapoer [sic] which might actually be kapur. Good luck finding anything about Spinner Skateboards on google.

Check out this design for a simple DIY skateboard rack from Instructables. It’s super clean looking and pretty easy to make, I just wonder how sturdy it would be. I’m imagining my kids cracking it after a month or so. It’s pretty clever though. – Thanks to Kathleen Conahan for the tip. UPDATE: Well Crud. Posted the same concept 2 years ago.

Andrew sent me a picture of this box some two years ago, but it was pretty blurry so I resolved to try and find one in a store, but never did. In the meantime I found some good scans online via Mr Breakfast and Flickr user Jason B. This is a limited edition box of “Rockin’ Xtreme Colors!” Fruity Pebbles with “amped up fruity take!” On the back you get a full color illustration of the Bedrock Extreme Skate Park. – Thanks to Andrew Wahl for the tip