Several stills from Skate and Annoy made it into Jeff Grosso’s Love Letters to Skateboarding. I thought I had happened before in another episode but I couldn’t be sure. The footage looked similar to something I shot for Cold War in Hippie Jason’s living room ramp, but it wasn’t the same. A lot of things I post here obviously come from other (credited) places on the Interwebs, but They often get uniquely composited for S&A, with the 1 pixel white border separating different photos. I thought I recognized a few in this episode, but it was hard to tell for sure until I saw part of the Skate and Annoy logo and my floor! It’s great to know that someone in the Nichols and Charnoski camp occasionally trolls Skate and Annoy, and it would be even greater if they weren’t afraid to thank us in the credits with the rest of their sources. Show us some love!

As usual, this episode of Love Letters (Rant and Rave) is highly entertaining. I love Grosso’s take on longboarding. He’s all for you riding whatever kind of board however you want, on whatever terrain you choose… unless you’re not tucking your knee.

I really hesitated a second to buy this ‘Roskopp’, since I will probably never be able to afford a NOS one and this complete looks not bad at all. Of course there are some differences with the original Santa Cruz deck from 1988 by Jim Phillips: the graphic isn’t all over the board, the shape is different and the Santa Cruz logo is not there. Still, if you’d remove the plastics and trucks, this thing might confuse any collector and would look good on your wall. Some more pics after the jump! Found it on leboncoin.

– Thanks to Kamer Kermad for the pictures.

It’s basically a desk toy, the new millennial equivalent of a Newton Cradle. I saw Neolev hover boards a couple years ago during their first Kickstarter campaign, but I skipped the posting about them because at the time the board part of the toy was just a rectangle that didn’t look anything like a skateboard. Neolev has a new Back to the Future licensing agreement and another Kickstarter. Now your desk toy can look like Marty McFly’s hoverboard, or any one of hoverboards used by Biff’s gang. The boards look cool, and the hovering works, but you’ll need a track to make it work, just like the Lexus version of an actual ridable hoverboard. (Liquid nitrogen is optional.) Neolev’s expensive toys are cool, but the novelty is going to wear out quickly. Back and forth. Back and forth. I’m surprised Tech-Deck hasn’t just licensed the designs as fingerboards.

When I first watched this video I thought was one of those acid tracer scenes where the same sequence is repeated with a start time a few frames later, over and over again, but it’s actually multiple sequences composited together. It’s pretty impressive, and it ought to be considering the spent over 480 man hours on the editing alone, not to mention shooting the original sequences. It’s pretty flawless except for the 47 second mark where a skateboarder (Cory Juneau) appears out of thin air without dropping into the bowl. The behind the scenes video is pretty interesting too, despite the severe levelness of the director’s voiceover. He’s so stiff and awkward, especially when trying to sell the Nokia Lumia 930. It’s almost comical, considering Windows Phone’s faltering performance in the market. True story: I was at a BBQ the summer with a bunch of Microsoft employees. As an Apple fanboy it was interesting to hear the shop talk. When they started talking about the phone platform it was as if someone let all the air out of the conversation. Guys who can basically get Windows phones for free were giving up on them, with no foreseeable relief in the future. Which is why I find the delivery and tone of the behind the scenes video so amusing. Look at what we made with this great thing that we’re not even very excited about.

– Thanks to MC for the tip.

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 a special surface) definitely appeals to skateboarding. It doesn’t require power, except that to make liquid nitrogen to keep the thing floating. In addition to flat ground riding, there’s also transition and attempted rail slides. The park has been painted to simulate concrete, but most of the transition elements built for the hoverboard appear to have a wood covering. I swear this is real, if not, it’s the most elaborate and well done viral hoax I’ve ever seen. Loads of video and pictures after the jump.

– Thanks to Concretins Nick for the tip.

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.