Insert Elephant Man video by the Stupids here. Not to be confused with this elephant. Check out the ad for Powerflex Skateboards.

A trip to Target is a 50/50 chance that’s I’ll be able to squeak out a quick post. This time I found this helpful display instruction accidentally left on by an employee who stocked the shelves. Maybe the next version the Kryptonics produces will have an addendum that says “Don’t forget to remove this notice.” This is the very important, critical piece of skateboarding history that would be lost if I were not out there tirelessly documenting it. Betsy, where’s my Nobel Peace prize? Part of me actually wanted to take the paper notice home with me, but how embarrassing would it have been trying to explain that to store management after I got stopped by security, walking out the door?

Random spot near Siesta Key, Florida. – Thanks to Sparky for the photo.

At first glance you might assume this was a poorly illustrated millennium era skateboarding frog wearing sandals no less. It looks like there are hub caps, which could either be a half-assed reference material used for the illustration, or actual wheel covers which existed on some clay wheel era Nash boards and were also sold as separate accessories in the 70’s. (Ad link coming later). Then I looked at the (long expired) auction info for this poster and it was in the 1950-1979 subcategory of shoes, so there you have it. My guess is early 70’s. Gali was/is a chain of stores in Israel that also manufactures it’s own shoes. According to Hadassah Magazine, besides making skate sandals for frogs, they are also the sole (har, har) supplier of boots to the Israeli military.

We’ve seen basketball once, and tennis not once, but twice. Here’s a California Rampworks build for Nike that combines basketball and golf terrains with skateboarding. The Nike SB Popup Skateboard Park was built for Go Skateboarding Day in 2014.

I was honored to be asked to contribute some of my old skateboarding photos here on Skate and Annoy. I grew up in the seventies and eighties in Arizona skating the legendary Desert Pipes, tons of empty pools, the Love Bowls, and lots more … I now live in Seattle, I have been up here in the Northwest for 20 years. I still skate as much as I can, I love all the amazing skateparks we have here, but sometimes I miss the good old daze … So here is my first contribution, a gallery of pipe photos I put together awhile back, enjoy !!! For more: Desert Pipes

Cookies, chips, and soda! Actually, that used to be a diet that sustained me well around the time these boards were made. Check out these skateboards featuring the Keebler Elf, Chester the (Cheetos) Cheetah, and the Coke logo.

I’m trying to decide how much retouching and color correcting to tackle in the Vintage Skateboard Magazine Advert Gallery. Here’s a comparison for this Zephyr skateboards ad from 1975. Not surprisingly, the forty year old pages are discolored with age. Do you prefer the scanned image with minimal color correction, or the adjusted version that is closer to what the page originally looked like but has a slightly artificial look to it? There’s an enlargement to compare after the jump, but really this is just an excuse to get you to check out Zephyr Skateboards: Young dudes in heavy spots.

I was going through some old files on the computer and found this picture I took a few years ago of some weird signage at an arboretum in Illinois. Fairies use the maple seeds to windboard (much like skateboarding, but through the air). OK. It’s Magical!

Before Mark Conahan was a renown skateboard cartoonist and all around ripper, he was a chubby little kid who modeled for Campbell’s Soup. At least that’s what I’d like to think since I lost my notes on this Campbell’s Soup store display featuring a kid on a skateboard. It looks very 80’s but could easily have been from the 90’s as well. Then again, those volleyball kneepads are very 70’s. Even though that board style existed in the late 70’s, the archives of S&A have pretty much demonstrated that art directors always lag a good 5-10 years behind the times whine comes to skateboard illustrations, so we can’t be sure.