Three Sims boards in different colorways? No, the middle one is a Speedent, copied from the Sims ‘New Wave’ team deck from 1981 by Bernie Tostenson. The legit Sims images are from (left) eBay Watch March 2010, and (right) February, 2011. The Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei turned up some history of Speedent: ‘Charles Yeh, CEO of Speedent Corp, has been exporting Taiwan-made sporting goods world-wide since 1975. The first line that Yeh introduced to the international market was skateboards …’ Considering the original date of this early graphic (1981-1982) and Speedent’s origins in 1975, I’d say that Charles Yeh was a pioneer of crappy bootlegs!

Pacer was a brand from the UK that produced some decent boards during the late 70s and early 80s. Towards the end of the 80s they started to make rather crappy completes (pics after the jump). Still, the decks in the picture above (both from eBay) are definitely bootlegs from the original 1988 ‘Maniac’ deck, designed by Doug Cameron. The left one has the typical flat pig-like shape that most of the very cheap decks have and still have, but the funny thing about this one is that the front picture was stolen from a 1987 Valterra team deck called … ‘Ramp Champ’. The complete on the right seems to be a Rusher Sports, which surprises me, since Rusher Sports was a well-known company that had their own designs and the shape was different than this one, if I remember well. I have never seen a Rusher Sports that copied from the big brands, so maybe it’s a Rusher Sports/Pacer bootleg.

At some point a few years back I had to switch email clients, and protocols from SMTP to IMAP, as my OS evolved, I can no longer open the old archived Eudora Email, plus it got corrupted anyway. I did find some scans of a Skate Straight zines in the attachments folder, which I’m sure were meant for the Zine Gallery. I’d like to be able to credit the collector when I do post them, so let me know if it was you, or if you know who put this out. Looks like it was out of Dayton, Ohio. I know this is a long shot, but stranger things have happened. One of the creators posted 9 out of 10 issues in the BMX Society forum but you have to pay for an account that will let you respond or download attachments. I wonder how that is working out for them. Probably keeps most of the riffraff out.

Happy New Year from Skate and Annoy! Thanks to all our contributors, readers and tipsters. We’re working on improvements and additions to the site for a better S&A in 2014. Good health, good fortune and a Dog Cheeze for everyone in 2014! Now go out and skate!

Vintage 80’s Grin and Bear It comic, courtesy of Paul Graf. Too bad the skateboard is mostly out of frame.

It may actually take decades to respond to reader mail, a Jim Gray can attest. I recently found an envelope from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, mailed to Skate and Annoy sometime in 1988, only to be fully examined in an entirely different millennium. Do I regret not reading this letter from Darko Kolesar, AKA “Gricko” from Zehun, Yogoslavia? Do I lament the lost opportunity to create a cross-cultured, transcontinental friendship, let alone the chance to establish an outpost behind the Iron Curtain? Would I have loved to have a copy of the Yugoslavian skate zine Body & Soul in my collection? Do I wonder what Yugoslavian skate rock sounded like in the 80’s? Do fell like a dick? Yes. UPDATE: A response from Gricko! Thanks to everyone who helped track him down. Read the Darko chronicle appended to the post!

This is a fake Schmitt Stix ‘Totem’ complete. The original graphic from 1986 was designed by John Lucero and is pretty rare. This fake one sold on eBay for £6,23 after 6 bids, a complete bargain! Thanks to John William Davies for the tip and Chandra Ruegg for the pictures.

SFGate has posted some pictures in a feature called Four decades of skateboarding in San Francisco. It’s part of their Let’s Go to the Morgue! series where they dig up old photographs from the San Francisco Chronicle. Better versions of the picture, along with a little commentary are on the SFGate blog. The earliest photo dates back to 1964, and the last one is from 1994.