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.

In this edition we have some Malone skateboards. Malone was a brand that produced crappy skateboards in the 80s, but I really don’t know much about it, besides the fact that they were pretty crappy and my brother had one.  I was riding a Rusher Sports  ‘California Pro’ (even worse than a Pro 90) at that time and my brother bought a ‘Malone’ from this sports store. I have never seen these decks back untill now on eBay. Funny thing, I remember my brother ( he was 10 or 11 at that time) described his boards as ‘semi-pro’, haha, but I guess he had a point there, since they were actually better than the ‘Turbo 2’ ones. More models after the jump.

This is a TDK advertisement shot at Venice Beach circa 1989. I’ve seen this up on ebay before, actually but this one actually comes from the Google Books, repository, adjacent to the digital knoll. It’s from “Spy” magazine… ha. Remember that one? I’m looking at the shape of that board and thinking that might be Dave Hackett. Possibly Steve Olson? Anyone got any other ideas?

– Thanks to Sandor for the tip.

While wasting time on Alibaba.com, I saw a lot of bootlegs. Especially the more recent Tony Hawk designs from Birdhouse seem popular to rip off. If you order a minimum of 100 decks, you’ll get them for a few dollars a piece. Yes, I definitely took most of these pics from the sellers, but what will they say? That I stole from them? Also, take a quick tour in their factory here.

On this edition of counterfeit skateboards we have a pretty good rip off of a Tony Hawk claw board. In fact, it’s decent enough to fool the casual viewer. When you look at it up close you realize it’s a bit off. The main drawing is inexplicably off center and the tree branches are not as full as the others, even so they don’t extend to the bottom of the deck. Also missing, the Powell Peralta logo under the claw. The shape is pretty similar, actually, but the tail dome and nose guard are stock, and are definitely suspicious. A reader scored this for $5 at a yard sale. I’ve paid more for worse!

– Thanks to Fungandus for the pics