I can’t make a simple post to save my life. This was going to a bundle about handful of crappy vintage computer games that weren’t interesting enough merit their own post. Curiosity killed my free time, and so here we are. In 1988 a 16 year old kid named James Closs programmed a crappy skateboard computer game for the Sinclair Spectrum called Skateboard Joust. He sold it to a publisher and made enough money to buy a car and have some cash during college. James had never stepped foot on a skateboard at the time, or actually played the game Joust. By his own admission the game wasn’t very good, and that always bothered him. 32 years later he released the sequel, Jetboard Joust on the Steam platform in 2020.

Don’t Bite the Pavement is clone of another mechanical game from Tony called Kongman. Game play vaguely resembles the video game Kong I suppose, but it’s all mechanical. There are buttons to punch activate pinball-like levers, and a battery that runs some of the steppers and the swinging guy on the top. You have to maneuver a metal ball through various stages all the way up to the top. Earlier on there are opportunities to get the timing wrong and have the ball return all the way to the beginning of the puzzle, but it seems like once you get past a certain point you’re pretty safe. If you do get to the end, the ball is returned to the star anyway. Kongman came out in 1982, but I’m not sure about Don’t Bite the Pavement. My guess is a little later because they were probably figuring out what to do with unsold stock. – Thanks to Wesley for the pics

If you were more than a casual skateboarder in the 80’s who lived in and around the orbit of Chicago, you would eventually hear tales of a mysterious spot called the Elgin Pipes, allegedly located near a mental hospital, and in 1983, the scene of a double homicide. You could say the spot defitnely had mystique to those who hadn’t been there. Here’s a few pics courtesy of Art Abasolo.

This started as another David ODK post that I rescued out of drafts and embellished. It’s an Italian special edition Commodore C64 computer that came in a box with a skateboard! David found the board on Etsy back in 2015, and I had a screen cap from Facebook that showed a box with no info whatsoever. It was hard to tell if it was real or not, but it is real. Regular googling and reverse image searches came up with nothing but a thousand pictures of vintage skateboarding video games. However, some finessing turned up a decent image on 20thcenturyvideogames.com.

The rabbit holes I fall into… A reader sent in a picture inquiring about a 70’s skateboard he found that had a “Jordy” logo screen printed on the bottom. I felt pretty cocksure that I’d be able to track down an old advert or something. It seemed to me to be an English brand, or otherwise European, but boy did I strike out. Well maybe instead I hit a foul ball over the back fence? I did discover a lot of pictures related to an Italian TV show called Striscia la Notizia that is a satirical TV news program. A quick google image search revealed that it’s like the Daily Show with cleavage, and lots of it. I spent hours on this post. Hours… Dive into obscure Jordy-related Italian skateboard history with me, it’s slightly more interesting than you think!

Check out this Ken Park (AKA Krapnek) model on Kryptonics skateboards. It’s the first pro model he ever had and is so rare that at this time he himself does not even possess one. – Thanks to Jason Lorin for the photos.

This is the beginning of the sacred holiday here at Skate and Annoy known respectfully as the 7 days of Jughead. We’ll see if I have the intestinal fortitude to actually follow through with it, so here goes. Let’s start with Jughead #13, AKA Volume 2 #13, from 1989. The first series started in 1949, but volume 2 started in 1987. This issue features story called “Roll Model” that takes place in the hallways of Riverdale High, like half of all Archie-realted skateboarding stories. Oh, the antics… The tomfoolery! Shenanigans!

From the folks at Brand X, life-size skateboard deck puzzles, AKA S8zzles. The name doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue, (I keep hearing “skuzzles” in my head) but you get the idea. The first 4 releases feature the classic Weirdo, a later era X-Dream, and the Brand X flavored Lester Kasai reissue deck featuring his famous Sims graphics in 2 color ways. What’s the connection? Brand X was started by Bernie Tostenson who did most of those early 80’s Sims graphics. I’m not sure how they are getting away with this copyright-wise, but The Brand X folks have a ton old screen printing films from the Bernie days, including Sims and Kryptonics artwork. The thing that makes these skateboard puzzles more interesting (and expensive to produce) is the decision to die cut these puzzles in the shape of the actual boards instead of just leaving them on a rectangular background. Check it out in the Cool Stuff category.

Because this site is still part of the Skatewing Preservation Society, enjoy these pics of a red Skatewing. This one is in pretty good shape until you get a look at a side view of the tail. Once again, this site is also the only member of the Skatewing Preservation Society. – Thanks to Allen Weekes for the photos.

Here’s another counterfeit Brand-X Sean Goff deck, this time in a different color way. Amazing that they straight ripped off the graphic without changing Sean’s name, and hilarious that they stuck a Powell graphic on top. – Thanks to Christoff Vermeulen for the pics.