Like many things (most) on this site, this post started out as a relatively simple showcase of a board from Michiel Walrave to add to the crappy board series. And because it was a company I’d never heard of I tried to learn a little more about it and found out there are barely any pics old AISI boards out there. You might think maybe it’s actually “AISL” and not “AISI” but those searches returned nothing.

These are part of a set of Northworld Novelties stickers from 1986. No Wimps! No Nerds! I can remember seeing these back in the day and always assumed the were bootlegs but it looks like the actually licensed Wimpy from King Features and the Nerds Candy critters from Sunmark, who owned that brand at the time. These are scans a not photographs which is why the look washed out. Why? Once again, today’s LED scanners are unable to properly reflect neon colors. The true colors are quite vibrant in the group photo though. No Nerds and No Wimps were often seen in the company of the infamous “No Fat Chicks” stickers at the time. – Thanks to Jason Harrison for the pics.

As a kid I can remember seeing ads like this in the back of comic books and other publications aimed at adolescents. The gas is, you send away for some sort of sales kit, most likely a catalog and some motivational text, and then you could sell greeting cards and who knows what else to all your neighbors and extended family in hopes of earning enough credit to get some free stuff from the advert. It was your job to take the orders, collect the money, send it to the company and then deliver everything when they mailed it to you. This scheme for using a child labor farm sourced from comic books has been around for a long time, probably dating back to the 40’s with Grit, which amazingly, is still a thing. The practice of bribing kids with the potential to earn prizes probably had it’s heyday during the 60’s and 70’s. Here are 2 examples from the late 80’s and early 90’s in which you can earn a Nash or Variflex skateboard.

Friend of the site and undervalued hero of the skateboarding and surfboarding historical community, Scott Starr passed away some time this month. Scott put a tremendous amount of effort and his own money into collecting and preserving old skateboarding and surfing films, which included having them professionally digitized when his finances permitted. His numerous accounts on Youtube wouldn’t last long due to obscure, questionable or pointless copyright claims. The only thing that seemed to matter to him was preserving these films and TV appearances, some of them dating back to the 60’s. I used to email him fairly regularly about things I’d seen or heard about, and he was a willing fountain of knowledge. I also bought a handful of 60’s era comic books from him that featured skateboarding content, you can find many of these on S&A. Scott had some health and anxiety issues he battled with, keeping him out of the public eye and probably contributing to that fact that he is not more widely known to later generations of skateboarders. I consider him an important person in the lexicon skateboarding in popular culture. I don’t know that there is anyone else out there doing the kind of…

Details are slim to nonexistent on this, but you are looking at Tracy Morgan appearing on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, while decked out in an outfit that is assuredly based on the Brand-X Weirdo model. I’ve got a message in to Brand-X and will share what I learn. You know the Weirdo has a special place in our hearts here. UPDATE: It’s an old appearance from 4/01/19 and you can watch it here. The clip available online is not the full interview and the topic of his outfit does not come up.

Once upon a time in the fabled past known as “The 80’s,” I briefly had a miniramp in my front yard. I was supposed to be in college but I was spending all my time skateboarding and hanging out with the bands in the house I lived in. A friend of mine who would later go on to be a veterinarian, once famously received a letter from his parents stating that he needed “less Randys” in his life. Of course I would invite friends over to ride my ramp. And, as one often does after a night out at the bars, a suggestion was made to use box springs for those late night revelers who were uncomfortable on a skateboard. It started out as just dropping in from the platform, but it escalated to dropping in off the porch roof into the transition. Note: No college students, indie rock stars or dropouts were hurt in these photos.

Hey! Swatches are still a thing, and they released a collection called Swatch x Peanuts. One of those watches featrues Charlie Brown on a skateboard. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it looks like they cobbled it together from an illustration where Charlie Brown is running and a separate illustration of a skateboard. – Thanks to Lin Holcomb for the tip.

The Real Ghostbusters in this context refers to the UK based Marvel comic series that ran from 1988-1992 for 193 issues. Issue #53 dates to 1989 and features I was going to try and buy one cheaply but I managed to find the entire issue online at a sketchy website that threw up some security warnings so I won’t post the link here. There is no real additional skateboard art other than the cover because the story is a written one that appears in a feature called “Winston’s Journal,” which is kind of a bummer, but’s a cheap way to fill pages. Check out the cover, and the story, plus a bonus shot of a crab on a skateboard from an advertisement for Tom & Jerry comic book in the same issue. And for the heck of it, a bunch of Ghostbusters skateboards from the late 80’s to present day. – Thanks to David Maes for the tip

The Milwaukee Journal has an article on a documentary in progress about the Turf (AKA Surf N’Turf) skatepark. Much like the Nude Bowl, the Turf just won’t die, and keeps coming back decades after you thought it was gone forever. Opened in late 70’s then shut down and turned into a strip club, then reopened in the 80’s, then shut down again, raised and burried. Then dug up and skated briefly! Then filled in again amidst a community effort to have it saved. It seemed like a pipe dream, but somehow the City of Greenfield ended up buying the land from the department of transportation to save it from becoming offramp. Now, not only will it be dug up and refurbished as it existed, indoors in it’s heyday, it will also be surrounded by a new, modern and public skatepark outside. Stoked to be able to add this to our coverage of The Turf, and anxiously awaiting the premier of “Believe It.” [Photos: L-City of Greenfield. R- Peter DiAntoni]

We just added 15 new-to-you zines to the 80’s Skatezine Gallery. The new titles include Contort, Clueless and Skeezer from the Boston area, Skate Street and Clueless (moved) from Wisconsin, Social Disorder from Illinois, Crakpot from Oregon, Tight Transitions and Naughty Nomads from California, Asphalt Assault from Georgia, Freezine from Ontario, Canada and Vaffanskate from Italy. There are currently 57 complete issues in the gallery now.