50-50.com has a Dan Bourqui gallery of sequential photos from the recent Clash At Clairemont. Clash At Clairemont is a Grind for Life event. The pictures might look a like an odd choice at first, but it’s because they are animated gifs and they take a while to load. That’s a cropped still of Lincoln Ueda up top. check it out.

The City of Poway has temporarily closed the skatepark due to “turnstyle construction” which is a weasel’s way of getting around the fact that they are installing biometric fingerprint ID scans as way restrict park usage for certain age groups during select times and of course “cut down on vandalism.” The scanner has a price tag of $5,700, but who knows what it will cost in red tape and overhead in the future. And what is the human cost? WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN. Oh my god, I think I’m going to be sick. We’ll sink with California, when it falls into the sea. See SIgn On San Diego for the full, sad tale. – Thanks to Tito for the tip.

On Friday April 9th the HVW8 Art + Design Gallery will be hosting the Heel Bruise book launch for the last batch of Disaster zines. Celebrating its origins in counter culture youth movements and DIY bookmaking, the Disaster zine highlights the art of Lance Mountain, Thomas Yu, and SkyPage. The final edition comes signed and numbered with a Disaster zine tee shirt. Also on display will be a selection of new works from the three contributing artists, and sounds courtesy of Ras Dynamite (aka Lance C. Mountain). HVW8 Production House Art + Design Gallery 661 N Spaulding Ave Los Angeles, Ca 90036

Yes, it’s Jim Henson day on Skate and Annoy. Here’s a bit from the first season of Fraggle Rock, something I have admittedly not seen more than a few seconds of before now. My wife says she loved that show as a kid, but I married her anyway… It’s from a 1983 episode called the Garden Plot. A Fraggle Rock regular known as Traveling Matt makes a visit Venice Beach and takes a spin on some sort of weird Powell knock off deck. Check out the Carrot Top lookalike. Thanks to Kevin for pointing the camera at the TV!

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from Colin Walsh. Whether or not he rules depends on what side of the bed he woke up on that morning. This is Brandon Morris at the Buena Vista pool in Watsonville California. Brandon loves Watsonville so much he had it tattooed on his legs. Are those NOS Airwalks or did they bring back the old logo? Man I hated that logo and those shoes when they first came out. (No offense, Brandon.) Hey look kids. it’s Pabst Blue Ribbon! Check out the Shot of the Week.

Here’s the final installment of Sadlands video from reader KC aka Kieth Cote aka Bill aka… You get the point. “Aaaah TOTally rad….” These guys make it look so easy. This video ends up in the Badlands. Highlights include weird puppets, van surfing, french kissing and a scum pond obstacle at the Egg bowl. Oh yeah, watch for the handplant to unintentional disaster/finger smash. Enjoy! Good stuff KC. Too bad you guys didn’t have any fun…

Best idea ever. Some gently used decks were repurposed into flyers for the band Hot Lunch. Eric Shea explained how it all went down. My pal Bart unloaded a grip of decks that he didn’t want any more for me give to the neighborhood kids at Potrero Del Sol skatepark here in SF – the ones who needed boards. And I did give away like four of them but out of the four only one kid said “thanks” (and that was because his sister made him say it). The other kids just yelled at me and demanded that I give them more free things. So I thought maybe it would be better to do something different with the remaining decks. I cut a stencil for my band’s next show and spray painted our name and the gig info on the griptape. Then I went around the Mission at night with a drill and some wood screws, putting them up around various wooden telephone poles ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) After each deck was up for a day and a night, I’d post a pic on various forums telling people to go find ’em and take…

Wheelhouse Media publishes Carlsbad Magazine and Encinitas Magazine, two free publications serving the needs of their respective communities. Communities, it turns out, that have identical needs in some cases. They both published essentially the same feature on Tony Hawk, until you get to the last couple of paragraphs where they explore what Tony loves about Carlsbad, his long time haunt, or Encinitas his relatively new digs. Some cool photos from Grant Brittain, check out that tweaked air. You can read them online or view them in their original layouts. Don’t bother to download the “offline edition.” For some annoying reason they have chosen a proprietary flash reader with assorted clumsy files. Ever heard of a PDF? Also, you”ll need an email address to read the pretty versions. Seriously guys? Could the whole thing be any more intrusive? They don’t even tell you what they are going to do with the email. At least they gave each magazine a separate layout.

MRZ has posted some great pre-opening day photos of a new skatepark in the LA (Moorpark) area called Poindexter Park. Head on over to Concrete Disciples to see them. It’s a California Skateparks project. Lance Mountain designed the bowl (above right) after a backyard spot named the Buddah pool. There are some construction shots, where esle, but Concrete Disciples? There is supposed to be some sort of snake run feature but so far I can’t find any photos. – Thanks to Keith Cote for the tip.

The California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica just opened a show called “SKATEBOARD: Evolution and Art in California.” The shot at top is thanks to a friend of Sam at SkateOregon. The exhibit runs until the end of May, 2010. You can catch a description of the artifacts and lenders at the official museum site, and you can see some photos at CtotheJL.com (Photo: bottom right) or The Smogcheck. The “museum” is actually located in an historic house in Santa Monica. The contents appear to be the usual fare, but I never get tired of looking at that stuff.