Ah, the Long Rider! I first became aware of the Long Rider back in 2005, but only saw a couple small pictures. In 2009 I uncovered an ad for a Long Rider in the Montgomery Ward catalog from 1984. Since that time, I bought one from a reader named Dan Kite who saw it on the site and offered his up for a very reasonable price. I marveled over it, and then I tried riding it a few times but the bearings were sort of shot. Long Riders are sized for (ahem) much smaller riders, so it sat in my basement for a couple years. Recently I picked up one on eBay that Matthijs tipped me off to. It came in the original packaging and it was essentially brand new. Bonus! It was in a different color from the one I already had. So I jumped on it. We had a philosophical discussion about the purchase the other night before we went to the Briefs show. Both my wife and Grover were puzzled by why I spend any money on these things. The answer? I buy them because they are magical and weird!

I swear there are less than five pictures of the

I’m still waiting for someone to send in a pic of the Wheelieboard, so I’ll post this for now. Plastic skateboards were a dime a dozen, so you had to do something to distinguish yourself. The longrider comes to you courtesy of an eBay auction a year or so ago. Right now the only place they are showing up is on defunct Australian eBay auctions. The colorized black and white picture comes from a cool Australian skate zine called GaP, which you can download. It’s in issue one, which dates back to 2005. You can see larger pics and the auction description which is packed with a surprising amount of background info on this 1983 vintage board after the jump.