The official web site for the Burnside Project is kind of a mess, hosted on two separate Blogspot accounts, and hard to read and find your way around. If anyone needs/wants help rebuilding the site, consider this my formal offer to do it, pro bono of course. On the plus side, there is a bit of written history that is a work in progress, going back and getting things right is a daunting task. The best part is an old section with a wealth of tiny pictures of various stages of Burnside, mostly from Kent Dahlgren, going way….. back. It looks like it was made back in the modem days, cause the images are pretty small, but still they are an amazing resource. Check out Burnside Photoview.

Skateboarder Magazine. has a slide show from the opening of the Seen of Change photography show in Portland. If you haven’t checked out the show you should get over there before it’s gone. Artery also has shots from the opening. It’s in frames, so you need to hit the main site and click on the Opening Photos link at top.

Milan Spasic created a pool skating documentary called Chlorine in 2003. SnA has posted about his Rip City Project a couple of times. Well, I don’t know what happened to Rick Coyle who started the project but the thing seems to be in the can. The Portland premiere is Tuesday March 24, 2009 at the Doug Fir Doors at 8pm, Showing at 9:30pm. FREE!! Sponsored by Fuel TV and NikeSB.

The economy sucks, and BMX riders and skateboarders at Burnside will be closer neighbors as a result. The Burnside Bridgehead redevelopment project is having funding issues. Instead of funding some of the planned landscape architecture, a parcel of land overlooking the new addition to the skate terrain is going to be turned into a temporary BMX dirt “pump track” filled with “rolling jumps, step-ups, and berms” according to BikePortland. You’d think the city would know that once you let anyone squat, it’s going to be hard as hell to get rid of them! That reminds me, there’s a bizarre new mural at the Department that shows a skatepark under the Fremont bridge and a buttload of bicycles going over the bridge. There’s only one or two skateboards in the whole thing. It’s strange indeed. Who commissions those things anyway? There must not be much of a screening process.

– Thanks to Fitz for the tip.

Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to the art scene. There is Xerox on the Inside of Your Eyelids, a traveling show of 80’s skate ‘zines opened October 1, 2008 in a small gallery at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. I just happened to spot it tonight when I was teaching a class.

Somehow I missed the invite and I’m guessing it will come down this weekend. On the first Thursday of every month there is a mass gallery crawl in Portland and all the new shows open that night. If you want to see it I recommend you get down there in the next couple of days.
PNCA 1241 NW Johnson St., Portland, OR 97209

More snaps of the installation after the turn.

In the two years since Pier Park skatepark’s reopening Portland has built an additional three skateparks and work is proceeding on the Ed Benedict plaza-style skatepark. There’s actually a lot of progress in the last two weeks. It looks good. I heard some kids ask one of the two workers how much longer and he said “a month and a half.” Looks closer than that to me. More images after the turn.

Newline Skateparks and California Skateparks have some concrete poured at Ed Benedict Skate Plaza in southeast Portland, Oregon. I hadn’t been out there for over a month so I was excited to see some concrete. The sign says it’s supposed to open early fall 2008. Looks like there is still a lot of work to be done. More phone snaps after the turn.