This shot breaks a cardinal rule for skate photos, but the outstretched hand in combination with the butt shot makes it interesting to me. This is Omar Hassan at the Rumble in Ramona, Creature’s invite only vert ramp contest held the 17th and 18th of October. You’re seeing it here because Davoud from Concussion shot it, and he’s got more cardinal rules than I do. I thinkthis breaks three of his, Butt shot, fisheye lens and pads. Who knows, he may even be wearing a helmet. You can check out this week’s Shot of the Week or watch some video from the event after the jump, courtesy of Transworld. It’s set to auto play, so mute your speaker before you jump if you need to.

Rumor has it that the vert ramp at the Hood River skatepark is for sale. 5K is the asking price for this highly modified ramp that rests on the chassis of one of those old Firestone touring ramps consisting of a metal frame with a plexiglass surface. I think you can still actually see the plexiglass underneath. Those old Firestone ramps didn’t have any flat bottom either. These things have turned up at skateparks before, always resurfaced. I guess the plexiglass goes bad, although you would think it wouldn’t. I think this ramp was resurfaced last year? Supposedly it’s being offered for sale to public entities only, but if there are no takers after a set time period they will offer it up for all interested parties. Why is the ramp for sale? They’ve got plans for concrete in that spot. There’s no information on the offcial parks web site, but one thing is for sure, if it ever becomes available for private purchase, interested buyers will have to wrestle Steve Grover (right) for the rights to make the first offer. [Photo left: Hood River Valley Parks and Recreation]

Tito from Team Pain sent some pics of a wooden bowl they are building for Modern Skate & Surf in Detroit. OK, looking at the Modern web site, it looks like the closest location they have to Detroit is in a suburb called Royal Oak, so I’m guessing that’s where this is going, even though they currently have a skatepark in Grand Rapids.

Fishbone Skatepark is the name of the entity that ended up using all the donated ramps from the X Games appearance in Mexico City. It’s open, and Urbeskate Magazine has the action photos. Chica Rider off shoot Open Skull is an organization set up for teaching and promoting skateboarding for girls, which is kind of what I though Chica Rider was, but… Open Skull has already had lessons at Fishbone. I guess it’s 30 pesos or about $3 to skate there. I don’t know how that translates in the standard of living there. – Thanks to John Aguilar for the tip.

Dean Tyrell writes: A friend of mine who was patricpating in a Skate contest here in Palma (Spain) last weekend, broke a finger in practice. He went to hospital, got it fixed up in a plaster cast and came back halfway through his heat, (loaded on painkillers hence carefree expression in the foto) and still competed, probabaly with a semi-wet cast. Nice air too. Andres Moral. A very hot skater around these parts.   the foto says it all; the cast, the smile and the air… skateboarding. See the whole shot after the jump. Update: Photo by Albert Crespi

The M.E.S.S. guys will tell you backyard contests are (were) what it’s all about. Are there any vert contests beside the televised marketing vehicles of the X-Games and the AST Dew Tour? Well, in the U.K. there is the, uhm, U.K. Independent Vert Series, that looks like it’s just an excuse for vert riders to get together and skate with other vert riders in different areas. There’s a point ranking and a paltry purse at the end of the year. The editor of Europeskate (Jonathan Young) says there’s a small but dedicated scene of vert riders, although he didn’t say whether or not they still make fun of freestylers. There’s some video from something called the Blackpool Seaside Session contest which was at some undisclosed date in 2008. Watch Sean Goff take some hard slams after the jump. [Source: Europeskate]

I can’t believe I’m actually getting this one up in time, but this week’s Shot of the Week also marks the start of the second year of actually updating the shots once a week. Before that there was just the showcase gallery that would sometimes (OK, usually) stay unchanged for over a month. This week’s Shot of the Week is a Xeno photo of Fritz Mead. I originally wanted to use a photo I found on the Saturday Skateboards web site, but Xeno pointed it out that it was pretty old and had already run in Focus. I don’t care about that so much, but I did like this photo a lot. It’s a 2008 shot from a place called Attleboro, which I’m guessing is in Massachusetts. This photo is actually a little misleading in terms of the scale of the skate structure. There’s a shot after the jump that will put it into perspective.

OK, trying to tie up some loose ends. It’s getting hard to keep trak of everything around here. Here are some shots of the blue fiberglass ramps from the 70’s that found their way to Thrasherland and The Roxbourough in Philadelphia. There’s also a video clip of a modern day ramp using some pieces salvaged from Thrasherland after the jump. If you’ve sent me some Thrasherland/blue fiberglass ramp shots and I’ve failed to post them, please let me know. Same goes for Skateball shots.

They offered to send me some pictures from the vert event in China, and I said Sure, I’d check them out, and see how they went over on the site. They were kind of stingy. Pierre-Luc Gagnon won the vert event (2nd – Andy Macdonald, 3rd- Adam Taylor) and Sandro Dias’ 900 won the best trick. I don’t know if there was a street event, all they sent was vert info. You can read the canned press and see the pics after the jump. Who knows, maybe you are curious about what Zhou Qiang, President of Xingyi New Media Investment Company has to say.

That’s right, we’ve got a 20+ year old beef and we’re calling out Jeff Kendall. Sure, he’s probably got a life and has moved on, but we haven’t, obviously. I would say we’re tryng to embarass him with these old pictures, but there isn’t really anything embarrassing about them, considering he was 14 years old when these were taken by friend Bob Pribble Swamp: Kendall is 14 years old in those pictures. The year is 1981 and he’s riding my old Losi Variflex deck on some ACS trucks and Kanoa Rollout wheels. Why do I remember all this useless information? The Roxbury Ramp was located at Chip Jones house in Indianapolis, IN. Check them out after the jump.