Sarasota has metal stick figure sculptures called Tube Dudes sprinkled all over town. I haven’t been to Payne Park in a handful of years. I don’t think this Tube Dude was there during my last visit. The baseball cap and basketball in hand are a bit of a head scratcher until you read the plaque dedicating it to “Coach Dan,” who must have been a basketball coach… who liked skateboarding?

When I first saw this sculpture I assumed it was just a temporary installment that was part of the D-Town Throwdown context in Dallas, Texas. It turns out that “Skaterbird” by Brad Oldham Studio was in fact, the impetus for contest, and is a permanent installation. The sculpture sits atop a parking garage which is home to the sanctioned downhill portion of the contest. [ Photo: Billy “Bones” Meiners ]

I spent most of yesterday in a hospital yesterday. Turns out my wife has a blood clot in her leg but she’s going to be alright. There’s a boatload of new construction at Legacy Emanuel, including art in the courtyards, as seen here. The dark part on the right is grass and the other end is a mirror image.

Skate Fails are a collaboration between Alex Trochut & Xavier Mañosa that can be found over at Apparatu. The collection features decks that look like they are made out of spilled paint or decks that have somehow been melted and made pliable. How do they achieve this effect? They are ceramic. The trucks look real, but some of those wheels might be ceramic as well. Skateboard art is… a mixed bag in general. The skateboarding public in general seems to have lower expectations for what qualifies as “art.” It’s nice to see someone fully execute a concept. I like several of these pieces, in particular, I’d love to have that red one hanging up on my wall. – Thanks to Michel Skart Poulin for the tip.

Ehren Bienert is a sculptor who used to work for McFarlane Toys. He’s also a skater, and for the past three years or so he’s been sculpting some skateboarding personalities. His work is pretty amazing. He even makes the boards himself. He sculpts them in wax first, and makes a mold for a plastic resin cast. Check out Sculpt or Die. – Thanks to Heath Berg for the tip.

There was some brouhaha about virtual reality skating on the Viet Nam Veteran’s memorial in Tony Hawks Project 8. I can’t be sure about reactions to skating on the monument to fallen defenders in what the locals call the Homeland War in Croatia. Of course, it’s a different kind of memorial. The Wall is more like a giant tombstone, while this one is more of an undefined usable public space. I mean, you wouldn’t get mad at that little kid for laying on it, so skating on it isn’t that far of a stretch. Reminds me of a monument to capitalism in Michigan. More pictures at Big Creative Industries. – Thanks to Urban for the tip.

I’ve been contemplating some designs for skate spots in my head lately. One idea that I’ve had for a while consists of parallel tracks of wave like bumps varying in frequency and staggered side by side. Watching this video was both disappointing (because it’s kind of been done) and validating at the same time. It looks pretty great for found terrain, but if it was built for skating I’d lie to see the tracks staggered and directly adjacent. I have to applaud the length of these things though, they certainly didn’t skimp on the concrete. – Thanks to our resident secret bike spy in the house, Mike Estes. Update: Added some actual skate footage too.