I love it when worlds collide. You’re looking at a picture of director John Waters and Iggy Pop, likely taken around 1990, possibly promoting the film Cry Baby. And, you’re looking at it on Skate and Annoy because I love both of these guys, and Iggy is wearing a Powell Peralta Mike McGill t-shirt. You have to wonder how Iggy got his hands on that. I would love to credit this photo but all I can find are reposts. It looks like it appeared in a newspaper or magazine at some point. If you know the original source please let me know. On the right: It’s the 40th anniversary of the McTwist? I guest was last year. If you’re going to buy a skateboard commemorating the event you might as well get it from Mike McGgill. Ask Mark Conahan about his Iggy Pop story…

Welcome to another addition of random Chinese crap that shows up in your feed. This is Skateboard Spark Attachments – Uncharged, Rubber Fire Stunt Device for Shoes, Fits Ages 14+ – Outdoor Skating Flame Enhancer. The isn’t the first Outdoor Skating Flame Enhancer by a long shot. In the 70’s there were G&S Speed Sparks, in 2004 the Tail Devil spark skidplate was patented. Somewhere around the same time period, Spark Trucks came out, which I would ink to but I must have never published the review. They were trucks with Tracker-like geometry that had flits embedded in the hanger to cause sparking during a grind. Results were mixed, or maybe we couldn’t grind hard enough to make them impressive. 20 years late we have this rubber thing you slide on the bottom of your shoe. It’s a tenuous link to skateboarding, except they advertise it explicitly as skateboarding related on Temu. Maybe not with mentioning if not for the fact that there must be a fad in China somewhere that involves coating a rose in a flammable substance and using your rubber flint booties to light them on fire so you can…. I guess hand a flaming rose to…

Brand X is offering a limited release of 2 Sims wheels poured in the original molds with updated modern urethane formulas. The Sims Snakes are limited to 100 sets in each color, while the Comp IIs are limited to 25 sets per color. They are being billed as a Tom Sims Tribute, in premium urethane made 100% in California. These are perfect for any historical reenactors out there riding the various old school reissues but they come with an insanely high price of $200 and $250 respectively. I don’t know the economics of hand pouring urethane these days, but it seems highly inflated. Maybe it’s due to licensing fees, who knows. A quick check on Ebay at publication time shows you can get some originals in pretty good shape for about the same price.

I spotted these Gnarly Gnome socks from Sock It To Me while doing some x-mas shopping.

Is that and anthropomorphic hot dog wearing sunglasses and smoking? Yes. You can get print from Rory Blank. He’s got lots of other stuff too, shirts, zines, stickers… UPDATE: I thought that sale looked familiar, Rory is the same wizard that brought you “People of Earth” AKA Alien riding a skateboard with his penis.

When I published that old No Fit State post one of the characters caught my eye. I didn’t recognize Thrashor, and wasn’t sure if he was an actual thing or just one off made up for the pin, but it turns out it was some cross licensing from an outfit called 8-bit Zombie that makes mostly t-shirts and stickers, but also made a Thrashor action figure that looks pretty rad. More rad than their Rad Alf t-shirt and the Gremlins shirt that features Gizmo on a skateboard. They make some Screaming Hand variants too.

I forgot to publish this post in 2016, and now you can no longer purchases these pins from No Fit State. Hans Moleman looks tough. That Dragon has to be a reference to Steve Caballero.

Hey kids, remember the Morfboard, Morfboard 2, and Morfboard copiers like the Flybar? Well you can add the Switchboard to that esteemed group of wacky boards, and this one might be best engineered version yet. It’s one skateboard with special mounting plates that allow you to swap out trucks and accessories in a snap. Is it necessary? Maybe. Is it possible? Yes! Who is it made by? Switchboard! But is it this Switchboard? Possibly. The logo is different and the product is conspicuously absent from the skateboard training products section and skateboard trucks section, so who knows. Someone in Poland knows. (Daj mi buziaka.)

You’re looking at a set of covers for curbs, ledges and parking blocks that are made out of 16 Gauge USA cold-rolled galvanized and powder coated steel. The idea from Curb Cover is to make unskateable elements skateable. Sure, you could, you know, just find a different curb to skate, but what if you don’t want to? If you’re worried about these things sliding out from under you, they have padding underneath that has been proven to work with ample video evidence. The most interesting product here is the parking block cover. It’s actually sturdy enough to skate without placing over a parking block, and can be used as a mold to pour your own parking blocks. The ledge covers offer a lot of functionality too, you can cover bricks or even skate stoppers. That’s actually genius. If you cover a ledge, the entire ant-skate argument of property damage is null and void.

Introducing the Flybar 3-in-1 Skate Trainer, a less elegant version of a concept we’ve seen once or twice before, but hey, it’s been almost 10 years since the original product appeared, and almost 5 since it apparently failed, because you can’t find these for sale anymore and the domain name has expired. This version may look like it exists in renders only, but it’s a real product that you can buy at places like Walmart. In a paradigm shifting development in the multi-use board industry, Flybar adds stationary trucks for ollie training. Hardcore scooter and bouncing enthusiasts may find this a deal breaker. If you’re familiar with the Flybar brand, chances are you’ve seen or used one of their many bumper cars, animal hoppers, hopper balls, “antsy pants” systems, scooters, swurfers, pogo sticks or even pogo stick trainers. It’s OK, we won’t tell anyone. They also make conventional skateboards that are about 80% cheaper than this $50 setup, so you know they are good. – thanks to ____ for the tip.