The Daily Herald from Arlington Heights, Illinois has a thoughtful piece titled Once a skater, always a skater and closer to (our) home, The Columbian has another not so thoughtful article titled Just About Everybody Can Go Extreme. These articles are a dime a dozen lately, but there are a couple of items of interest here.

Steve Cave knows pro skaters but he won’t flow! Aww, come on man, give me Shecklers phone number! Haw! Haw! Steve does About.com’s skateboarding blog, AKA How to apply grip tape and clean your bearings, and he’s compiled tips on how to contact pro skateboarders. Tip #1: Don’t ask him! Actually this post just an excuse to reference the old “Maps to the skaters… Holmes!” scene which is one of the highlights in Animal Chin. Tip number two? Buy the map!

I can’t stop watching this video of a Primo slide to back flip. Ok, it’s very light on the slide, in fact, I think it’s just called a rail stand? Freestylers help me out here. Freestylers? I don’t know who this shorty character is but he reminds me of the high school wrestling team. Check it out after the jump. [Source: Wiskate via the Skateboard Mag]

As if there isn’t enough going on in Portland this weekend. There’s the Rocco Docco(umentary), the Cording/Frisone affair and also the Michael Tubb’s Benefit where aside from helping a brother out, you can catch the premier of the new Vox video, Black & Blue Volume 2. Someone should start a calendar so people can schedule these events without conflict. Someone. Hmmmm…. Who should that someone be?

Hey guys here is the Cold War video for 07 shot in one day edited in 7 hours by Kilwag. If you get Concrete Wave it is on their DVD they put out 1x a year, so get your board orders in early if you see something you like. I am going to be so rich when this hits subscriber’s mail box, I will be able to make new friends so easy. So please get your orders in early so we can still be friends. I also want to welcome Shane Bell to the team. Peace Off.

Ignition TV has recent (I assume) footage from the grand opening of the Mission Valley YMCA’s new (to them) vert ramp. A bunch of vert dogs were there, Bucky Elastic, Bony Hawk, the French Canadians… There were other people present on deck but they didn’t make the cut, perhaps due to space limitations. Although posted on Metacafe, the clip’s producer is Ignition TV, who is the, uh, leader in action sports fro you mobile phone. You can chose by sport and brand on their web site, so you know that’s Extreme™! Mission Valley’s vert ramp was donated to them by the X-Games. We had one of those X-Games retired ramps in a suburb of Portland for a while, where it mostly sat as a platform for kids to practice flip tricks off of the flat bottom onto the cement. There was a small community of vert riders who would session a couple times of week and chase the kids off the flat. Ask MC about it. They banded together to meet and talk with the park district to ensure and volunteer upkeep, but the district wasn’t interested. As more and more concrete parks opened out here, the already underutilized vert…

No, this isn’t the start of a recurring feature, just a reference to the fact that we had a similar post last friday. Adult film stars are kind of like pro wrestlers sometimes, they need to have a gimmick to distinguish themselves from the rest of the competitors. Keeani Lei lists skateboarding and surfing among her other uhm, talents. I first got, err, turned on to her via a Sleestak post, but they got it from the NSFW Slap Magazine forums. Come to think of it, Slap sounds like some sort of a fetish magazine. In any case, Keeani does indeed skate and appears to enjoy it. She’s into flyouts, women, Jason Jesse re-issues and you know… other things. I like the shot where she’s pretending to drink OJ’s out of a juice pitcher, a visual pun that would be lost on anyone who didn’t skate. Reminds me of some of the 80’s skateboard advertising. She’s really going for the niche market. There’s safe for work video after the jump.

I remember the first time I saw an ad for Bacon, it was a full page in Concussion I think. I did find their first graphic amusing. It was just the name spelled out in strips of bacon. However, my first reaction was “Here’s another upstart company with a stupid name that is going to blow through all their money in two years and then go out of business.” Boy was I wrong. Bacon is going strong, and getting stronger, and now I have to live and skate in the same town as that dick Colin who owns the company. Sometimes I even have to suffer the indignity of skating the same spots with him. Apparently, Oregon is some sort of hot spot for skateboarding right now, so he up and moved his company here. They are working on a new video (way to make sure you get your money’s worth from that flame stock footage!) and it looks like it going to be a killer. It’s great seeing some familiar faces destroying some familiar spots in ways you’ve never seen before. Check out the trailer on the Bacon site. You and your speed metal music can go suck an…

It’s amazing how unsophisticated skateboard graphics were in the early 80’s when companies first started to explore designs that were more than just a small logo on the bottom. Believe it or not, some people are going to be pissed off that I posted this picture of a rare old Neil Blender deck that is currently up for auction on eBay. They will say that we are somehow affecting the outcome of the final price, blah blah blah. I’m just using it as an excuse to embed a few Neil Blender videos from YouTube. Notice there is no link to the auction. I don’t want to encourage any (more) of the “Hey, check out my auction!” emails that we already get. After you are done watching these videos, head on over to Neil’s official web site The Heated Wheel.

The latest installment of G.V.K. Watching this video made me realize I have had the same friends for 20yrs +. Good or bad im not quite sure. At the very least this is proof that we are washed up vert skaters. So all we need is a vert ramp so we can go and have a place to talk about the good old days and (re-live) the glory we never had. To be totally accurate this footage is from the end of our low fidelity careers. This footage is from Boulder but the crew lived in Steamboat, Colorado, circa 90-93. Not much vert anywhere, especially Steamboat. We would literally go months with out skating, get antsy head to Boulder (3 hours) to see a show. Most of this footage is from a session before a Ramones show.