Editor’s Note: It’s not often that we can compete with the major skate media outlets. We don’t have the resources, and they get paid for what they do. Every once and a while we are in the right place at the right time, or know someone who is. Stefan Hauser has contributed this piece about his recent trip to South Africa, and we’re pleased as hell to publish it. Also coming soon (It’s up now) is a interview with South African skater and scenster, Dallas Oberholzer. Thanks to Stefan and Placed to Ride Skateparks. South Africa – By Stefan Hauser 5-2-05. Photos by Stefan Hauser and Dallas Oberholzer. South Africa is the heart of skateboarding in Africa. Located on the southern tip of this vast continent, its closest skate destination is said to be Spain. It took me two nights worth of fly time to arrive at this destination from Oregon (the west coast of North America). The hardest part of my journey was managing to stay awake during the six-hour layover in London so that I’d not miss my connecting flight.

By Kent Dahlgren Originally written 8/8/04. This article was originally posted on Sleestak.net, which closed it’s doors in spring of 2005. It may reappear on the Skaters For Public Skateparks (SPS) web site in the DIY forum, who knows. In any case, thanks to Kent Dahlgren and Bobcat at Sleestak for lettingthis article live on at Skate and Annoy. The pictures are all poached, byt the way. Some from HowStuffWorks.com. If anyone has some original pictures that we can use instead, by all means, send ’em in. Feel free to contact us and chip in with your own advice.    Swimming pools have plumbing. We skaters need to learn how to use this plumbing to free these pools of pesky water. Here’s a quick and dirty for those who haven’t yet learned. The pump and all those pipes function to keep the pool clean. Water is typically sucked through the deathboxes, into pipes, through the filter, and back into the pool. In many cases, the water is also pumped through a heater, on-roof pipes, or both. First, let’s identify the key components. Go to the pumphouse. If you are a skater…indeed, if you are a swimmer, you know what the pumphouse is. Go there. Be quiet and low key.…

Beginner Skatepark Bulding 101 – By Stefan Hauser There are many possibilities for design when building your own skate terrain. A lot depends on your experience, expertise and preference. What we will cover here is concrete do-it-yourself “skatepark” construction. Just like wood ramps and steel rail construction, the more solid background you have in the materials the better off you are. First do your homework, investigate different obstacles, skateparks or terrain you would like to mimic. Find some good examples, be it a place you have been, a photograph in a magazine, or a video you have seen. Make sure it is something you would like to have and then something you would like to have in another three years. For that matter make it something that you can expand and build onto as your skills and enthusiasm kick in. There is the simple proverb: start small, think large, follow it. A major consideration to take into account when designing your skate spot is location. The location will ultimately decide the fate of your design and the longevity of your project. The best place to put your project is of course on private land of which you are the owner.…

Glossy new skateboarding magazines seem to recurr like a case of athelete’s foot with every boom and bust cycle in skateboarding. A partial list of contenders includes Skateboarder, Poweredge, BIg Brother, Skateboarder (again and again) Homeboy, Slap, etc… Except for in the case of a complete vacum, most magazines don’t start during the downturns. One exception has been Concrete Wave Magazine. The magazine’s editorial stance is unlike any other. Is it a nostalgia collection for Barneys or a safe haven from yet another handrail and shoe advertisement magazine? Whatever your opinion, Concrete Wave has a steadily growing reading base of all ages. Aside from publishing and editing Concrete Wave magazine, he is also the author of Concrete Wave – the book, Skate Legends. What follows is an interview conducted via email, with editor Michael Brooke, who was too busy collecting photographs and words for his upcoming Buyer’s Guide to send us any decent pictures of himself and his operations! – kilwag 2-22-05 Kilwag: Let’s get some of the basics out of the way. When and where you born, how long have you been skating, and how did you pick it up? Born in Leeds, England in 64. I moved to…

This article originally existed somewhere on the web. On Feb 02, 2005 it was posted on the Skaters For Public Skateparks (SPS) web site in the DIY forum under the title “Pour Man’s Pool Coping”. We had originally planned on reposting it, but it disappeared before we could get our DIY section up. Then it reappeared on the SPS web site, and author Carter Dennis was kind enough to let us publish it. Carter also happens to be a Southwest Regional Director of Skaters for Public Skateparks. Why re-post the same article? Well, for one thing, you need to register to view the SPS forms. Also, we have a hard time letting go. We figure, the more links this article gets, the more pool coping you are likely to end up skating. Don’t forget to check out the Skaters For Public Skateparks web site, and feel free to contact us with your own advice.

With partial payments of prize money from last year a mere memory for most, Choppy and Two Fourties Productions brought back World Cup Skateboarding with a vengeance. Oregon. Yes sir, it’s all rain soaked hippies, granola eating and tree hugging up here, so let’s commence with the stereotypes.

Oregon Road Trip Stories. Just because we live Oregon doesn’ mean we can’t road trip in Oregon. Everyone else gets to write about it, so why not us? Shawn Fendick had been planning a trip for some time now. A guys trip. That means no “wives, scrappers (kids) or non-skaters” in his words. Klamath Falls was picked as the destination. Shawn had originally wanted to rent a mobile home so we could get a keg and keep it on tap next to the park. Since we had people from different parts of the country joining us (yay! road trip) and leaving us on different days, the mobile home fell through, but the keg didn’t. What follows are some details and a lot of pictures spread out over four days, culminating in a live appearance by legendary long playing but sporadic recording punk rockers, the Dickies! Klammath Falls Road Trip: Aumsville Detour Day 1 8/13/04 Day 1: On Friday the 13th we all left work and converged in Aumsville Or for a send off. Joining us was Steve Grover, who couldn’t make the whole trip because he lost his balls, I mean didn’t have a job. In our minds, that meant…

Sarasota Florida. Used to be that the closest park was a Team Pain effort in North Port, which is about 45 minutes away. Now they’ve got a new park built by Team Pain as well. I’ve got in-laws in Sarasota that I visit every other year or so, and I’d been waiting to check out this park for about a year. I finally got to skate it over X-mas 2004.

Do not adjust your set. This is not another reprint of vintage photographs. Let me explain. A couple of years ago I sold an old Santa Cruz Jammer on eBay to a woman for a modest price. I was curious as to who in the world would want this semi-generic and not too popular deck. In settling the transaction I learned that it was intended as a birthday present. I did some calculations and jokingly asked what 40 year old skateboard collector was she buying it for. She replied it was for her husband, who was indeed 40, and still skated several times a week! A half a year later I was making plans to visit my mother in-law at her new pad in Florida. I remembered that I shipped that Jammer to Fla, so I fired off an email enquiring where an Oregon transplant could find some cement bowls to skate while visiting the town of Sarasota. (This was in the days before Sarasota’s new skate park. As fate would have it, Birthday boy (man) David Bonnell worked down the road a stretch, and agreed to session with me in Northport, a one horse, strip mall town with a…

Canada. Three of us ventured up to Vancouver B.C. from the Portland area one fine weekend in January 2004. Our secret weapon was resident alien Eugene Lardizabal, who was a Canadian living in the U.S. We got hassled a little at the border because Steve Grover only had a driver’s license and no Passport. It used to not be not much of a problem, but this was post 9-11 hysteria I guess. Once they got to check Eugenes’s Cannuck credentials they sent us in. I’m sure they would have let us in anyway, but probably just wanted to hassle some Americans, and who can blame ‘em?