Newcastle England Skate Scene – United Kingdom – By Matthew Sefton- Posted 9-12-06 This article was originally static html. Original comments can be found here. We’ve always had ties to the U.K. at Skate and Annoy, seeing as how Neil (the guy who originally said “let’s make a skate zine.”) was a transplant from Liverpool. In early print issues we had a U.K. scene report. Now we are stoked to post this comprehensive UK scene report on the Newcastle England area by reader Matthew Sefton, who is well on his way to being our official U.K. correspondent. Wait a second, correspondents usually get paid right? Better make him an intern instead. We hope you enjoy this. Read And Destroy! Don’t forget to show your appreciation for his exhaustive reporting in the comments section. Someone tell me what “Toodle Pip” means. – K.ed.

Spring Break Illinois! By Danterra: Posted 4-19-06 The winter skating scene in Illinois looks so awesome! I can’t remember why I left in the first place! – k.ed This year I spent my spring break time in the Midwest of all places visiting family, I didn’t see any boobies or drunk college chicks but I was able to skate a couple of parks. The first place I got to ride was Champaign, IL. What a big bummer this park is. Its all concrete and I heard that it cost somewhere around $300,000. Unfortunately it was built by someone who had never built a skatepark or least a good skatepark. The “street” area which used to consist of 2 big sausage-like lumps of concrete now only has one, the city removed one of them and now there is nothing but a big flat space in the middle, wow so street-like. The rest of the street area has a couple of ledges and rails and a quarter pipe with some super-coping that sticks out almost 2 inches. The other main feature of the park is the spine ramp. This ramp is probably close to 4 feet tall with transitions that rival the…

John Aguilar sends us pictures of Mexico all the time. I’ve been trying to get him to write a feature for a while now, but he’s a busy guy. So far all I have out of him is a paragraph and a some captions. Rather than sit on this forever, I thought we should post what we have. John’s been skating through two skateboard booms, and he’s not stopping anytime soon. The first bunch of pictures are mainly from the 80’s. Towards the end it’s all the Mexico City park. John sometimes hosts the Old School Jam in Mexico City, which is worth a feature itself. I think Thrasher might have actually covered it once, I can’t remember. Hopefully I’ll make it down there once. Until then, take it away John… Skateboarding in Mexico! By John Aguilar. Skateboarding in Mexico has been around for quite a time now, back in the late 70´s beginning of the 80´s there were several skate parks , like “el gran batazo” which had a snake run and the funny thing is that it had those baseball hitting cages. Arround it which was mainly the reason of the name of the place, then there was…

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.…

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.