The Volcano ( or Le Volcan as it is named in France, where it resides) was originally designed by Oscar Niemeyer and opened in 1982. These pictures are from Atelier Cambium, a firm involved in an extensive remodeling project that looks like it involved digging up everything underneath and around it in order to reimagine the space. At first glance it looks like a fun skate spot, although you’ll need big soft wheels to navigate some of the bricked areas. However, If you look closer you can see they have applied a short railing in certain areas to keep people off the walls. Why they want people off the walls? Some will likely say insurance and liability reasons, although I don’t know how big of a problem that is in the EU. I suspect it’s in order to keep the space from being used in more creative ways that tend to annoy the stuffed shirts.
Source: Atelier Cambium
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Along with social media posts, Surfer Today has confirmed that Patti McGee passed away on Oct 15th at the age of 79 due to complications from a recent stroke. Patti was the world’s first female professional skateboarder, and the first female to appear on the cover of a skateboarding magazine. Many people remember her iconic cover of Life Magazine as well, likely the first appearance of a skateboarder on the cover of a non-skateboarding magazine. Patti appeared on the TV game show What’s My Line? in 1965 as well as other TV programs with Mike Douglas and The Johnny Carson Show, as well as a Bell Telephone commercial. She was the first female inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. Juice Magazine has an interview with Patti conducted in 2017 by Steve Olson. By all accounts she was a lovely and inspiring person to all who knew her. A true legend.
Photo: Patti McGee
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Up to this point I’ve avoided posting any AI generated skateboarding content. While researching some pics a reader sent in (anyone ever hear of a Jordy brand skateboard?) my image search came up with some bizarre AI generated skateboards on the stock art site Freepik that were too good/bad to ignore. It looks like someone dumped a bunch of skateboard images that were generated by AI, which is fine and dandy for a generic image, but they must not have proofed these. It turns out the only thing AI is worse at generating than human hands is skateboard trucks, and the spelling of the word “skateboard.”
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Aruma Split Garden in Indonesia was designed by RAD+ar (Research Artistic Design + Architecture). Despite its name, the primary function appears to be the restaurant underneath the roof garden. Looks like fun, unfortunately the opposite side of the transition is a dead end. It would be interesting to see this concept replicated in a skatepark either symmetrically or with some sort of return to conserve momentum.
Source: ArchDaily – Thanks to Mark Conahan for the tip.
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Slek Skateboards (pronounced “sleek”) is an American company owned by the golf company Ping. Based on the front page of their web site you’d probably assume they made standard park/street skateboards but the majority of their lineup is actually longboard and cruiser oriented. The reason they’re here on S&A is because of the Float-Tec funky truck assembly that is designed to let users roll over cracks and bumps without eating it. It’s a strange niche because beginners who aren’t skilled enough to negotiate those, obstacles are likely not going to justify the expense, and you can’t buy the trucks separately. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this kind of setup before, but I may in fact be thinking of the Stair Board from back in 2012. One thing I find annoying, for the life of me I can’t replicate the “e” character with the line over the top that they use in their website and logo. Our character sets are both utf-8 and I cant find it in any character table.
[Source: MyGolfSpy]
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Check out this Ken Park (AKA Krapnek) model on Kryptonics skateboards. It’s the first pro model he ever had and is so rare that at this time he himself does not even possess one.
– Thanks to Jason Lorin for the photos.
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Day 7 (!) of 7 Days of Jughead! I made it! This is volume 2, issue #34 of Jughead published in June of 1992. It has a couple of stories with skateboarding, I Was a Teenage Jughead and Lessons in Skateboarding. Even Jughead himself asks, is this a joke?
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Day 6 of 7 Days of Jughead features Jughead v2 #32 from April of 1992. Introducing the impossibly cool sounding “J-Head Brigade” and the story “Weird Cats.”
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I’m taking it easy a little bit for Day 5 of 7 days of Jughead. Jughead #30, #31, #33, and #38 don’t have much (or any) skateboarding content at all beyond their covers, so they are all mashed together in one post. Although the content is a little thin, we do get to see the introduction of the character “Sassy Thrasher” who might have been based on my ideal girlfriend in the 80’s.
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