Sears. Still my favorite skateshop

I keep looking for this Sears catalog from 1965, but they always go for upwards of $40 when I’m watching. Too much for me, but I’d never actually seen the page before, but I knew it existed. This one showed up as an ancillary illustration to another Sears Hot Dog board on eBay. The same board they used on an episode of Green Acres. It’s at this point in the interview that I mention for the umpteenth time that I got my first skateboard at a Sears. Enlarge-o-rama.

– Thanks to Dave P. for the tip.

You can’t hide

No matter how hard you try to keep it a secret, somewhere, someone you don’t know is going to find it. I’m not going to tell you where, except to say that my mother in-law lives in this state. At first you might think it’s a coincidence that the satellite caught this pool on a day it was drained for maintenance. But if you look closer, you’ll notice some other suspicious concrete work, and what might possibly be some of the blue fiberglass ramps of the Thrasherland type set up in a closed track. I think those buildings might actually be ramps.

Two towns. Two videos

I’m watching this first video by “Jimmy” that looks like it takes palce in Corvallis and an Harrisburg, Oregon, And I’m thinking, Damn! That’s the scene to be in. What do those guys need help with a skatepark for? Just kidding about the skatepark thing there BCSA, but your locals are tearing it up! The second video was shot at Pier Park by KC, and aside from Thomas shown in the bottom still shot, it mainly features Shane Bell, who looks like he has recovered from his bone break in his leg about a year ago.

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A kidney donation from Finland

Since we’ve already discussed the merits of natural and synthetic wine corks, I feel we can confidently add modern landscape design our list of high brow topics. I’m not talking about skate plazas or the appropriation of public spaces. I’m talking about how Thomas Dolliver Church, the acclaimed author of Gardens are for People and the father of modern landscape architecture (California Style) who was widely credited with influencing garden and pool design with his influential free form pool in his most famous work, El Novillero. Truth is, he didn’t invent the kidney pool though. He most he was inspired by a visit to FInland’s Alvar Aalto Villa Mairea, which also featured a free form pool. That’s El Novillero above left, and Villa Mairea on the right. So there you have it. Kidney pools were invented in Finland in 1937, not in California, circa 1948.

[Source: Intercontinental Gardener] – Thanks to Jarno Väisänen for the tip.

Disposable: A history of boulder boards

This has been stated so many times before that I don’t even know how to say it any other way now, but my primary impetus for beginning work on what would eventually become The Disposable Skateboard Bible was to tie up a few loose ends that I wasn’t able to find or include in the first book—several of which were only made possible in the years following its publication. For this reason perhaps that’s why I dragged my feet for two and a half years to compile material for the Bible, because just when I was about to theoretically call it done I would inevitably find one more board or story to follow up on, e.g. the random time I met Rich Harbour’s daughter at a backyard Banta party. I could have gone on indefinitely in this manner had I not finally committed to a delivery date with the publisher in April 2009, and it was an oddly bittersweet moment to at long last say, “It is finished.” Not only that but I kind of felt like a dink for calling it the “Bible” when I knew there were still a few outstanding historical pieces to the puzzle. Seriously, God left Himself a really, really big loophole with that ambiguous book of Revelations.

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