Remember at the turn of the millennium when there were only a couple skateparks nearby? My buddy Shawn used keep a squeegee and a handle in his trunk for such occasions when we would arrive at the park after a recent rain and it would be covered in puddles, and kids skirting the outline of the puddles, occasionally tracking through the park. We’d spread out the puddles and push what we could into the drain. All the kids would bitch at us for making it wet, and we’d tell them to shut up and wait 5 minutes. Sure enough, the wet spots evaporated and suddenly the whole park was skateable. I’ve literally had kids yell at me for this. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, youngster. Most of the time, GVK carries a broom in his van for cleaning up those bowls filled with trash or dirt, and whatever nature or unsupervised children decide to throw down there. Check out these interchangeable cleaning tools from Swopt. You buy whatever accessories you need and snap them on and off a single handle, which is great for saving space on a traveling kit. The only thing that would make this system better would be if the pole contracted and telescoped. Of course, it’s overpriced, but it’s still a good idea. It won’t work on a sludge-filled pool, but good enough for others occasions.
StayTrueToYou.org is part of a public service campaign trying to convince teenagers in Oregon not to smoke pot. It’s likely funded by some of taxes imposed since the recent legalization of marijuana in Oregon. The trouble with running a campaign like that on social media is that allows all kinds of predictable commentary from the peanut gallery. This radical stock image posted on Instagram states “Pot can make it harder to learn new tricks,” but it prompted a response from an ever helpful young adult that said “Not really, I learned how to skate while being high 🙂” Earache my eye. This banner was spotted at the mall, surrounded by mall-grabbers. You know what else can make it harder to learn tricks? A bunch of girls with their feet hanging over the coping.
Fresko Shoes is a company that sells shoes and beachy-stuff to tourist traps next to oceans. They’re out of Florida, but I found this plastic skateboard in Pacific City, Oregon. It’s actually a pretty cool design. If someone had thought of this in the 70’s they would have sold the crap out of (another round of ) plastic skateboards. Remember, for those kids not near sizable hills and skateparks, a plastic skateboard with a good set of open bearings was a perfectly serviceable skateboard. I rode one for years, and.. uh, look how I turned out?
This wraps up any uncertainty about the authenticity of the Hobble Wobble, which seemed like it might have been artificially created to look like it was vintage. The name of the inventor made it easy to look up the patent this time. Harold Katz filed his patent in October of 1958 and finally received his patent in March of 1960. This short highlight article on the Wibbler must have been published sometime shortly after, making my original guess ( After the hula hoop in 1958 and before skateboard fad in 1964 ) pretty accurate. Somebody should pay me for this research. Hello Betsy? This is not skateboard related, you may cry, but I will endeavor to prove a direct connection in the following presentation. Can someone dim the lights please?
Thanks to Jim Thompson for these photos of Wee Willie Winkies. That’s “winkles” not “Winkles” as in Wee Willi Winkels. These disgusting looking, sickly pale, pink, fleshy appendages come from Scotland. Sausage skateboards probably require pizza grip to deal with all that extra grease.
Ryan Sheckler is still a thing, and he’s a thing for Lume Cube. Lume Cube is a wireless flash / lighting system. It’s a pretty cool device actually. They are tiny, waterproof, battery powered strobes you can link together and control with an app to use for discreet, highly mobile and quick photo lighting. In addition to using a smartphone to set up Lume Cubes for use with a DSLR, you can use an additional mount to supplement your phonecam’s lighting. After watching some of the tutorials I have to say that I’m impressed by the system. It’s expensive, but seems very well thought out. One thing that does seem needlessly obtrusive, to use a Lume Cube even once, you’re going to need to provide a valid email address and register the the cube (with serial #) via your smartphone. So what happens if you want to loan it to a friend, or share a cube amongst different phones? For instance, you may use different assistants on different shoots. Why should you have to provide a valid email address just to use the cube? What if the email address and serial # conflict with a previous registration? This is a major deal to me, can you tell? Another instance of needless overreaching by a tech company. An email address to register a product for warranty purposes makes perfect sense, but just to use a physical product? I’m calling bullshit.
This Barbie and Ginger toy dates back to 1997. Ginger is a battery powered dog that barks and walks, and can be used to tow Barbie on her skateboard, complete with little Hotwheels-style wheels. The top frame is a still from a creepy TV commercial. It may have been 1997, but the girl on the left looks like she’s stuck in a 60’s children’s book. The screen cap looks craptacular, but that’s as good as it gets. Someone digitized TV commercial in pre-hd days. The same low-res version with awful motion compression artifacts is all over the web under assorted watermarks. Unfortunately nobody’s uploaded a decent version of it, not that you’d want to watch it endlessly. It does have a sort of hypnotic quality to it, in a Jonestown massacre sort of way.
Sultana Yo Fruit packaging, made in the Netherlands with 90’s American marketing. I especially like the “What the fruit do I know?” tagline on the side of the package. I’m not sure what the little mascot actually is, but Matthijs thinks it’s a cellphone. Stranger things have happened. They look like miniature pop-tarts, but not meant to be put in a toaster.
Normally I might push this post off to the Broken Kingpins section without comment but the Tubuloids video for It’s Getting Weird connected with me on a primal level. I think GVK missed his calling. Their album on Beer City Records doesn’t come out until October, but you can preorder it now.
