What do you call a kid who can skate like that? You call that kid a Cracker Jack. I totally forgot about this jingle until I watched the commercial, and it all came back to me. I never saw this particular Cracker Jack commercial, but I remember others with the same song. This series of commercials aired around 1978. Assuming the kid skating is the same one they use in the closeup, someone ought to be able to identify him.
Adam Crofts sent me a beat up copy of the Keane Brothers debut album from 1977 because it had skateboard on the cover. I listened to it, hoping that the song Keep On Rollin’ was skateboard related, but it wasn’t. The album is a truly awful mix of 70’s disco, soul, rock, country and bubblegum. It’s a freaking awesome train wreck. I noticed the producer also had the last name Keane, so I figured this was a showbiz father trying to get rich off his kids, and that this was probably the last time anyone ever heard of the Keane Brothers, if anyone ever heard of them at all. Of course I was wrong. The Keane Brothers had one of those variety shows that were all over the 70’s like flies on shitty music, and they appeared on the Tonight Show and the Mike Douglas Show. On top of that, the opening sequence of their variety show prominently features the Keane brothers on skateboards.
Pure crap or Pure Genius? In the late 80’s I wouldn’t have been caught dead on a Variflex board, now I kind of want to make a t-shirt out of this old sticker design. The post on the Variflex XP series still gets a lot of traffic, but I’d never seen a Spittle board… until I googled it after writing that last sentence. I found one from Ebay seller toddtwist, AKA Sean Goff. Turns out the Spittle board looks semi-legit. This one sold for a killing at $280 considering NOS Variflex XP series were going for $70 8 years ago. Art of Skateboarding dates this board to 1988, and they’ve got one in a nice white colorway.
UPDATE: Justin Goetz has a mind like steel trap. He recognized this deck from an old Lance Mountain column in the November, 1989 issue of Transworld. It’s actually a pro model for Michel Spitalhouse. I added scans to the end of the post.
Good news from the Troutdale Skatepark Alliance. A new skatepark has been approved by vote for the city’s Master Parks Plan. There’s no funding yet, but there is a donation bucket at Cal Skate in Portland.
There used to be “no scene,” and it was sometimes hard to find people to skateboard with, especially if you were in smallish semi-rural towns, even if they were college towns. One the things I used to do instead of, you know, going to class, was making flyers for a “Mass Thrash” to try and attract larger numbers of skateboarder that I assumed were all hiding in the woodwork somewhere. How could you not like skateboarding and punk rock? It seemed absurd. The law of averages demanded that there would be more kindred souls out there, not going to class like me. We would hold these events right outside the student union, on the quad. There were so few skateboarders on campus that it was actually not a bust to skate there. The logos and skateboarders on the left were all transcribed from the black and white newsprint pages of the advertisements in the back of Thrasher.
California Sunday Magazine has an interesting piece on Jake Phelps that seems to have en done with some degree of cooperation from the Phelper. Some of the best parts are the sort of snide, deconstructive observations on the spectacle of skateboarding, such as observations that Thrasher is more like Vogue for degenerates than the skateboarder’s bible, and skateboarding has more in common with pornography than professional sports. “Skateboarding probably has more in common with pornography: Talented people are paid to be filmed doing something they’re good at, or at least insane enough to try.” There’s even a brief mention of Schwing! magazine as if their readers would know what that was. It’s long, and a bit nihilistic, and you’ll earn more about SOTY than you’ll care too, but even if you hate Phelps, it’s a good read. Check it out in California Sunday Magazine.
Which came first, the egg, or the toy inside the egg? Technically not an Easter-specific toy, but it’s an egg riding a skateboard. This is a hard plastic version representing the actual chocolate egg which would contain a toy inside it. So it’s a self-referencing toy. In case this makes zero sense to you, Kinder Surprises are chocolate eggs with a tiny plastic toy inside. I thought this was a generic term, but apparently it’s a trade name, like Kleenex or Xerox. I thought it was vintage, but it dates to 2014 according to the seller.
Because the world only needs so many canvases with the Audrey Hepburn, the Eiffel Tower or the New York City skyline, Ikea decided to bring in some new artists for the 2016 Ikea Art Event. On the right you can see Bara Prasilova’s photo. Sanskirt. After surveying the offerings, my 10 year old son declared he liked the underwear photo better, although the briefs and dress sent him mixed messages, and he wasn’t sure if it was a boy or a girl. Closer inspection of the photo reveals an Arbor skateboard and a flipped negative. I like the photo too, but I’d like it more without the flipped negative and cropped wheels on the skateboard.
Thanks to Matthijs for this picture of what is either a conceptual art piece or a very sad little skatepark located in Amsterdam. That round planter to right probably sees more acton.
