Paul Machnau

Paul Machnau apparently likes to golf. The bets for a day with him could be something like closest to the pin, long drive and a game of skate. From Concrete Powder mag.

Men's Health Habitat

Every week, my wife goes to the library and picks up magazines for me to skim through whilst sitting on the throne. For whatever reason, she picked up this issue of Men's Health... maybe she's subtly suggesting for me to get more exercise and get into shape. Pretty sad to see Habitat in this mag. That team model is the board I rode prior to my current one. It was a PS Stix, and it lasted me at least a dozen sessions at the Plaza prior to snapping.

Plan B Sean Sheffy Monkey

Plan B has re-issued one of Sheffey's old boards from 1992. You can get it in a modern 7.5" or 7.75" shape or you can get it in its original 9" shape. I think I can get behind this. All proceeds go to Sean Sheffey. Art by Sean Cliver.

Jason Lee

I'm being lazy. Go to chrome ball incident and check out the new Jason Lee post.

PS Stix Factory Tour

Here's a factory tour of PS Stix's wood shop. As far as I can remember, the company started as Schmitt Stix back in the late 80's, then became New Deal in the early 90's (under Giant Distribution that included Underworld Element and Mad Circle) and they pressed boards for several other companies in that decade including Girl and Alien Workshop, the latter (along with Habitat) is still primarily being done by them and are the only boards I tend to ride. PS Stix also does Element and Black Label. The identifying markings for boards from PS Stix are generally SN# PSxxxxx like below.



As for which country they were pressed in, I've seen 3 different variations: no country, USA and China. They are soon to, or already, have a factory in Mexico. For more info, here's a photo tour and another video tour.

Plan B Star Wars series

This was a great series of boards from the original Plan B. One of my favourite teams and one of my favourite movie franchises. I honestly can't say I'm a fan of the new Zorlac version of Plan B. Image from bobshirt.com. Make sure you check out the new Andy Stone interview there.

pig snitch # o

This is from Thrasher June 1996. Jody Morris, who grew up in Ottawa and was part of our crew back in the day, was doing a cross country article. He rolled through town and took a bunch of photos. Two pictures from Ottawa got in. One of me (fs 180 to fakie nose grind) and one of my friend Christian (switch bs tail, they missed the switch in the caption), who's last name is not Sluthunter. That's just what we called him.

Years later, when I moved out to Vancouver, I used to skate this underground parkade at UBC that has a 100 foot knee high ledge. I met this one guy skating there and one of the first things he says to me is "were you in Thrasher?" Turns out he was on the same page as me but his shot was in Calgary. Small world. The magazine did screw up his name and captioned him Brian (his actual name is Ben). He ended up becoming one of my good friends. He's now at some Ivy League school studying to become a doctor. Also on the same page is Jesse Sorenson, who was part of Weiss' crew and rode for Change.

Thanks to Dylan at police informer for the scan.

Johnny Drama vs. Chad Muska

Muska was relevant in skateboarding for a minute in those early Shorty's Skateboards and Circa days. He must have made some serious dough back then. So many little groms loved his shtick. I was never a fan. Johnny Drama, on the other hand, is one of the best characters on TV, period.

Powell Peralta Lance Mountain

I always liked this Lance Mountain doughboy graphic. I'm pretty sure this was shortly before the Powell exodus. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in Canada!

Scott Johnston: shoe designer

Here's a Vapors Magazine interview with SJ, one of my all time favourite skaters. He's always had such a great skate style and his gear always looks so well put together.

Skate & Annoy ebay watch

This is a hilarious section of skate and annoy's website with ebay auctions of skate stuff each month along with commentary. I assume that the writer 'House of Neil' was a skater from the 80's due to his lack of love for the Rocco era. It's amazing what people shell out for old skate crap from the 80's and 90's. I can remember seeing a nerdy kid at my local skate shop back in the late 80's/early 90's and he would buy decks. He was clearly not a skater.

me: "You skate?"
nerdy kid: "no."
me: "What are you gonna to do with all those boards you're buying?"
nerdy kid: "I'm gonna save them and sell them in 20 years for tons of money"
me: "Whatever. They're not like Spiderman comic books from the 1960's... they won't go up in value."
nerdy kid: "we'll see about that!"

Dwindle Factory Tour

I used this video in an earlier post but it was only recently available to be embedded so here it is. Dwindle had a press release in 2004 stating that they were moving their board manufacturing to China. One statement from the release didn't make sense to me:

The vast majority of pro US decks are pressed 4-6 at a time, yielding tremendous deviation in the stack. Consequently, most high level skate pros reject 60-80% of general production. All Chop Chop’s decks are individually pressed, yielding absolute consistency.

Why move production to China to save money if you are going to press boards one at a time, which takes longer and costs more? The video does illustrate how they pull this off and I can't believe no one else had thought of it. Gotta give props to the Mutt.

Unfortunately, I don't think the savings funnel down to the end user (skaters). It's just more profit for those further up the chain. Namely, retailers and distributors.

Ari Gold: golfer extraordinaire

I yanked this from my boy Brett's blog. What's not to like. Entourage and golf.

G&S Neil Blender

This post at Chrome Ball Incident inspired me for this weeks board graphic. Classic Blender art. Faces within Faces. I had department store skateboards for a few years before I started skating seriously in grade 8 (1988). This Blender graphic along with the Joe Lopes with the ball in the hand were two that really stood out to me. When you're so young, graphics meant so much as well as how light your board was LOL

Lakai 2009 Spring Catalog

Lakai's 2009 Spring Catalog. Love the re-release of the black/gum Staples as well as the all black Carrolls. Nice little company time line as well. A shout out to Chrome Ball Incident for getting into the catalog on page 7.

crailtap family

asphalt anthology is a great site which contains a video vault of all the Girl and Chocolate videos. So many sick skaters in that crew.

Epic Gino Iannucci 9

Part 9 of 10 is up. I don't know if my eyes are fooling me but it looks like a bs flip to backward nosegrind on the picnic table and a switch hard heel to manual on the sloped island. The video is so freaking small, I could be totally wrong.

Janoski Mosaic

Stefan Janoski from Habitat Mosaic. Amazing skater. Great style.