Skateboard Durability

I found this video while randomly perusing the internet. This guy Tim Piumarta works for NHS/Santa Cruz and he's created this contraption for testing the strength of boards. I think it's pretty damn cool. I've never really been into Santa Cruz or Creature (I've only ever owned one SC board in my 20+ years of skating and that was back in the late 80's). Who knows if I'll ever get around to ride one of these "strong" boards. I doubt any other board companies put this much research or engineering into their board testing.

Joey Bast: Golfer.

Joey Bast, one of the most under-rated stylish pro's from the mid 90's, is now a Denver golf pro. Scan courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood Spider Chrome.

World Industries Randy Colvin

This was a weird one when it came out. All the black on the bottom of this board was a velvet-y texture. Similar to those posters from the 80's with fuzzy black and flourescent colours... or am I the only one who remembers that? Surprisingly, I watched Two World Industries Men for the first time ever just this morning. Never got this short promo at any of the shops in Ottawa. I know what it feels like to push mongo normal stance. Looks brutal! Art by Mark McKee.

Rob Dyrdek Fantasy Factory Tour

Video tour of the Fantasy Factory here. Dyrdek's hilarious. Some people hate him, call him a sell out, washed up etc etc. He's been in the game for an awful long time and I enjoyed his skating way back in the early 90's. I figured he would fade out by now and be a washed up wannabe white gangster guy... milking it a la Vallely. I was totally wrong. He can definitely still skate. Of course, he's not throwing himself down 14 stairs or rails.

Vision Ken Park

Nobody is going to care about this weeks graphic. This was the first pro model skateboard I ever owned. Krapnek represent. This bad boy was white dipped and had flourescent green griptape, blue 60mm Bullet 95A combos and Tracker Ultralites. I was in grade 8, what can I say!? Art my Andy Takakjian. Graphic from Disposable.

Koston Golf Invitational

Koston's annual golf tournament sponsored by Active. Photo coverage here.

Kyle Desaulniers

I was skating the Plaza a few weeks ago in between rain falls and it was totally dead. This kid shows up and proceeds to 360 flip the big stairs 8 out of 10 times. No sweat. Turns out it's this guy Kyle who rides for Geoff Dermer's Kitsch Skateboards.

Anthony Pappalardo

"In 1995, Anthony Pappalardo was a great golfer who barely skated. In 2000, he's a great skater who barely golfs."

His first Lakai ad. He was pretty tech back in the day in comparison to how he skates now.

Remembrance

Menace Blunt Series

The first series of Menace boards released: White Alomar, King Eric and Suriel Sweets. Nice clean graphics. Definitely the best series they had. I couldn't find any actual pictures of the graphics so the above are Dill and Pupecki riding the boards, yanked from chrome ball incident.

Woodchuck Factory Tour

Woodchuck is Canadian pro skateboarder Max Dufour's woodshop. Their boards are 100% Canadian Maple, made in Quebec and they have a warehouse in California as well. Premium and Avera skateboards are their own brands but they do press for Ben Chibber's Vancouver-based Monke Skateboards as well as some for Alien Workshop, Habitat and Baker. Their identifying marker is similar to PS Stix but instead of a PS#, it's a WCK#.

Pressure flip to bloggage

This dude does some weird ass pressure flip variations but he's got a few goodies on his blog. Check out his entries on OG DC ruler Chris Hall and Dyrdek's rare Neil Blender board.

Barack Obama

Good Luck today.

Alien Workshop Duane Pitre Olives

There's something so simple about this graphic, yet so amazing at the same time. Two videos that had a huge influence on me in grade 9 and 10 (1990/1991) were G&S Footage and Alien's Memory Screen. I clocked many hours watching Rob Dyrdek and Duane Pitre's parts. In the grand scheme of things, the latter's skateboard career was quite short lived in comparison to his teammates. I was down for Alien Workshop back then and I'm still down to this day, regardless of the Burton takeover. Mindfield is going to be sick. Graphic yanked from Disposable. Art by Neil Blender.