This is a closeup of a bootleg Powell Peralta deck with a Per Welinder themed graphic on the bottom. If that’s not enough, it has a Tony Hawk graphic on the top. It’s from an old 80’s Brazilian skateboard magazine sent in by Luciano Fleck Peixoto. It’s funny that the bootleggers thought they had to improve on the originals. Thanks to Luciano for sending this in. Check out his new skateboard company called Yerbah.

It looks like they made bootleg wheels too. Expect more gems from Luciano in the days to come.

Click to enlarge.

I sat on the story of Gordo the skateboarding parrot, but it blew up after he was kidnapped. I think the prime suspect may be the skateboarding budgies we profiled earlier. Now that they’ve got their own blog, they probably don’t want some parrot on a glorified sled stealing their thunder. It’s called Skateboarding Budgies, but you have to scroll through the most recent posts of them rocking out to get to the pictures and videos of the Budgies on Tech Decks.

A couple years back I heard a rumor about a green light being given to a Burnside-style project in Chicago. Having been a long time resident of Chicago, a city famous for corruption, and the political machine, I was hesitant to believe that any alderman would risk alienating the 10 unions that would stand to lose their piece of the pie if skaters were allowed to take the DIY route. It just seemed completely un-Chicago. I don’t know if this Logan Square skatepark project is the reality of that rumor, but it blows chunks. Logan Square is my old hood, I feel for you my brothers…

[Source: Time Out Chicago Photo: Scott Judd]

Chicago proper has one dung heap of a concrete skatepark on the south side, Burnham that yes, can still be a lot of fun, but you can’t argue that it was built or designed well. Well, they learned their lesson when it came time for the second park. Wilson is a well constructed, if somewhat generic Site Design Group skatepark on the north side. Somehow or other, Logan Square ended up with prefab. The Chicago Park District feels that prefab is cheaper, and may consider a permanent concrete facility “at a later date if it proves to be popular and a good investment.” It’s essentially a self fulfilling prophesy of doom. Chicago already has another prefab park (who knew?) that apparently sucks and is falling apart, and as such, rarely gets used. However, this park will be the only one with a roof, so it may end up being heavily used by default. Now neighborhood “concerned citizens” are bummed out about a massive amount of graffiti the skatepark has attracted.

I can’t believe this travesty happened, yet on some levels I can. In the words of Chicago punk legends The Effigies:

We’re da machine,
an organized dream,
And a greased palm down at city hall,
means you walk away clean.

I went on a really fun road trip last weekend. I went down to Grants Pass for a fundraiser party/session at a private bowl. Along the way I stopped at three brand new skateparks in Oregon, including, Winston, Myrtle Creek, and Harrisburg. I even went to the old Grants Pass skatepark for the first time. I took a little over 200 pictures, and lost them all to a corrupt memory card. Unfortunately, this isn’t an April fools joke. Those three up top were the best I could salvage. I don’t want to hear any arguments about why film is better, because I’ve had catastrophic failures there too. Rich has some shots up from the bowl party, Harrisburg, Or and Winston, Or. I imagine he’ll be doling them out over the next week or so. Still, it could have been worse, I could have broke my leg like Shane Bell did.

My brother was in the Bay Area last week and snapped the wall famously featured in the Bryce Kanights photo of Mark Gonzales. He didn’t have a skateboard with him.

Bryce says they got in trouble for taking the original shot. That was the end of their tour.

I can’t believe anyone still wants to see this besides me and my friends. I had the day off so I decided to finish the 1st of the Spring Break (09) series. It may be the last also. There are a lot of parks and riders in here, I bet you cant name them all. Consider it a GVK challenge. That ought to boost my internet rating. Winner gets a personal dinner with the editor clothing optional! - GVK Adios.

Grover’s Video Korner #46: Spring Broken 2009

Visit the GVK Archives

YouTube version

Totem Decks has a few spendy but nice-looking laser etched decks. This three-deck piece is by Christian Pearce. Damn, as if $165 wasn’t enough for the deck, shipping is another $35! Must cost more to ship a work of art than to ship a skateboard deck.

They also have a model with a giant cock on it. Check the categories links at the top of the site. These would go nicely in your architect-designed ramp house

This week’s Shot of the Week is BJ Morrill on a jersey barrier somewhere in Socal. It’s a feeble to fakie shot by a mysterious character named Hurvey. I guess that’s no more mysterious than Kilwag. Check it out.

Swell! It’s 60’s week over here… or at least 60’s couple of days. I save these tidbits on a whim and then sometimes a few of them will bump into each other and make enough meat for a post. First up on the left is a shot from Max Schaaf’s 4Q Conditioning, some vintage hang 10 action. It may be early 70’s though, hard to tell. In the middle we have one of James A. Turners personal photographs from when he was an architecture student at the University of Michigan. This shot is in Detroit, circa 1965. “If life could have been all yo-yos and skateboards, I would have been King.” Turns out he’s a professor of architecture there now. He’s no king, but that’s not too shabby either. Last up, Life Magazine has released some photos into the public domain of sorts, for personal use only. There’s a set of skateboard shots from the 60’s that I found through the Wesleyan University blog. It turns out that Wesleyan University was the host of the first intercollegiate skateboarding championships in 1965, probably the last one too. The Life shots are available at a decent resolution if you click on them. They aren’t all campus shots either. If you are going to follow one link in this post, make it this one.

That’s right, “Skurfing.” This is a short clip from a 1965 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation piece on skateboarding. The reporter interviews a gal who says she had to form a “Sidewalk Skurfing Association” to keep from getting kicked off campus. It’s got lots of Peanuts-esque light jazz piano and the soon to be archetypal reporter flailing on a skateboard. Best line, hands down:

Do you think this will be obsolete in time, like the hula hoop?

There a short excerpt on YouTube, but to see the whole thing you have to go to the CBC Digital Archives. At the end there is a gratuitous shot of the original skateboarding dog with a dire voiceover about the current skateboard sales trends in major Canadian cities. Love the visual quality of that vintage video tape. It looks like it’s ready to catch fire.

- Thanks to Curtis for the tip.

Just a reminder to go to the Benton County Skateboard Alliance benefit if you are near the area in Oregon. The Corvallis Gazette Times wants you to go too. Another flier after the jump.

From the sketchy free online translation, I gather that fashion photographers Claudia Knoepfel and Stefan Indlekofer shot some supermodels (that I don’t recognize…) for a series of skateboards put out by Swiss skateshop Doodah. By the way, this is Friday T&A on S&A.

Surf and Skate historian extraordinaire Scott Starr turned me on to this clip from Green Acres that originally aired in 1967. There’s a community play production of The Beverly Hillbillies that Oliver and Lisa have to step in at the last moment when the leads get injured. Jethro finds a skateboard by the “cement pond” which was what the hillbillies called their pool. This is probably the first time a skateboard was ever used as a plot device on a TV show - the inevitable “unsuspecting tv character gets injured on a skateboard.” I believe there were earlier skateboarder appearances on talk shows and game shows such as What’s my line?, not to mention some ABC sports action, but if this aired oin 1967 it was probably after the skateboard fad had died a seemingly overnight death. According to Starr, 1965 was the big commercial year for skateboarding, and Christmas catalog research seems to validate this. Watch the skateboarding segement after the jump.

Thanks again to Scott Starr for somehow knowing this scene existed and letting me know about it. I’d link to his YouTube account but he can’t keep them anymore, and his website isn’t up yet. After you hit play, hit the “High Quality” (HQ) button that appears next to the volume control.

In the inevitability that this clip gets removed from YouTube, here are some stills.

Yuck Yuck Yuck! It’s a skateboard and I’m a hillbilly!

I found it out by the see-ment pond! Possibly the earliest TV reference to pool skating.

Aaaaaay! Oops, wrong show.

Setting the skateboard down just around the corner… I’m sure nothing bad will happen.

Whoaa!!!

look out for that scenery!

Is it Eddie Albert actually skating or is it a stuntman?

Verdict: Stuntman. You never see his face while he’s skating, and there’s a cut before they show Eddie picking himself up.

I don’t know what the deal is with this Black Label Chris Troy ad in the April 09 issue of Transworld. Estes spotted it and sent in a blurry photo. I’m not sure how to respond to this. Surely someone in the marketing department should have googled “Skate and Annoy.” We’ve been mentioned in Thrasher as recently as the March 2009 issue, as early as 1988, and even made it into the 25 Year anniversary book. We’re certainly not famous, but come on… See the whole advert after the jump.

Kevin Decker aka KVON sent in some nice photographs of an estate sale score he picked up over the weekend, a 60’s era Nash skateboard/scooter. The logo says “Nash Surfboards.” I believe they sold the exact same thing without the handle. Looks like it’s in fine shape. This is one scooter I’d be proud to display.

Went to Ed Benedict today, had a lot of fun. It’s kind of boring because every bank is exactly the same, but on the converse side, there are lots of places to work on things, be you regular or goofy foot. Some complete assholes appear to have stolen a granite slab and some of the pool coping. Classic. I encourage a supreme level of narcing on the guilty parties if anyone ever sees it. I took two pictures of Kaden, and because I can’t edit myself, you get to see them both.

Rich was there too, snapping away like a madman. I’ll link to his shots when he posts them.

Both of these shots are of the same thing, ride up the ban, ollie to axle stall on the extension, ollie shuvit off. Remember kids, before there was an ollie shuvit, there was a vanilla variety shove it.

Hot off his recently filmed “interview” for GVK, Bryce Kanights is curating the Seen of Change skateboard photography show at the Portland space called Artery. Artists in the show include Grant Brittain, Joe Brook, Jon Humphries, Ryan Flynn, and Bryce Kanights. The opening is this Friday from 6-9, with live music from Ben Krahn. We’ll be there, and so should you. Dig that shot of Burnside up top, if you like that, you’ll appreciate this.

Ok, it’s more like a lot of late, late 80’s and 90’s nostalgia, but the title should give you an idea. Vert is Dead in a nice collection of magazine pages and flotsam from the era. Pictured above left is a 1989 photocopied product catalog from SMA. On the right we have a 1991 Thrasher advert for the infamous Natas graphic on his 101 skateboards. If you go back to the first post, Vert is Dead kicked it off in May of 2008 with a Tracker advert for GSD’s airplane evacuation graphic board. The advert appeared in the October 1988 issue of Transworld, the first issue of a skateboard magazine that the site’s author Justin ever saw.

We’ve covered marginally skateable architecture, so now we travel to Punta del Este, Uruguay for this apartment complex surrounded by waves of bricked banks.

This corner is a JAWBREAKER, since the first time I passed by this corner during the 80’s I felt in love with the arquitecture. Good that It was free to ride this “wave”… The “skate abuse” of the place during early 90’s made skateboarding prohibited. Nowadays there’s a security guard 24/7 and they don’t even like people who go there to take pictures. If u come with a skateboard you’ll have a not so nice welcome.

Check out the pictures and the video on Yerbah. - Thanks to Luciano for the tip.

Canadian manufacturer Control Skateboards has licensed the likenesses of adult film actresses from Vivid Videos. The series includes Vivid Girls (L-R) Sunny Leone, Nikki Jayne, Hanna Hilton and Meggan Mallone . It’s supposed to be a limited edition run, but they are priced like normal boards. In fact, they appear to be on a bit of a closeout in some locations. I wonder if they aren’t selling as well because Control doesn’t have the same distribution as the bigger brands.

[Source: Tacky]