After Eric Koston’s departure from Lakai recently.  Lot’s of rumors have been flying around about where he’ll end up. Vans? Nike? His own brand? Well, Felix Arguelles recently snapped a pic of Koston wearing some Nikes. Does this mean he’s inked a deal with Nike? I guess we want know until someone makes it official. Stay tuned for details, as we get them.

David Lynch Foundation Televison (www.dlf.tv) has a great 20 min feature on Zarosh Eggleston. If you’re not familiar with Zarosh, he’s an amazing creative skateboarder. He rides super big boards and always has crazy grip tape art. He’s so fun to watch skate, because he’s the guy that will be off in the corner somewhere doing stuff that most people don’t even think about. When I first met Zarosh, he was “living” in San Diego and would come by our shop looking for scraps of grip tape. I wasn’t sure about him at the time, until he finally came in to skate our ramps. We had 2 minis, one that had super tight transitions, with two corners and a 3 foot extension, and the other was a pretty standard 5 foot mini. Most people would come over and ignore the ramp that had the tight transitions, because it was really hard to skate. Not Zarosh, he would head straight to that ramp and always pull something that everyone would just be amazed by. He’s definitely a creative guy that you will hear more of in the future. Watch the video and be amazed.

Looks like Vans has their name on a new iPhone app. In a partnership with Fuel Games, Vans has released a cool looking iPhone skate game, called Vans Pool Service. The game features Bucky Lasek and Omar Hassan.

Vans and Fuel Games put their heads together to create the most addictive iPhone skateboarding app to date- Vans SK8: Pool Service will have you shredding with the best of ‘em!

Active Ride Shop announced that they have filed for a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the county of Riverside. Which means after recently closing several stores, they’re still having enough financial problems that they need help. Chapter 11 allows them reorganize their finances and temporarily not pay their creditors. For a indepth explantion of what Chapter 11 means, read Jeff Harbaugh’s post over on Transworld Biz.

Gareth gets his shred on, over on the Skateboard Mag.

Gareth, it’s time to have an intervention—a shred intervention.

Check it out.

Rob Meronek of the Skatepark of Tampa has been kind enough to share stats on deck sales for the last 6 years. If you’re in the Biz, you’ll appreciate this kind of info. You can see the full report here.

It has been a epic battle. Check the Benny Farifax and Mike Mo final here.

The Adidas Skate team hit up Osaka Japan and captured it in HD. This video is awesome. Make sure you check out the HD version on youtube.

Rob Dyrdek has been on a campaign for the last few years to build a different kinda skatepark. His first one, in his hometown of Kettering Ohio has been received well by skaters and community a like. Now with the completion of his mini skate plaza in LA’s Lafayette Park, he’s on a roll. Rummor has it that the park is complete but not officially open. But, as you can see from the pic here and over on Shad’s site, the fence is being jumped. Keep a look out for the official oppening coming soon.

Just about everyone has a iPhone now, it’s a pretty amazing little device. Now, with the new iSkateboard iPhone app, you can find and share skate spots. Currently they claim 30,000 street spots, skate parks and skate shops worldwide. I can see this growing pretty rapidly, especially since they’re currently working on apps for the BlackBerry, G-Phone, Sidekick & Windows ME. Check it out.

Tony Hawk tops the list with $12 million and The Flying Tomato made an estimated $9 million in 2008. Suspiciously missing from the list is Rob Dyrdek and BAM, who both make at least $1 mill per year. Skateboarding and other board sport stars on average still make a lot less than main stream sports. Tiger, Lebron, Kobe and even Michale Jordan still make well over $40 mill per year.

You can check out the Forbes top 10 list here or here.

I just watched a great interview over on Plan-B TV with the Skateboard Mag’s Dave Swift. He’s a collector of all things skate, and he has a kick ass hand painted Neil Blender board. Check out the interview here.

[via the skateboardmag]

Staff writer Jennifer Davies of the San Diego Union Tribune did a interesting piece on the looming economic times for the Action Sports Industry.

Already struggling with a glut of inventory, the $14.4 billion industry is forecasting sales to fall as much as 25 percent this year. Some surfboard makers say their business is down 30 percent to 40 percent as consumers put off larger purchases.

If you work in the action sports industry, look out, it’s time to be lean. ASR should have been the first marketing expense to be cut.

[via transworld biz]

Not sure how we missed this one. Any who, Crailtap had a Lakai Final Flare edit contest last month. The winning entry is a animation short by Cosme. This is a pretty awesome video.

[via Bonza.com]

Inquiringmind has a short interview with skateboard collector, Boneless One. Self admittingly, Boneless One is only intersted in collecing boards from the 80’s, but has a few from the 70’s also. Looks like he has a  collection that most would be very envious of. You can see the full interview here.

The new SLAP magazine is becoming favorite skate web destination. This time around, they visit with Jason Jessee at his warehouse near Santa Cruz California. Jason Jesse is a true original. Enjoy.

Paul Rodriguez jr. (aka P-Rod) makes his big screen debut in the upcoming movie Vicious Circle.

Set in modern day Venice Beach, this character study uniquely examines cause and effect, unintended consequences and the duality of brotherhood. Inventive and wise beyond his years, young RJ is an artist, a chess master, and on a mission to find out what happened to his dead girlfriend. But he’s not the only one. A speed-fueled gangster, a petty but vicious drug dealer and the cops all think RJ has the answers.

The flagship “extreme Sports” site for ESPN has been EXPN for since early 2000. They’ve now re-branded under the name ESPN Action Sports.

ESPN is re-branding its online home for action sports. The site will become ESPN Action Sports this fall as part of a new multimedia initiative that will also mark the launch of the ESPN Action Sports Network—a group of interconnected sites, including sport-specific vertical sites from ESPN (ex: ESPN Skate) and other premiere action sports destinations such as Surfline.com, Vans.com, Active Ride Shop and more. The new network of sites, with ESPN Action Sports as its central hub, will create multiple drop in points for action sports participants and enthusiasts, with the mission of developing the best, deepest, most useful network of action sports content and community anywhere.

Fourduos.com is a Dallas Texas based blog that covers the skate scene all over the Lone Star state. Check out out the their January Montage video.