Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MacKaye usually is enlisted to talk about various iterations of punk culture, so it’s exciting when he puts his brain on other topics. Blogger Atiba Jefferson of The Skateboard Mag recently sat down to query MacKaye about skateboarding, and the results proved typically fascinating and incisive, especially about how skating helped form his world view and shape how he perceived his immediate environment. The bit about Ian and Henry Rollins as teenagers taking a Greyhound bus across the country to check out California skate parks and pro contests proves especially rad! Read the interview here.

Ian and Rollins are featured in the upcoming documentary, Barbarshop Punk, which premiered this year at SXSW.  Here’s a preview.

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Pro skater, Greg Lutzka, explains, “The economy is definitely hurting our industry because people aren’t buying as many boards and aren’t spending as much money. It’s hurting our board sales because, as a pro, our boards sell for $60 when a kid can go buy a local shop deck for $35.”

The bottom line is that smaller skate brands and smaller markets will be most hit. The result of that will be less innovation and indie startups than in the last 10 years or so, at a time when skate is just coming into its own. That’s not even taking into consideration the rising star skaters that might not be able to compete. It’s not a surprising story, but the well-timed sentiment on skateboarding as a cottage industry that has seen much success and could be in for a tough run is welcolmed.

More: ESPN Skateboarding

Video games have come a long way, and even the iPhone app games rival anything you’d see in an arcade back in the day. So it was a matter of time before skating became a game sector of its own, and our local, Greg Lutzka is the main character of this new one called S.K.A.T.E. which is the skate version of H.O.R.S.E. You challenge the virtual Lutzka to a head-to-head game of S.K.A.T.E. where he links together a series of tricks which you have to match or suffer the fate of getting another letter. Spell S.K.A.T.E. and you are out.

The game also features a pretty dope soundtrack Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Ivy League and Soapbox Paradox care of Skullcandy. It’s only $1, so if you’re a skate freak with an iPhone there is no excuse to not grab it.

More: LA Examiner

“Skateistan” started two years ago in a dried-up fountain in the heart of the Afghan capital, when two Australians with three skateboards started teaching a small group of fascinated kids.

Now dozens of boys and girls from across all social classes can mix in a giant indoor park that looks like a cross between a military hangar and an urban hangout, festooned with the names of fashionable skating brands that have sponsored the park.

The group have established an indoor park to give lessons, and so far it seems to be a winning effort, to allow kids to be kids. Alot of these kids are poor, used to selling chewing gum on the streets. So Skateistan represents a chance for something better, and hopefully a positive move on the world stage.

Austin Stephens and posse came up with an awesome skate vid—seemingly homemade but with expert tricks and moves. It features probably the dopest use of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” we’ve heard in a minute, too. And while the skills on display here prove ultra smooth, they don’t stint on the classic faceplants and wipeouts, either. The sense of fun and invention in this clip is infectious: it proves all you need to create your own skatepark is some imagination, wide open pavement and a few rails to bounce off of.

The Skateboarder’s Journal isn’t a history or a how-to manual, however – it’s an attempt to capture the essence of skateboard culture via the people who do it. It’s expressionistic ride through six decades of the sport, featuring individual skaters’ histories (about 180 of them), from well-known faces to a young skate grommet just doing his first tricks to a 73-year-old architect who only started skateboarding at the age of 65.

Illustrating those narratives are nearly 300 photographs varying from candid snapshots to artful pics from the top lensers in the skating universe: Grant Brittain, Glen E. Friedman, Jim Goodrich, Wynn Miller, Mofo, and. Ted Terrebonne all contribute. From top to bottom, this is a “core” package: avid skateboarder Adrian Pina was responsible for the book’s graphic design, while skate legend/Dogtown and Z-Boys documentarian Stacy Peralta wrote the foreword. Flipping through the pages of The Skateboard Journal, the numerous icons of the sport appear: Britt Parrott, Bryan Ridgeway, Chris Yandall, Curt Kimbel, Dave Dash, D. David Morin, Dave Hackett, Dan Gesmer, Don Hoffman, Ellen Oneal, Di Dootson, Jim O’Mahoney, Jim Fitzpatrick, John Fudala, John O’Malley, John “Tex” Gibson, Keith Meek, Laura Thornhill, Mark Partain, Mike Weed, Roger Hickey, Tom Sims and Wentzle Ruml IV are all in there.

But it’s the cumulative force of everyone’s stories, from notable to nobody, that demonstrates the impact skateboarding had on so many different generations – “lives on board,” indeed…

and lastly in Jack’s own words: “The book looks great thanks to the efforts of designer Adrian Pina and editor Jonathan Harms, both of whom devoted an incredible amount of time and energy to this project (both are still making tweaks here and there).  And of course I would like to thank everyone who contributed stories and photographs, you are the ones who truly “wrote” the book. If you’ve been following my Facebook and TSJ postings, you already know the foreword was written by Stacy Peralta, one of my first skateboarding heroes.”

You too can get involved at the SJ site to share your skateboarding life with skateboarders from all over the world. Contribute to the culture, lifestyle and sport of skateboarding. Go deh !

Any day’s a good day to be blown away by some Wizard Smoke – an awesome piece of skateboarding film making by the Salazar and Don’t Sleep crews, as directed by Liam Mitchell and incredibly shot by Nathan Drillot and Liam Mitchell. Featured chalky skaters are Bradley Sheppard, Alien, Nate Lacoste, Chris Connolly, Nate Roline, Stacy Gabriel, Desmond Hoostie, Mike Klinkhamer, and Rob Rickaby.

More a short film really than a video, it’s simplicity is stunning – enjoy and Have An Awesome Day !

Click here to view the embedded video.

Though this probably has nothing to do with the parks, Dyrdek is also responsible for the largest skateboard in the world. This is good enough excuse to post a video about it.

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Not much to say, other than anything you think you saw for the first time was probably already done and dusted by some one old school. I know we keep referencing him, but Gonz here shoots the gap and rocks people’s domes… from a distant era.

Via ESPN

American Sports Data found that in 2002 there were 18.5 million skateboarders in the world, however the sports witnessed it’s first boom in the 1960s. Originally a “hobby” for off-season surfers, skateboarding got to the point of popularity as “sidewalk surfing” that ABC broadcast the international skateboard championships, and this was before urethane wheels had even been introduced. So, imagine this video in that light, a freestyle skateboard championship for the ladies division in 1965 from Anaheim, California, televised nationally. Peep it here now.

via Nerdcore

No doubt Mark Gonzalez has changed the game. He along with being a well-esteemed skater, his art career has influenced more than a few young contemporaries. It seems like yesterday, but until I was reminded of the scene in Thomas Campbell’s “A Love Supreme”, I had forgotten about the “circle board.” A contraption made by Gonz, ridden here by Anthony Pappalardo, the circle board is of legend and seems to have even been up for art auction at one point. Don’t know if ever sold. Now, ESPN bloggers are calling him and his crew (Pappalardo and William Strobeck) the new Factory, or at least giving Gonz props for his influence on both skating — he doth invented the Ollie — as well as art (he collaborated early on with Spike Jonze and Harmony Korine). He also appears in Gummo, where he wrestles a chair. His influence is actually all around you, but good luck finding a VHS of his skate video Gnar Gnar. Still the circle board delights. Bravo.

More here on the Dew Tour Final: Alli

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The 16,000-square-foot skate park is named after legendary Z-Boy skater Dennis “Polar Bear” Agnew who passed away 5 years ago. It’s magnificently located right on the beach near Windward Avenue and Ocean Front Walk and is complete with a range of rails, steps, ramps, plus the 9ft ‘deep pool’, the ‘flow bowl’ and ‘the snake’. A grand return and tribute to the days of the Z-Boys (Venice’s hometown Zephyr skate team) from the ’70s who helped bring skateboarding to a whole new level.

We have no idea what ‘freebording’ is, other than it appears to be a name for those long, curved boards with the squishy wheels. Whatever it is, this is pretty cool. Watch.

via ESPN

Click here to view the embedded video.

Peralta would also go on to become a director and producer of films, like Dogtown and Z-Boys and and most recently Bloods and Crips. In 2005, he reunited with Powell to reissue the classic line of boards for a new (and old) generation. Not to date myself, but I remember my Peralta Ripper and they did the right thing by keeping true to the originals. They have also issued new versions, smaller and probably agile, of the same boards… for your son or daughter. Cringe. Regardless of the sales talk, I would love to grab a reproduction and slap some trucks and OG Bones urethane on it. I doubt you’ll see me in the pool, but that classic neon is back in fashion and kinda hype for old and new school.

via Boards Magazine

Venice-based skaters have banded together to keep the park’s inauguration dedicated to the local community and free of corporate sponsors. So justice has been served, with an extra helping of half pipe to boot! After all, it’s skate or die, as the saying goes: indeed, it took that dedication to make the dream of a Venice park finally happen – the best trick of all.

via Transworld