"Full Deck: A Short History of Skate Art" - Cool Art Exhibit

BEDFORD GALLERY'S new exhibit "Full Deck: A Short History of Skate Art," featuring more than 400 skateboards and other pieces about skateboard culture.


Exhibit

What: "Full Deck: A Short History
of Skate Art"

When: July 5-Sept. 13

Where: Bedford Gallery, Lesher Center for the Arts, Civic Drive at
Locust Street, Walnut Creek

Hours: Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-
Sunday; 6-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday

Cost: $5 general, $3 ages 13-17, free for ages 12 and younger; free admission every first Tuesday

Doodah’s limited-edition Supermodel Skateboard Project presents super hot skates with naked models!

Doodah’s limited-edition Supermodel Skateboard Project presents super hot skates with naked models!

The outcome is a series of four skateboard decks

Lara Stone, Toni Garrn, Isabeli Fontana, and Edita Vilkeviciute pose for sexy pics which cover the boards. The models are wearing mostly just astonishing heels.

These shoots were made by Claudia Knoepfel and Stefan Indlekofer.

Erin Wasson in Balmain board will be ready in mid-August and teh number of pieces will be limited to 150 only.

Fans of Isabeli can buy a board with her splendid body now, it has been on sale.

So, Toni, Lara, and Edita boards are left.

The boards go for 99 Swiss Francs, which is about $92

Sheckler, Lasek take skateboarding titles Saturday at the Dew Tour's Skate Open

Three-time Dew Cup champion Ryan Sheckler won the skate park finals and Bucky Lasek won the skate vert finals on Saturday at the Dew Tour's Skate Open.

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Sheckler and Lasek were also crowned the first ISF Skateboarding World Champions of their respective disciplines.

Sheckler, of San Clemente, Calif., put up a score of 91.03 and beat out first-time Dew Tour competitor Ryan Decenzo (89.5).

Sheckler's first-place finish included back-to-back frontside lips, boardslides and 5-0's.

"It's crazy that I'm the World Champion," Sheckler said. "These guys out here are absolutely amazing and it could have been anyone's day. Today was my day, and I'm excited to see what happens on the rest of the Dew Tour stops."

Decenzo, of Canada, went through four rounds of international qualifiers in his professional debut and came out with a second-place finish, pulling tricks like a nollie heel to flat and a switch 180 to Smith down the rail. Philadelphia-native Chris Cole wowed the crowd with a front blunt to fakie down the rail and a 360 lip down the rail to round out the podium with a score of 87.93.

"What a great way to start the Dew Tour here in Boston," Cole said. "Being from Philly, it's always great to skate on the East Coast."

Lasek, of Baltimore, Md., took home the world title at the skateboard vert finals, with a run that included a heelflip stalefish and a nollie heel stale, earning him a score of 92.50.

Lasek's last first-place podium finish on the Dew Tour was at the first stop of the 2008 season.

"The first Dew Tour stop this season kind of crept up on me but I had a lot of fun out there," Lasek said. "I usually ride on a bowl so I wasn't used to wall-to-wall, but it was great and feels good to be the world champion."

Canada's Pierre-Luc Gagnon pulled out a 720 and a fakie 540 to earn his second-place finish with a score of 90.75. A hometown crowd cheered on Boston-native Andy Macdonald's runs, which included a backside 540 and a gay twist to earn him the third-place spot.

Afghan kids find skateboards the wheel deal

Oliver Percovich, a lanky Australian in a black T-shirt, emerged from the van with a load of banged-up skateboards. The children grabbed the boards and raced off to skate in the cracked bowl of the dried-up fountain.

Skateboarding was unknown to Afghans until Percovich, who followed his social scientist girlfriend to Kabul, starting teaching local children to skate in early 2007. Two years later, their relationship is over and his girlfriend is back in Australia. But Percovich's "Skateistan" nonprofit club has become a magnet for children in Kabul, the capital.

Los Angeles Times article here

Clearwater beach skateboard ban unfair to responsible skaters

If there is one thing that is incompatible with pedestrian use of sidewalks, it is concurrent use of those sidewalks by inconsiderate or overly aggressive skateboarders who don't care about the dangers they present to walkers. After 11 merchants on Clearwater Beach's Mandalay Avenue complained that skateboarders were creating hazards for pedestrians, the city had a rather measured response: It put up signs banning skateboard use on limited sections of sidewalks where skateboarding had become a problem. The question is, was an outright ban the city's only alternative?

While casting the net to catch unsafe skateboarders, the city has caught two groups that created no problem: responsible skateboarders who are careful about their behavior around pedestrians, and a subset of skateboarders called "longboarders" who use their special boards designed for long-distance transport to travel from beach parking lots to their jobs in beach hotels and restaurants. Mandalay Avenue has no bike lanes, so the sidewalks are the only place for longboarders to travel safely.

After the city quietly posted the signs a week ago, angry longboarders and regular skateboarders started signing petitions against the ban.

Skateboarding is not the first athletic pursuit to get the attention of city enforcers. In recent months, city officials have disagreed over the appropriateness of a city ordinance that bans the tossing of balls or Frisbees in city parks and on Clearwater Beach. City Council member George Cretekos was so offended by the ordinance after finding it in the city code book that he hounded his council colleagues until they agreed recently to consider changing it.

Cretekos argued that the city, out of concern that some careless folks might be too aggressive and hurt someone by tossing a ball or throwing a Frisbee, had banned activities that were normal and usually harmless. He said what should be banned was dangerous behavior.

The same could hold true for skateboarding. Rather than banning all skateboarding on Mandalay sidewalks, the city could ban behavior that is dangerous to pedestrians.

In fact, the city already has such an ordinance banning dangerous skateboarding. City ordinance 28.11 (2) reads, "It is unlawful for operators or riders of skateboards, roller skates or in-line skates to fail to yield the right-of-way to any other pedestrians or to otherwise endanger or interfere with pedestrian traffic on any street or sidewalk within the city."

That ordinance seems to provide sufficient direction for a police officer to make a judgment about whether a skateboarder is endangering pedestrians. However, the city instead chose to use a different section of the same ordinance, 28.11 (1), which provides for a ban and states that it is illegal to ride a skateboard "on any public or private property where prohibited by conspicuously located signs having lettering at least two inches high and containing as a minimum the words 'No Skating,' 'No Skateboarding,' or a substantially similar message." Hence, City Manager Bill Horne had the signs erected along Mandalay.

The city also has banned skateboarding on the Beach Walk promenade, a $30 million city amenity that was designed to provide for a variety of pedestrian uses such as walking, jogging, bicycling and in-line skating. There, the reason for the ban is that skateboarders are damaging the Beach Walk sundial plaza and low bench walls by performing stunts on their boards. Skateboarders also have done substantial damage to sand walls at Pier 60 Park. That damage to public property runs up the cost of maintaining the facilities — something the city government can little afford these days.

Athletic skateboarders who want to practice their sport without the limitations of dealing with pedestrians and city rules have an alternative. The city's Ross Norton Recreation Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue south of downtown has an expansive skateboard park overlooking Lake Belleview. There, skateboarders can jump and grind all they want, and they won't risk getting an $88 ticket for a city ordinance violation.