Feel The Bubbles, some behind-the-scenes action for an internetty project featuring Bob Burnquist, a million black balloons, and the San Jose Skatepark. The final cut be showing in its entirety on March 2.

By Altamont
Press Release

Los Angeles, CA— Get ready to get buck! Skateboarding, music, and hi-jinx! The Altamont skateboard team will be on tour March 10 - 21, 2009, shredding the southwest with No Age and The Goat as the bands make their way from Los Angeles, California to Austin, Texas in time for the annual South By Southwest music conference. If you happen to be in the path of the hurricane, be sure to join the circus for one or more of these dates and locations (all shows all ages)…

Bands:
No Age
The Goat & The Occasional Others

Altamont Team Riders confirmed: Andrew Reynolds, Bryan Herman, Brian “Slash” Hansen, Garrett Hill, Kenny Hoyle, Sammy Baca, Justin Figueroa and Theotis Beasley.

About No Age: “The music is an invitation and rallying call for individuals to get involved in a community which celebrates art and experimentation,” No Age’s Randy Randall explains. “It’s DIY on a different scale, an attempt to reacquaint people with the notion that art is a crucial part of everyday life. No Age is more than a band to us,” he continues. “It is an umbrella.” And, under this umbrella, Dean and Randy have curated art shows, designed shirts, hats, bandanas, etc., made videos and ‘zines. No Age prefers to perform in unique venues: the LA River Basin, a public library, book stores, an Ethiopian restaurant, all to foster new ways to experience live music outside of traditional bar/club settings.

About The Goat & The Occasional Others: The Goat & the Occasional Others is a Los Angeles-based garage band. Formed in 2007 by two skateboarders with too much time on their hands and too much creative energy to keep bottled up. Andrew Reynolds (guitar) and Shane Heyl (vox) were quickly joined by their good friends Kevin “Spanky” Long (guitar) and Beagle Oneism (drums) to create The Goat’s first record, a vinyl 10″ self-titled EP released in 2008 as a promotional item in very limited quantities by Altamont Apparel Ltd., Reynolds’ Los Angeles-based skateboard clothing company featuring the band logo and cover artwork designed by the notorious graffiti writer NECKFACE. Soon after this first release, The Goat added the Atiba Jefferson on keyboards to complete the line-up. Through this much sought after release and some energetic and intense early live shows, The Goat quickly established a cult following amongst everyone from professional skateboarders like Eric Koston and Guy Mariano, to the porn actress Crystal Clear and the celebrated movie actor Ryan Gosling. Gosling, himself a musician in the band Dead Man’s Bones, introduced the band to the label Wolfheart Records in Los Angeles, for whom The Goat is currently recording their first full length entitled “The Goat Speaks” to be release in Spring 2009. As much fun as these guys have making and playing music, loyal skate fans need not worry, none of these guys have any plans for quitting their “day jobs” anytime soon!

The City Skateboards crew hit up Southern California and came back with a webzine and video of their adventures. Check out the Southern Sojourn.

The Best of The Battle of The Berrics has been compiled for your dancing pleasure. It’s already a classic.

PLUS: Check out The Battle at the Berrics Redemption Battle Bracket IV is now up and running.

Be sure and check the links to Redemption Battle I and Redemption Battle II and Redemption Battle III— your chance to catch the unbracketed-but-now-fully-bracketed bracket of SKATE at The Berrics.

Mikey Taylor is now on etnies.

The biggest skateboard competition in the history for skateboarding is coming May 2009. Each Am skater can pick up to 3 styles, Vert, Street or Park and submit a 1 minute video for each. All video entries are due in May and it is free to enter. You can read the complete rules and watch a demo video on the site right now.

Online Skate Jam
onlineskatejam.com

This is the first Online Only Am Skate Comp of this scale.

Each skater can pick up to 3 styles, Vert, Street or Park and submit a 30 second video for each. Judges will then judge the video and we will award Semi-Final Prizes to the winners of each category in Male and Female divisions. Then judges will view all of the Semi Final videos again and an overall winner will be chosen.

Sponsorship
Some of the sponsors have also offered to sponsor top Online Skate Jam skaters. Not everyone will get sponsored. I don’t need to tell you that getting sponsored by a major skateboard company is a awesome.

Product
Decks, Trucks, Wheels, Shoes, Pads, Helmets, Toys and all kinds of other product are going to be prizes not only for the best skaters but for random participants also.

Exposure
DVDs, TV, Magazines, Newspaper, Highlights on skate sites. And the best of all, your video will be watched by the top skaters and professionals in the industry.

So fo the judges are Dave Duncan, Steve Steadham, Vinton Pacetti, Ronnie Bertino, Courtney Payne Taylor, Mike Furst, Brendan Migliori, LA Dave, Josh Levis, Mark Martin, Dave Hegstrom, Joe McDonald, Chuck Dinkins, SEAN DILLON, Bobby Stevenson, Rene Morales and Billy Wahl.

You can read the complete rules and watch a demo video on the site right now. The site also lists sponsorship opportunities for companies to get involved.

Have fun.
Online Skate Jam

Ambush to host Game of Skate on March 28, 2009. Registration is open, so head to Ambush’s site to sign up!

Divisions: Beginner - Intermediate - Advanced

Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 finishers in each division, plus raffles and give-a-ways all day long!

On Tuesday the movement continued in Los Angeles as Skate Plaza visionary Rob Dyrdek opened the world’s first Safe Spot, Skate Spot at Lafayette Recreational Park. A thousand kids were joined by LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, camera news crews and reporters, a Fuel TV crew, and magazine reps. The locals, their families, the DC team and the industry were all on hand for the opening of skateboarding’s newest landmark, and the start of the era of the Safe Spot Skate Spot.

The opening ceremonies began around three o’clock as Dyrdek got L.A. city council members up on his giant skateboard (the largest one ever made) for a little ride across the spot. It was pretty crazy to see Dyrdek, simply a great skateboarder and business owner to most of us, riding a skateboard and rubbing elbows with the mayor of one of the biggest cities in the world. Dyrdek has reached a new level for real.

Then came the welcoming speeches. In his, Dyrdek reinforced his long-term goal of making many more spots just like Lafayette all over the city of Los Angeles. Thanks to the cooperation of the city, this is the first legal street skateboarding spot of many. He said, “This is the future of the sport. We are not trying to over build and force features into a space, but creating a handful of obstacles in a place we call a spot.”

Ribbon cutting was next, and Dyrdek joined LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to slice the red ribbon. The spot was officially open to the public with the sun shining but quickly setting. The kids rushed in to be among the first to session the spot, hitting the benches, stairs, handrails, and even a skateable star bank — it’s 9000 square feet of street skating in all. They’d seen it being built over the last 3 weeks from outside the fence, but Tuesday was their first real chance to skate its pristine terrain smack dab in the middle of downtown L.A.

It was a good scene to start Laffayette off right: the team, local government officials, kids and families all packing the spot to celebrate its birth. Spotted in the crowd were DC riders Rob Dyrdek, Josh Kalis, PJ Ladd, Ryan Smith, Lindsey Robertson, Greg Myers, Wes Kremer, and Marquise Henry. Also in attendance were Steve Berra, Braydon Szafranski, Giovanni Reda, and Anthony Van Engelen.

Can you imagine if there were spots like this all over LA? All over the world? If Dyrdek gets his way, there will be.

As dark fell the crowds began to disperse, with the spot open from today on as a new hub for legal street skateboarding — no pads or tickets at this free spot. Skate it at 625 South Lafayette Park Place, Los Angeles, CA 90057 (near the intersection of Commonwealth and Wilshire).

The Rob Dyrdek/DC Shoes Skate Plaza Foundation site has got a few photos… Click here.

Our friends at skateboarding.com posted a bunch of photos from the opening, plus a little video interview — Click here. Fuel TV also posted photos from the event within about 20 minutes of the ribbon cutting — see those by clicking here.

Check out the Newsclip and dcskateboarding.tv next week for a video from the opening.

The new interactive Blind catalog is online.

More’s ready at The Manifest, which is Real Skateboards‘ cornucopic vault of photos and interviews with their team guys. For today they have Jake Donnelly, Chima Ferguson, JT Aultz, and Max Schaaf. Also on tap are The Manifest teaser commercials from Ramondetta and Chima, as well as ones from Busenitz (interview March 2), Dompierre (interview March 6) and Brock (interview March 6).