Pretty cool that a 16 year old can open a skate shop. Wonder if it will still be open in 6 months time?

New Skate Terms & Definitions

• Bearings
• Salad Grind
• McTwist
• Bertslide
• Daffy Manual and Yeah Right Manual (same thing)
• Yo Yo Plant

About Skateboarding has a competition running where you can win two Gareth Stehr pro decks, one set of wheels, a t-shirt and the new Go Go Toe Skate DVD. This competition ends on the 6th of December and you can find out all the details here.

To enter you are supposed to trawl through the About website and the Foundation Skateboards site finding the answers to these five questions...

• Who's the artist that created the graphic for Gareth Stehr's Crooks deck?
• Which Foundation DVDs have featured Gareth Stehr's skateboarding?
• Foundation had an add with Gareth Stehr jumping out of a jar of what?
• What was Foundation's 15th anniversary film?
• When was the last time you wet yourself in public?

But hell, I'll give you the answers (to the first four) because I'm just that nice. E-mail them to Steve at skateboard@about.com.

• Chris Ryniak
• Madness & Mayhem, That's Life Flick,
• Vegemite
• That's Life Flick

Lack Of Internet...

I have huge amounts of tricktionary entries to update, both from Tony's massive list and all the tricks you guys have been patiently submitting over the past couple of weeks. My Internet connection has been hijacked by my brother recently for the purposes of playing world of warcraft (yawn). We're now networked right up and I will be able to get on with adding the tricks starting right now.

EDIT : All of the corrections e-mailed to me by Tony Gale are done. Starting on new submissions tomorrow...

I was watching Rodney Mullen vs Daewon Song - Round 1 the other day and I happened to pause it right at this moment where Rodney is about to pressure flip.

Look how much his back foot is hanging off - now you know what you need to do!

I'm Wrong, So Very Very Wrong...

Tony Gale e-mailed me a couple of days ago with a list of corrections and new additions to the tricktionary longer than my arm. I'm happy to say there weren't any major mistakes, and predictably the area where he owned me most was flatland tricks. I'm very grateful anyway, and hopefully I will find time to phase in all (well, nearly all) of his suggestions in the next week or so.

Bob Burnquist, famous amongst other things for skating everything in switch, doing an upside down kickflip on a loop the loop, and having a hot wife, plans to rival Danny Way's Great Wall Of China jump by skating off a cliff (I only hope he has more luck than Homer in the Simpsons...).

That sounds more sensationalist than it really is though, in my opinion, although the 'fly off a massive launch ramp onto a rail' part will be good. That bit certainly seems the most testing.

Mike V. Tours USA

The skateboard directory has a list of shops and skateparks where inspirational skateboarder Mike Vallely will be making an appearance on his "man vs skatepark" tour.

Although the whole jumping from big heights into ramps thing isn't really my thing, from various interviews and random footage of him he seems like a pretty sound guy.

The long awaited (yeah right) second installment of the beginners guide is now done. The kids in my road that I was actually teaching have all but given up - biking over shabbily built ramps seems to be the craze at the moment and in fact the weather isn't exactly suited to skateboarding anyway. I'm now drawing on my own experiences as a beginner for this new article which you can read here.

A couple of days ago I picked up Rodney Mullen vs Daewon Song - Round 1 on DVD. Read my review of this skate video here.

I've finally found a definition of a semi flip that I'm comfortable publishing, being that it comes from one of the UK's leading flatlanders and trick gurus, Tony Gale. Cheers Tony! So now you can find out what a semi flip is, as well as a few other recent additions to the tricktionary...

• Semi Flip
• Gingersnap
• Casper Flip - Updated
• Christ Air
• Cave Man
• Nosegrab
• Powerslide

Steve Cave Knows Nothing About Skateboarding

Ironic, given his position as staff writer for www.about.com on the topic of skateboarding. Take this 'profile' on Rodney Mullen for example. Aside from the astounding inablity to consistently spell the guys name correctly (is it 'Rodney', or is it 'Rodeny' - at least choose one and stick to it, foo!) sweeping, ill informed statements such as this do nothing for his credibility as a so called 'expert' :

I'm sorry? He's "easily" the best street skateboarder the world has yet seen? I'll be the first to admit that I'm slightly obsessive about Mullen, but to make such a statement without backing it up seems a little... crap. And as was pushed home to me when watching Rodney vs Daewon, he certainly isn't 'comfortable and relaxed'.

What's more, this guy is supposed to have a degree in English but if you ask me his writing stinks. About.com should do themselves a favour and employ me as their staff writer instead - I want at least £30k but for that you will get a decent level of literacy and interesting articles that consist of more than a few 'facts' reeled off with all the imagination of a brick. Oh, and I won't try and search engine optimise your website by stuffing it with keywords that nobody searches for...