A short skateboard video from Salazar Productions featuring, Bradley Sheppard, Alien, Nate Lacoste, Chris Connolly, Nate Roline, Stacy Gabriel, Desmond Hoostie, Mike Klinkhamer, and Rob Rickaby

Directed By Liam Mitchell
Shot By Nathan Drillot and Liam Mitchell

(via Briefly Noted)

Reminds me that ski season is coming up – something I never forget even though I’m stuck in the city these days! Boy, I hope to get out and do some deep powder this winter. But, don’t worry, Ma, I won’t get into this sort of mess. I hope.

(via NewTeeVee)

The Hardcourt Bicycle Polo Federation World Championships are happening this weekend directly across the street from my house here in Philly! I’ll be able to watch from my bedroom if I wanted.

(via sarahspy)

No comment needed for this one. Just, wow.

(Hat tip, NewTeeVee Station!)

File under: WANT. The ingenious folks at the sustainable product design and engineering shop called Studio Gelardi came up with this masterful lil’ tool for your bike. Seems as thought it’s still in ‘concept’ mode, but I can’t wait until it gets manufactured. Given the buzz it’s getting, I won’t be surprised if that happens soon.

Cool Hunting sez: “The small apparatus attaches to any bike’s seat tube and applies a thin layer of chalk powder in one of several colors to the rear tire. The result is an eye-catching streak that traces wherever you ride. In addition to visually enhancing the street, it serves as a directional guide for subsequent cyclists and a constant reminder to motorists that they should share the road.”

So I’ve been riding my trust old steel Schwinn single speed bike for about three years now and the poor thing is getting mighty ragged. I’ve been thinking about an overhaul, but also perhaps a whole new purchase. Every once in a while I see this one amazingly sexy bike parked where I park at the train station on my morning commute and I just salivate over it’s shear beauty.

All of a sudden, rather out of the blue I come across Republic Bikes of Dania Beach, Florida. They’ve got this slick web site where you can ‘build your own‘ track bike from the colors and sizes they have in stock. And wouldn’t you know it, a complete bike is just $344 bucks. Hmmmm. I may be on to something here. Just look at the fun designs you too can make:

Now that it’s getting nice (relatively) out again, almost spring, we’ve been stepping it up a bit on the running regimen. Today was a gorgeous sunny winter day, so we decided to head down to the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge for a jog around the water. Turns out, this is a spectacular spot to go running.

The small loop trail is very well maintained, there is hardly anyone there, the visitor center is a great warming hut for cooling down and getting a drink of water, and the one loop is 3.3 miles around which is just about 5k. Perfect!

On top of that, it’s only about a 10 minutes drive down just past the PHL airport. And it’s terrific to be in a quiet nature preserve with lots of wild birds and information signs and bird lookouts like this:

I have never done the swim yet, but I have heard about it’s legend for years. My brother Paul, his best friend Chris, Chris’s siblings and several other nutty kids love to jump into the Bushkill Creek at Jacobsburg State Park in my high school hometown every Christmas. This is the 8th 9th year they’ve done it! I love this kind of good old fashioned funtimes. I’m going to try my best to be there for the 10-year anniversary. Check these great photos by Chris’s sister Schuyler:

Snowboarding at Solitude in Utah from Mark Schoneveld on Vimeo.

Oh, and… ICE BEARD!

Bright Bike from Michael Mandiberg on Vimeo.

Bright Bike is a Retroreflective Vinyl coated bike. It is like coating your bike with a big sticker that turns ultra-brite in headlights. Right now we are in the prototyping stages, and hope to offer a DIY Kit soon. If you can’t wait that long, contact Beacon Graphics in NJ for Scotchlight 680.

[Thanks, Rocketboom!]

Philadelphia Phillies became World Champions last night, in case you didn’t hear. If you were in Philly last night, there wasn’t a chance in hell you missed it. The noise + celebertion + collective euphoria was unbelievable. Here’s a crappy, dark, blurry shot I took on my phone outside of Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown. Probably 500 people in the street from all the bars in that area. Fireworks. Police. Crazed fans. Amazing.

This short film is about champion mountain biker Dave Wiens as he recently took on a late entry by Lance Armstrong into the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race.

[photo: ESPN/AP Photo/Chris Carlson]

Holy crap, I am so high from the Phillies amazing playoff run right now (though it might be the coffee). I haven’t been this baseball crazy since I was 12 and I was growing up in the Bay Area and going bananas for the Giants awesome playoff run that got them to play the A’s in the “Earthquake” World Series in 1989.

Jason Stark’s pride-inducing post-game write up starts off:

The magic of October is that you can’t script it, you can’t predict it, you can’t even explain it.

So who wrote this script? Who predicted this finish? Who can explain the unbelievable chain of events that have led the Phillies to the brink of their first World Series journey in 15 years?

My love of baseball has been fully revived. If I weren’t so damn broke, I’d snap this up in a hot minute:

Down on one of the backstreets among the broken down factories near the waterfront behind our house, hundreds of people gather on a nice day to race their tricked out four-wheelers. It is a crazy sight, to be sure. Nary a helmet in sight and outa control bravado, it’s really like the old wild west. Racing for money and honor.

After hanging out for a while this afternoon and chattin’ up a few of the racers, we’re convinced we must make a documentary about this amazing subculture. Stay tuned for that.