We spent two weeks in California enjoying the sunshine and skateboarding. We even got a chance to surf and closely explore the beauty of the state. There were numerous people that made our trip very special. Our sincere thanks to all those who made us feel so welcomed. We started out in San Francisco and drove all the way down to San Diego. That Highway 1 is something to behold! For those readers who live far away from California, we hope these photos inspire you to plan a visit soon. We know we’ll be back!

The Cover of Spring 2009 Concrete WAve, in bigass PDF format.

The Spring '09 Noteworthy, where you'll find sneak peeks at new stuff, including the Munkae and Genghis speed trucks, carbon-fiberspeedboards by RPP and news of various events.

Over the past few years, the number of corporations getting involved with skateboarding has escalated to unprecedented levels. We thought the time was ripe to hear from the folks on both sides of the fence. Kevin Imamura works at Nike in their skateboard division. “Birdo” heads up Consolidated Skateboards and is also involved with the newly reactivated “Don’t Do It” campaign. We asked these two the same set of questions. Their answers may or may not surprise you.

But it goes beyond just increasing the number of female skaters. We’d like to see to see increased prize purses and coverage. Currently, the gap between male and female prize purses is absolutely enormous. Take the X Games for example. Cara-Beth Burnside took first place in vert and was awarded $2,000. Pierre Luc Gagnon also took first but wound up with $50,000. In fact, if you look at the overall prize purse for the X Games, male skaters had a total prize purse that was twenty times that of females. ($343,350 for the men vs. $17,000 for the women.). Thankfully, things are changing. Thanks to Burnside’s dedication, she has been able to get prize purses increased (most recently at the Slam City Jam).