Breakdance and skateboarding are from yesteryear: Hockern is the new trend sport on the streets these days. The origins of Hockern can be traced back to the German coast city of Kiel, where people with too much time on their hands and not much interest in breaking their bones invented a few tricks that have since spread around the world. Hockern loosely translates into ‘stooling’, although the more appropriate expression for it would be ‘extreme sitting’. The actual activitiy can be described as simply as this: ‘Just grab a stool and rock it like a hockstar!’

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Even though it is made for the streets, the new Organic Anagram Industries skateboard also makes great art for the walls. Made in the UK with Canadian wood, the illustration includes a lot of details and the vivid colours work great. Lovely.

Phil Jackson is a semi-nomadic skateboarder, artist and documentary photographer. Still shooting film and making zines he’s everything you like about Larry Clark or Nan Goldin, but with more hopping fences to skate pools and much less heroin addiction and domestic abuse.

There are still shitty sleeping conditions, drunken regrets, and occasional vandalism, but what’s shown in his photos are all the trappings of a self-empowered lifestyle dedicated to doing something you love instead of something that can only destroy you.

Conceptual designer Oliver Bishop-Young has reclaimed urban dumpsters for the benefit of the community with his ongoing series, The SkipWaste project — he has created a skateboard ramp, a flower bed, a swimming pool, and even a homely living room, complete with lamp and retro TV.

Our friends over at the photography website, Feature Shoot, are giving away three copies of the stunning book, SKATEBOARDING.3D, which features three dimensional images of some of the finest young skaters on the scene. And let me tell you, viewing the photos through the supplied glasses is a trip! The book is the work of photographer Sebastian Denz, who was a visiting artist at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. To be in with a chance of winning, simply sign up to the Feature Shoot Facebook Fan page and leave a comment under one of the giveaway posts on that page. [Read an interview with Sebastian Denz about the book]

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The Grind 2.0, a charity auction show to fund construction of the Swift-Cantrell Skatepark in Atlanta, opens on Friday, October 10 at Atlanta’s The Rabbit Hole Gallery. The show features more than 60 hand-painted skate decks painted by some of today’s top underground artists from across America and Europe, and I couldn’t be more excited to be part of it! Other artists include Amy Sol, Dave Kinsey, Chris Stain, Jason Limon, Tara McPherson, Tessar Lo, and many more. The gallery is even offering an online bidding through their website.

Andrew Davis (from AWWSWEET, a curating agency) has done it again: his second skateboard art show has made it all the way from Detroit to the Brooklyn-based art space, Third Ward. Inspired by the documentary feature film Beautiful Losers, which focuses on the subcultures of skateboarding and graffiti, Good Wood brings together 45 different artists who’ve designed a stunning selection of decks. Styles range from collage, graffiti, acrylic, oil, ink, silkscreen and photography to sculpture. Some of the big players in the show include Chuck Anderson, Nathan Fox, Leo Espinosa, and myself, amongst many others.

Davis, the originator and curator of the exhibition, recently graduated from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies with a major in illustration. His first Good Wood show debuted exactly a year ago. I caught up with Andrew at the gallery yesterday to find out more about how this came about: “I thought of it because I saw that many artists were making their names through skateboarding; it also gave me a good excuse to reach out to artists I admired and establish a solid network for future shows I plan to curate.” Davis provided the canvas — the decks — and the artists provided the work, which made artists more receptive to his proposal. This year’s version of Good Wood continues that trend.

Stop by the opening at Third Ward this Saturday, July 26, between 7 pm and midnight, where you can check out some short films by Josh Stewart, dance to DJ Brion Isaacs’s music, have a drink or two, and buy a deck to help a good cause. The show will be up until August 10th.

Skateboarding has always been a group activity, friends coming together to skate, hang out and show off tricks. Tomorrow at the worldwide Wild in the Streets event, skaters come out from the woodwork to skate with friends and take back the streets.