a seattle photoblog

The Boardroom Cafe

2011-12-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

With a spacious parking lot located just off Aurora Avenue north, a few blocks from Greenlake, the Boardroom Cafe offers delicious hot coffee, free Wi-Fi, friendly folks and freshly prepared soups and sandwiches for breakfast and lunch!

Swing in off Aurora at 84th (next to Motion Skateboard Shop)

for a cup and a smile!

The Guitar Store

2011-12-16T13:36:00.000-08:00

Located at 8310 Aurora Avenue North. Their showroom has all the national brands you are looking for as well as unique offerings by Northwest builders.

Website: Seattle Guitar Store

Mermaid No. Four

2011-10-18T02:18:00.000-07:00

Mermaid No. Three

2011-10-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

Elliott Bay during Seafair

2011-10-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

And picnic tables.

BLOCK PARTY! GRAND OPENING of 3 new Aurora Ave stores!!

2011-07-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

Dragonfly Skateboard Jam - August 7th!!

2011-07-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ride this OMEN all summer long!

2011-05-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

WIN AN OMEN COMPLETE LONGBOARD! SEE CONTEST RULES TO ENTER

2011-05-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE PREMIERE - DROP: My Life Downhill, Sat, April 30th

2011-04-15T16:10:00.001-07:00

Mermaid Sideshow Banner II

2011-03-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Another mermaid has turned up in my studio alive! These banners are reproductions of the sideshow circus banners of yore. Measurements are five feet tall and almost three feet wide. More to follow.

Mermaid sideshow banner recreation

2011-03-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

Mermaids aren't real. And this isn't an authentic circus sideshow banner. Just wanted to paint some banners to look like the old timey ones. More to follow.

Cops Got Guns

2011-03-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

As most of you already know, I am a Seattle native, born in Seattle to a large family, that's part of a larger family going back many generations in Washington.

I have had a lot of encounters with Seattle Police, and I have witnessed their actions individually and as a department for more than 40 years. I can tell you in all honesty that we have good cops in Seattle. I can tell you that they appear to have done their jobs without abusing their authority. I know a few thousand people who live here, and I've never spoken with one that got shot or beat up by a cop. Sure, there have been incidents, but on the whole it doesn't happen, and that's a fact.

Look at the big picture, and you'll see that the police don't look for trouble. We have had a spate of unfortunate events that have turned out very badly, but on the whole I do not see a rampant police force out to gun us all down. These have been isolated incidents, and unless you or I wear a badge and do that job, we can't always know why lethal force was used.

As we have all seen, no shooting in this town goes unnoticed, and the consequences for police officers involved in taking someone's life here are incredibly steep. People get involved. Facts are collected. Stones are turned - even on the behalf of a poor homeless person. We hold our police accountable and hell hath no fury like that of an angry Seattle populace.

Seattle is the wrong town for a rogue police force to think they could terrorize or brutalize us without repercussions. Nobody here is afraid of the police, and nobody here considers them above the law. The vast majority of Seattle's police do their jobs fairly, ethically, and within the law, and we trust them to continue that mission. I would like to think that all police would only resort to the use of deadly force when it is absolutely necessary - when there are no other options available and an someone's life is in immediate peril - and I am going to insist that this rule be followed by all law enforcement officers in the City of Seattle henceforth, but it is still an exceedingly rare event.

There are many homeless and mentally unstable people living here. They are my brothers and sisters, and they belong here as much as I do, or you do, or the mayor does. They're human beings, and we will treat them with dignity. All they have is us, the good people of Seattle, and the hard cold concrete of the streets. I love my streets in this city, but I don't want to sleep on them. Everyone is welcome here regardless of their net worth or lack of it. People come first.

My parting message is that we're all in this together, citizens and cops alike, and we're the same people at the beginning and the end of the day. Yes, we're going to make you miserable if you're a cop and you gun someone down here, but we admire and respect you for the job you do, and you are very welcome here as is everyone. Yet I simply will not tolerate our citizenry painting the entire Seattle Police Department as corrupt or dangerous because of a few isolated incidents. It just isn't fair.

I will be here observing.

Marymere Falls, Washington

2011-01-25T17:31:00.000-08:00

Wingsuit flight above the space needle! - Seattle Swoopers - Red Bull Ai...

2011-01-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

Squirrel Having a Beer

2010-09-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

This one is going to the Dray in Ballard.

708 NW 65th St
(between N 7th Ave & N Cleopatra Pl)

Scenes from the Ballard Locks April 2010

2010-04-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

My Life Downhill

2010-04-01T22:28:00.000-07:00

My Life Downhill. A 2010 Orangefist Production.

Ripe Tomatoes 2009

2009-09-30T13:18:00.001-07:00

2009 Tomato Crop

2009-08-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

4th Annual Dragonfly Skate Jam

2009-08-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Heather Meadows, WA

2009-07-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

At the end of the 57-mile long Mt Baker Scenic Byway lies Heather Meadows, perhaps one of the most photographed scenic spots in Washington. Sandwiched between towering Mt Shuksan and majestic, snowy Mt Baker, you can wander the meadows at the 5,000 ft level for hours taking in breathtaking views around every corner.

Insect Firefly Speedboard

2009-07-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

When you spend far too many waking hours thinking about how to edge the competition by a few seconds at the finish line... When you just can't seem to forget the time you slid out in that dreaded hairpin and explored the ditch while watching the rest of the pack streak past smiling and waving at you. When you keep finding yourself standing on the second step, not the top of the podium, it starts to get to you.

The Firefly is different from almost anything else on four wheels for many reasons, but it's form comes from it's racing pedigree. Designed by a committee of genuine racers on very steep, very fast roads around Seattle, Washington, this board exists because those who want to win made it so.

Rather than being penned by a sole architect working alone under a 100 watt bulb, this board lives because dedicated downhill junkies had to have it.

In fact, they demanded it.

When some of the fastest speedboarders in the world, including the likes of Shane Donogh, Editor of Northwestlongboarding.com and Team Insect's Jeremy Geier line up shoulder to shoulder in your shop with their helmets hanging from their hands and ask for a board to make them drive better and win more often, you really ought to grab a notebook and start scribbling.

Well, Steve Hopper of Insect Skateboards did just that, and after an infinite number of hours of negotiation, testing, building and destroying prototypes, and hauling Firefly decks to dozens of actual races, the Insect team has created what they believe is the best thing to ride when you want to take home the cup, and not just a ribbon.

The jet black, 40-inch long, topmount stealth bomber you see here is their baby. It has some immediately obvious features, including a 3 position adjustable wheelbase, full cutouts front and back for no chance of deadly wheelbite, deep concave, and a touch of rocker toward the nose. Motion Boardshop's Trevor Preston says that the concave on the Firefly is like "standing in a bathtub".

But Insect's owner and chief scientist Steve Hopper isn't the kind of guy to bang out a plank that works and sit back on his laurels. He set out to improve the design in two fundamental ways. He wanted it to be lighter and thinner than any other board out there, and he wanted it to be just as strong or stronger than a traditional wood core board. Enter the microscopic carbon building blocks called 'nanotubes'.

Carbon nanotubes are the strongest and stiffest materials yet discovered in terms of tensile strength and elastic
properties. In 2000, a multi-walled carbon nanotube was tested to have a tensile strength of 63 gigapascals (GPa). Under high pressure, nanotubes merge together like the strands in a rope, producing strong, unlimited-length wires through high-pressure linking of the tubes. Insect is the one of the first companies on earth to utilize this material, and the only company using it to make longboards. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.

This unassuming black board is turning up at races with increasing frequency, and Insect is now so committed to the material, they're building every board in their line out of it. This means casual riders, slalom fiends and go-fast officionados on your block can experience for themselves the performance of next generation skateboard design alongside some of the world's fastest, most determined speedboarders alive today.

The Insect Firefly, built for speed by those who live it.

motion boardshop

2009-06-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

Located in Lake Forest Park, just 10 minutes north of Seattle, Motion offers an astounding array of adventure sports toys for nearly every kind of wind, water, or even concrete activity you can imagine.

Motion Boardshop slash Seattle Kiteboarding Center has everything you need for kiteboarding, stand-up paddle, wakeboard, and surfing but their comprehensive longboard skateboard showroom is the real deal offering the ultra-rare boards, wheels and hardware that downhill riders demand.

Motion has a casual, family feel. Drop in any given day and you'll find athletes from a wide variety of outdoor sporting backgrounds rubbing shoulders, swapping expertise, and playing video games. Drop-ins are welcome, and you will feel welcome at Motion.

Motion Boardshop
Seattle Kiteboarding Center LLC
Lake Forest Park, WA

Go Skateboarding Day, June 21 @ SnoCon

2009-06-05T16:11:00.000-07:00