Skateboard

Still got a skateboard buried somewhere in a corner of the garage? Celebrity personal trainer Mike Donavanik - http://www.mikedfitness.com - suggests you drag it out and repurpose it for this simple and effective fitness move, the skateboard pike. Why you should try it: These assisted pikes work your entire core and build upper body strength. What to do: Place the toes of both feet on the middle of a skateboard placed underneath you. Arms are on the ground in front in a push-up position.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Here's a little skateboarding present courtesy of Thrasher magazine. Among the treats on the 2012 compilation video: --Trevor Colden with a lengthy front wheelie. --Dakota Servold grinding down a rail on a couple of flights of concrete stairs. --Paul Rodriguez sporting some stylish black-and-gold Nike shoes. --Silas Baxter Neal going old school with some blue suede Adidas Campus shoes (OK, I dig shoes). --More kick flips than you can possibly count.

Carrie and Carl are twins and Laketon's youngest detectives. They were watching TV when the phone rang. "I need you guys to solve a mystery," Alan Rees said. "Come on over and I'll tell you what happened. " On the way to Alan's house, the twins saw Betsy Watters playing with a dollhouse in her yard. "Isn't it pretty? It's all blue because that's my favorite color," she told Carrie. "I remember when I loved playing with dolls," Carrie told her brother as they hurried along.

Skateboard legend Danny Way is the subject of a new documentary, "Waiting for Lightning" by Jake Rosenberg, which follows his career from childhood to a spectacular 2005 jump over the Great Wall of China. The native Californian based in Encinitas is known for imagining and executing extraordinary jumps, such as his 2008 "bomb drop" from a helicopter onto a ramp. The documentary is structured around your jump over the Great Wall of China . How long had you had that dream and what prompted it?

'Skateboard: Evolution and Art in California' Where: California Heritage Museum, 2612 Main St., Santa Monica When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. Ends May 30 Price: $8 Contact: (310) 392-8537 or www.californiaheritage

Lil Wayne is issuing new music this month -- another entry in his "Dedication" mixtape series -- but after that, fans shouldn't hold their breath for more from the Young Money leader. In an interview with DJ Drama on Atlanta's Hot 107.9 on Wednesday, Weezy expressed feeling a bit burnt out from rap and was looking to tackle another challenge.   “Being me, I always feel like I ain't done nothing yet, so I'm always looking for the next thing to do. It does get pretty boring when it comes to just the rapping and all that type of stuff,” he said.

The public is invited to express its preferences on two different matters in a city-sponsored barbecue Saturday at the Watts Towers. The pleasant and easy one is: hot dog or hamburger? The thorny and contentious one - an issue simmering since 2009 - is whether it's a good idea to plant a state-of-the-art skateboard plaza in the shadow of the Watt Towers, a national historic landmark that's one of the most revered and symbolic public artworks on the West Coast, if not the nation.

Palo Alto, the city that reimburses its employees 7 cents a mile to ride bikes to work, has taken steps to encourage commuter use of the skateboard. With passage of a controversial ordinance, the city is permitting skateboards on all but 25 of its busiest streets. The move has thrilled skateboarders--many cities, including nearby San Francisco, make skateboarding illegal-- but is unpopular with bicyclists, who fought for years to develop a bike trail system on Palo Alto streets.

Possibly shrinking the concrete universe for skateboarders, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will discuss banning skaters from some sidewalks in unincorporated communities across the county. Supervisor Kathy Long suggested the ban after hearing complaints from property owners--primarily churches and businesses--that skateboarders are damaging property and disturbing patrons. Property owners have also expressed concerns about possible legal liability if a skateboarder is injured, Long said.

The likelihood that a skateboard park could someday be built on a downtown corner known as the Village Entrance increased slightly this week as the City Council agreed that the possibility deserved further study. Council members said Tuesday that they would also be willing to consider other sites, should any become available. The city's recreation committee has been searching for more than two years for an appropriate spot to build a skateboard park.

"Waiting for Lightning" is a portrait of the extreme-sports superstar Danny Way, centered on his 2005 effort to leap over the Great Wall of China on a skateboard using an enormous megaramp to accomplish the stunt. Unfortunately, the athlete himself simply isn't much of a presence in this documentary, even as the film aims to celebrate him. Why it took some seven years to bring this story to screen is unclear. As the film uses the buildup and preparations to the jump as its structuring spine, people speak of Way as if he's already dead, often talking for him when he could be responding for himself (he is still alive and well and interviewed in the film)

Pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek has sold his tricked-out house in the Hollywood Hills West for $2.125 million. Built in 2005 and designed for entertaining, the home features a two-story entry, an open floor plan, 20-foot ceilings, five bedrooms and five bathrooms in 4,706 square feet of living space. There is a swimming pool, a patio and a lawn. Dyrdek, 38, is executive producer, a creator and appears in the series "Wild Grinders" (2012), "Ridiculousness" (2010-12) and "Fantasy Factory" (2009-12)

Stacy Peralta was fighting off bronchitis inside Santa Barbara's fabled Skate One complex - a kind of Willy Wonka world for skateboard manufacturing that he and former business partner George Powell established in 1978 to distribute their groundbreaking Powell-Peralta line. While the factory hummed with the day-to-day business of cranking out hundreds of candy-colored urethane wheels and pressing plywood into signature decks for Kilian Martin, Tony Hawk and more top riders, Peralta ripped into a box containing DVDs of his latest documentary, "Bones Brigade: An Autobiography.

Skateboarding legend Stacy Peralta's latest documentary, "Bones Brigade: An Autobiography," is like a high school reunion, filled with affectionate memories of an earlier, more innocent, time. The director returns to his pro-skateboard roots, and it's clear from Peralta's comments, sprinkled through the film, that the sport and the players remain his first love. But while his breakthrough documentary, "Dogtown and Z-Boys," cracked open the window on a largely unknown world in vibrant and visceral ways, "Bones" feels like an epilogue.

Traffic was heavy in and around downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, but not for the reasons one might expect in a city known for freeways, angry drivers and bumper-to-bumper frustration. Organizers estimate about 100,000 bicyclists, pedestrians and skateboarders flooded much of Spring, Figueroa, West 7th and East 4th streets and beyond as part of the city's fifth CicLAvia festival, which bills itself as the city's biggest block party. More than nine miles of city streets stretching from Boyle Heights to MacArthur Park and from Chinatown to Exposition Park were closed to motor vehicles for five hours.

For 20 years, Diavolo has been Los Angeles' wild child, a company of daredevil dancers leaping and cavorting on pitching wheels, Goliath walls and other playground equipment from a super-sized Wonderland. An unsettling issue kept nagging: Was it circus or was it dance? Artistic director Jacques Heim intended the latter, but he couldn't always convincingly make the case. The choreography's superhuman feats often overwhelmed the metaphorical themes within. But a corner has been turned.

A 22-year-old man who tried to escape robbers by having his dog tow him on a skateboard was caught, beaten and robbed, authorities said. Derrick Wayne Morris was treated at Ventura County Medical Center and released, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Unless they're supervised by adults, children younger than 10 shouldn't use skateboards and those younger than 8 shouldn't use non-motorized scooters, according to new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Non-motorized scooters have soared in popularity--with an accompanying rise in injuries--in the last two years. The recommendations update the academy's 1995 skateboard policy, which says children younger than 5 shouldn't use them at all.

Tom Sims, an innovative skateboarding and snowboarding pioneer and former world champion who helped bring snowboarding to the masses by pushing ski resorts to embrace the fledgling sport in the 1980s, has died. He was 61. The founder of Sims Skateboards and Sims Snowboards died Wednesday at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital after suffering cardiac arrest, said his sister, Margie Sims Klinger. "He was the godfather of all board sports," Michael Brooke, publisher of Concrete Wave Magazine, said Friday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — When 14-year-old Khorshid took to her skateboard, her face would light up with an enormous smile. For an Afghan girl whose short life had been filled with hardships, the swooping and whooshing and rocketing speed were an undreamed-of taste of freedom. Khorshid, together with her little sister and two teenage boys who were her friends from Kabul's first and only skateboarding school, were among the six Afghan civilians who died in a weekend suicide bombing in Kabul, the international nonprofit group Skateistan said Tuesday.