For everybody heading towards Berlin, Germany this coming weekend for the Bright tradeshow (July 8th – 10th 2010 – click right here for the Bright website) you can add a little extra spicing to your skateboard weekend by starting it off Thursday, July 8th with the Tony Hawk and Friends European Tour show at the Max-Schmeling-Halle in Berlin.

Maybe you can remember all the way back to November 2009 – I hope you can – when Tony Hawk, Andy MacDonald, Sandro Dias, Jean Postec, Kevin Staab, Jesse Fritsch, Sergie Ventura and Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins landed in Paris with an extraordinary show in which Lyn-Z Adams pulled the first 540 every landed by a woman. So if you have the time and the really fair amount of 13 Euros to give out, head over to Berlin and enjoy some of the best vert riding around. The tour will be stopping off in Brighton and Barcelona as well this summer.

A bunch of skaters were invited to ride at the new Woodward Skatepark in Beijing so check out some of the skating and the general tourism that took place with David Loy, Jaws, Andrew Cannon, Tom Asta, Ryan Sheckler, Ryan Decenzo, Tony Hawk and many more- great looking park!

» check out the Woodward Beijing website

You are already here on the site so do take the time to watch this video with the Birdhouse Skateboards crew doing a skatepark roundup which is packed with bangers and it ends with no one less then Aaron “Jaws” Homoki doing something that has more in common with a film stunt than just skateboarding…enjoy it!

Vert skateboarding was looking great already back in the 1990’s – check out Mike Frazier and Tony Hawk taking the somewhat smaller vert ramps apart!

The Quiksilver / Transworld Skateboarding “The Program” video series continues with part 2 featuring skating from Christian Hosoi, Tony Hawk, Omar Hassan, Justin Brock, David Clark, Kyle Leeper, and Austyn Gillette. This time around the mountain and wave logo gets some transitions and a bank. Justin Brock wins for me with a trick at the end plus a frontside stalefish in the tightest transition.

The list of top skaters joining the Theeve Titanium Truck team just doesn’t seem to end and the newst addition just confirms it: Johnny Layton has now joined the roster and skates along with Tony Hawk, Matt Mumford, Garrett Hill, Dan Murphy, Gareth Stehr, Chad Bartie and Ben Raybourn. Now I’m really looking forward to see which international riders get hooked up. Here’s a video clip from last year showing some of J-Lay’s board skills…

Attention all of you video game fans – with winter knocking on the door we all can expect to be stuck indoors a bit more often and what better way to take advantage of this time than getting yourself a copy of the latest skate video game – Tony Hawk:Ride! It’s something I know I’ve dreamed about when I was younger but it was like Star Trek technology – would you ever have thought that you could actually control a video game with a controller shaped like a skateboard?

Sounds more than cool to me and we’ve been hooked up with 5 Tony Hawk: Ride t-shirts to give away to 5 lucky winners running up to the official release of the game, all you have to is answer the following question after clicking the link below:

Where can you become a fan of the new Tony Hawk Ride game and connect with other fans?
1 – on Facebook
2 – on Microsoft
3 – on CNN

Send your answer with your complete name and address by December 4th, 2009: freestuff@europeskate.com

Here’s the official statement about the game and the Facebook Fan page:

“Taking gaming to the next level, Tony Hawk:Ride is a skateboarding video game that lets you stand on an actual board. No complex buttons to press or fiddly analogue sticks to flick – just step on and ride.

Tony Hawk:Ride comes with an exclusive wireless skateboard deck, kitted out with a whole load of motion sensors that help bring the experience of skateboarding to life.
By tilting, spinning and lifting the board, you can push, turn, ollie, flip, grind and grab right from the comfort of your own home.
It’s something Tony Hawk himself has wanted to do for a long time. But you won’t need the skills of the Birdman to play. With three different skill levels and masses of tricks, vert and speed challenged, Tony Hawk:Ride is a complete skateboarding experience for both the hardcore pro and total newbie alike.’

You can become a fan of the game at facebook.com/tonyhawkride and pre-order the game at Game.co.uk before it’s release on 4th December.“

Theeve Trucks which have been making quite a few big waves with the announcement of their new team members continues to do just that with their two newest additions: Matt Mumford and Tony Hawk. They join team mates Garrett Hill, Dan Murphy, Gareth Stehr, Chad Bartie and Ben Raybourn. As my curiosity about how the trucks actually skate is growing, I already contacted Theeve Trucks about testing but – understandably – they’ve got loads of work at the moment so I’ll keep my fingers crossed about getting to test them some day soon.

» check out the Theeve Trucks website

Decided to sleep in a bit today which means I got up at 8 instead of 6 in the morning – yeah, the early bird bla bla…you know the story. Doing my morning check of the various social networks, I found a video post from German vert/bowl skate rat Anders Tellen which catches some of the action at a vert demo during the Cologne Games Com 2009 in Germany with Tony Hawk, Juergen Horrwarth, Sam Bosworth and Renton Millar (filmed By Bob Joosten) – Hawk again doing the marketing tour for the latest video game RIDE.

Tony Hawk and Andy MacDonald were filmed doing doubles in the vert ramp and this is yet another proof for the exponential growth of vert skills that continues to go on. The double invert and the flip-throw-in-the-board (any name ideas for that trick?) are just again making me look pretty dumb at my monitor again and again. Damn good skating here, enjoy!