Better Skateboarding Wheels is coming out with a new system where you can have any picture you want printed on their skateboard wheels! This is a crazy time to be a skater - combine this with the companies who will print your own pictures on skateboard decks, and you can pretty much have a completely customized skateboard deck! Ride up at the park with your face on your wheels, on your deck, on your shirt, and ... well, on your head. That might be a bit much. Or how about giving your buddy a set of wheels with his name on em? Pretty sweet. Or, give everyone you know wheels with YOUR face on them! Again, I'm back at shameless self promotion... It's fun!

And just to let you know, Better Skateboard Wheels aren't junk blank wheels from China or anything. They're real skateboard wheels, the company is here in the USA, and they came up with their own urethane formula for wheels. They feel that they are better (thus the clever name) than the other wheels out there. They might be! I skated the ones they sent me, and they ride very nice. No flatspotting. No weird problems. Of course, it takes a while to know for sure, but I'm happy with them. Plus, they have my name and face on them! Check out this video about Better's custom printing for more info.

Summer is right around the corner - why not make this summer be the one that you check out a professional summer skateboarding camp? They can be great ways to get away, have some fun, make new friends and most of all to get personal and professional skateboarding instruction!

Depending on where you live, we have the Top Skateboard Camps of the Western US, and the Top Skateboard Camps of the Eastern US. For outside the US, I know of the Rubicon skate camp in the UK! They've been in business for a while now, and have a very solid reputation.

If you know of other skateboard camps that you'd like to let the world know about, OR if you've been to one of these camps and want to tell other skaters what it was like, please leave a comment below!

Being a skater can sometimes feel like being an outcast. In Afganistan, a group called Skateistan has been teaching skateboarding to young kids in the middle of war, religious conflict and oppression. Here you can find girls who must disguise themselves as boys. You can find pain, heart ache and loss. And in the middle of all of that? You can find this group of amazing people working with the local kids to bring hope, joy and life.

"A skateboard park and school surrounded by war makes perfect sense in a senseless world, doesn't it?" These are the opening lines of the new book, Skateistan: The Tale of Skateboarding in Afghanistan. This book shares the strange and beautiful intersection of traditional Afghan society and a new generation of Afghan skateboarders and artists. This 320-page color book features stunning, previously unpublished photographs accompanied by essays, interviews and personal stories from Skateistan's founder Oliver Percovich and the young Afghans that have gone from being students to teachers in the skatepark and classrooms. Full of hope, beauty, gritty honesty - and skateboards! - this is a story about Afghanistan that you won't find anywhere else.

The book comes out this summer. Check out the Skateistan website to pre order your copy!

One week until the International Association of Skateboard Companies (IASC) presents the 2012 IASC Skateboarding Summit on May 10-11. The IASC Skateboarding Summit is a two-day event that gives the leaders in skateboarding a chance to come together in a non-competitive atmosphere to educate themselves on topics meant to broaden their perspectives, connect them with their peers, and to inspire and further their business.

This year's summit will host three special events: The Skateboarding Hall of Fame and Icon Awards (The 2012 inductees are Danny Bearer, Jay Adams, Mark Gonzales, Peggy Oki, John Humphrey, Frank Nasworthy, Glen E. Friedman and Black Flag), as well as special screenings of the new Bones Brigade Documentary by Stacy Peralta and the new Danny Way documentary Waiting for Lightning by Jacob Rosenberg.