Tyshawn Hancock’s family wonders whether or not he was targeted for death by probation officers trained to kill because of his affiliation with the sovereignty movement. Here’s what happened the last day of his life.

If someone skated during the past 27 years, Donnie Humes probably skated with and/or caught them pulling a trick that made their week.

Mr. Humes has been putting out at skateboard zine Smelly Curb since 1987.

Smelly Curb and Old Skool Skateboards are putting on a Halloween Curb Contest on October 26th at the Westerville Skatepark. Issue 44 of Smelly Curb is also on the way.

Humes laughed when I inquired about the content of Smelly Curb Issue one, replying. “The First Issue was really corny. Think about you being awkward and 17, thinking you know everything.”

We were standing on a hill above the Dodge Skate Park bowl on the West side of Columbus, that is part of Dodge Recreation Center. This is the skateboard wing of the Dodge Park Rec Center which Humes helped open and run from 1990-1995.

During these formative years of Columbus skateboarding, Humes and his buddies were pulling grinds on curbs around town on their way to punk shows at Staches.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two months, you know that English heavy metal band Spinal Tap is coming to Ledo’s Tavern on Halloween night (Friday, Oct. 31st). Having been a huge Tap fan since their psychedelic period in the late 1960’s, I was absolutely thrilled to sit down with singer David St. Hubbins and lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel to discuss the upcoming show.

FREE PRESS: So to begin with, Spinal Tap hasn’t toured in at least a decade. Why did you choose to kick this tour off in Columbus?

ST. HUBBINS: Well, we used to have a tendency to confuse Columbus with Cleveland and Springfield, which saddened our Columbus fans tremendously.

TUFNEL: We felt we had a karmic debt, so to speak.

ST. HUBBINS: Exactly. So to square things with the universe, we decided to start the tour in Cleveland.

FP: How did you settle on Ledo’s Tavern as a venue?

ST. HUBBINS: Well, there is a great deal of mystical symbolism in the letter L

TUFNEL: And they had the best insurance.

Not only is my middle name Donovan, I'm a huge Donovan fan. And while I often refer to my Irish-Slovenian hot headed jugulars for those many times when I get p.o.'ed, truth is there is a folk side to me. Not everything's gotta be “Street Fightin' Man” for me, though it took me decades to stop passing over soul ballads when I played my favorite R'n'B dance records.

In reality, as much as I loved Donovan I never spent much time listening to whole Donovan albums. There was one called something about, I don't know, “Farting In the Wind,” or some such overly sensitivity to some mythical Anglo-Irish Western wind. Whatever. The material was sorta substandard. I mean, thanks to Mickie Most, legendary '60s British record producer, it is mostly Donovan's Most-produced hits that slayed me like a dragon: “Mellow Yellow,” “Wear Your Love Like Heaven,” “Eptistle To Dippy,” “There Is A Mountain,” “Jennifer Juniper,” “Lalena,” “Atlantis,” “To Susan On the West Coast Waiting,” “Barabajagal” and one of the heaviest songs ever made, “Hurdy Gurdy Man.”