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Archive
For February, 2010
In my virgin BroBomb article, I outlined several predictions for the coming ski season. First among them was that “poor is the new cool.” This might be the beginning of a mid-season retrospective analyzing how each of my prophecies was panning out. I’m going to begin with a quick recap of the Traveling Circus’ webisodes to see how they are managing from a quality of life standpoint.
The TC crew got outfitted with brand new bright Orage gear for the season, which has done much to mask their ghetto standards. Andy’s new clean blue and red get-up is a far cry from last seasons’s rolled up baby blues that looked like they had seen more use than the inside of his sleeping bag and the soles of his easy walker sneakers put together. However, as evidenced in Episode 4, Andy, Will and the gang are still sleeping on floors, in cars, and in ski patrol bomb shelters, while eating pb & j’s for breakfast, lunch & dinner. With all this success and fame, wouldn’t they have upgraded their quality of life? Then it came to me, a moment of business clarity: they could get away with being much poorer.
Just the other day I was sitting on a bar stool next to Mr. Chris Casula discussing the state of competitive skiing. It’s a pretty popular topic of conversation these days as it seems likely that ski superpipe will make it into The Games if the Mayan calendar doesn’t get us first. The particular topic of debate wasn’t Mount Olympus, per se; it was whether or not we saw a new class of skier emerge at the 2010 X-Games and subsequent Dew stops.
I broke the field into two groups: trainers and regular skiers who just happen to be athletically gifted. It seems to me that Bobby Brown’s victories exemplify the emergence of the “trained” skier. Tom Wallisch, on the other hand, was the last remnant of the amazingly gifted kid who loves to ski and can also win comps from time to time. I don’t know either person, so I have absolutely no idea if this is accurate, but the way I imagine it Bobby goes to the gym everyday and does 1000 reps of every spin he’s capable of on a trampoline. He then goes to Breck and lays down flawless slope run after flawless slope run. These images get blended with Ivan Drago’s training sequence from Rocky IV, and you get the picture.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Denver, Colorado. February 22, 2010— The Association for Freeski Olympic Competition in Superpipe (AssFOCS) would like to make the results of its recent emergency vote known to all interested parties. As you may know, our organization has been tirelessly pursuing the rightful inclusion of ski superpipe in the Winter Olympics since 2006. We have faced great opposition, but with great determination we have made amazing progress towards inclusion.
However, after an emergency text message vote last night, we have decided to immediately suspend all of our efforts. The change in the Olympic climate has happened so quickly that we are sure this will come as a great shock to all of you, but we offer these excerpts from members’ texts in order to explain the prevailing mood:
Jossi Wells- “F*ck that! Did you see the girl kissing that snowboarder’s bronze? I’d take my chances with those music video stalkers before I’d let her kiss my medal.”
Tanner Hall- “I’ve got a great clean pee guy, but no dreads or sagging pants? Cali P tell me mah nah gwan fokwidat mon. Oh and I get better girls in Retallack.”
Xavier Bertoni- “Huhuhuhu. Frenchy French French! Cette fille était laide.”
Greg Tufflemire- “Dude’s got great abs. What? I did a 1260 in 1999.”
Skiers decide local pro ho's are better. photo: TMZ.
For well over a decade, rails were strictly for skateboarders, snowboarders, inliners, BMXers, and pretty much anybody else considered X-Games worthy. Rails were like the prerequisite to be considered a cool extreme sport in the 90s, and anything from Soap shoes to skiboards (sorry Line) were legit, because you could slide rails. Unsurprisingly, skiing was not considered cool back then. Much of this is attributable to the fact that skiers still didn’t have the nerve to risk nutting themselves in terrain parks or urban settings.
In some kind of collective consciousness, skiers realized we could slide rails with the best of them and be as cool as all those Dew-chugging, wide-leg-jean-wearing “extreme” kids. Well now we’ve seen more than a decade of skiing on rails, every kid under the age of 18 can do all eight, and every pro can do unimaginable things to any urban rail. It’s amazing to see the progression in skiing’s rail game and I want everyone to take a step back and appreciate this progression. Pros used to just slide rails and that was good enough. If there was a kink, even better, and not moving your body an inch was ideal.
Now this all leads to the real reason I’m writing; skiing has come so far with rails and urban, yet the major ski mags have only given the coveted cover shot to an urban photo a dozen times or less in the last 12+ years. Skogen was the first one on the October 2000 issue of Freeze, and the most recent was Max Hill on an issue of SBC Skier. AXIS magazine, which only had 5 issues, had three covers with a skier sliding an urban rail; best ratio in skiing. Seems unacceptable when 50% of videos are urban shots, and kids are more preoccupied with rails than learning to actually ski.
Freeskier, Powder, and every other ski magazine– why are you neglecting the urban shots? Tom Wallisch, Mike Hornbeck, Will Wesson, Phil Casabon or any other urban slayer should be snagging covers left and right. We need you to represent skiing accurately on newsstands. Same question goes to Poor Boyz, TGR, Level 1 and MSP. Name me one movie cover with a skier sliding a rail or urban feature (other than Exact Science).
It's a bit of a stretch to call some of these "urban." And why does Sammy Carlson get so many covers?
Let us know who should be bagging more covers and fill in the blank:
I want to see __________ get a cover.
U S A! U S A!
Ah, Vail. Remember Vail? When it hosted the luster-less US Freeskiing Open, Vail saw freeskiing careers made on its slopes. Remember when the Big Air came down to a showdown between Andy Woods’ 1260 and some 17 year-old Swede’s D-spin (can you actually do that trick anymore?) Remember when Phil Poirer ran halfpipe contests? Marc Andre switch frontflips, JP Auclair winning the first Open with a 720 and holding the first pair of 1080’s in his hand on the podium, TJ Schiller winning slope, Mikael Descheneux’s gorgeous switch 7, switch 9, switch 10 combo over the channel gap, the list could go on for an installment of Know Your Roots (I’d send along all my VHS recordings). Anyone whose parents would pay the money for a trip out to Vail from Vermont, because their kid thought they could get sponsored but crashed every run, made their way up I-70 every January to freeskiing’s biggest home-grown show.
Vail’s position in the freeski scene has changed significantly, going from the jib haven of yore with the first serious S-rail to a resort that gets talked about more frequently on the TGR forums by people arguing that it’s a better locale for the backcountry shredder than Aspen. During my time in Colorado I’d never gotten off in Vail except once to get lost on South Frontage Rd. for half an hour and then get drunk at my friend’s house. The sliver of trails you see from the highway seemed like a conduit to a far-off land of Back Bowls, those mythical formations that have been both hyped and hated. So when I was back out in Colorado last December, I had to make a stop by.
I guess Olympic coverage is obligatory right now. The slipping ratings and questionable national relevance of these hallowed games aside, they’re still a pretty big deal. Then there’s the question of whether or not ski superpipe will make it in next time.
To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t care much less if ski superpipe makes it to the big stage. I have a hard enough time sitting through the X-Games; the Olympics would just be another event I have to pretend to care about. If you are one of these people who are still deluded enough to think that “freestyle” and competition can coexist, check out this article about baggy pants rules. Or check out some extreme commentary on that article.
Nonetheless, it does seem pretty ridiculous that there are no skiers up there in Whistler with that red Shaun person. Like everything though, it’s all business. There’s only so much airtime and there’s no way to speed up curling. That said, no NBC executive worth his weight in Conans would turn down an action packed double-sport. It’s more for less; simple economics. Nordic combined is going strong, so all we’ve got to do is a little freestyle-combined and we’re in the game baby!
I dug deep into the BroBomb Archives and discovered a little thing called Skijoring. It’s the original extreme Olympic sport. Back in 1928 these rad dudes were getting towed around by horses in pursuit of that sweet, sweet Gold. It’s been discontinued for the past 80 years, but what better time to bring it back?
Work with me here—you’ve got Simon Dumont behind his favorite pony dropping into the pipe. Not only is there a cute and cuddly horse to distract the public from the rebellious nature of his baggy pants, but there’s shit tons of amplitude. Amplitude! Naturally the skijoring-combined High Air is next, and we’re on the board with two totally extreme Olympic offerings.
U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!
If your mountain won’t build park jumps, do Superman front-flips over their handrails.
Gabe Anderson’s business card says he’s the Managing Director of Jiberish Clothing. As far as we could tell, he’s just the man. Gabe, Dave Boger and Pete Drago are the owners of the cut-and-sew Jiberish clothing label. I asked someone what “cut and sew” actually means and I was told that they get a fabric and a fit that they want, and have it made from scratch rather than ordering a stock piece from a wholesaler. I figured I’d pass that little nugget of knowledge on to you.
BroBomb got the chance to bother Gabe with a few questions at the Jiberish store party in the LoHi section of Denver. I’m not bullshitting you when I say we were really impressed by the styling and design that goes way beyond the iconic tall hoodies we’ve all seen. Be sure to check out their new spring line dropping in the next month and enjoy:
BroBomb: Did you originally make Jiberish clothing specifically for snowsports kids, or was it just embraced by them?
Gabe: Well myself, Dave, and Pete Drago all ski and snowboard. Me and Pete ski and Dave snowboards. We just saw a void for street wear in the ski market. We saw that skiers were repping skate and snowboard brands, but there’s this absolute sense of identity with skiing, or with any sport, where when you’re off the mountain you want to wear something that says “I’m a skier.” There wasn’t a loungewear or street wear company that was doing it. Siver Cartel had been doing it, but unfortunately they went away.
R.I.P.
Yeah, I have to say they were a big inspiration for what we did.
Where there seems to be a difference between you guys and Sublux, Siver, etc. is design. You guys go beyond printing a logo on a t-shirt and actually sew this stuff right?
Back when we started, when there were about twelve hoodies associated with Jiberish, it was that wholesale sweatshirt with a logo printed on. But when you put it on, and it’s a crop top and it doesn’t fit like you want it to, it’s no good. Especially in the skiing market where a taller fit is a little nicer, and it’s generally just a baggier fit. The stock sweatshirt didn’t work for what we wanted to do and what we envisioned we could do. So then we started working with pattern makers and working with fabrics to make something that fit exactly how we wanted and just made it from scratch.
I don't think we were supposed to touch stuff.
So I’m pretty familiar with a lot of your stuff, but some of these new pieces I haven’t seen before. I’m seeing some new materials that are starting to look like outerwear. Is the end game that Jiberish will jump into the outerwear market?
