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.
Paco. But it’d have to be paparazzi style cause he might kill you if you get too close
Deep thoughts right here…solid questioning, I used to wonder the same thing. The basic reason is that a “rail” shot of a skier doesn’t have relevance on a newstand. The average buyer in a Barnes & Noble supposedly would not recognize or relate to that kind of image and think of it as “skiing”..Same thing basically goes for the movie cover, even though relevance to an audience is less of an issue I personally would be hesitant to display a basic urban shot on a dvd cover because it immediately brands it as a “jib movie” which is after all just a niche. 50% of most every movie out there is not urban, not even Level 1, that is not accurate. Although urban is still a huge part of skiing both by pros in videos and kids out there making edits, it is still not a majority representation of what “newschool” skiing is today.
Your homework is not complete though- Freeskier ran a cover in 2004 of Liam Downey on a red double kink in New Hampshire, Jeff Winterton photo. And Level 1 had David Crichton on a rail on the cover on Second Generation, also a Winterton photo. By brother on the second(?) cover of Axis, by Winterton again, was a huge highlight for us back in the day.
To answer your last question- I want to see Phil Casabon get a cover.
You also should take into consideration mags outside of the US- as there are currently only 2 that count here, one being called Powder. (not including Backcountry, Ski Journal, SKI, & Skiing). SBC Skier ran a rail cover of Max Hill just this year.
The biggest part of the industry might not be jib shit, but the biggest part of the flesh and blood culture of it sure is.
I think this works as a KYR because it’s a bit of a retrospective. Print mags aren’t going to start throwing rail covers around, they’re trying to appeal to as broad a spectrum as possible like Freedle said. But I think this thing is fragmenting/diversifying. Those trying to appeal to the broad spectrum will be bland old debt machines.
We put a cowboy riding a horse while hoisting his skis into the sky on our cover. Worked out just fine for us.
Oh and Rooster would like me to add, “with lightning bolts and horses running out of an avalanche.”
more max hill please
I had a feeling I was missing a magazine cover of liam downey and I should have remembered second generation, but that’s only one more magazine and dvd cover.
The mind set of the industry thinking skiers wouldn’t recognize an urban photo on a magazine cover or think a movie was just a “jib” flick is out dated. I would have agreed 8 or more years ago, but that customer who doesn’t relate or understand sliding a rail wouldn’t be purchasing that media anyway. Now my fear is that 10 photos are sitting there to be considered for covers each month and anything that’s urban is just pushed aside because of selling magazines in the short term. The jib culture has purchasing power, Newschoolers is the greatest example. I would argue that if Powder, Skiing, Ski, SBC Skier, Ski Journal and Freeskier are all sitting next to each other on shelf at Barnes and Noble and are all just powder and booter shots, except Freeskier with someone sliding an urban rail, Freeskier will sell more and sell to the appropriate consumer.
Every year someone in my family gives me some ski magazines for Christmas. I always end of with Ski or Skiing. This probably happens because they can’t tell the difference between each magazine.
In 2004, I wanted to see Dash Longe get a cover.
Today, I want to see Phil Casabon get a cover.
Fragmenting does not work for publications within an already relatively small sport universe- ever wonder why AXIS didn’t survive very long? The web has that on lock anyway. Diversifying, well that’s another thing entirely, we need some more of that.
Back the the subject though, rail shots by themselves don’t look that appealing anymore- it’s just a guy on a rail…it was cool while it was completely fresh but now it all starts to look the same. Like that shot of Coker on the Ski Time cover- that could be the cover of a skateboard mag. Shots with flavor stand out, like that one of JF jumping through the wall, or Sammy on the chimney, I liked those. Oh and Sammy gets so many covers because he’s good and has the right sponsors.
I’ve merely been playing devil’s advocate here anyway, seeing as how I don’t work in publishing. Supposedly there is hard research to prove that many more copies of a mag will be bought off the shelves if the cover displays a tight shot of a skier making a turn or at very least doing a trick in air. They of course try to compensate by making up for it inside the magazine. Obviously not so in snowboarding, but one could argue that that already is a board sport minded readership- to compare the two separate publishing worlds is depressing- for example seeing how Snowboard and Freeskier both come out the same building.
After the demise of more “newschool” youth oriented magazines like AXIS and Freeze I think the remaining publishers don’t want to take the leap into fully going after the youth and/or “core” market. Do I think they’re eating themselves with this mindset to a certain extent, yes. I think about it a lot. In the current economic climate, combined with the contraction of print publishing, more and more editors are taking LESS risk and catering MORE to advertisers, and while they may be better off short term I think that will eventually further turn off readership and add to the shrinking of the print media industry. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Especially when you have six issues a year, a web is already killing it with realtime commentary and content.
That’s it for now- Know Your Roots just turned into a commentary on the state of skiing magazines.
I vote for random unknowns.
Like Dima Makrushin
http://www.vimeo.com/4527797
It would be insane if Paco G got a cover
too bad he quit skiing professionally.
I definitely agree about the movie covers. Why Lvl 1 has never had one with a rail is beyond me since it’s almost all rails.
As for magazines, I think we need to leave it up to the indi mags for that (skiing could use an Up Down Magazine) publishing is not a very good business now and other than Freeskier, most ski mags are run by huge companies that don’t really care/know much about skiing. I think we just need more magazines. Snowboarding and skateboarding have tons lets jump on that band wagon and show people what skiing really is like.
In france there was a real artsy shot of tom wallish’s one footer in helsinki from Refresh on the cover of We Ski last month. And on the cover Skiuer this month there is someone doing a debatably urban drop, but whats best about that is he’s wearing tight pants, at first I thought it was paco but if it is it’s old photo as he is on old dynasters. i didn’t manage to buy the mag to find out.
[claim] totally have that same angle as Emil of the underground rail in the bag from John Weichecki sophomore year..score! Will, Pat Waite & I were quite possibly the last to hit that beat before its destruction RIP rail (and Jeff Anderson who also bagged a keeper on it)
Well that was off topic and I’m blown away this late in the season peeps still have energy for debate. nice work!
^^ EMK can you post a picture of those covers from WeSki and Skiuer on our Facebook??? I would love to see them.
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