Americans and the French do not mix well. Us stupid, hamburger-eating, English-speaking, pickup-truck charging freedom lovers usually don’t take kindly to lots of wine, back to back vowells we can’t understand, and all that jour de vive, if that’s even correct. But considering our Congress is dumping freedom left and right and the French president recently stated they should be more like Germans, it looks like we’re all loosening up a bit. So maybe it’s time to take another look. On that note, the very French-sounding “Simply Beauty Production” recently put out this clip called “Waiting for Winter.” We know only a few of you know how to ski powder so it’s probably good to educate yourself more on that end. Or you could just fast forward to 6:00 and see the most insane speed-flying landing EVER. Let me just take my parachute with cette skis and do a fancy loop 20 metre above a snowless field and vouila! Une landing parfois! Where is my baguette?
BONUS: Poor Boyz Productions’ timeless Propaganda is illegally up on Vimeo!! Enjoy an early Eric Pollard segment, Mike Nick’s liu kangs, and JF Cusson’s best segment ever.
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For the know your roots category
Many moons ago, when edits were 1,000 times fewer and farther between, a crew of weird Quebecois released Team Pizza. It was a big deal. Pro skiers just didn’t screw around with creative flatland tricks, they were too busy with “progression” on Superpark-type stuff.
We asked JP to provide a little background for one of our favorite edits ever. This is what he had to say:
In February 2005, Julien Regnier, Sven Kueenle, Elina Sirparanta and I headed off to Austria to compete in a contest called “Red Bull Shape The Nature.” The concept of the contest was that four teams of three, armed with video cameras, venture out to the slack-country to stake their claims or features with their team flags. Once a team places its flag on a feature, it is off limits to all other teams. Each crew puts their footage together and the videos are judged by the other teams…blah blah blaahh.
When I purchased Poor Boyz Productions’ X, back in 2004, I had understandably high expectations after 1242 and Ready Fire Aim. But after a viewing or two, the only segments that left me wanting more were Anthony Boronowski’s opening masterpiece and Dave Crichton’s last full segment. The rest was just repetitive trick-after-trick and a little too cliché. It was a familiar disappointment, but I dutifully went to the bonus features; much to my surprise, I found a little gem that changed the freeskiing world as we know it: U.P.1. What?!
Bernie Rosow is a Vermont transplant, best known as a founding member of the Mammoth-based Montage Inc. crew. However, Bernie has another claim to ski-innovation-fame; in 2000, before the Line Mothership and Prophet, Bernie was skiing on possibly the first super fat twins in the world. Instead of accepting production twins, he created custom made Line Ostness Dragons with 120 mm waists. The story of the skis he dubbed the “Double Dragons” chronicles one of those revolutionary events in skiing, and is a story that needs to be told.
In a recent ESPN interview, Ahmet Dadali was questioned about the debate between “film segment vs. competition results.” He said, “people seem to remember a good ski segment, but will forget a competition standing.” When I think back to my freshman year of college in 2001/2002, I don’t remember who won the X-Games, U.S. Open, or even the Olympics, but I do remember watching Propaganda over and over and over again! I especially remember segments from JF Cusson, JP Auclair, Julien Regnier, and Eric Pollard/Mike Nick.
If you were lucky enough to get into skiing between 1997 and 2005, you were able to witness Skiing’s Revolution on the pages of FREEZE magazine. During this period, FREEZE captured skiing’s culture from the big mountains of Valdez, Alaska to the terrain parks in New England, something new to ski magazines at the time. Skiing and Ski magazines seemed to be concerned with selling vacation packages and equipment to yuppie skiers, while Powder seemed reluctant to consistently cover the newschool movement outside of their Superpark issue. Freeskier came on the scene in ‘99, but they were, well, you know…Freeskier.
You know those dumb Red Bull commercials with dudes in chicken costumes on gliders or pigs with wings trying to fly, but ultimately crashing into a river? The ones for that event with the name you can’t pronounce? It’s called Flugtag, which is German for “Flying Day”. It was in Philly, or more accurately, really beautiful Camden, NJ this Labor Day weekend. Free Red Bull was harder to find than you might think, but the day was saved by the presence of the Shane McConkey inspired “Toss Your Sauce” team! We had the privilege, along with 70,000 other people, to watch Saucer Boy ride again and crash into the Delaware River. We caught up with the team captain, Ben Harmer, to get some details about this absolutely absurd event and the Toss Your Sauce crew.
Any skateboarder worth his Mark Gonzalez knows that their favorite skater’s favorite video is Plan B’s Questionable. Featuring skateboard lifers like Matt Hensley, Rodney Mullen, Pat Duffy, and Mike Carroll. Every skater cool enough not to wear a helmet at the skatepark has seen it.
I was stunned when I found out that my twenty-something co-worker at SASS had seen the light and decided to “become a freeskier” without having seen 13. That’s like me seeing the light and deciding to become a freeskier without having seen State of Mind. I remember watching 13 on the last day of the season when I was in middle school; it was my first time seeing a twin-tip ski, and by the time I’d seen CR (RIP) nearly stick a cork 1260, I was out in the yard trying to slide a shovel handle on my mogul skis.
In the early evolutionary years of newschool skiing, there was one beast of an event that brought together the leaders and young guns of skiing. In some sort of Darwinian process, the likes of Tanner Hall, David Crichton, Pep Fujas and Simon Dumont made names for themselves while the brick layers of skiing, like the Three Phils, JF Cusson and Vinnie Dorion, continued to push the sport forward. This hallowed event’s scientific name is: Parkasaurus.
Mercon gaps a dinosaur p: Freeze.com (extinct)
Each year, from 2000 to 2003, Parkasaurus would appear at Snow Summit CA. Organized by FREEZE magazine (RIP), it was an event that brought together top skiers, filmers, and photographers to evolve skiing without competition. It was said in the historical pages of FREEZE, “Events like the U.S. Open and X Games establish the best athletes in a competitive environment, but Parkasaurus is a place where creativity oozes like spaghetti sauce from everyone’s pores.” It was a time before edits, so the creative beast could only be seen when films were released and photos were published. Many important milestones were reached at Parkasaurus events, like Tanner landing the first disaster switch 450 on 270 off, CR sliding the first 50-50, Jon McMurray backflip disaster, JF Cusson and Philou slaying the first rainbow and battleship rails, Crichton’s massive halfpipe airs, and the infamous transfer gap over an inflatable dinosaur.
Species: Tanner Hall p: Freeze.com (extinct)
As we get nostalgic and unearth Parkasaurus, there is much to discover from evidence left behind in issues of Freeze and early Poor Boyz films like The Game, Propaganda, Happy Days, and Sterotype. First of all, we need to refocus on unifying park shoots again. By necessity, skiing park shoots brought every crew together in the early years. Now, we have little niches and film crews shooting on their own, but nothing brings about more creativity than putting together an entire ski community. Yes, we have JOSS and a ton of park shoots for each film company, but none that brings all of them together without competition.
Jason Levinthal is the founder and mad scientist behind LINE skis. I had the privilege of skiing with him at Stowe. Before we met up, I put together fifteen questions and we got through about four of them. When J Lev speaks, you listen. What follows is Jason’s response to my first question; I passed him my iPhone and let him talk because what was flowing was essential for knowing your roots. I’ve transcribed the interview for the readers among us, but I’ve also included the raw audio for your listening pleasure.
Who and what influenced your skiing the most back in 1995 when you started Line?
Back in ’95 skiing, you gotta remember and it’s hard for people to realize, there were signs at the top of the Stratton Terrain Park, and most terrain parks, that said no skiers allowed. You know, that’s just a fact. And then, the other fact is it wasn’t even called terrain parks, it was called snowboard parks. If you can imagine that, then that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what skiing really was, and it’s such a short time ago, but it’s so easy to forget.
The only ski you could buy was like a 203 length, you know, if you’re 5’10”, 150 lbs, you’re gonna ride a 203 length ski that was like 65 in the waist, so stiff you couldn’t even flex it if you put it between two saw horses and jumped on it. It had no side cut, so you really weren’t even carving unless you were going 80mph down a downhill race course in the Olympics, which only 5 people can do. That’s what all the skis were built on. So, your options for skiing was basically this product that really inhibited you from progressing, and then you had no imagery other than Scott Schmidt and Glen Plake which, hats off to those guys for at least taking that product and pushing it as far as they possibly could. I mean, they’re throwing like 720’s off cornices and they’re doing like everything possible but it was still so far behind snowboarding, and snowboarding was behind skating, and you know, that’s ultimately what influenced me was the fact that all these other action sports existed and were so far ahead of the curve of skiing.
Skiing was one of the oldest of all those sports, and it was like the last one to ever evolve or change. I mean you’re talking 30-40yrs of just the same thing: skis built for world-cup downhill skiers, of which 99.9% of people that go to the mountain can’t ride like, don’t train enough to be able to bend a 200-length ski at an 80mph course of ice. They just wanna go have fun, and they’re really fighting the design of the ski. So, for me, design-minded, kinda inventor-minded, mechanically minded, I saw snowboarding, I skateboarded, I wakeboarded when that came about. I inline skated when that came about. Mountain biked. BMX. All these products were old products. I mean cycling evolved to BMX, evolved to mountain biking. Skateboards became twin tip. Wakeboards came from water skiing. Rollerblades came from roller skates. Snowboarding really came from a problem with skiing not being able to evolve.
So, what I did seeing that, it just bothered me for like a long time, probably, 10 years leading up to that. So, I started snowboarding in like ’88 or something. So that was when I was going to Stratton on the weekends and I was visiting the Burton factory, and I was seeing what Burton was doing for snowboarding. You know, from just an idea into a finished thing. So, I saw what Burton was doing with snowboarding and how they were doing it and then, eventually, when I had my second or third board, my first board was a Sims Switchblade, anyone that knows snowboarding knows how old that was. That was one of the first boards with edges, you know, a few years after edges were put on snowboards. Eventually, I got a Burton Air, it was a completely symmetrical board, or pretty damn close, it was the first board that was like that. I got on, took one run at Stratton, and it was like the light bulb went on: “I’m mounting my skis centered.”
So I didn’t mount my skis center, I was just on this snowboard, and I said, “this is crazy dude, like what I can do on this snowboard is unbelievable and this is what I need to be able to do on my skis.” And I was literally snowboarding half the day and skiing half the day. I’d bring a snowboard and skis to the mountain every time I went. Half the day I’d snowboard, then I’d jump on my skis the other half, because I love skiing because the forward facing, just like that was me; but snowboarding, I got a feeling from snowboarding carving, riding switch, doing tricks, the maneuverability, the playfulness, the fun, the agility, all is what I really also loved. I wanted to be able to do that on my skis, but couldn’t, so I just had to do both to satisfy my craving.
At one point I snowboarded half the day, I switched to my skis, I was on like 203 Rossi’s, those green ones, and then I, without thinking, just did a 180, cause like that’s what I had been doing all morning on my snowboard. This was like before college, I was in high school. Then like 5 years went by and I was in college and we had to do a project and I was like, “I’m gonna make a ski like a snowboard.” This was in ’95, so I took all the dimensions of a snowboard, cut in half—length, width, everything. That’s how I came to a skiboard. There was no more thought beyond than that.
So, I wasn’t about to take a ski and redesign it. I was going to take a snowboard, and evolve it into a ski, you know, start all the way from one extreme. That’s why it was short, that’s why it was wide, that’s why it was twin tip, symmetric, and had side cut, and it had a soft flex. All those aspects of that ski at that time, which people want to call a “skiboard”, was closer to the modern day ski that you’re on today. You’re riding on longer skiboards, or more realistically, back then, you’re riding on shorter skis that were fucking 10-15yrs ahead of their time. People call them skiboard for the same reason they call terrain parks snowboard parks. They couldn’t get over the fact that that could be a ski.
