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Internet Drama Goes Skiing

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

The boys here at BroBOMB have really been milking the SIA coverage. I get it, it’s a big deal and you worked super, extra hard, but come on dudes, it’s snowing in the real world. (And by Real World, I am talking about DC, even though on the show it’s magically summer and not the midst of the storm of the century. There is also some bitch who is complaining that she needs to go home cause she can’t last 6 WEEKS without her boyfriend, or something. Anyway, I feel like I may be getting off track.)

I ventured over to this Wordpress back end as opposed to my own, because while my hate mongering towards skiers is mostly for show, I felt the video submission YoBeat received recently and the attached story may better be suited for the BroBOMB readership. Allow me to introduce Jeremiah Paquette, aka Jermagain.

Hopefully you enjoyed that little vid, as Jeremiah made it to prove a point: Snowboarding is easy, but skiing is easier. Apparently this was his first day shredding on two planks this season. But don’t worry, that’s not the good part of the story, or the reason I posted it. No, the real reason Jeremiah made this video is out of pure spite! You see, as Jermagain, he is a frequent commenter on REELcomp, a sort of extreme Youtube where kids post their videos and make fun of each other. Apparently, the kids trying to show off their skills don’t appreciate Jermagain’s subtle brand of hate-filled humor though, and he recently received this letter:

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SASS Around the World

Friday, February 12th, 2010

New media outlets are so great because they provide timely, relevant content. So it’s a little awkward for me to be writing a blog post about SIA more than a week after it happened.  But the beauty of BroBomb is that you don’t stop by to find out what trick Bobby Brown did two minutes ago; you stop by because we find some funny way to hate on Bobby for being sponsored by Under Armour.

burton casinoPhoto courtesy of Yobeat

This year SIA moved from its traditional home in Las Vegas to the more pedestrian locale of Denver, Colorado. Burton made a mis-directed effort to maintain the Vegas motif with a series of table games and slots. All lame because after winning in slots I had to give all my coins back to the woman standing attentively by the machine, without even a shitty Burton hat to show for my performance. Despite the lack of distractions, SIA was a pretty intense experience thanks to the six hundred meetings and after parties I attended on behalf of South America Snow Sessions. The founders of SASS spent years and years building the brand. I got to show up two months into working there, and attend meetings in which top-level ski and snowboard companies and media would shower praise and money on SASS. It was pretty overwhelming and really cool to be a part of, or more accurately- ride the coattails of. Not to mention that having a business card & a media pass let me fuck around with numerous unsuspecting industry personnel.  I just hope that chick from Bitch Boards doesn’t call me asking about the SASS/Bitch Boards signature session that I promised her.

While the vast portion of SIA was taken up with SASS-related business, I did find a little bit of time to bask in BroBomb’s growing celebrity and get led around by Mike Rogge to meet several industry big-wigs (read: BroBomb readers).  Eric Iberg, feeling rosy after a few frosty brain grenades from the Orage booth, proceeded to bow to us.  I don’t really know how to finish that comment in a way that would make it remotely believable, but Iberg was pretty stoked when I gave him a BroBomb sticker at the X Games. For what it’s worth, he was sober then.

Proof

Proof

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Last Day at SIA and Ruby Hill Preview

Monday, February 1st, 2010

After three days of meandering through a maze of SIA booths under oppressive fluorescent lighting, the Brobombers, Andy Parry, and Garrett Russell took to Ruby Hill Railyard in Denver to get some shred done. You can check some sneak peak photos in the gallery below, but the edit is damn near done so be sure to check back for that.

The rest of the photos are from Day 4 of SIA. The partying is over and everybody is just waiting to disassemble their booths. We wandered through some booths we hadn’t seen yet, and even found our way into the heavily-guarded Holden compound.

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Photos, Photos, Photos!

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Free hotel wifi kicks ass! BUT it doesn’t kick that much ass, and so my image uploader won’t work. Sorry, but they’re all on our Facebook for your perusing pleasure.

We’ve got big plans for today, and there will be a few video tours of the skis we deem good enough to be worth our time. Thus far the highlights include ORAGE MAKING A TIGHT PANT, a Causwell baselayer they claim is made from bamboo, and a case of mistaken identity where Chris and I thought we were meeting JP Auclair (we weren’t).

Today we’re aiming for some footage of the 2011 gear from Holden, LibTech, Trew, and whoever we else isn’t a dick (like the dude at Sessions who called us “impolite”).

That's a tapered men's pant from a ski company son!!!

That's a tapered men's pant from a ski company son!!!

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Sage Does 3’s Off Cliffs. TGR Goes Wild!

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

I’m very new to the TGR forum experience, putting me on pace to be a respected member about five years after my death. They’re a rough bunch over there, but there’s one surefire way into their hearts: sponsor Sage Cattabriga-Alosa. The dude is their Wallisch, Tanner, and Dumont all rolled into one. Therefore, the following press release comes as no major surprise. Let’s just hope that Scott throws similar money at Level 1 for their new boy wonder- Tom Wallisch.

tgrTGR announces Atomic as its new premium ski sponsor.

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Happy MLK Day!

Monday, January 18th, 2010

The worst thing a website can do on MLK day is provide weak token coverage of a black athlete.

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Skiers with Jobs

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

ski industry

Greetings from Burlington! I’m on a bit of a fact finding mission in the epicenter of the east coast ski world. If you have any aspirations of making a living in “the industry” here on the right coast, then it’s likely you’re going to end up in Burlington. Always eager to help budding industry drones, I’m here to get a little feel for the city and a couple of the companies that might be getting your resume. Newly minted Vermont resident Mike Rogge, of Ski the East, is my tour guide so you know I’ll be all behind-the-scenes and whatnot.

I’m going to do some interviews and analyze the companies based on some highly scientific criteria, but I’m open to suggestions. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

-          Number of pros working there that you can go totally fanboy over on your first day.

-          Amount of free product laying around for five finger pro deals.

-          Office vibe: Are there dogs? Putting machines? Wall Street style screaming?

-         # of employees (the more the better for you, someone’s always getting fired).

Drop any further questions you’d like me to ask into the comments. I hope to visit Orage and Meatheads headquarters today, and we’ll see what else the day brings.

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Surface Acquires Joystick

Monday, January 4th, 2010

surface acquires joystick

When BroBomb gets a redesign, and I have a separate “News” page, you’ll be able to scroll through every press release that you already heard about from some insider on NS. Until then, I’m going to stick with the interesting ones. The people who brought us “Hot Lunch” are all under one tent, and that seems like a good thing. Then there’s the related news of Joystick founder Anthony Boronowski signing with the Surface Crew (interview to come). Surface is building an empire, so you better watch your ass or you’ll be next!

Surface Acquires Joystick

 Salt Lake City, UT – December 17, 2009 – Surface Ski (www.surfaceskis.com) today announced its acquisition of Joystick Skiing (www.joystickskiing.com).  Joystick adds several ski poles and gloves that complement Surface’s line of snow skis and Causwell’s line of snow sports apparel.

“We’re really excited about bringing the Joystick brand into the Surface and Causwell family,” said Michael Schneider, manager of Surface Skis.  “We’re also stoked that we get to have Joystick with us at the SIA tradeshow in January.”

“It means a lot to me to know that Joystick will be owned and managed by people who represent and embody the brand,” commented Anthony Boronowski, Executive Director for Joystick Skiing.

About Surface

Surface Ski Collaboration, LLC is a Salt Lake City-based company that makes twin-tipped snow skis for powder, park, and pipe skiing, the fastest growing segment of the snow sports industry.  The Surface brands are Surface Skis, Causwell apparel and now Joystick poles and accessories.

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“List” Articles Suck

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Everybody’s got wish lists and year end recaps left and right. I think it has something to do with Christmas and the New Year, but I could be wrong. BroBomb hasn’t been around for a whole year, and I have a notoriously poor memory that makes it very hard to recap my week, forget an entire year.

A man must know his limits, so I’m going to bite off a very small piece- otherwise known as the past weekend. The storm of the century was hitting DC, Philly, and NYC, but it took a hard right before it hit any real mountains. That is depressing, especially since I had a trip to Mount Snow planned. It was bitter cold and the wind was blowing like the frosty bastard that it is. Nonetheless, I kept my blogger radar up and made enough observations to keep you all entertained for the ten second it’ll take to read these two lists.

 Top 5 Promising Things I Saw this Year (Weekend):

  1. Your average kid is out there getting creative between features. I’m talking butters, taps, slashes, and all that good stuff. We used to look like automatons that just rode feature to feature, now some of you are actually worth watching from the chairlift.
  2. It’s still a fashion show. You’d think this would be a negative thing, but where would we be without our vanity?
  3. My brother was riding his shiny new Moment Planks. I heard more than one kid whisper “yo dude, those are the Planks.” I remember when simply owning a pair of twin tip skis made you a rarity on the mountain, at least now you have to go out of your way to order a limited-production ski to get noticed.
  4. Shitloads of kids are skiing. Until you go to a park-specific hill like Carinthia at Mount Snow it’s easy to forget how quickly this thing is growing. Again, I can remember when being under 20 and skiing was extremely rare.
  5. You’re all getting really damn good. We were all reminiscing on the chairlift how being able to slide a rail used to make you the best kid on the hill. On Sunday I saw more switchups than a Level 1 video, and some of them actually looked good.

 

Like a super rare Pokemon card at ComiCon
Like a super rare Pokemon card at ComiCon

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Hurt Feelings

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Josh Dirksen hurt my feelings. For those of you who don’t know who he is, Josh is a snowboarder and he appeared in my favorite snow film of all time- Robot Food’s Afterlame. If I’m remembering correctly he gives a little speech about how he doesn’t “spin the 900” anymore, unless sponsors are watching or there’s some contest. What a ridiculously cool guy. He couldn’t be among the ski-hating snomophobes that seem to be hiding behind every blog these days, could he?

Well he recently put on a banked slalom event at Mt. Bachelor to benefit an injured friend. You can read a description of the event here, and let me tell you it’s a real honest feel good story. Just the kind of thing I’d expect from one of my snow heroes. But, then I asked if I could run a couple photos of Eric Pollard and Chris Benchetler, who competed in the event, and I was told that Josh specifically requested I mention that it was a snowboard event with a “token skier division.” That’s just hurtful. Haven’t all these years of bigotry taught us anything?

Well here are the pics of Eric and Chris supporting a great cause, and I have a dream, brothers and sisters, that Josh Dirksen and I will slide down the hill on our respective snow devices holding hands in perfect harmony. In fact, I have that dream quite often. Call me.

Photos brought to you by Abe Blair- Blindman Photos

brobomb eric pollard

EP on his way to being the first token skier to finish.

brobomb Chris_Benchetler

Benchetler, just another token in the crowd.

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