For all the environmental talk you get from all kinds of granola big mountain skiers and ski companies, you don’t hear any come out like Scotty Wittlake and call out the Olympics for being so damaging environmentally and economically. Where is Mark Abma and other socially conscious skiers on this issue or are our big-name skiers scared to upset their big money sponsors like Salomon who will be sending teammates Bobby Brown and Simon Dumont to the Olympics?

Where are the big name pipe skiers who are going to boycott the games like Terje did for social reasons like corruption? Where is the open dialogue and debate in skiing? I’m not asking where are the 14 year-olds arguing on message boards. I’m wondering where are the pro skiers on this issue. I find it hard to believe every skier is in lock step with freeskiing being added to the Olympics and the Olympics in general. This seems apparent in the SBC Skier interview with Anthony Boronowski from last July. Boronowski is the only skier I’ve heard verbally come out against it and he implies there are many more who are silent. In a Freeskier article that listed initial responses to skiing slopestyle being added to the Olympics, every response was positive until the final one from Jacob Wester, which was coincidently buried at the bottom.

So in this convoluted mess of a post, all I’m saying is where is the healthy debate? When will lines actually be drawn in the freeskiing community? Because as of now, the skiing community looks like a bunch of corporate lap dogs. So come on skiing! These are the same Olympics that for the past 15 years refused to recognize skiing as it really is, until it was worthwhile financially to put Bobby Brown doing triples and quad corks and Simon Dumont airing 25 feet out of the pipe on center stage. Do you really think they have the best intentions? Does “free” skiing really fit within an Olympic governing body? Does any pro skier question the ski industry based on social issues?

The youth will have their opinions but they don’t know any better. We need the true thoughts from those inside the industry, skiers. Maybe BroBomb can become that place going forward.

#OccupyHalfpipes

BroBomb, maker of snarky web shenanigans, welcomes Ben Pruess as the new CEO of Holden Outerwear. We have always been big fans of Holden and have widely bitched and moaned about how ski companies don’t offer anything that actually fits. In addition, we’d like to thank you for filling up our inboxes with three different press release mass emails about this same person. He seems like a real mench.

At Holden, even the CEO gazes thoughtfully into the distance.

The rest of you can leave the room now, it’s time for me and Mr. Pruess to have a heart-to-heart. Ben, your mass email said, “please feel free to contact me if you have any ideas for us to work together or just to say hello.” I’m one to take mass mailings literally, so yes, here are some ideas:

1. SPONSOR SOME SKIERS! I’ve bothered Mikey with this every chance I’ve gotten, and now it’s your turn. You’re here to make money Benjamin, and skiers are the most materialistic fuckers on the planet. Have you ever seen a teenage skier in last year’s gear? No, you haven’t. These kids make 53 page threads about a company that doesn’t even sell outerwear. They’re nuts, I’m telling you, but they’re also rich and their parents hate to hear them bitch. Imagine Eric Cartman (But maaaaaaaam!), but instead of Cheezy Poofs, they want “that new Holden kit.” It’s like that.

2. Don’t go Grenade on us. Skiers used to rep Grenade pretty hard, and they even tossed us some bones and sponsored Tanner. Then they got all “well run” and “profitable” and made those weird skeleton suits and other hideous gaper garb. However, if you come through on #3 you can do whatever you please, so keep reading.

3. Buy ad space on BroBomb. It won’t help, but still, you said to “feel free” so I did.

You give the word and this lady will be laying in a field at the top of this site. Once I learn how to make that happen.

Like Apollo, the Spirit Bear and Guardian of the Great Spirit, we awaken! We’ve spent our summer getting really into First People’s Mysticism, and due to an early morning spirit vision induced by a drink of fermented berries and the urine of a pregnant goat, this site will no longer be all about hate, sarcasm, criticism, and the occasional Simon Dumont joke. No, it will be about the spiritual journey of our heroic Rastamen as they climb the heights of Mount Olympus and add spins to every flip and flips to every spin.

Just kidding you little hippies. It’s been the hottest damn summer in, well, ever and I’ve hated every friggen minute of it. If you’ve been upset that BroBomb has taken a two month hiatus, get a damn life. It’s 200 degrees Canadian out there and you probably need a different hobby. All the summer camps, water ramps, turf setups, and other rich kid crap have kept you all emotionally and developmentally stunted. Summer is for finding other shit to do that will make you less of a lopsided little ski brat.

But enough about that, it’s August, and that means it’s high time to get preemptively obsessed with skiing again. I have officially abstained from watching all trailers except for After Dark (are we serious with that “waking from a dream” thing?). I’ll get back to you on what else we hated and loved. You can even expect some good old fashioned mid-winter reporting from Argetina as our dear friend Dunfee is down there spreading the SASS gospel to the savage tribes.

P.S. If Surface will return our emails we’ll be replacing that annoying Yobeat ad with a sexy shot of some Surface ski jockey very soon.

If we of the BroBomb are good for anything, it’s calling out some boollshit when we see it. There’s been no shortage of worthy offenses, but what we are discussing today is the weak-ass representation of the Nike 6.0 superstars. These dudes have agents, publicists, and guys to carry their energy drinks. If you say something crooked about them on a blog that twelve people read, you will get a letter threatening to take you on Judge Joe Brown. BUT, a cool ass opportunity to promote skiing nationally on the Nike “Chosen” commercial, and where are our stars? Where’s the tough talk from all the Ari Gold wannabes when their clients are nowhere to be seen?

You all fought so hard for the Olympics, but nobody actually watches those anymore. What people do watch is the internet, and that Nike commercial is actually pretty damn cool.

And to Nike, I know you don’t think skiing fits in your “board (and wheel) sports” commercial, but that’s because you’re sponsoring Dumont, Schiller, Hatveit, and Wells. All great skiers, but there isn’t a dose of charisma in the bunch. And is BMX really higher than skiing on the “action” totem pole? I guess I’ve always known it, but damn son, they ride bicycles.

When you’re ready to take the original boardsport seriously, you come talk to us.

I slept three-ish hours last Tuesday, got up after six a.m., hit the road with my friend at seven and since then, I’ve been under the influence. The sheer anticipation of a deep powder day is enough to put me in a daze. 22 inches fell at Stevens Pass in 24 hours. That was the chemical keeping me in a delirium for a solid five hours. Even during the drive, I started to feel this euphoric tingling. Before you’re even locked in to the ride, it’s affect (and I mean affect, as in a psychological change) is circulating through your system. You get antsy and the anticipation almost makes you snap, but then you’re taking that first run and it’s happening.

Drug culture has long acknowledged the potential for a psychoactive experience to alter one’s life, for better or worse. Today was the right time and place for me, a very good trip. As junkies of any altered state will tell you, I needed this high.

Excuse me while I get a little granola… Days like today are the reason I moved to the Pacific Northwest for skiing. Like any skier raised on the gilded images in ski media, we pine for those transcendent moments where we are locked in between the dance of gravity and bottomless snow. It’s kind of like swimming, in the sense that you’re experiencing a state that is atypical. Skiing anything is like that for me, being totally present and not thinking about much other than what I’m feeling as you slide and drift. But I have no regrets in saying that powder days are different, it’s the next level of skiing consciousness.

My inner old fart might get a little snide when I see park rats (where’s my Metamucil?) tossing around their powder boards in the backseat. The inexcusable spoiled snob in me sometimes loses sight that weekend warriors floundering through fresh tracks on outdated snowboards are still having fun. There really is something about feeling all of this frozen water, a pretty remarkable chemical by itself, surrounding you, carrying you, wrapping you up, giving you this sensation; an experience. The truth is, my tolerance is high. You could call it skill but that’s for other people to judge.

Today was all time in my entire life; an existence centered on skiing. One of the purest trips I’ve ever had but I feel like one of the LSD mavens after pow skiing’s Timothy Leary, Mr. Warren Miller. That feeling of open pow, you don’t necessarily have to take a heli trip, you might not even have to travel far from home. I look at snow reports from around the country these last two years and winter seems to be holding an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Tune in at your local hill Back East. Shit, get it in North Carolina!

As we drove back to Seattle, a city waiting in April for it’s coming summer Vitamin D binge, I started to feel like I was coming down but still buzzed, like you would after a trip. It’s twelve hours since I woke up, no nap, and I’m sitting in a british pub with a beer. I need to eat. It will help me even out. And I need to put my mouth to work or else I’m willing to chew anyone’s ear off about my experience today. I’ve had my fix and it was fantastic.

Ian is a distinguished member of the Hot Possie. You can see his/their work here.

The Oakley Crowbar is one of the most elegant goggle designs ever – the baby blue/brown colorway of the Crowbar may be the best of any goggle in history. But it wasn’t long before the German house DJs/industrial designers at Oakley, still hungover from taking too much ecstasy in the 90’s, beat the simple, clean Crowbar into Klausian submission. What was born was the Splice, with its unnatural structural additives and hideous nose flares that complement the generous curves of the human nose with blocky sharp corners that evoke the emotions of a steel sculpture made of broken rebar.

Stupid nose flare, the horror, the horror!

The new Airbrake goggle brings in a measure of ergonomic ease with a flip-switch lens removal system while packaging Oakley’s signature over-design strategy with a larger and more Robocopian face. Will minds that insisted the return of the Frogskin to wild success strike again at Oakley? The designer in the back listening to house music in his Spock outfit says no.

Empire Attire

What could a “worst of” list be without unduly criticizing something to do with our favorite whipping post, Simon Dumont? Empire’s thankfully kept a bit lower profile since every top fiver in X Games pipe was shoving its ugly gold and black bits in our face a few years ago, but the design certainly hasn’t moved any farther along the track to graduation. The fact that Candide backs it may represent my biggest moral quandary yet.

No, Candide…no.

First Drop

Now with interchangeable ugliness.

For my money, nothing beats having three cargo pockets in your ski pants or a useless pocket in the small of your back to store your… PSP? While First Drop’s come a long way since the debut of the ying-yang cuts and the chest pocket, it’s still a TJ Maxx version of Saga.

Blackberry Storm

Most skiers outside of Canada own phones, so they’re still a relevant topic. That being said, this phone is the fucking worst. Left with only a touch screen with the reliability of an Argentine bus driver, Blackberry’s Taco Bell answer to Apple’s iPhone is downright terrible. Blackberry apps are about as inspiring to use as Oregon Trail is to play on an Xbox 360, and Verizon does their part to unload their string of terrible in-house apps as well. The Storm loves to freeze when you try to write texts and freeze when the weather is colder than 60 degrees and at all wet (i.e. skiing weather). Might as well put this piece of shit under your tire to keep your car from rolling away in the resort parking lot.

Overlong intro aside, this isn’t a history lesson. This is a Monday morning afternoon callout. If you’re a skier who has made a career through a mix of physical prowess and African American cultural appropriation, then get off your damn ass and give a little back. Skiing doesn’t need a Bono, we’ve already got JP Auclair (sans sunglasses and general creepiness) building schools in Africa. What we need is a guy who used a Biggie song in his legendary Superunknown video to lend his celebrity to something like Hoods to Woods. Or maybe a couple foreign kids who think they’re Red and Meth to help kids from the NY/NJ neighborhoods their heroes came from to enjoy the same sport that has made them snow celebs. It’s not even about being do-gooders, it’s about not being a dickhead. And since charity is 90% public relations anyway…just think how “G” you’d be if your next edit had a whole bunch of black kids in it.

Full disclosure: We aren’t associated in any way with Hoods to Woods, and for the record, we haven’t really done any good ourselves either. Also, this callout was inspired by a drunken conversation with the Hot Possie, they’re not just hot pants, they’re also hot brains.

The finalists shake out as follows: You Bet goes the route of a pretty straightforward anti-Olympics, pro-rail argument, but then spices things up by actually complaining about the prize. BroBomb loves a curmudgeon, welcome to the finals.

Natros makes the tough decision to forgo any actual argument and simply rant about the merits of the sponsor’s (barely) caffeinated beverage, and complain like a geezer about tall-T’s. To be honest, I just really liked this part: “To get enough caffeine from Dew, you would have to chug so much of it, you would be pissing mid run. Which, come to think of it, could be kind of cool. ‘Torin Yater Wallace just pulled the 270 on, golden sprinkler, to 450 pretzel. Amazing!!’”

B-Ladd bucks the trend by opening with a “fuck you” to Natros and then mounts an argument that’s pro judged contests and anti whining.

So now you get to pick the winner. I’ve pasted all of the finalists after the jump, you can read them, or vote on a whim….like a Dew Tour judge, BOOM!

YOU BET:

I am no ski event judge, nor do I care to be. I am a simple observer of neato things that happen at the Xgames, or dew tour. I have observed stunt skiing pander to FIS for quite a while now, I don’t really remember when it started to be honest. But I do know that we have been trying to get into the pockets of those Olympic guys for kind of quite a while, and those dusty old farts don’t care to see you wrecking your skis on those damn rails… thus the lack of scoring for the jibbing section of any slopestyle stunt course. These are people we try to impress, but they don’t get what’s going on, and if they don’t get what is going on, the general public is not going to understand what is going on, and so on and so forth. maybe 2% of your score is going to come from doing amazing tricks on the obstacle portion of the track, so you can’t just skip them, but if you just spin on a box/rail flip out of a cannon, and then don’t fall on your jumps, especially the “money booster”, you will probably score high. If you want to win the god damn money, you better throw down super hard on the jumps, cause that is what we came to see. (The audience and the judges have a better view of that anyways) so for those guys who aren’t double corking/ double poking/ double grabbing their 900/1080/1260 combos, it doesn’t friggin matter that they can do crazy things on the crazy things, because its only worth 4 or 5 points to do it anyways.

Trust me, one of those Quebetian sons of bitches starts destroying the field through the “Wall Street 2: money never sleeps” section of the course, those jib points will start to matter, then everyone gets a fair score.

Or just put the rails at the bottom of the course, even if most of the crowd just walked over from the skidoo course, during a heat break.

So can I actually get a Beldon Jacket in grey, and Ralston pant? Seafoam and blue is like so early millenium… and that;s another thing, what the crap is with all of the horrible outdated designs for this year? Jesus! I don’t want a logo jacket, or a windbreaker, or a brutal offshade of some crazy muted neon. I want a nice roomy longish coat with some pants with some shape to them, I want them to be probably a 15/10 because I don’t ski or walk or hike in torrential downpours, I don’t live in fernie or whistler or washington where it could rain at any given moment (see what I did there?) or where the relative humidity is like 280%. I don’t plan on spending money for goofy features like speakers in my collar, or shiny jacket interiors. Just give me some pockets, a useful media pocket like the ones sessions made like 8 years ago, taped seams and a nice long removable powder skirt preferably one with an elasticky draw string instead of a grippy stretch band that fucks up my tall tee underhang!

God dammit!

NATROS:

“the dew tour???” seriously??!!! when was the last time mountain dew was extreme? like mid 90′s, when there were in your face commercials with people passing each other cans mid flight while sky diving, or some crazy aussies surfing like their lives depended on it, but acting like it wasn’t a big deal. the dew tour? what a joke. there’s nothing extreme or action sports-y about mountain dew. it doesn’t even have enough caffeine to get me worked up enough to throw a 180, much less a 2400 or whatever the hell the kids are throwing these days. plus that yellow 5 shit totally lowers your sperm count, basically making you LESS macho,less extreme, less badass. now if it were the “extra large coffee with two shots of espresso tour” you might be onto something. that shit will really jack you up to where you might actually throw down something impressive. i mean, to get enough caffeine from dew, you would have to chug so much of it, you would be pissing mid run. which,come to think of it,could be kind of cool. “torin yater wallace just pulled the 270 on, golden sprinkler, to 450 pretzel. amazing!!”

And another thing. whats with all the dresses? these frickin kids wondering around looking like skittled-out cross dressers, neon shit dragging around their ankles. and one dress would be bad enough, but apparently the layered look is “in” for 2011, so they wear 2 3 or more different colored dresses, each one slightly smaller than the last,like some fucked up psychedelic cross dressing version of those russian dolls that fit inside each other.

So you’ve got little kids in dresses, thinking they are extreme cuz they drink some watery barely caffeinated crap, doing ballet on metal surfaces. and that’s supposed to be skiing??????!!!!!!!!!!
NO THANKS.

B-LADD:

First off, fuck you Nastros, Mountain Dew is fucking delicious.

Secondly, is everyone still on this whole style over spin to win shit? It’s a competition, this is the way it’s been for the past however many years. The fastest racer wins, and the dude who does the biggest craziest trick is gonna podium. Especially in a sport where there aren’t any particular parameters for style and it’s all incredibly subjective. Why does B-Dog fail to podiuk time after time despite innovative and stylish rail sections? Dude doesn’t have a single double in his bag. Like it or not, a switch dub 12 is harder and more technical then a switch 10, and when both tricks are grabbed blunt the whole way through, which one do you think will win? Sorry to break it to everyone who hates hucking, but if you grab a dub the whole way through, that shit’s stylish, and it’s gonna win. If you want to see cool, innovative tricks, pop in a movie, if you wanna see some dude go mach looney into a jump and do way more spins and flips than you could ever dream of, then watch a major competition.

I can understand when you guys say you’d rather go skiing on your own then watch a competition-fucking duh, who wouldn’t? What most of you guys probably don’t understand is that competing, believe it or not, is actually fun for some people. I grew up competing in moguls and then slopestyle through high school, and it was always fun to travel to different mountains, meet new kids, and let competing push me to progress my own skiing. I can’t think of how many tricks I wouldn’t have tried if it weren’t for the fact that I wouldn’t stand a chance in competition without them.

The Dew Tour is awesome because it does broadcast the type of skiing we do to a broader audience. Yeah it’s made for TV, but what competition at that level isn’t? Competition skiers aren’t better than film skiers and vice versa, they’re just different. Now stop bitching about stuff that doesn’t affect you, and go back to doing half-assed imitations of all the tricks Max Hill and Mike Hornbeck do, because guess what (gasp!) those guys ski for the camera too, and all you anti-competition kids bite their steeze just as hard as that 14-year old who saw Bobby Brown on TV.

I want your best rant about anything Dew Tour related in the comments. It can be about this most recent Dew stop, or if you’re like me and didn’t watch a second of it, feel free to rant about past Dew happenings (or whatever you want, really). We will pick the best rant, and that person gets the slick kit you see pictured here.

To get this thing started, here’s my rant: Can we drop the shit and just start calling slopestyle a triple-jump with some rail obstacles at the top? Let’s face facts, if you actually touch your skis to the rails, and don’t fall, you’re good. The size of your outerwear and the carrying of poles probably have more effect on your overall score than those stupid metal objects at the top.

To prove this point, let’s talk about Phil Casabon. Phil consistently does shit that absolutely nobody else has ever done, or probably can do, on the top rail setup (again, didn’t see this most recent one). So he’s combining style and innovation on the rails, and then solid (but average, relatively) spinny tricks on the jumps. Everyone else is doing relatively average stuff on the rails and then (not so) stylish innovation on the jumps. So why isn’t his score equal? Why are the rail innovators still on the back of the slopestyle bus? Mubarak must go! I mean, equal scoring for all!

Now it’s your turn. Best rant (as chosen by me) wins the kit.

As part of my day job working for some random travel company, I offered a bunch of lift tickets to Mount Snow for whoever wrote me with the best idea for their dream shred trip. People wrote in with all kinds of fancifully impossible ideas, and about half included mentions of ski or snowboard idols they’d bring along. I think if I were writing in to that contest I would say that I’d want a trip to ski pow in Japan with JP Auclair and Candide Thovex. But would I? I’m pretty sure I’d be shitting my pants the whole time, terrified of the experience, ability, and pure legend of the two people sitting next to me on the chair, and would be simply unable to ski. Plus, I don’t speak any French.

Candide has done arguably a better job than anyone in the ski industry of keeping his immense talent hidden from the world – despite being practically the only skier on the Quiksilver program, year after year the French recluse shreds his home terrain in the Alps and gives us less than a five minute peek of what must be hundreds of hours of epic footage. In an age of GoPros and Allisports.com “Pro to Pros,” this is simply unheard of. The man that has found more uses for a tailgrab than any skier before or since puts up something like “Candide Kamera,” a super well-produced annual webisode series that makes us think we might actually see a full-length Candide movie drop sometime during our active lives, and then goes on to delay any possibility of that for at least another two years.

I remember the day I lived through the second-biggest regret of my ski career. I was at Snowpark in New Zealand helping my cousin train halfpipe when out of nowhere, Candide was standing at the top of the quad. I was in shock – I never would have imagined I would ever actually see him, or that he even existed. I rubber-necked harder than ever before to watch him do a 360 tail grab, and then a 900 tail the next run. IN PERSON. I was in shock. And I never said hello.

So what do we say? Give us more! Get a Gopro! Make a fucking movie already! No. Despite the fact that Candide has without a doubt maintained his level of skiing, winning the World Freeride Tour on his first go last season, and having been the only skier in history to excel in as many different aspects of the sport as he has, Candide has remained, by practice or chance, the immaculate legend of our favorite pastime. If I met him, his cell phone would probably have scratches on the screen, or he might fumble for cash in his wallet at lunch, or he might even speak enough English for me to understand. It would be totally ruined.

So keep doing what you’re doing. The day whatever Quik/Coreupt/Swatch/Euroville project you’re purportedly working on goes public is the day I will quit skiing.