Jon and the gang would never post this video because it contains:
1. Big clothing
2. Rap music
3. Simon Dumont
But that being said, I have a nifty login here at BroBomb and damn it, I’m using it. Enjoy the 2010 Team America JOSS Edit. God knows Jon won’t.
-Rogge
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.
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.
Why is Julien Regnier the Ultimate Badass?
Sickest Japan Ever!
Julien Regnier is probably your favorite skier’s favorite skier. He single-handedly influenced more aspects of the sport than almost anyone. This past week, Anthony Boronowski mentioned him and JP as the skiers he watched growing up. With Ant and JP, Julien created the UP1 series, which was such a refreshing dose of fun at a time when ski films took themselves very seriously (imagine that). If he were given the money, he would create the greatest ski film ever, and that’s a fact. I guess there are those who would disagree; even as an original team member and trendsetter, he found himself orphaned by Armada this year. It’s a sad story, but dry those nostalgic eyes and check his new sponsor- Black Crows Skis. Seems like a perfect fit for the legend and his imagination.
Watch this “mixtape” edit of Julien in PBP films like The Game, Propaganda, Happy Dayz, and WAR, and witness why Julien is no doubt the most underrated founding newschool skier. Then, be sure to check out Julien’s other edits on his Vimeo page. Especially the “Yeah Dude” edit, that shows him absolutely destroying BC pillow lines.
I’m obsessed with analyzing and reflecting upon the last decade. I can’t get enough “best of” lists, news stories, and discussions from the first decade of the new millennium. It’s been the most influential and important decade of my life, and possibly everyone else in their teens to mid-thirties. We’ve seen the true rise of the internet, cell phones, and awesome blogs. We witnessed 9-11, a couple wars, Katrina, and the Great Recession. Music has shifted from rap rock, boy bands, and compact discs to “indie” music, autotune, and iPods. I personally graduated high school, college, and got married. Every aspect of life seemed to progress and change at an alarmingly fast rate; skiing was no exception.
I just returned from celebrating Christmas at my parent’s house in upstate New York, and I brought my entire ski magazine collection back with me. When I got home, I spent hours skimming through piles of Freeze Magazine, every issue of Freeskier published, countless issues of Powder, and the infamous Axis Magazine. With this vast collection of skiing history at my fingertips, I plan to bring out the best and worst of the last 10 or more years of freeskiing, since no one else will. We need to recognize, respect, and laugh at the apparent changes skiing has made over the past decade. It’s alarming to read on NS that some kids don’t know about the New Canadian Air Force, Candide Thovex, Julien Regnier, or understand how this whole “newschool” thing started. I get nervous that skiing will forget its roots and neglect to learn what worked or hasn’t worked from the past. Thus, BroBomb births the new series “Know Your Roots.”
So let’s get nostalgic before we forget.
Come back for discussions about the stuff everybody seems to have forgotten, like Axis Magazine, Huntony grabs, New Canadian Air Force, Parkasourus, “13”, skiboarding, Skogen Sprang, Freeze Magazine, Julien Regnier, Siver Cartel, JF Cusson, Stereotype, David Crichton, Ski Time Magazine, Boyd Easley, SB1, Rory Will, Ask Brad, Line print ads, Nicky Adams, gorilla steeze, Mike Nick, Jonny Moseley Mad Trix, Josh Loubek, Kent Kritlier, The Three Phils, etc…
(Disclaimer: I won’t be talking about all of it, just the important crap.)
