According to the Tahoe Daily Tribune, Airblaster founder Travis Parker is going back to school.

Sierra Nevada College has awarded a scholarship to professional snowboarder Travis Parker. Parker will attend Sierra Nevada College on an annual art scholarship in the amount of $15,000 per year, totaling $60,000 over a four-year period. Parker will enter the college in the fall as a fine arts major in painting and drawing, and also plans to get his teaching credential.

It’s so good to see snowboarders getting a good art education. Because nothing is more important in today’s economic realities than a fine art degree from a school no one has ever heard of.

[Link: Tahoe Daily Tribune]

We were just on our way to pick up some Beta Unit tees at UNIV (because Shaun McKay always looks so sexy in them, doesn’t he) when we were reminded that Beta Unit groove doesn’t stop at tees. No, not this season. Thanks to a collab with K2 snowboards we’re all in for a bit of an up-sell on the Beta Unit side.

Beta Unit is excited to announce their partnership with K2 Snowboards for the upcoming 2010/2011 season. We got to design the graphic for the Darkstar, which we used as a canvas to transmit our geo-futuristic dreamscapes to. We love snowboarding, and a lot of details in our clothing is inspired by the functionality of outerwear.

For the rest of the Beta Unit goods click the link.

[Link: Beta Unit and K2 Snowboards]

Dan Brisse, Jake Blauvelt, Gigi Rüf, Lucas Debari, Fredi Kalbermatten, Sylvain Bourbousson, Romain deMarchi, DCP, JP Solberg, Annie Boulanger, Marie-France Roy, Bjorn Leines, Taka Nakai, Tadashi Fuse, Jules Reymond, Cale Zima, Blair Habenicht, Terje Haakonsen, Bode Merrill, Wolfgang Nyvelt, and Nicolas Müller tease us with a blast of freeze winter air in our sweaty, sweltering faces and it cools like ice.

[Link: Absinthe Films]

Method Snowboard Magazine CEO Rasmus Ostergaard announced today that they moving to a free distribution model for the “pan-European” magazine.

It’s very simple, over the past 5 years it’s become increasingly clear that newsstand sales are in steady decline. Sadly, our target audience simply doesn’t buy magazines anymore. We could continue working with the old paradigm or radically change our business model to adapt to the market’s new realities. . . . Going free is a win-win situation for everyone –advertisers, retailers, readers, riders and photographers. From now on METHOD will be found where it counts most, namely core snowboard shops and other spots where snowboarders hang out.

We’ve always been big fans of free, plus, it’s just one step closer to 100% digital. Follow the jump for the official release and unleash the kitties.
Continue reading ‘Method Magazine Sets Print Free’

Eddie Wall is obviously not afraid. We’ll leave it at that. Want to see him perform live, click the link for more info.

[Link via Snowboarder Mag]

Okay. We give up. We can’t ignore Buoloco any longer. For the past few months Euro snowboard historian Ed Segovia has been interviewing some of snowboarding biggest names on iChat and then posting the videos on a site that he and Kevin Jones have created called buOLOco. Some are boring as hell, others compelling to no end. This interview between Kevin and photographer Ian Ruhter may be our favorite yet. The best part: seeing Kevin Jones get back in the mix.

But be careful–entire afternoons have been known to be blown on this.

[Link: buOLOco via Board As Fuck]

Shaun White won two ESPN ESPY awards last night (July 14, 2010) and Torah Bright took home one at the annual ESPN awards show held at Hollywood’s Nokia Theatre. White won for Male Olympian and Male Action Sports Athlete and Bright won for Female Action Sports athlete.

Follow the jump for photos of Shaun with all his Hollywood friends. . . See what a good CAA agent can do for you?

[Link: Stamford Advocate]
Continue reading ’2010 ESPYs Were White And Bright’

Mike “Chief” Nusenow has reportedly left his position of SVP Global Marketing for the Burton Corporation, according to a post on Shop-Eat-Surf.com.

Greg Dacyshyn, formerly senior vice president of creative, has been promoted to chief creative officer and will oversee all marketing and product. . . Sam Paschel, general manager of The Program, is now the Burton vice president of marketing and will oversee day-to-day marketing operations and execution, Janice [Nickloff ] said.

Lots of shifting around going on at Burton these days. . .

[Link: Shop-Eat-Surf.com]

There are few better collections of focused snowboard action than when manufacturers get together and try to out do each other in the creation of a team snowboard video. This clip is a little taste what we can expect from Nitro, Rome, Salomon, and Volcom, in Transworld Snowboarding’s ingenious sponsored content creation contest The Team Shoot Out.

[Link: 2010 Team Shoot Out]

During his career artist Ari Marcopoulos has had the uncanny ability to roll in to the right places, with the right people, at the right times: always. He was with Andy Warhol near the end, assisted Irving Penn, shot the The Beastie Boys in the mid 80s, skateboarders in the late 80s, Terje Haakonsen and the snowboard heros of the late 90s. He helped with the creation of Frequency The Snowboard Journal, and directed Where The Wind Blows a tribute film to Craig Kelly.

His work is included in the collections at The Whitney in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Most recently he been shooting short films for Yves Saint Laurent designer Stefano Pilati.

Though Ari is always affable, we’ve never been able to get any kind of solid read on him. That’s why we we’re linking up this interview he did recently with Dossier Journal’s Elisa Lusso. Among other topics covered he mentioned the Internet:

The Internet allows for instant visual reference. It is a cool tool for communication. I guess we’re going to see more and more pixels. . . Every piece of information will eventually be on the Internet. Soon they’re will be no need for the press as we know it. . . Our minds are melting into the Internet, becoming like a hive mind. We should avoid that and stay individuals.

He also says that Terje Haakonsen was the most confident person he’s ever photographed. Click the link for the rest.

[Link: Dossier via SlamxHype]