Beer cheers to Jonah Owen for finally getting a board sponsor with the Rome SDS.
During a season without a board sponsor, Jonah Owen spent last year on his own schedule completely killing it. He took to the streets and backcountry to stack footy and quite possibly take the “hardest-working snowboarder” award in 2012. This season he has already cashed in $10k from a 1st place finish at Hot Dawgz & Hand Rails at Bear Mountain, and checked off early pow runs during the first snow fall at Bachelor.
Here, let Nike and some energy drink with a cow on it rub your face in their big, bulbous, bulging wallets and show you how epic snowboarding looks when they spend way, way, too much money to “get the shot.”
Hey, I know let’s film Austin Smith juggling eggs in Phantom slo-mo. How rad will that be? Then you throw a boot in a snow storm with Danny Kass standing behind it throwing horns and going “Arrrrrggggghhhh.” Oh my gawd.
Former Snowboarder Magazine online editor (and award winning photographer) Laura Austin is curating a photographer show at the Lomography Gallery Store LA during the month of November 2012. The show is titled Everyone’s A Photographer. The show features images from Chad Muska, Corey Smith, Jared Eberhardt, Jeremy & Claire Weiss, Natas Kaupas, Ian Ruhter, Danny Zapalac, Jason Lee Parry, and Laura Austin herself.
The opening party for the show kicks off Friday night, November 2, 2012 at 7 PM and features free drinks from Pabst, Peligroso Tequila, and O.N.E. Coconut Water with DJ Aaron Castle and others spinning through out the night. The event is free but they’d like you to RSVP to store.losangeles@lomography.com.
In short, The Mad Ones is a snowboard video features the antics of Forest Bailey, Forrest Burki, Patrick McCarthy, Shaun McKay, Wyatt Stasinos, Nick Russell, Kael Martin, Bryan Fox, Mark Landvik, Lucas Debari, Nick Ennen, Scott Blum, Dan Liedahl, Alex Beebe, Will Lavigne, Jamie Lynn, Sebi Geiger, Marco Feichtner, Atsushi Hasegawa, Kohei Kudo, and Austin Hironaka. A project by Liam GallagherThe Mad Ones was apparently “inspired by the Beat Generation and specifically the writings of Jack Kerouac.”
Better get a cup of coffee ’cause this one’s 53 minutes long. If you prefer old media a limited run of DVD’s will reportedly be available soon for $15 each.
Sure, the San Francisco Giants may have won the 2012 World Series last night, but the really big news in NorCal was the Downtown Throwdown. Okay. Just kidding. It looks like a few people showed up to see snowboarding on the streets of San Francisco. Yobeat was there. Here’s what they saw.
Snowboard trainers Mitch Tölderer and Bibi Tölderer-Pekarek show us how to get ready for the new winter season. Remember: “He pulls heezs heelz on zee germ bool az far to heez buttock as possible.” And ya dis not too hard for us. It eez too sexy!
All this was obviously too much for the mind behind The Tackled Box because he let loose one of the best snowboard rants we’ve read in years. It starts out like this:
Are you kidding me? All the hoopla over saving Forum? GIVE it back to Peter? Really? Shit if there was this much excitement over the brand during the last few years the brand wouldn’t have been put to rest. You want to know why Burton cut the cord on Forum? Cause not too many people gave too many shits about it, that’s why. Forum is a brand that failed and by the grace of the snowboard Gods in Vermont got a second chance at life and then failed again.
That’s only the first paragraph. For the rest of the hilarious, biting, unauthorized history of the Forum brand as only a competitor can put it down, click the link.
Amer Sport the Helsinki, Finland based parent company of Salomon, Bonfire, and Nikita reported their financials for the quarter ending September 2012. Profits appeared flat versus 2011 with net sales increased by two percent, and unfortunately winter hardgoods sales were down by 12 percent, according to Marketwatch.
“Our Q3 sales were driven by strong on-going momentum in Apparel (27% growth), as well as continuous improvement in Suunto (+24%), Fitness (10%), Tennis (+8%) and Cycling (+7%),” said Keikki Takala, president and CEO of Amer Sport. “As expected, Winter Sports Equipment declined in line with the previously communicated low pre-orders, despite our strengthened market position.”
Guess their trouble in winter sports equipment is old news. For the official word and all the numbers click the link.
On Mammoth Mountain’s opening weekend (November 9, 2012) Spring Break Snowboards will be hosting a pop-up art show “featuring primitive abstract powder snowboards, photography from Spring Break contributors and original artwork. Musical performance by Luke MacMaster of The Romany Rye, and plenty of on snow fun to kick off California’s first day of shredding this season.
The show opens at the Mammoth’s Grand Sierra Lodge at 5 PM on Friday, November 9, 2012. The Grand Sierra Lodge is located at 1111 Forest Trail, Mammoth Lakes, California.
Here’s the short version: Analog is going snow and moving back to Burlington. The snow team will stay, but the skate and surf teams will be “transitioned out of the brand”. Gravis is moving to Tokyo and going Asia only as a lifestyle brand. The team will be “restructured to accommodate” that market. Helmet’s and optics will be combined under the Anon brand (with some Red still being produced). Burton will “exit out of” The Program brands (Special Blend, Forum, and Four Square) by 2014 (good-bye). Burton has operated the brands for eight years yet, “the businesses have failed to be viable.” In the surf world Channel Islands and it’s team remain unaffected.
Here’s what founder Jake Burton Carpenter has to say about it:
“Burton has experienced several years of income growth since the recession and paid out bonuses to employees over the last two years,” said Jake. “That said, the economy has a voice of its own that we all have to listen to, and the message is clear: do what you do best and focus purely on it. In our case, that means to narrow our focus to the sport and lifestyle that got us here – snowboarding. We will continue to support Channel Islands in its endeavor to make the best surfboards in the world and Gravis in its new home in Japan, but when you walk through the front door here in Burlington, Vermont, it will be all snowboarding and snowboarding lifestyle all the time – driven by the Burton, Analog and anon brands.”
Sound like a good plan all around and honestly, we can’t believe it took them so long with Gravis and the Program. Burton went far beyond a reasonable investment in many of their brands and should be commended for trying to make them work in spite of market response.
Follow the jump for the official word an complete breakdown of the changes. [click to continue…]
