by The Editors on December 17, 2009
Burton is going all in on their current Web Presents promotion and it’s worth checking out simply for the voyeuristic spectacle of the whole thing. It started on December 15, 2009 but we just got over to check it out.
The whole thing reminds us a little of the old JenniCam Show popular in the late 90s because it proves just how much we all love watching normal people do stuff no matter how boring it is.
Then again $1,000 shopping sprees to the “next person to walk into the NYC Burton store with a orange tank top on and say the words ‘cold room'” can be compelling content.
[Link: Burton.com]
by The Editors on December 16, 2009
Four years later and Lindsey Jacobellis is still answering for that method in Torino. This time to USA Today.
“I’ve been asked about it a million times,” she says. “My stock answer is: ‘I was pretty young and got caught up in the moment. I was having too much fun. I was excited to be in the finals, I almost got knocked out.’ “
Reminds us of a letter we wrote her back in 2006. . . The good news is she appears to be back on track for Vancouver and is busy (as the above pouty, doe-eyed, insouciant Under Armour photo would suggest) exploiting all of her talents this time around.
[Link: USA Today]
by The Editors on December 16, 2009
Nina Van Zandt, 22, of Shelburne, Vermont has come up with a great new business idea: the Snowboarding Nanny, according to a story in the Burlington Free Press.
I’m looking for a few families that would want me to pick their kids up after school (age 7 and up) and take them snowboarding and then bring them home to help them with their homework and make dinner.
Van Zandt says she’s also interested in massage therapy which kind of makes her a quad threat: a snowboarding, baby-sitting, chef who gives massages.
[Link: Burlington Free Press]
by The Editors on December 15, 2009
One of snowboarding’s true originals gets a little much deserved coverage as Shawn Farmer shows up on VBS.com’s Powder & Rails.
Powder and Rails takes you to the Legends of Tahoe event at Donner Ski Ranch for a couple classic Shawn Farmer moments. Some may say he’s crazy, but we’re here to prove he may actually be a genius. At Shawn’s apartment, we check out one of his inventions and engage the man in some snowboarding discourse. From his first video scenes to his preference for gigantic boards and rapping, no stone is left unturned. We even get a Farmer philosophy lesson just moments before he closes the convo by shot gunning a beer.
[Link: VBS TV]
by The Editors on December 15, 2009
This week snowboarders are converging on Breckenridge, Colorado for stop one of The Winter Dew Tour and the Totino’s Open.
Danny Davis and Mason Aguirre have dropped in to help Totino’s with some of their branding issues. And we’re so stoked on those two shred dogs that we almost forgot that only two years ago (November 2007) Totino’s parent compnay General Mills, Inc. voluntarily recalled 5 million pizzas (many of them Totino’s product), according to a story in the Star Tribune, after “an investigation by federal and state regulators found that the pepperoni topping likely caused several E. coli-related illnesses.”
Good thing they cleared all that up years ago. Because now Totino’s are all good, just ask Danny and Mason.
by The Editors on December 15, 2009
We can feel the Olympic hype heating our fingers as we type. And it appears to be Gretchen Bleiler all day long. Here she gets profiled on VanityFair.com and we’re guessing this is just the tip of the hypeberg:
But the dichotomy between being a fashion designer and a gangster shredder isn’t Bleiler’s only contrariety. She also straddles the worlds of core and mainstream snowboarding. “Snowboarding, from the beginning, has always been a very core sport, and at first there were a lot of riders who resisted the growth of this sport on the mainstream level—thus the Olympics—as it seemed that it represented selling out the soul of the sport. But things have changed,” she says, pointing out that now kids are growing up going to snowboarding academies and training to be Olympians. “Even though this is still a very image-conscious sport, there are riders who are able to walk the line between core and mainstream.”
[Link: Vanity Fair via @GretchenBleiler]
by The Editors on December 14, 2009
Terje Haakonsen’s big ol’ snowboard contest The Oakley Arctic Challenge, originally scheduled for January 2-3, 2010 has been officially postponed to March 5-7, 2010 because most snowboarders had other things going on of the weather, according to the T-A-C website.
So TAC choosed the safe option: Postponing the event to March. There are no other TTR 6 star events in the weekend of March 5 to 7. It is also right before the European X Games, and after the Olympics, suitable for the migration of riders from America to Europe. . . TAC hopes this opens up for riders that are now focusing totally on the Olympic event and qualification.
Makes us kind of wonder what they thought people were going to be doing during an Olympic year.
[Link: The Arctic Challenge]
by The Editors on December 14, 2009
There are in America who think you can buy Olympic medals. It’s simple according to the Boston Globe’s story How To Make and Olympic Snowboarder.
Start young. Sign up for the sport’s premier academy, located in Vermont. Pay $40,000 a year for tuition and board. Devote days and nights to the pursuit. Add guts. Expect glory. . . Stratton alumni are hoping to fill a third of the spots on the US Olympic snowboarding team for the upcoming games.
Yes. That makes nice brochure copy for the Stratton Mountain School, but not all students are Louie Vitos. For the full horror story on what some people will do to try to get their kids get into the Olympics read the rest of the story.
[Link: Boston.com]
by The Editors on December 14, 2009
The Blecher Report sports blog has released a list of the 40 hottest Female Athletes of the Decade and look who is at number 16, ahead of Gabrielle Reece (33) and Danica Patrick (21): Gretchen Bleiler. Here’s what they said:
Snowboarding doesn’t seem like a place you would find a hot athlete. It normally attracts tomboys and women who don’t really care about their looks as much. But we did hit the jackpot with Gretchen Bleiler. . . This sexy snow bunny is an Olympic silver medalist and a golf medalist in the Olympic bikini competition that I just made up. Congratulations.
When Gretchen did the FHM shoot did she every think it would be following her around all these years like a crazed stalker? Probably not. On a side note: freeskier Kristi Leskinen ended up at number 5 on the same list from the same issue of FHM.
[Link: The Bleacher Report]
by The Editors on December 14, 2009
