by The Editors on August 25, 2008
Burton Snowboards has teamed up with Vice Magazine for a new 10 episode video program on VBS.tv called Powder and Rails. Drug references sell, right?
The series will delve through the storied history of the sport with an emphasis on how it transformed from a novelty for yuppie two-plankers to something bored skateboarders did in the winter to one of the most anticipated events in the Olympic Games. This VBS series begins with the legendary Fall Line Films releases in the late ’80s, particularly The Western Front. The videos shifted the focus of snowboarding, inspiring a whole generation to forget about contests and focus more on tricks and mountain exploration. They also helped, plant the seeds for the proliferation of professional snowboarders over the next two decades.
Looks like a nice little retrospective that all the bitter old snow shreds will enjoy. Lots of Steve Graham, Jeff Brushie, and Snowboarder Magazine employees.
[Link: VBS.tv]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
Lifeguards at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area have closed Northern California’s Stinson Beach to swimmer and surfers “after a great white shark was spotted on Sunday night, according to park officials.”
The shark, which was eight to 10 feet long, was seen about 7 p.m. about 125 yards from shore. . . .“It was by a former lifeguard and fisherman, he knows what he saw, that is why we are confident it was a great white shark,” said John Ralph, the lifeguard supervisor at Stinson, which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Don’t know if it’s ever that great an idea to surf at Stinson Beach.
[Link: Press Democrat]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
Olympic snowboarder Rosey Fletcher was riding in a truck with Peter Grunwaldt in her hometown of Girdwood, Alaska on Saturday August 23, 2008 when a bear ran right into the side of the truck. A nearby crowd of people were watching three bear cubs by the side of the road when the accident happened, according to a story in the Anchorage Daily News.
“It was a freak show,” Fletcher said Sunday. “The police and an ambulance show up, everybody’s running around with bear spray, all these ladies are on cell phones screaming, ‘There’s three cubs in the tree! . . . Then one of them goes, ‘Wait! You’re that snowboarder, that Olympic medalist! You’re the one who ran over the bear?”
Luckily, Rosey, nor the bear were injured. “There was no blood on the truck, Fletcher said. Only hair and bear scat. “We scared the poop out of him,” she said.
[Link: Anchorage Daily News]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
Leave it to the comedians at the San Elijo Hills Visitor Center. You can die or you can skateboard, but apparently both are illegal in San Marcos, California.
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
Shaun White recently appeared on Fox Sports list of Top two-sport Athletes of all time. He was sandwiched right in there ahead of “Bullet Bob” Hayes “the world’s fastest human in the 1960s” right behind Deion Sanders “the flashy, brash, and cocky” footballer and baseballer.
Not bad company if you’re stoked on team sports. We’re not, but luckily the Skateworks blog keeps track of that stuff for us.
[Link: Fox Sports via Skateworks]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
It could be argued that Red Digital Cinema is 59-year-old Oakley founder Jim Jannard’s third lightening strike. He completely rearranged the way motorcycle/BMX grips were made, then moved on and revolutionized action sports eyewear. It would seem that selling Oakley to Luxottica for $2.1 billion would have been a nice place to pause and maybe buy an island in the South Pacific, spend a few years painting nude island girls, and call it a life. Not Jannard.
Instead, he decided to completely re-wire the image capture business with a revolutionary camera designed from the ground up to digitally do what no one had ever done before. Jannard seems driven by an ability to look at stagnate industries and ask, “Why are they still doing things the old way?”
His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—”4K” in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There’s also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn’t have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that’s what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it’s easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard’s creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.
Early on camera experts were treating the Red One like some kind of hoax. But most of them had no idea who was behind the camera and that he literally was capable of creating the impossible. Wired magazine’s Michael Behar breaks down the story, which makes us realize that Jim Jannard is probably the most incredible mind to ever work in the action sports business. He never competes. He simply moves the entire industry his way.
“I’m passionate about this because I’m building the camera I’ve always wanted to shoot with,” he says. “When my grandkids and great-grandkids look back, they’re going to say I was a camera builder. I did handgrips and then goggles and then sunglasses to prepare myself. But cameras are magic.”
[Link: Wired Magazine]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
According to the Australian newspaper The Age, Billabong plans to open up shop in the heart of Russia.
Billabong plans to set up a flagship store in one of Moscow’s trendy shopping districts as a way to assert its dominance in the international youth-wear market. . . . Billabong is sold in over 100 countries including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Estonia, which makes up about 1% of global sales.
Which reminds us: “Every Russian, looking at Moscow, feels that she is a mother; every foreigner, looking at her and not knowing her maternal significance, must feel the feminine character of this city, and Napoleon felt it.”
[Link: The Age]
by The Editors on August 25, 2008
South Carolina surfer Craig Massey, 20, (pictured above) was stabbed to death on July 2, 2008 in the home of Charles Richard Dobson, Jr.,19. Dobson who is charged with murder and two counts of assault and battery with intent to kill claims he acted in self defense.
“These people broke into my house and assaulted me,” Dobson told Charleston County Magistrate Mary Holmes at his bond hearing Thursday night. . . His attorney, Margie Pizarro, later said that Dobson was at home with his younger brother and another person when several people entered the home. She said they were not guests and were not invited into the residence.
Many people can’t figure out how it could have happened:
“Everyone was completely shocked by what happened,” Nancy Hussey, director of the Eastern Surfing Association, said. “Craig was so friendly and well-mannered. He was a very sweet guy.”
The only connection appears to be a 19-year-old girl named Mary Whilden Hills who both Massey and Dobson reportedly dated. (Hills was wounded in the incident”)
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for September 2, 2008.
[Links: Charleston.net via Thedigitel]
by The Editors on August 24, 2008
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Dude’s getting old. But Mike “Mack Dawg” McEntire has decided that he’s through doing the annual snowboard movie and is going to concentrate on other projects. One of which is a documentary on the life and weird times of Peter Line.
One of the more interesting things Dawger had to say was about what Transworld Business writer Mike Lewis called the “Internet piracy of content.”
Any industry that relies on a digital master and makes copies of it to make money dies by the Internet,” says McEntire. “It doesn’t matter what you do, if it’s a digital item that you can put on a computer and send it around then that’s exactly what they do. . . . “People…don’t know how much effort all the riders and film companies put into this. In the end I would have to say that a lot of people [in the industry] will be getting over it fairly shortly too, and then what happens is all these kids that thought they were all stoked for getting this stuff for free are gonna get nothing, well nothing of super, crazy good quality. There’s a handful of people that have been making snowboard movies for a super long time and they’re skilled craftsmen at what they do, and when those guys start to go away then the kids are gonna see that there’s a big difference between that type of production and just some kid with a [camera].”
Turn to face the strange changes. . . . .
[Link: TransWorld Business]
by The Editors on August 23, 2008
Aaron Rose is going the distance with the Beautiful Losers brand. There is no doubt about that. First it was an art show, then a traveling art show, and finally a film that continues to get more and more much deserved coverage as it rolls along. In a “special to The Times” Mark Olsen breaks down the story behind the film and the film itself.
Rose and his artists were navigating a terrain that could be seen as in opposition to the DIY ethos from which they emerged. With commercial success came claims of “selling out,” a watchword bandied about frequently during the ’90s. . . “I think corporations have changed since ‘selling out’ was such an issue,” said Rose. “Corporations have learned over the years, how to treat these alternative cultures.”
Of course, that’s probably not a bad thing to say when Nike Sportswear is “underwriting the theatrical release.”
[Link: LA Times]
