Written by Portland dude George Cutright
This might not seem odd to you, but for me to end up at two snowboard video premieres in the same week is really weird. At each one I kept asking, “where’s Brooke? Shouldn’t she be covering these for the site?” But since she wasn’t, I’ve taken it upon myself to do it. Because if a premiere doesn’t get a write up, did it even happen?
To really get you prepped for what a letdown this little review will be, let me tell you readers about me. I am not a snowboarder. I ride a snowboard, but I don’t live that snowboarder lifestyle, nahmean?* These premieres are the most snowboarding I’ve watched in a long, long time.
So, with that out of the way let’s kick this off with the first K2uesdays of the year! This was the premiere for the new Airblaster video, Gone Wild, with a special showing of TB3 (the flier said Simple Pleasures, but a copy could not be found at showtime). Let’s talk about TB3 for second. If you’re old like me, you’ve seen this or maybe all of the TB series several times over. This did not let me down. The last time I saw it was probably when it came out. So like, 1994. There weren’t nearly enough Pennywise songs (zero), but with some Down By Law, Fretblanket, and FaceToFace why 90s rock needs were met. Whatever happened to Mambosok?
I liked Gone Wild a lot. The video has a good vibe that really centers around fun and traveling far and wide to shred some interesting stuff. It’s organized around the trips instead of parts for each rider, which I also liked. There is a fair amount of what some people might consider to be filler, but I thought it added more of a story to the trips. It injected a lot more character into the film. The time lapse of the crew night riding with headlamps on was pretty epic. Also, there are a lot of backflips.
A couple nights later I went to the premiere for Nation and the ThinkThank video. I don’t know who most of these dudes and chicks are, so it’s hard for any one rider to stand out. I’ll say that the guy who has first part in Nation is crazy. Repelling down sheer rock and ice faces with ice axe in hand just to hit some crazy chute on some gnarly mountain. [Xavier De le Rue] That’s some next level shit right there. Visually, this production had some cool intro-video-overlay-thing going on for each part and the time lapses and other filler reminded me a lot of skate videos. This made sense when the credits rolled and John Holland’s name popped up (he works on all of TWS’s skate videos too.) Of course I was hyped when Forest Bailey had skating in his intro and in Portland no less! But it also borrowed heavily from skate videos with the quick cut editing mid trick. For example:
The ThinkThank video has an interesting structure that felt almost like two videos in one. First comes the Braindead section followed by the Heart Attack section. So there is a lot of shredding to be seen. A couple questions though? What’s with the high visibility safety vests? Is that the next big trend in outerwear? And there was frankly too much shirtless footage. Come on dudes, it’s cold and you don’t want to fall with your shirt off. And is ducking under something considered a trick now? On the plus side I liked that someone rode to an old Screeching Weasel song.
For me the riding in these videos all kind of blurred together. The same thing happens to me with skate videos. Yes, those longer rails with more kinks are fucking crazy. But they’re boring to watch for a whole part. I do like where some street riders are taking it with the weirdness of the obstacles they are hitting. Weird arching rails over tiny hillside buildings. Huge metal sculptures in the courtyard of the community college. That weird flatbar on the corner of the roof of the car dealership. Elaborate gaps over bars to wallrides. I really appreciate the spot-hunter guys and the ability of snowboarders to reach things that I only imagined skating on from far away using my fingers as a board.
All in all a good showing from all the videos. Maybe I’ll see you at the next premiere.
*Here is a detailed version of what George “means”:
I started snowboarding so long ago that a good chunk of you probably weren’t alive yet. We’re talking 1991. The first rental board I had was a Look. I owned a Kemper Freestyle at one point. I’ve owned 1 snowboard video in my entire life. The peak of my time on a snowboard was probably 1996 or 1997. I lived in Montana and it was too cold and snowy to skateboard, so snowboarding it was. Around the turn of the century I was living in Colorado and still snowboarding a fair amount. My interest was waning though due to my friends really wanting to ride park, the riding in Summit County sucking compared to Montana (I’ll argue that Big Mountain/Whitefish is the best place to ride snowboards ever), and the amount of sunshine made a lot more skating possible. I’ve gotten in a couple days of riding each of the last few years, but I didn’t ride one single day last winter.