Words: Danny Burrows

Enzo Nilo - Handplant in Les 2 Alpes, Photo: Matt Georges

It’s 4.40 in the morning and I’m hanging off the side of my bed feeding words into my laptop having been shaken from sleep by one of those ‘eureka’ moments. This revelation relates to the response that those with a vested interest in your wellbeing habitually say when tell them you’re going for a ride: “Be careful”. Well here it is: I hate that phrase. It’s prophetic. It’s the sharp stone under a skate wheel, tripping that state of instinctive reflex that is the essence of any session that you would define as RAD. You know the ones I mean; Riding without thinking. Carefree not careful. It’s being in the flow, not expending energy contemplating the things that may go wrong. Careful creates hesitation. Hesitation causes slams.

So next time you’re heading out the door with a deck and someone sees you off with a well-meaning “be…”, stop them, policeman like, with a raised palm and Spockish stare and insert “carefree” into their kind but misguided farewell. They may think you a little odd but you’ve taken the first positive step into what will be an amazing day. You’ll be in the flow.

I know, it all sound a little soul-surferish, a descriptive that sends a mixed charge of dread and venom down my spin – but the “fl ow” doesn’t have to be a cross-legged, patchouli oiled experience it can be as punk as you like. Think talking in tongues rather than a monotonous ‘ommm’ and it implies mini-shredding rather than dreads and no-board turns. Anyway, whichever channel you’re tuned in to you’ve got to be in that carefree state; instinctive refl ex rather than contrived action.

If you are reading this and thinking to yourself, “what the hell is he going on about?” then I apologise: it’s now past five and I’m trying hard to exorcise this brainstorm otherwise I may as well get up and rattle around the house for the next four hours until the sun’s up. The truth is I wouldn’t be rattling either, I would be limping. Yup, I was careful; I borrowed someone else’s deck while skating, a Duane Peters, to be precise, and disturbed the fl ow of a perfectly good skate. Was it the hesitation of being unsure about the steed under my feet that led to my limp or just bad luck? In a snowboarding context I dropped without that last ratchet of my straps or some other miniscule action that as a key to THE ZONE. Funnily enough, thinking about it, writing has to be done in that state too. Screw English lessons and their rules which cause you to hesitate and stammer through your thoughts. Carefree not careful. Let spell check pick up the pieces in the morning.

Well, I really want to get back to sleep now although I am worried that this whole “speaking in tongues” that I am doing will read like Jabberwocky. But go out it will, otherwise next Monday I will just sit in the office staring at the falling snow and cussing the hesitation or being careful as the rest of my compadres are out at the Shops First Try testing boards.

Ride on – I am going back to sleep

Danny

POST NOTE: This is the last issue of the 10/11 season and as such we would just like to thank all those riders, photographers and writers who have contributed to you the readers pleasure this season. Hope you enjoy this issue with its forays into the snow-filled concrete jungles of Poland and Japan (don’t ask), the wilds of Turkey, the minds of our main interviewee Elias Elhardt and Freshman Gjermund Braaten – here’s wishing him well in mending that shoulder – and all its other butt slappingly good content. Enjoy!

Words: Danny Burrows

Photo: Matt Georges

Panting our way through Autumn like thirsty dogs we, the Onboard crew, finally quenched our thirst for shred at the local resort of Spitzingsee in early December. The snow wasn’t epic, even though some resorts nearby were claiming a metre of fresh, but it was good to feel the cut of an edge on snow and knock a few hits into the banks of the piste.

In the same week the TTR series kicked off in earnest with China putting its ex-Olympic  stadium to use, hosting the inaugural Beijing Air&Style. It was a homecoming of sorts for snowboarding as the local factory workers could finally watch the gear that they assembled for export being put through its paces.

Tom, the web-itor, and I spent that afternoon writing a blowby- blow blog on the .com as the world’s best rippers fired off a volley of perfect hammers on a jump that, judging by the riders’ low-impact landings, was built with mathematical precision.

Seppe Smits stormed in from the  flatlands of Belgium ousting last year’s tour winner Peetu Piiroinen in the semis and stomped into a second place with a faultless back 12 – apparently a prerequisite spin for events these days. The Canuk, Seb Toutant, and his balls of steel were the clear winners, bowling a Cab 12 double to clear the lane, having somehow kept his cool after a slam that had he been a cat would have cost him 8 lives. Podium climbing aside, Bang earned Onboard’s high-funf for a back rodeo stale, opting for style over rotation, closely followed by Elias’s front 10 melon, which he seasoned with a poke that would have made Ingo proud.

Without question it was a good event, if, as a conscientious human being, you were able to put aside the feeling that by holding it in China  snowboarding was legitimising the country’s abysmal record of human rights abuses and poor record of environment neglect.

Also, there was another itch and that was that the event bore an odd coupling of title presenters: Oakley was logical, but Shaun White? When did he become a brand? Absent from the riders list he did appear at the base of the jump grinning broadly, his red mane flowing over the collars of a pea coat and surrounded by rigid police officers of the sort you find clearing Tiananmen Square. A broad definition of presenting, perhaps.

When I asked the TTR what the deal was I was forwarded a statement from Air&Style that read “Shaun White will not compete at the Oakley and Shaun White present Air&Style in Beijing. He will be present at the event and focuses on his duty of being an ambassador for snowboarding in China”. When did riders not riding become ambassadors for snowboarding?

There are plenty of things in snowboarding that bear the names of pros, like signature boards and outwear and a short list of events including the likes of Gumby’s Big Day Out or Joni and Jussi’s Invitational but they are all things that they have earned or owned. Shaun himself has a whole cupboard full of gear bearing his name and deserves them all but White Presents Air&Style? Why? In my conspiratorial mind a sign flashes: CULT OF PERSONALITY, which Wikipedia describes as arises “when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.” White has that heroic public image and deserves a little flattery and praise for his riding but he god forbid that he becomes a personality bigger than his riding for in the end he won’t be the one to benefit; perhaps financially, yes, but spiritually? I think not.

In my opinion it is as a reaction to the manifestation of a saleable and sanitized face of snowboarding that a new generation of shredders are riding beyond over priced resorts, in homemade parks and on the streets. They are foregoing expensive technical wear for jeans, the music is hipped out
grunge and, in the case of gangs like the Gremlinz, guns, booze, bongs and bitches are what defines their take on the shred – it’s like Whisky revisited. This is snowboarding in the raw; unsavory and in need of a parental guidance sticker. But it’s snowboarding’s rebirth as a subculture and apart from the guns and bongs it is fucking awesome. I have the greatest respect for riders whose riding has earned them pro models and the like but I don’t, like I am sure many snowboarders, don’t want to be sold a cult of personality. After all we should be able to choose our heroes, not told who they are.

Ride on.

Danny

Words: Danny Burrows

Lucas Debari, Steven's Pass, WA, Photo: Cole Barash

I read, with trepidation, an article in an annual by Reporters Without Borders lamenting the death of documentary photography. According to them, the financial crisis within print media was its executioner as the genre, including that of snowboarding, is far from cheap to create.

A photographer needs to be in the thick of the action for long stretches of time and in the case of snowboard photographers this means slavishly following snow and those that shred it. Unless committed solely to banging the metal and ‘crete of the urban sprawl then they also have the added expense of resorts and all the rip-off bars, restaurants and squats they contain.

The article went on to ask “who will now pay for photographers to get out in the field?”, answering with dread “corporations and/or institutions”. Why dread? Because when your pay master has an agenda, impartial reporting and freedom of observation get put away in the drawer labelled ‘obsolete’.

In the field of truth this is truly a worrying phenomenon – imagine BP paying New York Times photographers to cover the oil spill in the gulf, and then leveraging a biased report through advertising.

Thankfully for snowboard photographers there is nothing more sinister than their snaps selling product when bankrolled by a company, and for bottom livers like Onboard and its fellow mags the by-product of this clever marketing union of snapper and brand is more shots to get you guys stoked on snowboarding. I would say it’s a win-win situation if the brands don’t start counting, comparing the amount of shots used by a mag to their advertising spend – but then such an idea is far too Orwellian for such a bro-down industry as ours, surely.

So, the documenting of snowboarding pictures is alive and kicking like the temperamental beast it has always been; you might even go as far as to say that it is veritably booming across all levels of aptitude, from happy snapping seasonaires to seasoned pros, thanks to the advent of the digital camera. The danger here is that publishers with little care for the sanctity of quality photography start believing that any old shot will satiate the apetite of shredders. Fear not – in every snowboard magazine this idea stops at the editorial office door.

Without dedicated snowboard snappers who suffer aching feet, frozen fingers and battle with the the elements, both natural and financial, this photo issue would be rather empty. Therefore we dedicate this annual to them.

Keep on snapping.

- Danny

Words: Danny Burrows

Photo: Cole Barash

Sometimes being a hack in snowboarding can be a real ball-ache, especially when it comes to the interviewing of snowboarding’s paid ‘professionals’. Its not that they’re intentionally coy or elusive; no, the problem is that ‘professional’ as an adjective used in conjunction with snowboarders is about as fitting as rad is to rollerbladers – they just don’t fit (this is a sweeping sleep driven generalization for humours sake rather than sound, informed journalism).

I’m not referring to their unquestionable abilities while strapped in. I mean to compare them with ‘conventional’ sporting folk or to expand further, to the professionalism of the lithe Adonis, on a diet of carbs and cardio-exertion who are trained in the art of oily charm before the cameras. Contrast this with the reality of your average pro ripper for whom media is an annoyance and training involves mucking about on the hill throwing shapes that if a dance would be more raver than Torvil and Dean. And as for their routine of health, exercise and abstinence I am not sure that knocking the back out of groupies and a fish’s thirst for alcohol counts.

So when it came to me squeezing words of wisdom from (insert name of rider here) I wasn’t thinking Frost and Nixon. In fact I wasn’t thinking at all. For starters, as I write this he would be straining through summer training – a euphemism for getting pissed and surfing – and the most I hoped to get was garbled pleasantries in a virtual interrogation cell on Facebook. And secondly, Frost and Nixon might have something more to tell me than how bloody good the waves that I might be missing were.

BUT WAIT. HOLD THE PRESS.

I move through a labyrinth of concrete tunnels that fizz with florescent light and through which the sound of a snowboard contest clacks thinly, like music from the unworn headphones on my desk.

He’s in here somewhere.

I feel feral with the need to track down my interviewee – nerves wriggle and jump like a bag of condemned puppies.

Identical doors stretch down the tunnels, behind each I find faceless strangers in dressing rooms who gawp back at me but no (name of rider) or blackness without shape or depth.

I know he is here.

Tom, Onboard’s English editor, appears pushing a pram and tells me without me asking that he doesn’t know where the aforementioned rider is. That’s weird exclaims waking mind.

I turn to find myself sitting in a clown’s police uniform, holding scratched sketches on parchment, Futura like; the type skaters call art.

“Dude the guy in there is going to fuck you up” a Steve McQueen-in-Papillon-look-alike confides nodding in the direction of the cell door between our benches.

My head’s swimming.

Someone lifts me by my elbow and I move into a claustrophobic cell. A screen flicks on the wall showing (insert rider name here) slashing a face of Absinthish pow. On the walls are more Uncle figures scrawled in florescent pen – the Xerox of those which I carry in my hands – I get it they are (riders name) tattoos.

“He isn’t in,” says a voice above me.

I look up and out to a tarpaulin blue sky where a synthetic tune is finding a foothold in the air.

Bugger it’s my alarm.

I’m awake but my eyes are blind behind closed lids. My brains live but isolated in a body that still asleep.

It’s only the alarm that reaches in, as consciousness drowns the fading shadows of sleep.

A dream!

Too much thinking and not enough doing is a bad thing.

Bring on the season.

Danny