A New Golden Age
Much ink has been spilt, breath spent, and binary code… binary coded, regarding the supposed heyday of our beloved pastime. Collective wisdom puts this era in the late 90s and early 2000s. Budgets were phat, pros were larger than life, and Instagram and TikTok had yet to shatter our ability to watch a full-length snowboard film beginning to end. Listening to old heads opine about the glory days, and seeing young heads dress like they’re still happening, one could be forgiven for believing it really was better back then. But we are optimists here at the Journal.
So with that in mind, what if right now are the glory days of our future’s past? And what if we're missing them wishing for what’s gone? I was recently considering just one example in this light: the snowboard “event.” I believe that we are truly in a renaissance era for formal and informal gatherings. From the global stage to mom and pop resorts, it seems like there are endless contests, banked slaloms, and festivals. We’ve got street jams and backcountry battles, hand-built parks and machined masterpieces. There are events for women trans and queer riders, for members of the Asian diaspora, for Black and brown boarders, and for crunchy split-boarders and dripped out rail dawgs.
In light of this new golden age, let’s take a brief internet tour through a sampling of the year’s highlights:
New this season was the Rockstar Open, which boasted a novel head to head contest format and an atypical slopestyle course. Highlight of the event had to be the impromptu hip contest though, with Rockstar ponying up an extra 10 G’s for the winner-take-all prize. (Nik Baden took top honors, and he’s on Rockstar… so maybe some home cooking going on there, was a sick method though…)
Mons Roisland he-man after the buzzer, for the love of the game.
Speaking of G’s, Jess Kimura’s brainchild, the Uninvited (Invitational), handed out over 50 of ‘em to their all female competitive field. This event has grown into a late season mainstay, and we hope it just keeps getting bigger, better, and more lucrative for its yearly champs. How 'bout them stomping legs on the event winner Himari Takamori?
Natural Selection has entered its 6th consecutive year of running (not counting its test event in 2008, or the subsequent “Super” and “Ultra” Natural versions thereafter). Somehow, this feels simultaneously new and old. Like, “It’s been going on that long?” But also, “Imagine it in 10 years when the finals are on Mars or some shit.” We at the Journal were pleased to see the good homie Nils Mindnich take this sucker home on the men’s side of the comp, and the other good homie Brin Alexander place second, and do one of the biggest backflips to flat ever. Zoi Sydowski-Synnot took her second crown in 4 events. I think it’s time to get these peeps to Alaska again, let’s all manifest that for 2027, can we?
Throwing it back to early season, Ethan Morgan’s DIYX STRT JAM went off in classic raucous style. Loving the energy at these things, and even though, technically, I think this is a contest, it doesn’t really feel like one.
Gotta throw in the Olympics. Though these Games were not without controversy and/or grumbling, tuning into the halfpipe finals was a completely mind-blowing watch. The doubles, the triples, the alley-oop rodeos, the height, the new names--peak entertainment. Whether you back the Olympics or not, try not to scream at the screen while a Japanese teenager on a Yonex board does an incomprehensible rotation, 20 feet above a deathly-solid, perfectly-cut, knife-edge deck/transition combo.
Don't think I'm legally allowed to embed Olympics content, or maybe I can, but this hilariously bad AI video of what I described above is more fun.
I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight Sven Thorgren’s very recent RIP OFF SESSION, where he did one of the wildest and largest backside rodeo 720s of recent memory, through fucking flames.
Oh, and the Journal's friend and contributor Will Weisz just got back from Snowboy Productions' Holy Bowly 13 at Sunshine Village, check out his take here, and this glorious photo of Ichinoshin Maruyama below.
At the time of writing this there’s banked slaloms going down, West Coast Triple Plank just popped off in Canada, and Brain Bowl/Sesh Up at Mt. Baker just wrapped up last weekend. Photo: Will Weisz
Relics of the Digital World
Recently, a “whose part, what movie?” debate took place deep in the Selkirk backcountry, at the very comfy Retallack Lodge. To settle the score, the internet was consulted, and we found ourselves, as we have before, and as maybe you have, on snowboardingfilms.net. The site has sketchy pop-ups and bizarre banner ads, looks like it was coded and designed in the aforementioned glory days, and has a silhouette of a rider doing a stinkbug with bullet holes around him as its logo.
How long has this page been around, who runs it, are they making money off it? All good questions, and if anyone knows, hit me up. I reached out for comments, but got crickets in response. Have a click around though, pretty fascinating. (Disclaimer: I bear no responsibility for what happens if you click on one of these banner ads, though maybe you can clear up that pesky toe fungus if you do.)
Snowboardingfilms.net, who runs this thing?
Perusing that site had me reminiscing even further back to the original social media site: "Snowboard.com." If you’re old-head enough to have been on there, congrats. I was, and I spent the bulk of my time trolling people who posted on the "hotties" section. Even though I disparaged this sort of thinking a bit earlier on, there was actually something special about this time developing my nascent virtual self. I was gonna launch into a whole thing about the site, but looks like it’s already been done pretty thoroughly back in 2019. Long story short: snowboarders almost invented social media, could have been billionaires, went boarding instead. Just as well, Zuck and pals seem sorta miserable anyway. Plus, they’re just now finding "board-riding" and they look like that's what they call it when they tell their friends.
When the Oh Henry! money was flowin'.
Sick, brah.
A Few More Things
Gotta wrap this one up and get to the business of print production preparation. Seeing as how summer is imminently upon us, here’s a couple gems from the wide world of warm-weather boardsports, plus a bonus winter one just for the hell of it.
Skateboarder Ryan Lay has been putting out these self-filmed skate/travel/coffee edits, and damn are they pleasant to watch. Oh to be this talented and touring Europe with no specific place to be.
Surfer Harry Bryant has been on a tear releasing well-filmed, well-surfed, and equal parts stylish and gnarly videos over the past few years. Here's his latest short flick, "Roasted"
Finally, gotta shout out these PVC tube peeps. I've gone back to this video like 3 times this year. Not pro-level boarding by any means, but this looks so fun, and the vibes in this crew are elite.
If you made it this far down, congrats, here's some "Bizarre Boards": POGO Boards out of Germany.