Our days are stretching, a few precious minutes at a time, drawing out the twilight hours into a floating blue and gold. The air, cloaked in campfire smoke and infused by the briny sea, sits heavy on freshly-sunned skin. Sand and dirt scratchy between toes, and maybe, with just a hair too much to drink, we ponder our winter seasons in the rearview. That’s right, summer is here. This past Sunday, June 21st, marked the first day of most regular-folks’ favorite season (and the longest day of the year). I like summer too, to be fair, though obviously I’ve organized my life around its dark and foreboding opposite.
Many of us arrogant Northern Hemispherites like to think we’re tops, literally. Ever seen an “upside down” globe? It’s actually dizzying, unsettling, it feels wrong. It’s easy to forget that the cardinal directions are mostly arbitrary. North could be South, and vice versa. In fact, we could have called the poles East and West, or Blip and Blop for that matter. It’s all made up; a grid thrown upon the chaotic randomness of existence so our puny human minds can grasp at some sort of order. As we stare into the menacing open maw of endless galactic space, we know there is truly no up or down.
Webb's First Deep Field, image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. Again, galaxies, not stars. Comforting, right? Courtesy of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
Now, all of the above does not preclude the fact that the poles of this planet are real places, (despite the conjecture of a few tongue-in-cheek snowboard films). As Santa’s perennial home tilts toward our closest star, our brethren to the south lean away. There are of course understandable reasons for the primacy of the North. We are geographically and populationally top-heavy. Roughly 87% of the world’s people live here, and 68% of the planet’s land mass ended up on the “top” half, post-Pangea of course. In the snowboard world, the focus and the industry are predictably north-leaning as well.
But I'd like to imagine for just a moment that it was the other way around, literally. There is absolutely snow south of the equatorial border, and some of our all-time greats were born and bred in this maligned land. This is a good excuse to highlight them, and ponder what their status may be if they happened to be from "up" here.
Will Jackways (now a Golf and Snowboard guide, hit him up!), hailing from New Zealand, put out some heater video parts in his day. Would he be more of a household name had he been born "above" the equator? I don’t know. What I do know is his part in Videograss’s Enlighten is mind-blowing to this day. I haven't seen any clips or photos of the Mt. Baker area gap that ends this part since it came out. Has anyone else sent this thing? If so, enlighten me, I want to see it.
Chilean ripper, and at one time adopted Stevens Pass local, Manuel Diaz has stepped to some of the biggest terrain ever ridden, in both hemispheres. But Manuel jumps too. In my opinion, the two double-corks that end his part in Absinthe’s Heavy Mental are some of the most stylish ever done. Take a gander.
Torah Bright, many a mid-2000’s teen boy boarder’s biggest crush, has both Olympic gold and silver medals to her name. In the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Torah competed in Halfpipe, Slopestyle, and Snowboard Cross (the first, and maybe last?, to do so). She was born in Cooma, New South Wales, Australia, and spent her youth riding at nearby Thredbo ski resort. If our world was upside down, maybe Torah wouldn’t have had to cooma north to Salt Lake to chase her winter dreams, eh? Mate? Speaking of getting upside down, and related controversies aside, Torah was instrumental in laying the groundwork for women's pipe progression and beyond, and the snowboard world is all the better for it.
Can’t forget the heavyweight himself, Scotty James. Another Aussie, another pipe-savant, another… children’s book author? The cryptocurrency sponsored boarder is originally from Victoria, Australia and supposedly started snowboarding at age 3. He’s spent his career sending fellow competitors down under, if you will, in his relentless pursuit of the podium. Scotty has Olympic bridesmaid/groomsman syndrome though, maybe the 2030 French games will finally deliver him the gold. He’ll be 35 then though, so he might need a blood boy.
This is truly mind-boggling.
The two time Natural Selection champ, many time X-Games gold winner, and one time Olympic gold winner Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, is of course, the Kiwi GOAT. My biggest hope is she stops competing in everything except for Natural Selection and makes a Travis Rice-esque suite of high-production films with other female chuckers in tow.
How 'bout that back seven?
Also gotta quickly shout out Argentina. Boarder Iñaki Odriozola, better known as Inyo from “Inyo and Worm’s Adventures,” is a personal fave. Queue up their magnum opus Cheechako. Additionally, fellow Lionel Messi fan Manu Dominguez just got picked up by United Shapes, and his welcome video was filmed at Baker. (I have no idea if Manu is a Messi fan, TBH.)
NOW, lest I be labeled a chopped unc, I am aware of some youngins coming out of our southernmost hemisphere.
Mitchell (Mitchy) Davern is a New Zealander (sometimes Mt. Baker homie as well) with rad style and is sporting a pair of stout powder stompin' legs. Here's his vid Frequencies he put out a couple years back. Love that title btw, Mitchy. 😉
There’s also the current world record holder for highest air on a snowboard, the Australian, Valentino Guseli. I’m partial to his alley-oop backside 3 that he’s been starting his pipe runs with, but this air is freaking huge, and the method isn't too shabby either. Here's a very Red-Bull-esque edit of the feat:
So, as we roast our tushies off here in the Northern Hemisphere, let's keep our southern brothers and sisters in mind, maybe pop south for a visit, see how the other half rides. For me, I'm going to try to remember to keep my global biases in check. Up isn't necessarily better than down, if something is "going south" maybe thats a good thing, or if they're "looking up" maybe not so much. No need to keep this story on the down low either, send it to a homie, make sure they know it's on the up and up, or wait, is it the down and down?
Once again, if you stuck with me this far here are some "Bizarre Boards": Somehow these DoubleDeck guys convinced Terje to ride this thing.