Snowboarding

First of all, Nobody wants to read anything when they go on one of these blogs. This one being less than a day old, and this idea being even younger, who knows who will get past this line.

Recently I have been doing a lot of thinking about snowboarding. Not just the sport..or art...if you want to get sentimental about it, but more of the industry itself and how its kind of this cool click of people and the goal of thousands of kids these days is to break into it and eventually make a living off of it. Lets face it, everybody wants a job in the snowboard industry. Maybe it is to have all of the free stuff they can handle, or be able to talk to their favorite snowboarders, and get paid to do it. Regardless, everyone wants in, and when you figure out your just not going to get in to it. there is a certain bitterness that makes so many people not want to snowboard any longer.

After reading Scotty Wittlakes interview recently, it dawned on me that there are better things to do with your life than be a professional snowboarder. Yes, it would be an amazing 10 years, but what happens when your in jeremy jones, or JP walkers place, where you probably should have retired a year or two ago and found a cushy industry job but instead you decided to start calling shuv-its innovative and doing mctwists off of moving trucks. Anyway these guys might have enough in the bank now to retire early and surf in a so-cal for the rest of their lives, who knows. So Scotty Whittlake was a major pro snowboarder who did not seem to care the least bit about money and seems to have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit and or capitalism, but his snowboarding is fun to watch, and he loves doing it. Now he works partly for his friend Mike Leblanc at Holden, and than does industrial jobs all summer to live out the winter snowboarding. Sounds perfect for someone without a desire to make a lot of money, and loves snowboarding. Awesome.

I however, along with many of my friends, am not Scotty Wittlake, I love money, and I love snowboarding. Another issue is that I do not have the smallest bit of interest in the contest circuit which the money in snowboarding revolves around. If I could come up with a reasonable system and had absolute power over the snowboard industry I would probably try to devise a system where the best video parts received what would be the prize money given out in contests, and than the contest kids can hear from all of the haters on message boards and make under 30 a year. However I have no control over the snowboard industry and I am just another kid who would like to stay involved.

With all of the video companies these days, I can not help but see a similarity between video companies and sport franchises. You get a group of people together and try your hardest to make the best video possible with the budget you are given by the companies who support you for filming their riders. Sports franchises also have sporting good companies backing them, along with an owner and a whole lot more money. However they also try and make the best team possible with the money and talent they have access to. Anyway, the point I am getting to is how do we have all of these snowboarders all around the world and such a small group of people contributing to the core of this industry. I think if someone bombed the right star bucks in salt lake or portland (although it wouldn't be a star bucks cause its not hip enough) than we might be out 4 snowboard companies. I think the way to make more jobs in the snowboarding industry is to do it through the video companies. We all just need to figure out the details