What is snowboarding culture?
And, in 2023, who gets to decide?
This column was first published in European snowboarding magazine Pleasure in 2022. Pleasure is one of the grand old titles of European snowboarding, and I’ve been lucky enough to have work published in the mag frequently over the years. Earlier last year, editor Stefan Goetschl asked me to write a couple of columns on ‘whatever you like’ - obviously the dream gig for an opinionated old hack like me.
This first piece was published in the spring 2022 issue, and I’ve got another one coming out in the October issue. Big thanks to Stefan and team for getting me involved - click here to support subscribe and support independent snowboarding media. We’ll miss it when it’s gone.
In February 2022, I was scrolling Instagram, as you do, when I noticed a post from Mike Ranquet.
It was an extract from his Rad Matters podcast, in which Ranquet appeared to be taking a right royal slice out of US snowboard journalists Stan Leveille and Pat ‘the eye’ Bridges’.
I’m paraphrasing, but the gist of Mike’s argument seemed to be: who put these two in such a position of power? They’re poseurs. The fact that they focus on rails and urban snowboarding, rather than powder, proves it. And I bet Stan can’t even do a legit backside 180 (something which seems to be a bit of a deal breaker for Mike).
Now, I happen to know Stan a bit. He’s editor of Slush The Magazine and hosts The Last Resort. I worked with him at the January 2022 leg of the Natural Selection Tour. As far as I could tell, he’s just like everybody else who has made any kind of career in snowboarding: he’s a kid who absolutely LOVES snowboarding and has worked out a way of dedicating his life to it.
Pat? I’ve known Pat for at least two of the three decades he’s been involved in snowboarding. He’s a mentor to half the professional US scene, edited Snowboarder for years, and recently put his money where his mouth is to start Slush (which, in the current media climate, is akin to enthusiastically setting fire to a large pile of your own cash). If the US scene has the equivalent of a ‘lifer’, it is Pat Bridges.
And yet, according to Mike Ranquet, peer of Craig Kelly, Chris Roach and Noah Salasnek, these two are steering snowboarding culture in the wrong direction.
The entire exchange got me thinking: in 2022, what exactly is snowboarding culture? And who gets to decide?
To answer this question, it’s helpful to look back to the early years for context. As everybody knows, surfing kicked off the entire ‘board sports as counterculture’ trope. In post-war America, surfing and everything that came with it (like the music and the films) WAS a legitimate counter culture. This was documented definitively in Stacey Peralta’s Riding Giants, and accounts for those jarring old images of, say, Californian surfers riding ditches while dressed as Nazi officers. In many ways, the offensiveness was the point.
Later, the advent of skateboarding, saw early skaters gleefully adopt the same rebellious position. Snowboarding, when it came along, eventually did too, thanks to the influence of pioneers such as Tom Sims and Terry Kidwell (and lesser-known heroes like Scott Clum, above); their skate-influenced approach helped set snowboarding on the path it still follows today.
So far, so canonical.
Except there’s one fairly significant issue when it comes to this take on snowboarding, surfing and skating in 2023: today, action sports are culturally huge in a way that early pioneers like, say, Greg Noll or Jay Adams, could never have imagined. Surfing, skating and snowboarding are all in the Olympics. Nike and adidas are two of the world’s biggest skate brands. I could go on.
The result is that there have been subsequent generations of newcomers, especially recently, who don’t know anything about this history, and how it influences this very specific take on sideways culture. And who can see it as the tedious and ubiquitous ‘It was better in my day’ nostalgia of middle-aged men (and it is always, always middle-aged men) the world over.
That isn’t to say that there’s no place for a healthy veneration of the past in our world. Of course, every tribe needs to be celebrate its elders, culture and history. When something like the FIS/IOC saga comes along, for example, this knowledge is a useful form of in-built course correction.
But, equally, the older keepers of the flame need to be aware that things evolve and change is a constant. (‘Progression’, I believe we’ve come to call it).
The trick is to find a balance between these two poles, keeping in mind the themes that have always embellished our world, whatever starting point we come from. Themes like progression, creativity and community.
Accept this, and it becomes easier to let go of the urge to preserve your own particular cultural viewpoint in aspic, and accept that new developments will come along that can enrich rather than threaten the whole. (That’s why inclusivity and diversity, for example, is such an important topic).
If you think about it, that’s really what the whole tedious ‘cancellation of Terje’ saga was about. The initial comments, the apology, the criticisms from people like ex-Burton employee Sam Bertolino, JP Solberg’s much-shared post, my interview with my friend Lauren MacCallum (above); they’re all really a protracted argument about who snowboarding is ‘for’, and who gets to call themselves a snowboarder.
For the old guard, it was obvious: Terje’s comment and stance is classic punk rock snowboarding in the finest old-school tradition.
For the detractors, it was something else entirely: the dismaying sight of one of the all-time legends growing old and moribund before their eyes, with comments that were exclusionary and reinforced a particularly narrow definition of snowboarding.
So with all that mind, in 2022, what exactly is snowboarding culture?
Is it Ranquet on Stan and Pat? Is it Ayumu’s gold-medal winning pipe run? Side Hits Euphoria? A rootsy Banked Slalom? Is it no-boarding? Todd Richards on NBC? Is it Seen Snowboarding’s focus on LGBTQ issues? Is it Selema on the board at Burton? Is it inclusivity? ‘Being punk rock?’ A method in the backcountry? A powder day with your pals? The stoke of seeing a kid takes his first turns with his parents while on their annual snow trip? A euro-carve? Wolken’s nose rider?
Personally I’ve come to believe that, if it encompasses the creative, progression and community themes that have stayed constant throughout our shared history, it counts.
Otherwise there comes a point where, if you’re not careful, being a self-appointed guardian of the culture becomes just another form of toxic gatekeeping - and goes against the progression that was always supposed to be the point.
No one is in charge.
Pat and Stan only have a voice because they have created the space for themselves, by doing stuff that people watch/listen to/read.
If Ranquet has a problem with Pat and Stan having too great an influence, he should just ignore them (easy enough), or build his own channel (in the broadest sense) to reach the snowboarding world and present an alternative view (somewhat more challenging to execute).
If there is an un-met need for an alternative world view, I am sure someone will fill that void if Mike would rather just make Pow turns all day.
Personally, I just want it to snow more in places where I am going to snowboard, and for my knees to work long enough for me to complete my bucket list.
The answer is to ride and have fun........