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Outside Magazine November 2002

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The Cool Sellout (Cont.)


	What's up, dog? Danny Kass, doing his best to keep a low profile slopside in Stratton (Ben Watts)

IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW any better, you might assume the pranksterism on display at Waterville validates a certain stereotype of snowboarders as lawless punks. But thanks to the Salt Lake City Olympics, you do know better—don't you?

When Kelly Clark won the women's halfpipe event—the first U.S. gold of the Games—and then, the next day, Powers, Kass, and Jarret "J.J." Thomas became the first Americans to sweep a Winter Olympics podium since 1956, snowboarding was transformed in the public eye from hoodlums' hobby to serious sport. The many outsiders among the 21 million people watching NBC prime time last February 11 couldn't help but get what they saw: ethereal athleticism. "Oh! I just enjoyed it, that halfpipe thing," raved Gordon Hinckley, the 92-year-old president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in USA Today. "It was crazy, to get down and tip upside down and cavort about."

A month later, at the U.S. Open, riders could already sense the bizarre 180 in pop culture perceptions. But broad acceptance ushers in a different dynamic. Without a negative stereotype to gleefully buck against, snowboarders may find it more difficult to define themselves. "We're a little more respected, for sure," Josh Pekuri told me while standing at the bottom of the halfpipe during a lull in practice. A 23-year-old engineer on leave from Coast Guard duty, he was wearing a leather skullcap, a Stanley Kowalski undershirt, and a studded leather belt to hold up his snowboard pants. Taking a drag from his Camel Light, he frowned. "People used to look at us like we were all drug addicts."

Leading up to Salt Lake, all you heard was that top halfpipers hardly cared about the Olympics. They were too cool, the thinking went, to rah-rah such a mainstream event. In fact, core snowboarders had reason to be wary: Events at Nagano in 1998 had made them look silly. The uniforms were dorky, the pipe was shoddy, and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) mortified them by marketing Animal, the Muppet character, as their mascot. And then, when Canadian Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana, the press wrote off the entire sport as a stoner joke.

The SLC program managed not to embarrass anyone. This time, the best riders were mostly accounted for, the pipe was mint, and the sky was Windex blue. Best of all, the United States dominated. "I was stoked when I figured out that I got the bronze," says J. J. Thomas, a handsome 21-year-old Coloradan sponsored by Ride Snowboards and Oakley. "But I wasn't that stoked, because I didn't have my best run. Then some guy came up to us and told us about the sweep thing—that's when I got excited."

But not everyone was stoked. Within the sanctified walls of Burton Snowboards, which puts on the U.S. Open, the posture toward the Olympics remains more bullheaded than bullish. A month to the day after the sweep, the company fired off a sniffy press release that read: "Many people have a false impression, supported by ambiguous communications from the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, that America's snowboarding success is a result of the USSA's ÔU.S. Snowboard Team' efforts. This is not the case. . . . The best athletes train, compete, choose sponsors, and manage their careers as they choose—as individuals. The team system does not work, and is essentially a marketing device for USSA."

It came across as something of a head scratcher, like a grouchy surfer getting territorial over an epic swell. Why bring everybody down when there's more than enough booty to go around? Perhaps because with a 30 percent stake in the snowboarding market—which last year amounted to more than $100 million in sales—the 25-year-old company considers itself the feisty ombudsman of snowboarding, bent on protecting the sport's image.

"The number of opportunities for people to talk about snowboarding and fuck it up is just enormous now," says David Schriber, 38, who was senior vice-president of marketing at Burton for five years before taking over a sister brand, Gravis footwear, last spring. "The growth is consistent with where we've wanted to take things, but you have to be careful. We have the job of growing Burton and making it cooler. But bigger is lamer in snowboarding."

Jake Burton himself seems unworried about the mainstreaming of the sport. "Obviously, for self-interested business reasons, but also beyond that, I think the more people who snowboard the better," says the 48-year-old entrepreneur, who owns his company outright and rides more than 100 days a year. "What kids are doing—the rails that they're hitting and the jumps they're going off—that's a completely different sport than what mainstream snowboarders are doing. I mean, does Michael Jordan get pissed off that fat white guys play basketball? I don't think he's like, ÔDamn, that's the end of my sport.' And I don't think core riders feel that way either."

Probably true. Definitely true: Snowboarders are nothing if not fickle. Now that the mainstream has latched on to snowboarding itself, can the sport keep its cool?

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