Tyrant Snowboards - How Not to Rep Your Company

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Goldsmith's Boardhouse - Going the Extra Mile

You wouldn't start a snowboard shop expecting things to sell themselves...

But in these days of over saturated egos and an undeserved sense of entitlement, how often have you waited ten minutes for Joe Cool Shop-Kid to finish a conversation with his buddy before he reluctantly approached you.  Then as quickly as he came to chuck you whatever you needed, he was back into his chat and unavailable to help you out any further.

Thankfully this experience is characteristic of only a few shops; out there still exists the core shop that symbolizes why we need to keep the little guys alive.

A small shop named Goldsmith's Boardhouse in Big Bear, California is one.

Goldsmith's and I go back a long way.  I rented my first snowboard from them, and I'm really glad--though honestly not surprised--they are still around.

You'd be hard pressed to find a shop employee willing to dive into sweaty, and tremendously smelly, old liners to get your insoles fitted properly--definitely not part of the job description, but a huge display of customer devotion.

Or how about when you are "Closed for Summer" and in the middle of inventory when a kid shows up to look around?  If it was you or me, "Sorry, we're closed" would be the likely response.

Not Goldsmith's though, whose employee came running out to the parking lot to let me inside for some last minute shopping.

What a relief having every question I asked met immediately with an answer.  From general specs to product comparisons, the good folks at Goldsmith's are completely on top of it.  Think the binding is too narrow for your boot?  They run and find their widest rental boot to check the fit.

So am I writing this just to give Goldsmith's props? Yes.

They deserve to be recognized as do all of the local shops out there going the extra mile. Celebrate your local shop by sharing how they made your day in the comments below!

No Dumping

Apparently it was going to be an amazing day:  I managed to get to the hill nice and early, the sun was shining brightly through a clear blue sky, and fresh snow from the day before meant primo slope conditions.

"Nothing could possibly bother me today," I thought as I loaded the chairlift, eagerly scoping out the first laps of the day.

With falcon-like focus I zoned in on any powder patches left untouched.  Maybe I'll spin that roller, or that looks like a good place to lay out a method;  I see a stump that I might jib, but suddenly I'm distracted...

The piece of shit on the chair ahead of me just chucked his beer can into the forest--threw trash on my favorite place to play--and now I'm just fucking pissed off!

This wasn't the first time I got to bare witness to such a display of human douschebag-ery, and I'm sure it won't be the last.  Let me just say I tolerate my fair share of bullshit, but I'm not about to put up with an overprivileged city dwelling asshole treating his local mountain like the room in his parents' basement.

Forget that fact that resorts always place trash cans at bottom and top of every lift, but the ones with lower snow levels like Snow Summit are even sympathetic to the cause.  Ok, we all know throwing things off of high places is fun, so they put groups of "trash targets" up the lift line for us to exercise our inner 8-year-old.

So what kind of person goes out of their way to skip those? How can you really want to litter that much?

I'm just happy resorts continue their efforts to gather literally tons of trash off the hill at the end of each season.  They could have the same shitty attitude about things, and then we could just skip the mountains altogether, strap in at our local dump and shred garbage.

We snowboard to escape.  Put me out in the middle of nature, the great outdoors, with nothing but trees and fresh air in every direction.  Here is my way out of life's daily grind; complete serenity covered in a blanket of pure white.

Littering has no place in my image of snowboarding.

Park Change-ups: For Better or Worse

"We have record snow accumulations, and a park that doesn’t stay the same for more than a couple weeks which is my favorite part about of this resort.

The set-up changes so much that it’s like you get to ride a new resort every week. There’s nothing worse that hitting the same rails and boxes, week after week, month after month.

No need to worry though, you’ll never know what that’s like as long as you ride Bear."   

-- Bear Mountain Blog, February 20 2010

When I read that quote on Bear's website one morning, I couldn't help but remember the times I'd been right on the cusp of landing a trick only to be disappointed the next day when the feature was nowhere to be found.

Of course once I got a taste of whatever replaced it things were quickly forgotten, but you have to wonder can there possibly be a downside to riding a park layout that constantly changes?

When features are left unchanged and consistent you open the doors for creativity at all levels; it doesn't matter if you are a beginner to an advanced rider, hitting the same rail over and over lets you progressively learn tricks.

A new rider can start with one basic trick, land it over and over, then look to familiarity with the feature for the confidence to push forward with another.  A feature that never moves leaves very few surprises.

That means while advanced riders may have all of the tricks, they'll have to rely on imagination and their sharpened skills to create new variations that keep a stagnant rail fresh and poppin'.

On the other hand new features inspire trick consistency.  Now, nobody wants to be that guy that only does one trick, but for an intermediate rider with even just a few tricks under his belt, any changes to the park are an opportunity to get those tricks fully dialed.  Even an advanced rider is going to find kinks in tricks he thought were bagged; you could say keeping the park fresh promotes mastery.

If feature consistency aids progression, and park change-ups mastery, then the logical thing to do is maintain a touch of both. Resorts like Bear Mountain already do this:

Their basic features, commonly known as beginner parks, are left almost untouched throughout the season. Meanwhile their more advanced features are moved around piece by piece to give more experienced riders their "old-faithfuls" along with plenty of variety.

In the end I suppose just as in life, sometimes things change for the better and sometimes they change for the worse; it all depends on what trick you were you close to landing beforehand...