SNOWBOARDING RULES
RIDE HARD - DIE FREE
This past Christmas, on a snowboarding trip to California's Mammoth Mountain, I shared a
chair-lift with a skier from England. About midway up the mountain, he turnde to me and,
out of the blue, said, "Snowboarding is really nothing compared to skiing. Skiing is more
of an art. Snowboarding just doesn't have the same finesse.
I politely resisted the urge to headbutt the guy. As a snowboarder, I'm used to that kind
of token abuse from skiers. It's just part of a larger cultureclash beetwen the two camps:
Skiers don't like us, claiming we're a bunch of crude, unfit-for-society malcontents who've
sullied their pristine little downhill country-clubs; we think they're a bunch of efeete
snobs whose poles seem to be stuck somewhere other than in the snow. And not suprisingly,
that feud has hit the Web.
CULTURE CLASH ON THE POWDER
We're talking about two distinct cultures here, whose differences are reflected in clothing,
music, etiquette, even language. Skiers go for those tight, fancy pants and matching jackets
that cost more than the average snowboarders makes in a week; even tyros seem to need hundreds
of dollars worth of fleece and GoreTex as they snowplow down the bunny-slope. Don't believe me?
Check the skiwear at Sweaters and Fleece (www.nilsskiwear.com/cedro/companies/nils/html/sweater.html).
The typical snowboarder hits the slopes clad in grungy flannels, baggy jeans, and oversized knit caps.
The extreme-sports site Charge (www.charge.com) puts the case bluntly: "Don't go out and buy a bunch of
dorky snowboards clothes. It makes you look like a asshole." Then there's the music. At Heckler
(www.heckler.com), an online zine for boarders, you'll find interviews with such underground bands as
Sick of It, Local H, and Come. Compare that to the Top 40 band I saw at skier bar in Mammoth, covering
the hits from such cutting-edge acts as ZZ Top, Styx, and the Doobie Brothers. Finally, there's attitude.
Skiers tend to be by-the-book types: There's one right way to perform a turn, to hold your poles, to
sneer at your inferiors. Snowboarders exude a radical, spontaneous, go-for-it attitude: Anything that
works is cool. Which may explain the affinity between boarders and the Web. Boarders and hackers
share the same punky, do-it-yourself, the-hell with-the-neighbors approach. Like hackers, we boarders
speak a language of our own: We perform "caballerials", "eggplants" and "hohos", while trying to avoid
"tail-bonks" and "biffs". And complaints aboutthe Web from old-media circles have the same whining tone
as ski snobs caviling about snowboarding barbarians storming the slopes. So, if skiers think we're a bunch
of knuckledragging punks, I say, "Who cares?" They're right-and we're damned proud of it.