Skate Legends On FUEL TV this week

Three legendary skateboarders will be appearing on Fuel TV's The Daily Habit this week. Christian Hosoi will be on the show tonight, Omar Hassan on Tuesday night and Tony Alva will appear on Friday along with punk rock legends, Circle Jerks. The Daily Habit airs... Daily... on Fuel TV at 9:00 ET/PT. Be sure to check out all three episodes this week.

Christian Hosoi and his Vans signature shoe

Tony Alva and his Vans signature shoe


















Omar Hassan

Skateboard Art

I thought it was about time to get some art on here. I have some really really awesome artists lined up to feature but in the meantime here's a couple of my paintings and a few custom grip tape jobs I did. I have some more in the works that I'll be able to post soon... hopefully. Please comment and let me know what you think!!

"Easy Livin"



"3 Amigos"



"Roll The Dice"



"Radical"



"Helter Skelter"

TJ Schneider's Snowboard Realms

At the beginning of the snowboard season, like way back in early December when the only good snow in the country was in the Colorado Rockies, a bunch of pro shreds were in Summit County to get some turns in and ride some park. One particular snowy day in Breck, a Thursday possibly, The Gonz and I were walking up to the Quiksilver lift when we spotted a group of dudes rockin the 2009 Captia board line up. Since '09 gear is not available to the public until September-ish, these guys were either sponsored riders or had some industry hook ups. The Gonz is riding a Capita this year so as we were walking by the group we here one of the guys say, "Yea Capita!" That guy turned out to be pro rider TJ Schneider. We chatted for a couple minutes about the new boards, the super rad tye-die Airblaster leg bag he was wearing, the oh so tasty early season conditions, and this new film project he was working on called Snowboard Realms. TJ was, and is, way cool and for the next couple days we watched him and various other pro riders throw down OG style in the park at Breck.

Snowboard Realms is a film being released in weekly installments about the life of pro snowboarder TJ Schneider. Now, before you write this off as another extreme athlete reality show (Life of Ryan, Rob and Big) let me assure you this is in no way like Ryan Sheckler's dumb ass MTV show. This is a self filmed, Internet only release inside look into what being a pro shred is all about... Relentless traveling, what it takes to film a video part, finding and dealing with sponsors, designing signature gear, contests, parties and everything else that happens during the year. Pretty much what's NOT in the snowboard magazines or videos. There are lots of curse words and some sweet ass Rock n' Roll music.

Again, I'm a little late reporting this as I just recently started this little blog, but I've been following this series since the first installment and this is something I'm really stoked on. TJ is so down to earth and is such a SICK rider. He draws this crazy ass art that is so fuckin rad... Everyone needs watch these videos. They really give you a taste of the pro snowboardeing life style. Also, here's an interview with TJ about the Snowrealms project courtesy of theMUSTACHIO, a really cool blog that everyone should go peep right now. Just one more link to click on, check out TJ's personal website, www.tjschneider.com/

Here are the first 3 episodes of Snowboard Realms. I'll post new episodes every few days... Enjoy!

Episode 1 -- TJ talks about the project and some cool footage

Episode 2 -- Rad drawing of yellow creature

Episode 3 -- TJ Talks about how he got sponsored, early shred vid

New Pennywise Album... FREE!

Yea that's right, Reason To Believe, the new album from SoCal punks Pennywise is being offered up for free by Myspace Records through a promotion with Textango. All you have to do is log on to your myspace account (Yea everybody has one), add Textango as your friend and you'll receive a message with a link to download the album. Click here to add Textango as your friend. The album will be available for free until April 8th, after that you'll either have to buy it or steal it off the Internet... Which the band is just fine with. Guitarist Fletcher Dragge stated in a press release, “We know that this will piss off a lot of people in the music industry, and what do we say to that? ‘Who cares?’ We’ve been pissing people off for 18 years. Why stop now? We have been telling people to get our records by any mean necessary for 17 years. As a band, we decided that it was time to come to terms with the facts. There are a lot of people out there who want their music for free, so we got proactive and with the help of MySpace Records and Textango we found away to make it happen…we couldn't be more stoked.” I would have gladly payed full price for the record but being the starving college student I am, I was super stoked to be able get this kick ass album for free. Huge thanks to Pennywise for giving a little something back to their fans.

Reason To Believe, the 9th full length studio release from the Hersoma Beach, California quartet, is arguably the band's best work to date. Pennywise has long been one of my favorite bands and I'm a huge fan of their older stuff so I was a little skeptical about the new album when I heard it was being released on semi major record label, Myspace Records, and was to be given away for free. You see, major record labels sometimes have a way of sucking the life out of really good bands, changing their sound when really no change was needed.

Despite a split from long time indy label, Epitaph, Reason To Believe is 100% Pennywise. The album grabs you by the throat from the opening track and doesn't let go until the final seconds of ear punishing Punk tick away. Fletcher's super crunchy, lighting fast guitar riffs teamed with the heart thumping rhythm section of bassist Randy Bradbury and drummer Byron McMackin, set the perfect backdrop for front man Jim Lindberg to wail away with intelligent and critical examinations of current political, religious, and cultural issues.

What impressed me the most about Reason To Believe was the bands musical growth, most evident in the guitar playing. Stepping away ever so slightly from the standard Pennywise sound, Fletcer incorporates numerous harmonies, hardcore riffs boarding on Metal, face melting solos and other guitar subtleties into his playing that give this album a little different flavor. This is also the tightest and sharpest the band has ever sounded... If that's even possible after playing together for nearly two decades.

Reason To Believe is a high energy, fast pased, angst filled album reminiscent of Punk Rock's glory days. From a band that has never sold its soul, and has never had a problem telling anyone to fuck off, Punk vets Pennywise have stayed true to the music they believe in and show no signs of slowing down. Always substance before image, this is Pennywise at their finest.

Must listen to...
1. One Reason
2. As Long As We Can
3. Western World
4. Nothing To Lose
5. Something To Live For

Spring Break Recap -- Back To The Grind...

Classes officially resumed today at CSU and after an epic week spent in the mountains ripping, I was less than stoked to be back on the academic grind. It took all my will power to peel myself away from a fantastic skate park sesh this afternoon and go learn about accounting. Brutal. This was my 4th spring break spent in the mountains and it turned out to be one of the best weeks of riding all year. Summit County was hit with some nice storms during the beginning of break, leaving great snow for the week. Throw in some blue bird days, warm spring weather, and thousands of tourists and what a week it was! The Texans were out in full force making their presence know on the mountain... Mainly falling all over themselves getting off the lift, smashing heads with the lift bar, and basically just clogging the whole flow of things. Despite the Southern invasion to Breckenridge, we had a sick week of riding. Brian "Dinger" Heimerdinger and I made it our mission to find every natural feature the mountain had to offer and sesh it. Olliing over everything that was possible to ollie over, finding the hidden pow stashes and slasssshhhhing that shit, making the whole mountain our terrain park. The highlight of the week was a 30 minute hike up to Billy's Bowl at the top of peak 9. Standing at 14,000 feet you really can't help but appreciate how absolutely fucking amazing the mountains are. It's like the first time I heard the Beatles.... We dropped in, aired off about a 7 or 8 foot cornice, then proceeded to get some super rad pow turns in. Soooooo stoked!!

It's always hard for me to leave the mountains, especially after such an awesome week of riding. Even though I'm usually up there 3 or 4 days a week, I can't get enough of it. When I'm not snowboarding, I'm thinking about snowboarding, getting hyped for when I can strap on the board again. In the mean time, I'll be hitting the skate scene full force.

I have some rad stuff coming up for the site so if there's anyone besides my family and friends reading this get excited!

Johnny Layton's New Digs

Johnny Layton has been a favorite skater of mine for a while now. He's got a super smooth style and really makes every trick he sticks look effortless. He's got a new pro model deck out on Toy Machine and he signed an apparel deal with long time sponsor Vans, featuring shoes and threads, that dropped earlier this year. Both the deck and the gear are super sick. The shoes come in a few different color ways and of course feature the legendary Waffle Grip sole which will cement your feet to your board.

This is just the tip of the new Layton line so check out the rest of J Lay's gear on the Vans website, and watch his sick video part in the Toy Machine video Suffer The Joy. Aslo, peep this day in the life of J Lay video... Rad.

That's it, That's all -- Quiksilver Natural Selection

It's been 2 years in the making and is hyped to be one of the sickest shred flicks of all time. Filmed entirely in HD, this Travis Rice brain child is set to be released in August. T Rice is arguably snowboarding's most well rounded rider. He kills it in competitions, destroys the big mountains and back country, and films insane video parts. T Rice was the master mind behind 2005's Community Project so That's it, That's all should be nothing short of spectacular. Peep the trailer and get stoked.

I know I'm a little late on this one, but it's still worth talking about. Again, from the ambitious mind of Travis Rice, came the Quiksilver Natural Selection snowboard contest.

The invite only contest featured some of the best free riders in world such as, Travis Rice, Nicolas Muller, Mark Landvick, DCP, Gigi Ruff, and Brain Iguchi. Held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in early Feburary, this was a contest like no other. Instead of perfect conditions with manicured booters, pipes, and landings, the Natural Selection was an all natural terrain contest, meant to mimic the type of powder riding you'd encounter in the back country. Jackson Hole is world renowned for the massive amounts of snow they receive and their extreme terrain. The 2 day contest was held over a period of 10 days. This 10 day "holding period" was to ensure the best possible conditions. JH was hit with huge blizzard storms and there was an ample amount of fresh pow to ride in. Day 1 of the contest was held at Dick's Ditch, a 2,500 foot long gully featuring hand shoveled hip like kickers, a cat track to air off of, and a variety of other natural features. Day 2 was held under blue bird skies at the legendary Casper Bowl, a huge bowl featuring steep faces and numerous cliff drops. The contest was a best run format, with the best runs from each day of the competition being added to crown the winner.

As much fun as park contests are to watch and be a part off, I must say this format blows that shit out of the water. This is true snowboarding. Any decent rider can land a jump in the park, landing in 3 feet of pow is a different story. This contest was all about creativity as the riders had the freedom to choose their own lines and hit what ever feature their hearts desired. It was so rad to see a contest where it wasn't mandatory to land a three 9s and a cab 1080 to win. Instead, creative lines, tweaked out straight airs, slow stylish spins, and pow slashes were the winning formula. Hopefully we can see more contests like this one. Big props to T Rice for dreaming up the carnival of shred.

Top 5 finishers were:

1. Travis Rice

2. Mark Carter

3. DCP

4. Nicolas Muller

5. David Benedek

Check out Quiksilver Natual Selection for a full event recap, tons of sick photo's, and videos of the competition.

Epic quote from commentator Willie McMillion at the beginning of the contest. "I heard these riders each got paid 9 grand just to be here. They've pretty much already won. I mean, you could drop in, shit your pants, wreck, tomahawk all the way to the bottom, and you're a winner." HAHA! Eat your heart out Sal Masekela...

Viva Music!

Someone once said, "Music is what feelings sound like." Nothing could be more true. Music to me is the ultimate from of self expression. Unlike other art forms where it can sometimes be difficult to understand what the artist is trying to express, with music all you have to do is listen. The greatest thing about music is it can be about absolutely anything. No matter what you're feeling or thinking about at a certain point in your life you can write about it and turn it into a song. There’s been a time in everyone’s life when you hear a song and think to yourself, wow, I can definitely relate to what this person was going through because I’ve been in the exact same situation. Music evokes human emotion. You listen to certain genres of music and songs when you’re in a happy mood, when you’re in a sad mood, when you’re angry, when you’re lonely, when you’re in love, when you get your heart broken, when you’re chillen, when you want to dance, when you want to rock out, and hundreds of other situations. Some people listen to music for the lyrics, some for the actual music, and some people just want something they can groove to no matter what it sounds like. I believe there are two types of people in this world when it comes to music… People who LISTEN to music and people who LIVE music. I fall into the latter category. Don’t get me wrong now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a person who just listens to music. That’s not a bad thing. However, there are people to which music is a passion, an everyday obsession. Listening to it, writing it, playing it… Living it.

Most famous musicians say at some point what their inspiration was to play music. I can pinpoint mine to age 13 when an older neighbor of mine gave me the album Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth on cassette tape.

Before that I would listen to music sparingly, whenever I felt an urge to turn on the radio, not all that into it. After listening to Countdown to extinction, I was F'ing blown away. I had no idea a guitar was capable of producing that kind of sound.I was instantly drawn to the heavy metal sound and became hooked. I listened to that album so much I wore out the tape. The fast, crunchy, distorted guitar riffs were what I liked the best. I had a natural ear for music and could easily distinguish when chords would change and different picking patterns, although I had no idea what any of that was at the time. I soon went on a mission to discover new music. More heavy metal, classic rock, punk, blues, reggae… I was like a sponge soaking up all these new bands. After spending about 6 years perfecting the air guitar, my senior year of high school I finally picked up a real one. It was a $150 piece of shit red and white Fender Strat rip off but I loved it. I learned how to read tabs and taught myself how to play. It was a slow process but after I started playing that’s all I wanted to do and I’ve been playing pretty much every day for the last six years.

Music is an escape for me. Music inspires me. It’s the one thing in my life that I’m most passionate about. There’s rarely a moment I’m not listening to or playing it. I devote a good amount of my time to discovering new bands. I’m obsessed. Without music, life would be a very dull and boring existence.

I’m planning on introducing a new band every few days that maybe you have or haven’t heard of. I’m working on getting in touch with some of these bands and hopefully getting little mini interviews from them. I also want to give local music a platform to be heard. I’m super stoked to share my musical tastes and knowledge with you… It’s a subject I can talk about all day!

Breckenridge Sesh --- Gaper Sprays

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, snow bunnies were a plenty, and the 17 inches of fresh in the last 3 days was just waiting to be destroyed. The tourists were out in full force, but I had a fresh wax on the board and was stoked for an epic blue bird day in the hill. Fellow shred partner Brian Heimerdinger and I decided to go jacket less and opt for the hoddy steez in lieu of the clear skies and bright sun. We arrive at the Quicksilver Super Chair only to be greeted by an absolute zoo of people. Instead of waiting for 20 minutes with a million little ski & ride school kids, we decided to hike the 200 yards up the mountain to Beaver Run which proved to be a wise choice. We jumped on the chair and the shred-straganza was finally underway. After a couple runs we met up with fellow crew member Jon "The Gonz" Gallegos and his buddy Kyle. About this time, the storm that wasn’t supposed to hit until the evening rolled in and the sun disappeared behind the clouds for the rest of the day, making the decision to go with the hoody a little less appealing. But honestly the only shitty part of the sun peaceing out was the ride up the lift… The cold and wind bites you up there. Once off the lift, everything was cool. Despite the mostly gray day, it was still super fun. Our runs were filled with rides through the trees, pow slashes, booters, back and front side 1’s and 3’s, half cabs, boned out methods, steezy shifty tail grabs, tail taps, bonks and ollies off every standing obstacle (including humans), and tons of other sick maneuvers.

As fun as all that was, by far the highlight of the day was the multiple gaper sprays that were executed. The pure joy of showering an unsuspecting skier stopped on the mountain with snow can’t really be explained. It’s comparable to Christmas morning. Let me break down the “gaper spray” for you, step by step. The first step is to locate the gaper downhill from you. Some things that will help you locate a gaper are: Day passes attached to jacket, brightly colored neon outer wear from the 70’s, fanny packs, ridiculous looking spike beanies or cowboy hats or no hat with styled hair, a Texas or southern accent, jeans… Especially overall jeans, puffy jackets with ones favorite sports team on it, ski blades (don’t even get me started on those), chicks wearing designer purses while skiing, someone taking huge, slow, pizza turns and the biggest gaper indicator? The group of skiers stopped on the best lip to air off of reading a trail map.

After you’ve locked on to your target, you’re going to want to bomb down the hill at top speed toward them. Carrying a lot of speed into the spray is very important… You want to make sure to get the biggest snow wall spray possible. When you’re about 8 – 10 feet from the sprayee, slam on the breaks, heal or toe side, whichever you’re most comfortable with, and let the snow fly! In my spraying experience, I find toe side produces the biggest spray. Make sure you look back as you ride by to capture the look of confusion/ anger/ utter contempt for all those ass-hole snowboarders on your victim’s face. The best situation, and what happened today more than a few times, is when the whole crew rides by, one by one, and white washes unsuspecting gapers. After they get sprayed they look back to see what happened and what do they get? Three more facials of snow! Like I said before, gaper sprays are a complete joy and are sure to brighten everyone’s day…. Well maybe not everyone’s… Check out this video clip from the Absinthe film Optimstic? of Marc Frank Montoya layin down some epic sprays about 45 seconds in. MFM is a Denver native and a super sick rider so check out the whole clip. If you haven't seen Optimistic? you definately need to, it's the best of they year in my opinion.

We’re heading to Vail tomorrow and hopefully this storm dumps enough fresh pow for some cliff drops and deep slashes. The week of snowboarding awesomeness is off to a great start and can only get better. More updates to come, until next time… Go snowboard!

Spring Break... Shred time!

So it's officially spring break here at CSU and while most students have been workin on their fake tans the last couple weeks in preparation for the pseudo tourist beaches or Vegas, I've been working on keeping my body pale for a week filled with fresh pow, $1 High-Lifes, big booters, hot shred bettys, sunny days and hopefully some F'in great snowboarding. I can't think of any better way to spend 9 days off from class than up in the mountains ripping. Why go piss away all your money on gambling, over priced drinks, babes who are probably not going to hook up with you, and expensive plane tickets when you can spend about 1/4 of that on a tank of gas, groceries, super cheap beer, have about a 10 times better chance with the opposite sex and be outside in all of Mother Nature's glory? If snowboarding isn't your bag get outside and hit up your local skate park or that super secret spot no one knows about. Go on a road trip with your crew, follow your favorite band on tour for a couple days, paint a self portrait, fucking whatever... Just get out and do something you love to do!! This is probably a little too late to influence anyone who was on the bubble about what to do over spring break but if there's anyone still undecided let me urge you not to be a mindless zombie and follow the crowd to Cancun or where ever else it is people go on spring break. For everyone not in college and thus not on spring break this up coming week, don't sweat it, college is overrated anyway. Keep doin what your doin. As for me, I'll be up in Summit County all week, probably mostly Breck, searching for that untouched pow stash and layin down the smoothest slash anyone has ever seen. For all the other shred heads out there... I hope to see ya rippin it up!

Welcome Sesh

Welcome to the Hybrid Sessions! Your one-stop shop for everything skateboarding, snowboarding, music and art. I've recently been handed an enormous amount of free time after playing 5 years of college football at Colorado State University and haven't really had a clue what to do with all of it. My days, and nights since December have been spent shredding the mountains every possible moment I can, jamming endlessly on the guitar, having all night paint seshes, partying, and occasionally attending class. Also since Mother Nature has been so kind these last few weeks here in Fort Collins, I've been able to get back on the skate scene after a long hiatus. I'm a semester away from graduating and that day can't get here soon enough. I'm at the point in my life where I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do after I graduate. I could get a job related to my major and join the 9-5 drones but that doesn't exactaly appeal to me. I'm ready to move on from the whole college scene and start living for real. Hopefully this little blog will help me stay connected with the things that I am most passionate about... Shredding, music and art! Look for local and national shred news and happenings, tons of art and artist profiles, and all sorts of rad bands and maybe a review or two... Well it's 5:30 in the morning right now and I've got to get some sleep before my skate sesh in a few hours. More to come soon... PEACE!