Damn You Mustachio!

There's this super rad new snowboard magazine that came out this past winter called AllUs Snowboarding, and they're all about the Colorado shred scene. I grabbed the first issue at a skate shop in Fort Collins and was immediately stoked on the mag. They started out pretty small, with only like 20 or so pages of content, but by the end of the season they had morphed into a legit, 70 page mag with sick photos, local rider profiles, music reviews, and good stories. They had a great little article called The Art of Logging which was all about jibbing logs. Sick.

So anyway, I was planning on getting in touch with the peeps at AllUs Snowboarding closer to the start of the 08/09 snow season to see if I could get a little interview and get the inside scoop about the new mag. Well, I guess I should have jumped on that a little sooner because the rad dudes over at The Mustachio beat me to it. Ah, such is life. I guess the ultimate goal is to get the word out about awesome things like AllUs no matter who does it. They got a really good interview with a dude named Justin who is one of the originators and he tells all about how the mag got its start.

Click here to read the interview and be sure to check out the AllUs link above. Colorado is home to some of the best places to shred in the entire world and these guys are bringing the CO scene right to your face with AllUs Snowboarding. If you haven't seen an issue of the mag go get one right now!

Also, go check out The Mustachio. Those dudes have a great site and are always on point in the snow game.

In other news, the And Now premiere last night was sick and I'll have the review posted sometime tomorrow. I couldn't sneak the post in during work today and now I have to go skate!

And Now Premiere Tonight!

Oh I'm stoke-o loco for this one... Tonight is the And Now premiere in Reno and I'm going to watch it, Yay! Big hype surrounding Transworld's 20th skate film so it should be a doozie. Hopefully work is slow tomorrow so I can write a review on the film. If you live in Reno and happen to see this before 6pm, get your ass to the Eldorado and peep the vid, details here.

Toy Machine Oddity Odyssey Tour

The Toy Machine crew is balls deep into their west coast summer tour, The Oddity Odyssey, and good ole Ed Templeton has been posting up a bunch of cool photos and recapping all the note worthy happenings along the way. Check out the Toy Machine website and get your fix of everything Oddity Odyssey and if you're anywhere near these locations go check out the tour.

Supra Mini Ramp Sesh

Here's a nice little vid of a Fathers Day mini ramp sesh featuring the Supra crew. This was held in Erik Ellington's back yard and some pretty rad skate maneuvers were thrown down. Skating mini ramps is so much fun, I need to build me one like this ASAP. Peep the vid below or click here for the hi-fi version.

Reno Up In Smoke... Literally

Well pretty much all of California is on fire. There is something like 850 wild fires burning in Northern California alone, which in turn is covering the Reno/Tahoe area in a blanket of smoke. It's like being in a thick fog that smells like the inside of a casino. The last couple days I've tired to go out and skate but after pushing around for no more then 5 minutes my lungs were en fuego, my eyes watering, and my head was starting to hurt. This shit is so crazy... Here are a couple photos I took up at the job site where I'm working. What you should see is pretty much all of Reno. It's up above the city so it usually provides a good view.....

Yesterday afternoon


This Morning

Now from where I'm at this is basically what you should see. I pulled this off the internet and it's way more zoomed in but it's the Northern Reno skyline.

Reno skyline

Hopefully this poop haze clears sometime in the near future so I don't die of smoke inhalation while I'm skating!

Lib Tech Skate Decks

Peep the new Lib Tech skate decks. These will cost you a pretty penny, i think around 85 bones, but they're built similar to a snowboard with epoxy and vertically laminated wood so the concept is they last a lot longer than your general 7-ply decks. It sucks when you have to spend $30-50 every few weeks when your deck breaks so it might be worth it to spend the extra cheese and have one last a few months. I've never skated one of these but I know a couple people who have and they seemed to like em quite a bit. You can read all about how the mad scientists over at Lib build their skate decks HERE.

Lib always has awesome graphics on their snowboards and the skate decks are no different. These new boards were done by artist/ripper Quincy Quigg. I highly suggest clicking his name and checking out some of his art work, it's super duper rad.

Wake Up Call...

I hope everyone got out and skated on Saturday for Go Skateboarding Day, although everyday really is GSD. The Out Of Bounds event was pretty fun, a little disorganized, but still fun. It wasn't any Market Skate Bash though. I was going to take a bunch of photos and post them up but I was having too much fun skating so I just said fuck it. Watson over at Youwillsoon had some epic coverage of the GSD event he attended... Hilarious.

Anyway, switching gears, I've decided Mondays blow. Now that I'm a working stiff I can truly appreciate how a "Case of the Mondays" feel. I'm still hurting from drinking too much beer over the weekend and wishing I was skating, or chillin at the lake, or jammin, or laying on my ass watching shitty movies on TV... Pretty much anything but being at work.

So this construction internship I have used to start bright and early every morning at 7am and I am not a morning person whatsoever. I am a creature of the night and the only reason in the past I would ever be up as early as 7am was to, A) go do something fun like shred some fresh pow or, B) I was still awake from an epic night of partying. I usually didn't go to sleep anytime before 3am and would wake up whenever. So anyway, we started work at 7 and every morning I would wake up and just lie in bed for a moment thinking to myself, "This is absolutely shitty brutal, how can I possibly get out of going to work today?" Of course I can never think of a clever way to swindle my way out of going, so I get out of bed, get my shit together and roll out.

Last Thursday my boss gave me the best news I've ever heard in my life. He must have sensed how much I despise waking up early because he proceeded to inform me that our new start time would no longer be 7am. It would be 6am. Faaaaacccck. The only thing cool about waking up at 5am is I get to see the sun rise over the mountains and that's pretty rad.

When I started this internship I needed a way to wake myself up in the early, early mornings. Some rely on cups of coffee, some take cold showers, some pop acid or speed, whatever ya know?.... Well, I've found the method that works best to wake me up is not coffee, nor extreme temperature showers, nor psychedelic drugs, but Heavy Metal. Yes that's right, hardcore, screaming, face melting Heavy Metal. I've engineered a decent little sound system in the Love Bus and from 5:35am to 5:55am I turn that shit up as loud as the Bus will handle and head bang all the way to work. I find that if I rattle my brain a little to some ear pounding Metal on the drive to work I feel awake, alert, overall stoked, and ready for a productive work day! (Hopefully the sarcasm is easily deciphered)

So what I've really been trying to get to all along with this post is a little taste of what wakes me up in the morning. I started out with these guys for a couple days, then over to this band, next with this, can't forget the shred masters, the Texas metal heads, oh this rocks my face off, and of course the heaviest of all metal.... Oh wait how did that last one get in there?!

So there ya go. If you like Metal these bands fuckin rock, and will wake you up at the butt crack of dawn. (maybe not that last one so much) Except for Pantera, I've seen all of them live and they will rip you to shreds, metaphorically speaking of course.

New 08/09 Lib Techno Zine!!

Holy shit I'm so stoked right now! The best snowboard company in the universe, Lib Technologies, launched their new Zine for your viewing pleasure. Question: What do you like better, Christmas or new Lib Tech snow Zine season... Ummm Zboy? Lib Tech snow Zine season? That's right!!

The new Zine features the 08/09 line up of shred sticks, interviews with T.Rice, Mark Lanvik, Sammy Luebke, Shred LEGEND Jamie Lynn confessing his love for the Banana, the 4 eras of snowboard design history, (hilarious) info on their enviroMENTALY friendly snowboard design and factory, (really cool) lots of other awesome stuff and of course photos of all the new 08/09 boards.

The 08/09 line up has gone Bananas! Every board is being offered up with the award winning Banana Technology/Magne Traction (BTX) while the Dark Series, T.Rice, TRS, and Skunk Ape still have the option of BTX or just good ole Magne Traction. For all the old school shreds out there the Phoneix, Jamie Lynn's pro model, is being offered with BTX or how it's always been. I'll save my thoughts on the Banana Tech for a later post but let me just say I'll never ride anything else... ever.

Other than the producing the best sheet of wood to strap onto your feet and ride down a snowy hill, Lib Tech's uniqueness and creativity are what I love so much about the company. Just look through the Zine and you can't help but notice the truly original content and marketing strategy. Plus everything they do is usually saturated with humor and sarcasm which is fucking awesome.

I'm stoked out of my mind about the new boards, especially the new tie-dye Skate Banana and Jamie Lynn's pro model. It's going to be a very difficult for me to decide which one I should buy for the up coming snow season... I might just have to peep both! I've already read through the Zine about 4 times... I'm counting the days till shred season!

Finally, since I'm still fairly new to the whole blog game I don't get all the latest breaking news sent directly to my email so I can post it before anyone else does so I do the next best thing... Steal it off other peoples blogs! Haha I only do that when I see something really cool and this definitely qualifies as really cool. Hopefully someday I'll be on shred blog A-list status and won't have to participate in thievery but until then all the content I borrow will be properly sourced. There are a lot of people who steal shit and try to pass it off as their own and that is incredibly lame.

As much as I wish I could take credit for being the first to post the 08/09 Lib Zine, (it's not even on the Lib Tech website yet) the honor goes to Shayboarder. She has an awesome blog and always seems to be one step ahead of the game. I hope she doesn't mind the Zine heist.....

Anyway enough talk, download the new Lib Tech Zine and get stoked!

08/09 Lib Tecno Zine

Ripping At Raging Waters

Just saw this on Skatedaily, an awesome video of some heavy hitting pros shredding up a Raging Waters water park. I've always thought water slides would be so much fun to skate and apparently it is. It's really cool to see something fresh and unique like this in a time where everyone just wants to go jump down 10 stairs. Creative vids like this is what skating is all about! Rune Gilfbergs rock back pivot on some over vert about 57 seconds in is pretty sick. Peep the Youtube vid below or click here for the crystal clear version.

PS go check out Skatedaily... They have their shit on lock!

Vans Nick Trapasso Chukka Low

I don't know how I haven't seen these until just a few minutes ago, especially since I have such an affinity for awesome tie-dye threads but these rad shoes are the new Nick Trapasso Chukka Low color way. I'm super stoked on the Chukka Lows, they're a great addition to the already epic Vans line up, and I'm probably going to be placing an order for these in the next 10 minutes.

I can't think of a picture I've seen of Trapasso where he isn't wearing a tie-dye shirt or some other hippy type digs so naturally his color way is tie-dye. Nick T is featured in Transworld's new film And Now and has a real solid part in Toy Machine's Suffer The Joy.

Buy the Nick Trapasso Chukka Low HERE, or HERE, or HERE, or HERE.....

Danny and The Dingo... TVs Newest Reality Show?

Just saw this on Snowboard Revolution... Possibly the pilot/preview for a new reality show featuring pro snow shred Danny Kass and pro snow MC The Dingo? Who knows but it looks pretty funny. D. Kass and the Grenade crew are known to get a little wild so a Danny Dingo reality snow show would probably be a complete circus. But a funny circus. Peep the vid.

Go Skateboarding Day - June 21

Skaters have their own holiday? Fuckin A! That's right this Saturday, June 21st, is the official holiday for skaters all over the world, Go Skateboard Day. So whatever you have planned on Saturday you better cancel, grab your board and go skate! There are events happening all over the country so head on over to your local skate shop and get the scoop on your local Go Skate Day happenings.

If you're in the Reno/Sparks/Tahoe area, Out Of Bounds board shop is hosting a GSD event in the parking lot out in front of the store. There will be a BBQ, games of skate, A sidewalk sale, lots of sweet gear to take home, and an all around awesome time had by all. The festivities start at 11:00am. Hybrid Sessions will be there snapping photos and will have a full recap of the event

I know the crew at The Skateboard Market in Fort Collins have something cool planned for GSD but I don't have the details yet. Stay tuned in here for updates on what they're doing or just stop by the shop and talk to the guys about it... They're all super rad.

Skating has come a long way in the past few years so get on your board and go skate this Saturday in support of this most righteous holiday and help to keep skateboarding moving forward!

Transworld's And Now Premier - Reno

Transworld's newest skate film And Now premiered last Friday at the 10th Annual Transworld SKATEboarding awards and word on the street is the video is the real deal... Fully Flared style.

The film is being premiered right here in Reno on June 29 at 6:00pm at the Eldorado Hotel Casino. Out of Bounds board shop is putting on the event and it's gonna cost ya 10 bucks to get in. You can buy advanced tix at Out of Bounds or pay at the door. OOB is located at 235 E. Plumb Lane in Shoppers Square.

The hype surrounding this video is pretty intense so I'm super stoked to check it out. I'll post up a review after the premier. Hopefully it's as sick as everyone is saying it is!

Future On The Fritz?

Rumors are flying around the interweb that Future Snowboarding Magazine is shutting down operations effective immediately. If this is true I will be pretty bummed out. Aside from reading Transworld and Snowboard Mag religiously, I was really getting into Future Snowboard Mag. They had some very unique articles and a great website that I frequented. Hopefully the rumors turn out to be a big hoax... You know like.. "We're closing down the magazine....... Psyche!"

Shayboarder has a great good bye letter to Future posted that goes super in depth to what the magazine is/was all about. Check it out.

Standard AestheticaTrailer

This is the one I have been waiting for... From Standard Films comes the first look at their new snow video, Aesthetica. Standard had an absolute epic video this past season with Catch The Vapors, and this new one looks to be even better. Aesthetica will feature the riding of Eric Jackson, Mathieu Crepel, Torstein Horgmo, Mark Landvik, Mitch Reed, Kazuhiro Kokubo, Mads Jonsson, Juuso Laivisto, Chas Guldemond, and Johan Olofsson.

Mark Landvick is one of my favorite riders his part in Catch The Vapors was, in my opinion, hands down the best video part of the season. The dude in insane... He charges the big mountains like they're fresh groomers. I can't wait to watch this video to see what he killed this past year.

Still waiting on the new Absinthe trailer... Can't wait for that one either.

Peep the Aesthetica trailer here

Toy Machine Decks and Tour

The Toy Machine crew are a bunch of blood suckers but they are also a way rad company. They have a killer team, consisting of Billy Marks, Diego the Butcher, Nick Trapasso, Matt Bennett, Josh Harmony, Ed T, Johnny Layton, and Austin Stephens. They've also put out a couple super good videos. (Suffer the Joy, Good and Evil) Plus the company was started by Ed Templeton who is a sick skater and one of my favorite artists.

Here are some of the pro model decks Toy Machine is offering up, maybe you've seen these, but if you haven't then they're new to you! Eddy T paints and designs a lot of the graphics and they're all pretty cool.

The guys are hitting the road for the second time this summer for a tour of the west coast so if you're anywhere in the vicinity of these locations I highly recommend checkin out the demos, there will be some sick skating for sure!

The Gonz Robbed?

Airblaster recently announced the winners of The Great Grab Off photo competition where anyone could submit a photo of them self doing the most tweaked, boned, poked out grab for a chance win some sweet gear. I'm sure there were tons of photos submitted but the wizards at Airblaster chose these three as their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place photos respectively.

Kevin Wells - Behind the back binding?



Cameron McCutcheon - Double Ko-nee-chee-waaa... (Yea Banana!)



Brandon Whitney - Pokin your eyes out

But Wait!! There must be some kind of mistake... How did our fellow shred crew member Jon "The Gonz" Gallegos not take first prize with this twiiiisted method?! WTF? Was it just too steezy for the competition? So rad the judges' heads exploded? Perhaps a better photo from the photographer? (Brian that's probably you) Or maybe he should have submitted the photo to the contest! Damnit... Oh well, still a sick method on a Loveland Pass kicker.

The Gonz - Ninja Steez

Vans Vault Fall 08

Well if you can't tell by now I'm more than a little biased towards Vans. I really don't even talk about any other shoes or shoe company because in my opinion there are no better shoes to skate or look fresh in than Vans. Maybe I'll expand my horizon's in the future and talk about some other companies... I like a couple styles from Emerica, (like these and these) and these from Lakai. But for now I'm just going to stick to what I love best. Vans is coming out with some sick shoes this year already and they now have their 08 Vault line up on the Vans website. There are a couple super cool artist colabs and and a few others that I'm really stoked on. These should be dropping late summer/ fall so make sure to peep the whole 08 Vault line up, find the nearest dealer and get your hands on a pair of these!

Here are a few of my faves


Photos: Hypebeast

Rome SDS No Correct Way Trailer

Add it to the list... Looks rad, check it out HERE.

Dig It

Here are a few really cool skate vids I've come across in the past couple days.  The first is from the Girl skate crew on tour down under called Yanks on Planks.  It's rad.  Next up is Easy Steady, a really cool vid filmed in kind of like a 3/4 speed and featuring the Chocolate team.  Super awesome.  And lastly is a contest promo video of the Roof Top Rampage which is going down this Saturday June 14th in New York on top of a building.  Way fresh.  So do yourself a favor and peep these vids... They should be viewed and throughly enjoyed by all.  

New Snow Trailers

There's going to be some siiiick snow vids comin out for the 08/09 season... CLICK HERE to check out a list of all the trailers and get stoked!

When Life Gives You Lemons...

You get on your blog and write about it.   I've been slacking pretty bad lately about getting awesome new content up on the Sessions due in large part to my summer internship falling through at the last second, sending me on a scramble to find another one so I can fulfill my graduation requirements.  And also because my pops is livin it up old school style and doesn't have internet access at his pad... yet.  

So instead of spending the summer in sunny Irvine, California, riding waves everyday, hangin at the beach, and checkin out all the hot babes, I'll be spending my summer at home in good ole Reno, Nevada.  So to help all of you loyal HS readers out there better understand my absence let me elaborate a little.  The construction company in Irvine I was supposed to work for (who shall remain nameless) was supposed to find me an AFFORDABLE place to live for the summer.  Now I know how ridiculously expensive it is to live down in SoCal but two (2) different people from this company told me they could find me a place to live at a reasonable price.  They said they usually just stick all the summer interns together in an apartment.  So after a couple emails of mine to the company went unanswered and I was three days away from driving down there I finally got and the horn and called my contact.  Now this is partially my fault for not calling sooner but like I said I was told multiple times by two (2) different people that I would have a place waiting for me.  

So I'm on the phone with the company and I ask if they have found me a place to live yet.  Now I'm expecting them to say, "Oh yeah we found you a place, it's at this location, you can move in at this time, you start work on Monday, show up here at this time and meet with blah blah blah...." Ya know the usual stuff a company tells a new employee.  But my conversation went a bit different....

Me: So have you had any luck finding me a place to live?

Lame Company: Oh no I haven't... We usually don't find the interns housing, they usually find their own. 

Me: What? You told me that you were going to find me a place to live for the summer...?

Lame Company:  Ummm...  yea that's usually the interns responsibility...

Me: Well you told me yourself that you would find me a place to live.  I'm planning on leaving in 3 days to drive down there and I don't have a place to stay yet....

Lame Company:  Well you might want to get on Craigs List and check out housing...

Me:  So have you even looked at any places?  I don't even know where to look, or where to find an affordable place...

Lame Company:  No I haven't personally looked at any places... and it's pretty expensive down here... You can just look anywhere in Orange County...

Me: (in my head) What The FUCK?!?! Are you kidding me?! (to the HR chick) Ok so you told me you would find me a place to live and you haven't.  I guess I'll start looking right now...

Lame Company:  Yea sorry for the miss-communication, good luck finding a place and we hope to see you on Monday...

Me: ..... Click. 

After I got off the phone I was a bit annoyed/frustrated/angry but more than anything just baffled.  Was I just hearing things when they told me they would find me a place to live?  So I got on Craigslist and started to search for a place to live.  Well long story short there wasn't a room to rent, that's right a single room in a place with people already living there, for less than 600 bucks.  There were rooms to share with people for less than $600 but moving in to the same room with a total stranger is a little sketch.  I have big plans for the winter (more on that later) so I have to save as much money as I can this summer and paying over $2,000 for 3 months rent would have put the pinch on those plans.  Plus I was so pissed off at this company I didn't want to go down and work for them.  Shit.

So I found another internship and everything is finally slowing down.  I was pretty bummed at first about not going down there because I reeeeally wanted to surf all summer and explore the SoCal skate scene... But such is life.  Reno is a rad city and it'll be a fun summer.   

Now that this whole shit show is over with I'll be back on the blog scene on a daily basis.  Love Bus Adventure recap is almost ready but the video is most likely going to be a summer project... That shit takes forever to edit.  Plus I'm switching over to imovie... So easy even a caveman could use it.  

Well that's what's been goin down in my life the past couple weeks... It's good to be back on the scene!

Top 5 reasons it'll be an epic summer in Reno

1.  Lake Tahoe... No explanation needed

2.  Free place to live and delish home cooked meals

3.  3am Awful Awfuls

4.  A brand new MacBook Pro provided free of charge by my new employer 

5.  Endless skate spots

I Got The BLU's

A couple weeks ago my sister (who is an unreal artist and will be featured on HS soon enough) and I were having an art related conversation and she was telling me about this independent amateur animation thing happening in L.A. and I mentioned something about how cool time lapse filming is and then she was like holy shit you have to check out this artist named BLU! So I got on the Interweb and navigated myself over to BLU's website and I must say this dude is out of his mind incredible. He's painted these giant murals on public walls in cities all over the world like Berlin, London, and Sao Paulo just to name a few, that are sooo sick and has a ton rad drawings up on his website.

The stuff he paints and draws is pretty weird and abstract and that's the reason I'm so stoked on it. I really dig artists who seem to have all these crazy ass ideas in their heads about what they want to create and they don't seem to give two shits about what anyone will think and just go for it. Paintings of nature or a boring portrait, however well they are drawn/ painted just don't appeal to me. I'm way more into the crazy, weird, abstract sort of art that will make you think a little. For example, these 4 BLU drawings capturing the apparent suicide of a librarian.









Fucking awesome! How does anyone even think of something like that? I guess I just really love art that is truly original and unique.

Now to blow your mind...

This time lapse / animation video called MUTO was painted on public walls and shot in Buenos Aires. Apparently he spent the entire winter working on this but when you watch the video it looks like it was all shot in one day. He makes it look easy but I can't tell you how difficult and time consuming this process is. Let me explain a little... Before computers and all the hi-tech shit we have these days to create animations, they were created by either drawing or taking photos of an object, moving the object every so slightly, drawing or taking another photo, moving, drawing/photo so on and so on... hundreds, or thousands of times to create the illusion of movement. Think of a flip book, or this type of photo animation for a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Now think of how long it would take to draw all those simple little stick figures in the flip book example and then try to imagine how difficult it would have been to create this video. Essentially it's the same thing but done on a much larger scale and with a tremendous amount of detail. Take the time to watch all of this it is absolutely mind blowing!

Incredible! I'm so stoked on this dude... He's got a super rad website with tons of drawings and wall paintings and more of these videos so make sure to go peep all of it. He also has a blog with some cool photos and updates and what have yous. Truly an amazing artist, if he ever sees this I hope he's stoked. WATCH THE VIDEO!!!

BLU's Website

BLU's Blog