You’d probably never guess that a TV weatherman living in Salt Lake City, Utah owns one of the most comprehensive collections of historic snowboarding memorabilia. His name is Kevin Eubank, and he’s been the chief meteorologist for Salt Lake’s local KSL, an NBC affiliate, since 2006. But as I mentioned, Eubank is also a historian. His home is filled with more Burton gear made between 1977 and 1990 than you’d even think existed.
There are outfits Eubank can piece together from decades-old catalogs, there are hats, collectibles, and it all helps tell the story of snowboarding’s history. Eubank hosted Burton Snowboards’ archivist Todd Kohlman, aka “TK,” and one of the coolest pieces the pair dug up was a prototype board (you can see it at the 11:00 mark, above).
Photo: Burton
“It was fun to see how those boards evolved,” Eubank says. He’d explained earlier in the day how Burton’s original vision for snowboarding had a strong influence from the slalom events and disciplines that dominated ski culture. Snowboarding as a counter culture sport was something that would need to evolve naturally, and Jake Burton adapted. The outfits and boards changed as that evolution occurred.
You might be surprised at how much that original prototype (BB-1) looked like a surfboard, actually. It was made of fiberglass, which is now as yellow as any old ’90s thruster sitting in your dad’s garage. It has a stringer, a foam core, a pointed nose, and even its tail is pulled in just slightly into a squash design.
So, how’d Eubank come across the relic? The person who sold him the piece worked in a ski shop, and somebody brought the board in asking to have bindings put on it. When the shop owner told the customer it wasn’t going to happen, the board was just…left behind.
“What I’ve been told is that was a template that (he) just practiced putting stenciling onto a fiberglass board. It wasn’t to ride.”
The board was made specifically for Burton to test out how designs and logos would look on the earliest versions of its commercial boards.
