Shaun White taking questions at the always-sunny Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Photo: Air + Style
Shaun White is taking snowboarding to Los Angeles. Air + Style Los Angeles, a “blend of action sports with live music, fashion, art, lifestyle trends and food” is set for February 21 to 22, 2015, in a snow-blanketed Rose Bowl. White said taking the “unique event” to L.A. for the last leg of the three-stop tour, “felt like the natural fit.” This is, of course, completely absurd.
The sixteen-story high scaffolding jumps to be constructed at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl will be blanketed by snow from machines, because by and large, it doesn’t snow in L.A. The other red flag is “action sports, live music, fashion, art, lifestyle trends and food.” A cross between the X Games and Coachella, as White characterized it to the Los Angeles Times. To “true snowboarders” this is an affront, a perversion of what snowboarding is. It’s a marketing stunt, and that’s fine.
Indeed, most snowboarders will never have an experience that resembles blazing towards menacing jumps in front of Steve Aoki groupies, with the possibility of winning a massive prize purse. But that does not mean White’s business project, that he has flavored with snowboarding, threatens the sport and/or lifestyle (or however you choose to refer to it). If anything, it is a booster.
White has recruited Olympic-medal winning snowboarders — and for the first time in A+S history, skiers — to showcase the most extreme feats humans can perform on snow, as a means to attract attention and inspire investment. A+S L.A. will have the best freestyle snowboarders and skiers, monstrous jumps, loud music, and a shot at capturing the spotlight in the entertainment capital of the nation. Minds will be blown. Seeing masters at work sparks the spectator to challenge their own perceived limits, to push themselves harder, reach further, and to get gnarly on snow. This is why snowboarding media exists.
So yes, there will be remarkable snowboarding maneuvers, inspiration for witnesses to take with them to the hill. But what of all the corporate buzzards circling on the edges, looking to pick the pockets of the amped up spectators? In this day and age, this is a given. Snowboarding is a go-to hook for advertisers trying to convey that “adventure” identity.
But the great thing about snowboarding is that big money cannot leach its bones dry. Snowboarding is awe-inspiring and captivating. Nothing can steal the feeling of triumph after learning a trick, nor imitate what it’s like to float on untracked snow. A+S sponsors and add-ons that have nothing to do with snow cannot mandate what snowboarding is. Snowboarding is something unique and intimate for everyone who does it, unreachable to all save for the individual. If anything, tastes of snowboarding, as bogus as they may be, can serve as a prompt to reconnect with one’s own passion for the sport. Be it in a goofy car ad, Nintendo video game, or an event heavily infused with brands and action-sports culture, whiffs of snowboarding whet the appetite of those who bear witness, accelerating them towards their next jump or hill bomb.
Finally, and White has cited this as one of his motivations for taking A+S to Los Angeles, it could introduce snowboarding to someone who might never have seen snow otherwise. What if White’s marketing stunt ignited a new passion in someone? That would make holding a snowboarding contest at the Rose Bowl of all places, more than worth it. If White’s aim to plant the seed of snowboarding in new areas plays out — and it likely will — he should take it to Dubai next year, and then on to the next location with music, art, and pop culture fans, who haven’t realized they’re snowboarders yet.
Regardless of how you feel about it now, everyone should agree that it would be great to see Los Angeles experience the same sort of success as last year’s event in Innsbruck. Photo: Air + Style
