Now, this is more than a rant, but I am going to start off with one so please excuse me.
I see a slowly changing scene, but for the past few years, skiing has and continues to still hold an image of something to prove. This goes beyond a few individuals with unique style or their own lifestyle. It goes to a point where every alternate style that comes along, the community feels it needs to piggyback onto in order to identify itself. The biggest one is an urban, ghetto/ hiphop scene. Same goes with all the 80s steeze, another image that has been adopted and overused to try and bring an image to the sport.
Face it. Most of us are white, live in the mountains, and have thrown away our own culture on the hill in favor for being either ghettoized or wearing banana yellow stretch pants for the sake of trying to seperate ourselves.
This not only goes for the culture, but design inside the industry. Armada's site is their best to date, but all the "progressive" brands out there have terrible design, one that latches onto one of these cultures that are no more than a crutch.
I'm sorry, but it is not cool to wear chains and act like you're from Detriot when you've never left Aspen, or dress up in a one piece and scream at everyone because its funny. Pimp suits? Please. It's not cool, its insecure. We have no reason not to be secure in the success and beauty of our sport, and we have no reason to latch onto cultures that are not our own. I do however respect and encourage individuality, that is what makes a sport unique. However its a mass adaptation of an alternative culture to attempt to bring credibility that really annoys me.
The same thing happened in snowboarding, for awhile. Once however, the sport didn't need mirrors and facades to hide behind, those cultures faded to only individual expressions.
I'll give you a great example starting with design alone.
If you have the time, visit www.elansnowboards.com or www.burton.com, then compare it to Line's site. While the snowboard company sites have clean, modern design, Line's unfortunately doesn't. Last year it was more 80s, apparently its been toned down a bit, but its still far from what anyone would call progressive. I hate to rip on a company I respect, but I don't respect the fact that our sport doesn't even respect themselves.
I really wish we had the culture that modern snowboarding has. Much of that community has great style, respect, and attitude, and I feel skiing still has a long way to go. We could however get there much quicker if we just cut out the crap.
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