Since it came up....
In response to your question, YES. I sure as fucking hope so anyway. I looooove seeing innovative and fresh tricks. I'm so over the switch up one-up-manship that has passed for "progression" over the last three seasons or so.
I don't know about you guys, but I was pretty much over super duper spinning on/off/switchups after:
1.) Candide 810 disastered a down box (Shot was in Skiporn and something else...can't quite remember.) Furthermore, it might even have been corked and grabbed. Correct me if I'm wrong. Slayed.
2.) Candide switch 630 disastered a down box at Winter X '07. Booyah
3.) Tom pretzeled everything ever. Dope
4.) Gus and a handful of other peeps inverting off of everything. Big ups to Jon McMurray of couuuurrrrse. Though, I'm in love with cannon boxes and all the possibilities there, so keep em coming I guess. Chea.
I'm not trying to shit on those tricks—all of them were rewind-rewatch-repeat hammers. And, at their respective times, they were innovative/progressive (NOTE: I'm sure other people were doing similar tricks, possibly even prior to the peeps I listed, BUT I'm not looking for a debate about that. I'm just using them as examples, so please don't flash your coreness by pwning me with your knowledge of obscure riders who actually did those things first. Gracias.).
Buuuut, it seems like since then we haven't seen much in the way of a genuinely unique outlook on jibbing. Until recently.....
I'm in love with a few "trends" I've seen come about lately.
1.) Taps. All kinds. Cole tapping the side of a down rail before sliding it in CASG Sundays. Wallisch slapping the side coming off in Feel Ghood. Hornbeck slapping the propane tank with his bases on a tip drop in Unaffiliated. Martini slapping the SHIT out of a wallride in Yesterday at Breck. Russell tip drop tapping a box before sliding it in "Into the Mind of" (I believe Perron does a tip drop into a layback in Slamina). Anything Max Hill does. And on and on.
2.) Presses. I've seen presses generally improve, and I'm excited to see riders press gnarly technical urban kinks in the future. Riders actually landing in presses as opposed to drifting into one. How about doing butters/spinning presses on boxes?
3.) The aforementioned blunts/crooks/overcrooks . What's there to say? They're fucking ill.
4.) Actually ollieing/nollieing onto rail and boxes. They aren't as common as some claim...let's face it; just because you jump, suck your knees up, and point your toes down before you latch onto a rail, it's not necessarily a nollie, hahaha. No hate, tip drops are dope in their own right. But, I'm talking about skipping a lip/kicker all together and ollieing onto a jib from the side. Particularly, when they're lipsliding the jib ala Casabon or Bergeron (can't remember who) in their newest edit. Soooo tight, and soooo tech.
5.) Creative grinds ala Andy Parry and Allen Lam. They don't ALL look so hot necessarily, but I'm loving the unorthodox approach. Royales, bindsouls, hippiekillers, etc.
6.) One footer variations. Never understood why kids hated on them in the first place...(well, Tanner hating on Gagnier at Winter X probably had something to do with it, in addition to the kneejerk refusal to overtly do anything rollerblade-esque). For my money, Ahmet's shit from France was silly, and any one footers on a Rainbow is sooo tight. I'm also talking 50/50s, nuggets, etc. The nuggets in the Gypsy edit are clean. I think seeing skiers slide anyway other than perpendicular to a feature is really refreshing for me.
7.) Reverts. Hornbeck/CASG. Yessssir. I swear half of them are the result of someone failing to grip and pop hard enough to get the 270 out, but who cares?! They look sooo real.
8.) Butters In/Out. I was at the Mt. Snow Dew Tour when JF Houle won slope. In his run, he butter 2ed on, and PRETZ 2ed out on a legit urban down rail.....the crowd went fucking crazy. It was probably the most tech rail trick I've seen in any slope contest. Ever. Anyway, since then (before then too...T Heed was doing it, and I know other peeps were doing them before then, but waaay more often now), I've seen a ton of people buttering into all sorts of jibs.
Buttering out...or maybe we want to call it manualing out? I don't know, but it looks so dope. I remember Heed doing it in Wicked, and this season Wallisch and Hornbeck have been doing it a bunch. Actually, Hornbeck has a shot in Turbo where he rides out of an urban in a tail press/manual, but I SWEAR it's just because he lands so far backseat and he's banging it so hard, hahaha.
9.) And lastly, just jibbing creative features, setups, etc. Snowboarders have been looking at jibbing in general in crazy and unique ways for years (Think Thank anyone?), and only now is skiing beginning to catch up with the likes of the Meatheads, and more specifically, the fucking deadly stealth jibninja Mr. Wesson. I wanna see people grinding, stalling, tapping, wallriding, and hand planting all kinds of random shit More of this please.
Soooo, things are moving in the right direction in my eyes, and hopefully some of the more subtle, yet tech and stylish, tricks that may lack the "wow" factor of huge spins in and out will be recognized for what they are. Should make judging rail jams and slope events interesting (read: controversial) this next year. And yea, I realize that many of these "innovations" are largely influenced, if not directly lifted, from snowboarding. I think that's ok, as long as we as skiers continue to push ourselves to be more creative on our own accord. We have unique equipment that provides unique opportunities AND drawbacks...finding the balance there is crucial in seeing this sport that we all love grow.
Sorry for the novel, but I think it's a worthwhile post/topic.
-Chris
