Sit back and read this - J Lev Q&A

The master speaks the truth

Best Q&A to date.

Yeah! Best QA ever. Been following Jason Levinthal, and been loving what he's doing.

That was a great read. By far my favorite Q&A piece.

Not sure how I had never heard of him, but he is awesome. His work-ethic, his vision, and his honesty are great!

I'm very curious - how old are you / how into the 'scene' are you?

No hate at all, I'm just curious. In my world its insane to not know who J-Lev is, but I'm 34 now and its easy to start to get out of touch with the new reality of life.

I'm super duper impressed with how this turned out. J told me that he hadn't ever answered such an in-depth interview in his entire life.

I'm amazed what we can come up with as a community.

What I hope is that this bitch shows up in the 2014 Yearbook. Reading this fucker as a feature in a super epic hipster print magazine is going to be epic.

now THAT was a fucking great Q&A.

haha, the only reason i asked that question was because i could have sworn when i was younger in a JLev interview he said he made the best chicken parm. i have no clue why, but that always stuck with me.

i can't wait to see what j skis is all about, this is going to be awesome.

Hahaha, the answer to the last question blew my mind. That's awesome.

very very good. So many puffy tongued skate shoes were in those pics, TC hipster filmer cool guy included.

I'm 18 and I've been into the "scene" for about 3 years now. NS is my source for 90% of skiing news/stories/edits/whatever. I thought that I follow the world of skiing pretty closely, not that closely it turns out.

Totally cool man, J Lev is old school which is why I was interested in your opinion. Its been long enough now that the younger folk getting into the scene aren't necessarily going to know the history of the founding people.

Nothing wrong with that and I'm happy you could learn more about an icon like this. Its just good to get that frame of reference once in a while. :)

Next step: Read up on who the New Canadian Air Force are.

We should basically open up a thread and have a good solid 14 pager speculating about this. I could see this being some of the biggest news that has hit the industry in a very long time.

Also to everyone else - please give this Q&A the upvotes it deserves. This is quality reading, get in there and show your support!

I'm stoked on J Skis to but this makes me wonder what all of his motives are with it:

"Where do you see the next big revolution in Freeskiing coming from? (New construction materials, design, organizations, ski terrain?) -Rowen"

"I don’t think skis will evolve as much in the next ten years as they just did. I believe there will be a need for half the number of models because everyone will ski between a 95-115 waist and 2 pair will cover everything for you. I think there will be hundreds of micro brew ski brands just like micro brew beers instead of only the top 10 or 20. -Jason"

The first part of that, really kicks me in a weird way. Personally I feel like the industry is super stagnant when it comes to gear construction and design. Aside from shape, what internal changes have been made to really change skis in the last ten years? For the most part skis were and still are metal edges, wood cores, fiberglass, epoxy, and some form of plastic base and topsheet. I think there is soooo much we can do to modify or completely change this construction to really make some bomber and fun stuff to ride. Not too many people seem willing to go after that though, and if Jason himself who is very forward thinking has a mentality that things won't change, then what can we expect from J Skis?

Who knows, maybe he's got some crazy ideas and feels as if they're nothing super amazing; or could he be bluffing and be looking to keep some things under his own hat? Or his focus isn't in revolutionizing the hell out of everything right now, and he's looking to get walking before he goes running? Maybe I'm just super cocky and can't bring any of my own ideas to terms with reality? We'll just have to wait and see though, and I really do hope J Skis produces some kick ass and cool stuff, and I don't doubt he will have a problem with this.

P.S. This is really micro-analyzing one scentence but if I can be the catalyst for some conversation around it, then I'm cool with that. I also love it when NS has good content to converse about!

Great read!

From his website:

'Limited skis, designed by Jason Levinthal, sold direct.
I started this new ski company the end of September 2013. My goal is to create a ski company that moves at the speed of thought. I’ll start by taking the company itself from concept to skis in people’s hands in 8 weeks. Jskis.com
Follow my progress here'

STOP THE PRESSES! WE'VE GOT A LATE ADDITION!

What is your favorite LINE ski you've created? -dgraves

I always had a ski that we internally referred to as my pro model jokingly because it was the one that I influenced the graphics on the most and it was a model I rode almost exclusively for multiple seasons.

Remember I’m an east coaster, so here they are in order from most recent:
Blend 172
Anthem 171
Mothership Flite 172
Twelve Sixty 164
Jedi 98


What if these are going to be the lineup of J Skis! I would kill for some 1260's and Moship Flites.

https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/forums/readthread/thread_id/759192/

These Q&A's, especially this one, are better than anything a magazine has ever done.

As for J skis, I wonder how he's going to approach it in a way that is different than what has been done before. That seems to be what drives him.

I'm convinced the next step in skis is materials. But with that would come a lot of cost and the traditional materials today are already doing a pretty good job.

i hear ya Doug, i work at a ski shop and we just hired some park rat kids and they have no idea who Shane Anderson, Kent kreitler or Mike Douglas are. It shocked me they didnt know the "d-spin" was named after douglas.

Holy moly this took me back. I remember incessantly trying to convince my dad that "twintips" weren't a fad.

Upvote this excellent piece of literature. Best q and a yet.

word.