This post is probably a lot more pro skiing-ski scene information than my average regular reader is going to be interested in. Then again, I don’t think I have many ‘average’ readers left, so there. And, even though the subject of this post is skiing, the theme is irony, which is something anyone can relate to.
To summarize, if you’ve been to a ski mountain lately and noticed the kids wearing dumb-large T-shirts, sliding down kinked rails (on a ski slope?) and afterbanging to whatever bad hip-hop it is that’s blaring on their low-riding SkullCandy headphones, you can basically thank Tanner Hall. That’s right, the very guy in the video below–wholesale hating on the new school ski scene–is the one who practically invented it.
It’s hard to beleive that a 26 year old guy from Kalispell, Montana, who used to roll up to ski events seriously blunted with an entourage that wouldn’t have been out of place on the To The Extreme / Vanilla Ice Tour would turn out to be the most influential skier of the past 20 years, but he did.
Two things Tanner had going for him, that only his parents can be thanked for, is being 14 years old in 1998, when Salomon introduced the first twin-tip ski, enabling skiers to land and ride backwards, aka switch. This was also around the time when Johnny Mosley unleashed the 360 Mute Grab in front of millions of people during the 1998 Nagano, Japan Winter Olympics. A new trick that would forever make the daffy, backscratcher, mule kick, and spread eagle uncool tricks only to be broken out in situations of extreme irony, ie spring skiing, or skiing in your dad’s old 1 piece. So, while Tanner obviously has prodigious amounts of ski talent and the requesite Boing quality internal gyroscope all great hucksters seem to have, timing was on his side.
As recently as 2002, Tanner was doing his own thing. His clothes were bigger than everyone else’s, his skiing was more laid back than anyone else’s and he valued the ability to do a trick fluidly more than how high he was getting out of a half pipe. He was also a serious asshole, which kept a lot of peopel at arms length. But then a funny thing started to happen. The whiz kids who were a few years younger than Tanner started wearing larger clothes, doing harder tricks, while oddly, reducing the amount of perceived effort exerted into each trick. Hipsters are very familiar with the trying my hardest not to try philosophy. See, there it is again. An unrelatable subject throughout which I’m insterspersing relatable themes.
In short Tanner was ahead of his time, and now he’s worried skiing is going to overshoot the dropzone. Rather than taking their insane quivers of tricks all over the mountain some of the best pro skiers are staying where they’re comfortable, in the park and pipe.
Oh my god, watch the video. It’s midnight and this is pointless. No more. I also am linking to one of Tanner’s recent half pipe runs at the bottom. It’s worth watching and will give you all a better idea of how crazy skiing has gotten and why I’m obsessed with it.
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