YoBeat: Making Fun of Snowboarding Since 1997

by Jim Ferrigno
It’s not easy being a slave to the big bad corporate machine. Days are filled with long, painstaking hours spent punching your fingertips to the bone, only to have your boss steal your precious red swing line stapler and move your desk down to “Storage B.” Well, that’s at least how it is [...]

Yes ladies, Mr. Sell is single and searching for love.             p. Robbie Sell of Robbie Sell
With guns o’ plenty, a mean mustache and an apartment in Reno, Robbie Sell is nothing short of an American badass. After the tragic death of a once prominent snowboard career Robbie has recently [...]

The Olympics are finally over and Todd is no longer in a foreign country. For Todd that means he can finally see his family again, for us, that means we don’t have to think about ice dancing anymore. This week we are bringing back the Todd in High Fives with Todd Richards. Here we go…
If I gave [...]

Dave takes a hands on approach. He’s actually whittling a snowboard out of that snow bank.
Amidst a sea of giant ski brands and influx of corporate culture, there are still plenty of small snowboard brands, run by snowboarders. Monument may be out of Washington DC, not exactly a snowboard epicenter, and Dave Tran may [...]

Photo courtesy Quiksilver

Just four months ago, I had never heard of 16-year-old Sage Kotsenburg. Even while writing this, I can’t recall a photo or edit of the Park City hellion that wasn’t published by the Dew Tour. But since November, the 2010 Slopestyle Dew Cup winner has demanded my attention by shocking his way into my [...]

The top of the podium is a nice place to be.
Despite boyish good looks and solid snowboard skills, JJ Thomas has never been a Danny Kass or Shaun White type. He’s always been good, but just lacking that hype that creates true snowboard sensations. Maybe that’s why when JJ ended up in a 3-way tie [...]

Jonas is an artsy guy. Photo: Oli Gagnon
Back in my day if you were good at something you were expected to brag and exploit whatever special skill you possessed beyond a reasonable doubt. If you were lucky, others would see value in this talent and grant you some of life’s little amenities – like a [...]

TJ being deep.    p. Joel Fraser
TJ Schneider is one of the oldest CAPiTA Pro riders, one of the newest Bond Outerwear riders and one lucky guy for not blowing out both knees last year. With his personal video blog, The Snowboard Realms, up and running and Universal Healthcare giving his career the thumbs up, [...]

We’ve got Olympic fever and it’s mostly cause Scotty Lago made the team. Not only is he a good ol’ New England boy, but he’s down for a good time, even while trying to make Team USA. If anyone can show the world what snowboarding is really about (hint: not double corks) it’s Scotty.
As the [...]

For all this talk about how little we care about the Olympics and what not, we’ve really been paying pretty close attention to it. When the team was officially announced on Monday we realized that maybe we are even a little bit psyched to see how big of a junk show Vancouver 2010 really ends [...]

People from California are laid back.    p. Stan Evans
Growing up in Truckee, CA, Kimmy Fasani had nothing better to do than hang with the dudes and huck backflips. A few hundred  backflips later and Kimmy had three USASA National titles under her belt, she’d been on Burton, she’d been dropped by Burton, and she’d [...]

Photo: Keenan
When you’re not happy with your board sponsor in this day in age, there’s only one thing to do: start your own brand. Sure, given then current economic climate, and the responsibilities of running a company, it might not be the easiest proposition. But for Sean Genovese, it’s a walk in the park. Wait, [...]

Photo: Oli Gagnon
Meeting someone in person that you’ve grown up watching in videos or reading about in magazines can be a crippling mental experience – especially if it’s someone that you’ve held in high regards. It’s the first opportunity you’ll get to experience them firsthand, minus the ass-fooling effects of a media filter. Sadly, more [...]

5-0. Photo Neil Dacosta
Sara Phillips picked up her first sponsor in the US with a beer in hand and her mouth gushing blood. It wasn’t a publicity stunt, rather just what she happened to be doing at that fateful moment the Nitro TM ran into her. When you live the “snowboard lifestyle,” that’s just how [...]

Our weekly interviews, or as you are used to them, “Hump Days,” have exposed secrets good and bad to our readership in 2009. We learned who was junkie, who ate (literally) shit, all about Todd Richards and oh so much more. While we focus many of our interviews on the up-and-coming talent of today we [...]

The fateful day. Nothing but smiles.
Anytime someone is seriously injured snowboarding, it’s easy to start throwing blame around. And in the case of Mike “El Schwarez” Schwarz’s injury, there’s no shortage of culprits. Last year, at the World Quarterpipe Championships at Timber Ridge, VT, any paranoid person would say it was bound to happen. [...]

Ahh, snowboard photographers. Chicks love them, dudes want to be them. Oh wait, that’s the actual pro snowboarders. Snowboard photographers are the ones with cold fingers and (probably) massive debt who, let’s face it, probably weren’t very good at snowboarding. But a few lucky and talented individuals have had the pleasure of living the dream [...]

Johnny has a big mouth.

I still can’t picture Johnny “Lazz” Lazzareschi as anything other than a wound-up stick of a little kid. Time is a heartless beast though, and the lil fella’ is now a man sized 18 year old. This North Tahoe native has been perfecting his park game for years, and his new [...]

A nice home, great folks and plenty of options are supposed to create safe and sane children, but no one told Jarad Hadi. Having developed an unbelievable ability to disregard negative thinking, Jarad enjoys a care free lifestyle, independent of traditions and institutions that would otherwise attempt to control and limit the soul. Without the turmoil and impulsive decision making that [...]

This is where your snowboards come from.

Photos and Interview by  Jim Ferrigno
Just outside Reno lies Sun Valley, Nevada. It’s your typical Nevada desert town — small, simple and, as my friend so eloquently put it, “undoubtedly the largest trailer park in these United States.”  There wasn’t a visible building in the entire town that wasn’t [...]

Chad called me on the phone one night out of the blue and drunk.  Never even met the kid and he says, “When you gonna put me on Bluebird?” I’m like “Are you fucking kidding me - right fucking now.”  That was a long ass time ago.  Homeboy has been throwing down like a real man [...]

Dave Brewer posing with an oddly dressed June Bhongjan.  p. Dave Brewer

Simply put, Dave Brewer is a nice guy, and while he’ll never admit it, a great photographer. Dave’s range as a photographer expands far past snowboarding, as do all aspects of his life. When not traveling through Mexico in search of photos or proactively helping [...]

It’s easy to make fun of Grenade. Between Danny Kass’s antics, and the company’s complete makeover, one has to wonder what exactly is going on over there?  Then, when you add in the fact that almost everyone in snowboarding has worked for, hung out at, or done business with Grenade, yet only a few people [...]

Over the past 6 years, instead of just talking about “going green” Mike Parziale has been doing it. With his company, Grease Not Gas, Mike has helped many people convert their diesel vehicles to run on waste vegetable oil. He’s toured with bands like Piebald, embarked on adventures with Snowboarder Magazine, driven HCSC campers to [...]

Cooking is for girls. Cole Barash photo.
Interview by Jack Boyd
One of the nice things about conducting and writing a feature on a female snowboarder is that you know everyone is going to read it. Dudes are a given because they have a penis and those little dinks have minds of their own. Girls are [...]

Travis Paradise? Louif Rice? No, no,  Bode Merrill. He’s young, he’s reckless, he’s completely insane. Bode is the shit and he’s at the top of his game each and everyday. With the ender-ender in this year’s Absinthe release, Neverland, Bode is a name that you should definitely know (not to be confused with Bode Miller; [...]

Out of all the Party Time Product reviews, the glove reviews have definitely been the lamest. I mean, who really cares if you can eat tacos in gloves? But for the final test of the Drop, Dakine and Bonfire gloves we think we really nailed what matters. We lit them on fire. So now you’ll [...]

You gotta go big to freeze frame like this. photo: Amy Galbraith
Kumara Kelley is a bright-eyed early-to-bed early-to-rise lover of all things snowboarding, but it hasn’t always been this way. Once upon a time Ms. Kelley was a hard partying youngster circling the great snowboarding toilet. After a failed reality show, and a really rough time [...]

If you snowboard as hard as Party Time Nate, you probably sweat a lot. So how well do the latest first layer pieces from Bonfire, Dakine and Airblaster do when put to the test? Nate works up a sweat and tests each one in today’s PT review.

A normal dude, sitting on a normal trash can. Photo Mike Theines/Bald E Gal Productions
By Jack Boyd
I’ve only met Dan on one occasion and that’s when he saved my life.
Ok, not really. Except the meeting him once thing, that part is true. It was at a premiere party a few years back for Capita’s [...]

This pile of hair was eventually the prize in a HCSC raffle. Totally worth it.      p. Ian Clark
Kyle Fisher has one of the weirdest lives I’ve heard of. A snowboarder through and through, Kyle loves all things helpful and all things dirty. When we first met he was a long haired stranger. Now-a-days [...]

Born in the 925, aka East Bay, CA, Bev Vuilleumier has since grown to be a Tahoe resident, a fan of all things hip-hop, and one of the brightest young stars in ladies snowboarding. I once watched her almost die from a drunken eight foot fall into a pile of dusty rocks, and Bev has [...]

Last winter when Burton announced it’s 2010 Global Team Roster, a lot of names were conspicuously missing, among them David Carrier Porcheron. While many of the cuts came as a surprise, DCP’s absence was especially shocking. It seemed like he’d be a lifer with the brand, his first and only sponsor. But the kind and [...]

Nose press. Photo Ryan Taylor.
Joe Mertes is a quiet killer from Minnesota. Hardened from freezing cold winters and skilled from 1,000,000,000 laps through the park at Hyland Hills, Joe is at all times in full control of his snowboard. I spent some time riding with Joe in MN this winter and was impressed to see [...]

He’s no Jsak, but Louie Vito is the latest pro snowboarder to be cast on the mainstream stage of reality TV.  Whether you think it’s the greatest or the gayest thing you’ve ever heard, Louie is one of 16 stars on this season of Dancing with the Stars. For this Hump Day quickie, we figured [...]