Tradeshow Hell – Part 1
February 4, 2010

It's game time for us to hit the tradeshow circuit. Agenda just passed, ASR is about to happen and the daddy of them all here in the states, SIA, is about to begin. After 37 years of SIA being held in Vegas, it's moving to Denver to be closer to the snow. Some people absolutely hate the move. I’m actually down with it, as it gives a totally different perspective on what really happening in our industry (not to mention I won’t get hassled by the hookers in the casino and I get to go to bed a little earlier...) Another plus is that we get to take our reps and go ride in the mountains before the show. Echo mountain is about 45 minutes from downtown Denver and they’ve supported us for a long time. In return we supply the park and lifty crew with custom gear. Hello Echo!

Let's do this fellas

Growing up in LA, I thought our mountains were small. Damn, I think this is the smallest hill I’ve been to. Actually it’s a snow park and not a hill, but it's hella fun.

Echo reps us hard. Check out the last pole on the main chairlift (I don’t think the Big B was pleased with their positioning, but oh well…)

Last run of the day and they took us to a custom 686 wall through the trees. The crappy thing is that I just slammed doing something stupid and hit a tree right before this picture, so I’m actually in pain, but that’s how it goes.

When I head to the hills, I see a lot of heads rocking our gear. I get more stoked when I see people sporting the old shit. (cuz it still holds up!) I saw this one dude that was wearing a jacket I designed close to 10 years ago. (It was in pristine condition and I almost asked him to do a trade so I can use it for the 20 year book I’m planning on doing...) I remember the inspiration for this came off this one shoe. I designed the jacket into an quilted eyelit gull wing motif.

In 2002, I did a 10 year retrospective and called it “A Decade of Individual Freedom.” Sounds a little corny today, but oh well, but so were the short shorts I wore in grade school.