Top 10 Snowboarding Pop Princesses & Where You Might Run Into Them

It's another in our hard-hitting investigative series in which we out celebrity snowboarders - This week we track down our top 10 pop songstresses...

What’s Wrong With Snowboard Movies? - The Tyranny of ‘The Format’

Can you guess which snowboard video this describes?

• It starts with musical intro and a roll of the sponsor’s logos.
• After the opening credits it launches into the first segment featuring one snowboarder riding for the length of a song, it will be the second best snowboard section of the movie.
• Then there’s a short and mildly amusing candid interlude captured at some point during the filming process.
• The film then progresses into a series of sections, with an assortment of snowboarders, riding to a variety of tracks, with a few more short interludes.
• Then there’s a bit more of the same but a switch to Japan or the Southern Hemisphere.
• Next up it’s the slam section.
• Finally it all ends with the best snowboard section of the movie by the stand-out rider, which includes the biggest single trick.

Sound familiar? It should do because it roughly describes almost every single snowboard movie ever created. It’s what, for the purposes of this article we are going to call ‘the format’. ‘The format’ has been the dominant type of snowboard movie for over twenty years, and it’s been copied and rehashed to a point well past it’s sell by date. We've reached a situation where there’s now a whole generation of snowboarders that don’t know anything else but ‘the format’ and because of that it’s become even more pervasive. Is ‘the format’ something all snowboard movies are doomed to repeat forever or is there another way?

Pro Snowboarder Autobiographies - The Mega Book Review

This week we review every single pro snowboarder autobiography ever written…

Craptions - The top 10 crappiest puns in the October edition of Snowboarder Magazine

It's sometimes said that puns are the lowest form of humour, but for years I've argued that the dubious honour should actually go to the likes of anagrams, pranks, mother-in-law jokes, slapstick and Garfield. At least that's what I believed before I picked up the October edition of Snowboarder Magazine on my last trip to the US. Here are the ten lowest points, in a new low point, for the now proven lowest form of humour...

Twitter Bombing #skishow2012

Illicit went to the Ski and Snowboard Show and had a go at live tweeting the experience. For those of you that missed it, here's how it went...

How Dangerous Are Avalanches? - A Statistical Avalanche

Over the last few weeks ESPN have been releasing some great articles on the effects of avalanches in the US. They’re now mid-way through a run of six articles and they’re also mid-way to scaring me into never snowboarding off-piste again. It’s time to take a look at the stats and see just how close to a horrible avalanchy death we really are…

Top 10 Lift LOLs & The Bottom Half Of The Internet

In the last article we wanted to test the hypothesis that the only two things people read about were tits and Shaun White. To test it we combined the two topics into one composite article and bloody hell was that theory proved correct. So far 9,382 people have read the article, 1,272 people shared it on the Facebook, 893 people hit the Like button and 4 people took time out of their busy schedules to complain  Based on the evidence we've learned that we should either just focus on Shaun White and tits from now on, or focus on testing scientific theories. We've chose the second option, so this week we test another theory:

It's said that if there were an infinite amount of monkeys hitting keys at random on typewriters, they would eventually produce the works of William Shakespeare. To test this theory we constructed YouTube. Let's see how close we've got to producing reams of great literature...

50 pictures of Shaun White being a dick

The other day, while we were Facebook stalking, one of our imaginary friends mused; "So far what I've learnt from working in Action Sports media is that the only 2 things that sell are tits and Shaun White". Well, we've done tits to death, so here's fifty pictures of snowboarding's very own ginger Brian May...

Reports of the death of snowboarding are greatly exaggerated. + How to get more women into snowboarding

Earlier this year Nate Fristoe from the consulting firm RRC Associates presented some worrying statics on the current situation in snowboarding titled ‘The Rise and Stall of Snowboarding’. His speech resulted in what Transworld Business described as a “media blitz” or as we’d describe “a couple of obscure articles” foretelling a decline in snowboarding. Earlier this month Transworld Business printed Fristoe’s presentation in full. The data was interesting, there were oodles of charts and everyone loves a good chart, but some of the interpretations were very questionable. Do we need to worry?...

The 2012/13 Snowboard Porn Product Guide

Each year the snowboard magazines (or treeware as they're know by the incredibly wanky word I heard for the first time today) churn out a special edition introducing at the newest snowboards and gear. The gear guides that are produced is usually a endless, and not all that exciting or useful array of pictures of snowboards for people to peruse. We felt that the format needed spicing up a little...

Slash 'n' Grabs & The Case For Unbranded Snowboard Stickers

Last season, in Whitelines Episode 99,Ed Andrews wrote a nice piece of guest editorial about manufacturer branded stickers. Not sure if you read it, it was easy to miss even if you had the magazine, because like me you were probably distracted for at least half the time it took to read the magazine as you tried to get your head around the Xavier de la Rue insanity on the front cover...

Urban Dictionary & The Sordid World of Skiing

Last time out we took a look at what the Urban Dictionary could teach us about snowboarding. One the the main things we learned is that we should hate all skiers. This week we do our research into these nasty little skier fellas and see what they are all about...

The Urban Dictionary Guide to Snowboarding

What would happen if you used the Urban Dictionary as a reference to learn the language of snowboarding? ...

The Tyranny of Choice – A problem for snowboarding that’s waiting to be solved

Traditionally we consider choice to be a good thing, but is it really?

The Hypersexualisation of Snowboarding – 12 Pro Snowboarders Who Got Their Kit Off For Mainstream Magazines

Photo by kind permission of Nathan Gallagher, who is not at fault for, and bears no responsibility for, the subsequent hacking up, crude Photoshoppery and desecration by larey scribbling, of the original artwork

I was reading this interesting article in Huck Magazine by Cori Schumacher about the recent trend of hypersexualising female surfers and the problems it causes. It’s an interesting and thought provoking read. Anyway here are the professional snowboarders who have decided to get in on that trend by posing for glamour shots in mainstream magazines…

The Faceless Corporations That Run Snowboarding

A couple of years back we took a look at all the big faceless corporations that exist behind the familiar brands of snowboarding (and skiing, and skateboarding, and surfing, and now rollerblading) and it was surprising to see just how big and seemingly unrelated to the sport they were. It's time to take another look and see what's changed over the last two and a half years...

The Snowboard Masterpieces of Fine Art America

We're back after a temporary travelling-in-the-middle-of-nowhere caused hiatus. This week we look at a site you're all familiar with called Fine Art America. No? You must have heard of them. Its the only place to be for all things art according to their home page: 

Fine Art America is home to 113,275 of the world's greatest living artists and photographers. Browse through our collection of 2,918,037 images - all of which can be purchased as framed prints, canvas prints, greetings cards, and more. When you're ready, we'll deliver a museum-quality masterpiece right to your doorstep.

It must be good, that's 7.5 times more museum-quality masterpieces than the Louvre...

Yahoo Answers: Top 10 Unintentional Innuendos

Rapper Slash Snowboarder: Top 15 Celebrity Snowboarding Rappers

A week ago I’d just started to research another in our entirely vapid series of celebrity snowboarder spotting articles and I was checking an old article we’d done on Adam Yauch when, bang, my TV decided to hit me with the news that he had just died. Shitty news. Freaky timing.

For what it’s worth here’s a list of famous rappers that snowboard…

Top 20 Dumbest Snowboard Questions on Yahoo Answers...Answered

When you have a question to ask that's so stupid you can't ask anyone you know then why not post it on Yahoo Anwsers, the internet's repository for defeat. Today we try to help these people by answering some of their snowboarding-related conundrums...

Current State: Sandboarding

Following the success of David Benedek’s book Current State: Snowboarding and now that it’s the end of the season we thought we’d dissect snowboarding’s summer cousin, sandboarding…

Unusable Snowboarding Stock Photography

"Picture editor, I need a photo for a story we're printing about snowboarding."

"No problem. Do you want the snowboarder to be doing anything specific?"

“Yeah, I need an action shot, get a picture of them jumping”

“Should be simple enough. Do you want them jumping in a park or do you want a freeride shot?”

“What the hell does freeride mean? Is it one of those Instagram filter things? I like the park idea though, it's much more original than a plain old mountain. Let's switch it up even more and have them jumping in the middle of a city street, without any snow.”

“In the middle of a road? Are you sure, it will only be a foot high standing jump and it will look really awkward.”

“Of course I’m sure, do you think I’m an idiot? Also I want it at night, the snowboarder needs to look petrified and I need him to be chased by a huge Ukrainian prostitute.”

“Really? Is that all?”

“Oh yeah, the snowboarder needs to be Todd Richards.”…

Women Who Can't Carry Snowboards

If you're editing a newspaper and you need to rustle up some photos to quickly tart up a crappy article about snowboarding, then you can turn to stock photography for help. Unfortunately the models don't have the first clue about snowboarding...

What we should have done this winter if we were real men

For some time now we’ve been coming to the horrifying realisation that, despite engaging in what is commonly regarded as being an extreme sport, we’re more than just a bit soft in comparison to our forefathers. We came across these old men’s magazines from the 50s and 60s and apparently this is what we should have been up to this season if we were real men...

Legends of the Fallen – Vintage Snowboard Stickers Celebrating Lost Snowboard Brands

The early days of snowboarding were a time of invention and excitement. Every other day a new company would pop up with a new game-changing idea or innovation. Some of those early developments have gone on to become an integral part of snowboarding today, but unfortunately some of the companies that created them didn’t make it. This week we take a look at a few of the early pioneering brands that made a big impact on snowboarding but who ultimately bit the dust, and we celebrate their impact through the medium of stickers…

Current State: Snowboarding – A Book Review

From the man who brought you, the first ever frontside double cork 1260, the seminal film Afterbang, the seminal film 91 Words for Snow, the seminal film Lame, a bunch of other seminal films (and no, not that sort of film), the perfect kicker and the winner of the converted iFPackaging Award of 2008, comes the much anticipated book Current State: Snowboarding. We got our hands on one this week and here’s what we made of it…

2012 - The Year of the Pro Snowboarder Action Doll

2012 is going to be the year of the pro snowboarder action figure. Until now only 6 snowboarders had been lucky enough to be immortalised in plastic for eternity, but this year there’s a deluge and another 16 lucky snowboarders will get their own Mini-Me’s.

Here’s a look at the runners and riders…

Illicit Snowboarding got a mention in Whitelines...sort of

We were flicking through issue 101 of Whitelines magazine this week when we were surprised to see our site getting a mention. Ed Andrews, the Online Editor of Huck Magazine, has been writing a good value opinion column for Whitelines this season and it looks like we inspired his latest one. The only downside to the whole affair is that we didn't actually get named...

Made in ? - Snowboard Brands from Unexpected European Countries

Its trade show silly season in the snowboarding world. SIA, the US’s major show just finished on Sunday, and without giving anyone time to get over the hangovers, Europe’s biggest show ISPO also started on Sunday. That’s a bitch of a clash of schedules for anyone in the snowboarding industry.

Now that the trade show circus is in our neck of the woods we thought we’d take a look at the industry in Europe. Specifically we thought it would be interesting to ignore the traditional big guns of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy and see what the other places have to offer. And to keep the list just partially sane we limited ourselves to just looking at companies producing snowboard. See how many of these oddly located brands and manufacturers you recognise…

PHART (Photography Art) - The fine art of the ski resort

Just been to the London Art Fair (coz I'm all cultured 'n shit) and spotted two photographer/artists who are both hitting up European ski resorts for inspiration. There were a couple of photos that caught the eye... 

A Compendium of Naked Snowboard Calendars

If you like the Western Christian Gregorian calendar, and you like naked people then here’s what you need to organise your life this year…

The Specialisation of Snowboarding

Back in the 70s and 80s snowboarding was a bit simpler. You grabbed a snowboard which would be pretty much the same as everyone else’s snowboard, you went to one of the few places that allowed snowboarding, hung out with the small but close-knit community of fellow snowboarders, if you got good you could compete with any other snowboarder in the slalom and the halfpipe in the few events that existed and if you were really good you could star that season’s film.

Then all of a sudden things started to get a bit more complicated…