The strange state of snowboarding

[philw]

Seems like the euro kids are much more in tune with alpine gear and racing.[...]

Well the culture here, Europe, has always been a bit different. We never had the "bad-ass" marketing thing, so we weren't banned from anywhere, and you always had mixed groups of boarders and skiers. I think that was just marketing, plus we had a lot of mono-skiing and other stuff around too.

There are still many more people on hard gear in Europe than in North America, and it's easier to buy the gear. However I think the soft culture is winning out... although I find French kids dressed up in LA street clothes a rather strange concept, they all wanna be like you. I guess they have Hollywood's images in mind, rather than the obeseity statistics;)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the UK has a more North American outlook than the mainland on this. In the last few years I've never met another UK hard-booter. The locals think it's a different sport; the snowboard "instructors" teach sideslipping. Most boarders here are the functional equivalent of snow-plough skiers.

What goes around comes around. I think we're screwed for this generation, but sooner or later someone will rediscover competence on a board. Or they'll all go back to skiing. Sideslipping just doesn't look that much fun, however hard you market it.

[Vahur]

...and the hard boots look like something Robocop would wear.

Nah, Kevin Costner had hard boots in Waterworld (although I'm not sure, that they were snowboarding ones) :)