Hot Dawgs, Hand Rails, and A Full Body Cavity Search

Kevin our long time supporter, affiliate, and reviewer transplanted down to Southern California from Colorado. Now that he lives in Los Angeles it was only a matter of time before he made the pilgrimage to Bear Mountain. What better event than Hot Dawgs and Hand Rails to indoctrinate him into SoCal shred culture? Here’s what went down at the 8th annual HD&HR event.

With winter around the corner and summer finally losing its grip Bear Mountain puts on a contest with a one day park set-up and a choice of riders to play on it. Sun, pros, wannabes, industry insiders, those who wish they were, drunks, shirtless bro kids, and plenty of free product.

The setup looked good with some fun options. They continued the wall ride this year but added a roof and a creeper rail with steps at the bottom. It made for some gnarly hits and gave some of the riders some trouble. On the other side of the setup they had a fairly basic down flat down rail. What made that feature challenging was the end of the course. It was basically a close out and something a lot of the general public doesn’t think about. When you come in hot and gaped the flat to a front board or similar down trick you had a lot of speed to kill. If you don’t kill it, you kill the crowd at the bottom. Jake Kuzyk gave a fair demonstration of the danger of closeouts on the kink this year launching himself over the bails and fence after he failed to control his landing off the kink causing mayhem with the spectators.

So who else got this good of an angle to get a shot?

Going skate style down the bank into the jibs.

The popular feature this year was the yard gap double down bar. On the wall ride side it was a basic down bar and the kink rail side had a little bit of a flat section before the down with a right-bend at the kink. The two were connected with a bar and beyond that was a gap to snow, the gap filled with a grassy yard. Front flips, a lawn dart by Dylan Alito, and many a 360 were blasted over this. Again, what really brought up the difficulty for the yard gap was the lack of a real run out once you landed. If you didn’t stomp you’re landing you were in for a wash out or a crowd dive and as the day progressed it turned into a miniature pond skim.

Oh look a rail!

The one thing no one took into consideration was that this event went on for hours and the riders were hiking after every lap. It takes enough energy to throw a gap to lipslide over the yard to one of those down bars, but to do that all day will tear any athlete up. An hour practice, semi finals, and then finals with about a 20 minute break in between each session. The jam format just pushes the riders to try things they wouldn’t in a standardized contest. It means they can try for their harder stunts instead of a banger full run. Some notable stunts I remember were a gap to backside lipslide over the yard, a 360 gap-the-flat to 50-50 on the kink, Dylan Alito’s front flip creeper on the wall ride, a wall ride to backflip by Cody Boan, a couple 720 and 540 wall ride attempts, 270 gap-the-flat to front board on the kink, and plenty of spin in pretzel outs on the down bars.

Now enough about the event, how about some shenanigans I got into, eh? After the last heat my brain had turned to mush from all the hammers I had bore witness to, or it could have been the lack of food and standing in the sun frying inhaling every version of Axe in Southern California. Being that I, like many other people, carry something for that in my car I headed out into the parking lot to relieve my new found annoyance. As I put a few in my hand I noticed Johnny Rent-a-cop approaching. He sees the pills and gets just a little tense then proceeds to ask to see the rest. After seeing the rest he gets flustered and asks what they are. I tell him its all Ibuprofen as he asks me to exit my vehicle. Now getting a bit over zealous he calls over reinforcements and his boss has me assume the position and pats me down all while asking the usual do I have any bazookas or machete’s on me. He like his little minion then proceeds to ask the exact same questions about my little pills. Then comments why I need that much ibuprofen, as if I’m taking enough to kill a full grown unicorn. A little while later while I’m standing there with my thumb in my ass he tells me that it doesn’t look like Ibuprofen. Because small, round, red pills are all the rage for designer drugs like ecstasy as they have now concluded it is. Now it goes from awkward to really interesting as he cuffs me, calls the sheriff who is also working the event in a security capacity, and gives me the you’re not under arrest deal. If I’m not under arrest then why the hell is all 110lbs being hand cuffed? What am I going to do I’m built like a 10 year old girl not some roided out bad tattooed bro-dozer driving douche. Now the sheriff of this one horse town gets there and asks what’s up. Asks me what the pills are and upon telling him he then prods the pills for about 2 seconds and declares they are all indeed, Ibuprofen. So I’m finally free after they search my car for anything else that is illegal and without getting the long arm of the law rammed up my ass literally. I don’t blame them though, or security after all this is SoCal. So fair call on his part plus with it being over 100 pills that would have been the bust of his life for sure. Although I’m sure I would have made it on the cover of prison bride monthly had they arrested me.

SoCals finest!

Free product is probably what drew the most people up into the SoCal mountains to witness the shred. Walking around tent city the question you heard the most was “Do you have any stickers? Hats? Shirts?” This seems to be the common thread to any public event where vendor tents clutter the boundaries. And you have to wonder whether it’s something to hate, or something to just accept and deal with. On one hand you are getting many more people to see snowboarding and with the setup for HD&HR that’s a good thing. It lets the general public see another side of snowboarding and another set of pros. You won’t see Jake Olson-Elm, Harrison Gordon, or Scott Stevens at the Olympics spinning to win in the trick ditch. In this contest you get to see them in closer to the environment they prefer, the street! One of the better adjectives you can use to describe the public at an event like this is drunk. Lots of beer and mixed drinks were downed by the bros and ho’s that filled the straw field at Bear. A good example of this was Signal’s hot dog eating contest. Sign up before 2pm, come back at 2:15 to see if you are one of the 10 guys or 5 girls picked to try and eat 5 hot dogs with buns faster than the rest. If you do, you win a brand new 2012 snowboard, and free lunch. Time came around to announce but we waited a couple minutes to let some stragglers file in. A couple drunk bro’s were getting rowdy about the late call complaining, “You guys said 2:15 its almost 2:20 what’s up? Come on let’s get it going!” Bro seriously? they’re giving you a snowboard, chill the fuck out and cut your roid intake down.

Free shit comes first snowboarding comes second!

That sums up a lot of what was up there, guys with hot heads that love to get drunk and be obnoxious. And along with that comes their female companions, which is worse… you decide. Bro girls act drunk at the smell of alcohol, they’re loud, and really just the classiest of people. This is all of what snowboard events boil down to, bro’s, ho’s, vendor whoring, free product, and so many bad tattoos. I can not stress to you how many people had tattoos that looked like a monkey with down syndrome drew on them.

This was my adventure into the land that is dubbed BroCal. I now understand what I’m fully in store for this winter as I now call California home. But I will say that Bear kills it with making an event that’s enjoyable to watch and shows another side of snowboarding.

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