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Thirty-two inch impact

Skateboarding a major element at this year’s TWSSF

If this year’s lineup is any indication of things to come, the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival, or TWSSF as it’s known by both lingo-happy types and the lazy, might want to consider adding another "S."

That would be S-for-skateboarding, a major element at this year’s festival. It’s impossible to miss. A public, covered ramp in Village Square has been embraced by skaters of all ages since the festival erected it last week.

More significantly, skateboarding is ruling the arts scene this year.

The Pro Photographer Showdown’s past winner encore showcase format means the return of illustrious shooters J. Grant Brittain, founder and photo editor of The Skateboard Mag, and Jon Humphries, whose work is a fixture in the pages of Transworld Skateboarding.

The Brave Art exhibition on display in a temporary space in the Whistler gondola building has a major skateboard focus.

New to the festival and curated by Cec Annett, a resident of Whistler and California, Brave Art features the 32 Inch Canvas touring exhibit of hand-painted skateboard decks. There are also old school designs by Wes Humpston – the original artist for the Dogtown Skates boards from the mid-late 1970s – and works by street artists such as Shepard Fairey whose Obey Giant propaganda designs have been embraced by the skateboard community.

Brave Art is also showing the Freshjive-sponsored Mad Dog Chronicles – a touring exhibition documenting the larger than life skateboarding and persona of original Z-Boy pro Tony Alva in the mid-late ’70s through the photography of Wynn Miller and the groundbreaking Alva Skates ad-designs of Eric Monson. Both artists were in attendance at the exhibition’s opening reception on Monday evening, along with Mad Dog himself.

Alva came to town for a special invite-only advance screening of the upcoming Sony/Tri-Star Pictures feature film Lords Of Dogtown , about skateboarding’s original ‘Z-Boys’ Zephyr Skate Team – a legendary group whose surf-inspired renegade street style is credited with defining modern skateboarding and changing the face of alternative action sports.

Alva is a main character in the film, which was written by Z-Boy Stacy Peralta, also the filmmaker behind the award winning documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, on which Lords Of Dogtown is based.

Lords

was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, known best for the edgy coming-of-age flick Thirteen . Both Alva and Hardwicke were guests of the event.

Hardwicke has accepted a last minute invitation to join the judging panel for the festival’s 72-Hour Filmmaker Showdown tonight (Thursday, April 14).

And if you want to track down Tony Alva go straight to the Whistler skate park. The active, Redbull-guzzling old-timer (he champions living sober and chemical-free over the "rock ’n’ roll lifestyle" he became notorious for as a teenager) has been sessioning the concrete bowls as much as he can.

A compact, youthful presence, more street kid than middle-aged man, Alva’s dark eyes are extra bright as he describes a love for concrete parks 30 years strong.

"That’s my favourite thing," he said. "I’ll ride wooden ramps and I’ll ride demo stuff but when there’s a free, no-rules concrete place to skate, I’m basically a chameleon in that environment. I can change my colours and adapt to pretty much anything."

An endorsement from Alva – who arguably invented the concept of pool and bowl riding – to a skatepark is a five-star Zagat rating to a hotel.

"It just feels really good to skate and breathe the air here," Alva said. "It’s really good to have a place for kids to skate so they’re not buzzing around, bothering the businesses."

A documenter of the So Cal skate scene since the 1960s, Grant Brittain also had high praise for the Whistler park.

"This is a weird place," Brittain commented, on hand at the park to watch his son. "It’s hard to find skateparks in Southern California where skateboarding is so big. (In Whistler) they actually build public parks where you don’t have to pay. In California, everybody is so sue crazy and paranoid they just won’t build anything unless it’s privately done or a major city. But then they put all these rules around it. It’s not a fun place to go like back in the ’70s.

"I think it’s just Canada," Brittain added. "They’re really accepting of everything compared to the U.S. We’re the land of the free but we’re really uptight."

It’s possible this year’s skateboard-strong festival may go down in the books as a novelty. The festival can’t do a Pro Photographer encore showcase every year, which means Brittain and Humphries won’t be presenting in the near future. The Sony screening is most likely an isolated incident. And Brave Art, should it become a fixture of the festival, wouldn’t be so brave if it kept showing the same content year after year after year.

But festival organizers have been professing their once double SS sport-focused event has broadened its horizons, becoming an event celebrating "mountain culture."

It’s a concept that continues to shapeshift as urban music artists like Kinnie Starr fit right in with storytelling nights arranged on the theme "Tales from the Mountains." Framed graffiti works adorn ex-ski rental shops and one of the biggest snow events involves the importing of an urban handrail structure onto an open slope.

While a literal third "S" would make for a cumbersome moniker, in the years to come a spiritual third S is definitely something Whistler’s mountain culture can celebrate.