INTERLUDE

in-ter-lude noun

1. an intervening period of time.

2. a pause between the acts of a play.

/'in(t)ər,lōod/ inter-dood?

Trade Show; a phrase that instantly puts dread into the hearts of even the most steeled industry veteran. At the national level, it usually means a week lost (two, including set up for exhibitors) in the prime of the snow season to travel to another city, spend the day on your feet, eating bad convention-center food, and going through the industry dog and pony show. If you were lucky, there were great after-party events. Still, of course, you had to drag yourself out of bed at 7 AM the following day because Karen and Chad from some backwater shop selling boating goods and patio furniture in the summer made an 8 AM appointment. Hopefully, the hotel coffee and concrete brick they tried to pass off as a bagel could hold you over until someone could make a legitimate food run. Let's not even get into the politics of snowboarding being "allowed" to attend ski-centric conventions (literally shoved in the back) or the insane parameters that the big shows placed on vendors that made the Multi Level Marketing schemes of a Provo stay-at-home mom seem tame by comparison. On the regional level, shows faced the exact opposite challenges. They were generally harried, unattended by the company heads, hyper-local vs. all encompassing, and typically tried to cram too much into a short duration. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

LPitfalls aside, there are viable motives to attend a trade show. After all, something keeps the industry coming back season after season, drudgery aside. The primary was the face-to-face experience with every facet of industry personnel attending. Everyone from pro riders, shop kids, marketing, media, company founders, product engineers, and every other industry role was there, and it was terrific. Zoom Meetings and Emails are sufficient for handling business, but being present, face-toface, is where relationships are built. Secondly, the on-snow experience was always a blast. Yes, there were issues here as well, BUT even a mediocre day on the hill will surmount any complications. The on snow was the place where snowboarding could be snowboarding. Free of the convention hall politics and headaches. I have stated many times before that snowboarding is always best as an industry when it is in control of itself, and on-snow events were a place that thrived off of that mindset.

IWords by Daniel Cochrane

The Interlude Snow Show, the brainchild of Chase Burch, profiled in our first issue of the season, is snowboarding and snowboarders stepping in to take control of their destiny within the trade show world. Fully aware of the previously mentioned ups and downs of trade show life, Chase set out to create a better model. The first thing I noticed about Interlude's early press information was its self-billing as a SNOW show, NOT a trade show. That was a great start. When Interlude's mission statement was issued, it furthered hopes for success and belief that Chase was on the right path;

Chase decided to re-invent, perhaps even perfect, the notion of what a snow show could and should be. The business end was relegated to evenings, and daytime hours would be allocated to snowboarding, which everyone would rather be doing anyway. Powder Mountain hosted both aspects, with an on snow-based at the top of Hidden Lake and the nighttime "business" side of the event in the valley at Bower and Arbor Lodges. Evening festivities would include chef-prepared meals and a main event that was more lifestyle focused than business focused. It was a gamble. It all looked great on paper, but how would it be received? Was snowboarding ready to embrace such a radical deviation from the norm?

Chase built it, but would they come?

Arkade made the trek to Eden on set-up day to see how it all would pan out. Set-up day was an unofficial on snow day, with show commencement and check-in officially beginning that evening. A foot of new snow made for many a last-minute set up that evening as hellos and high fives at Arbor Lodge in the morning quickly transformed into power euphoria up the canyon. When the fortunate made their way back down to set up, we headed down as well to get into "business" mode. Quickly, before the official launch, we knew this would be a success. Despite its smaller nature, we immediately encountered heavy hitters from the snowboarding world. Blue Montgomery (C3), Tim Eddy (K2), Matt Stillman (Rome), Bjorn Leines (Cardiff), Joe Sexton (Public), Benny Pellegrino (Nitro), Dave Marx (Arbor), Johan Malkoski (Union), and Mark Dangler (Capita) were all in attendance. The snowboarding industry had taken notice of Interlude. Would the shop community do the same?

We made our way to Bower Lodge for some delicious and muchappreciated food from Chef Wally Inouye. Perfect after a long day on the hill. Inside we also ran into a handful of other snow media folks: Pat Bridges, SKS, and Justin Meyer, to name a few. We worked the room seeing more friends from Utah and beyond. We met retailers, buyers, and shop owners from the Pacific Northwest, California, the Southwest, and the Midwest. It was so thrilling to see small shops with such a significant presence and given the attention and time they so much deserve. Interlude got it right. Interlude brought snowboarding together to celebrate snowboarding in a way only snowboarding knows how to do. We exited to get some air and were astounded at the line of attendees spilling out of Bower Lodge into the parking lot, each waiting to get their credentials and join the celebration. The following days, and evenings, were just what the industry needed. Chase and his group built it, and snowboarding, as it always does, showed up to support one of its own. Arkade is so proud of the community and of Chase. What a momentous occasion, showing that snowboarding's embrace of its DIY roots is still strong. Interlude 2024 is now in the planning stages.

AN INTERVIEW WITH:

Riddles crew was organically formed by Kevin Gillespie and Calvin Green as roommates thru 2017-2020. Both had been filming street and contributed to The Impaler videos over a few seasons. Then over the summers of 2018 and 2019 they filmed a skate flick titled "RAME" releasing it 2020. It was with the enjoyment of that experience and a new excitement of doing their thing collectively. That they then choose to continue to build on their skate video feels and make a snow flick with their own crew of friends who enjoyed searching out and setting up unique spots to shoot street. This eventually lead to the a two year piece titled "Chrome Portal" featuring, Kevin Gillespie, Calvin Green, Collin Maynard, Chaney Gilmore, and host of homies. Released November 2022 to a Minneapolis scene primed for a fresh take and view. Just what this well established base of riders had to share. Let's just say the fresh takes, easy style, smooth edit, and unique features added a new richness to a year full of "edits". Read on to hear their perspective on some of the ideas, spots stories, and project managing that it took to put out their first feature.

Robby: Robby:

Alright, Chrome Boys, so this was a two year project. What were some of the benefits from undertaking a two year project?

Kevin:

Um ahh I would say being able to be more selective with clips because after the first year you can kinda see what you’ve done and you can build your footage around that and it just gives you more time when you’re working, and life.

Collin: Collin:

I feel like we all work a lot and we pretty much go out on weekends anyways so it sort of makes the timelines longer.

Does it make the process easier?

Yeah, yeah.

Calvin:

I like that it gives you more time, but also having footage from the previous year to kind of build upon and gain momentum into the next season; that’s kind of helpful. You can figure out what you want to hit and you can dial it in a little easier.

You can look at what you have and you can diagnose what’s necessary around that?

Collin:

Calvin:

Robby:

Robby: Robby:

Yeah it’s kind of nice to not feel like you’re starting from scratch.

Right. Yeah, you can have, like, a solid foundation and you’re building from there.

Sure. So a lot of the clips are filmed at night, obviously because of work during the day. What percentage of the video do you think was filmed at night and what was your latest night?

Kevin:

Calvin:

Ummm I don’t know, probably less than 40% of the clips

There's a good split.

The night ones stand out more, I suppose.

Kevin:

Calvin:

Collin:

Kevin:

Robby:

The latest night was probably Calv’s spot where did that backlip in New Hope.

Oh yeah, that was probably like 2am? Because you hit it for a little while also.

Which backlip?

The gap to flat, backlip fakie.

What about your latest night, Collin?

Collin: Collin:

Kevin:

Uhhh not super late, but I feel like the Bakken one maybe? Maybe like 11ish?

That was such a sick night because we were just in and out and everything happened really quick.

Robby:

Back to the backlip, would you be able to share the process behind that?

Calvin:

Ahhh yeah. It was a gap to flat rail. So, we set it all up, I board slide just to test it and broke my board right away.

I only brought one board so I had to go home and come back. That’s probably a 40 minute round trip. Then set another board up, started hitting it again, then the drop-in broke that time. It’s probably like 11:30 or midnight at this point and so we fixed that and started hitting it again. Finally get it by like 1am then Kev hit it for a bit. It was a long night.

Robby:

What about the clip of Kevin doing the down flat jump to the sign? Can you talk about that one a little bit? I thought that was so sick.

Robby: Robby:

Kevin: How many tries did it take?

That one we went to that spot where Calv did that concrete ledge that drops. While we were letting the ledge ice over we saw that thing and decided someone should probably hit it.

Kevin:

Calvin:

Collin:

It took a while. It was like... I don’t know, a lot [laughs].

Yeah you kinda battled that for a little bit.

The camera took a shit on us too.

And then a clip I wanted to ask you about, Collin, was the switch fifty hop switch fifty?

Calvin:

We were in North [Minneapolis], and I don’t know, Uptown just wasn’t too far away. I think I had already done it regular with Justin. I sort of figured why not try it switch? I couldn’t really figure out speed the first time. And I think it was a pretty fried drop-in, too, like there’s this weird pallet sitting on the top that we probably didn’t need. And I completely forgot to dust the stairs so I ate shit a couple times.

Robby: Robby:

Calvin, what about you? You’re in a similar boat Collin?

Calvin: Collin:

I usually work like 9-4ish everyday. I feel like it makes you plan ahead a lot more and just go into the weekend with a plan of, like, what you wanna hit.

Robby:

Kevin:

I think I was pretty lazy that winter, or at least the second winter. I was working for a friend’s dad and they couldn’t bring me on full time. So, I would just board at the resorts all week while they were at work then we’d link up on nights and weekends.

We did have a good program going though. Like, 10-12 hour days on Saturday’s and Sunday’s. You spend your time a little more intentionally. You don’t really want to wait another week to try and get something - you know?

I know that music was a big issue [laughs]

Kevin:

I don't know - if a video doesn’t have, like, interesting music or memorable music or like introduce you to new music. It can make the video less interesting to me. That was just really important to me, I guess. To have music that kind of fits everyone.

Collin:

Kevin:

Sorry I asked you to change my song so many times.

I don’t know but that was sick; For Collin’s part we went through like, probably, 15 songs. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but there was a lot I threw into the timeline, so probably close to that. Once we were narrowing it down it was probably closer to like 4 or 5 that we really tried.

Robby:

Speaking of Chaney, he’s not here, but could you tell me about his pivot to fakie under that bridge? Ollie to tail tap, to fakie?

Kevin:

Oh, on the bridge pedestal thing? Yeah that was just one of the spots he wanted to do. When Calv and I pulled up they had already had it set up. Like, to the extent that they could, but the transition looked so meager. It looked huge because of the absence of the transition, but yeah it was a really funny set up.

Robby:

Collin:

Robby: Sick. He used a Bungee for that?

That’s probably my favorite clip in the video.

Collin:

Kevin: Kevin:

Robby:

I feel like that was one of the few Bungee spots, too. We didn’t really bungee at all.

Yeah once Calv made the drop in it was a lot of drop ins. Chaney winched one spot.

Which spot was that?

Chaney’s front board to the fence that Lamb filmed the fisheye of.

What about Eau Claire? I hear there was magic in Eau Claire.

Kevin:

Yeah, we ended up having a pretty sick squad, a whole bunch of people came together. There was nine of us, I think? It was me, Collin, Calvin, Chaney, Casey Pflipsen, Peter Limberg, Tony Wagner, Chuck and Haley Boucot. We set up this big wall to jump hit the first day. Chuck had wanted to hit this fence on the top of the wall. He had heard that we had the landing built so he drove there at like 7am or something from the Twin Cities. He got to Eau Claire super early and hit it first I think. Which was sick, it ended up being his ender in the Impaler video.

Robby:

What about your experience, Collin?

Collin:

All of Chaney’s stuff is my favorite. The clip he got in Eau Claire was sick. He comes down out of the woods, gaps over a little sidewalk to an out rail and fifties the rail into a wallride.That was amazing. It was a really fried set up. There was a pallet wedged up against the rail for the lip and then…

Kevin:

Collin:

Robby:

Robby:

Kevin:

And the one he did the cops were walking up on him.

Hell yes - I loved that clip too.

There was a piece of plywood against the wall for the landing… That spot was kind of like a genius eye. Chaney saw that one lining up, pointed it out, and just busted it like that - all sick. But yeah it was kind of funny all - of the really sick clips that we got in Eau Claire were all on the same street. Dewey Street in Eau Claire.

People are talkin’ about Dewey St.

Calvin:

It was productive; Dewey St. provides… Whatever you want to hit you’ll find it on Dewey St.

Robby:

Is that where the bank to stair spot is? That’s a cool one. How did you get around to premiering the video at the Heights Theater with Erik Olsen and Panic Order?

Calvin:

I ran into him at Palace Park one night and we just started talking about it. It all just snowballed from there. Trial and Error played, too, which is some younger kids.

Kevin:

Yeah they kinda lined that whole thing up. L1 helped out with the venue. They were down to have us show our video there too.

You told me that after the video premiere there was kind of a slump; you guys were just sort of riding out preseason. When did you get over the slump and how did the rest of the winter turn out?

Kevin:

Yeah, after we premiered it some friends came to town in January and that sort of ignited this new video. I think we are going to do another two year thing to make it more of a full fledged project.

Robby:

Robby: Robby: Robby: Robby:

Did you feel like you were in any kind of slump, Calv?

Calvin:

I don’t know I would say I was more excited, sort of ready to just like keep going, but it was definitely hard to get hyped on hitting anything around here. There’s so much stuff here, but its kind of hard to find new stuff. I don’t know, it’s hard to find new spots to get excited about in the Twin Cities area without taking a lot of time, which is what I ended up doing. I was just trying to find more shit that I was hyped on, things that got me excited.

Kevin:

We had exhausted a lot of the spots that we had in mind with Chrome Portal.

Collin, you moved to Boise for a bit and now you’re back in Minneapolis due to an injury. Will you be able to snowboard next year and hopefully get in this new project?

Collin:

Yeah that's the plan. I need two knee surgeries. I got the first one in March, and then I have another one in June. That’s, like, a six month recovery, so hopefully December/January I can board again. I was super bummed this year. After everything I was very excited about snowboarding and kinda got stuffed a little bit with this injury. When I was in Boise I would text Kevin every weekend and just ask what they were hitting [laughs].

Kevin:

I was sending pictures of every spot to Collin, he loved it [laughs]

And when you came back to Minneapolis you went out to the spots with them? Limping around?

Collin:

Yeah, [laughs] and honestly that scratched the itch a little bit too, to just be out with the homies again.

Sick, it’s always fun hanging out at the spot, helping out. Well, I am excited to see Chrome Portal 2!

Mike Kijewski moved here for a job, but really, he moved here for the mountains. I was introduced to Mike by our mutual friend Dusti, who's a lifelong Powder Mountain local. I believe the reason why we all knew a friendship would blossom with Mike was because he already knew where he wanted to ride... Pow Mow! Anyone who's been in the industry wants to rub shoulders with the pros at Brighton, Snowbird, or Park City. However, this East Coaster already had the right idea of what he wanted from the mountain.

Mike and I have spent the past 7 or 8 years rippin' around Pow Mow, fishing the west, and skating around town. I'm stoked to see him link up with my high school buddies, Matt and Blake, to help them run the new Slackwater in SLC. As the GM for the downtown restaurant, he's already hosted a bunch of industry events, partnering with its neighbors, Evo, Industry, etc. Mike is the right person to help market the Canary District and help all the local businesses thrive in this newly redeveloped area in Downtown SLC.

People. People Skate.

People Snowboard. People Skate And Snowboard.

We opened up in 2010, 20 miles north of Detroit, in Keego Harbor, Michigan. I had been a manager and buyer at a shop called TWC (The Windsurf Company) for six years. The owner was ready to call it quits after something like 20 years. His focus had shifted to commercial real estate and running a boardsports shop had become more of a liability than a passion. So I was freshly unemployed in the middle of a recession. Married with one kid and another on the way. I decided the best thing to do was what I knew and open a skate and snowboard shop.

What did I have to lose? At 26, I pulled all my finances together, sold off what I could, maxed out my credit cards, stopped paying my underwater mortgage… in hindsight, I probably wouldn’t repeat those choices, but it is what I had to do to open up the shop. In the end, I had amassed about $30k and believed I could make it work. This wasn’t to be a clone of the other shop. I wanted to do something fresh in our area. A shop that I wanted to exist. It was my own thing. People. A place where the artists, musicians, freaks, and different opinions had a place to belong and interact. An inclusive space where we sold skateboards, apparel, and snowboards. We held art shows, video premieres, and provided a space for people to be themselves.

This was achieved by curating a group of rider owned and operated brands that inspire me and add value to the local skateboard and snowboard culture. I assembled skateboard and snowboard teams with people who got/get me stoked to ride and progress that extends outside of the park or a spot. That can be through intellect, art, music, or style. One of my founding employees, Stevie Shakes (a big reason this thing happened at all) would always say something like, ‘I want the least interesting thing about a skater to be skateboarding’. It is a mantra that rings true for me. We are so much more than riding a board down a hill or handrail. If your entire existence is skateboarding or snowboarding, maybe you should spend some time doing something else... You’ll be a better skateboarder, snowboarder, and person for diversifying your interests.

Our shop is successful because we are more than just a place to buy goods. We are intentional and nourish the culture that makes our business work. We don’t expect everyone who comes through our doors or shops on our website to be good at skateboarding or snowboarding. We do hope that we can inspire them directly or indirectly by being responsible with what we carry and having more integrity than warehouse retailers chasing a sale.

Where you buy something is often much more important than what you buy.

Is their team or staff that is inspirational to you?

Is it the art direction?

Is it sustainability?

Are they holding events, donating products to make those events happen?

When you support a small retailer rather than a big corporate warehouse retailer, an exponentially larger percentage of your purchase is going directly back to skateboarding and snowboarding. Put a little extra effort into knowing which shops are worth supporting out there. Before making a purchase, check their instagram and see if they are posting photos of their team, events, etc. It will go a long way in keeping this culture rich.

Buy good things from good people.