WIN CANDIDE THOVEX'S RIG | FEEL WARM and FUZZY | OUTERWEAR SHOWCASE p.54
BECOMING CANADIAN: PLAID IS THE NEW BLACK
QUEBEC POWDER. Really. SOLID GOLD:
THE ROZ G INTERVIEW
PHIL CASABON IN QUEBEC CITY, QUE.. NADEAU PHOTO
FALL 2012
SBCSKIER.COM
$6.99 DISPLAY UNTIL DEC. 31, 2012
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STYLE IN THE HOUSE:
PHIL CASABON 2012-10-01 8:25 AM
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Thank God for rails or there would have been nothing to ski in Quebec last winter. Phil in Saint-Ă&#x2030;lie-de-Caxton. Nadeau photo
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%$0!!!!!!!!!74$6$(8+!/#&,!(2+26)%!&+!$-&'&%.!').$'#$9!*)9$!'#2%!#&+!)"%!:4'49$; '$3'<!6$%!"2%%2*2=$9 HOW CLICHÉ IS IT TO START A PROFILE ON PHIL CASABON with a paragraph about style? Well, incredibly so. But then, that is his niche. Style is elusive, unmistakable and, when very good (or quite bad) impossible to ignore. It’s a subject that is simultaneously subjective while unusually universal, and Quebec’s Phil Casabon, a.k.a. B-Dog, channels it with ease.
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Over the past decade of skiing for Armada, 23 year-old Casabon has gone from excited ski fan (“Mickael Deschenaux’s segment in Exact Science [2003] changed my vision of freeskiing; the music, the flow and the style were untouchable, and it basically confirmed what I already knew inside—this was going to be me.”) to the highest of honours: being accepted as a peer by the heroes of his youth. “Phil is one-of-a-kind, just like me,” says Deschenaux candidly. “He knows it doesn’t really matter what you do but that it’s the way you do it. He finds a dope-ass spot and makes it a visual banger without throwing any crazyass tricks, and to me, that’s a winning combo. His legacy will be just like mine: he just does what he does best, and that pays. Look at Tom Penny and Trevor Andrew; those dudes have even been out of the riding scene forever and people still talk about them.” Born July 19, 1989 and raised in Shawinigan, Quebec, Casabon grew up next to the small ski area of Vallée du Parc. Naturally, by age two he was skiing; by six he was on a local race team where he found his edges for five years. “Naturally” may be a theme here because, naturally, what 11-year-old likes being told what to do? The young Casabon quit the strict schedules of race training, picked up some hip-hop hints from his brother, and watched over the older sibling’s shoulder as he and family friend, Vincent Villemure, built twin-tip prototypes in the garage their own way, staying true to the historic and unquenchable entrepreneurship of Quebec freeskiing (see D-Structure, Axis, IF3, New Canadian Air Force, etcetera). In 2001, Eric Iberg’s legendary, style-pioneering Royalty was released on distinct yellow VHS tape. According to Casabon, “Royalty is and was a big influence on the style I have today.” And here another fullcircle theme arises: with Iberg’s The Education of Style, Casabon has been able to live a dream. Working both in front of the camera and in the editing studio with yet another one of his childhood heroes, he collaborates on a vision that’s sure to find the same kind of place in history as Royalty. “It’s been a dream for a while to create something with Iberg,” says Casabon. “He has been directing my favourite movies since I was a kid, so I’m beyond stoked I could link with him and collaborate. We’re friends, and he gives advice on how to advertise myself as a professional skier and much, much more.” Who says there's nothing to do in Trois-Rivières? Nadeau photo
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Phil pours over hundreds of pages of web-edit scripts. Retallack Lodge, B.C. Jorgenson photo
“A lot of athletes want certain things when making a film,” notes the Armada co-founder, legendary editor and Education of Style director. “The problem is they don’t know how to explain or show it physically. Phil can come up with an idea and edit it how he sees it in his head to a T.” Naturally, not long after the mass inspiration via Royalty, Casabon was competing. At 15, he came top three in the slopestyle and big-air contests in Mont Sutton, Que., and the following season won both the East Coast Open Rail Jam and Mountain Dew Night Rail Jam in Mont Avila, where one of the first inline-skate crossover ski pros from the early millennia, Iannick B. (Brouillette)—alongside Mathieu Melançon—tipped off Casabon about Armada, the first rider-owned and operated ski company to poke its head into the industry. Why? The mutiny then striking at the big-business ski makers counted heavyweights Tanner Hall, JP Auclair, Julien Regnier, JF Cusson and Anthony Boronowski amongst its ranks, and it had Casabon in sight as the company’s first amateur. By 2006, he was crossing the continent with his heroes, as the youngest competitor at the inaugural Orage Masters in Mammoth. That same year, he won slopestyle in the Coors Light Trauma Tour at Avila, and added Mont Tremblant’s Cote Obscur to his growing list of credentials, becoming a hometown hero on the ski-world’s “to-watch” list. “I got to meet Phil at the first Orage Masters when he was 12,” remembers Iberg. “He was the first person ever—other than founders—who got a free pair of Armada skis, so he kind of stuck out to me. As a person, Phil is a quiet and polite individual who’s highly motivated to learn and improve. As a
skier, he is mentally technical, viewing things in a whole different way than most other skiers. If I was to describe his style, it would be ‘consciously comfortable’.” WITH ARMADA ON HIS SIDE, 2007 proved a big travel year that saw Casabon venturing to Whistler to win the Coca Cola Rail Jam, then back East to take the Spin Symposium Rail Jam in Tremblant, as well as competing in the Aspen Open and European Open in Germany, where he won best skier performance. From that point, Casabon secured himself as a contest regular in every subsequent season. From the X Games to London Freeze, from Stockholm’s King of Style to War of Rails at Bear Mountain, California, he’s now expected to be around, “Mellow, chillin’, being himself and not taking more space than necessary,” as described by Armada’s latest Quebec recruit, Laurent Oliver Martin. “I met Phil while competing at home maybe seven or eight years ago. He was one of the youngest at the time but already one of the best. Then it all went super fast. As he was getting known, he was phasing out of the Quebec scene more and more. Probably one of the most down-to-earth guys I’ve met in the scene.” It’s fair to say it was only natural for Casabon to quickly be hunted down by film companies. No super-unknown rise to fame story here; the sound of his undeniable style on the radar of ski-media rang like a brass band above the other metronomic blips. “Casabon joined a street-rail session near Montreal in late 2007 while we were shooting for Turbo,” Level 1’s Freedle Coty explains. “From there, he shot with us over the next two years, going on several trips for Refresh and Eye Trip. Phil was immediately
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Phil rides the fine line between revolution and institution in Quebec City. Nadeau photo
distinctive for one reason: inimitable style. He created tricks no one has seen before and did them in a way few could copy; he’s a modern-day tastemaker. Polite, focused, calm and driven are proper adjectives to define him.” But is Phil Casabon that easy to define? Throughout the course of this writing, he grew gradually harder to put a finger on—further from the projected self seen in his edits. Rather than coming to more refined solutions about his personality, I found myself increasingly confused. The rabbit hole only deepens as we insert a Wu-Tang interlude played on a Chinese pipa. The skiers I interviewed painted him as a nothing less than a choir boy. But the B&E edits, his Level 1 parts, The Blackout Movie, B-Dog Gone Wild… basically anything he has self-edited or been a creative force behind suggests multi-dimensionality, something more than just the polite, understated skier described by his inner circle. “People are really quick to judge him based on the appearance of a seemingly privileged white kid imitating hip-hop within skiing,” Coty explains. “That look is an easy target for a lot of folks. Like, ‘Oh, here’s another kid who hits rails and wears extra-baggy pants and a fishing hat and listens to Wu-Tang.’” “Phil may think he’s a gangster,” Iannick B. says, “but he is really polite on the inside.” So is he slightly schizophrenic, eccentric or flatout lying with his self-portrayals? Is this kind of performance art done meticulously and consciously? Or is Casabon just ‘doing him?’ Is his B-Dog persona merely a concept album like the Wu-Tang’s Gravediggaz horror-core side project that his older brother first showed him? It’s notable because his attention to concept is very specific: editing style, trick choice, signature clothing... everything down to the projects he chooses to be a part of. It
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all seems very intentional and produced to meet a vision. “It is a conscious effort, and that’s not a bad thing,” elaborates Coty. “He was always talking about concepts he wanted to create, showing new skiing styles with a lot of emphasis on music influence, rap music history, skateboarding, flow, editing.... He definitely followed through with that vision when he joined up with Henrik [Harlaut] over the last two seasons. It takes a high level of attention and willpower to simultaneously advance your skiing while creating and weaving it all together. His ‘vision’ is what turned me on to him as a skier in the first place. When I saw his self-produced edit, B-Dog Gone Wild, I immediately knew I had to film with him. Something about the shots and style made it more special than the other 10,000 jib edits out there.” “Phil has his own idea of what skiing is, and he creates his world around it,” adds Iannick. “Sometimes, I see him as the Eric Pollard of his time: influential, extremely gifted and doing his own thing without looking back at what other people think.” Coty agrees, “I think his strength and most likely his legacy will be in the conceptualizing category, taking his skiing style and directly translating it to film. Not that this is new: many skiers before him have done so, too. But the way Phil—sometimes singlehandedly—has created unique video projects to fully portray his skiing? That’s what sets him apart.” And that’s no cliché. ! Phil Casabon counts his home resorts as Vallée du Parc, Quebec and Mammoth, California. His sponsors include Armada, Axis, Oakley, Orage and Rockstar. Check philcasabon.com for information and links.
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B-Dog goes to the wall at the Breckenridge Dew Tour, December 2011. Maloney photo
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Livin' the dream. Winter photo
Dewing it some more. Maloney photo
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Easy to define? Does it matter? Nadeau photo
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