Why snowboarding is so cool
Snowboarding is a very cool sport. Being a much cooler version of skiing, it is the primary sport of choice for the young hip crowd whenever they hit the slopes. It is a sport that can take place on a ski slope or on a snowboarding slope that is slightly different and looks like the ramps used in skateboarding. Skateboarding and surfing is where snowboarding originated from. The surfers and skateboarders wanted something to do while on skiing holidays that wasn’t skiing because that probably looked like it was more for older people to enjoy.
Snowboarding came about when some hip skater or surfer decided to try skateboarding down a ski slope by taking off the wheels of the skateboard. People usually think that snowboarding is a pretty new sport to be developed but it actually started in the 60’s and 70’s in the US by some crazy kids who were tired of just going skiing all the time when on holiday. Instead of using two skis to help you slide down a mountain covered in snow, snowboarding, as the name implies, uses a board that both of the feet of the rider are attached to and then they go flying down a mountain. It is a sport that is not without its danger though as the speeds that can be attained while speeding down a slope on snow can be quite fast and dangerous.
Snowboarding came about when a younger generation rebelled against the sport of skiing. They wanted something that they could call their own and wanted a sport that would identify them. The unique act of skiing on a board combined with the styles of skateboarding and surfing gives snowboarding its coolness factor. If anyone takes a look at young people all over the world, whatever they are into just seems cool and hip. Be it skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking or even the very cool sport of kitesurfing whenever a new sport is introduced in the world you can be sure it is done by some cool kids bored with competing in regular sports all the time. Young people by definition look to break boundaries and innovate and make new things their own by sometimes combing two sports or coming up with something totally new and different that soon takes the world by storm.
A very unique culture emerged alongside snowboarding, which was a polar opposite to skiing at the time. Skiers were supposed to be prim and proper while snowboarders looked like they absolutely didn’t fit in and didn’t belong on the nice white slopes. Wikipedia very well defines the subculture that emerged with snowboarding. “The snowboarding way of life came about to rebel against the more sophisticated way of skiing, and skiers did not easily accept this new culture on their slopes. The two cultures contrasted each other in several ways including how they spoke, acted, and their entire style of clothing. Snowboarders first embraced the punk and later the hip-hop look into their style. Snowboarding subculture became a crossover between the urban and suburban styles on snow, which made an easy transition from surfing and skateboarding culture over to snowboarding culture,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Snowboarding).
If you walk by a city street and look at a bunch of skateboarders or if you are at the beach and see some surfers, there is a certain style and culture that these people represent. It is usually a style of being laidback and chilled out and not having a care in the world. When compared with the hustle and bustle and stress of people’s everyday lives with going to work and paying bills, the surfer lifestyle seems very ideal. This is the same sort of feeling you get when you look at someone snowboarding. They look so comfortable on the snow as if they were born to be there. Put anyone in a snowboarder’s jacket and put them on a snowboard and the most straight laced individual suddenly gets something edgy about them, something that is cool and makes them look with it.
It seems like they would know what the latest music is and what the newest movies were. Which were not out in cinemas even before you knew they were being made into films. Snowboarding has such an international appeal and is popular in so many countries that it seems like it may become too mainstream for the coolest of the cool kids out there. When that happens they will jump onto the newest fad that is about to hit the sports world and make it their own and turn it into the next big thing, until that too becomes too mainstream and off they go again in search of the next cool thing to do.
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