SR: Hokkaido, Japan 2011 / 12

QUOTE (Mike Pow - 19/02/2012 @ 13:05)

Bar Tabs and Free Goggles

A lot of people think that being a pro skier is the Ultimate Job in the industry. It's not. That's just being dumb enough to risk it all for an illusory Shot At The Big Time. Pros get the glamour, but in the end they're essentially just Trained Stunt Monkeys, and there's a huge lineup og younger up-and-coming primates willing to gamble a life of quadriplegia for a fist bump and middling travel budget.

A ski magazine editor, on the other hand, gets to go to all the cool places the pros go, and unlike them, can call bullshit when he doesn't feel like tempting the Wheelchair Of Fate - and has corporate health insurance for when he does. If the snow is chundery, or when he's tired from making laps past the pros while they Wait For the Light, he can retire to the bar with the ol' company credit card. There he'll most likely wax poetically to the resort P.R. girl about skiing the midnight sun in Norway.

Sure, there are standards and qualifications that go way beyond most editorial positions. You have to ski well enough to show up anywhere in the world and follow ripping locals and pros down unfamiliar terrain after a 12-hour flight and a hard night of drinking homemade 100-proof schnapps. And you have to understand the sport well enough to appreciate the goods when they're in front of you, analyze foreign snowpack, know the difference between "switch" and "fakie", be able to talk calmly to police officers in strange countries, and charm the pants off the people that run ski area marketing departments.

You can't flinch at slough management on exposed terrain and you have to be comfortable with second-year Jackson locals vibing you on the Sublette Chair, aspiring Tahoe big-mountain specialists who still think it's 2002 and their soul patch is "edgy," Coloradoans who call a 70-inch base "stacked" and Vermonters who insist their secret stash is "the best sh*t East of the Mississippi." And most importantly, you have to drink. And not recreationally.

If you meet one of them, it will probably go something like this:

"Hey, how's it going? I'm from Powder magazine. Yeah, we're, um, doing a story on, ummmm, the scene here. So anyway, I was wondering if you could:

a) "Mount and tune these new skis that the product manager gave me after I got him wasted at SIA?"


or:


b) "Show me where the best snow on the mountain is?"


followed by:


c) "Step aside so I can ski this fresh line now? You may get mentioned in the magazine. Here's some stickers."


and later, at the bar


d) "Tell me your girlfriend's name again?"


The crucial point to remember when a ski magazine editor asks you one of these questions is: Bar Tab. They will have one, a formidable one, and you can be a part of it. Decline the stickers, request a pair of next year's goggles (editors throw them away after two to three uses), do not tell them your girlfriend's name,a nd demand to know where the Bar Tab will be. Not only will they appreciate your natural aptitude for The Industry and possibly offer you an internship, they will probably be glad to have s6meone to help them with their boozy Brand Management burden.

The next day, as you proudly sport your new goggles and brutal hangover in the lift-line at Mount Bumf*ck and wonder why your girlfriend is so quiet, remember that Mr. Editor is now flying off to Italy or Japan, where he will have to sort out whether the local guy is saying "Go!" or "No!" as he blearily dodges slough, while making jump turns on poorly-tuned unfamiliar skis over what may be a massive dead-end cliff. If they survive that, they'll have to stay up all night dancing to crappy techno and reflexively hitting on anything that moves, while once again ceremonially sacrificing the expense account, several pairs of free goggles, and their battered livers...all for Ski Journalism.

Rest assured, even while pro skiers sleep soundly in their beds dreaming of being pro snowboarders, somewhere a ski magazine editor is turning coroprate dollars into an Armageddon-style bar tab, so that all of us can partake in the Spirit of Skiing