The second weekend of November in Innsbruck, Austria belonged to the snowboarding with the capital S (as if any others did not in that area). But this weekend, this one can be called as a big happening in a snowboard world. There were some of the best street riders from around the world riding and jibbing all together at one place. And it's our new HF Family member, Ethan Morgan, to blame for that. With the help of sponsors, he took care of a great event called DIYX (Do It Yourself X-treme) STRT JAM, from which we bring you the following report.
DIYX STRT JAM is a series of events organized by snowboarders for snowboarders. It's about shoveling hard, being creative and then riding what you created. Behind DIYX STRT JAM stands pro snowboarder Ethan Morgan, who was born in Japan, currently lives in Austria, but has dual German and American citizenship. Don't ask us, we don't know what this is about either, haha. Anyway, we were happy to welcome Ethan to our HF Family recently and we are glad to have been a part of this unique snowboard event. With the realization of DIYX STRT JAM helped him the guys from Method Mag and other sponsors.
Apart from Ethan, some of our riders did not miss the event - Zoltán Strcuľa, who has recently moved to Innsbruck after six months in Bali, so now you can mostly find him riding the Stubai snowpark. Then, Dušan Kříž, who has been living in his camper van for some time now (which could be also seen in the new snb film, Two Vans No Plans by Rusty Toothbrush), in which he has been moving around the best European snowboard spots for some time now. And four of our riders are closed by Kasper de Zoete, killer from the Netherlands, whom you could spot, for example, in the Chardonnay movie by Notion snow.
Let's get to the event itself. On the first day, two spots were ridden, located near the Tivoli Olympic Arena in Innsbruck. Spot number one had a setup consisting of six shorter rails over the stairs, one kink rail and a ledge on the side of the stairs. The jam started around 11 in the morning, weather was great, Man and Wolf Beer was tapped from our car and the atmosphere, with increasing snb tricks, and maybe even with those percentage from the beer in the sun, graduated.
Joe Tyler Simpson also got into a pretty decent hype, he climbed the pillar and undoubtedly got the drop of the day. Instastories of all presented was literally burning. However, the next moment Zeb Powell, who flew in between two support pillars with the shape of a "V" and parked it right among the spectators, killed it even a bit more. Exactly the good old punk snowboarding we all love!
In the second half of the day, DIYX STRT JAM moved to the spot number two, just a street away from the first one, where three double kink rails over the stairs were waiting for the riders. Our riders threw some decent 50-50's, boardslides and presses there, Zoltán's trick of the spot was his famous fs bs. What kind of punk snowboarding action would it be, if the rails didn't burn there ... And so Ethan and Jacco Bos set them on fire. So, on the spot number two, there were burning rails ridden, Zeb slided it down with a burning torch in his hand, the riders ended up in the audience or in photo technology - Kasper did. Twice. And the first day of DIYX STRT JAM Zeb Powell ended with something that could be called as a fs hardway 270 transfer to fs bs. What a legend!
The second day of DIYX STRT JAM moved to a spot under a bridge near the railway in Innsbruck. The setup consisted of rails, stairs, ledges at the sides of the stairs and a massive pillar. The riders showed their rad skills there again, Dušan's trick of the day was definitely a bs rodeo from the pillar wall, on which he was pulled by a diy motorcycle winch of Alex from Rusty Toothbrush. The spot gradually filled with people, riders jibbed till it got completely dark, one rad trick after another, the rail was literally burning again, Man and Wolf Beer was tapped from our car till the very last drop and this whole amazing DIYX STRT JAM event ended with an afterparty which will only (not)remain in the memory of the participants.
In the end, just one big thank you to Ethan and all the people who took part in the event. It was great! Thank you snowboarding.
photos by @prouzicc
