At long last, I got my hands on a copy of David Benedek’s book, Current State: Snowboarding. Yes, this book came out months ago, but here’s the thing with books: they’re timeless. So my potential enjoyment level of this book should, in theory, not change over months or years. Therefore, I’m just getting around to doing a review now. Deal with it.
Being the purveyor of an internet website, things with pages you can actually hold in your hands confuse me. The double-sized format of this book confused me even more. Admittedly, at first go, I read it backwards, just looking at the half with pictures and missing all the interviews and captions, which would have explained what I was looking at. Once I figured out that to get the full experience would require laying it out on a table and doing some coordinated page-flipping, it all made more sense.
Inside this book are iconic photos, interviews with influential and even interesting people who matter in snowboarding, and even some input from people who don’t seem to know what snowboarding is. Visually, it’s amazing, with pop outs, charts, graphs and all sorts of things to keep ADD-riddled minds occupied. Mentally, you’ll probably learn something you didn’t know about snowboarding. I certainly did.
Since this book literally represents three years of David’s life, I thought it would be fitting to get his input as well. Here’s the questions that were raised for me, answered:
Why make a book? Don’t know you know snowboarders don’t read?
Haha. Yeah, I know. I was actually thinking about that after realizing I had spent about 4-5 months on interviews and text editing only…oh well. But everyone still has pretty pictures to look at, right? But really, I didn’t even care that much in the first place about the amount of people who would actually take the time and read through everything.
I just wanted to make this book, that’s all I cared for. And if people read it, great. Interviews are pretty very reader-friendly in general I think. They don’t require too much thinking.
What’s harder: a double cork 1260 or getting Shaun Palmer to do an interview?
I think I was actually really lucky with that. Because obviously, Shaun Palmer doesn’t answer e-mails or anything. At least not mine. But the good thing about this whole project has been for me that I’ve become pretty immune to rejection, I’ll just keep bugging the shit out of people until they feel it’s less of a hassle to respond than to ignore me. That strategy has been working really great.
But actually, Bob Klein hooked it all up. I owe it to him that I even got in touch with Palmer and got a meeting arranged. It was kind of funny, because I was actually pretty nervous to meet him, I mean – it’s Shaun Palmer! – and right before the meeting Bob’s like: “Ah, I just spoke to him. He’s in no good mood. He’s so pissed.” I guess he just came back from an Olympic qualifier for the 2010 Games and didn’t do good. And two sentences later, Bob said something about how Shaun hates Europeans or something. He must have forgotten where I am from. Anyway, I thought it was going to be terrible but it ended up being pretty cool. Once he figured out I am not some douche bag journalist he started to open up. In the end he showed me a bunch of old videos and all that. Cool cat.
I read on a more insightful ESPN interview you did a few interviews that didn’t make it into the book. Who were they with and why did they get cut?
Well, I did a full round of pre-interviews just to narrow down the topics and who to talk to, so all those didn’t make it in the book, even though some of them were pretty good.
And then, for the final ones that didn’t make it, it was mostly just because their topics showed up in other interviews already and I didn’t want too much repetitive content – although some of them were with my favorite riders and people: Louif Paradis, Jason Ford, Bob Klein, Travis Parker… those were all amongst the ones I decided not to use. As I said, they were all really interesting but were simply covered by someone else topic-wise. Mack Dawg was actually the only one who didn’t want to be interviewed. He was really nice about it though, he’s a cool and supportive guy but for whatever reason he didn’t want to be in there. Maybe he rather likes to be behind the scenes. I totally respected his decision, I just thought he would have had something interesting to say.
After completing this exhaustive process, do you have more hope for the future of snowboarding, or less?
Oh, definitely more. I really started out with a somewhat negative outlook on snowboarding’s current state and that definitely changed a great deal after talking to so many different people from so many different areas within snowboarding. I think with the mainstream and competitive side of snowboarding being so big you just have to look a little harder to make out all the cool stuff that’s still happening, and how much of a common thread there still between people. I actually think snowboarding is doing a lot better than it was a few years ago. There’s so many cool little pockets that are really vibrant and people doing their own thing. The diversity is just a lot greater these days. Which is a good thing.
I assume there are still copies left for sale since you sent me one. Where and how can people get one?
Yeah, there’s actually only a few left now, they can be ordered here: www.almostanything.com
I think I might be printing a small 2nd run for the fall and that’ll be it.
My final review: What David has managed to create is a sort of time capsule of the images and happenings that shaped snowboarding to this point. In other words, if you care about snowboarding, you should own this book.
FUCK READING. SMOKE METH.
95 euros is like… 10,000 US dollars …seriously I’m not a doctor
fuck brooke geerys posts
I saved my months paycheck a while back so that I could pre-order this book. Best investment I ever made, such a cool layout and amazing photos. Well worth the money…
print a 2nd round!
Jerm’s a fruit booter..
$100 for a book? That’s a quarter of weed. A lift ticket and lunch. A pair of jeans. Nice try Yobeat.
*half of weed
tim horton you pay 100$ for jeans? youre blowin it
Yes. I like to support the board shops around my city. If you’d step foot in one you’d see jeans run from $80-$100. At least in Canada.
Thats a lot of donut money Mr. Horton smh…..
damn tim 100 dollar jeans & 100 dollar quarters!? you like it up the butt too, eh?
the dingo in the last photo set!
fuck this KC KYLE kid
Fuck whatever you said Catfish’s word is law, so stoked what he does for this sport apart from David Benedict, who has influenced just about everything we know and don’t hate about.
buddy childrens books that cost 5 bucks have pop outs, why would I pay 100 dollars for them
Who is this other “sam”?
Word up on Catfish and Cooper. i got this book and to be honest: fuck yeah that’s a lot of cash (AND weed), but as Catfish said. layout, content, images, interviews, did i mention the layout? THIS BOOK IS FUCKING AWESOME, trust me ..basically almost everything what David B. does turns gold and is special …podcast show, events, films, documentary films, this book. if you got the money left, purchase, you won’t regret and feel proud to be part of this here, seriously.
@ kc kyle, tim horton makes your mom his bitch everynight
amazing.
@Cooper- check your spelling, but i couldn’t agree with you more. though on a different scale, and in different ways, those two guys have done nothing but good for snowboarding. and they’re in it for all the right reasons.
“but here’s the thing with books: they’re timeless. So my potential enjoyment level of this book should, in theory, not change over months or years.”
Describing a book named current state ?