It looks like the X Games are here to stay, at least through 2010. It’s a great thing for Aspen, which could always use a higher dose of cool. But for me, it’s an annual reminder of a life I thought I left behind. Every year I go to the X Games, it’s just one big reminder of why I’m not cool.
It seems my career keeps bringing me back to the all-too-hip world of snowboarding and action sports (the word “extreme” also is not cool), despite my efforts to broaden my scope and cover other topics.
Snowboarding certainly is where it started. Two weeks after graduating from journalism school at CU-Boulder, I was recruited to be an assistant editor at Transworld Snowboarding magazine in Oceanside, Calif.
From the very beginning, my experience in Southern California was rife with difficulty.
For one, I didn’t fit in. I was pretty much the nerd who was thrown in with all the cool kids, like that terrifying clique of mean girls back in eighth grade. The level of cool in Southern California was unbeknownst to me. Including the surfers and the hot chicks and the beach and working for a publisher who was at the epicenter of the snow/skate/surf scene, I was totally out of my league, and totally out of my element.
I moved to Cali from Boulder and was very much the mountain girl, with my floppy hats and beaded jewelry, loose-fitting sundresses and Teva river sandals. I was fit, but far from skinny. (“Stocky” or “muscular” were the ways people who didn’t want to offend me described it.) I came from a place where all it took to impress a boy was keeping up with him on a mountain bike, and all it took to rope him in, so to speak, was tying a figure-8 knot into the other end of his belay.
My second week on the job at the magazine, I was told a major snowboard manufacturer would outfit the entire editorial staff from head to toe with whatever equipment and clothing we wanted. So, I went straight to the publisher and said, “Isn’t that unethical?” When he started turning red, I clarified. “To accept free stuff from an advertiser, I mean.”
He escorted me into his office and closed the door. His office was strewn with relics of a life spent being cool: an electric guitar in the corner, several surfboards stacked against the far wall, a skateboard under the desk, artifacts from travels to the tropics, and a blown-up photograph of himself hanging 10 on some giant wave, his big belly pressed forward in the classic “soul arch,” his own silent, private glory. He was a large man with long, grayish blond hair he wore in a ponytail. His skin was freckled and red from being in the sun, blue eyes fixed in a permanent squint. He wore a leather choker necklace with a shark’s tooth hanging from it, a T-shirt that stretched over his round belly, surf shorts and flip-flops.
“Who do you think you are?” he bellowed, his sunburned face turning a deeper shade of crimson. I felt my face get redder, too.
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You better get right off that feminist soapbox of yours, and you better get off it now.”
“Feminist? Me?”
As boy crazy as I was at the time, I had always considered myself sort of sexist, preferring the ways of men.
“If that’s how you’re going to be, you can go right back to the East Coast, or back to your prep school or wherever it is you came from.”
I replied: “Um, I came from Boulder. That’s in Colorado. It’s actually a state school.”
I pretended to agree with everything he said, and repeated: “You’re absolutely right. I’m terribly sorry,” until he calmed down. Then I happily filled out my order form and collected about $3,000 worth of free gear.
That’s kind of how it was at the X Games. I had access to whatever, wherever, to control towers and snowmobiles, VIP tents and free meals. I was drowning in the sea of cool, but that doesn’t really matter anymore. Once the X Games finally leave town, I’ll have all the space I need – enough to fit in just fine.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
