See: The Weekender Zine

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For those who live for the long weekend, we present Weekender - the mission that many have dreamed of but few have attempted. Three boards in three days - snow, surf, and skate - from Mt. Hood to the Oregon sea, Ryan Townley and Kevin Shapiro make a sprint over a three-day weekend to hit the slopes, go bank to bank, and get barrelled. Can they do that which has never been done? Win or lose, they had an exciting time. Some heavy snow, some good skate clips, and surfing that was so fucking gnarly that we were worried our production insurance wouldn’t cover the injuries they’d sustain if they paddled out, but that’s alright, two out of three ain’t bad. The trip was so fun in fact that we decided to partner with our friends at Pub Beer to create a little zine, which you can flick through below, and read in its entirety.

Enjoy.

words by Kevin Shapiro.

Brunch is the sanctioned pastime of the city of Portland, the folks here tend to be anti religion but are religious about brunch. To stand in a line, wrapping around some cute corner, chatting gleefully, they like the wait, it’s part of it, at least on Sundays.

But the brunchers aren’t around on weekdays so when I took Townley to a popular brunch spot, we walked right through the front door. Ian met us, the coffee was great, the huevos rancheros were mid. Now, most snowboarding days don’t start so leisurely, there’s usually a hustle to the morning, at least on powder days, to get the goods and to avoid the lines. Avoiding lines: that’s why you go to brunch spots on weekdays, and that’s why you snowboard at Ski Bowl. 

It was my idea to make Friday the snowboarding day because it would be raining and I’d rather snowboard while it’s snowing than skate while it’s raining. Mount Hood is the local hill for Portland snowboarders, and there’s a few resorts on it: there's Meadows where the powder hounds go, there’s Timberline park rats go, then there’s the less popular Ski Bowl. Ahhh Ski Bowl. The mom n pop shop of Mt Hood resorts, the down-to-earth sibling who brought a couple a beers to the function when the others are concerned with appearances. Ski Bowl woke up late and had a better time than everyone else. No chairlift exceeds a two person capacity and what they lack in speed, Ski Bowl makes up for in low-costs. There’s too many things to prefer about Ski Bowl but to name a few: it’s the closest to Portland, there’s no lines, and they open at 3pm on the weekdays. 

Now any old skier or snowboarder will tell you that it’s all about first tracks. Usually this involves a very early morning, a blaring clock staring at you, yelling to “eat faster, gear up quicker and get there sooner” because if not, you will miss those fresh tracks which are the reason for all this going to bed and waking up early in the first place. This is where the genius of opening at 3pm comes in. Picture this, you wake up at 12 having had six too many pub beers the night prior. You take your time getting that one meal your craving, you get back home and lounge for a bit before the idea to go snowboarding strikes. You get to the hill around 2:30, put some boots on and still make it in time for the first chair. Ahhh first tracks. Ski Bowl! Don’t go changin! 

Our day wasn’t quite this idyllic but the 3pm start still came in clutch, at least for me. I split from brunch because I had to belt sand a bunch of tape and epoxy resin off the backs of these woodblock illustrations I’d been working on for a show the next night. Per usual I was cramming too much into too little time, a habit Townley consistently reminds me I am guilty of. I finished the last one as the van arrived to pick me up but I was covered in epoxy resin dust and changing was a must. When Townley walked in I was in boxers, he was giving me that look that anyone who knows him knows. You see, Townley is a professional, he’s up at 6:30 am, he’s two coffees, two kick flips and a front feeble deep before you’ve woken up. He’s got the bondo, the leaf blower, the extra deck and the tools in his trunk and he doesn’t need to go to the store for a beverage. He’s going to show up to your 12 o’clock session warmed up and eager and when the filmer isn’t quite ready yet, Townley will give them the look I’m taking about. God damn we love him for it. I put some pants on, got behind the wheel and we took off.

Driving to Mt Hood feels like you’re driving to a liquor store for an hour. It’s raining and you’re passing stop lights and tire shops and strip malls and food trucks and people commuting to work and it just doesn’t feel like you’re about to go snowboarding. After about forty five minutes the pine trees start consuming everything, at which point you cross your fingers and hope it’s cold enough for the rain to turn to snow. That day everyone including the weather report told me it would be raining but I trusted father Ski Bowl and kept my anxieties suppressed behind a confident facade that “it will be snowing for sure.” Just as I’d claimed, around the last turn the drops turned to flurries and the thumps of rain on the windshield were replaced with a satisfying snowy silence. Ski Bowl! Don’t go changin’! 

Getting out of the van we were met with wet white clumps, typical Oregonian snow, heavy and liquid once it hits you. Gearing up, I kept it up, “oh it’s dumping at the top! it’s gonna be deep.” Meanwhile we were already getting wet and we hadn’t left the parking lot. Regardless of a brand new Gore-Tex jacket or the one I was wearing from 2007, those conditions penetrate everything soggy. “Couple a beers?”

Ian, poor Ian, opted for a trash bag and crawled inside of it to operate the camera with the relentless weather. We got off the first lift and it became apparent filming would require some patience and an open mind. My initial ideas of where to go and what to hit was fleeting away with the realization that this camera situation was heavy. So we started squeezing all the juice out of one run over and over instead of exploring. 

Townley and I go way back, first through skating but we’ve been snowboarding together over decade and he is my certified bro for life. I believe he said it was the deepest snow he's ever ridden, an exceptional day. Meanwhile the bag around Ian’s body is fluttering in the wind as he struggles to keep the plastic flaps from intruding on his lens or the moisture making its way inside. We all felt for him but I think he’d agree that the sight was objectively hilarious. I was guiding us to familiar drops and zones all the while, trying to make things as convenient as possible for Ian given the circumstances. Nothing about it was convenient.

At the top of the mountain is an open air lean-to with a trail map and a tool bench. It’s meant for a brief stop but became our little refuge, we’d chill in there each run, take our fogged goggles off and have a Pub Beer. It was the necessary reprieve between runs given the cumbersome weather. All things considered, we got fresh tracks and free refills all day. Ski Bowl delivered as always and it felt like an early morning and it was 4 pm. It was hard to believe earlier that day we were in a booth with a menu in our hands. 

After getting our fill of deep runs, we decided we’d go to the bottom and check out the rails at the rope tow for a bit. We did one fruitless lap behind fogged goggles on powder boards. It was obviously not the move, so we moved on back to the car. Ian finally crawled out of that garbage bag and into the sanctuary of the van. He and Squid carefully inspected their cameras then set them aside to dry. We piled our drenched jackets in the back corner and made our way towards the cooler for a much deserved Pub Beer, then towards Portland. 

On the ride home, as the snow turned back to rain, all I remember is asking Squid and Ian,” you think we got anything?”

“I think we got some things.”

We made quick work getting to the Nike park in the morning where we met our pals Aaron (Harrington), Zack (Fashouer) and Preston (Harper). Hard to tell what was most impressive, Ian absolutely ripping on this piece-of-shit cruiser board I brought for him, noseblunts being part of Aaron warm-up repertoire, or the fact that Townley didn’t miss a single one of those three flips. Biscuit!. Or perhaps it was the marathon line Preston did; who the heck ends a long line with a manual combo? 

It was a difficult call to make but around 1:00 I had to leave the crew to install at the gallery. Ryan calls it doing too much, I call it squeezing all the juice out; but then again he’s usually right about everything. 

On that note, the night before I went to the abandoned Loyd Center parking lot to do some last minute woodworking for the show. It was night two in a row of going there late night to avoid waking or annoying my neighbors. I sanded and assembled some chairs while some urban outdoorsman stood over a flaming pile of cereal boxes lit with a lighter he borrowed from me. His name turned out to be Cody, and Cody was amazed at the heat that is produced from simply burning “common trash.” I was slightly worried he would notice the heat potential of the plywood in my hands. At a certain point he looked over, “Is that a chair? Far out!”  Indeed some Portland shit. 

Anywho, after I split from the Nike park, Aaron led the crew to a classic bump over barrier spot on Burnside. After throwing some bondo on the crusty, quitisentially Portland run-up, Townley made quick work of a pop shuv and a three flip. A pop shuvit is one of those tricks that you learn when you’re eight but even as an adult is extremely difficult to do properly, especially over things. Everyone knows the feeling of your tail clipping on a pop shuvit over something, it’s incredibly frustrating, which is why Zack was so impressed that with all the tries it took, his tail never clipped. Professional. 

Next they went to my favorite god damn spot in town, that flat bar on Hawthorne. Oh the fomo! Everyone got tricks, a patented Townley front blunt power pop-out and Preston with some cactus combo slide manual maneuvers. Zack sealed it with the backside Halloween surprise; that is, a board slide frontside flip. A real ghoulish trick, I think he might be a bad guy. 

I believe that was the last spot, but then again I wasn’t there so I’m going to assume they finished the day soul skating under the Burnside Bridge, refusing to film as each on of them did a thirty one second hand plant on the spine and a 900 on the punk wall. I can see it now. Couple a beers. 

That night, the crew trickled into the gallery for the book release and exhibition I’d been preparing for. That or they trickled in for the free beer and red wine. Thanks to 10 Barrel the Pub Beers were flowing like the mighty Columbia and the whole place was filled with friends and strangers having what could only be described as a good time. The show featured resin encased illustrations I made, some furniture I designed, a book I released and some songs I wrote. It was difficult to advertise, I didn’t know how to refer to it. Townley called it a talent show, a term which evokes images of  elementary schools and the feeling of learning pop shuvits. Another buddy suggested I end the set with “and for my last act, a smith grind out the front door!” …Those were worth a laugh. Jokesters! I was quite happy to have pulled it off and was overwhelmingly grateful to everyone who came through and to the folks who helped put it together. Southeast Portland! Don’t go changin! 

Sunday morning started in the afternoon which I suppose was inevitable given the day and night prior. We were hopeful that the coast would offer better weather and that we could rip ride Hawaii style. The surf report said it would be 13 feet, walled and windy. Ryan and I don’t know how to read a surf report so we were optimistic that this meant that the waves would be forgiving and inviting for novices. After all, I drop-in on 13 foot quarter pipes with varying degrees of success, Ryan has a mean wall ride and we can handle a little wind. 

You see, Ryan and I don’t really know how to surf, him being half Hawaiian and both of us being from Orange County, California, we simply never had the chance to learn. We spent our childhoods in parking lots, learning pop-shuvits like I said before. The beach was twenty some miles away so as soon as we got our driver's licenses it never made sense to go surfing when we could drive hundreds of miles to some fried mountain town to snowboard. But today was the day, we were going to surf, fuel TV style, like Rob fuckin Machado. 

The coast is a convenient couple hours from portland. A beautiful journey of changing landscapes, through tunnels and suburbia, a pine lined climb up and over the coast range, then down to the coastal cliffs, rocky shores and sandy beaches. Not to long but long enough for a couple a beers.

Arriving into cannon beach, there was a big group of elk occupying an island of grass between the main roads of town. It was like an open air zoo, which to us seemed too good to be true. We pulled over to see them up close until a local let us know that they’d recently been having issues of elk charging people. Good to know.

Continuing on, we went to the beach to check the swell then to another spot in hopes it would look better than the first. Turns out, the wind makes it all choppy and scary looking, all haunted and what not, like Zack. The term “wallled” means the transition disappears all at once and it’s just all coping, like 13 feet tall of crumbling pool coping. In addition to all of this, it turns out 13 feet is best for surfers of a slightly higher caliber. Determined to push through the adversity, we located local surf shops that would rent us big surfboards to glide on the coping and thick seal costumes to keep us warm. 

Just then is when I noticed the spot was nobbed. Between and around the crashing waves there were scattered rock formations penetrating the water. Surf stoppers. We looked into ways to de-nob the spot but the rocks were rather large and installed with a drill bit that none of us had even seen before. To be honest I think they have been there for millions of years. Committed as we were to conquer the surfing challenges in front of us, we decided that the responsible approach was a couple a beers. 

We retreated to the van and to the safety of a seafood spot. Though surfing would not have been as wet as the snowboarding was, we estimate it would have been twenty eight times as dangerous. So we ate clam chowder.

As we arrived back to the city the clouds parted and the puddles started to dry. We went to a not-so-secret barrier spot on a freeway interchange high above the east banks of the Willamette river. We took in the views, avoided the oncoming traffic and skated the barrier like Rob Machado. Overlooking all of Portland, it was a fine bookend to a miraculous weekend. 

THANKS:

Jon Colyer, Aaron Harrington, Max Jang, Ben Merker, Zack Fashouer, Preston Harper, Neik Pulles. 

All of the following made that happen (in alphabetical order): 

Joey Abarca (provided lion display), Megan Kelso (support), Austin Leong (installation), Jean Luc LeMay (running sound), Reina Mochizuki (cinematography), Patrick Myers (cnc fabrication), Liam O’Neal (mastering), Joey Pepper (wood working), Bethany Porten (shop space), Neik Pulles (CORNER GALLERY SPACE), Jeremy Schneier (producer), Shel Silverstein (inspiration), Russ Teclas (support), Ryan Townley (collaborator), Pierce Valenzuela (inspiration), Dorian Warneck (photography), Mikey Whalen (producer), Fanny Yip (printing)

Everyone who came out.