Photos and Captions: Kyle Beckmann
Words: Brian Neri and Kyle Beckmann
“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” – William Blake.
In every region, there is a war between shops. Whose team / staff has the best skater, snowboarder, and all around mountain man. Well, Sara Mehlhaff from Nixon, founder of the event, decided to lay the claims to rest for the Northern California region at least. From all over Nor Cal shops assembled their best to compete in the first annual Nixon “Into the Wild” event at Boreal Mountain’s Woodward Tahoe on Friday, June 14th, 2013. “Into the wild” is an all around mountain man competition based on 5 categories: snowboarding, skating, hatchet throwing, BB gun shooting, and archery. All the big gun shops came out to throw down: Eternal, Ground Zero, SFO / FTC, Goodtimes, The Butterbox at Northstar, Milosport, The Ledge at Squaw, and Boards N Motion.
First to go down was the snowboarding competition and the crew at Boreal threw together a super fun course with a good amount of rails, a small hip / jump, a few boxes and a few other creative jibs. Right off the bat kids were just dropping heavy tricks like it was mid-season. Standouts were Max Tokunaga with a huge gap to lip tricks on the down-flat-down, Niko Nakumara had some impressive plants over the dog house, and Brady Lem is just a boss (look him up). But the most impressive rider of the day was Woodward’s own Lou Macias who threw a huge back 3 front 1 on the down-tube.
Things then moved off the snow and indoors to the concrete park at the Woodward Tahoe bunker. You may think that Goodtimes may have been sandbagging the competition bringing in the Blood Wizard crew, but then you took at look at his competition. Kids in Nor Cal can skate. Two skaters from each shop went head to head in a jam session format. The Goodtimes crew obviously slayed it, but other dudes killing it were Ian Flynn from The Ledge with a huge bag of tricks, Rico Suave from Milo just getting super loose and going huge, and Nathan Alegria of Eternal with his huge 5-0 to fakie on the big bank wall.
After one rowdy skate battle in the Bunker, it was time to take it to the woods to find out which shop had the real mountain men. Teams were challenged to test their skills at hatchet throwing, BB gun shooting, and archery. Gus from GoodTimes came out swinging, landing all three axes on the Nixon target. But it came down to demographics. The dudes from Northstar’s Butterbox , who all live in the mountains, plain and simple, KILLED it.
Results:
Standout Snowboarder: Lou Macias
Prize: Nixon Gear and Tahoe Moonshine
Standout Skaters: Nathan Alegria and Tristan Moss
Prize: Custom Nixon / Plan B skateboard, Nixon gear and Tahoe Moonshine
Best Snowboarding Shop: Boards N Motion
Best Skate Shop: Goodtimes
Best Mountain Man Shop: The Butterbox at Northstar
Best Shop: Boards N Motion
Prize: Nixon backpack full of gear, Tahoe Moonshine and Bragging Rights.
A very special thanks goes to Anders Isaacson, Jon Slaughter, Rob Salas at Old 40 Forge, Lane, Mizzle, JR at Park Staff, Dave Downing, Elena Hight, Andrew Brewer, Silver Sereno, DJ Paul, Joel Cline, Eric Messier, Paul Heran, Pro-Tec Helmets, Ross and Jeff at Tahoe Moonshine, and of course all the shops that participated.
And as always, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHOP. If you don’t have a shop by you, these guys are online retailers too, so check ‘em out.
