The Drifters: A Snowboarder Magazine Video Premiere
September 6, 1996

The audience at the Snowboarder Magazine Video Premiere wanted to like The Drifters. This was the grand opening of the new video season. Snowboarding's own sweeps week. On this night alone, three major videos would premiere and The Drifters was numero uno.

The crowd spilling out into the street follow- ing the video premiere.

On their way out of the Spreckels Theater on Broadway in downtown San Diego tonight viewers weren't as stoked. And that's a bummer, because God knows it isn't easy making snowboard videos.

It's hard to tell where The Drifters began to fade, because it had all the makings for an epic snowboard film. The idea wasn't new, but it was solid: take six or seven great snowboards around to some of the great snowboard places and let a good shooter (in this case Tim "Fresno" Boyer) film them. It had a nice groove. It had great black and white movie footage from hero skate photographer Tobin Yelland to break up the snowboard action. The graphics worked well with the action, but it just didn't spark up the industry crowd.

To it's credit The Drifters shows a lot of the kind of riding most snowboarders would like to do--Steven's Pass on a powder day, heli riding in the Cascades, cat boarding at Island Lake Lodge, and back country charging in Utah where Chris Englesman shows everyone why he's getting a heavy rep as a big wall rider. It also features the work of Travis Yamada, Jason Brown, Hillary Maybery and several other strong riders. Even with all this something just didn't work.

A lot of that could be blamed on the weather last year. It seemed like every where the snowboarder crews went, they got rooked. The movie even apologizes for this in one segment where it says, "We went to Alaska twice. The first time we spent 20 days waiting out a storm and got nothing."

Well, that's kind of how the audience at the Spreckels Theater felt. But hey, there's always next year.