How’d everything get so serious? Is the end near? Are we out of our minds? It seems like over the past couple of years, snowboarding has gotten way too serious, with all the pros, the companies, magazines (including ours), photographers, and writers. Everyone is worrying about big-money involvement, the mainstream taking over, losing the soul of snowboarding, the Olympics …

Yes, the mainstream is aware of snowboarding, and everyone from soft-drink to credit-card companies is using snowboarding to help sell their products. So what? The truth is you can’t steal or buy the soul of anything. The essence of snowboarding is still about riding a board down a mountain. The rest is excess baggage. You can take it or leave it–some of it or none of it.

Your own attitude determines how much of these things you take on. Snowboarders are just out to have fun with snowboarding, they don’t have any products to endorse or people to please–they just ride a board, buy a lift ticket, or hike a kicker.

For 1999, we’re going to get back to that essence. It’s only snowboarding, so what’s the big deal? Have some fun before

the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

–Jon Foster