San Francisco Downtown Throwdown 2011

San Francisco is an accepting city filled with diversity and rich cultural heritage, or to put it more bluntly, a total freak show. But the local color was only slightly weirder than a bunch of trucked in crushed ice and snow bros that made up the first-ever SF Downtown Throwdown event at the Civic Center on October 29th, 2011. As with any inner city rail jam on a 70-plus degree day during Halloween weekend, there were acrobatic maneuvers, ambiguous costumes and beers cleverly disguised by sponsor stickers. If all that wasn’t random (or normal) enough, even Thrasher editor Jake Phelps rolled by to scope the action.

A cultural display of some sort is apparently now a fixture at Snowboy events. Can’t be mad at that.

For the Yobeat crew, a snowboard event in San Fran mostly seemed like a great opportunity to road trip down, do some drinking, skateboarding and touristing, while simultaneously writing things off our taxes. It also helps that Yobeat is now a media powerhouse, so we dragged along the Intern and even flew Pat in from Utah to make the video extra spiffy (watch it here!) Neither intern nor Pat had ever been to Rice-a-Roni town before, and you’ll be happy to know, they made the most of it. On night one, Pat managed to kill his phone battery with Instagram and get completely lost, winding up sleeping on some strangers’ couch. This morning, Intern showed up with his face painted like a pirate, which means he must have had a good night, too.

I took a photo of snowboarding. This is it. Dylan Alito, Juggalo.

But enough about us. You’re probably reading this to find out what happened at the contest. Luckily, I assigned Josh Parker to pay attention and take notes and here are some of trick the highlights, in convenient bullet point form:

Ryan Paul
Boardslide front flip pole jam
Suitcase method to front board gap – dfd
Front board to back rodeo pole jam
Switch back 270 gap – dfd
Crippler wall ride
Back 360 onto downrail

Spencer Schubert
Front 270 to flat off dfd

Dylan Thompson
Pole jam front flip
Cab 270 gap – dfd
270s – downrail

Andrew Brewer
gap 270s front and back – dfd
Fakie ollie switch front board gap – dfd
Gap front 270 – dfd to handplant
Switch back lip

Dylan Alito
Cab 270 – downrail
Back 270 over front off dfd
Front 270 – downrail
Back 270 – downrail
Switch back 270 to regs – downrail

Johnny Brady
Hard way back 180 on cab 360 out – downrail

Nick Visconti
Back 180 on switch back 180 off – downrail
Pole jam backflip to hand plant on wall
hardway front 180 switch 5050 back 360 out – downrail

Expect TOTAL COVERAGE. Pat Fenelon and Mike Morgan, getting the shot.

As soon as Dylan Alito appeared dressed as a juggalo, complete with plastic hatchet he actually used as a prop during tricks, it was pretty obvious he would be a stand out. But it was actually the fact that he landed approximately 10,000 maneuvers over the course of two hours made that him a pretty obvious winner. The rest of the places weren’t so clear cut, as there was no shortage of “killing it” going on. Ryan Paul (4th) may very well be clinically insane with moves such as boardslide frontflips, even though Brandon Hobush (5th) was the one donning a Alcatraz psych ward shirt. Nikki Fresh got some redemption from his 6th place finish in Seattle, coming in second.

“I just feel weird riding with bare hands,” Ryan Paul.

In a day with no shortage of randomness and freaks, perhaps the strangest part of the San Francisco Downtown Throwdown was even though it was hot as hell just standing there, and the riders were racing to get in as many laps as possible, more than 50 percent of them wore mittens the whole time. Guess Jerm was right, for once — mittens are in, gloves are out.

Snowboy Productions is not afraid of child labor laws.

Thanks to Krush and Snowboy Productions for an always-fun event, SFO for letting us hang out, and all the other event sponsors that made it possible.

Results:

1. Dylan Alito
2. Nick Visconti
3. Dylan Thompson
4. Ryan Paul
5. Brandon Hobush

Zumiez Destroyer Award: Andrew Brewer
Crab Grab Style Award: Chris Brewster

Now click through the whole Jared Souney-created gallery and see how much awesome stuff you missed.

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