fowzi #1

Issue #1January – 2012

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1st Avenue, Fernie, British Columbia, Canada

Photography: Gustav O

Hlsson

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We would like to change the world. In a good way.

Thank you for listening.

Contact usEditor: Brian Wolfe – [email protected]

Photo Editor / Layout: Gustav Ohlsson – [email protected] / Marketing: Sofie Windh – [email protected]

Fowzi Magazine #1Published January 2nd 2012

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Fernie, British Columbia, Canada

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Good byeBig White was good to us. We had some rad days. Thank you Big White. Thank you for the delicious British Columbian powder snow. Thank you for accommodating half the people of Australia. Thank you for making the good aussies throw a real mother blowout. Thank you for making the really, really hot girl kiss me when we were alone on the lift. Thank you all. Goodbye.


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Gustav Ohlsson

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“Not to be a dick dude, but thats a great shot.” – Brian is actually talking about this photo. Storgatan, Nyköping, Sweden.

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Photography: Sofie Windh

Brian Wolfe, Nitonupuri, Japan.

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Enjoy snowboarding quietly

There was a moment of silence in our apart-ment after the earthquake and tsunami hit the east coast of Japan on March 11th, 2011. Our celebration of a great snow day in the An-nupuri bowls faded quickly with our house shaking and seeing the event unfold on the emergency channels from 500 kilometers north. The earth moved for 5 minutes leaving the Sendai residents only 8 minutes to escape to higher ground before the 800 kph wave hit. Watching the power lines sway outside our window and seeing life being washed away on television in a ski village was haunting. Japan was in pain.

Most of Niseko’s winter bookings cancelled as airports were scrambling and 77% of all

tourists left Japan in panic fearing that more disaster would follow, and it did. The Da-ichii nuclear power plant meltdown and poor planning of containing the radiation exposed communities and displaced 80,000 residents who are still not back to their homes. It was hard to understand the government’s slow re-sponse in making decisions and trying to less-en the severity of the reactors melting down. The radiation scare was always looming for us in Hokkaido but the winds kept blowing that scare the other way and Niseko powered their lifts until May for the locals and few tourists that stuck around.

We felt the pressure from family and friends to leave and turned it into participating in

Words: Brian Wolfe

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Sofie Windh, Annupuri, Japan.

Photography: Brian Wolfe

What looks like bushes is the tops of five meter tall trees. Japan had a good snow year. Mt. Youtei in the background.

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charity and fund-raising events. Since a lot of the foreign work staff left Niseko, we were often driving guests to and from their ac-commodation to help out through the end of the season. Spreading the word in English through Holiday Niseko’s blog, facebook and twitter was our vessel to help. We watched as the good people of Niseko opened up 1000 beds in empty hotels and lodges for refugees to get away from devastated coast. Some lo-cals were driving down supplies and lending a helping hand.

The charity event that stood out was with 37 Japanese professional riders that toured Hokkaido resorts offering a couple hours of small group riding time for a donation and auctioned gear with other local companies to raise money for the cause. Niseko had a good turnout with great riding and raised 600,000 yen (roughly 7800 USD) for Red Cross Japan plus started new friendships. It was partici-pating in events like that and enjoying snow-boarding quietly for a country in pain that helped us not feel so guilty for riding an emp-ty resort of powder.


One of the charity rides in Niseko where your donation got you a ticket to freeride or lap the park with Hokkaido’s finest professionals.

The images broadcasted from the disaster area were truly horrifying.


Photography: Great Lakes Insurgents

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Sofie Windh, Kiroro Snow World, Japan.



Sending it in the Shirakaba spring park with masked Kutchan local Lib Tech rider.

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Over 10 years ago Hisashi was given a small red Coca-Cola vending machine door by a friend who had salvaged it. He liked it so much that he added the fridge door along with straw bail cement sides to the en-trance of his Gyu bar and tasu in Niseko, Hokkaido, Japan.

– No other doors were ever considered. Adding the vend-ing machine door wasn’t a pre-meditated act, it just happened, says Hisashi.

Gyu bar goer’s duck and squeeze through the little coke fridge door into a little room where there sits an old organ, then enter the bar. The collec-tor’s feel of art, shelves of books and crates of vinyl behind the bar and the staffs hand-written menu fits this unique snowed in spot where snow foxes stare at you through the windows.

Small door

Brian Wolfe

Photography: Terry Heydt

All six feet / 183cm of Brian Kopish will give you an idea of the size of the door.

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Meloncollie 5Indy 29No grab 5Mute 29Stalefish 1Tailgrab 2Nosegrab 1

1%3%1%

40%

7%

40%

7%

Meloncollie Indy No grab Mute Stalefish Tailgrab Nosegrab

Contemporary fashion: Grabs

This is a complete chart of what grabs went down at the Stadium Winter Jam on Novem-ber 19th at Stockholm Stadium in Stock-holm, Sweden. Not a huge variation in this collection. On the whole the tricks that went down is a very homogeneous group. Every-body did a double cork. Some did frontside 900’s. Some crashed. A couple of backside rodeos went down and one guy pulled out a frontside underflip. As expected most on the gang went for technical difficulty rather than picture perfect style. Though it must be

Mute 40% Indy 40% No grab 7%Stalefish 1% Tailgrab 3% Nose grab 1% Meloncollie 7%

Words & Photography: Gustav OhlssonStatistics: Brian Wolfe & Gustav Ohlsson

The cold hard statistics are in. It’s here. A quick look at the pie chart will confirm the trends in this years collection.

pointed out that some managed to combine both, even though the sheer difficulty of the spins seemed to inhibit the execution of styl-ish grabs for many. As we can see in the pie chart above, most of the riders choose the easier mute and indy grab in favour of more intricate maneuvers such as stalefish or rock-et air. In all this collection was a bit of a let down. We see mute and indy occupy 80% of all territory. There was definitly more room for variation here. At least nobody brought out the hilarious tindy or euro-method grabs.

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Here we can see an example of the very common indy grab. Carried out with very nice style by this model.

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This is a very nice combination of style and skill by Nicklas Mattsson. The grab is a mute. It’s very nicely executed. The left arm extended in the opposite direction of the grab is very nice. The trick is a backside double cork 1080.

The one and only nose grab. A very unusual grab in the collection, here very well executed.

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The natural rotation of this mute grab is used to improve the speed of this backside spin. A very typical move for this show.

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One of the rare tail grabs, with picture perfect style.

This is a more unusual use of the otherwise very common mute grab. As we can see here the mute is accentuated with an extended back leg, instead of the more common front leg extension.

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A nice, but style-wise not perfect, mute grab.

There were also skiers present at the presentation of this trick collection. This skier didn’t grab.

Talking about trends in tricks can not be done with-out making a comment on contemporary fashion amongst the audience. This gentleman sums up all the current fashion within the audience: skittle thug outerwear, digital slr camera and some brightly co-loured pass to get into different areas of the arena.

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Put plumbers tape on your bolts to prevent them from unscrewing themselves.


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Help a brother out behind his back

It’s a new year, lift tickets are expensive and time is precious. Do a good deed and tighten up your friends loose binding-bolts behind their backs so nothing comes loose when you are out in it to-gether. There is nothing wrong with snugging-up your pals bindings in 2012. But be sneaky. They might think this is a binding-ambush-move messing with their stance when you were just trying to help out.

Wasting time out in the snow looking for a t-nut, screw or buckle when you just got warmed up doing park laps or put in time and effort setting up the street jib sucks. If you just paid a weeks worth of groceries for a lift ticket you don’t want to waste time waiting at the tune shop. For checking the bolts, you’ll have a better chance of an uninterrupted day boarding and get as many laps in as possible. When your strapped in on the peak and are about to Point-It, you probably will not hear your pal yell “I lost my ankle strap!” or “Does anyone have a screwdriver?”.

Also, load up one of the too many pockets on your jacket with a couple extra zips and rachets as well, you will be happy you did.

Words: Brian Wolfe & Gustav Ohlsson

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If you are lucky enough to be at a resort that has lift ticket wires, grab some for your pockets. These wires can save your day when a binding bolt goes astray.

Photography: Alex Madhuizen

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hlssonPhotography: G

ustav Ohlsson


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If you use collapsible poles while splitboarding or snowshoeing to get your backcountry turns, put ductape some around your collapsible poles.

Back country ductape. It never sucks to have a couple meters of tape when you need it. By taping some of this silver bling around your back highback you can help keep the highback-foam in place longer (these shits fall apart from kicking them down every lift up) and peel it to use in a time of need.

Zip-ties could be your saviour one day. They work great for on the hill ghetto repairs. Some resorts even give them out for you to fasten your ticket with. Stocking up on a bunch of those could really save your day of shred.

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Ignoring the signs of no overnight parking we woke up in the middle of the night to something pushing up against the snow-van. At negative 18°C, the end of April and the season is almost over.

What we thought was the Lake Louise parking lot police-ranger bust-ing us turned into a young moose lick-ing our salty snow-van that had not been washed for most of the season. After an hour of it licking and circling the van we had some face to face time through the window and passed out to it’s tongue brush-strokes. Proud of the new look we didn’t wash it off until the rain took care of it.

Moose licks

Brian Wolfe


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These are the hands of a man that lives his life on the floor. Everything in he owns is on a floor. He has a wardrobe, nothing in it though. To put something in it would also be quite the feat. There’s always a mountain of clothes laying around blocking access to the storage space. Walking around his space makes you feel like a giant looking down on a landscape of mountains and valleys made out of clothes and random stuff lying around. The most amazing thing is that this man actually is a great clothing designer.

Life on the floorWords & Photography: Gustav Ohlsson

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Gustav Adolfs torg, Malmö, Sweden.


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Norrekattparken, Halmstad, Sweden.

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Outside Sapporo, Japan.


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I had to move side to side to escape the water torture while my girl was skyping her par-ents. She couldn’t have helped anyway. If I got up the bidet would spray all over the bath-room and my clothes so I sat on it. Pulling the remote off the wall and taking the batteries out didn’t help so pushing more buttons was useless. No off switch on the toilet. Vulnerable moment. After 5 minutes it stopped and I don’t know why. A couple weeks later the same event happened with the exact same results. Never hit the bidet button again – bidet rape.

It was unstoppableWords: Brian Wolfe


34Au revoir.


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fowzi #1

Documents

good way

good people of niseko

gustav ohlsson10photography

gustav ohlsson3we

east coast of japan

good snow year

good aussies

brian wolfewhat