Crude Conversations

In this one, Cody talks with Giles and Sebastian Landry, the founders of Turnagain Hardcore, a video production crew that produced Alaska-based snowmachine videos throughout the early 2000s. From 2001 to 2009, Turnagain Hardcore, or THC, released eight videos that helped nurture some of the best snowmachiners in the world. These riders were setting records and going bigger than anyone else in the industry at the time.

More often than not, the stakes were high. And every year, they got higher—bigger jumps, bigger tricks and more serious consequences. Their thinking at the time was, “If it can’t kill you, no one’s gonna watch it.” That was key to the mentality that drove THC. They wanted the videos to be an example of what Alaskan snowmachiners brought to the table. They wanted Alaskans to be proud to share the videos with anyone, anywhere in the world.

Turnagain Pass, from which Turnagain Hardcore gets its name, was homebase. It’s located about a half-hour from Girdwood, where Giles and Sebastian live, so it was an easy commute. In the beginning, they would go out there with tape measures to measure distances from potential take-offs and landings. They wanted to find spots where riders could go huge. But as the jumps and the consequences got higher, Giles and Sebastian made a point to find spots close to roads and cellphone reception. Thinking back to those times, they say that their biggest accomplishment was that they always brought everyone home.

Chloe Ivanoff is new to the kelp farming industry in Kodiak. She says that because it’s such a new industry in the United States, there’s always something to learn or something to innovate. The process of kelp farming, for instance, is still being tweaked. Kelp spores are gathered locally and brought to a lab where they’re grown. When they’re ready for a larger grow environment, the kelp is set in the ocean along a group of grow lines. However, once they’re in the water, they’re at the mercy of the elements. Unlike agricultural farming, kelp is grown in its natural environment, without constant surveillance. After it’s harvested and processed, the kelp, or seaweed, is generally used in food products like seasonings, sauces or even made into noodles. 

Above all, Chloe wants to be a lifelong learner. With kelp farming, that means being adaptable. So, if a storm hits or her grow lines become tangled, she needs to go to work, regardless of time or weather. She looks to other local farms for understanding and inspiration. For what works and what doesn’t.

Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks."

In this episode of Chatter Marks, Cody talks with three fellow podcasters about what it's like creating podcasts about Alaskans. Alice Qannik Glenn hosts “Coffee & Quaq,” a show that celebrates and explores contemporary Native life in urban Alaska. In it, Alice sits down with Alaska Native thinkers, doers and changemakers to discuss issues that affect Alaska Native people, their culture and their environments. She also hosts and produces “Resolve,” a show about missing and murdered Indigenous women in Alaska, and also “Alaska Natives on the Frontline,” which highlights the adaptability and resilience of the Inupiat people in the face of climate change. Daniel Buitrago co-hosts the “Alaska Wild Project,” a show that gives an inside look at Alaska outdoor lifestyles. Ralph Sara is the host of the “Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast,” a show that features conversations with guests who are working through alcohol and drug addiction, many of which are Indigenous People.

Chatter Marks is a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, and is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Just search "Chatter Marks."

In this one, I talk with Ralph Sara, the host of the Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast, a show that features conversations with guests who are working through alcohol and drug addiction, many of which are Indigenous People.  Ralph’s heritage and his past informs many of these discussions. He grew up in Bethel, where he says that almost every household on his street was affected by alcoholism,  including his own. That’s where his relationship with alcohol started, with his own family. He says it goes back to his first memory and his only memory of his father. The memory goes like this: He’s at his dad’s funeral and his sister is holding him. He’s looking down at his dad in his coffin and he asks his sister if he’s sleeping. She tells him, no, that dad went to heaven. It’s a vivid and heartbreaking image of how alcohol was introduced to Ralph because his dad drowned while he was drinking and the result affected his entire family.

Before he got sober, Ralph said that his life was a revolving door. He would go on binges and lose everything and then he would get sober. Sick of the revolving door, he went to residential treatment. In total, he went three times and during the last time, he thought of doing a podcast. It would be something that would hold him accountable to his own sobriety. He would have conversations with other people about their stories of addiction and sobriety, conversations that could help other people going through the same thing understand that they’re not alone. And so The Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast was born.

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 1 on the list is with Preston Pollard, a motivational speaker and celebrity interviewer. Preston grew up skateboarding in Anchorage, Alaska, and aided by the unwavering optimism he learned from family and loved ones, he pursued it in the same way he pursues everything in his life—with curiosity and passion. Talk to him and he’ll tell you that he’s not great at a lot of things—including skateboarding—but the one thing he is really great at is being himself. He’s tenacious, optimistic and devout. And he has a talent for connecting with people and motivating them to be better. He says that everything he’s doing right now, he envisioned it. He thought about where he wanted to be, prayed about it and doggedly pursued it. And in that pursuit, his dreams became a reality. He says that, “Once you stay true to who you are… everything starts to open up.”

Preston is on a lifelong journey of inspiration, knowledge and understanding. He reads constantly. In fact, among the many people he considers to be his mentors are both living and deceased authors, entrepreneurs and faith leaders. To understand his motivation and faith, all you have to do is look on his bookshelf. He says that these people opened up the world to him, they taught him that there’s more to life than the insulated worlds we generally create for ourselves.

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 2 on the list is with Pika Burtner. Pika grew up watching and studying snowboard videos with the technical eye of an auteur. At 14, she started renting snowboard videos from Fairhaven Bike and Ski in Bellingham, Washington. She would always rewind the videos and return them on time. Fairhaven eventually offered her a job, which is where she worked until she went to college. At 18, she got a photography job at the University of Washington. It came with all the traditional benefits, including a steady paycheck, a 401k and healthcare. Because of that job, Pika—alongside her husband Jesse Burtner and Sean Genovese—was able to help create and fund Think Thank, a snowboard video production company. Think Thank would go on to create a category of snowboarding that focused on riding urban environments rather than backcountry ones. Pika describes Think Thank as an ongoing piece of art.

In 2014, Pika and Jesse had their son Ollie. At that moment, Pika says that she went from working on Think Thank to being a mother. It was a transition that caught her by surprise. So, in response, she began pursuing things she’s always been interested in. She says that as you get older, you feel like there’s less room for error, but that it’s also important to not be afraid to fail.

This is an episode of GLOSS, or the Gorgeous Ladies of Shred and Ski—an ongoing series between Crude and Blower Media.

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 3 on the list is with Nick Perata. He worked at and helped create King of the Hill, a legendary snowboard competition held in Thompson Pass back in the 1990s. Perata talks about what it was like being the director and event promoter and how the event came to be. Before King of the Hill, he was a professional snowboarder, pushing the nascent sport into new areas of discipline and filming for the most progressive videos of the ‘90s. He was one of the best snowboarders in the world back when the professionals weren’t considered traditional athletes. They were often dirtbags and drifters with an attraction to rowdy groups and the outdoors.

Perata says that the rate of progression in sports moves quickly, so most athletes have about seven or eight years to be at the top of their game. After that time is up, the next generation of riders are on a higher level of progression. So, to continue his presence in the snowboard industry, Perata made a transition from being a professional snowboarder to an event promoter. It was a move that spawned King of the Hill and also set him down a path that would forever include Alaska.

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 4 on the list is with Dan Coffey, one of the youngest competitors at King of the Hill. Coffey’s experience and recollection of King of the Hill is unique, in that he was just a teenager when he went. He was a senior in high school when he first competed in the event. He says it was surreal, he was up there in the Chugach Mountains, competing with and riding the same lines as many of the snowboarders he looked up to. So, for him, the abundance of drugs and alcohol weren’t as front-and-center as they were for others. Sure, he participated in the festivities, but he rarely overindulged. He was there to snowboard.

Coffey says that there was a sense of camaraderie and community at King of the Hill. That it was such an undertaking it took the whole town to do the event, so everybody had to be part of it. But between alcohol, illicit substances and young bravado, there was a lot of room for error. A number of times in this conversation, he makes a point of mentioning that nobody was ever seriously injured. Which, I think, could be a testament to skill and preparation or it could be a testament to luck. In a separate conversation we had—when talking about the equalizing quality of the Chugach Mountains—Coffey told me, “Those mountains will bring the skiers and snowboarders with the biggest egos down to earth.”

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 5 on the list is with Brooke Geery. In 1997, Brooke started an online snowboard publication called YoBeat. It began on an AOL message board with 2 megabytes of free space and grew into an internationally recognized website. She says that it was a satirical site that gave a voice to people who snowboarded rather than a mouthpiece for the industry. Brooke and the content YoBeat hosted were children of the Internet, conveying unfiltered opinions and candid ideas. Many of which garnered love and hate in the comment sections that often drew just as much attention as the articles. And this all started back when there were only a few online snowboard publications.

Brooke says that YoBeat needed to die so that she could run a more mature snowboard publication. She was 15 years old when she started the site, and that voice persisted throughout the lifespan of the publication. Now, with her new online publication, Blower Media, a more mature Brooke is re-entering the conversation surrounding the culture of snowboarding during a time when so many legacy publications have died out. There are only a few people left in the industry with the same knowledge and first-hand experience as Brooke. So, her perspective on the past, present and future of snowboard media is one to listen to.

This is the first episode in an ongoing series between Crude and Blower Media—where I’ll be talking with influential women in snowboarding—I talk to Brooke Geery, a longtime snowboard journalist and publisher of snowboard media.