Burton Bullet Snowboard - Men's

Description

Don't let your big boots be a drag. Step up to the wide waist Bullet. An evolution of the wide ride, the Bullet features a slightly tapered shape for rapid fire response and enhanced float in fresh snow. From first turns to dropping lines lesser riders fear, the Bullet offers high-caliber performance that won't leave you, or your toes, hanging.

Features:

• FEEL: 2
• SHAPE: Directional
• FLEX: Twin
• BASE: Lightspeed Vision
• CORE: Fly w/ negative profile, Biax react fiberglass
• SIDEWALLS: Slantwall
• EDGES: Cruise controll
• EXTRAS: NEW Cruiase controll tune, NEW SIZES: 157cm and 160cm
• SIZES: Men's wide-154cm, 157cm, 160cm, 164cm

NEW Cruise control tech: Gives entry level to intermediate riders a progression tuned platform to learn and improve on. Softer flex, lower camber, and a mellower edge tune create a more forgiving, easier to maneuver ride. The base features a convex shape at the nose that not only makes turning and stopping simple but also adds a whole new level of catch free confidence when stepping to rails and spinning off kickers. Here's a chance for you to pad you knowledge base.

The History of Snowboarding in North America

It was Christmas morning, 1965 when Sherman Poppen walked outside his home in Muskegon, Michigan, looked at a snow-covered hill, and saw a wave. Seems like an odd scenario for the birth-moment of snowboarding, but considering the Beach Boys had just finished selling twelve million albums, it's not surprising that a land-locked inventor with several industrial gas patents under his belt got the surfing bug and translated it to snow.

As with all inventions, there's always some speculation regarding who pioneered the movement. Before Poppen, there were accounts of World War I soldiers standing sideways on barrel staves and sliding down snow-swept hills while stationed in Europe. At a local garage sale, Jake Burton found a board dating back to the 1920s.The recent discovery of a video dating back to 1939 shows an elegantly dressed man by the name of Vern Wicklund riding a snowboard-type sled sideways down a small Chicago hill. Wicklund family members have also uncovered patents for the board. This discovery adds to the historical depth of snowboarding, but as far as initially bringing the idea to the masses, Poppen's Snurfer onslaught marked the conception.

"My wife was pregnant and told me I had to do something to get my two daughters out of the house or she was going to go crazy," said Poppen, who admitted he was fascinated by surfing, but had never tried it. "When I looked at that hill, I thought why not?" Remembering the past attempts of his daughter Wendy standing up on her sled, he hastily screwed two pairs of children's skis together with some doweling and fashioned a surfboard for the snow. Within a few days, all the neighborhood kids were begging Mr. Poppen for what Mrs. Poppen dubbed the "Snurfer" by mixing the word "snow" with "surfer." Six months later, Poppen licensed the idea to Brunswick Manufacturing, and over the next ten years, upwards of a million Snurfers were produced and sold through chain sporting goods stores and toy stores. Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of Burton Snowboards, the largest snowboard brand in the world, remembers the Snurfer as his first winter ride, as does Demetrije Milovich who started Winterstick Snowboards and Chris Sanders who founded Avalanche Snowboards. Burton, Winterstick and Avalanche all started up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as did Sims out on the West Coast. Quickly thereafter, the American-born sport filtered throughout Europe with early pioneers such as Frenchman Regis Rolland riding his swallowtail snowboard into history as the "good guy snowboarder" being pursued by the "bad guy skiers" in the cult classic movies known simply as Apocalypse Snow I, II and III. The French dubbed the sport appropriately Le Surf, and surfing on snow became the newest winter sport worldwide.

In the early eighties, ski movies by Warren Miller and Greg Stump occasionally featured clips of snowboarders surfing deep powder and articles gradually popped up in skateboarding, surfing and skiing publications. But unlike the Hawaiian-born water sport of surfing, there was no clear-cut occurrence that brought modern-day snowboarding to the masses. Hollywood released the movie Gidget in 1959, and then in 1966 independent filmmaker Bruce Brown released The Endless Summer and the surfing lifestyle reached the mainstream. Though the Vietnam War slowed down the sport's growth until the mid ‘70s, the romantic lifestyle of chasing waves instead of paychecks was firmly engraved into the youthful minds of the world and especially America. If any year could be marked as the beginning of the snowboarding explosion it was 1985. Absolutely Radical, the first exclusive snowboard magazine hit the newsstand behind visionary publisher Tom Hsieh. By this time, dozens of snowboard entrepreneurs were addicted to riding and recognized the huge potential of the sport. Six months later, Hsieh changed the name of his magazine to International Snowboard Magazine to tone down the sport's already "radical" image and better represent the snowboarders of the world.

Even British agent James Bond saw the benefits of snowboarding when he narrowly escaped capture by enemy Russian thugs in the 1985 release of A View To A Kill. American snowboarders Steve Link and Tom Sims doubled for 007 on location at Glacier Lake in Iceland and Vadrietta di Scersen in The Swiss Alps. The final scene of the pursuit shows Bond riding full speed into a glacial lake where he surfs safely across the surface to the other side as the skier thugs wipe out, screaming and sinking in the icy waters.

Two years later the publication of TransWorld Snowboarding Magazine and Snowboarder Magazine spread the word with high circulation numbers targeting skateboarders, surfers and cross-over skiers. By 1990, every European country as well as Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand offered exclusive coverage of snowboarding. Local "zines" and independent filmmakers released Snowboarders In Exile and Totally Board while snowboard manufacturers like Burton fed the fire with Winter Waves and Chill.

Skiers started to wonder, "Where did all these snowboarders come from?" For some staunch traditionalists, snowboarders came straight out of their worst nightmares, the bad boys and girls of winter who, according to a 1994 television episode of American Journal, "are knocking down skiers like bowling pins." Ironically, that same year, the May 5th cover of Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “Snowboarding scores as the fastest growing sport with participation up 50 percent since the previous winter." Appropriately a day later, Ride Snowboards became the first snowboard-specific company to go public. It raised over $5.75 million its first day on thestock exchange. All this from a sport that was discounted as "a fad" by many ski resorts and mainstream media journalists. Parade Magazine quoted Time Magazine, in its January 1988 issue by calling snowboarding the "Worst New Sport...To traditionalists, the breezy fad is a clumsy intrusion on the sleek precision of downhill skiing, but to some 100,000 enthusiasts, many of them adolescent males, it is the coolest snow sport of the season... Of course there are holdouts. Complains veteran Vermont skier, Mary Simons: Snowboarding is not about grace and style but about raging hormones." But that was 1988.

Still, the sport was struggling for acceptance at many resorts in the early ‘90s. The average snowboarder was an adolescent male with the same attitude as an adolescent skier. But since most adolescents were on snowboards, the stereotypes began as a result of a few bad apples riding fast and out of control, cutting lift lines and disregarding ski area boundaries. The still fledgling sport was pegged and anyone on a board was regarded as "one to watch" by the ski patrol, and "one to watch out for" by the skiers. Riders and manufacturers eventually started to police each other and write letters to the resorts, lobbying for acceptance. Many resorts began to allow snowboarders, but a few resorts still held out against riders. Today, only a handful of resorts that ban snowboarders remain: Alta and Deer Valley in Utah, Taos in New Mexico, and Mad River Glen in Vermont. Park City in Utah finally gave in during the 1996 season, ironically, after it bid for the snowboard events at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and more recently Aspen opened its slopes on April 1st, 2001.

Snowboarding has come a long way since The Summer of Love, 1965. It debuted as an official Olympic sport at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, proving that it was no longer a fad. And the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics fully launched snowboarding into the mainstream, dominating the media and public’s attention before,during and after the Games. Burton Team rider Kelly Clark captured the first Olympic Gold Medal for the United States at the 2002 Winter Games, winning the Women’s Halfpipe Competition. And Burton Global Team rider Ross Powers won the Olympic Gold Medal in Men’s Halfpipe, leading the Americans to the first medal sweep at the Winter Olympics since 1956. Burton PGS rider Chris Klug also walked away from the Olympics with a bronze medal in the Parallel Giant Slalom event, bringing Burton’s medal count to three – two gold medals and a bronze. A 2002 survey conducted by Leisure Trends stated that 32% of the total US population saw the Snowboarding Halfpipe competition – that means nearly 92 million people watched the event – and that was only in the US. Of that percentage, 18.6 million Americans said they wanted to try snowboarding after viewing the Olympic event. The 2002 Olympic Games gave snowboarding an unprecedented amount of exposure, showing the world that it was legit and here to stay.

In addition to the Olympics, ESPN, MTV and dozens of corporations push snowboarding to the masses. Thanks to a dedicated core group of snowboarding industry leaders, including manufacturers, magazines and riders, the soul of the sport is remaining intact and thriving amidst the chaos of its newfound fame.

(The above information has been provided by Burton)