Contributor WACKLE //

IN the mid 80’s before snowboardings’ rise in popularity and commercial appeal, shred competitions were near non existent. Surfing on the other hand, had roots, lots of participants and competitions. Westbeach was the at the epicenter of the California lifestyle scene and knew it had to stoke the fire and blow the scene up. The solution? The Westbeach Classic!

An excerpt from Out West: Snowboarding, Westbeach and a new Canadian Dream by Dano Pendygrasse available at www.westbeach.com.

The first Westbeach Classic was actually a surf contest. it started in the mid 1980’s on Vancouver Island’s west coast and in its very first year had 100 entrants, including four in the women’s cateogry. As Marco Allinott remembers it, Raph Bruhweiler, who went on to some fame in the surfing world, won the novice category that year. In typical style, Westbeach decided they were going to have a contest, set out to do it, and, without asking too many questions, went ahead and did. Only after they showed up to the beach did they find out that they needed to have an event permit from the Canadian Parks Service. The next year they had that covered and had rented and filled the entire campground at Chesterman’s in Tofino.

Below: A poster from the 1989 Westbeach Surf jam advertising sun, surf, sand and prizes.

Contributor // Lenny Rubenovitch

Check out this short video my crew and I made about the history of snowboarding in Whistler. As you may know, we will be releasing some upcoming Westbeach Anniversary videos……more on that later.

The Whistler Film Festival in association with underexposed media group presents a Whistler Stories Film: The First To Go Up, a brief history of snowboarding in Whistler.The First To Go Up documents the story of the first snowboarders allowed to ride on Blackcomb and Whistler Mountains, and the struggles they encountered as this upstart new sport took hold.

Whistler, 2007

The First to Go Up, a brief history of snowboarding in Whistler

Skateboarding’s popularity was suffering in the early 80’s and fashion was changing, surf culture was in, while the snurfer and snowboarding were on the rise. Bright colours and Californian culture were being imported in Canada and the California dream was alive and kicking.

Yes, the ad below does say, “DIG THIS BUYERS”. I think I still do.

-Jon Cartwright

This framed advertisement comes from Chip’s personal archive of Westbeach memories. It was probably the first ad that Westbeach did and from what I can tell it ran in a trade magazine in the early 80’s. It is also one of the few pieces of advertising that Chip kept. His archive also contained some amazing examples of the early snow clothing and lots of internal comunications.

Some of the things that I find interesting about this ad is the cut and paste that is a holdover of the recent punk movement, the lack of name identification, The shorts are called “chips shorts”, as well as “2 HIP” just within this ad. Chip has also called them “bbq shorts” and of course they ended up being Westbeach shorts. The name “Westbeach” is relegated to the tiny yellow strip on the bottom right (mostly hidden beneath the frame). The brand was definitely tying to find its name still at this point.

Also, the “surfer” in the top photo, on the left, is Shane Bunting who later went on to fame as “Madchild” from  the Canadian hiphop crew “Swollen Members”

- Dano