Eddie Wall Interview From The Union Square Street Sessions
Feb 09 2007 / New York City, NY
Eddie Wall Wins Union Square Street Sessions
If you set up some rails in some random place and throw a snowboarding contest, Eddie Wall will be there ready to kill it: In addition to winning just about every slopestyle or rail jam contest ever held in Mammoth, CA, he’s also been winning contests in unlikely places ranging from Las Vegas to London. When he heard about an action sports block party going down in the middle of Manhattan, he knew it was for him: a perfect excuse to party in NYC.
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PHOTO GALLERY
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Check out photos of from the Rail Jam and Awards Ceremony
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Photos from the Rail Jam After Party
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Lat34 caught up with Eddie Wall during warm-ups at the Union Square Street Sessions, just after he blew chunks from partying too hard in the Big Apple the night before and just before he put it down for another first place finish. We fear the $15,000 paycheck may have helped add fuel to the fire at his victory party. Bode Miller, eat your heart out.
Lat34: Feeling all right now?
EW: Every time I’ve ever thrown up before a contest, I’ve ended up winning. So I’m not really superstitious about it at all. It’s a good thing! You can’t come to New York and not do it up right. This place is crazy.
Lat34: Contrast an event like this with the X Games, or with being at a ski resort.
EW: It’s super cool to be downtown in Manhattan hitting a handrail. It’s surreal, and it’s a whole different feel. It’s rad. It’s cool to see it coming away from the big expensive resort scene a little bit, and it’s cool to see so many new people getting exposed to what can be done on a snowboard.
Lat34: Now that you’ve been out here for about an hour feeling things out, who are you looking out for?
EW: Lucas Magoon has been killing it and he’s won a lot of these lately, and Yale Cousino’s been doing really good in practice. But it’s hard to tell because some people ride really hard in practice. For me, I try to save myself for later on.
Lat34: Tell me about the setup here. What’s it like out there?
EW: It’s pretty harsh! It’s definitely a really steep rail, and I guess that it is really similar to real street rails you might find in the city: It’s long and steep and then completely flat. It will rattle you for sure.
Lat34: Obviously a setup like this is somewhat artificial. How much are you actually out there in real urban environments doing your thing?
EW: All the time! I’ll spend like three months out of the year in the streets this year. We spend a lot of our time in Stockholm, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland. You don’t get kicked out there. It’s like there’s no lawyers in Europe.
Lat34: Now that these kinds of contests are popping up, snowboarding can pretty much go anywhere, right?
EW: The craziest place we’ve done one is Las Vegas. Snowboarding in the desert! We also did one in Trafalgar Square over in London. That was insane. There’s been some pretty abnormal rail jams. Downtown Manhattan is right up there. Mainly after this I just have filming for a bunch of different projects, and then the US Open in Stratton, Vermont. Hopefully they get some more snow, but if we have to set up in the parking lot with something like this, at least we know we can do it.
– Colin Bane
