This is sort of, one of the more interesting ways companies spend money building fun things to try to make you more inclined to buy their products that are unrelated to skateboarding. It’s not the best one from Mountain Dew, but the Super Snake hybrid snowboard / skateboard course looks fun enough. It’s mostly just parallel courses,but there is a chance for some interaction between disciplines. You can watch a trailer for a 22 minute short film that will be televised nationally on ABC, Sunday, October 16. Headlining pros are skateboarder Sean Malto and snowboarder Danny Davis. Corporate schilling over.

Tom Sims died last week from a heart attack. My first snowboard was a Sims, because it was in the 80’s and quite frankly, there weren’t a lot of other choices out there. Sims put out some of my favorite skateboard graphics courtesy of Bernie Tostenson, so why would any self-respecting skater choose another brand? The Sims name was trusted and it legitimized the sport to a certain extent, at least through my eyes in that time period. As his clout in the skateboard industry waned, he picked up more steam in snowboarding, and that seems to be how the mainstream media is focusing on. The images above were poached from a gallery on ESPN. They’ve got a story and a video up too, mostly focusing on Tom’s influence in snowboarding. Interesting fact, Sims was instrumental in bringing the halfpipe to snowboarding competition, otherwise it would have been endless slalom races.