Jon Stark has perhaps one of the deepest archives in snowboarding. He has been there for nearly every seminal moment in contemporary street snowboarding. In a Shot List the filmer picks the clips that mean the most to them. Sometimes they're enders, but not usually. With Stark, it's different. The level of talent he surrounds himself with is so high that when someone like, say, Cole, wants to film an ender, the relief at the end of that clip is practically divine. It's an emotional moment. It's memorable. It makes the list. Check out Stark's top five clips he's ever filmed, this one is a deep cut for the video nerds out there.

Cole Navin—5050:

Cole’s ender in Living Room was the culmination of a pretty incredible year with my best friend. I think a snowboard project’s success has so much to do with timing. And timing so often is something no one can control. You just don’t know if someone is going to get injured. You just don’t know if it’s going to snow or not. You just don’t know any of the variables that come with snowboarding, and I think there was something very serendipitous about all of Living Room. We’re coming out of the pandemic. A lot of brands didn’t have plans for people. Cole just happened to have moved to Portland that year, where I lived also.  The brands were super supportive of it and we go off and have this year where, I think everybody in snowboarding was just so excited to get back to it because—I mean if I can speak for myself I was like, is there going to be snowboarding after COVID-19? Like, I don’t know. But everybody came out swinging that year. And it culminates with this trip in Denver—The Hunger Games Trip—where everybody’s in Denver. Everybody’s trying to finish their projects. All American crews were stuck in the US and there was that late-season trip to Denver, and on the last day of our trip—it’s 72 degrees. I lived in Boulder for 6 years and I’d known about this rail forever. I’ve known about the rail for at least 15 years. And, I had a little bit of a home-field advantage feeling going to Denver where I knew of a bunch of stuff, enough to get around. And I had taken Cole and the crew there before the snow fell, we did a dry-scope. I showed him the rail, and it’s crazy. So, our week unfolds and it’s Savannah, Reid, me, and Cole. And Ian comes and joins us later. So, we have our week, and Cole’s like, I kind of want to hit that rail. And we go to it, and it’s set up. And it’s kind of the worst setup—I don’t want to rag on skiers but it kind of just felt like a skier homie setup. Like, the drop-in was super thin and there wasn’t much snow around. I kind of just brushed it off. So, then the next day we go to it to set it up for the next day after that to hit it. And while we’re setting it up we find out that it was Demetri Bales and his crew who had tried the rail. So, then there was this complete jam-on-the-brakes moment. He was like, I want to go back and hit it again and I guess he had been battling it for three days. And we all had to take a breath. I might have had a mini crash-out about it. At the end of a year where I think we had some tricks where it was like, ok, any of these could be enders but this would be an ender. We basically had to negotiate with Demetri where it was like, ok, your crew shows up, our crew shows up, we’re all going to set it up and then we’re going to go for it. And it was so sick that Demetri was down because he could have said no. But he was down and Cole was open to it because he was like, I really want to hit it. And the rail is fucking crazy. I don’t know how much the clip does it justice. The downs don’t meet the flats, each section of the rail is crooked to the next one. So, each time you hit a flat you have to reset your board and do the down flat and then hit the flat and reset your board. It’s crazy. The day we go back to hit it it’s 72 degrees. In the clip where Cole gives me a hug when we’re celebrating the clip, I have my shirt off. In between each try, I’m basically just farming whatever snow there is to make it not looked fucked up. And I remember being like, I’m going to put every ounce of effort and energy—because I know this is it—into this very last thing and if we don’t get it that’s fine. But if we do…I’m just going to leave it all out there. I remember I was basically running up the hillside with a shovel, throwing sloppy snow, and then coming back down and filming. Ian was there taking a photo and Reid was shooting 16. And Dimitiri just got fatigued. I remember he just sat next to me for a while and I think after like four and a half hours Cole did it. It was the biggest relief. It was the last trick we filmed for the video and it was just like, this was the best ending. Literally the most euphoric high. And I remember Cole bought a case of beer and we went and linked up with Dustbox and just hung out at the spot with them, all thirty of them. And that was it. It was just the perfect cherry on top. 

Jed Anderson—Back Lip:

I will go on record and say that trip to Pittsburgh was one of my favorite trips I’ve ever been on. Top three best trips I’ve ever been on. It was just the spots, the people, the vibe, the food, the city. I just fell in love with the city to the point where I’ve gone back like four times, not to film snowboarding but to enjoy the city, to take photos. It like changed my DNA. I love Pittsburgh. It’s culturally Midwest and aesthetically East Coast. I’m from the Midwest. I’m from like four and a half hours away in Detroit. So, it felt good to be there. And I just like this trick. It’s a non-rail trick. It’s natural speed into an abandoned pool. We found it one day on a day when we had gotten a trick in the morning and then didn’t have a plan for the afternoon and we were just driving around and it was literally just someone looked up and saw potential in an area and we drove up and there it was. Because of how incredible the spot was, there wasn’t a consensus of what you could do on it. Initially, he thought about airing up and down, straight on like a quarterpipe. And he—either first or second try—hit it going straight in and landed to flat and hurt his back to the point where I think he left like two days later because his back hurt so bad. I’m pretty sure—I’m under the impression that he was in pain the entire session. Going up and down didn’t really work. I don’t remember necessarily what it was but there wasn’t enough umph. Like, it wasn’t totally satisfying. So, he was like, let’s go around the bend. And I remember we had to rub brick it and get the corner set up and then it was a full-on unreal session. It worked way too well. It was just like, too good. And he did the switch up mid-session. He back lips around the corner and goes to lipslide I guess…I guess it would be a lipslide. But I think it was one of those things where, at the spot, I said ‘I think that might have been the coolest thing I’ve ever filmed.’ And I will stick by it…or put it in the top five. And Jed’s part was crazy. It’s arguably his best part and to be a part of that history is so sick.

Layne Treeter—Boardslide:

I think there’s a lot I could say about the lore of this part. And I’ll keep it short with the fact that he filmed the entire part in six weeks. I don’t think he was totally bought into the video either. He had a couple of pretty gnarly injuries that he overcame during the filming of the video. But yeah, it’s the rainbow rail in Quebec, in front of the big hotel next to battlegrounds. It’s the alpine slide that’s next to the hotel. And, I don’t know, one day we were scoping and I think we were filming a spot and he just disappeared and was like, I’m going to go grab a coffee. He disappeared and came back like an hour and a half later and he’s like, hey I found this spot, and then showed me the rainbow off his phone. And I kind of was like, oh hahaha, that’s sick. But then we just spent some time there. Yeah, I could say a million things about this but like, it’s in such a high bust tourist zone that like, I think when you tell the crew you’re going to want to do something like this…I think there’s kind of a sigh. But if you’re with the right people they’re like, alright let’s do it. And if you’re with the wrong people maybe you get talked out of it. And we were on a trip where two movies were being filmed. There was Videograss Visitors and Videograss Half Off. I think they [Visitors] were doing their own thing and we were doing ours. But like, together we were one full crew. And I do think there was some skepticism on whether we could pull it off. And I totally understood their stance on it. I think that trip wasn’t going the best, that section of the trip—because I had been on a non-stop three-month trip at that point. I hadn’t gone home. And I think that section was a little rocky. Yeah, I don’t know, we went there. The other crew went and did a line, I think there was a line that Mark did that day. And Layne and I went there and literally shoveled this thing by ourselves. We put on yellow vests and we shoveled, I want to say for five and a half hours. And it was such gnarly shoveling. We had to move snow up the hillside to cover it and create a landing for him. And all the while there were so many police and tourists. I guess the only reason the alpine slide wasn’t open was they were refurbishing it. So, it was closed. I shoveled so hard that day that my hands were bleeding with blisters on them. And Layne was just putting everything into it. I matched his energy because that’s really what it was. He matched mine and I matched his. I remember at one point I had to start shoveling the landing by myself because he had to start working on the lip, and the lip was just made out of junk. And at the point where maybe he had just enough energy to snowboard on it, the whole other crew—I think it was like Spencer, Sexton, Anthony Drolet, Jerm, and Mark Wilson and they all showed up at the exact right moment. When pure exhaustion had kicked in. Spencer gets on this thing and just files the edges on the rainbow and yeah, the rest is history. Layne does it in like five tries. The sun is low and the hotel is in the background. I even had the wherewithal to be like, this is definitely the ender of the video, so then the clip runs out where I put the cap on the lens but I don’t stop recording. I just remember laughing, you can hear that in the clip. I’m like, there’s no way this all just happened like this. No one bothered us. And if you go to that zone, it’s not the most friendly. There are cops and security and tourists everywhere. But it just all worked. 

Vinny—5050 Indy:

That whole video part is maybe one of the ones that mean the most to me. Vinny had been a couple of years sober at that point. It’s from Rendered Useless. That movie means a lot, doing it with Eli and Roobs and all the people involved and the time in which it came out and the snow year and the stories and the memories of it all. This trick sticks out so much because of the way we found it and I think it just embodies Vinny perfectly. Vinny is very grab-and-grind vibe. He did the tuck knee boardslide on Harding in Saint Paul earlier in the year. And he’s done those tricks in the past—not to say he doesn’t have more to offer. He does…but, that year we were given High Cascade van #18. Just one day it was Vinny—I don’t know if Andrew Aldridge was there or not, I think he might have been. But it was Ian, Vinny, and I in the van for sure and we were stuck in traffic on the Mass Turnpike. Ian was rolling up and he was throwing some of the loose stuff out the window and he looked over and literally saw the sharkfin. And he’s like, holy fuck what the fuck is that? Because of where we were it was really hard to get to. I think from being next to it to actually getting to it took us over half an hour. It was the crazy snow year of 2015 on the east coast. We found it and it took like three or four hours to dig it out. We went back the next day and, I don’t remember how long it took him but I feel like it might have taken him a little bit. I can’t really remember. I just was one of those things where Vinny's coming off of…like…he was sober and we’re filming this project and…I think I would be remiss not to include at least one trick from Rendered Useless and this one just sticks out the most. I love Vinny very much. I think I filmed every trick in that part. I look back on that and I’m just very fond of those memories with him. We were basically inseparable that entire year. Shouts to Vinny.  

Dillon Ojo—Boardslide:

Again, arguably for me the best snowboard trip I’ve ever been on. It’s hard to pick one. I think those chikenmeat edits just ended up being excuses to just go on trips with my friends. The Chile one was insane. The next year we did this New Zealand one. Creatively, it felt like I was coming into my own. I was really finding myself with the work that I was making and going on these trips with my friends was insane. I don’t know, what can you say? We knew Snowpark was abandoned. We knew it existed and we knew it went out of business. One day on the trip we just risked it and went up there. It’s kind of a trek and we got there and there was a lock on the gate. I remember we pulled up and immediately was like, oh fuck, that’s it, can’t get passed this. And Colton Morgan jumps out of the van and he just goes straight up to the lock and I shit you not, eight seconds later, the lock just opens. I believe he immediately realized, looking down at the numbers that the combo was 0000. And so he just switched it to 0000 and opened the gate and we got in. It was just that easy. We go up and I remember there was not much snow. It’s the opposite of the Northern Hemisphere so, like, south-facing is good—I believe the majority of Snow Park is north-facing so it had been like fully melted out. That famous rail and stairset were still there. I think some sort of car driving operation bought that area and they did car testing in it—I think. But anyways, I was just like, we probably have to hit this rail and Dillon was immediately down, as he would be. And I remember him and I set it up by ourselves while the rest of the crew looked around because I think there were still features there and I think everyone just went for a walk and Dillon and I set it up. And if I remember right Dillon builds the lip out of dirt and then just covers it with a little amount of snow. So, yeah, you never know when something you're filming will take on a timelessness you could have never imagined before. Just to have a little part of the lore of Dillon…that rail was gnarly. I remember we walked down the stairset and broke through one of the stairs because it was rotting and there were like jagged nails sticking out. The rail was kind of cantered, it like wasn’t fully upright. I think he slammed a couple times, as he would. But yeah, he did it. He rides out into the dirt and it’s such a perfect moment with all of my best friends at the time: Cole, Dillon, Blake, Spencer, Colt Morgan, and Max Warbington. It was just the best trip and that moment…I just look back and…yeah.

Honorable Mentions:

Johnny Brady Boardsliding the Northstar Kink in a Cowboy Hat—Rendered Useless

Spencer Schubert Ender—Good Sport

Ted Borland Ender—Pepper 

Louif Gap to Boardslide—Blindspot