The In Crowd

Click here for more details.

According to Metro. Who knew Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Scotland (see above), Tehran, Iran or Seoul, South Korea had any kind of skiing?? Click here for more details.

I discovered this place on a recent vacation to Colorado. Quality designer street & snowboard wear in the heart of swanky Aspen. Check it if you run in 'those' kind of circles and happen to be out there some time. Just make sure your private jet has enough space for all the gear you're likely to cop!

Online:  Website  |  MySpace 

Officially known as the Air Max 95 Zen Venti boot, these are not supposed to be officially available until January but I've seen them in Brooklyn sneaker stores for the past few weeks now. They also have them in a different colorway at Finish Line and Nike has done similar boots in the style of the Vanadal sneaker and the Nike Shox.

So is this, "[t]he result of combning one of Nike's most popular running styles of all time with a high-fashion boot" or fugly like some message board chatter claims? It's definitely eye-catching at the very least....

And no, despite this post and the last one about the trend towards upscale fashionista grocery shopping bags, The In Crowd has not turned into a women's fashion blog, aight!

(Image courtesy: Sneakerhead.com) 

This Stussy x Burton collab board looks super dope. But it's also super limited so you better go cop ASAP if you're feeling it. $650 for those who got it (unlike me). Details as follows from the Stussy online store:

Burton Air 157cm model features World Tour screenprint, superfly core, dualzone EGD, sintered vision base, infinite ride, base color black/red, imported, Stussy store exclusive, limit one per customer.

Click here to order. 

As spotted in this weekend's New York Times Style magazine:

"Not so long ago, Africa was to soccer what Jamaica was to bobsledding. No more. This year, five of the continent's teams have qualified for a chance to win the most-coveted trophy, the World Cup. In "The African Game," a new book bankrolled by Puma, the Nigerian photographer Andrew Dosunmu documents African football fanatics, from the beaches to the bleachers. (The journalist Knox Robinson contributed essays.) And with South Africa set to be the host of the 2010 world tournament, the book is as well timed as a scoring header on a corner kick. Only one thing is missing: a world champion to call Africa's own." (click here and here for more)

Regular readers know I am a fan of all things wooden, particularly snowboards so it's no surprise that I would be a fan of the 2005 Burton Idiom 158 board (right). It's already sold out - at least on the site where I discovered it - but props and shine are still due. Read on:

"The Idiom 158 has a directional shape intended for all conditions. This board has healthy sidecut conducive to nice, tight turns. The board has a mellow, medium flex which makes the board easy to handle. Edge-to-Edge quickness is very good and turn initiation is responsive due to the shorter effective Edge, making this board very agile in all situations. Materials are very good and quality is exceptional, making the Idiom one of the premier snowboards in the world. The IDIOM SELECT 158 is inspired from early modern furniture design and draws influence from the designs of Charles and Ray Eames." (click here to read more)

I better post this before the snowboard/ski season is over.... the ultimate snowboarder's house:

"There is one word that snowboarders apply to any euphoric condition: "epic." It is a state that Marc Morisset, a former pro boarder, knows well. He has experienced it time and again in the mountains of Whistler, in British Columbia, where he has lived for the past 15 years. And he encountered it recently when he climbed a tree on an empty lot in a new Whistler development, which to the civilian eye must have looked like a completely unbuildable pile of rock by the side of the road, and discovered that it afforded tremendous, near panoramic views taking in Mount Fee, Sprout, Rainbow, Mount Currie, Armchair, Wedge, Blackcomb and Whistler. Sweet.

But it would take some imagination to see a house there.

Through a mutual friend Morisset was introduced to Christos Marcopoulos and Carol Moukheiber, the young husband-and-wife team behind the San Francisco-based Studio (n-1). Marcopoulos (who worked for Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and SOM in San Francisco) and Moukheiber (who came out of Cooper Union and worked with Bruce Mau in Toronto and SOM in New York) were used to some pretty extreme challenges, but in this case it was creative political skills that they needed more than anything else. "Intrawest practically gives you a phone book of design guidelines," Marcopoulos explains, referring to the development corporation that also has stakes in Mammoth, Calif., Squaw Valley, Nev., and Winter Park, Colo., and is aggressively propagating its finely honed McResort aesthetic." (click here for more)