Urban Snowboarding is about finding and creating Urban Features in towns and cities, where riders find stairways with handrails, walls to ride, gaps to jump, random thing to slide, jib or stall on.
Better have a good supply of boards, because this environment destroys boards. Most urban riding setups are a lot like a Slopestyle Setup, with a wide stance, no forward lean, soft boots, etc. There are a few things that the Urban Riders travels with.
A pickup – To move snow to the site when you plan on riding
Shovels – To move snow and try to build in runs and jumps to get onto the object to slide.
Files and other buffers – To smooth out obvious catch spots. When you want to slide a handrail or fence or whatever, it’s a good idea to look for burrs and sharp or abrasive surfaces that could hang up you edge and lead to a head slammer.
A drop in ramp – Some of the more experienced and ambitious urban riders, build custom drop-in ramps to take with them when exploring potential stomping grounds. They might have a slick plastic surface to slide on or framing to hold snow for sliding on. Many drop ramps come apart easy or fold up to go in the truck for easy transport.
Helmets? – Although it goes against the style conscious jibbers, I have seen horrible wrecks into the street and into cheese grader stairs. I feel I have to suggest wearing a helmet.
The most crucial skill here in addition to expert rail and box riding skills, is a high level of motivation to go explore, find and set up a spot, knowing that it might not work or you may not even get to hit it once before you get kicked off. An urban rider must be aware that many private property owners don’t want you on there property playing snowboards. So pick your spots wisely and do your best not to be destructive or a bad representative of urban snowboarding.
Shares a lot of style characteristics with Slopestyle. With wide stances and soft boards, the urban style is commonly straight legged and very technical at slower speeds. Many urban riders like using a shorter board also, which lowers swing weight and allows for quicker spins and change ups.
The only way to describe the most common style of urban snowboarding, is straight up gangsta, which is funny, because it is mostly middle class white kids doing it. No disrespect to Mark Frank, who is legit gangsta and a super nice guy, or any others that come from that environment. The thing is, much of the freestyle snowboarding style and culture has come from hip hop and current rap star styles. You can see that hip hop style in nearly any terrain park in the world, especially, among urban style riders.
