Rob Machado, Taylor Steele, and a Winnebago full of musicians visited VAS Entertainment while touring the latest Hurley and Taylor Steele Project “The Drifter” throughout California. The premiere was a huge success, packing in San Luis Obispo’s historic Fremont theater. During Machado’s office visit prior to the screening he noticed the company ping pong table in the warehouse. He requested a match with the current office champ. Ben Bryan rose to the occasion and took game 1 (in a best of 7 tournament) in OT…23-21. The game mirrored many characteristics of the classic Machado – Slater ASP clashes of old. Machado displayed amazing skill showcasing his “nasty English” while serving, yet he couldn’t overpower the tenacious young competitor. After the game Bryan credited intimidation, home court advantage, and Machado playing a portion of the game with the opposite hand as his primary reasons for the victory. The belt will remain at VAS headquarters until Machado returns to finish the series…to be continued…

The B premiered simultaneously in 5 major Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Harbin, and Changchun) on October 17.  They also held a King Of the Park contest at the indoor Burton Qiaobo Terrain Park near Beijing to kick off the season the same day.  There were more than 600 people in attendance to watch the gasp-worthy film of A-list riders.

Thanks to Burton rep William Avedon, we get to feel like we were halfway across the world in 5 cities at once without the jet lag.

Danny and I recently had a European business trip which was fun and productive. We hit up 4 countries in 8 days.  We used London as our hub to get cheap flights and were there basically every other day.  Note:  if you plan to take the cheap flights around the EU bring light luggage because it’s $30 extra per Kilo which is rape in any language.  This picture was shot is in Biarritz on our visit with our friends at X-treme Video.  The waves were very small so surfing was out, but having woken up to the first snow in Austria earlier, the sunshine of France was welcomed by the afternoon.  Napoleon built this palace for his mistress back in the day.  I wonder how grand his wife’s house was???

BB

This just in from our Japan office where they hosted a premier for Think Thank’s new film “Cool Story”. They had a great turn out!

Read below:

Hello,

We did the Think Thank “Cool Story” premiere in Tokyo last weekend.
It was the great night for audience and us.
Of course, there is some industry guys. But almost audience was consumer.
I could feel that they love THINK THANK movie.

I send some pictures of this event.

Best regards,
HIRO

Cool Story Premiere in Japan

Team building is important to VAS.  So is making sure that we participate in the sports we represent.  We have some seasoned snowboarders, surfers, skaters, bikers, climbers and more, but it’s always fun to get others to try something new.  This week we had Sharon Barto and Dan Strickland from our Seattle office in town.  Dan has been surfing for a while and he and some of the other dudes around our office went out quite a bit before and after work.

Sharon, however, held the V-card in the surfing department.  Rumor got around that I could take her out and show her a few things so she came knocking on my door.  I told her that I would love to take her out, but it would be entirely at her own risk being that I’m still learning myself and wouldn’t make much of a teacher.  That didn’t phase Sharon, and once Rebecca from our international sales team got wind of the plans she jumped on board as well to try surfing for the first time.  The cool thing about our office is that usually if you send out an email to everyone saying “we’re doing X thing at X time on X day,” you get a pretty good team rallied.

We ended up with the 2 newbies and myself, as well as Dan and Josh, another sales rep who rips.  VAS also welcomes outsiders in with open arms, and especially this time when Grant, a Hawaiian native and SLO local came along.  He was a life saver to Sharon and Reebs, spending time giving them tips and pointers as I fended for myself and Josh and Dan were off shredding the bigger waves when they rolled in.

We had about 7 non-surfers come to watch the shenanigans, and they posted up on the beach and froze to death, but I’m sure watching us try to surf was worth it.

All in all it was a blast out there.  Reebs stood up on a few waves and Sharon caught the surfing bug and went out again on Saturday morning, dragging anyone she could with her.  Oh, and Sharon also picked up a new nickname thanks to the borrowed board she used … let’s hope she lives up to it one day.  Thanks to Wavelengths in Morro Bay for hooking up the wetsuit rentals and keeping the girls looking hot and feeling warm.  Ooooooo-OOOOOOO!

Amy Detwiler

Hope everything went well in the real world! This weekend the VAS gang along with 50,000 spectators and almost 10,000 athletes put life on hold to attend the bike epic that is the Sea Otter Classic. I met up with Ben, Amy, Reebs, Geoff, Mike, and many more at Monterey CA’s Laguna Seca Raceway where for a change the sun was in attendance this year. What ensued was four days on two wheels.

Arriving in a small army of Westfalias (Westfalia?) the crew quickly took our place inside a tent city only slightly hotter than it was dusty; think “Collective” meets “Fear and Loathing”. Adding to camp Westy was Ben’s canvas igloo, complete with stereo and a/c. As the weekend settled in winds died down and the sun only got hotter. The atmosphere at the expo and races was upbeat and outgoing, which can be at least partially attributed to the ridiculous quantities of free energy drink that seemingly sprung from every corner of the event.

Joining the many hued refreshments were venders from all corners of the cycling world, displaying never before seen gear for the start of the new season. Some were concerned that last weekend’s world cup race in South Africa would shorten this year’s guest list but the expo proved to be a who’s who of cycling with everyone from bike builder Gary Fisher to downhill racer/ wildman Cedric Gracia catching some serious rays by the end of the weekend. Trials legend Ryan Leech awed the crowd putting on a total of ten shows over the course of the weekend and leaving spectators questioning conventional physics. Joe Graney of Santa Cruz Bicycles saw it all atop a one-off tandem V-10, which I personally feel deserves its own class in the DH competition; trail medics eat your Wheaties.

Three successful premiers punctuated a solid weekend for the crew from SLO with Clay Porter’s “The Tipping Point” making its North American début Friday night and two films, “Barred For Life” and “Freedom Riders” playing for the first time in the world on Saturday evening. All three movies drew a packed house, an back at camp the air was abuzz with talk of the new films. All things considered I can’t imagine a better place or a wilder crowd in which to spend 96 hours. Those of us who experienced it know the whole was more than just the sum of all the parts. Keep the rubber side down and if you missed out this year, I’ll see you next April!

Chris Bono

Amy and Freedom Riders producer Chris Kitchen

Crowd awaits the U.S. premiere of The Tipping Point

World Champion Gee Atherton introduces The Tipping Point producer Clay Porter

On Friday March 6 we were treated to a visit from mountain bike movie magnate and original Klunker creator, Billy Savage. In town to promote the viewing of his ‘origins of the mountain bike’ biopic, Klunkerz at the SLO International Film Festival, he stopped by VAS to say hello and grab a bite to eat.

As soon as you meet Billy and shake his hand you realize that there is no one more stoked than this guy. You can’t get by the pleasantries before you realize you have struck up some sort of related tale of Billy’s historical and sometimes epic exploits. A true salt of the earth classic, you get an instant sense of  Billy’s goodwill, positive vibe and sheer history emanating from his curly salt and pepper locks and handle bar mustache.

Ben Bryan, Mike Troy and Myself headed down to Gus’ Grocery with Billy to grab some tasty sandos and enjoy them under the sun on the patio. For 45 minutes or so we seemed to travel the world both historically and geographically listening to Billy regale with stories ranging from the original, improvised equipment of the first mountain bikes, to working in the same building as animation god Seth Macfarlane (Family Guy, American Dad, Cleveland Show), to sketchy late night meetings with colorful Guatemalan locals, to dealing with the aftermath of being at the wrong end of a whacked out LA hit and run driver. It seems there is nowhere this guys hasn’t been and well, lived to the fullest.

We eventually had to come back to earth and go back to work to process all of the stories. I was strangely compelled to pick up my copy of Klunkerz, and watch it again for the Nth time. See for yourself.

Keep rolling Billy! Come back anytime.

>geoff tutko

Official Klunkerz Website

SLO Film Festival

4:45am Saturday, some of the VAS crew slowly pull into the parking lot.  Cranking out some early morning phone calls to the East Coast or overseas for an upcoming major release you might ask?  Getting in some overtime cleaning out the many questionable items in the sales fridge?  Nope, we were headed 4 hours north to the tiny ski hill Sierra Summit in the VAS van.  Got to be first chair!

I don’t think many people know that most of us here actually participate in the sports we sell.  There’s a resident expert on practically every genre somewhere in the office.  We’ll pretty much try anything and it gets rowdy if we’re all doing it together.

So when the chance came up to do a day trip to the mountains Karen and JC decided why not try snowboarding for the first time.  It was a shock to hear that neither of them had ever been on a snowboard.  Even me, Reebs the 2 planker till death, has ridden a snowboard.

We figured by the end of the day, the two would be bombing the hill.  Geoff, Mike, LP, and I already had their video all planned out.  Geoff billed it as the next THAT’S IT THAT’S ALL.  Karen said no it’d be more like that’s all that’s left!  Mike would splice the first scene of the movie and then cut to Karen and JC racing down the bunny slope.

My money was on Karen.  Sorry JC, but she can eat her oatmeal while Indo Boarding!  Turns out it was JC who was the one coming in hot almost taking out a little kid and his dad just to take the honors.  It was like a sponsor god whispered in his ear and said, “Go fast.  Take chances.”

So how my giant bobble head made it on to the “video” cover is beyond me but look for the video at a retailer near you.  And keep an eye out for our next adventure.

Rebecca the Reebskis Delekta