Beatdown on Brooke Street

Most of you have probably never heard of Brooke Geery. No big deal, that just puts you in the 97 percentile of the population that flip through magazines without actually reading any of the words. Brooke's name can be found among those words sometimes, usually as an author. It was when interviewing Laura that I first came to know of her name and the reputation she had earned while doing a website in the late-nineties known as "Yobeat".

So, Laura says to me, she says "You ever hear of Yobeat? It's a super sick site but they don't really update it much anymore". Sure enoughI checked it out and she was right - they hadn't changed up that puppy in awhile. But luckily they had a good back log of old issues, news posts and features to dig through. It was a real doozy considering the state of the shred media during that time (with the exception of BLUNT) that seemed hell bent on putting everyone to sleep with their mediocre trick tips and the ramblings of a couple dumb fuckin' interns. Unfortunately, the internet wasn't as accessible then as it is now. Had it been no doubt a lot of our lives would have been a little more fulfilled knowing there was and there was a publication (electronically speaking) that wasn't afraid to call fat out of shape pros milking a career, fat out of shape pros milking a career.

What year was was it and what was the reason behind starting up Yobeat?
Yobeat started in 1997 when my friend Rachel Cotton and I were 15. She would come up from Boston and stay at my house in Vemont and we would stay up all night giggling and talking shit as 15-year-old girls do.Rachel and I had actually met online in the Snowboarding Online chatroom, which at that time was not really something people did, but that's another story. One night we were bored and decided to start a zine, and since AOL gave out 2 GB of free web hosting space,and we had no money print it, it became a website. I think we put out three or so issues before we finally gave up on it ever going to print. I guess you are probably looking for a "we started Yobeat because we wanted to change snowboarding!" but we didn't. We were just bored and it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Do you think being a girl saved you from some potential ass beatings?
Ha! Yes and no.I think people weren't really that pissed about things I said because some of the time I was even funny about it. The people who were really pissed would never have the balls to do anything about it anyway. I don't think many psychical fights have actually started over things written about snowboarding,I know I haven't heard of any.

Give us a couple of awkward situations that were brought about due to something you wrote...
Oh this is a good one. I don't know if "awkward" is the right word, because I never really cared what anybody thought enough to make it awkward. But my top three run ins over something on Yobeat go like this:

1. Jeff Brushie was a fellow AOL nerd and I would talk to him in the chatrooms. But just because we were internet friends and we'd met once at the Killington halfpipe, it didn't really protect from my wrath. So at some typical east coast contest with shitty weather, Jeff got top three or some placing thatto me seemed like he only earned because he was Jeff Brushie. So I called himold and fat and said he was getting sympathy points from the judges in our gossip column. Of course he read it and sent back an amazing email all in caps (which was just the way he typed) telling me to "learn to go over the lip before you talk your shit." Better was the email I got from one of his friends telling me I "dug myself a deep hole," and I simply responded" lucky for me the hole I've dug myself is too small for Brushie to fit through." To this day he still calls me shit talker, but we're cool.

2. Some of my friends rode for Option Snowboards, but were, as any rep rider is, totally bummed on the company. So when Dumb snowboards came out with an ad that said "Dumb people ride Dumb snowboards" one of them put an Option sticker over the first dumb, and of course, we all thought it was hilarious. I took a picture of it and put it on Yobeat. Soon after my dad gets a call from the Option rep telling him I was going to get sued and that I should make fun of a big company like Burton, not little guys like them.

3. I had written a story about the X Games for my college newspaper, filled with typical Brooke-isms, and I decided I would just put it on Yobeat as well. I think the fact that it was in the Plymouth Clock makes this even more amazing. So somekid writes me a letter saying I am a hack and he is going to tell ESPN and theyare going to sue me, sighting several lines in the story he found objectionable. I think my favorite was when I talked about the parties sucking, he said "I know media was not allowed at the parties because I personally had a media pass and was not allowed at any of the parties." The next year I recruited him to write my X Games story and it was the worst piece of crap I'd ever read.

I could definitely keep going with cease and desist letters and other law suit threats for days, but I think you would have to pay me if I write much more.

What do you think about the current state of the shred media? And don't lie just becauseyou work for some of them.
I think loss of Future was a big blow for snowboarding. Future was doing what a major publication should, which was cover what was rad in snowboarding no matter who was doing it. But overall, I will just say abysmal and leave it at that.

You seemed to have tamed a bit, mostly choosing to write about your garden or householdprojects rather than making light of peoples shortcomings. What brought aboutthe change?
I got old. I am not 15 anymore and aside from the fact its hard to be as passionate about something like snowboarding as you were when you were 15, I have other stuff going on. But when I do update Yobeat, however rarely that may be, I try tokeep it edgy or whatever you would call it. I mean, our US Open coverage a few years ago was just about the Dingo chanting white power.

So what's become of the old gang?
Well, Rachel has a real job as a computer programmer in Boston and keeps talking about moving to Portland. Our original staff photographer/copy editor Monty is a lawyer, and our second staff photographer Tim Zimmerman is one of the few photographers making a living in snowboarding these days. I'd say he really hasYobeat to thank. I've either lost touch with everyone else, or they are not doing impressive things so I don't want to mention them.

Being that most people who read the site at the time may have considered you an instigator how did you come to land a job as a "real" writer among some of the magazines?
People eat up controversy, and while some people might have thought I was a trouble maker, most people who mattered realized that was I was doing was valuable. It was actually because of Yobeat I landed my first paying gig, thanks to Lee Crane who was an early reader, I ended up writing about the US Open for the site that became Transworld online. I also happened in at the right time when people we're first starting to realize they needed websites, but no one knew how to do it. Because of my very basic HTML skills and understanding of timely content, I was in high demand before I even started college. But there are still people who hold grudges from the old days, one of which just got a job at Transworld. What canyou do?

Any plans to ever get Yobeat back into full swing?
We talk about the Yobeat resurrection at least once a month. Maybe we'll turn it into a blog orsomething, but it will never recapture the magic that once was.

Any thanks or no thanks you would like to throw out there?
Thanks to my parents. No thanks to God. Bastard has never done shit for me.

www.yobeat.com

www.brookegeery.com