www.snowboard-women.com

There are a bunch of little random, independently- owned ski and snowboard shops scattered around the South Bay and this past Sunday I checked two of them out.  The first was H&H Sports, which gets foot traffic in the store by using huge signs on trucks parked along the main drag out front sporting the phrase “SNOWBOARD OUTLET.”  It ain’t much to look at from the front, but I was still intrigued.

I believe the store gets its gear mainly as leftover inventory that they buy from the ski and snowboard shows, such as LA’s recent Ski Dazzle event, then they resell to customers at a markup that’s still less than retail.  Most of the items I saw had stickers which I recognized as coming from Ski Dazzle.  But that’s fine, there’s an almost neverending aftermarket for snowboard gear even from many seasons past.  Most people just want gear that looks good, is durable, and highly functional.  Not to mention at a good price.  Hey, not all of us are using Daddy’s credit card!

It’s hard to say the size of the store in square feet, but it was decent size, and it was pretty full of merchandise.  There were racks about 15 feet long of each size XS thru XL, and each gender, full of jackets & pants.  Quite a good selection of styles in each size.  One whole wall was devoted to layering materials such as fleeces & long underwear.There was a small selection of socks, a smattering of helmets, a good selection of gloves & mittens, and even some roller bags.  The store only had about 4-5 styles of boots available in either gender - the only category where there was a very limited selection.

Finally, the hardgoods.  Their board selection was a little thin, but there were enough different styles and sizes available that most people could probably find a new board to suit them.  The store also sold bindings & goggles, all kept up at the front of the store.

I talked to one of the store reps, who told me that their merch is mostly from the current season, it’s not overstock that’s left over from past seasons.  As proof of this, I took a picture of one of the jackets I know is from this season:  this Burton Slub.

He told me that these Andy Warhol limited-edition jackets & pants from last year are NOT moving because they are too expensive… indeed - the jacket & pants pictured here were like $320 apiece!

They have I’d say over 90% Burton goods - when I asked about this he said it’s because Burton is the best quality, has the best guarantees, and hads the best customer service.  I took this to mean it is most cost-effective for them to sell the best products because it’s less headache for them.   No worries w/ me, I like Burton!  Other brands I saw were some Forum boots, and Nordica & Foursquare jackets.

I’m sure you’re wondering about price!  Well, I guess the prices were OK.  Jackets ranged from $119-$179, boards that were $549 were marked down to $479, and gloves didn’t even seem to be marked down.  The Lexa bindings I bought last year at around $180 at the Burton store, were on sale here for around $110.  But overall I didn’t think these were true “outlet” prices.  I would have thought jackets would be more like sub-$100 and boards under $200.  Ahh well.

(Sidenote:  Randomly, they have a huge section of swimsuits for sale there… if you need something for the hot-tub after your day of boarding!)

If you’re in the area, it is worth a look, the staff is nice and there is a decent selection overall.  You can check out their web site for yourself, and they even have a link to their online store:  H&H Sports

First let me start off by saying that this outing began as a coffee meeting with Christina from the VeniceSurferGirl blog. We met through reading & commenting on each others’ blogs! (See, good things CAN come out of the internets, it’s not all a bunch of crazy stalkers)

It was great fun meeting a fellow female action-sports blogger, and sharing our blogging experiences. She was really cool to talk to; we had a quick bite to eat and discussed our past shoulder injuries and recovery (both of which resulted from enjoying our favorite sports, argh!) Christina is almost 3 months in to her recovery from shoulder surgery, but is recovering nicely and is even back out in the water. You go, girl… and we WILL hit the mountains together soon! Enjoy Tahoe this weekend!

Okay, with that aside, after our meetup, we headed over to ZJ’s Boarding House on Main Street in Santa Monica. They were having a big sale on all the snowboarding stuff, it was ALL 30% off. Christina picked up a nice padded bag for her impending trip for less than $50. Maybe because of the sale, there wasn’t too much left to look at or choose from. I think overall the shop is definitely dedicated more to the surf/skate sports than snow.

There were maybe 2 racks total of women’s jackets and pants, about 6 different boots to choose from, a very limited goggle selection, and just a few women’s bindings. However, lots of snowboards left, as well as a huge selection of beanies.

The staff at ZJ’s was really nice, and the store overall has a laid-back, neighborhood vibe. There were tons of flip-flops, t-shirts, and hoodies as well (oh yeah and it seemed like a hell of a lot of board shorts, of course…) I didn’t really check out the surf stuff at all because I’m still in a winter/snowboard mindset and I’m lucky if I get in the water when it is 65 degrees, much less in the 50s (Yep, I’m a wimp!) Prices on the snowboarding items were pretty comparable to what I’ve seen at other shops, and made that much sweeter with the big sale discount.

Next door is the women’s annex section (the Ladies ZJ Lounge) where you can find lots of bikinis and cute fashioney surf clothes from your favorite brands like Roxy and Billabong. Only passed thru here really quick; it was a fairly small store yet had a lot of stuff crammed onto the racks.

I’ll be back when the summertime shopping fever hits me!

2619 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(310) 392-5646
www.zjboardinghouse.com/

(all images courtesy of Yelp.com by Joan S.; read more store reviews on Yelp.com)

Wow… that is about all I can say about this store! It is a triple threat - visually appealing layout, amazing merchandise, and a great staff.

(Pardon these pics, I didn’t have my digicam with me, these are Blackberry shots)

(the logo on the Melrose-facing front wall)

Apparently, it was built around Burton’s vision of becoming a “board sports” brand, not just a snowboarding brand. As part of that, they offer Channel Island surfboards as well as a huge wall of skateboards & skate stuff (I don’t know what brand they were…)

(the skateboard wall as seen from the street)

The store is huge (10k square feet +) and takes up the entire street corner it occupies. Two huge garage doors open onto the sidewalks, each showing the display of snowboards and surfboards which line a mock half-pipe made of what looks like bamboo hardwood. It’s a really stunning display. There is a huge selection of Burton snowboards - they even had the limited-edition Andy Warhol boards out. Yup, even had the one with the Velvet Underground album-cover banana - that was pretty sick.

(view of the snowboard section display)

The store is laid out around the skate/snow/surf themes, with each section devoted about one-half to hardgoods and the other half or more to the clothing. Seems like obviously the biggest area was still the snowboarding stuff, of course. For me that meant a big ladies section of Burton shells & snowboard pants to peruse. The selection is impressive. Every color you could imagine of pant, and jackets to match, and within each color family there is another set of decisions - cuz there’s a range of prices and options! If I was buying a whole new outfit I’d be in there for hours, thank god I already decided on a pant color to buy.

Lots of different bindings to choose from, and the sales floor staff is really friendly and knowledgeable about the products. Helping to steer me to a nearly $200 pair of new Lexa Snowboard Bindings … ah, what the heck. They’re gonna be great!

There’s a HUGE wall of ANON goggles, many with cute fashion materials on the frames, such as denim, leather, or snakeskin. The choices were really mind-boggling.

They also have fleece, t-shirts (you know I love me some quirky t-shirts and they had some really cute ones made with a blow-up image of puppy dogs and bunnies from those 70s inspirational posters…), a wide selection of beanies, a fair amount of boots (they had both the Speed Zone quick-lace ones, as well as more traditional lace-ups), and sunglasses. In the mens section they were sporting the 80s-throwback Burton stuff which Jonny at SouthoftheNorth mentioned in his blog recently.

I didn’t check out too much in the surf or skate area, but will be back to explore more.

I ended up with a new pair of these white women’s Burton Lexa Snowboard Bindings:

and a pair of Burton Stow cargo pants in the “rock salt” color.

(Can’t wait to try the bindings this weekend in Mammoth!)

Extra kudos goes to Paul and Pat, two of the awesome team members that helped me make my choices and depart with my cash! Oh Burton store, I and my credit card will be back!

Rating breakdown (scale of 1-5, 5 is excellent)

• Snowboard outerwear selection: 5
• Board & gear selection: 5
• Prices: 4 (it can get pricey! But it’s Burton!)
• Staff knowledge and helpfulness: 5

Jonesing for some Burton gear now? Follow this link to get FREE SHIPPING on Burton at ProBoardShop.com

Or visit the Los Angeles Burton store at 8175 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles, Phone 323.370.1777

I love Burton’s snowboarding gear so imagine my excitement seeing a store devoted solely to their women’s line. This store is gorgeous. It was about 1000 square feet, with hardwood floors. The clothes are arranged by color scheme and wall fixtures are back-lit with soft white fluorescent lights.

Three-quarters of the store is devoted to clothing, and the rest is accessories and hardgoods. The entire back wall contains their ’08 line of Feelgoods, Feelgood ES’s, and Feathers. I didn’t see many ’07 models still in store. But man, those ’08 Feelgood ES models were beautiful – to the tune of $799!

They had a good selection of boots and bindings – about 10 different styles of bindings, and about 8 boots. The ’07 boots & bindings remaining in store were priced well – I saw some regularly priced at $249 marked down to $149. Interestingly, they only had 1 model of boot which had “traditional” laces – all the rest were the Burton innovative drawstring style, apparently much easier to tighten and customize a fit. I’ll have to try some on sometime!

Accessories – lots of gloves and liners. I have to point out these funky lobster-claw mittens we saw… why would you want to have your index finger AND thumb separated from the other 3 fingers? Thought that was weird. But fun, I guess?

Even the music was perfect - it was kinda indie-rock yet somewhat poppy. Somehow just fit the vibe of the store. Good marketing!

If I had more time to shop and a little more money to spend on this trip, I would have dropped some cash… but I really just wanted to window-shop. And this was definitely the place to drool over cool Burton merch!

This begins a regular installment we’ll be featuring on this blog on the various snowboard gear and snowboard clothing shops we visit.

Location: Val Surf, 169 W. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena

(image courtesy of Yelp.com)

Right on the outskirts of Old Pasadena sits Val Surf. It’s only about 3 blocks down from a PacSun and a Vans store on the same stretch of Colorado Bl. So their clothing selection tends to run along those same lines… more of the same Roxy/Volcom/Element/etc. clothing you see pretty much the same from store to store.

I always find these chain “surf/snow/skate” stores to be kind of depressing. On the one hand, I like that these sports are now somewhat mainstream and more people enjoy doing them because I’m a populist at heart and really I just want people to be happy doing whatever they’re doing. On the other hand, it takes away a lot of the authenticity and the fact it’s mainstream means it’s now been co-opted by a lot of lame-ohs. Not to mention it makes the mountain resorts and the best surf breaks very crowded!

My philosophical rant aside, in this Val Surf you’ll find a huge selection of hoodies and jeans for both men and women. Hoodie heaven! For the ladies, lots of thermal tops and snug fitting tees. They have a wide selection of jeans by Hurley, Roxy and other top brands. In addition, I was pleased to see they carry Frye boots and had some for 50% off! They also featured quite a few styles of Ugg boots (ugg is right, I was thinking!) and a HUGE selection of wetsuits.

Now about their snowboard section. I was somewhat disappointed to see a very limited selection of women’s snowboarding jackets and snowboarding pants - only about two racks of each. Size selection was decent, but prices were high for my tastes. Maybe I am too used to the deals at Ski Dazzles and the end-of-season sales in the mountain shops. But I thought $199 for a pair of mediocre-looking pants was kinda high. The usual suspect brands were in full force - Burton, Roxy, 686, Grenade.

They carry about 20 different types of bindings (weirdly, I don’t think I saw any Flows in this store but I saw them at ValSurf.com), and a moderate selection of boards though sizes on display were limited. I saw mostly 147s and then it went up to 157s and above. Did they have more in the back? I didn’t ask. Further, only about 1/4 of the boards were women-specific (lots of Never Summers.)

Not a lot of beanies but lots of gloves and mittens.

Rating breakdown (scale of 1-5, 5 is excellent)

• Snowboard outerwear selection: 3
• Board & gear selection: 2
• Prices: 2
• Staff knowledge and helpfulness: n/a - I didn’t talk to anyone

Overall, I’d give this store a 2.5 out of 5 for snowboarding stuff… it’s kind of too generalized and tries to be a lot to many audiences. To be fair, I didn’t talk to anyone about the boards and bindings to gauge their experience and helpfulness, but it really seemed like most of the store was more focused on fashion, surf, and skate with snowboarding falling 4th in priority.

Web site: http://www.valsurf.com