12 Oct Downtown Throwdown: part awesome, part lame

I heard that some people were complaining that there was going to be a lot of noise and fake snow (how dare they!) in Occidental Square on Saturday.

Really, complainers? The only cool thing about the event was the fake snow.

Although the event was scheduled from 10 – 2pm, it didn’t even get started until around 3pm. Some of the homeless guys told me that they started to set up Friday night, and then got started again at 6:30 Saturday morning. That still didn’t help them start on time, though.

I wasn’t too impressed by the crowd of people that actually showed up, considering all of the money and effort it would take to build a fake snow hill in O2. I can’t seem to tell from the photo who sponsored it, but maybe they should have done some better marketing.

Also, while it was cool to see some snowboarding in October in the middle of the city, they just kept doing the same thing over and over again. We didn’t know what the scores were or how the judges were judging them, and there was no excitement added in (like a streaker, or part obstacle course, or something).

I have to admit that it’s fairly mesmerizing to watch people jump down a fake snow hill and up onto a ramp. I was hoping for someone to fall one of the snowboarders to do something crazy. The other most mesmerizing aspect of the event was that so many of them had mustaches! Who knew that something so wrong could be so cool to snowboarders.

To see more images from the event and to catch some tall, dark and handsome mustaches, click here.