Champagne and shots? Uh oh.words and photos by Julie WeinbergerSki movies, parties, Aspen. Sounds good!For those of you who don’t know, The Meeting is a multi-day gathering of all sorts of ski and snowboard industry personnel with two purposes: watch some of this year’s top ski and snowboard films, and party hard.The event was a Who’s Who of the industry. From Greg Strokes to Johnny Decesare to the TGR guys to Simon Dumont to Josh Berman to Grete Eliassen to the Olenick siblings to Tanner Hall to Jamie Pierre, to way more names I can’t remember right now, pretty much every modern ski hero or hero maker you can think of was there.On Thursday, Oct. 5, the NEPSA awards kicked off the festivities. NESPA gives riders a chance to showcase not only their talents on the hill, but also their creativity with a video camera and a storyline by creating three to five minute movies. Ted Davenport and Kiffor Berg took top honors this year, taking away two grand with their spin off of “Point Break,” which they called “Point It.” Following this, everyone headed over to the Sky Hotel for the after-party.

Andrew Still-Baxter, Michael Olenick and friends at Belly Up.

Sammy Carlson says, "Hello!"
The Olenicks, apparently, can match their hats much better than their liquor.Friday was day one of some of the year’s best ski and snowboard movie showings. On the ski side of things, we got to see Level 1’s “Long Story Short” and TGR’s “Anomaly” at the Wheeler Opera House. While no one could have picked two movies that were more different from one another, both left the packed house wanting more skiing. Almost the entire cast of “Long Story Short” was on hand, including Craig Coker, Travis Redd, Steele Spence and Luke Van Valin. Dirk Collins, Jamie Pierre, Dash Longe, Seth Morrison and Peter Olenick represented for TGR. Following this, the party headed over to the Belly Up bar. The Absynthe Films movie was on the big screen, and liquor was flowing quite freely. After the movie was done, Cypress Hill’s DJ, DJ Muggs, spun the tables for the remainder of the evening.At 2 p.m. on Saturday, the whole “watch some skiing and drink too much” procedure was repeated. The Bigger Picture’s “Show and Prove” kicked off the afternoon at the Wheeler Opera House, followed by Poor Boyz Productions’ “Ski Porn.” It might have been early afternoon, but that definitely didn’t deter anyone from curing hangovers with more booze. Tanner, CR and Seth jumped on stage to introduce “Show and Prove,” emphasizing how much the movie meant to them. And PBP’s Johnny Decesare was on hand to introduce “Ski Porn,” and made the point that “Show and Prove” showed a serious reality, while his flick was just for fun. Sammy Carlson, Simon Dumont, Seth and Peter were also alongside Johnny.
T-Hall's right hand must have gotten tired.
Seth Morrison has traded in his bright hair for bright Oakley shirts.
Grete Eliassen picks her own larger-than-life nose.Later that evening, those lucky enough to score tickets got to see the weekend’s feature presentation, “Mountain Town.” This flick was put together by Aspen to show life in—you guessed it—Aspen. It was awfully inspirational, and made everyone want to step into his or her bindings immediately.After all this motivational stuff came yet another party at the Belly Up bar. Peter and Simon—among some others I can’t remember—had bottles of champagne in their hands. A few people who shall remain nameless were eventually escorted out of the bar by the bouncers. Not to worry, though. There were still more parties after the bar closed. A bunch of people headed over the Freeskier condo to continue the mayhem. That was all good until the lovely police decided to stop by and climb onto the balcony, putting a damper on the fun for a little bit. I guess someone made a noise complaint. Anyway, at around 4:30 on Sunday morning, I decided it was time to get some shuteye, bringing a close to an amazing weekend in Aspen.For those of you within a few hours of Aspen, make sure you don’t miss this next year. And, word up to Aspen/Snowmass for putting on a such a successful event and to Ski Co’s Ryan Miller for hooking me up with tickets to more movies than I could have possibly wanted to see.
This photo about sums things up.[We at NS usually prefer to leave party coverage to our esteemed brethren at Freeskier. But it's the fall and most of us are still waiting on snow, so what the hell. - Ed.]