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Rusty Toothbrush – Opening The Box

Night Shifts At Sunset Park Peretol

With bellies full of cut price booze and body clocks reset to NZ time, the Rusty Toothbrush headed to Sunset Park Peretol in Andorra to once again reimagine the boundaries of snowboarding, using projection mapping to light up the long nights and produce something a bit different for Electric.

The full edit will be out in the autumn on Whitelines.com as part of a special week devoted to this very special crew, but for now take a look at the teaser and peak behind the scenes with chief flosser Alex Stewart.

Words by Alex Stewart // Photos by Kolben Saetre

Have you ever worked the graveyard shift? Security guards, Nurses and Supermarket shelf stockers know all to well what I am talking about. The graveyard shift is a strange thing, it can feel at times like somewhat of a parallel universe. Your surroundings are the same but it’s dark and empty.

There is an upside however…. this darkness and solidarity means you can go about your business in almost complete secret.

Last month was insane! after four massive weeks on the road with the crew filming our street project, Alex Maillet from Electric had invited us to Andorra for one final week of mayhem. Fun fact for anyone who flunked Geography in high school, Andorra is actually it’s own country, 0% unemployment and 100% TAX free.

To break it down for you this meant a litre of Jack Daniels will only hurt your wallet for a measly €9.  Although if you like to get the most bang for your buck you could always pick up a nice €3 alternative.

Within the first day of arriving in Andorra we had given our body clocks a full reset. Daylight hours were now dedicated to sleeping with the occasionally afternoon splash in the pool before our usual wake up of 6pm. The team at the Hotel Llop Gris were happy to supply us with an incredible three course meal as a packed lunch, and after a quick stop at the local service station to pick up a couple bottles of brew we would then make tracks for the mountain.

Francesco Zoppei – Rusty Toothbrush’s behind the scenes evil genius

The sessions in Andorra were dope! The Sunset Park Peretol – which operates from 1 – 9pm – had a fast drag lift and legit jib line which made stacking shots pretty easy. It was when the lights switched off however that the real sessions begun.

Francesco Zoppei’s brilliant idea was to fuse his geeky side once again with snowboarding with a plan to use projection mapping to light up the snow-park. Something we didn’t account for was that it would be snowing the entire week, such a nightmare when you are playing with electronics.

Fortunately for us in situations like these we always keep a few rolls of duct tape, some umbrellas and a crafty New Zealander on hand at all time. The most time consuming part of the whole project was the set up of each spot. Each projection had to be studied for the structure it was being projected on. Me Victor (Loron), Jack (Giacomo Errichiello) and Mahi (Mains) spent the majority of each night just bumming around sipping at whiskey waiting for Francesco and Brad to suss out the projectors.

Victor Loron knows that the best time to get kinky is at night

I found it surprising how easily you could loose track of time without the sun as a reference, and I’m sure it didn’t help that our blood alcohol levels were soaring through the roof almost the entire time we were in Andorra but each night the sun rise always caught me by surprise.

The sun on the last night snuck up on us fast and we still had some stock shots to get if we wanted to finish the edit. It was suddenly a mad rush against sunrise to get everything we needed. Just as we set up the projector for one of the final shots the generator ran dry.

Half cut and exhausted, Brad and I jump in the van and start cutting laps around Andorra looking for a gassy that was open. Swinging out onto the main road we heard a loud THUD followed by the long and upset groan of Jack having had his head launched into the sliding door of the van.

We had completely forgotten that Jack had passed out hours earlier in the back of the van and was now involuntarily on the gas hunt with us. Having had no luck in finding gas we raced back to the snow-park where I set to desperately siphon gas from our winch into the generator.

Jack had since perked up and was ready to chip in his 10 cents on how to siphon gas. Strung out of my mind and with petrol now lining the inside of my mouth this really wasn’t the time to joke with me – I was doing my best to stay calm and ignore Jack who was gesturing at me to take mouthfuls of gas and spit it back into the other tank, one at a time.

No wonder their toothbrushes are rusty if this is how they unwind

We continued to race around like headless chickens finishing the last shots right up until the full morning light was on us. As our time run out we just stood in the carpark taking it all in, a few half empty bottles of rum still in our hands, giggling and telling stories about the night before as if they were distant memories from our past.

I looked at my crew with their blood shot eyes and big goofy smiles and felt their stupid happiness wash over me, I was finaly completely relaxed. With empty stomachs but a hard drive full of bangers it was time to head home, reset our body clocks and return to life in the real world.

Whilst our week working the graveyard shift had come to an abrupt end, we weren’t exactly upset about it either.

Thank you to Alex Maillet, Merlin Balfour, Tyler Chorlton, Slidewayz and the Llop Gris Hotel for making this trip as ridiculous as it was.

Keep an eye out for this masterpiece dropping later in the year on www.whitelines.com.

Rusty Toothbrushes 2016
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