No one
doubts that. What people who know him doubt is his sanity.
In Tahoe he achieved full on bad-boy status when he ollied
a sixty-foot gap onto a picnic table last season in front
of everyone. It's fortunate that his father is a doctor because
the consequences of dropping 75 foot cliffs, jumping double
lane highways, and sticking back flips off chair lift ramps
can make for hefty medical bills. A CASE IN POINT IS THE TIME
LAST SEASON WHEN BEALLO DROPPED THE PALISADES AT DONNER ON
HIS RACE BOARD IN HARD BOOTS, AND THEN DROVE HIMSELF TO THE
HOSPITAL FOR STITCHES, WITH ONE HAND ON THE WHEEL AND THE
OTHER TRYING TO LIMIT THE FLOW OF BLOOD FROM HIS LIP.
Beallo
grew up in Oakland, CA and despite having spent a lot of time
away from home, on the snow in Tahoe or Oregon, he affects
the rude boy mannerisms of an East Oakland Gangster. He takes
great pride in the Earthquake speaker that takes up the entire
back of his Subaru station wagon. The music he likes (Dance-hall
rap and the occasional death metal medley) keeps him "Ready
to Fight" and shakes Interstate 80 as Beallo adjusts the cruise
control to a healthy clip and heads for the mountains from
his parent's opulent digs high above San Francisco Bay.
Once
on the snow, Beallo's slouchy gangster drawl manner disappears
and is replaced by his uniquely high energy riding style.
Beallo rides an almost square stance, low over his board and
lofts more kickers on a given run at Squaw than anyone else
knew existed and busts through moguls like they're not there.
Beallo
did the school work for his senior year of high-school at
home so he could spend a full winter using the season pass
he got as a member of the Squaw Valley Race Team He picked
a good year for the move, Tahoe got more snow than any season
in recent memory (Beallo remembers days of making fresh tracks
in bottomless powder nonstop under the lift on KT-22) and
his main HOT, hired surf cinematography legend Scott Deitrichto make a full blown snowboard film, "Yesterday is
Donuts," (Some of which was actually shot in 35 mm, a
luxury unheard of in an industry used to home edited video)
with Beallo as the main player. Antics on the big screen include
a hop over an airplane in Argentinaand a memorable
sixty-plus foot long road ollie to flat landing at Glory Bowl
in Grand Targhee, Wyoming. What viewers won't see is Beallo's
brush with death as an avalanche, a bowl away sent a three
foot thick slab-fracture of soupy death cookies spilling over
the top of the runway where Beallo was strapping in to make
another attempt at jumping the highway. Like all his stories,
Beallo recounts this one casually- all in a days work for
a full member of snowboarding's new school of sick boys. He
is currently training for the amateur world cup contest in
Yugoslavia in January.
THINK
THE OF THE SPORT AS TECHNICAL PIPE WORK AND ANEMIC AIRS? GO
SESSION A BACK COUNTRY HIT WITH MIKE BEALLO AND YOU WILL KNOW
LARGENESS.
