At just 23 years of age, Tyler has come full circle. Born on the “Sunshine Coast” of British Columbia, only to leave at the age of four after his parents split to be raised in the sunny enclaves of central coast California, only to unknowingly stumble across snowboarding after his Mom’s move to Incline Village, Nevada following the lose of her job in the 5th Grade. Fate couldn’t have cliff dropped Tyler in a better place and the very first afternoon he arrived in Incline he was up at Diamond Peak shredding the gnar.

It’s been almost three decades since Tyler’s Dad, John, crossed from New York State into Canada on a supposed “fishing trip” to avoid the Vietnam War and as he says, “Just kept moving West across Canada.”

Tyler and I our drinking beers at his father’s house, on the spot his father selected to live and raise his family almost three decades ago, Gibsons, British Columbia, a 45 minute ferry ride from Vancouver. As the sun sets at almost 10 PM on a warm summer night, Tyler and I fade brews, talk about the good times, talk about Canada, the place where Tyler feels he truly belongs, and reflect back on his 10 years of sponsorship in this zany world we call professional snowboarding.  

I want to know why they call you rabbit?

My last name is Italian, and my last name, Lepore, means “the hare” in Italian. Hence my nickname the rabbit. 

This has nothing to do with the fact you eat a lot of vegetables?

No. Maybe it does, I don’t know? I love vegetables. 

What’s your favorite vegetable?

Dude, I seriously love them all. Squash just came to mind. That’s pretty good. I really like breaded items. I also love muffins.

Muffin isn’t a vegetable.

Yeah. I just love bread so much. It tastes so good to me. Good French bread, multi grain, I could just eat the whole fucking thing. 

You’re only 23 but you’ve been a sponsored rider for 10 years. Do you ever feel old?

Some days I feel old. It’s one of those things where you look back and go, holy shit! What am I doing? What have I done, man, 10 years later? I guess I’ve been sponsored since I was 13, I am 23 now, so it’s been a long time. It’s just chill I am able to do what I love which is snowboard…I don’t really give a fuck about anything else (laughing).

Every pro has one in deep somewhere in their closet, so why don’t we talk about your first sponsor me video.

I got third in a boardercross contest. I remember going up against Tim Manning, IJ Valenzuela, and some shop dudes. After the race this guy came up to me and told me he liked the way I snowboarded. It was Mike Perry from Morrow and he told me to send him a sponsor me video  and he gave me his card. I just remember waiting a week and I got my Mom to come with me to the ski hill and she filmed me in the snowboard park that was like nothing man. It was a piece of shit. I did this backside 5 off of this mogul  and sluffed it all around. Then I did a melon over a broken shovel. Like a shovel that I stuck in the ground so if I fell on it it would go up my ass. I was stoked. I got all the footage from Mom, and just did the old record-stop-record-stop  on the VCR. Super sketchy, glitchy, cutting shit out type of editing. I did this really super uncomfortable intro against my living room wall that was like gross, dirty, stucco white. I had this G & S Neil Blender beret on sideways, with this white & black checkered shirt, and Oakley frog skins on. I was trying to play it very cool. “Hey this is Tyler Lepore, thanks for watching my sponsor me video.” It was really uncomfortably weird, and kind of humbling I guess. That was it. The end shot was me making these kind of try to hard turns down this open run as the sun was going down at Diamond Peak. Sent it off to Morrow Snowboards , waiting intently for the mail, and got hooked up. The first letter was like with 20 stickers and I was so into it man. I lost it. I was so excited. Totally spazzing. It was the coolest thing to ever happen to me. 

The first time I physically went on a photo shoot for snowboarding was with Chris Carnel. I was just a young kid, super nervous, and It was just really weird. I put on all my Morrow gear. Everything Morrow had ever sent me. I was on a new board, new bindings, and new boots. I was super nervous man and so petrified I was going to ride like shit. My Mom had to drive me up there, and I waited for Carnel for like 45 minutes an hour. I think I told my Mom to leave . I just chill and wait for Carnel. I was like, woo, this is pro snowboarding, this is how it works. Dude is totally late, gets out of this Subaru GL with crazy body rot that’s brown. This short gnarly dude gets out and he gives me this jug of water to carry to the top of Mt. Rose. I start hiking this extremely sun cupped, shittiest snow in my life, and I am still kind of sweating. How am I going to get a photo? What tricks am I going to do? I got 2 photos from that day. One was a Yang Ad and then one was a full page  ad in Snowboarder magazine. 

Do you remember your first Heckler shoot?

Yeah, I used to snowboard all the time with John Sommers because he used to come up from Stockton and stay at my house. They’d just stay on my floor, smoke weed, take them around,  and just snowboard the whole time. We went to the back of my school and there was this handrail that had been done lots. Jaime Lynn did it in the Garden, Joel Mahaffey had done it a bunch, and it was just a cool rail. We started seshing it, seshed it for hours, and finally we call Carnel and our like, “Dude, we should get some photos!” He tells me he’ll be there in an hour. He ends up getting their hours later, because I think it was snowing crazy at Mt. Rose. He stayed for half an hour, and I don’t even really remember talking to him that day, I was just so intent on doing the rail. John was trying 270s to it way back then, and I was tripping on that. I was just trying to noseslide it. Carnel ­ just so nonchalant, just holds his camera out, doesn’t even look through the viewfinder and just takes some pix. Snaps it up, and bounces. We keep seshing that rail so long we pull up John’s friends truck, Mike’s truck, lights die, we call AAA, they die again, so in one night I think we called AAA 2 or 3 times. We kept doing the rail till 11 at night. We seshed that rail for literally  8 hours, and then I got the Heckler cover. The first cover I ever got. 

You spent your formative years, 11-18 in Incline Village, Nevada, long a bastion of the rich and the old. What was it like growing up there?

Incline’s about the families that have 2 kids and have made their crème de la crème selling tract homes, or real estate, and they move to this little town to kind of set up shop and settle down for the rest of their lives, and give their kids a good atmosphere to go to school in, to make friends, to be outside, it’s safe ­ that’s what Incline Village is, a small, wealthy community. I didn’t have a lot of money. Every kid I new had a car bought for them, or given to them. I had to buy my car, I had to buy my own gas. I didn’t have  a gas card. I took a sack lunch to school everyday , because I couldn’t afford to eat in the cafeteria. My Mom was a single Mom. It was cool though, she did a great job ­ she’s an amazing women. High School was just a weird place. Kids are so angst, and some kids have a lot of money, and other kids don’t. It wasn’t so much the money thing, it was just those kids we’re a bit different. They knew their path a bit more. I think when you have a lot of money in your family you can afford to fuck around because you know there’s always going to be that pillow, that cushion to fall back on. It doesn’t matter how bad you fuck up ­ they are going to give you those chances where you get to hit the reset button. Where with a smaller family, only one person providing income, my  Mom just couldn’t afford that. I am not saying we were poor, we were fine, we had a nice 2 bedroom place, a dog, a little yard, and it was fine. 

How did snowboarding fit in to all of this?

Just like every weekend when school was done I would snowboard. I didn’t even think about what I was going to do, I’d go snowboarding. I think that’s what pushed me away from some of my friends because I competed so much when I was younger, I didn’t even ride with my friends. I’d just ride with my competitors at contests. Every Saturday or every Sunday I was at a contest, or cruising around Boreal watching the Solid team, or watching Cardiel jib barrels. I was way stoked and would go to ASI and checkout the quarterpipe Standard was making with Haaken, or Jaime Lynn hitting it. I’d see Darren Cingel or Tracy Latzen rolling all over the place, or see them at Sqauw. Fuck, I saw Shawn Farmer drop the fingers on KT-22 as I am going up the chair with my friend Duncan, and I was like, this is ill! Shawn Farmer just dropped the fingers!

Was the first time you traveled overseas when you made the Junior National Team at 16?

Yeah, they had a wild card spot because some kid couldn’t go. I was never really the halfpipe dawg but I had the most points in my region. I never missed one, I was a contest Nazi. Going to Finland was amazing. I went with the U.S. team because at the time I was living in the states. I remember seeing the Canadian team and being bummed, like, “Fuck! I want to be on the Canadian Team!” The U.S. team was just so rigid. The Canadian team stayed out as long as they wanted. They partied like motherfuckers. We had to go out and wear this US Jackets with huge writing that said, “USA.” They were like mandatory, you had to rock them, and I was so bummed on this jacket. For one, it didn’t fit me well. For two, our boss made us be home at 11. In Europe people don’t go to the bars till 1, are you kidding me, 11? So, whatever, we were a bunch of young kids going to the bars and getting completely annihilated. I remember riding around with teammates and meeting Dufficy, and Trevor Andrews, and checking out crazy girls in different languages that are so wonderful and beautiful. I seriously remember the girls, because I shit you not ­ when I left they were like three girls that went to say peace to me when I got on the bus, as people were totally heckling me because I had the fan base when I bounced. It was rad.

Yeah, they were starting to open already but The Junior National Team changed things for sure. I’d start to go to more pro oriented contests and you’d see people perform or try tricks that are just a bit out of their range and people start getting hurt. People start getting way too serious and that totally turned me off. I think I was at the Junior Nationals at Big Bear, hitting the big air jump doing rodeo flips. My Mom was there watching me, and this guy goes off in front of me and does this crazy trick because they’re a lot of people around. The dude goes off the jump and tries some crazy trick that he didn’t look like he know what the hell he was doing, and landed on his dome and quadrapeligiced himself right in front of me. I was the next dude to go. The bulldozed the jump and closed it down. Kid turned himself into a vegetable basically because of peer pressure from himself, or the audience, or whatever. Everyone does that, but usually people know their limits. Competition just lost a lot of its fun. Nowadays things are so big, that’s it’s just not fun anymore. I don’t have fun when I hit a 70 foot jump and have to point it dead straight and hit a 110 foot jump. It’s not fun. I don’t enjoy it, so why should I do it? I just thought about what direction my snowboard could go in and I didn’t want it to go that way. 

You’ve lived up here in Whistler for about a year. How has your experience been so far?

It’s been really good. Living with Joel (Fraser), got a sled, and just want to go into the backcountry more and do the things I do, ride the stuff I want to ride, not going to photo shoots as much, do this, do that type of things. I live there because it’s easy. I’d like to live in Vancouver, but it’s so up in the air. I get up in the morning and do what we’ve been doing this summer- take bike rides, get my morning coffee, have some cool conversations, and the riding up here is just amazing. The weather sucks most of the time, but that just means there is pow. 

How has your experience been riding for Capita?

It’s great because I am snowboarding for my friends. If I don’t get a video part I won’t get fired. I shouldn’t say that. I probably should get a video part. I am snowboarding in something I believe in. I am not making anyone else money but my friends and hopefully myself one of these days. It’s just guys who love snowboarding and they’re doing it because they’re into snowboarding. They don’t make skis, they don’t make rollerblades, they fucking smoke weed, drink beer, and they snowboard. If they weren’t into it, the company would flop, and they’d still snowboard everyday. 

How did you start your magazine, Full Spectrum?

It was around 1998 and I was living in Lake Tahoe. At 18 Morrow had some financial troubles and I got cut from the team. At this point in snowboarding I was super pissed off because I had put so much work into it. I was by no means over snowboarding, just need some time to pursue my art so I moved to San Francisco and lived in the tenderloin. It was for 2 months until I ran out of money. I skateboarded every single day. I started doing lots of graffiti, and taking photos of it. I had been doing an introductory course at the Academy of Art to see if I liked the school, so being out of money, I called Morrow again and I was back on the team. I had all these graffiti photos and was super stoked on graffiti, so I’d go to the train yard in Reno by myself and sit there all day sometimes and watch Union Pacific pull train lines in and out and just take photos, meet some homeless dudes, hang out, drink water, and eat my snickers bar. Ian Spiro and John Sommers gave me some money for the second issue and it was 24 pages full color, nice paper. I am still going to pay them back one of these days. Last issue we got all over North America, Europe, and Japan. 

You were born a few miles from here on the Sunshine Coast at the Sechelt Hospital. 23 years later did you think you’d come full circle and live up here?

By about 18 or 19 for sure I had told myself I had to go to Canada. I was ready for it and I just love the atmosphere up here. It’s not loud, it’s not fast, it’s just chill. Just down to earth people ­ especially over here on the coast. I think there is more individualism up here in Canada because it’s smaller, that and it snows like a motherfucker. 

What do you see yourself doing in the future with snowboarding?

I’d like to just keep snowboarding. I think I still have things I can bring to the table. I don’t see myself in the snowboard industry at all when I am done. I don’t think I’d ever start my own board company, or a clothing company that deals with snowboarding. That’s just too fucking depressing. All the riders doing that are doing their own thing, that is so awesome, and nothing but love for those guys. But everyone else that is fucking it up for us, trying to just make dollars, that is so whacked. You’re not hurting the industry, you’re hurting the snowboarders that are the industry. You are fucking everyone. I don’t care if the bottom falls out of snowboarding, if those people bounce, it will be good. It will be nothing but good. 

Any words you take to heart?

You know that track!

But the kids don’t know the track.

It’s Jeru The Damaja dude, and it’s from Wrath of The Math I think, but I forget what track. “I said what? She says you know your occupation, so I broke the fuck out.” Ahh Man, I don’t like ending quotes or anything like that. I’d like to thank the people I ride for because I ride for companies that I believe are doing a 100% good for snowboarding.

Anything else to say as the sun sets.

We are overlooking Keats Island, and I’d like to thank my Mom for just being a great Mom and taking me around. Everyone knows my Mom, so, yeah, she is doing fine. She’s good. 

Should peeps be on the lookout for you riding your bike around Whistler?

I am that naked guy on the beach, I am that dude on the bike, I am the dude in the crack skate bowl by himself. I am the guy drinking coffee spilling it on himself. Be on the lookout for me everywhere.

Intro and Words: Brad Oates