Interlaced | Jesse Jarrett
Interlaced | Jesse Jarrett
By Liam Glass
I've known Jesse for quite some time, but it wasn't until filming with him this year that I really got to know him. Often likened to the flying tomato's young doppelgänger, Jesse has recently discovered a newfound sense of self. He's hardworking and organized - he's come a long way since his days in Ontario. He's got a system for finding spots like no other, utilizing obscure websites I've never heard of and proficiently navigating google maps. Jesse could be a guide in a town he's never been to. He's quiet yet witty, lives for hell rides, tends to stray away from steel, but is never afraid to get a base grind from a mean ledge. I really enjoyed watching his process this year."– Martyn Vachon
Heels through bricks is a little terrifying. End-of-the-season desperation trip to Edmonton provides. Switch Frontboard, Edmonton, AB.
Liam Glass: Last time we chatted for the mag you had just moved from Toronto to Calgary. You’ve been in Calgary for three years now. What made you move?
Jesse Jarrett: It just kinda made sense. At the time, it was cheaper in Calgary, and I had a lot of friends from previous visits. It’s easy to meet up here, back in Toronto, it’d take me hours to drive and see a lot of my good friends because we were so widespread. Also, the snowboard season is a lot more dependable and much longer out here. Sunshine is open till May long weekend. It’s a lot easier to do the thing.
It’s kind of funny, although you live here, we’ve just been doing trips back to that side of the country.
Yeah, a lot of the spots in Calgary are pretty played, for my liking. The East Coast tends to have worse winters, so there are many more spots that haven’t been hit yet. Whenever there’s a freak snowfall, I’m always ready to get out of here to a fresh zone.
This was the first year you’ve traveled outside of Canada to film. And considering how terrible the snow conditions were this past winter, are you happy with your footage?
Going into the season, I had such low expectations. El Niña was scary. All I was hearing was that nowhere in North America was supposed to be getting snow. Quin [Ellul] and I went back to Toronto for Christmas and ended up hanging there for close to a month, waiting for snow to fall. Vibes got pretty low. Luckily a storm was forecasted to hit the Midwest and we rented a van and drove down. Other than that, Halifax was definitely the highlight of last winter. I have so many spots pinned there, but they almost never get snow that sticks. To be able to get two weeks there was pretty unexpected. I’m never really gonna be fully content with what I film, but the fact that it was one of the worst winters yet and I got enough clips for a part, I’m happy with how the winter ended up.
I liked Halifax a lot more than the Midwest. The people in Halifax were stoked on life. The people in the Midwest weirded me out.
Halifax had the nicest people. I don’t know how we got away with all the spots we hit, but somehow people always ended up being down with what we were doing. I didn’t really think about it that much before going down, but being in the States is definitely a different vibe from Canada. I wasn’t trying to get in too much trouble being across the border. I always had that in the back of my mind when deciding what to hit.
How was it hanging out and working on a project with Marty Vachon for the first time?
Getting to know Marty was sick. I always thought he was the best, especially growing up in Ontario. Working on a project with him was pretty surreal. He met up with us for our drive down to the States. The first day driving, Marty white-knuckled us through a whiteout blizzard in the middle of the night. Can’t think of a better bonding experience. He became the designated driver after that. Thank god because being in the car with Quin behind the wheel might have been the scariest part of the winter. Safe to say we were talking shit in no time. We liked to bug him about being “washed up” if he seemed like he was gonna bunt on a spot [laughs].
A spot worth talking about is the church roof. That felt like a crime spot. I thought we might get arrested there.
That one was definitely a little scary. Not so much hitting the spot, but building it and being up on the roof. The spot is right across from a Catholic school and every time we drove by the parking lot was packed. We set it up late at night with the plan to hit it first thing in the morning. We showed up early and the parking lot was full to the brim with the kids getting dropped off. We had to come back later in the day. The light was going down, it was raining, the parking lot was still full of kids getting picked up. All I was thinking about was trying not to be seen on the roof, which was in plain sight of everything. I had to lie down on top of the roof waiting for there to be a break in people leaving the school. I’m laying there staring up at this massive cross above me, thinking, What the fuck is going on down there? As I rode away, the priest was on the phone watching us from the window. Kind of crazy that it ended up working out.
This spot was equal parts nerve-wracking as it was funny, watching Quin Ellul and Dan Bubalo do TikTok dances and yelling “potato” if they thought a bust was coming. Ride-on, Davenport, Wisconsin.
The spots you choose have a pretty distinctive style. What makes you hyped on a spot?
Something that’s unusual from a typical spot. I’m looking for spots that are visually appealing, and that I think will translate well over film. I’m gonna spend hours staring at it on the computer in a few months’ time, so I don’t want to hit something if I know I’m not gonna like how it looks. I try to stay away from spots that have already been hit. Half of snowboarding for me is finding new spots I want to hit. I’ve logged way too many hours on Google Maps as a result. I always get hyped watching videos and getting to see all the new spots people find. If they happen to be in an area that I know, I’ll find myself looking for them on Google Maps to see how I might’ve missed it.
You won the Garage Mag GeoGuesser Spot Tournament. I guess all those hours paid off.
[Laughs] Yeah, that was random. I’ve always thought how sick it would be to gather all the best Google mappers to see who would find the most spots in a given area. This ended up being a little more of a spot-knowledge tournament, but it was still sick. Those guys are the shit. I’m really hyped about everything they’re doing, it’s refreshing. Still gotta go pick up my prize when I head down to Salt Lake in the fall.
With no financial incentive, what keeps you motivated to jump down big stuff?
Easy, because I want to. Getting some money to help with travel is nice, but I don’t really think there’s a financial incentive for anyone doing this in Canada. I feel like everyone just does it because they love it and wants to stand out in their own unique way.
Editors note: This is the type of big stuff being referenced. Hellride Fs 5050 for the cover of 16.1, shot by Liam, of course.
You switched your shit up recently. How’s it been riding for K2?
Yeah, it was time. Rob Madill (the rep for Capita in Ontario) has helped me out for as long as I can remember and I can’t thank him enough. But I just kinda needed to mix it up and it worked out to move onto K2. I really love what they’re doing as a brand. Their boards are sick, the graphics are sick, people are sick. Shout out to Taylor Ricci for hooking it up. With K2 it’s really nice because I feel like my snowboarding aligns well with what they’re doing. They have been putting out some of my favourite brand videos. The fact they have Seamus [Foster] putting them together tells me they know what’s up.
You’ve edited every video you’ve been in for the past three years. Is it hard being the one going through your footage?
Definitely not my favourite thing, but I can’t imagine not having a hand in how my footage ends up looking. I’m lucky to have Quin to help carry the load now. Last year Quin and I stayed up for almost a week straight trying to wrap up the Paid Programming video. Not leaving the house for that long will make you feel insane. I’d edit until I ran out of gas and then take a quick power nap while Quin fixed whatever I was stuck on. I don’t think there was any way that video was getting done if we weren’t working together. Gonna try to wrap our video up a little earlier this year [laughs].
Your dad, Steve Jarrett, started Snowboard Canada Magazine back in 1992. I imagine that played a pretty big role in your snowboarding.
His involvement with print media and everything else definitely rubbed off on me. Making sure you’re capturing that stuff is super valuable in the industry and just in life. I always liked taking photos and filming. He definitely helped me foster that passion. When I was younger, he’d be there filming me, running the winch, or just driving me to spots. I can’t thank him enough.
Does your dad ever hit you up to see what clips you’re getting?
I sent him clips as I got them. He was super hyped. He would text me every day, trying to figure out what we were doing, which was sick.
Who were your influences in snowboarding and who do you think is doing it right now?
Growing up, I was exposed to a lot of riding through my dad but I don’t think I was really taking it in. There were always pros that came to do autograph signings. I was always front of the line trying to get their autographs, but that was all pretty superficial. I feel like when I was a little kid I’d watch all those videos, but I just wouldn’t even take them in necessarily. The local Ontario scene is what got me hyped on things initially. Trash League, Pocket Figures, guys like Marty and everybody from Dagmar. I went to ride Dagmar a couple times when I was a kid and I’d see them ride and I’d be like, “Holy fuck, I want to be able to do that shit.” I was in my early teens when I got hyped on riding rails and realized what I wanted to do. But then everyone I looked up to for filming street in Ontario started moving out West or fell out of it for whatever reason. Dawson McLaughlin started filming Aint Finna and I definitely was keen to start riding street. He kind of took me under his wing a little bit, and started filming with me, which is sick. I did that for a couple years and then met Vinny [Laz] and we became really good friends. We realized we wanted to make our own videos so Paid Programming started from there.
Who are some of the filmmakers you’ve looked up to?
I was almost more hyped on the filmers than the riders growing up. Maybe because I knew I wanted to make my own videos one day. I loved to try and reverse engineer the filmer’s editing process while watching their videos. I was always most hyped on the videos that came out with the boarders from Ontario. Subcity and Psych really changed everything for me. Those videos were perfect in every way. Colter Heard and Alex Biel were and still are huge inspirations of mine. When I was editing our first video with Vinny, I must’ve watched all the Snooze Global and House Call videos about a million times. Colt Morgan and Jake Durham were also huge inspirations. Colt is the best at ramping clips, and Jake always has the best film and effects incorporated in his videos. I still go back and watch their videos.
You have a serious archive of used songs in snowboard videos. How long did it take you to make that?
Yeah, I kinda nerded out on it. I feel like my taste in music came from videos. I always looked for new music in the videos I was hyped on. The first summer of Covid I spent a week making playlists for almost every video I could think of. It really refined my music taste. It’s nice now cause every time I’m wondering if a song has already been used, I have a pretty reliable source to cross-check. I was able to narrow my taste and what I was into during that process. All the songs I’m most hyped on are good songs for a video part.
What makes a song good for a video part?
I really just look for songs with emotion, a song that makes you feel something. It can be any genre. It helps if the song switches up tempo a bunch. The last thing you want is someone getting bored watching someone jump off a building. Usually, the songs I’m most hyped on in a video are the ones that you least expect. If you can get people to want to look up the songs after they’re done watching the video, that’s when you know you did a good job.
It’s safe to say more goes into your snowboarding than just the riding. Is there anything else you do that ties back into snowboarding?
Taking on a whole project definitely forces you to get good at a lot of random things. Whether it’s talking to sponsors and sending proposals out, organizing trips, booking flights, Airbnbs, rental cars, there’s so much shit you have to do. A lot of skills that apply to everyday life that I‘m very grateful to have had to learn. When we first started doing Paid Programming, I taught myself how to screenprint to make some shirts for our video. Now that’s something I really enjoy and wanna keep doing. It’s a hobby, it’s fun to make shirts that my friends are hyped on.
What are you doing for work at the moment?
Right now I’m working as a carpenter for a landscaping company. It’s seasonal, which is nice. I’m able to get on EI in the off-season, which makes taking winters off a lot easier. I like to work with numbers and have always been a bit of a math nerd so I’ve been enjoying that aspect. When they run out of woodwork for me I’m just doing general labour, shovelling rocks and what not. I think the carpentry part has been a good experience and I could see myself starting up my own thing in the future. I try not to plan too far ahead, though.
Well, you’re going to love this question. What’s the plan from here?
First things first, I have to finish editing this video with Quin and do everything that comes along with that. Definitely going to keep filming. I’d love to keep traveling. Getting to explore new places and seeing what they have to offer is really nice. I’ve never been to Europe so it would be sick to make my way over there. At the end of the day, it’s hard to get your hopes up for anywhere in particular. You don’t know where the snow is going to fall or if it even will.
Anyone you’d like to thank?
We wouldn’t have been able to make our video this year without the support we got from Sanction. They backed us and made it possible. Shout out to Malcolm Vaughn for helping me out all these years and having confidence in us to make another video with their name on it. I’d love to thank my Dad, my Mom, and Taylor Ricci for all the support they’ve given me this year. I also want to thank Rob Madill for everything he’s done for me in the past. Quinn, Biel, you, and everybody we film with.