Here’s how I got from the Lower East Side of New York City to the Green Mountains of Vermont.

My dad is an architect and my mother is a graphic artist. As a kid, I enjoyed everything the city had to offer including art galleries, museums, restaurants, music and just living there. New York was an exciting and different place in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. I think the pizza was better then too. As I got older, I was really drawn to skateboarding and the hardcore music scene. I went to tons of shows at CBGB’s, The Ritz, Irving Plaza and the Roseland. I bought a lot of records and Thrasher Magazines which I’ve held on to. My family traveled a lot including Africa, Mexico, Scandinavia, Europe, Japan, Canada, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean where I gained my SCUBA certification which I still enjoy. 

I then left the city for boarding school (no pun intended) in upstate New York and then on to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was during this time in my life that I fell in love with snowboarding. I also started getting into tattoos. Instead of going the traditional college route many of my classmates did, I decided to go to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted to have some trade skills to keep me employed wherever I ended up. Around this time, I also bought my first Harley-Davidson. To support my snowboarding habit, I worked in restaurants and as a ski tech. This is where I met my lovely wife. Eventually, we moved to Vermont and I started to work full time for Burton Snowboards.

I enjoyed my time at Burton and soaked up as much as I could for the nine years I was there. After I left, I became a welder and worked as a fabricator and then a machinist, which I enjoyed. I then worked for Stowe Mountain Resort as a snow cat operator.

I’m not sure when I had an epiphany, but I started building prototype powsurfers in my basement using vacuum forming techniques. After some trial and error, I realized I had something that rode well. Since I had the materials already on hand, I decided to build a snowboard. It was small, but it worked! At the time I remember staring at that board thinking I was onto something. This is when I decided to go for it and MTN Local Snowboards was born!

The next year was spent building and testing so many different shapes on snow. I settled on a rad new shape which I call the Hammerhead; and fell in love with it. I was using the first of three hand-built presses in my garage, but that press just wasn’t up to the task. I continued to tweak and test and press and press. Fast forward to the third and current press which uses industrial compression technology and heat to fully cure the epoxy. And that’s where I am. I’m really excited with my product and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.