Cow Eye

So way back in like 1992 there was this freestyle bump ski company called Hart and they picked up this European snowboard line to distribute called Radical Airlines. I remember seeing the first ad in the mags of some dude doing a staged frontside air and he had angel wings attached to him. Wacky Euros’ I thought.

Hart Ski’s big man on campus at the time was good ole Party Marty Carrigan who like now a days, knew nothing about snowboarding. I worked in a shop and was Hart Ski’s link to Radical Airlines snowboarding for some reason. The more time spent with these guys the more important this dude Reto became. He was some sort of Euro Craig Kelly mixed with a bit of flare like the Palm had. He destroyed all the contests, but was also out there making party with the women and being that Euro playboy.

Then like in the second year of Ride Snowboards existence, they start distributing this Euro boot line called N-Boot. Our shop was one of the first to say “hell yea, these things look wacky as fuck but hell, if we can sell a boat load of Rad Airs, A Snowboards, Morrow and Never Boards, we can certainly sell these here N-Boots." Low and behold there’s a clown boot in the line with this stupid ass red sole and it’s none other than a Reto Lamm pro model.

Fast forward to 1997 and I’m working for Northwave and go over to Euro land and end up working with Reto quite a bit. He’s like this dude that comes up with these wild ideas for product and gets the boot dudes to build it. He did the two boots that put Northwave on the map as a real boot company, the Apollo and the Reset. While we were working with him, I think it was Hor Hey that noticed that every time you were talking with Reto or Remo Latt as we like to call him, he’d always cock his head sideways like a parrot but still be looking at you. Kind of like a cow does when you’re fucking with them from the other side of a barbed wire fence. Thus the Cow Eye nickname was born.

It’s been some years since we worked together, seeing how the North went south and we all bailed. Every once in a while you hear a Reto story but it’s been a while since seeing him. George sent these links to me the other day and got me all stoked again on ole Cow Eye. You got to let this movie load and then sit back and check this shit out. Pure Euro, pure Reto and stylish as all hell.

By the way, the dude was the first Air and Style winner way back in 1994 when a front flip indy would win you that shit. Palm got second with a one footer by the way.