The following article was originally printed in the December 2025 Issue of Slush. To get more articles and subscribe, click here.

Story by: Jill Perkins

In the chilling month of January 2025, the crew — Justin Phipps, Ben Bilodeau, Justin Meyer, Oli Gagnon, and I — found our way to a little old place called Cincinnati, Ohio. I would like to share a ridiculous “Gen Alpha” term I recently learned while writing this article: “Ohio Rizz.” “Ohio Rizz” is a slang term that means bad, awkward, or weird flirting — combining the internet slang "rizz" (charisma) with "Ohio" is used to describe something strange or cringeworthy.

You see, I don’t quite understand where the kids got this term. In fact, Cincinnati, Ohio was so wonderful that there were about five different crews in the city at once! Not to mention the extreme talent that comes out of Ohio — Red Gerard, Corinne Pasela, Louie Vito, etc. There must be more in the water than just toxic algae and lead.

As people took flights to Japan and Bosnia during this time period, a few crews decided to wait it out and gamble with a said storm that was supposed to hit hard around Cincinnati. It was one of those trips where you drive in dry and leave extremely wet and cold.

There was some edginess when we found out that more and more crews were flocking to the area. Street snowboarding can be, unfortunately, very territorial. For some beautiful reason, this trip was vastly different. I’m not sure if it’s because the world is debatably over-therapized now, but the communication between crews was something I had never seen or heard before. The crews shared locations, FaceTimes, lists of tricks done at spots, and even shared meals together when the days winded down. At one point, we pulled up on Jake Kuzyk, Kennedi Deck, Cole Navin, and more at the most beautiful down-flat-down hubba I had ever seen. Tensions felt lower than usual, and the space was filled with good energy as it felt like a family reunion of sorts.

Okay, but going back to “Ohio Rizz” — I mean sure, some may look at that interaction as “bad” or “awkward.” But personally, and I am going to speak on behalf of my crew here, we found this run-in truly special. To be able to travel the world with or adjacent to some of your best friends, your role models, and your favorite snowboarders really fills one’s cup.

Having multiple crews in the same area added a sense of exciting pressure and drive to our crew. It caused us to be strategic, quick-moving, and always have a plan. And for a girl on a trip with all men 99 percent of the time, that is my love language.

Okay, enough of the gushy stuff, and let’s talk spots. Cincinnati was littered with gems. One of my personal favorites is this one of Ben. At the beginning of our trip, I had Google Earthed a rail that quickly got coined “Sketchy White.” Sketchy because in one frame it existed, and in the next it did not. It looked broken and most likely deleted from Earth through gentrification. Not to mention, we could not quite tell what size or how many kinks it had to offer. This rail was located about an hour or so out of the city, and one day we decided to gamble. The pressure of finding something online with the off chance it doesn’t actually exist is high stakes.

To our surprise, we rolled up, and not only was this rail perfectly sketchy — it had all the elements a guy like Ben could ask for: a subtly terrible drop-in, separations (multiple), and kinks. It landed on a small bridge with snow levels dwindling by the minute. We shoveled, he snowboarded, we laughed, we got frustrated, he took a break, he landed it, and we all went home with the feeling of “this is why we do this.”

It is the spots and days like this that really make me feel genuinely grateful to be a part of street snowboarding. 

There is something to be said about those days where it feels like all things are “Ohio Rizz” (bad, awkward, weird) and everything seems to be working against you, yet you and your crew decide to work together and deep dive into an experience together. It may not always work out, but in this case it did, and that is one of the beautiful things about trusting the process, passion, and supporting/believing in your friends.

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