When Icer Air announced last year that they were ditching the mega-jump inside AT&T Park and moving the entire event to the parking lot, you knew they were in trouble. So naturally, with Esurance bailing out as the lead sponsor, Icer Air has gone broke, to the point where none of the riders have received money owed to them.
The initial appeal of Icer Air was the location of the contest, which originally was held on San Francisco’s Fillmore St. back in 2005. Riders were literally flying into the crowd, and between jumps spectators had beautiful views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. To make the event even more appealing, it was free. You know, the price people usually pay when checking out an action sports contest (pretty much the only thing still innocent about extreme sports, although more and more contests are pricing for admission).
In obvious fashion, Esurance wanted to make money and get paid, thus Icer Air turned into the monstrosity that involved a mega-jump within the confines of AT&T Park . The jump was so big you could see it driving over the Bay Bridge . That in and of itself produced tremendous hype and publicity for the event, which actually kicked ass in 2006.
Slowly, greed and mismanagement started to erode the contest. Icer Air was still decent in 2007, but the event was stretched into a two-day spectacle with booths and exhibitions in the next-door parking lot, and the feel was a lot more corporate. Then came this past year’s contest.
Gone was the mega-jump inside AT&T Park . Replacing it was a weird slingshot-style contraption that flung riders over the transition. Making it worse was that Icer Air wasn’t even inside AT&T Park anymore, but rather in the parking lot. And the prices were ridiculously high, especially since the headlining bands, which in its peak were Jurassic 5 and Mos Def, were now the Cool Kids. Not very cool.
And this is where things went from bad to horrendous. Esurance, before bailing as title sponsor, had paid out the contest organizers. Only the contest organizers never paid the riders. "We are really sad to hear that the riders haven't been paid. This is news to us,” said an Esurance representative. “Esurance was the title sponsor for the Icer Air event from 2005 through 2008 and fulfilled obligations and made all payments to Icer for those events, including the 2008 event."
Which means contest co-founders Trevor Hubbard (who, personally speaking, is a major douchebag) and Glen Griffin kept the money for themselves. Neither Hubbard nor Griffin are anywhere to be found. Riders were supposed to receive $2,000 for competing, and $5,000 for winning the contest. No one has been paid for the 2008 contest, and to make matters worse riders are now seeing $271.51 charges on their credit cards from the W Hotel, a fee that contest organizers were supposed to pay for (riders provided their credit cards for the security deposit).
"Its heinous, its lame," said Jonny Moseley, the face and host of Icer Air. "Athletes need to get paid first, ahead of anything else. They've already taken the risk and put on a show and to not get paid is terrible. No matter what the excuse is business-wise you have got to take care of the athletes. I'm bummed that I'm associated to this." Moseley didn’t get paid for the recent contest either.
Moseley and the riders aren't the only ones upset over the situation. An anonymous source who has worked closely with Hubbard since Icer Air's debut in 2005 told me that Hubbard and Griffin have gone completely MIA since the contest ended back in November. "I haven't talked to them since January," said the source. "Trevor and Glenn are not responding to e-mails or calls from anybody. Apparently Trevor's phone is disconnected. It's a shame that this all imploded." When asked if the source had been paid, they replied, "No."
This goes beyond being a dumbass. This is straight evil. Greed is the single-greatest cause for our current economic recession, and it starts with people like Trevor Hubbard and Glen Griffin. In fact, one of my big journalistic breaks came back in late 2005, when Icer Air announced that they were going to move the contest from Fillmore St. to AT&T Park and start charging people for admission. Not knowing that Moseley didn't have any influence in the business decisions, I called him out on a story I wrote for an old website, calling him “Jonny Sellout”. The piece drew a lot of attention, and Hubbard called me immediately, asking me to take down the story. After Moseley came on our show to explain the whole situation (which included bad reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle), I relented. The story was pulled, and we started a great relationship with Moseley.
There will be no relenting this time. The true sellout is Trevor Hubbard. Only the word “sellout” doesn’t seem apropos. “Trevor Fuckface” seems about right. And props to former Icer Air contestant Pat Milbery, who helped break this story by revealing what was really going on. "I just want to expose the truth," said Milbery. "This event is an example of what, as a rider, you dread with contests--the disorganization. We put ourselves on the line to make these events happen. I can't understand how the event organizers can't appreciate that. They have straight up lied to our faces. I wish they could have told us the truth about the situation as it was unfolding instead of placing the blame on the sponsors.”
Photos courtesy of yours truly, from Icer Airs 2005, 2006 & 2007 (assistance with 2007 photos from Kelsey Winzeler).
