The mystery surrounding the disappearance and death of Dane Williams has brought the case national attention and hopefully this will assist in bringing the investigation to a close. I was keeping an eye on a bit of the CNN election coverage this past week when the promo for the Nancy Grace Show made it known they were making it part of her nightly show. While I wouldn’t consider myself a Nancy Grace fan, I really thought she did a very thorough report. There is still so much that is unknown surrounding his disappearance and death, and it appears there has not been a lot of progress in finding any answers. Williams’ mother appeared on the show and made a heartfelt plea to anyone with information on her son to come forward. Here is to hoping her plea falls on the ears of any who have yet to come forward with any knowledge surrounding this loss.

Here is Surfersvillage latest information on the Dane Williams case-

Crime Stoppers, working with the San Diego Police Department’s homicide unit, is seeking any information regarding the suspicious death of Dane Williams. 23-year-old Dane Williams attended the ASR tradeshow at the San Diego Convention Center for Hurley on January 26, 2008. He was last seen at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning leaving a Gaslamp area bar.

A citizen discovered a body lying in the North alley of 5200 Landis Street in the City Heights area of San Diego on January 29 at approximately 6:30 a.m. The body was later identified as Dane Williams. The cause and manner of Williams’ death is still undetermined.

Anyone with any information on Dane Williams’ death is asked to call the Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line at (888) 580-TIPS. Crime Stoppers is offering up to a $10,000 reward to anyone with information that leads to a felony arrest in the case.

- Questions regarding the homicide should be directed to Lt. Kevin Rooney at (619) 531-2425.
- Questions regarding Crime Stoppers should be directed to Officer Jim Johnson at (619) 531-1500 or Deputy Adriana Uribe at (619) 531-1547.

For information leading to an arrest, you could receive up to a $10,000 reward and remain anonymous. The qualification of any person(s) for the reward and the amount of the reward for any person(s) so qualifying will be determined by San Diego County Crime Stoppers, Inc, in its sole discretion. The amount of all rewards given shall not exceed $10,000. Information must be received on the tip line, (888) 580-TIPS.

For all of those working in the action sports industry who spend countless hours behind your desk imagining yourself taking home X-Games gold or landing a mag cover with your dirtiest move, here’s your chance to let it all hang out.

The third annual Office Booyz snowboard competition is strictly for action sports desk jockey’s who want to get a break from the daily office routine and take to the mountain at Big Bear to throw down a little ‘boarding love. That’s right, the contest is limited to those and only those who spend their days working in the action sports industry.

The idea was hatched a few years ago over chicken wings and brewskies (isn’t that where all good ideas are created?) by a group of self-acclaimed out of shape desk jockey’s from Vancouver and has taken flight ever since. And even if your shredding skills weren’t what they once were, or could have been for that matter, Office Booyz offers quite the variety of categories in order to give the boarding-challenged a reason to participate in the festivities. We here at 5ones have already been sussing out the categories, and if anyone thinks they would have a better shot at snatching the Most Donuts/Coffee Consumed award from our grips, they have another thing coming.

The contest is being held Friday, Feb. 22 and anyone interested in heading up can register over at Malakye. Should be interesting, and will more than likely leave some over-zealous office boys in pretty bad shape.

The ASR trade show held in San Diego this past weekend was everything it promised to be and the event itself drew rave reviews from all who attended. Unfortunately and tragically a member of the industry and a precious human life went missing and apparently has ended up deceased.

According to a report published by CBS News, the body of Dane Williams, Huntington Beach local and member of the Hurley marketing department, was found dead in the City Heights section of San Diego, about 20 or so miles from where he was last seen. Dane went missing on Saturday morning around 1 a.m. after attending the ASR tradeshow. Dane was 23. The knowledge of his death comes as a deep shock to all. Going off of what has been reported so far; the disappearance and death seem fairly sketchy, however without a whole lot of information being released at this point it’s best to not even begin to speculate.

Our condolences and prayers go out to his family and friends as they go through this unexpected tragedy. Rest in Peace Dane Williams.

asr

At the same time that all of Hollywood moves in to “grace” Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah with their presence for the Sundance Film Festival, the action sports industry throws their version of the event with the X-Dance Action Sports Short-Film Festival.

Launched initially in 2001, the X-Dance Festival has been working to continue the progression of action sports film-making while recognizing and celebrating the achievements of both athletes and filmmakers. X-Dance puts an emphasis on the importance of story, recognizing innovative work that pushes the limits of both style and narration.

Voting for the festival’s entries actually began on January 4th. Anyone who wants to view the entries and give their say on which films impressed them can do so by going to Nossatv.com. Once there, head over to the X-Dance 2008 channel to view and then rate each film on a 1-5 scale. It doesn’t take much time and by doing do you help decide this years winner of the X-Dance Short Film Festival. The winner is then given a fully paid trip to Los Angeles to meet with the industries top names. Last years winner, Constantine Papanicolaou, ended up with full financial backing to film “Show and Prove”, featuring Tanner Hall and C.R. Johnson.

The Grand-Prize winner will be announced at the closing party on January 23 at The Depot in Salt Lake City. The festivities should be off the wall and one lucky filmmaker will be the recipient of a career changing break.

and direct us to your website if you don’t have the actual product on there. It’s seriously annoying. I’m flipping through Surfing Mag right now and saw a Nixon watch I like. So I go to their website and I can’t find it anywhere.

What’s up with that? If you don’t have the product in stock then don’t advertise it in the mags. If you do have the product in stock then make sure it’s on your site. This definitely isn’t the first time this has happened either and Nixon isn’t the only guilty party.

Not only is it annoying to the consumer, but now your advertisement is worthless.

End rant.

Alex from the ASR blog is pondering whether mixed martial arts will be the next major action sport. She notes the rise in industry companies sponsoring fighters (RVCA & BJ Penn) as a possible connection. What do you think? Is mixed martial arts an action sport?

Personally, I don’t see mixed martial arts as an action sport. I see it as fighting and see no reason why it would fit a classification any differently than any other martial arts or even boxing. I do think it’s a great opportunity for advertisers in our industry to not only reach their target audience (lots of us watch it right) but to branch into new industries as well. Not to mention many people who train and fight in MMA events are also involved in other action sports. But that doesn’t necessarily mean these sports qualify as action sports even with the close relations, or does it?

Which leads me to the question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. What exactly defines an action sport? Especially with the all the new sports that have been featured in the X-Games over the last couple years. Sports like rally racing and supercross. Two or three years ago none of these would’ve ever been considered as action sports, but now it seems because certain athletes have crossed over they’re suddenly accepted into our industry.

The Wikipedia defines action sports as…

Extreme sport (also called action sport, adventure sport, and adventurous sport) is a media term for certain activities perceived as having a high level of inherent danger or difficult and often involving speed, height, a high level of physical exertion, and highly specialized gear or spectacular stunts. They are almost always individual instead of team activities and that they often focus on performing tricks or stunts.

While that sounds like a pretty lame definition, there are a few key takeaways here. But seeing as the action sports industry as a whole pretty much sucks when it comes to keeping up with technology on the web I’m not going to automatically accept this as the be all definition.

So my question to you is…. What defines an action sport and who has the final say?

Founded by sisters Courtney and Lisa Pugh, Core Action Sports is an all womens action sports website featuring both a community and an online store for women’s apparel and gear.

The company is based in Denver, Colorado and offers a wide range of products and brands in the skate, ski, snowboard, wake, and surf categories. The site is also aiming to become an information source for everything related to women and action sports. There are sections for news, events, competition results, fitness tips, tip tricks, athlete profiles, and much more. The company even plans to launch a blogging platform that will enable members of the site to write their own blogs.

I like the idea of a women-specific website. There’s an obvious void in the industry when it comes to the female market and Core Action Sports is aiming to solve that problem. With a strong push being made in the industry towards female branding, Core Action Sports is positioning themselves to dominate this niche.

The design for the site is well done and I found it a breeze to navigate through the site. Some of the features are either missing or broken but that’s to be expected on some level as the site is still brand new. I would imagine those issues will be fixed as they continue to roll out the new features in the coming months.

The site could use more social features though. If they’re aiming to own the women-specific space there needs to be a stronger push into creating a community where the ladies can not only consume information but contribute back as well. The blogging platform is a good start but there should be profiles, video & image uploads, and more. There also needs to be some social shopping features around the ecommerce section of the site.

Core Action Sports is holding a grand opening party in October. The event will take place in Denver and feature action sports athletes and fashion runways showcasing the latest gear and apparel. Even though we’re aren’t chicks we better get an invite.

Core Action Sports