NOW IN ITS 11th YEAR , Parry considers the Tell a Friend Tour to be integral to his project to keep kids skiing. The 36-year-old and friends show up to a small hill, mostly in the Midwest or Northeast, and spend the day skiing the park with local youth. Once Wesson stopped filming annual features with Level 1, he started joining Parry on every stop. “Tell a Friend is the closest thing you can get to bringing Windells to your home mountain,” Wesson says. Parry provides pizza and gives out thousands of dollars worth of gear at each stop. Underneath the swag, Parry’s works to create a space for kids to meet each other and develop an enduring desire to ski with friends. Friends like Wesson and McFalls have kept Parry on skis, and he knows those kinds of bonds can instill a lifelong love of the sport in others as well. “Andy loves hanging out with these kids because he sees himself in all of them,” says Josh Malcyzk, former global brand director at Line. “Andy Parry, to some kid in Boston Mills, OH, is the top level. He’s the most famous person they’ve ever seen in their life in the thing that they love. He understands that connection.” As Parry explains, “There’s that critical difference between seeing someone on your phone and then them being right in front of you, giving you a high-five for landing a front 270 out. The tour gives young kids an opportunity to discover skiing’s creativity with their friends in a free and noncompetitive environment. I don’t charge kids a dime for the tour.” The Tell a Friend Tour arose from what Parry considers an utter lack of support for creativity in freeskiing—a struggle he’s seen firsthand. “Andy is so valuable in such a funny way, but you really have to understand what it is,” Malcyzk says. “To Line Skis he’s everything, but some other brands wouldn’t even know what to do with him.” As he’s grown in the industry, Parry has watched sponsor dol-lars evaporate. From his perspective, if you didn’t grow up training 365 days a year in an academy setting or two doors down from the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club, you’re not going to the X Games anymore. Real Ski is gone, and Parry is sure it’s never com-ing back. It doesn’t leave much room for skiers from the suburbs of Rochester or many of the local ski hills Parry prioritizes these days. In many ways, Parry’s presence highlights the tragic discon-nect between those holding the purse strings and the skiers they aim to represent. He knows that all you need to do his tricks is a foot-wide box or rail—something that can be built after a trip to the hardware store. He also sees the paucity of opportunities to make a living in the sport narrowing the field of play. He lives somewhere in between, connecting miles of highways and small ski hills to weave those two realities together—understanding that you can style a hippie killer just as well at Trollhaugen, WI, as you can on the Horstman Glacier. Sometimes, he says, it’s about just showing up. “I think Andy loves hanging out with these kids because he sees himself in all of them,” Malcyzk says. When pros like Mike Nick would come through Bristol when he was a kid, it made Parry feel like he was being graced by the presence of a superstar. “Andy “In 2020, a pile of discarded log sections became a series of wooden moguls at TK, TK. Everyone was skeptical about Andy’s vision until he completed a successful trial run. His creativity has arguably led him to originate never-been-done tricks than any other skier. They don’t call him ‘the Wizard’ for nothing.” Photo: Jake Strassman Parry, to some kid in Boston Hills, OH, he is like the top level,” Malcyzk continues. “He’s the most famous person they’ve ever seen in their life. And he understands that connection.” Parry eschews the idea that skiing is a luxury good for the bour-geoisie. Instead he wants to show that grassroots accessibility is still a thing. Sure, it’s become his lifeblood, but he just wants it to be a part of people’s lives—no matter how small. “My parents weren’t taking us down to Disneyland; they weren’t taking us to Europe,” Parry says. Instead, he saw the world as an adult, crammed into rental vans with six friends and thousands of fast-food wrappers. He’s skied PVC setups in Oslo and ended up in Chinese hospitals with dislocated joints. Parry has filmed in Japan five times, skiing powder and slurping up ramen in 100-square-foot motels. “All these crazy experiences I’ve had are all because of skiing, and otherwise who knows where I’d be,” Parry says. For all the comedy that comes out of the Traveling Circus, Parry feels that he’s repaying a debt. Skiing has given him every-thing. Now decades into his career, he just got married and owns a construction business. He understands he would never have developed the drive to keep going (and working all of the odd jobs it took to fund his winters) had it not been for the work ethic he developed hiking rails in the dead of night. Parry admits that skiing might not fund the futures of all the people he meets on the tour, but he knows the sport can provide a support system for kids when they need it most. He’s heard all kinds of stories—parents’ deaths, lost jobs, car crashes. He’s also witnessed how skiing has given each one of those storytellers some-thing to look forward to, assuring them that they are not alone. At each stop on the Tell a Friend Tour, Parry stands on a table with a megaphone and yells to the crowd: “Look at everyone around you. You don’t know anyone here? Meet someone. You see someone with a camera? Ask them to get some clips. See if you want to give them some clips. This is how I started.” The Tour is a space for them to push each other and learn that it’s ok to fall. In his skiing, Parry hopes to reflect the same—bottling up that mad-scientist feeling of building a kicker with your friends, falling, picking yourself back up and working until you nail it. Or don’t. Who cares? Trying is the point. 048 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 3: Page 48
