Shaun White’s Business is Red Hot

When he won the gold medal in snowboarding at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, everyone knew how Shaun White’s story would end. The corporate advertising complex would line up to capitalize, just as it has with every gold medalist since decathlete Bruce Jenner. And White, with his strange equine beauty and crazy pile of long red hair, would assume the position, allowing his action-sports cred and new America’s-darling status to be sucked out of him and slapped on every can, box, and cookie bag in the nation. All the elements for cashing in and selling out were in place: Take a kid with working-class roots (his mom was a waitress, his dad worked for the water utility in San Clemente, California); add Olympic gold and huge endorsement checks; run the cliché. Heinz would offer six figures to put White on everything from ketchup bottles to stewed tomatoes (White’s then-nickname: the Flying Tomato). Maybe a toothpaste company would come pushing tubes of new Shaun Extreme Whitening. Throw in some potential heavy-rotation spots for Schick Xtreme Shaving and Doritos Extreme Nacho Cheesiness and the caricature is close to complete. As a final inspired bit of packaging, someone would lay down the big bucks to insert Mr. White in a straight-to-DVD production of Faster Times After Ridgemont High, where he would be cast as a snowboarding Spicoli attending a junior college somewhere near Banff. White would then spontaneously combust into the most awesome! bitchin’! rad! gnarly! D-list spokes-celeb ever. read more

Diane Keaton on Reusing Historic Buildings Like Plastic Bags

Last week, I drove past the 22-acre vacant lot once known as the Ambassador Hotel. As I looked at the rubble of our lost cause, I pulled over, sat back and gave in to a feeling I can only describe as guilt. I thought about my connection to the once-iconic hotel, about why places like it are so difficult to save, and about what it takes to be a better, more effective advocate for historic buildings. read more

Oakley’s New High Tech Headquarters

Directions to Oakley headquarters in Foothill Ranch, California, read like coordinates to a secret rebel base: Turn on One Icon Drive. Pass the abandoned motocross ramp. Take a right at the helipad. And we’re the 400,000-square-foot gray fortress at the top of the hill. Yeah, the one with the giant cylindrical spikes protruding from it. There’s a torpedo out front. Can’t miss it.

Inside, beyond heavy, unmarked doors, stands a cathedral-ceilinged chamber of riveted steel, like the air lock for a massive interplanetary docking station. As your pupils adjust to the dim interior light, it becomes clear that the creatures seated in the four B-52 ejector seats are not alien foes but surfer types who couldn’t be more psyched to be here. read more