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Salty Peaks — a 'board museum
Shop full of new, vintage equipment
By Carrie Kennington
Deseret News staff writer
Call them his love. Call them his life. Or, just call them his old snowboard-skateboard collection.
"I don't know what the next word past obsession is . . . it's an infatuation." What Salty Peaks employee Sal Begum described is what store owner Dennis Nazari calls his rare disease.
"It's a sickness, but therapy helps," Nazari said. If therapy is searching for old snowboards and skateboards, eBay is Nazari's drug of choice.
"He's on eBay everyday. He's got everything back to like a board with wheels nailed onto it," employee Jerry Thompson said.
"Anything you could ride sideways down a hill," Nazari said.
He's got just about that: Add the 30 snowboards he bought in Colorado this weekend to his collection of 620, as well as the 385 skateboards, and you've got the overwhelming decor of his snowboard-skateboard store.
It started out just as wall decor, Nazari said. Now it's a sequential display of snowboards donning the walls and tucked above the rafters as well as skateboards hanging from the ceiling — many bearing their histories. It would be safe to call the combined shop and wall-display collection a museum, maybe the largest of its kind.
Begum said he was watching a world's record show when an announcer asked viewers to call in if they knew of any world-record holders not recognized yet. "I almost called and said, I know a guy . . ."
"There was a time that I thought I was the only idiot" collecting vintage snowboards and skateboards, but with the rising popularity of the sports, Nazari said there are others who share his passion. He knows most of them.
Nazari gets his collection pieces from anywhere, from anybody willing to sell. He looks for the rare handmade wooden 'boards and has some newer models signed by the greats, including 1998 Olympic snowboarder Mark Fawcett. He hopes to be able to add to that part of his collection this year, Nazari said.
No surprise, Nazari has tickets to Olympic snowboarding. "My money's on Danny Kass," he said.
If you're a serious 'boarder in this town, Nazari already knows you and if you have any 'boards he wants. People call in from all over describing a 'board they have, "and I finish describing it for them," Nazari said. Then he tells them what year it was made, how many were made that year, etc. From something as little as the color of the old-style ropes early snowboards had, he can tell if the 'board is a fake or not.
After he finishes educating them about their 'board, sometimes they have second thoughts about selling it, he said. He has a few 1970s "snurfers," a sort of mini-looking snowboard, which are thought to be precursors to the present-day snowboard. Some 'boards at Salty Peaks are even as old as Nazari himself.
In the days of backyard snowboarding, Nazari saw pictures of it in a magazine and mail-ordered his first: a Burton Performer. After breaking a few, "Burton got tired of sending me new 'boards." So they sent him a foam core model to test.
He was a pioneer in getting Salt Lake resorts to allow snowboarders in the mid-1980s by teaching certification and setting 'board standards. He was even in an early snowboarding movie, a sort of parody of a snowboarding gang terrorizing a resort hill. Nazari still snowboards when he gets a chance.
There are a few specific pieces he's looking to add to his collection, but there's one snowboard he wants more than anything. It's probably not a classic in the eyes of other collectors, but it holds a special place in Nazari's snowboarding past. According to employees, he talks about it all the time.
It's a white Terry Kidwell with gold stripes and a Sessions sticker on the nose. Nazari owned it in the 1980s. He sold it to a man who has since resold it.
"It'll come back someday."
Until that day, Nazari will take his chances on eBay.
E-MAIL: ckennington@desnews.com
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February 12, 2002
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