An alpine snowboarder
Plastic boots, metal bindings and a narrow board that makes possible riding close to snow. Never made any difference between skiers and snowboarders, have friends among those and others. IMHO, skis are easier to start with but more difficult to progress in riding while snowboard can take up to a week just to start sliding down the slope and do curves, but once you do you progress quite fast. Skis were generally made for riding down well-prepared slopes while snowboard is more convenient for powder and freeride. It's also possible to do tricks both with snowboard and with skis but I prefer watching skiers' tricks, they look more stylish.
Concerning my friends here: in the younger group (20-28 years) about 80% of people snowboard, among which about half prefers "freeride" (we do not have big mountains, so by freeride is called riding among the trees in the forest) and the other half is fond of freestyle. At the same time only about 5-10% of those who do freestyle, do it on some serious basis - learning tricks,
training a lot and improving technique. Others go to parks to chat with friends, drink a beer and do a couple of tricks. Among skiers there is a trend of switching to freeride snowboarding.
In the group of alpine snowboarders we have almost all ages - from 14 y.o. guy, who is in top 14 race snowboarders in Russia (including participants of Olympic games) to his Dad, who is 43-44 y.o. Most of the guys here have good financial support, because the sport requires lots of trainings and they're costly.