Re: [lyndon] Cost of a tree rescue in the Swiss valley
I was talking with an "old-timer" the other day and over a few drinks lamenting the changes in BASE. (Don't bag on me. BASE as you know will change someday too, LOL).
I was trying to come up with the definitive single "turning point" but there were so many little "compromises" it was a very gradual (almost unnoticeable) and very slippery slope. And I'm as guilty as anyone in some of these things . . .
- When the NPS became egregious at Bridge Day and we didn't have the balls to call it off for a year or two. (Go back to the late '80s and pick any year.)
- When some outside of BASE corporate interests began to "use" BASE jumping and too many of us thought it was cool. No, I'm not specifically thinking of ShitBull (although that's become the current end result) I'm talking about Bridge Day '87 when "No Fear" showed up at the BASE trade show to sell their t-shirts. And we didn’t run them out of town on a rail.
- When the BASE community began to eat itself. I'm thinking here about guys like John Vincent, Stupid Dave, and Jeb Corlis, etc, and our combined treatment of them. There is something mildly romantic and old school about their approach to BASE. Just shove it down people's throats and fuck who doesn't like it. I remember when "The Pick" was led off the BD Bridge in handcuffs. Will Forshay turned to me and said, "Now, that's BASE." I think we screwed up royally when we started to think of the "collective" good rather than the "individual" good. Want freedom? Then just act free. In Stupid Dave's case I see a kind of "out of the mouths of babes" thing. Free from the history of BASE, free from the current - go along to get along - group think could it be possible he got it right and the rest of us got it wrong? Would a thousand "stupid daves" do us more good in the long run than a single entity like the Back Country Parachutists? Ever see that 80's computer movie with the tag line, "The only way to win the game is not to play?"
- The day we spilled the beans. And again I'm a bean spiller too. I can't actually point to a single day, situation, or event, when the beans first hit the floor. It might have been when a few Hollywood stuntmen began using BASE to pump up their resumes. Why, when Moe Viletto crashed through the skyscraper window in that Hollywood skydiving movie, wasn't he tarred and feathered? Was it because he got paid? Why didn't we go ape shit when Warren Miller started featuring BASE in his art movies? Who first thought paid for first BASE jump courses were a good idea? You can't buy your way into the Foreign Legion, the Mafia, or the Hell's Angels.
- When the Europeans blew it. There's a lot of revisionist history here, but when BASE finally took off in Norway, Switzerland, etc, it had already been going on big time here in the States for more than a few years. It's like they had a blueprint for what not to do. The Continent was like a big sweet virgin willing to go along with anything. There were no inherent anti-personal freedom laws, no over abundance of shit eating lawyers, no reason BASE couldn't flourish in all its glory. So what did the Euro-dogs do? They started making their own rules where none existed. "Oh, but we must keep the local farmer happy!" Fuck the local farmer!!! Now it's so bad you can't get help out of a tree, something anyone would do for a cat or dog for free, without forking over all your NOKs and Krones . . .
- The Wave . . . In the mid 1980s we sort of knew we had a good thing going but we also knew it couldn't last. We all feared "the wave" of new jumpers that would come when the world finally awoke to BASE jumping. We are certainly the same assholes now as we were then, except nowadays we are "known" assholes. Getting busted for urban BASE in the 80s usually got you laughed out of the courtroom. Now you're just another YouTube idiot that needs to be taught a lesson. Somehow in just thirty years we went from what Carl Boenish thought of as one of Man's biggest achievements of the 20th Century to something the public equates with "Bum Fights" and "Girls Gone Wild." When the "wave" finally did come rolling in –in the mid-1990s - some surfed it, some ducked it, and some drowned in it. (I'm in the latter category.)
- We just aren't cool anymore. And I miss that more than anything. Just like the Beatles aren't cool anymore, just like Free Love isn't cool anymore (Boy, did you younger guys miss out on the pussy smorgasbord) and just like dancing the "Monkey" isn't cool anymore (just when I finally got it) everything changes in time . . .
- So we've come to now. And it's summed up perfectly by lyndon in his response to goking. And its the one single definable point, reason, attitude, call it what you want, where we can see how BASE truly and finally went off the rails.
"To keep us all in good standing with the powers that be you have to pay the bill."
NickD
BASE 194
