Basejumper.com - archive

Morning Thoughts . . .

It's funny how reality, or the appearance of it, is twisted depending on how you encounter it. If you are a wuffo reporter working on a BASE article this week, (I mention it as I've been talking to two of them) and you enter "BASE jumper" into the Google News search engine the below list is what you get. The first eleven are about John Agnos, including his cliff mishap, and the twelfth mentions Felix Baumgartner . . .

We are making the mistake of not using the press to our advantage. We let them write anything they want about us, but we never give them anything in return. Through most of the 80s and early 90s when a reporter called they mostly got told to get stuffed. The same with the bottom feeding video shows. When we do that the only press we do get is on accidents and the corporate sponsored BASE jumpers whose job it is to get the corporation's message across and not ours.

Even when we do put our best foot forward, like the major events in China, and things like Bridge Day, where they actually invite us to jump we don’t get a bump out of it in the mainstream press. Most of the articles I read (written by local reporters) seems to be about BASE jumping, I mean the words are all there, but it's like something out of the bizarro world because they don't quite get it.

At Bridge Day every jumper (who agreed to it) should be given a form to fill out that states a bit of information about themselves (the human interest stuff, like Pete's the local insurance guy, car mechanic, or barber) and also the name of their hometown paper. That info can be entered in a boiler plate press release and in that week after Bridge Day I'll guarantee they would run in hundreds of local newspapers. The same should be done when someone from out of town does the potato bridge. Local papers eat that stuff up.

What I'm saying is we can't stop the press from writing about us so maybe it's time we (as a group) stopped shunning them. If you go out to BLM land or something like that, write it up as a press release, include a few photos and send it to every hometown paper of the jumpers involved. Now, this course of action would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but there's no use acting like BASE is a big secret anymore.

So let's start spinning them, instead of them spinning us . . .

I'll put up by saying if anyone needs help crafting a press release I'm here for you. But, make sure you get that these won't be "look at me, I'm a hero" pieces, but just vehicles to get the message across that BASE is a legitimate sport with a grand history and an exciting future. If the public hears that often enough it will truly become their reality when they think of BASE.

Instead, right now, that reality is what's listed below:

NickD
BASE 194

Google News results for "BASE jumper" 11-19-2005

BASE Jumper Tangled on TV Tower
WJXX, FL - Oct 28, 2005
... climbed 200 feet up the nearly vertical guy wire to reached the stranded jumper. ... was engaging in a daredevil form of parachuting known as BASE jumping, in ...

KXTV Fireman Who Rescued Stuck BASE Jumper Found It "Fun"
KXTV, CA - Oct 28, 2005
A Sacramento City firefighter's 200-feet climb up a nearly vertical guy wire to rescue a stranded BASE jumper was nothing less than gutsy, even if the rescuer ...

Base Jumper's Parachute Tangled after 2000-foot Leap
KESQ, CA - Oct 27, 2005
WALNUT GROVE, Calif. Rescue crews are working to get down a base jumper whose parachute got tangled in wires 200 hundred feet above the ground. ...

Base Jumper Hangs From CBS Sacramento Tower
CBS 5, CA - Oct 27, 2005
(CBS 13) WALNUT GROVE A base jumper is hanging 200 hundred feet above the ground, waiting for rescue teams to bring him down to the ground. ...

Base Jumper's Chute Fails In Grand County
KUTV, UT - Oct 21, 2005
(KUTV) A base jumper was taken to the hospital after his parachute failed in Grand County. ... He's been an avid sky-diver and base jumper for about 20 years. ...

BASE Jumper Rescued After Jump From CBS 13 Tower
CBS 13, CA - Oct 28, 2005
(CBS 13) WALNUTE CREEK A Walnut Creek BASE jumper is in the hospital Friday after a birthday stunt left him dangling nearly 200-feet above the ground from a ...

KXTV Fire Crews Work to Free Base Jumper From Guy Lines
KXTV, CA - Oct 27, 2005
... caught up. The action is known as base-jumping. Base stands for buildings, antennas, spans and earth. It is usually illegal. At ...

Firefighters Work to Rescue Base Jumper
Stockton Record, CA - Oct 28, 2005
... continued to work on rescuing a man who became trapped on a 2,000-foot television tower in this south Sacramento County town after attempting to base jump from ...

Base Jumper Hangs From CBS13's Transmission Tower
CBS 13, CA - Oct 27, 2005
A base jumper is hanging 200 hundred feet above the ground--with no way to get down. A man parachuted from CBS 13's 2000-foot-tall ...

Base Jumper Tangled in Wires
ShortNews.com, Germany - Oct 29, 2005
John Agnos tried to parachute from a 2000 foot tower near Sacramento. Mister Agnos said that he was afraid that he was going to die if the cords of his ...

California Base Jumper Left Hanging
ABC News - Nov 1, 2005
... Agnos. Clark said it took more than an hour to get the stranded jumper back to safety. ... release. He said that his base jumping days are over.

The Quest For Fear
CNN International - 22 hours ago
... After words of advice from Felix Baumgartner -- a seemingly fearless professional BASE jumper who made a death-defying skydive across the English Channel

How about submitting an Op/Ed piece to a large newspaper? Anyone, anyone...

Nick you’re a wise man and that is a wonderful idea! A few people from my area are going out to TF on Memorial Day weekend so we can definitely put out a press release in our local papers after that. In fact my local paper had an article on jumping in TF about 2 months ago. I can’t seam to find the article or I would scan it but it was on the front page of whatever section it was in and had a guy doing a gainer. It was a very positive article and very well written.

Edit to add: So I'll contact you after we get back for some help in making the release as beneficial to our sport as possible.

Our local paper had a piece on Jamie Boutwell that got picked up by a couple other papers.

We also had an AP and a Reuters piece done about TF this summer, as well as that ESPN Sportscenter bit.

You know what, Now that I thinka bout it, it was an AP article. Was the dude giving a peace sign and was bald?

Coco

I always thought it was funny how the media is very proud of themselves for knowing what the acronym B.A.S.E. stands for, they never miss a chance to explain it.

IMHO, no news is good news.
Every so often someone dies, needs rescue, or decides they want to be a BASEMAN super-hero and call the news. these things fade after their short lived 15 minutes is up. Ask some wuffo who JA is after thanksgiving and they won't know, if you remind them they'll probably respond "oh yeah the idiot who jumped off the tower and was hanging on it"
The general population will never think of BASE jumpers as normal people just like you and me. and even if they did....what would that change? they would still think we are crazy(hell I think i am every time I climb something, I only change my mind once I've jumped).Society likes to protect us from ourselves (right now in SF there is a $2million study on putting a suicide barrior on the GG bridge, if it is deemed possible there will be an approximate $25 million dollar construction. That will keep people from killing themselves....right?) I don't think it would inprove site access, and if anything would make people more conciensious of BASE jumping and you would start seeing designs that would prevent access to objects, doors not normally locked would be locked. And anti-BASE laws would be enacted in your local town because there would be reason to.
Right now John Whuffo thinks BASE jumping is done by a few daredevils, somewhere else, not in this town...i've never seen one = no problem.
no news is good news.
~J

FIREFLYR,

I appreciate what you're saying, and for 20 years I've been in that same camp, but over a span of time I see it isn't working . . .

NickD
BASE 194

I totally see your point Nick. I just don't think I'd want articles in my local papers. There are no legal sites around, and I'd much rather have someone figure that hidden parked car they stumbled across belongs to hikers/campers/hunters instead of possible jumpers by a local A.

Awareness could result in tighter security on some objects. And that would just suck. Right now, too few even know it's going on...

I don't understand what you mean, don't take this the wrong way but...what isn't working? What were you hopeing would happen?or change?
Becides El Cap being legal for all to enjoy, and any other cliff that a condor hasn't already claimed, what could change?
~J

hemphog,

Yes, I see that. But eventually we are going to have to decide what's more important. I know that protecting high profile sites is important, but the thing that's changed since about ten years ago is not that someone is going to blow you secret site (which I'm not advocating by making public with press releases) but that some yahoo is going to come to your town and jump your site and get caught. What happens after that is going to determine the course of your future jumps in that area.

The choice we have right now, is if we really worked hard on it, is in five years or so a Judge would admonish the police to go out and catch real criminals.

We have a real chance to lesson the offence, if wuffos understood it just a little bit better . . .

Fuck 'em all worked for a long time, but it isn't working now. And while that idea may get "you" through the next few years we, all of us, have to start thinking of the sport as a whole. Anything less is, well less, and I think we all come to that same conclusion after a number of years. And the day will come when you do too . . .

NickD
BASE 194

>>I don't understand what you mean, don't take this the wrong way but...what isn't working? What were you hopeing would happen?or change? Becides El Cap being legal for all to enjoy, and any other cliff that a condor hasn't already claimed, what could change?<<

Yes, El Cap being legal is what I'm saying. You threw it out their like someday it's just going to happen automatically. I'm not saying we have to change our ways so much, but this is so easy it kills me, I'm saying we could so easily change the public perception of BASE jumping, it's like a no brainier...

NickD
BASE 194

The bald dude giving the peace sign is Jamie Boutwell. The photo was taken for the local article, but got picked up and run with some of the AP stuff.

 

We have a real chance to lesson the offence, if wuffos just understood it just a little bit better . . .
Unfortunately I don't think they'll ever understand it. Given the image whuffos have of us(f**kin crazy).

However, I hope one day they WILL respect it.

When Thor Alex got busted for those three buildings in NYC, the mayor of the city was outraged and wanted him flayed alive (as did a few base jumpers for the least high-profile of those buildings, but that's another story).

He was facing three felony counts of reckless endangerment, each count carrying a prison sentence of 7 years.

There was a lot of rigamarole, but in the end, the sentence imposed on him was community service. It was not because he had a good lawyer, but because the New York Post made him a front page item: "The Human Fly," thereby rendering him a folk hero. New York City loved him, and it would not have gone over well with the people to put him in jail.

The Post kept track of him, and when he died, they ran a very tender and loving article about that too.

It pays to have the media on your side.

rl

So you're suggesting that if there's a gathering of jumpers at a legal object somewhere, to do up our own editioral about the experence with a pic or two? I guess I'm just kind of concered to be named in anything you know? Not too sure if this means I'm selfish in thinking this or not.

I do see where you're going with this. You're right, the only exposure people get on BASE are the accidents, and they just think everyone who does it has a few screws loose. It would be better to give them a view from the other side.

Do you think it would work? Wuffos understanding it any better? I guess, after really thinking about it, it's only going to do more good than harm. Even if people think it's crazy, but are more exposed to the fact, they might loosen up a little... hopefully

It is worth a shot. You've convinced me Nick. I'm still nervous bout names in the paper tho. I'll have to give you a shout after my trip to the potato bridge in may. If any of these do get published, be sure to post links for us.

Pace out!

It can't be . . . because "they" said . . .

Copernicus was crazy . . .

Galileo was crazy . . .

Da Vinci was crazy . . .

Amerigo Vespucci was crazy . . .

Louie Pasture was crazy . . .

Orville and Wilbur were crazy . . .

Listen to Schubert's "Ava Maria" he was totally crackers when he wrote that . . .

Lennie Bruce was crazy . . .

And it goes on and on . . .

In the end you don’t have to be sane, you just have to be right . . .

NickD
BASE 194

Sweet! Yea that pic was on the front page ("daily break" section I think) of my local paper.

Actually, Lenny Bruce WAS crazy...

Funny as hell though.

-smd7

>>Actually, Lenny Bruce WAS crazy...<<

I don’t know, but Lenny talked about all the things most were already thinking and for sure doing behind closed doors, but not willing to talk about. He got reamed because he said it out loud and first. Of course, the heroin didn't help him get the point across . . .

He died in '66 I think, but in '65 he played a small club in my part of Manhattan and I, even just being a teenager, remember that night as being epic . . .

NickD
BASE 194

I've got all his Stand Up on C.D. - I love when he goes off on a rant, and in "How to win friends and influence people", the court room chapter is the funniest f'ing thing I've ever read.

I meant crazy, in the right/good way.

-smd7

Thank you, Mask Man!

We have done a legal gathering of non-lawyers!!

More than two times and will do it again,

Cyall,

Joy