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Does anyone know how to contact Andy Calistrat?

If you can share his info PM me, if not hopefully you can pass my info to him.

edited to add a ? at the end of the Subject.

The Rise & Fall of Andy Calistrate . . .

I haven't thought about Andy, BASE 124, for a while, but no attempt at getting BASE history correct would preclude him. In phone calls to and from old hands it's rare when, "What the heck happened to Andy," doesn't come up.

I liked Andy right from the first. The old joke with him was, "Hello Andy! Gee, you sounded taller on the phone." But that didn’t bother him. Andy is riding the first BASE wave and he's at the right place in the right time - Houston, Texas in 1987. Bill lived there and so did Eric and a host of others. But Andy hitched his wagon to a star. Phil Smith, BASE 1, who's publishing "BASELINE" the longest running BASE magazine lived in Houston too. Andy became co-editor and Phil later said with a grin, "That was probably a mistake." Andy did became a little drunk with the power, and he made a lot of the same mistakes we all did at that time. But he kept making the same ones over and over.

When I started The Fixed Object Journal, another BASE magazine, in 1989, BASELINE was gone and Andy had struck off on his own with the "BASE Gazette" and it was pure Andy.

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and BASE all the way. We had a talk about it one time and I said, "Hey, Andy, maybe you should tone it down a notch," and he said, "Don't you get it, Nick? That's what BASE is all about." Andy would have been the Maggot of his day – except he truly believed these things.

Andy had a big heart and a good soul, but if power corrupts - Andy's a classic case. The debacle at the Space Needle was a two-fold failure. Andy had a hard-on for the Line-Mod and also for Jessica K. The Line-Mod thing goes back to his many feuds with Mark H. who invented it. The thing with Jessica goes back to boy meets girl. By that time Andy is on the fringes of BASE and hanging on by his finger tips. He organized that load at the Space Needle with people who wouldn't say too much about his now antiquated ways.

In fact – one idea Andy had was replacing the small riser ring with a really large riser rings like three inches across. The idea was if you had a line-over you'd release the offending control and fire it through the large ring, toggle and all. We fabbed up a test in a hanging harness using some sand bags and when we let the toggle go it wrapped around the large ring about nine times. We fell on the floor laughing.

I, and I think most in my generation, could forgive Andy for everything because to some degree we all did these things – but than he did something that no matter what happens now - did him in.

He turned over the list of registered BASE jumpers at Bridge Day to the National Park Service. That may not sound too bad nowadays but back than it was treason. When Andy took over organizing Bridge Day he was too naïve for the job and the NPS played him like a fiddle. They actually gave him a NPS Courtesy Card that said, "Please extend all due cooperation to Andy Calistrat," and I'm sure they had them printed for the occasion. For many years prior Jean Boenish, the then organizer of Bridge Day, kept telling the NPS with their requests for the list, essentially, "In your dreams."

So no – I don’t know where Andy is – but if you find him tell him Nick says, "Hey!"

NickD
BASE 194

For what its worth he bought something from me on eBay (completely parachute un-related transaction) about 2 years back. When I saw the name I just had to ask. He claimed no BASE jumps in the last 5 years or so, and occasional skydives from buddies airplane at a private airport. That was the only co-interraction I ever had with him. I do believe he was still in TX.

I met Andy at Bridge Day 1993 and he appeared to be fairly well-organized and likable. We chatted a few times over the years. In 2002, he gave Jim Guyer and I some advice on running Bridge Day under the Go Fast team - much of it was valuable. Generally speaking, he's a good guy.

But, he did make some mistakes along the way that still haunt us today. According to my notes, back in 1992 Andy took over Bridge Day and the $10 per Bridge Day jumper fee paid to the Chamber of Commerce began (apparently without much disagreement). Then turning over the jumper list and assisting the NPS in arresting jumper(s) with outstanding warrants. Nick already mentioned the Space Needle incident.

We all make mistakes in life and in BASE jumping, so Andy might not be that different than most of us. There is a lot of political influence in Fayetteville and it's easy to unknowingly side with the wrong people. As an organizer, you want to protect yourself and your fellow jumpers at the same time. But protecting your own interests at the expense of other jumpers will give you a bad reputation...

Do you still have his email address in your eBay account?

Tell him I said hi too. I also met him at BD in 93. He was never anything less than nice to me, but I was a neophyte to BASE then, and didn't realize his involvement with the BASE community. He was very helpful in helping me rig my equpment that year.
I haven't seen or talked to him since 96 or 97.
321CYA
Sitflybaseboy

  Hi Nick. Andy actually started BASE jumping in about 85 with Phil Smith, myself and occasionally Kevin Vennel. He came to Spaceland from Pelican Island DZ in Maryland. Andy was funny at first and lively. It wasn't until about 87 when Phil let him do the printing and most of the work making BASELINE that he got the power trip. Smitty let him go too far and he bacame a little Napoleon. I think he meant well at first, but later at Bridge Day 93 he actually helped point out 3 jumpers with warrants to the NPS Rangers. Don't ask Bill Legg, Jess Neuger or John Hoover, dec. about Andy. They won't have kind words after being arrested our of the jump line. Before that, he was clever at first. Smitty, Andy and I were climbing to 1100' on a tower and Andy got nervous and climbed down from 500'. As he approached his car in a subdivision, Phil and I could see and hear his car wouldn' start. Cops had pulled the coil wire when an old lady called after he parked by her house. Well Andy bullshitted the cops for about 5 minutes and they let him go. We couldn't believe it. He came around and Picked us up after we jumped. This was about 85 or 86.
Rick Harrison
BASE 38

Yes, I remember John, Jess and Bill getting hauled off . . .

You just can't get a real flavor for Andy's shortcomings into a single post.

NickD
BASE 194