Re: [KrustyR1] "Bridge Day Champion"
If we look at BASE history, with the benefit of hindsight, the changes in ideas & attitudes (my own included) have been rather remarkable. Jumpers like Felix, Jeb, and some others, are still somewhat being tagged as “glory hounds” and the question that begs asking is: In these days of Youtube and so much world wide BASE jumping access is there such a things as a glory hound anymore?
Although the current state of celebrityitis appears current and media driven the desire to be famous goes back to the beginning of time and is probably a basic human trait.
Let's take a stroll back in hound history . . .
The original glory hound in BASE jumping has to be Carl Boenish. But we must consider his motivation. Carl figured the films he made and distributed of the El Cap jumps in 1978 would make the world sit up, say wow, and embrace fixed object jumping as a really cool thing we humans could do. But it didn’t work out that way, and as he later said himself, cliff jumping was feared by the powers that be and pretty much legislated out of existence.
By the early 1980s BASE jumpers, now jumping not only from cliffs but also buildings, antennas, and bridges realized in order to continue jumping they had to kept what they were doing to themselves, or more to the point, inside the BASE community. They also suffered the wrath of traditional jumpers who said they were making skydiving look bad. And while it may be hard to believe now, there was a time when being known as a BASE jumper could get you fired from a skydiving related job. So from the early 1980s to the late 1990s BASE jumping was an almost invisible underground activity. And too ensure continued albeit illegal access a set of rules called BASE ethics was implemented. These rules can be easily understood if you simply understand the bottom line. “If you jump a site (no matter what, or when, or how) make sure the next BASE jumper that comes along can jump it too.”
And that worked surprisingly well for almost twenty years. Before going further let’s touch again on our need to be famous. During that twenty year span it was okay to be well known but that was “inside” the BASE community. And we certainly had the well known gear & rigging innovators, the well known for taking chances and pushing the edges of the sport, and more than our share of well known but lovable characters. And all was well.
The first chink in the armor came at an early Bridge Day in the late 1980s. Bridge Day, at the time, was totally contrary to the sport of BASE itself. But here we were in front of God and everybody doing our thing! We consoled ourselves with the thought most non-jumpers would figure this was the only place where BASE was regularly practiced and that seemed to be the case. One secondary reason for keeping BASE on the down-low was for when you got inadvertently busted back in your own neighborhood. In those days, and especially outside of Yosemite Park, you’d probably face a judge who had never heard of BASE jumping. Sure, the judge would figure you for a nutjob, but since BASE wasn’t seen as an ongoing problem, there was no need to make an example of you. So for a judge who sees the worst of the worst all day long most BASE jumpers got a laugh in the courts and a slap on the wrist.
But back now to that early Bridge Day. We were using the Fayetteville Gym for our small BASE trade show and as a place to help first timers pack and get ready for the next day. But there was a new booth setup this year. And it was a shocker. I recall one jumper saying, “This is it, boys, the end of BASE jumping as we know it.”
The booth was totally corporate and totally from outside the BASE community. It was “No Fear” selling their line of tee-shirts. No Fear, which had already been around for a while (you’d see their shirts at the dropzone) was any early adopter of the “X” generation and their business plan was to exploit that generation to make money. Now they weren’t going to make much off the 150 BASE jumpers in attendance, but they sold a boatload of tee-shirts the next day to the 250,000 spectators who attended Bridge Day that year. Not to mention whatever publicity they garnered.
We, several of us, went to the then Bridge Day organizer and complained but the organizer didn’t see a problem with it. I won’t drag the name into this but it was the same organizer who didn’t see a problem with turning over a complete list of names and addresses of all registered Bridge Day BASE jumpers to the park rangers. A move the previous Bridge Day organizer, Jean Boenish, had resisted for years.
Fast forward a few months, and no, nothing bad happened and BASE jumping continued as always. Then one day I walked into a skateboard shop in Southern California looking for some new battle gear. As I was playing with their selection of knee and elbow pads I looked up and saw a large poster on the wall. And I had to look at it two or three times to fully comprehend it. It was a poster from Reebok showing a BASE jumper launching from the edge of building. Okay, I know, big whoop right? But put into the context of the times is was a big frigging deal. And my first thought was, “Okay, who sold out?”
It was something Moe Villetto kept saying to me in the mid-1980s now come to fruition. “There’s a wave coming, Nick, and it’s going to overwhelm us all.” At the time is was okay to make money inside the BASE community. I mean it was okay to build and sell BASE gear for money and it was okay to mentor new jumpers for money and even sell BASE tee-shirts jumper to jumper. (The funny part in that was most of those shirts hung in dark closets as you couldn’t wear them at the DZ and certainly not when you were out actually BASE jumping.) But this poster? This kind of mainstream advertising using BASE was beyond the pale.
Now up to this point BASE had already seen its share of glory hounds. But most where your flash in the pan types. But I suppose an old-school definition of glory hound is in order. It basically applied to any johhny-come-latley (and that just means anyone who started BASE jumping after you, lol) who used the sport of BASE jumping for their own self-interest. In other words to become famous or well known outside the BASE community.
For instance there were a few Hollywood stuntmen who took up BASE just to fatten up their resumes and they burned a few good sites trying to get noticed. But we already knew Carl Boenish was right when he said, “The whole world is jumpable,” so getting a few sites hot wasn’t the real issue. (Although when some bozo blows into your town and burns a site your crew has been quietly jumping for years it will piss you off.) What was more worrisome was these guys were letting the big BASE secret out of the bag. And that secret was this - In cities, large and small, all across the United States every night BASE jumping was being done quietly and in wholesale fashion.
And that’s the way we wanted to keep it.
If we had a BASE dictionary those who’ve been around BASE long enough would know who’s photo would be included in the definition of glory hound. John V. gets that reputation because he was a serial glory hound. And yes, we learned later it was John I saw in the Reebok poster. He would actually call the local TV news and plead with them to come film him jumping off a building. And it wasn’t sites he locally cultivated they were sites in other cities he traveled to that were opened and protected by others. So he became the two worst things you could be - a glory hound and a site burner. But now is when yesterday becomes today. And in context of today it could be argued that John was guilty of nothing more than bad timing.
By the year 2000 the wave we knew was coming finally did arrive. There was a large spike in BASE numbers issued around that time and extrapolated out the number of people getting into BASE jumping, or interested in getting into BASE jumping, exploded. There used to be a time you could ask a random newbie jumper on the DZ if he wanted to make a BASE jump and they’d quickly say no, never. Ask that same question today, and you’ll more than likely get a yes, someday. Couple this with BASE videos on the internet, BASE in the movies, corporate sponsorship of BASE, and the proliferation of legal sites throughout the world and it must be concluded the golden age of the glory hound is dead.
Getting back to Jeb and Felix. On first meeting the latter I found arrogant and the former bombastic. But you can’t diminish their accomplishments. I only wish both were more like Dwayne Weston who’d freely admit he was standing on the shoulders of giants, but, oh well. They don’t need the support or respect of an old school BASE community when they have thousands of non-jumping Facebook and Twitter followers telling them what heroes they are. Glory hound has become glory found.
Even though I still run cold on corporate sponsorship of BASE one thing it will do is finally shut up Joe Kittenger. At an interview many years ago a thinking reporter asked him since he had made the highest jump (forgetting the drogue thing and the Russian guy) what did he think of these new guys called BASE jumpers who are making the lowest jumps. He’s reply was, “I think it’s all a circus act. And those guys are all clowns.”
NickD
BASE 194
