BMX, EXTREME SPORTS, and the WHITE MALE BACKLASH 153 Kyle Kusz

To the XE treme SUNY series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations CL Cole and Michael A. Messner, editors To the Extreme ALTERNATIVE SPORTS, INSIDE AND OUT ROBERT E. RINEHART and SYNTHIA SYDNOR Editors STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address the State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Kelli Williams Marketing by Jennifer Giovani Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data To the extreme : alternative sports, inside and out / Robert E. Rinehart and Synthia Sydnor, editors. p. cm — (SUNY series on sport, culture, and social relations) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5665-X (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5666-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Extreme sports—Social aspects. I. Rinehart, Robert E., 1951– II. Sydnor, Synthia. III. Series. GV749.7.T6 2003 796.04'6—dc21 2002042646 10987654321 For Nicholas Murphy and Alyssa Kathrene R. E. R. For Alvin, Mary, Jesse Francis, and Journey Elizabeth S. S. Listen: If we cannot do the superhuman we are lost . .* *Bertolt Brecht, “Wir Hören: Du willst nicht mehr mir uns arbeiten,” Gedichte V, 8–9. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1960–1965, as quoted in Frederic Ewen, Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art, His Times, New York: Citadel Publishing Group, 1992, p. 327. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi CHAPTER ONE—PROEM 1 Robert E. Rinehart and Synthia Sydnor ROLLERBLADING CHAPTER TWO—PSYCHOTIC RANT 21 Arlo Eisenberg CHAPTER THREE—DROPPING INTO SIGHT 27 Commodification and Co-Optation of In-Line Skating Robert E. Rinehart WINDSURFING CHAPTER FOUR—JOURNEY TO LA GRINGA 55 Bob Galvan CHAPTER FIVE—WINDSURFING 75 A Subculture of Commitment Belinda Wheaton viii Contents SKY DIVING/DANCING/SURFING CHAPTER SIX—FREE DIMENSIONAL SKYDIVING 105 Tamara Koyn CHAPTER SEVEN—SOARING 127 Synthia Sydnor BMX CHAPTER EIGHT—SMALL BIKES, BIG MEN 145 Brett Downs CHAPTER NINE—BMX, EXTREME SPORTS, AND THE WHITE MALE BACKLASH 153 Kyle Kusz MOUNTAIN BIKING CHAPTER TEN—OUT OF THE GENE POOL AND INTO THE FOOD CHAIN 179 Lee Bridgers CHAPTER ELEVEN—MOUNTAIN BIKING MADNESS 191 Simon Eassom ECO-CHALLENGE CHAPTER TWELVE—ECO (EGO?) CHALLENGE 207 British Columbia, 1996 Jim Cotter CHAPTER THIRTEEN—“ANOTHER KIND OF LIFE” 219 Adventure Racing and Epic Expeditions Martha Bell Contents ix KAYAKING/WHITEWATER SPORTS CHAPTER FOURTEEN—THE WRONG SIDE OF THE THIN EDGE 257 Ron Watters CHAPTER FIFTEEN—WHITEWATER SPORTS 267 From Extreme to Standardization Jean-Pierre Mounet and Pierre Chifflet CLIMBING CHAPTER SIXTEEN—XTREEM 281 David Dornian CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—THE GREAT DIVIDE 291 Sport Climbing vs. Adventure Climbing Peter Donnelly SURFING CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—VINTAGE DAYS IN THE BIG WAVES OF LIFE 307 Greg Page CHAPTER NINETEEN—EXPRESSION SESSIONS 315 Surfing, Style, and Prestige Douglas Booth SKATEBOARDING CHAPTER TWENTY—AUTHENTICITY IN THE SKATEBOARDING WORLD 337 Becky Beal and Lisa Weidman CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—DRAWING LINES 353 A Report from the Extreme World (sic) Jeff Howe x Contents EXTREME SKIING CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO—MAY 27, 1998 373 Kirsten Kremer CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE—OH SAY CAN YOU SKI? Imperialistic Construction of Freedom in Warren Miller’s Freeriders 381 Joanne Kay and Suzanne Laberge SNOWBOARDING CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR—SNOWBOARDING 401 The Essence Is Fun Jake Burton CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE—SELLING OUT SNOWBOARDING 407 The Alternative Response to Commercial Co-optation Duncan Humphreys INDEX 429 Acknowledgments When taking on a project of this scope, the support and enthusiasm of others become a valued entity. Throughout the inception and realization of this book, many individuals have facilitated my in- volvement: I therefore wish to express my personal gratitude to the Walker family; my son Nicholas and daughter Alyssa; Jim Rinehart, Karen Forcum, and Gabriele Rinehart; Kimmy, Wayne, and Jennifer Lang; to Harry, Gloria, and Kelly Rott; to Renee Echandi; to Vicky Paraschak; to Monica Papp. For professional support, I am grateful to my colleagues in the Physical Education and Dance Department at Idaho State Univer- sity: Mike Lester, Dave Bale, Ann Sebren, Sandra Noakes, Marcia Lloyd, Gina Lay, and Timothy P. Winter; to colleagues at California State University, San Bernardino: Clifford Singh, Chris Grenfell, Jennie Gilbert, Judy Powell, Joe Liscano, Greg Price, Jerry Freischlag, and Amy Wheeler; to the many students and athletes who have taught me about sport and relationships; and to Norman Denzin for his inspiration and faith. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the support of the Department of Kinesiology and the College of Natural Sciences at California State University, San Bernardino—particularly Dr. Terry Rizzo and Dean Paul Vicknair. —R. E. Rinehart I am grateful to the University of Illinois for a sabbatical leave that allowed me to begin this study of extreme sport. I have profited immensely from the ideas of Ed Bruner, Father Dwight Campbell, Michael Golben, Allen Guttmann, Stephen Hardy, and Joseph Kockelmans. Most of all, I would like to thank Robert Rinehart, for the book owes its genesis solely to him. These are earthly acknowledgments: I inscribe here also the names Blessed Peter George Frassati and St. Bernard of Montijoix, extreme athletes in a sense. —S. Sydnor Chapter One Proem Robert E. Rinehart and Synthia Sydnor Sports labeled “alternative,” “extreme,” “X,” “gravity,” “lifestyle,” and “adventure” proliferate postcontemporary transnational times. Motifs associated with these sports are ubiquitous in everyday life— they decorate our backyards, street wear, language, lunch boxes, the Worldwide Web, MTV, ESPN, and advertising of every sort. In the summer of 1999, the US Postal Service issued 150 million stamps featuring extreme sports, and today over 10,000 Internet sites in English are dedicated to extreme sports. This book centers on a few of the “extreme” sports: in-line skating, windsurfing, sky-dancing/surfing, BMX dirt-bike racing, mountain biking, Eco-challenge, whitewater kayaking, climbing, surfing, skateboarding, extreme skiing, and snowboarding. In order to interrogate a realm of alternative sport activities situated at various historical moments of invention, development, populariza- tion, transglobal appropriation, reinvention, and perhaps even Robert E. Rinehart is an adjunct professor in the Department of Kinesiol- ogy at California State University, San Bernardino. He has published a book, titled Players All: Performances in Contemporary Sport, and several research articles. His major research focus is in examining alternative sports forms, particularly forms that are on the cusp between popular culture and mainstream sports. Synthia Sydnor is an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she holds appointments in kinesiology, criticism and interpretive theory, the interdisciplinary concentration in cultural studies and interpretive research, and the John Henry Newman Institute of Catholic Thought. Her research has appeared in a range of journals and books including Quest, Journal of Sport History, Sport and Postmodern Times, and Games, Sports and Cultures. 1 2 Robert E. Rinehart and Synthia Sydnor demise, we incorporated “older” extreme sports like surfing into this volume, as well as the newer extreme sports. Jake Burton, known as the prime creator of snowboarding, has written a chapter (“Snowboarding: The Essence is Fun”) which sorts out an intricate historical foregrounding of snowboarding. Simon Eassom, in “Moun- tain Biking Madness,” details the elaborate historical and techno- logical lines which converge to continuously recreate and redefine forms of biking. This book offers an interpretation of extreme sports from the standpoints of both the academic and the practitioner/extreme athlete. The scholars, who hail from cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, history, literary criticism, and other related interdisciplinary fields, are fascinated with some aspect of extreme sport in their research—their projects represent a range of methodologies and theoretical stances. The practitioners are all expert/elite athletes in their sport; some—such as Arlo Eisenberg—are renowned as the “Michael Jordans” of their sports, others are quiet grassroots par- ticipants. Some self-promote, some promote their sport, some try to warn the masses against their sport. Our selection of particular sports and author-experts for in- clusion in the book had to do with our quest to publish significant works of quality concerning the culture of extreme sports, and not a desire to forge a canon of particular sports or experts. The book is comprised of both “insider” and “outsider” information: juxta- posed with the athlete who bemoans frozen toes is the academic who categorizes risk-taking; intersecting with the daredevil, public scholar is the athlete who writes of his own cherished family. Beyond such binaries, readers can engage with the book at many levels—its contents evoke debates concerning theories of represen- tation, authorship, dialogic narration, fieldwork, the avant-garde, “folk” sport, subculture,

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