I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
No reproduction on other media without the photographer's permission.

Monday 3 February 2014

Tread not on my dreams, stevie lucid Haston.




The winter trade show, that monster from which I have just escaped, is a cruel and hungry fiend. One goes there to win the money to make concrete the flimsy fabric of your dreams, but your soul pays more than your purse will ever win. Thousands and thousands of people, manufactures  retailers, merchants of Venice and one or two dreamers, once called climbers and snow sliders, all congregate in a vortex, a feeding frenzy, but there is less and less food and the big predators grab more and more for themselves.
This is for Serge, the man at Movment Skis and the man behind Wildduck Snowboard.

The good side of Ispo was I got to see lots of old and new friends and the wonder is that I have any at all, although there were less of the former and more of the latter, due to lets say wastage. Four magazines editors sook me out to do business and have  a chat, it wasn't happy. According to them the internet is indeed taking over and they are fighting a rear gaurd battle, it's more of a rout really. And you the reader, well truth to tell you dont even read do you, you simply glance over their glossy pages not noticing the pearls and gems amoung the mire. The great whore, the internet, is a cheap purveyor of dreams baubles, and trinkets and is having such a mark that my lazy friends these editors are worried, yes and it is no longer just their jobs and their business that they are worried about. The fabric that is our dreams, the mountains, cliffs and snow, is now being bought up by the big companies, instead of interviews you get press releases, not from athletes but from managers, the athletes are not allowed opinions they are mannequins for colourful fabrics that cost a lot of money, but don't often do their job.

For sure athletes like me have already mortgaged  our dreams long ago, and the corruption was always there, but we tried to be true, now you see this weeks new stunning ascent, being sold after last weeks stunning ascent and it dont matter what the value is. If you are not an American you won't get the internet hits! If you are not blond and a girl you wont get the internet hits! It helps if you smile and have perfect teeth, and ultimatly if you have an unpronounceable name and come from a buttsville eastern Europe, Asia, or old USSR, they wont buy your gear. Did I say it helps to be good looking.
This is for Fabrizio, Lorenzo, Filippo and all the others super snow bastardo!

And of course this is too long cos every thing has to fit into under three minuits of Ubend tube. I was looking at a web site that had the temerity to get it's viewers to vote on new gear, gear which they had never seen used or thought about! This is popularism taken to new height of idiocy, but it wont stop. We already have 9as that are two grades less, country to country, we have judges in international comps who are involved with clothing companies, and we have a public who doesn't climb or slide in dee snow man.
this is  Jurgen, still living the dream, and trying hard.

Anyway I wasn't actually that depressed, cos I know some people know, and there are some good people out there, but please people give some money to the good guys and girls. Because without the people with vision, without those passionate enthousiast we have no sport, we just have companies who copy each others gear and sell you a broken dream, a sheep in wolf's goretex.