Footbag Career

[Sporatical_Distractions]

daryl genz makes all of his money off of freedom footbags, unless he has stocks or investments or something. so he's a professional footbagger in a way.

and i have some thoughts on the possibility of professional footbaggers living off of it in the future. I think that thisis a far cry from what will happen in the future. the fact of the matter is that even though footbag has been growing, it will just never be big enough to bring in that much money. there just isn't enough demand and never will be. Why am i saying this? it lies in this question: what is it about us that draws us towards footbag? matt baker of brothers from different mothers brought up this question one night and we had an interesting talk. how many times have people declined joining into your circles? how many people like to kick in circles but not freestyle? there is something special about each and every one of us in the footbag community that makes us different from the average person. there is some trait in each of us that drew us into this sport that soooo many have turned away from. what is that trait? i have no idea. but it's that special trait that lies in the so few of us that other peole just don't have and cannot understand. how many times have grownups told you that you should be doing something better with your life? i hear it all the time. they just can't understand what it is about a bag of beads, dirt, or what have you, that I love and cannot bring myself to get away from. We are all special individuals with something in ourselves that sets ourselves so much differently than the masses. People just flat out don't understand us.

this will probably receive tons of angry posts but these are just my thoughts, so please don't attack me. this is just what i think about our sports future. I love this sport just as much as all of you and I wish for the best to happen, i just don't think the footbag comunity will ever bring inenough money for people to survive on, and it takes lots of money to live a comfortable life. don't get me wrong, i'm still going to donate as much money as i can part with to the footbag community and advise all of you to do the same, i just don't think there's enough money or interest in our sport.

[footbinc]

Rory,

How do you know gravy? (Mike Graves?)

Cheers

Ben

[crazydwarf]

I agree with Kevin that footbag is kind of a niche sport. Especially because of the wacked learning curve... like when people first start it's super hard and they probably think it stays that way, but once you get going you improve much faster... even if it does stay small player wise people might wise up to what it is. It could become say like breakdancing or a simmilar sport.

[LittleBoy footbag]

Speaking of which, all people in my school say I look like Riverdance when I kick. It'sjust frggin' toe>clipper stalls people! Not a 5 hour irirsh-themed musical thing!

[SlashC]

Rory,

How do you know gravy? (Mike Graves?)

Cheers

Ben

Well I don't really *know* him. Interesting story of how I met him though...

I was kicking with Andrew at the Fringe Festival a couple years back. At the time all I could do were a couple of inside/outside kicks followed by a most definate drop. I had just bought a dirty juice facile off WFA and dreamed of one day being able to hit a toe stall.

Andrew sporting his brand new lavers (ordered with the dirty juices) just started to bust out some tricks (mostly tiltless stuff) when this guy from the street walked up to us. This was not a strange occurence. People came up to watch/kick with us all the time at festivals. He queried: "Is this an open circle?", which occured to me as a strange thing to ask... Andrew replied: "Sure, but please don't do any toe pickups..." and then instead of explaining the delicacy of facile he kinda just trailed off. It was at this moment that Andrew noticed the guy was wearing modified lavers! "...nevermind" Andrew finished in shock as he passed the bag to Mr. Graves.

Mike played with us for a while, mostly just kicking, observing the tempo of the circle. Slowly, he began to do runs with more and more difficult tricks. I was astonished. I'de never seen someone better than Andrew before. At the time, I couldn't really understand what he was doing, but I was able to recognize some ducking and various flyers. He could even juggle with his feet! I'de never seen any footbag videos before and this seemed the most ridiculous thing.

We ended up playing for like 4 hours. It was great. Looking back, I'm very impressed with the etiquette he used when he approached our circle. He also showed us some stuff from the demos in Ireland. Overall he was very constructive. Mike even remarked how he thought I had good control and thought I could start doing some stalls and stuff (at the time that was a big deal for me!) Eventually, it started getting dark and he had to leave... I haven't seen him since. I attempted to contact him when Kevin and I started up the Edmonton Club, but I couldn't find any contact info. I understand he teaches abroad quite a bit (I think he mentioned something about teaching Flash in australia)?

How do you know him Ben? (btw want to kick sometime?)

[footbinc]

Also a long story (About Mike Graves)

In High School, i thought I was the king of all things footbag, which i was anyways, in grade 11, this guy shows up and all i hear about is oh, he is good, and this and that. We end up having a class together and chatting about kickin. He never knew or heard about freestyle per say, just had his own mad style of kickin. So, everyday after that we kicked and became great friends. When I was offered the gig in Ireland from Chard (Rich Cook) he asked if I knew anyone else, so naturally I tossed him Gravy's name. Its true he was teaching abroad. He is back now and works teaching flash at NAIT. Ill bring him on monday or tuesday if he is around for kickin.

Cheers

Ben