Let's Talk Beard

A beard is a way of life. It means you are a natural wild animal (Manimal?). The guy with the beard is likely to be the first one to rip his clothes off and jump in the water for a midnight skinny dipping session howling at the moon. But come Monday, that same howling Manimal has to get it together and go to work. So to help tame that chin mane UpperCut Delux makes beard balm.

Outdoor Retailer // Summer 2015

My name is Scrappers and I’m learning to love the outdoor industry. Keep in mind, I’m an outsider and never want to lose those credentials. Every time I’ve been to the world's largest adventure gear convention, Outdoor Retailer (OR), in Salt Lake City I feel like I’m crashing some rich kid’s birthday party. But fuck it, they’ve got good cake and I’m a fat kid with a big mouth.

This time around I hitched a ride to OR with the fine folks of North. North is an ad agency that makes the best ads for outdoorsy clients like Stanley, Clif bar, Anchor Steam, Granite Gear, Columbia, and other brands I actually use. North has given Stay Wild magazine a ton of support simply because they believe in the idea and want to help it grow. North and Stay Wild are adventure buddies standing outside in the dark holding storm-proof matches over our heads laughing as the crazy world spins us around. It’s weird and beautiful. Deal with it!

When I’m at OR I’m looking for the rare 2% of stuff that’s actually awesome. 98% of OR is a big budget pissing contest between the outdoor industry leaders and brave entrepreneurs with wacky innovations. Here’s the 2% of stuff I saw and loved the heck out of:

Woolrich: Their towel game is strong! Their shoes & boots game is stronger! Their apparel is strongest! It’s tricky being like over 180 years old, because you have to be true to your roots, yet reach the kids in order to stay in business. But they’re pulling it off. For example the collaboration Woolrich is doing with Almond Surfboards looks like classic 50’s surf culture and the emerging PNW surf culture at the same time.

Alite Designs: The future is going to be awesome when Alite’s new line comes out. They improved on the butterfly chair by making it taller and stronger while staying super collapsible, light-weight, and affordable. Their tent folds up like a light reflector (photography assistants are going to love this). The backpacks are dope (more on that in the next issue of Stay Wild)! The meadow mats they’ve been putting out got a billion times better by having one fold up to be a tote bag and another propping up, so you can watch the ponytail-waggers bounce by you on the beach.

Stanley: Nice Jugs! Really though, Stanley's water jugs are nice and if you’re car-camping, bouldering, or partying you should have one of these jugs. They totally come apart, so you can clean the margarita mix out of the spout (for some people this is all they need in life).

Iron & Resin: Their made-in-the-USA clothes are solid. Not just the construction, but the personality is a solid three-way hand shake between surf culture, motorcycle culture, and wood-fired pizza culture. They really do care about culture. For example they came to do this trade show, but organized a party and motorcycle ride for Salt Lake locals along with The Stockist and ourCaste. You know it’s a real thing when over 100 motorcycle show up.

Sanuk: Utah has some weird shit going on with booze regulations. It’s very superstitious. Like some bars mix their drinks behind a tiny curtain, so the drinker won’t know how to go home and make a weak ass Moscow Mule on their own. So when Sanuk, makers of the beer coozie flip-flop and other cool things, teamed up with Stone Brewing to have a simple happy hour they had some crazy impossible obstacles to overcome. My friend Ethan Anderson who works for Sanuk (and has turned me on to Wet Magazine and the book Be Here Now) said, “The obstacle is the way”, so with that Zen-like approach they made history and legally served Stone in Utah for the first time EVAAAR!!!

HippyTree: I’ve loved this brand for a long time because I relate to their fuck-it-we’re-doing-it-our-own-way attitude. That’s why the collaboration backpack they made with JanSport is so interesting. It looks just like HippyTree, but has the easy no-biggy functionality and affordability of a backpack you can pick up at any Walmart. I think HippyTree did JanSport a favor on this one because if JanSport came out with this bag on their own they’d get soooo much shit for jumping on the #campvibes bandwagon.

Nau: The finest in socially and environmentally responsibly made fancy clothes just gets better with each new season. I can't wait to wear this reversible jacket on my chill & chilly morning bike commute to the office (I'm part office jockey part wild animal).

BioLite: You already know how smart their phone-charging wood-powered stoves are, so you should be squiring cupcakes into your pants now that they’re making solar powered stuff.

IndoSole: Conventions suck a bruised banana! They just do, so don’t fight me on this. Ok? But IndoSole, makers of reused motorcycle tire tread footwear, makes convention life lovely. They serve the best slow drip coffee and love to elevate the conversation with the good work they do.

Timbuk2: By focusing on their manufacturing and offering custom-made-in-SF bags they’ve brought a new breath of life to the convention. They even had a nice lady from their factory set up sewing bags for people at the convention. Stay Wild had one made and we’re going to give it away on Instagram soon! Timbuk2 and our magazine are planning some events, so if you like bike rides and art shows you’re in for a treat, especially if you live in Chicago, Denver, and Toronto.

Proof Eyewear: We love their wooden frames, but are super excited to see their new line of recycled aluminum frames.

DUMB STUFF: My favorite stuff at OR is the stuff that should never be made. Somebody was like, “What if we just wrapped shoe soles onto our feet with alien tortillas” and somebody else was like “Here’s a million bucks to make it happen.” Better yet, some problem-solver was like “Snorkeling masks need to fog up more and make people look like Hannibal Lecter with a big dildo coming out of his head.” I seriously heard these masks come with blue tooth. DUUUUMMMMBBBBBBB!!!!!!!!!!!!

Skateboarding the Cambobian Jungle

Adventures in the Jungle Bowl

By Hannah Bailey

Skateboarding has taken me to all sorts of places, but I never expected to end up here with my board under arm and luscious leaves under my feet. In a world in which skaters eye marble ledges and smooth concrete surfaces, I was somehow standing in the least skateable terrain on earth the Cambodian jungle.

I came to this country to meet local skaters and document the scene, and like skate cultures the world over, I was invited in with open arms. Landing in dusty Phnom Penh, Cambodia, with rickshaws and motorbikes zooming by, I wondered how skating fit in amongst the madness. But trips to the local skate shops (there are two) and the skateboarding charity Skateistan cleared it all up. The nonprofit organization uses skateboarding as a tool for empowerment. For the past three years, they’ve invited vulnerable local children to their skatepark, a place where the kids can leave their problems behind and push forward on a board. I had connected my friends at Building Trust International (a design charity) with Skateistan, and together they built a mobile tuk tuk skate ramp to take skateboarding to the city’s pagodas and some of the poorest children in Phnom Penh. I was here to see the tuk tuk and find out more about what skating was doing for the locals.  

Not planned in advance, my visit to Cambodia happened to coincide with an annual bowl jam in the small fishing village of Kep. I’d hardly been there a day and Skateistan instructor Pheakna offered me a lift to the event in their minibus that was leaving early the next day. Turns out, this was the final fling for the bowl jam. The land had been sold and the bowl had a new flatland destiny. Stories of fraudulence and corruption abounded, with rumors that the builder of the skate bowl was forced off his land and out of the country due to a money dispute. Sadly, this meant the end of the one and only skate bowl in Cambodia. But with the bowl still standing, there was a chance to give it one last roll.

So to the jungle I went. A bumpy 6-hour drive from Phnom Penh, Kep is far away from the dusty big cities. Set back from the water and up a hill covered in verdant greenery, it’s only 10 minutes by foot to reach the bowl’s drop-in. A hand-built 6-foot coping free bowl, with a carve-prohibiting bank cut right down the middle, this spot was built for the adventurous, much like the journey to find it. Standing on the side of the bowl, looking down the transition and eyeing the cracks with the sun glaring down, it’s a long way from where I call home in the UK. It’s amazing how far skateboarding can take you. This moment may have been the last for the Kep jungle bowl, but thanks to the skaters, the skate shops, Skateistan, and everyone who was there that day, it’s only just the beginning for skateboarding in Cambodia.

Pictures and words by Hannah Bailey
neonstash.com
@neonstash

Find out more about what Skateistan is doing in Cambodia at skateistan.org
And check out Building Trust International’s amazing work: buildingtrustinternational.org

Snow Lion Dance Live Show

An Unforgettable Experience
by Dan Brooklyn

Dharamsala, India

I walked out of a day-long speech by the Dalai Lama feeling let down. Was I being punished for the hypocritical $5 Chinese radio I’d bought to listen to the live translation? The fucking thing was impossible to tune. Instead of the Dalai Lama, I mostly heard brain-melting static and Russian at irregular volumes. My eardrums hurt.
To summarize, the Dalai Lama’s message was:
1. Does God exist? Buddhism doesn’t give a shit.
2. Don’t hate. Meditate.
Afterward, 1,000 Dalai Lama groupies poured into the honking, cramped streets of Dharamsala at lunchtime. At the corner of a busy intersection, clearly the coolest Tibetan dude in the city approached me with a flyer. He had bug-eye shades covering half his face, big purple headphones around his neck, fire-red jeans, and a striped Adidas warm-up jacket. The flyer said:

SNOW LION DANCE
LIVE SHOW − AN UNFORGETTABLE
EXPERIENCE
    
He said, “Hello, please come tonight.”
I shook his hand in the coolest way I could, and promised that I would.
I hid out in my hotel for a few hours, playing the most worthless game I could—seeing if I could count higher than “1” between the sound of honking traffic. I lost. I headed to the show.
The dude was still standing there when I walked up, and we shook hands in a cool way again.
“Hello! Good you come! Go down steps into school. I coming soon, thank you, okay!”
I gave him 250 rupees ($4) and pretended to ignore the 7 tourists milling around the school who were pretending to ignore me while we waited for the Snow Lion—if that was his real name—to come down.
A swarm of little schoolkids more or less pushed us into one of the concrete classrooms. We sat on foam pads in neat rows. The walls were hand-painted with flowers, mountains, and huge raindrops. A Tibetan flag hung next to a framed, smiling photo of the Dalai Lama.
“Welcome, everyone.” The man bowed formally. “This is traditional Tibet dance.”
He wrestled a vest and a skirt from a duffel bag, pulled them on over his clothes, lit a tall white candle, and fiddled with some buttons on his boombox until thin, overly loud music blared.
He did a slow, deliberate, seemingly culturally appropriate dance, where he turned halfway, bent slightly, turned the other way, and bent slightly again. If it hadn’t been so bizarre, it would have been boring as hell.
He snapped off the music after it seemed we had all gotten the point.
“Thank you. Next dance not traditional Tibet dance. Please be happy. Thank you.”
He clicked on the next track and started spinning. The music was quivering, high-pitched, and Indian-sounding. There’s a way that dancers spin where they whip around in a controlled way, keeping their eyes focused on one spot so they don’t get dizzy. He did not do that. He held his head in his hands like someone having bad thoughts and he spun the way you or I might, unprofessionally running in little circles, trying not to fall over. He was like a spinning top, catching tiny cracks in the sidewalk and jumping around.
But he did not fall over.
His wild, curly black hair was matted with sweat. The kids in the back of the class giggled. The 8 spectators glanced at each other, finally, to confirm that he had been spinning for an absurdly long time. Ten, 12, 15 minutes? Who can measure time?
He spun so long that I forgot where I was.
He tore off the vest, then his shirt. A long belt of red fabric appeared from somewhere and he began rudely tying it around his face, tighter and tighter, until his cheeks were red and his eyes were blindfolded. He was spinning more violently, getting closer to the wall. I frowned. A German woman covered her mouth. He slammed into the wall. The kids in the back laughed, so the rest of us let out our held breath. He rebounded, and, now knowing where the wall was, he spun faster and faster, then lunged at the wall, banging harshly into the solid cement. Again and again. Sweat sprang from his body. His skull hit the wall with a cracking sound. He left impressions of himself on the wall.
I took a few seconds of video to prove this was happening, and on the video I laughed nervously and said, “Jesus.”
Then, he casually slipped off the blindfold.
“Thank you. Everyone, please, be happy and be free. Everything will be all right. Thank you.”
On the boombox, he clicked through to the next track, which was the unearthly deep sounds of chanting monks. He knelt on the floor and put his hands in prayer, then crawled toward the Asian couple next to me. He grabbed the woman’s face and stared deeply into her eyes. He lunged forward and pressed his forehead forcefully into hers. Their third eyes were touching. He stared into her eyes unflinchingly. She smiled for a second, then her cheeks sank and became deadly serious. The kids in the back whispered, laughed, and went silent. He held her for an uncomfortably long time before he released her, did a short bow with his head and dove at me. He grabbed the back of my head so I couldn’t look away. His hair dripped sweat onto my face and shirt. His eyes were wild and circular inside his sharp Tibetan features. His forehead pressed heavy, sweaty.

I stopped being a tourist, then.

This is what it’s like, Dan. This is what it’s like to be me. To be a refugee. To be Tibetan. To have your home taken. To be lost.
LOOK AT ME.
I understood that his dance was a communication. He could use words and say that China destroyed multitudes of temples, and we might imagine it somehow and then feel the result of our own thoughts, but it’s not real. We’re just feeling our own assumption of feelings. But that face. Staring into that hungry, painful face until thoughts dissolve—is an understanding beyond language.
Sorry. I skipped ahead. I forgot the part where he told us about how he left Tibet with his family and snuck into India. How the border police jailed them and how they spent months suffering from dysentery and nearly starved in a wretched Indian prison. What it was like to watch his mother almost die of weakness and dehydration, helpless and angry, for freedom from the Chinese regime.
We nodded because we were from the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan. We were good people who didn’t approve of stomping out cultures—we came here to see the Dalai Lama—we believed in human rights.
He crawled from one of us to the next, sweating, staring, breathing on us—he had to tackle the German woman—he straddled her and pinned her head down to the cold concrete floor with his forehead and we watched her mouth tighten to keep from drinking his sweat.

There was no escape.

“THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE,” his eyes screamed in a language that we all understood. The language of pain. The language of the human spirit’s desire to be free.
After he made his rounds through all 8 of us, he bowed politely.
“Thank you. This is my dance. When I dance, I am happy. Wish you all good friendship and health for you family and happy life.”
He turned and snapped off the chanting monks, sat on the floor, and collected himself. I crawled over to him.
I said, “Thank you. That was the best…dance… I’ve ever seen.”
He smiled and held out his hand. I opened my arms and I hugged him. He was totally sweaty and gross and I pretended not to care. I wanted to let him know that I was not afraid of him, not afraid to look at his pain, that I understood the plight of his people.
My eyes said, “I know what it’s like.”
And his said, “Nice try.”

More stories by Dan Brooklyn at wearefr.ee