Hey Shives,Originally Posted by shives007
I was just out in that area - Manhattan Beach, L.A., San Clemente, San Diego and Coronado, after Mexico, Tucson and Phoenix. Got back Tuesday after 6 weeks of partying with a lot of old friends in a lot of places. I wish Tim would let the rest of the world know something about Fred. I stopped trying to find him, several years ago. The address I have was good back then. I suppose if I had tried to mail something and he had moved less than a year prior, I might have got a forwarding address from the post office.
Freddy knew how to take care of you. The tv incident that TK was talking about was July 4th weekend of 1994 and Fred's partner used to work with Disney. They flew about 20 of us out there and put us all up in private cabins on the lake at the Marriott. We had back stage passes to everywhere on the Disney lot and great seats for the fireworks that evening.
Then they closed New York Street to public access, moved a bunch of buses and cars from old movies out there. The teams wore bright colored uniforns and the judges wore the first black & white stripes in paintball. Tom's team played against Fred's team and some of us judged. ESPN 2 had the highest ratings for a weekend and suddenly paintball was on the map. There was so much potential for the game to become a sport back then.
But, the big fish in paintball wanted to stay big and kept paintball isolated and profitable for themselves. And today, the players still pay to play and, by design, big outside sponsors like Bud, Coke or the airlines, etc., get only minimal representation.
Greed killed this sport from ever reaching it's potential and so, by the late 90's you saw most of the old guard hang up their markers and migrate away, while the leaches and parasites stayed in the sport to suck the players dry. Tom sold AGD, Freddy disappeared from the face of the planet, Dave sold ViewLoader, Rose left Unique, Marty got squeezed out of Scott, Vents is gone because they put Scott and JT to shame, Budd walked away from WORR Games Products. Of course, there are good people still in it, today, like Tim, Glen Palmer, Rick at Morgan Awards, the guys at Paintball Mania Supplies, Dale Hilton, Dennis Ashley and others. I think Joe West may still be at J&J. But, paintball is over-run with users and cheaters who never saw the potential or who were afraid to take it to the next level. A selfish generation of takers, took over and everyone loses. If tv had taken off and spectators had been encouraged to come in, the big boys would have followed with money for everyone to advance and profit.
Ahh, but once again, I digress. Give me an email address and I will send you what I got. I am still at GTOUSPL@aol.com
Biff
Reply With Quote
right on!
