The Red Bulletin_0610_USA

www.redbulletin.com

an almost independent magazine / june 2010

NEW YORK No LIMITS

It’s eyes on the skIes FoR the ReD BULL AIR RACe

Travis Pastrana

Inside the mind of America’s greatest daredevil

Fisher King

Mountain-bike Godfather Gary Fisher on his muddy roots

First lady of big surf

Maya Gabeira on waves, wipeouts and winning

Experience

Print 2.0

Distributed in the US in The New York Times This Magazine was produced by Red Bulletin GmbH and did not involve the staff of The New York Times

RED BULL AIR RACE

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

NEW YORK JUNE 19 & 20

LIBERTY STATE PARK

JERSEY CITY

TUNE IN LIVE JUNE 20 AND CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS

REDBULLAIRRACE.COM

Bullhorn

Cover IllustratIon: BruCe MCCall. thIs Page: gePa-PICtures

Dear reaDer, snowboarders and neurologists, hip-hop artists and top chefs, classic planes and triathletes, visual artists and Formula one drivers: the world of red Bull is shaped by creativity and adventure, by courage and a lust for life, and is populated with an inimitable group of heroes. the mission of this magazine is to feature stories about this world and its inhabitants, their ideas and their projects. the idea for The Red Bulletin was conceived at 2:30 in the morning in Dietrich Mateschitz is the a mountain hut in the austrian alps founder and CEO of Red Bull near salzburg. It attempts to convey that spark of excitement that rushes through the unique people who manage to transform their crazy ideas into reality, thanks to the energy in their bodies and minds. said another way, this magazine is a logical part of our development to become a content provider, thus enabling us to tell the world about the incredible stories we create. these stories must be told by the best writers and best photographers and explored in real depth, with our obsessive attention to detail, but all with a wink of the eye. there’s no shortage of stories from which we can draw. Felix Baumgartner would never have skydived across the english Channel without wiiings. sebastian vettel would never have made it to Formula one without red Bull’s youth training program. Freestyle motocross wouldn’t have gained worldwide recognition without the red Bull X-Fighters. I remember the first reactions to our idea of creating a race for the best pilots in the world. no one could foresee that a few years down the line the red Bull air race World Championship would attract millions of fans worldwide.

The Red Bulletin is a global monthly publication, adapted to reflect different local cultures. the magazine first appeared in austria, red Bull’s home, at the end of 2007 and the reaction was so positive that we were left with no option but to expand internationally. germany, then the uK, Ireland, south africa, new Zealand, Poland and Kuwait all followed in quick succession. and now this special issue in the united states (if you want to learn more about us and our future plans drop us a line at contact@ us.redbulletin.com or visit our homepage, www.redbulletin.com).

We’re excited to partner with The New York Times – the ultimate media voice, with credibility and a great image around the world. this edition is timed to coincide with the red Bull air race new York on June 19-20, the championship’s first visit to this great city.

WWW.REDBULLETIN.COM

AN ALMOST INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE / JUNE 2010

NEW� YORK NO LIMITS

IT’S EYES ON THE SKIES FOR THE RED BULL AIR RACE

Travis Pastrana

Inside the mind of America’s greatest daredevil

Fisher King

Mountain-bike Godfather Gary Fisher on his muddy roots

First lady of big surf

Maya Gabeira on waves, wipeouts and winning

Experience

Print 2.0

Distributed in the US in The New York Times This Magazine was produced by Red Bulletin GmbH and did not involve the staff of The New York Times

This month’s cover is the handiwork of Bruce McCall, famed illustrator for The New Yorker, among other titles. Bruce, who lives near NYC’s Central Park, says his King Kong spoof, above, from Jan 23, 1995, is a favorite.

We’re stoked he’s with this first US Bulletin.

enjoy, and welcome to the world of red Bull.

Fondly, Dietrich Mateschitz

05

Print 2.0

The new multi-media experience, wherever you see the Bull’s eye

phot0graphy: Klaus thymann

Your Red Bulletin can do more

than you thought possible Go to page 9 or online at us.redbulletin.com/print2.0

NNN%I<;9LCC<K@E %:FD

AN ALMOST INDE

PENDENT MAGA

ZINE

Contents

welcome to tHe world of red Bull Inside your high-flying Red Bulletin Bulletin…

Bullevard

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10 pictures of the month 16 now and next What to see and where to be in the worlds of culture and sports 19 me and my body Ducati MotoGP ace Nicky Hayden will never need tattoos. His battered and bruised frame is all technicolor scars 20 winning formula It may look like a twirling headstand but the science behind a B-Boy spin is a subtle interaction of physical forces 23 where’s your head at?

Michael Bloomberg has a lot going on upstairs. But then he’s Mayor of NYC, helicopter pilot, loving son…

24 kit bag A passion for bike trickery unites stunt rider Chris Pfeiffer and Evel Knievel.

But their steeds are worlds apart 26 lucky numbers The longest, most dangerous, fastest and most tortoise-like achievements

Heroes

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30 maya gabeira This young Brazilian is emerging as one of the world’s top big-wave surfers

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32 travis pastrana America’s daredevil-in-residence thinks nothing of jumping out of planes without a parachute – why?

36 carl craig Detroit’s king of reinvention is a DJ, producer, and cultural ambassador who takes electronic music to new places

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40 felix baumgartner The man who will freefall from space 46 pioneer gary fisher He made mountain-biking mainstream.

We salute a racer-turned-hippy entrepreneur-turned-cycling legend This magazine is produced by Red Bulletin GMBH and did not involve the reporting and editing staff of The New York Times.

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Contents

PHOTOGRAPHY: LuKE AIKINS/RED BuLL PHOTOFILES, BRIAN BIELMANN/RED BuLL PHOTOFILES (2), GETTY IMAGES (2), DOROTHY HONG, GARTH MILAN, RED BuLL MuSIC ACADEMY

Action

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52 red bull air race New York City is about to play host to one of the most exciting motorosports on earth. Let The Red Bulletin be your guide 66 m.i.a.

In the LA studio with the talented Londoner weeks ahead of the launch of her new album 72 vitilla baseball Simple sticks and bottle tops have honed the unique skills of Dominican Republic star exports to Major League baseball, from Pedro Martinez to Manny Ramirez

more Body & mind

82 hangar-7 You might not have heard the unique hangar-cum-theater-cum-restaurantcum-gallery at Salzburg Airport, Austria. But take a look: it’s a place where ideas take flight 84 get the gear Board legend Robby Naish reveals the gear that keeps him at the top of his game 86 new york clubs Variation is the only constant in the lounges and restaurants of the city’s decadent nightlife 88 listings Worldwide, day and night, our guide to the ultimate month-long weekend 92 nightlife We sample São Paulo nights; Hercules and Love Affair’s new solo project; Frightened Rabbit are on the brink; and we tour the Windy City 98 stephen bayley On the artistic splendor of New York

the red Bulletin Print 2.0 Movies, sounds and animation wherever you see this sign in your Red Bulletin 1

2

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36 us.redbulletin.com/ print2.0 In your browser window you’ll see the magazine cover. Just click at ‘Start Bull’s Eye’

Switch on your webcam If a webcam activation window opens, just click ‘activate’

Hold your Red Bulletin up to the webcam You’ll see all the multimedia content in this magazine – movies, sound and animation

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Havana, Cuba

Hard revolución Far from his home in California, a birthplace he shares with that of his sport, Ryan Sheckler takes to the streets of downtown Havana, where the sound of skateboard wheels on concrete still draws surprised stares. In the city heat, the 20-year-old champion skater kickflips through the air, his every move watched by awestruck young Havanans who have read about him in skate magazines smuggled in by American friends. Though their lives couldn’t be more different, this pro at the top of his game and the Cuban kids on their battered boards live by the same rule: just skate.

Get on board with the action at www.redbullskateboarding.com

Print 2.0

us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See Sheckler’s Cuban adventure

Bullevard

PhotograPhy: Jody Morris/red Bull Photofiles

News and views on sports and culture from around the globe

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PhotograPhy: Mathias KniePeiss/gePa Pictures

Monte Carlo, MonaCo

THe BoaT race When the Grand Prix comes to Monte Carlo, its family, friends and followers fill the harbor with their boats. The race circuit is set up on the city streets, and this Formula One flotilla provides much of the stunning backdrop to what is undeniably one of world motorsport’s great occasions. The harbor can accommodate around 550 boats, and with race rates said to be $3,700 per night, that’s… a lot of money. But this is Monaco, where money is a way of life. Red Bull Racing enjoyed a 1-2 finish at the 2010 Grand Prix, with Australian Mark Webber coming home just ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel.

Follow F1 in 2010 at www.redbullracing.com

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Photography: RayDemski.com/Red Bull Photofiles

Foto d e s M o n at s (2)

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Verortung Termin Weblink

lake vouliagMeni, greeCe

greece frigHTenin’ Within sight of the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, at nearby Sounion, cliff diver Gary Hunt takes a deep breath and prepares to twist, tuck and pike before a clean splashdown into the deep of Lake Vouliagmeni, some 100 feet below. Hunt’s season-long excellence in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series made him last year’s runner-up, sealed with a win here in Greece. He has carried his winning ways into 2010, taking victory in the seriesopener at La Rochelle, France. And Hunt, who’s, ahem, in the hunt for this year’s title, admitted: “It’s a great competition and it’s going to get even better.”

Let cliff divers take your breath away at www.redbull.com (search ‘World Series’)

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Print 2.0

credit

us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Take a tour of the Red Bull Arena with Red Bulls player Seth Stammler

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

every shot oN target Send in your snaps of anything to do with Red Bull â&#x20AC;&#x201C; win a prize if we print yours.

Email your digital works of art to letters@redbulletin.com

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Malibu

Daring cyclists brave one of the fast downhill bends in a fight to the finish at Red Bull Road Rage.

Ian Hylands

New Delhi Stuntrider Chris Pfeiffer shows he can do tricks on anything with wheels.

Sundeep Gajjar

b u l l e va r d

Home Field AdvAntAge

When the Red Bull Arena opened in Harrison in March, it raised the bar for soccer stadia across America. Here are 10 reasons why it’s the eminent amphitheater of MLS

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Sittin’ Pretty Home of the New York Red Bulls, the Arena seats 25,198 fans in style. Out on the terraces, all of the seats are of the tip-up variety, rather than fixed. This is both a first for a Major League Soccer stadium and a very good thing for when that guy goes back to the concession stand again.

photography: Marv Watson/red Bull photofiles

2

salzburg FC Red Bull Salzburg’s newest fan: Kevin Costner at ServusTV. Peter Franke

Clear Thinking The translucent ‘inner ring’ of the Arena’s roof, made from 95 polycarbonate panels, keeps all fans dry while also allowing light to reach the pitch. There hasn’t been a nor’easter in the stadium’s short life so far, but when one comes (hey, this is New Jersey...) it’ll be the players who feel it most.

3

SSS That’s ‘soccerspecific stadium’, and the Arena is at the vanguard of this rapidly growing sector of sports construction.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber says it’s “spectacular… the best

Neuschwanstein

small stadium in the world. It’s very intimate, soccer-focused.” The team seem to like it: they won their first six home matches, including the opening friendly against Santos of Brazil.

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Up Close The European design of the Arena brings fans very close to the action: along the sidelines, the seats are 21 feet from the field.

Visiting teams won’t forget the sound of the Red Bulls fans in a hurry – and, at that range, those fans can probably make out every one of David Beckham’s tattoos.

5

Keep On It The Red Bulls’ pitch is 100 percent Kentucky Bluegrass, an excellent playing surface, which is maintained via an undersoil air, heating and drainage system.

After leaving behind the FieldTurf at Giants Stadium, and with it the controversy that comes from playing soccer on an artificial surface, the only MLS

If you want the best view of Schwangau, Germany, you can’t do much better than this.

Jörg Mitter

teams that don’t play on grass now are New England and Seattle.

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Hard Yards I more than 370,000 man-hours to take the Arena from architects’ plan to opening night, along with: 7,100 tons of structural steel, 21 miles of cabling, 8 miles of pipe, 5,000 cubic yards of concrete, 15,000 concrete blocks and – this is the experts’ best guess – 14,372 orders of garlic knots and chicken fingers to go from Nino’s over on Bergen.

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All Oval Now It may be a soccerspecific stadium but it’s not just specifically for soccer. During the MLS break for the World Cup in South Africa, the Red Bull Arena is hosting a triple-header finals day for the Churchill Cup, an international rugby tournament. There are also plans for rock concerts. If only there was a world-famous New Jersey musician who could play…

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Newark Anew The town of Harrison, NJ, has been given a lift by the Red Bull Arena, according to area local and former MetroStars and US national team midfielder Tab Ramos.

“I used to ride my bike by empty factories here as a kid,” he says.

“Now the Arena is beautiful. I couldn’t be more excited.”

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Design Classic Red Bull Arena was designed by Rosetti Architects, and is the fourth MLS stadium to come from that firm, after the LA Galaxy’s Home Depot Center, Toyota Park, home of Chicago Fire, and Real Salt Lake’s Rio Tinto Stadium. A fifth, PPL Park, opens later this month in Philadelphia.

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European Flavor Sporting Lisbon of Portugal are one of three European teams competing, along with the Red Bulls, at the New York Football Challenge, at the Arena from July 22-25. The Lisboetas might like to get to the game early because PortugueseBrazilian-Latino is the key theme of the grills inside and outside the stadium. Saboroso!

Watch time-lapse Arena construction videos at the NY Red Bulls blog: redbullsreader. wordpress.com

graz Designers gather around the ‘JRX’ they made for the international Formula Student contest.

FH Joanneum

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b u l l e va r d

tough at the top

Metal winner: It took 9,000 cans to build this replica plane

Air CrAft

A real flight of fancy marks Red Bull Art of Can

When the Northern Iowa Panthers got to the Sweet 16 in March, Ethan Drew Carlson spent the weekend “going crazy with the rest of the town”. As he’s a sophomore at the University of Northern Iowa, studying graphic design and film, this seems like typical behavior. But it was unusual for Carlson, because every weekend, apart from that one, he was at home building a plane using 9,000 cans of Red Bull.

There was a point, of course. Carlson had entered Red Bull Art of Can, which, since 1997, has challenged artists to use the drink’s container as a material in the expression of creativity. In the last 13 years of exhibitions, no one has made anything as sizeable as Carlson’s 500-pound replica

Cusco

Filip Polc is offered an alpaca for his mountain bike in Peru.

Sergio Urday

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of the plane used by 2006 Red Bull Air Race World Champion Kirby Chambliss.

“I picked Kirby’s plane because I was just scanning through pictures of something that would make a sick piece,” says the 20-year-old. “I did drink some of the cans, but thousands came from local bars and can redemption.”

The final challenge was the ‘flight’ from Iowa to Texas. “It took eight of us to lift the plane onto an 18-foot trailer, which my grandpa and I drove to Dallas.

It was a four-and-a-half-day round trip, avoiding tornadoes on the way back.”

Chambliss would be proud.

Red Bull Art of Can is at the Galleria in Dallas from July 31-August 22: www.redbullartofcan.com

Melbourne Sebastian Vettel fits in perfectly in Australia with his surf-dude haircut.

James Quinlan

More than 800 stuntmen and women gathered to celebrate the 2010 Taurus World Stunt Awards on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood in May, with spectacular moments from movies including Fast & Furious, Ninja Assassin, Sherlock Holmes and Terminator Salvation among the winning action.

Glenn Foster, who won in the Best Fire category, deserves a special mention, and a cold bath, for his jump out of a window and onto a horsedrawn carriage in Sherlock Holmes.

The incredible gas tanker hijack sequence from Fast & Furious was awarded Best Work With A Vehicle.

The Taurus Lifetime Achievement award went to Jophery Brown, veteran of more than 400 TV shows and films, whom you won’t recall jumping a bus across a gap in the freeway in Speed, because the magic of the movies meant you thought it was Sandra Bullock behind the wheel.

You can find a full awards history at www.taurusworldstuntawards.com

Jophery Brown accepts his Award

Lake Tekapo Finding New Zealand’s noted areas of natural beauty can be thirsty work.

Douglas Wright

WoRDS: PAUl WIlSoN. PhoTogRAPhy: EThAN CARlSoN (1), JEAN-JAqUES FRogER (1)

Hollywood’s hidden heroes recognized at Stunt Awards

b u l l e va r d

me and my body

Nicky haydeN

The Ducati ace and 2006 MotoGP world champ knows all about the physical perils of top-line bike racing. He’ll never need tattoos, says the Kentucky Kid. He’s all scars

trai ning wheels

It’s hard to say how many hours I train. It’s something like three or four. In the off-season it’s more endurance stuff, but once the season really starts and we’re racing almost every week, it’s just a little something to stay sharp. I spend a lot of time are on Supermoto bikes and different things. There on rs wande it if se becau things I do to train my mind, crash. you r, marke brake a miss you and cycle, motor a You can’t be thinking about your little sweetheart back home. I’ve messed with some visualization techniques, but really I didn’t get into it. We have to train for motorcycle racing and there are times when you get too caught up in training. I’ve been guilty of it and you have to remember you’re a motorcycle racer and train to ride that motorcycle.

strong sid e

I really use my inner leg a lot when I’m on the motorcycle – I squeeze the bike with it.

My leathers are always rough there.

You can duplicate the movement in the gym a little bit, but you don’t need to be a he-man and you don’t need too much weight. You just need to be strong and have enough skin on your bones to take a crash. If you get real skinny and real little then you’re not strong enough to hold on.

As soon as you tip over, you’ll get smas hed.

Words: Günther WiesinGer. PhotoGraPhy: Contour/Max&douGlas

them’ s the Breaks

I injured my ankle and crushed my heel – that took a long time to heal. I had some shoulder injuries, hurt my back… But I’ve been pretty lucky not to have any big, big ones. Injuries are tough, man. They hold you back and take a lot of therapy and training.

It can wear you down mentally. They’re probably the hardest thing about our sport.

Badly drawn Boy

I’ve got no tattoos. I’ve got scars everywhere... but no ink.

no pain, no gain

I’m only 28 but sometimes I get out of bed with a pretty good limp or when it gets cold my body hurts some places it’s got metal in it.

But for the most part, when you’re professional you have to rush injuries and play through pain. I’ve raced injured. I got on the podium in my home GP on crutches. The mind is a lot stronger than the body. Sometimes that’s bad because you hurt yourself even worse.

Basic instinct

A big, big part of motorcycle racing is instinct.

If you’re out there thinking about braking and shifting and little things, then you are goin’ slow. t That’s all got to be instinct, but to make it instinc you have to visualize, practice, watch videos, get to the point where it just happens.

crash course

You have to be brave to race motorcycles.

If you want to play piano then maybe you can be a coward. In this sport if you’re going to race, then you’re going to crash and when you fall off these bikes it doesn’t exactly tickle. You put your body on the line and have to accept getting hurt.

There are things about crashing; if you hold onto the bike too long, sometimes you can grind your hands down. If you try to get up while you are still moving that makes things worse. Crashing is the luck of the draw, but there are some guys who know how to crash. They seem to take big crashes and get up with no problem. Other guys, they tip over in second gear and they’re hurt.

Feel the Fear… do it anyway

I get nervous. I’m not going to try and sound like a tough guy and say I don’t because MotoGP is a big deal, it means a lot to me. Nerves are a good thing. Y’know if you didn’t get nervous at all then it shows it doesn’t really mean anything. Honestly, sometimes the more nervous I’ve been, the better I’ve performed. Daytona was always my great race, but it was always where I was most nervous.

eat it I follow a strict diet. We don’t put trash in our motorcycles so I can’t put trash in my body. If I’ve had my intake for the day then I think, ‘toughen up’. I think about racing motorcycles and forget it.

suited ’n’ Booted

The protective suit has gotten really good.

Boots, gloves, helmets… it’s all custom-made down to the last detail, trying to look for everything to improve it. People are starting to use airbags, too. That’s coming.

Ride with Nicky Hayden at www.nickyhayden.com

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Words: Tom Hall, dr axel scH채fer. pHoTograpHy: raydemski.com/red bull pHoTofiles; illusTraTion: mandy fiscHer

b u l l e va r d

winning formula

body rock

A B-Boy requires a dizzying array of skills to spin on his head, but science plays a part, too. The professional and the professor show us what they’ve got

The headspinner “New York is the Mecca of breaking. This is where it started,” says 27-year-old B-Boy Victor Alicea, aka Kid Glyde. “Breakdancing is like a sport: you need discipline and desire. But the foundation, above any physical element, is definitely the music. It determines how you present yourself in the dance.

From there you have to work on your top rock, which is the way you introduce yourself to a circle of opponents. It’s like you’re telling a story and you’ve got to set the style before showing the big event. Footwork, freezes and power moves follow.

“My father, Glyde, was a B-Boy and he taught me to work at everything. I did handstands against the walls, one-handed stands, handstands in circles, handstand push-ups! And all because when you battle, you have to show confidence. Once you break the other person’s confidence, then you’ve beaten them. If you watch two boxers go at it, you don’t want to see two guys who don’t want to be there.

You want to see two guys try and kill each other.

“When I represented New York City in the Red Bull BC One tournament in 2009 it was a great feeling, but I took it too seriously and ended up not being myself onstage. I had to be hard on myself, though, because everybody in New York was watching. And there are a lot of B-Boys in New York.”

The head-scraTcher “The laws of physics power a breaker’s moves,” says physicist Dr Axel Schäfer. “For a handstand freeze, for example, the B-Boy freezes into a handstand position from a full turn with his legs entwined.

In a fraction of a second, he works out the angular momentum necessary to keep his body steady.

“In other words, gravity, the product of the dancer’s mass (m) and the gravitational acceleration (g) on Earth, determines, in combination with how far the breakdancer’s center of gravity is above the ground (hcm) and the body’s tilt angle ( tilt), the balance of forces at the moment when the dancer makes a move. That change of direction results in balance.

“The actual angular velocity ( ) of the rotation and the moment of inertia around the rotational axis (z-axis) are always taken into account so that tilt speed (d tilt/dt) is kept as low as possible. And expert guys work it all out in the twinkling of an eye.”

Watch battles with the best B-Boys from the NYC tournament at www.redbullbcone.com

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b u l l e va r d

Hard & fast Top performers and winning ways from across the globe

Adam Jones won the second round of the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour in Egypt. In the shadows of the pyramids at Giza, the 26-year-old American said he had a “perfect” final run to beat Andrè Villa of Mexico.

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ll champions mpic beach volleyba Reigning men’s Oly n the Santa wo rs ge Ro dd and To Phil Dalhausser make it two to , set a ing ut dropp Barbara Open witho lowing their fol ur To the AVP Nivea wins out of two on Lauderdale. rt Fo in nd rou ing victor y in the open

To get injured during your first race back after a year out with injury is plain bad luck, but Rachel Atherton didn’t let a broken finger sustained in a qualifying crash prevent her from winning the first race of the UCI Downhill World Cup Series, in Maribor, Slovenia.

PhotograPhy: Peter Brouillet, Balazs gardi/red Bull Photofiles, sven Martin, Mike stoBe/getty iMages for new york red Bulls

The New York Red Bulls made an excellent start to the MLS season, winning five of their opening seven matches to top the Eastern Conference. Juan Pablo Angel scored four times during that run, to sit second in the league top scorers’ table.

b u l l e va r d

Where’s Your head at?

Michael BlooMBerg The 108th Mayor of New York City and eighth-richest man in America: he giveth and taketh away, and knows it pays to be generous

ReBuIld, ReBRand

In Rud HealtH

Surprisingly, Bloomberg didn’t spend the years after his Wall Street windfall sipping cocktails on a yacht. Instead he created Innovative Market Systems, a financial software service company that sold data and analytical tools to Wall Street.

He renamed the company after himself in 1987 and turned it into a global news service via television, radio, print and internet.

Bloomberg became Mayor of New York City in 2002, succeeding Rudy Giuliani, ng after spending $41 million duri r othe the than e mor – n paig his cam him left This d. candidates combine ing, open to accusations of vote buy was but for many New Yorkers, it the endorsement from his then much-appreciated predecessor in that helped guide their cross the voting booths.

fIRst flusH

Forbes magazine puts his personal wealth at $17.5 billion, which makes him America’s eighth richest. Not bad for the son of an accountant who was fired from investment bank Salomon Brothers. This blow was softened by his $10 million severance pay.

MoMMy’s Boy Most mothers are happy with flowers as a gift from their son.

Mike marked Charlotte Bloomberg’s 75th birthday by establishing a professorship in her name at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

This year, she reached 101.

Mike puts her longevity down to her optimism.

MayoR glooMBeRg

His first mayoral moves: tax raises, spending cuts, a smoking ban and, perhaps as a consequence, lowering his approval rating. By the end of his first term he’d cut crime, improved school results and won a second tenure. And he liked being Mayor so much, he campaigned for a rule change so he could run for a third term, which he did last year.

Words: Wesley doyle. IllustratIon: lIe-Ins and tIgers

eat nIce, now Last year Bloomberg received a Healthy Communities Leadership Award for his policies promoting access to healthy foods and physical activity. His Healthy Bodega initiative offered incentives for businesses to sell healthy foods in underserved neighborhoods, while another strove to improve playground facilities in poorer areas. He also passed a bill banning trans-fats in all restaurants.

tHe Buck staRts HeRe Over the past five years, Bloomberg has given away $1 billion to charity. “The best measure of a philanthropist,” he said, “is that the check to the undertaker bounces.” There is a slight chance this may happen, as he refuses to accept a mayoral salary, choosing instead $1 a year for his services.

HIgH flyeR

With homes across the world, including the London, Bermuda, Vail, Colorado and flies he r opte helic a plus Upper East Side, mberg himself, is it any wonder Mayor Bloo le eligib most ’s attan was once voted Manh nied bachelor? However, he’s been accompa t by former state banking superintenden the Diana Taylor for several years; she is has unof ficial ‘first lady’ of NYC. He also two daughters from his first marriage.

youR caPtaIn sPeakIng

“As a pilot and great supporter of familyfriendly events across the five boroughs, I’m looking forward to the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, which will take place for the first time in New York City this June,” the Mayor told The Red Bulletin. “The Red Bull Air Race boasts some of the world’s best pilots in what is one of the world’s most thrilling events of its kind.”

PaRty gu

y In 2001, he switched from Democrat to Republican before runnin g for Mayor, and three years ago became an ind ependent candidate: “I believe this brings my affi liation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city,” he said, noting that a nonpar tisan approach had “worked won ders” at City Hall.

Keep track of Hizzoner at www.nyc.gov/mayor

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B u l l e va r D

Gear evolution

leap years

Stunt motorcyclists today may have the specter of one very special man hanging over them, but their wheels are way in advance of what Knievel considered jump-worthy

Evel Knievel honed his daredevilish nature riding Hondas and Nortons, then Triumphs and Laverdas, before beginning, in 1970, what would become a lengthy and noted partnership with Harley-Davidson. He pitched for the well-established XR-750, which, in those days, was a relatively light sports model.

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Barely any technical modifications were made to adjust the bike, with its distinctive 50bhp, two-cylinder engine; the only significant changes came in the shape of the stars-and-stripes design. Drum brakes at the front and solid rubber rear tires, a handlebar that would buckle at the very thought of a heavy landing and rear double

struts as a gesture towards disc protection... Knievel’s stunts are even crazier in retrospect when you look closely at the bike he performed them on. His exploits were more balls than brain; he would accelerate to 80mph, hurtle off the ramp and then hope for the best – but that’s what made him great.

Words: Werner jessner

EvEl’s Doing Harley-DaviDson Xr-750, 1972

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PhotograPhy: eric Long, courtesy of the division of Work and industry, nationaL MuseuM of aMerican history, sMithsonian institution (1), bernhard sPötteL (1)

us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 See what Chris Pfeiffer can do on his tailor-made motorcycle

Full cyclE BMW F 800 r, 2010 With its aluminum bridge frame, loadbearing 87bhp two-cylinder engine, dual disc brakes, adjustable central strut and six-speed gearbox, the BMW F 800 R represents the pinnacle of current motorcycle technology. German stunt World Champion Chris Pfeiffer has had some extra goodies added onto his work-

bike: an Akrapovic titanium exhaust, a bespoke seat with built-in wheelie bar, shorter transmission, a middle-fingeroperated rear-wheel brake, a more gently angled handlebar, axel pegs at the front and rear and a roll-bar. The engine takes half a gallon more oil than normal, for optimum performance in all circumstances.

His choice of rear tire is also unusual.

“You normally find the Metzeler Marathon 200 on big Harleys,” says Pfeiffer, who’s delighted with his ride. “It’s as if the F 800 R has been tailor-made for me; it’s maneuverable and powerful.”

More stunt bike rev-elations can be found at www.chrispfeiffer.com

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B u l l e va r d

Lucky Numbers

IncredIble records

The longest, most dangerous, fastest and most tortoise-like achievements from across the wide world of sports

The World’s Fastest Drummer organization holds its Extreme Sport Drumming competition twice a year.

Using a piece of equipment known as the Drumometer to count individual strikes, the WFD separates budding Keith Moons from Ringo Starrs. With a personal best of 1,247 strokes in 60 seconds, Mike Mangini, formerly the drummer of hair-rockers Extreme (yes, really), has been world champion in the Matched Grip Singles category since 2002.

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Such is their size and unpredictability, waves are notoriously difficult for officials to quantify. Besides, in surfing terms, the real power of a wave is in its weight rather than height, and surfing fraternity consensus has it that the heaviest wave ever ridden was Tahiti’s famous Teahupoo swell, conquered by legendary waterman Laird Hamilton on August 17, 2000. As many as 10 people are thought to have died riding Teahupoo since then, and countless more seriously injured, making it the deadliest wave in the world.

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Forrest Gump famously ran for three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours, but one must assume he made stops along the way, so he’s ineligible for the record of furthest non-stop run.

Having run 50 marathons in 50 days, the self-styled Ultramarathon Man, Greek-American Dean Karnazes, claims to have covered 350 miles without sleep. However, he couldn’t come close to his compatriot Yiannis Kouros (right), who in 1988 ran 456 miles in four days without a break. Incredibly, this was just the first leg of a 1,000-mile slog.

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5

The longest recorded skateboard jump, 79 feet, was landed in 2004 at the X Games by Danny Way. But while not quite as long, Way’s next recordbreaking attempt was arguably the greater achievement. In 2005, the native Californian became the first person to jump the Great Wall of China without motorized aid. Having failed on his first attempt, Way then successfully landed five consecutive 61-foot jumps in front of an adoring Chinese public, throwing in a few 360s for added flair.

0.28 The record for longest tightrope walk across a stretch of water was broken in April earlier this year by Swiss circus performer Freddy Nock, who traversed the 984 yards across Lake Zurich. This achievement, at 98 feet above the water, took him two hours, which by our reckoning also qualifies Nock’s feat as the slowest distance attempt in the record book. A distance of just over half a mile completed in a time of 120 minutes gives the daredevil an average speed of 0.28mph.

2,208 A quick refresher for those not versed in extreme vocabulary: the BASE in BASE-jumping is an acronym that stands for the categories of structure from which a person can launch themselves: Buildings, Antennas, Spans or Earth. The highest jump, recorded on January 8 this year, was made from the 160th floor of Burj Khalifa, a Dubai skyscraper recognized as the tallest man-made structure ever built. Jumping together, Nasr Al Niyadi and Omar Al Hegelan set a benchmark of 2,208 feet.

That’s more than two Eiffel Towers.

More record-breaking moments at www.guinnessworldrecords.com

Words: toby Wiseman. photography: action images (2), nick Laham/getty images, andreW LepLey/redferns, arnd Wiegmann/reUters, rex featUres

1,247

illustration: dietmar kainrath

K a i n r at h

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Credit PhotograPhy: www.flohagena.com/red Bull Photofiles

Hole-y moly!: daredevil extraordinaire Felix Baumgartner leaps into the 700-foot-deep Mamet Cave in the Northern Velebit National Park, Croatia. His next trick? A leap from space. Oh yesâ&#x20AC;Ś

Heroes

Speed, passion, danger and crazy, crazy action. Get your idol-fix here 30 Maya Gabeira 32 travis pastrana 36 Carl CraiG 40 felix bauMGartner 46 Gary fisher

Heroes

Maya Gabeira At just 23, the all-action Brazilian has broken the glass ceiling of big-wave surfing. Now snowboarding… that’s another thing entirely Words: Andreas Tzortzis Photography: Carlos Serrao

Name Maya Gabeira Born 10 April 1987, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Lives Encinitas, California Siblings Has one sister Parents Father Fernando’s political memoir was made into an Oscarnominated film Mother Yame Reis is a fashion designer Virgin territory Surfed her first big wave in February 2006 in Waimea Bay Awards Has won Best Overall Female Performance at the Billabong XXL awards four years running Female Action Sports Athlete of the Year, 2009 Espys Web mayagabeira.com.br and www.twitter.com/ mgabeira

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In four years of surfing waves that most of us prefer to appreciate from the comfort of a sturdy, concrete structure far inshore, Maya Gabeira has had a jet ski fall on her, broken her nose in 12 places, and negotiated the taunts and posturing of the boys’ club that is big-wave surfing.

Snowboarding, then, should have been a cakewalk. But on her first ride on the bunny slopes in the California mountains four months ago, she managed only a short distance before taking a fall.

“Everyone was like, ‘Yeah, Maya, you’re going to rip, it’s just like surfing,’” she says, her infectious laughter giving away the punchline. “I broke my arm!”

Gabeira has spent the past few months laid up in her house in Hawaii, recovering in time to complete a move to southern California, where she picked up her fourth consecutive Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Award for overall female performance in April. The award capped a remarkable year for Gabeira and her sport. El Niño’s winter storms brought massive swells to big-wave spots around the world, from the cold-water break of Mavericks in California, to shark-infested Dungeons in South Africa and Tahiti’s deep, curling Teahu0poo. At Waimea Bay, the legendary – and seldom staged – Eddie Aikau bigwave competition was held after waves up to 50-foot began buffeting the shoreline in December last year.

“It was a busy year,” she says. “I just got into that rhythm. I was getting comfortable surfing them so often that you see the difference and get confident.”

There are no other women who chase big waves around the globe the way Gabeira does. “Maya is like: ‘I want that’,” says Carlos Burle, a dean of the bigwave surfing community and Gabeira’s mentor. “She wants it really bad, she’s a warrior. You can tell that.”

Not at first. If Gabeira’s bronzed skin and sunstreaked hair are typical of the stunning women Brazil produces with alarming regularity, then her muscular shoulders, toned legs and a body marked by scratches and bruises tell another story. Her voice is thick with a drowsy Carioca drawl, the words coming as if

poured into a tall glass on a sweltering Rio afternoon.

Underneath the chilled-out facade is a woman driven to pursue a rush few of us will ever know.

“I thought it would be so cool to have a girl who could do it just like the boys,” she says. “I thought if I ever saw a girl doing it, I’d be impressed… Right now, I can’t even visualize that that girl is me.”

The daughter of a fashion designer and one of Brazil’s best-known politicians, Gabeira only started surfing when she was 14. Hooked, she wangled a high-school year abroad on Australia’s Gold Coast before leaving home at 17 to move to Hawaii.

Her meager English qualified her for a waitress job, where she would read the menu to customers and cast covetous glances at the waves breaking on Waimea Bay. She’d paddle out on massive days, just to bob up and down in the surf, getting used to the turbulence and watching veterans like Andrew Marr and Clark Abbey. “You figure ‘OK, I can survive this,’” she says. “So if you can survive this, then you can surf it, and then you’re through to another level.”

Photos of her on 40-f00t waves in Waimea, Mavericks and Todos Santos in Mexico in 2006, gave notice to the surfing community – and the boys – that Gabeira was no longer an interloper, but one of their own. “There’s so many barriers to break, it’s something new, you know,” she says, her voice trailing off. “It’s a man’s world and once you put yourself out there, you have to take whatever comes your way. And sometimes it’s not nice stuff.”

Gabeira’s fame has spread and her surfing heroes have responded by embracing the young Brazilian.

At this year’s Billabong Awards, Shane Dorian, one of Gabeira’s idols, singled her out as an inspiration as he accepted his award for Ride of the Year.

“I was overwhelmed,” says Gabeira. “I’ve always looked up to him. To hear that from him was the highlight of my night. Bigger even than my award.”

More of that is sure to come for Gabeira. On the waves, that is. Not so much the slopes.

For more on Maya, visit www.redbullsurfing.com

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us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Get ehind the scenes at Maya Gabeiraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Red Bulletin photo shoot

Making waves: Big-wave poster girl Maya Gabeira spends only a few weeks out of the year in Rio, her calendar packed with events and last-minute flights to chase major swells around the globe

Heroes

Travis PasTrana America’s daredevil in residence, the 26-year-old from Maryland regularly pulls off stunts that would have made Evel Knievel blanch. But it turns out there’s a method to all that madness

Name Travis Pastrana Born October 8, 1983, Annapolis, Maryland, USA Early Start He was riding a Honda one-speed at the age of 4 Brains and Brawn He’s also a whiz in the classroom, graduating high school at 15 Golden Games In 2006 became the first athlete to land a double backflip in competition, during the summer X Games.

He has a total of nine X Games gold medals Stunts Broke the record of 171 feet for distance jumped in a car at Red Bull New Year: No Limits in 2009.

Has his own MTV stunt show, Nitro Circus Favorite Food Ice cream

December 31, 2009. 9p.m. Long Beach, California.

Travis Pastrana sits behind the wheel of a souped-up Subaru Impreza STi rally car, his foot on the accelerator and hand on the stick shift. The glare of countless lights reflects off a 1,000-foot run-in.

Ahead, a steeply pitched ramp rises up into the darkness. And beyond that, somewhere in the harbor, lies a barge with the landing ramp.

The moment has come. Pastrana gives the signal that he’s ready to go. A technician holding a walkietalkie leans in through the window. “The fireboat that passed by spraying the water cannons doused the ramp,” he tells Pastrana. “It’s gonna be slick.”

Pastrana knows exactly what that means. He’s spent three days in the desert, practicing this jump.

He’s already crashed one car, tumbling it end over end at 65mph. He’s got the physics down cold. So he understands in the pit of his gut that with the landing ramp slick, he won’t have enough traction to stop the car before it slams into the back of the barge.

That is, assuming he nails the landing. If the barge is even 4 feet out of position, he’ll miss the ramp and wind up on the bottom of the harbor, trapped inside a crumpled Subaru with a broken back.

Either way, a crash is guaranteed.

Pastrana remembers the words of advice his father gave him long ago. Once you’ve said you’re going to do something, his old man said, get as prepared as you can, and try to limit the damage.

He guns the engine. The car leaps forward, its unleashed power forcing him back into his seat. As the speedometer hits 100mph, he hits the ramp. And then he’s in midair, weightless, soaring through the blackness.

I first discovered Travis Pastrana the same way millions of others have: through a link to a YouTube video. Clicking through, I found myself watching a sleepy, shirtless man seemingly roused from his slumber, who pops open a can of Red Bull, drains it, and rolls out of – an airplane. Plummeting through

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the air, he does a backflip, then another, then hooks onto a parachutist for a safe descent to the ground. Like everyone else who watched, I’m sure, my first thought was: What the hell is going on inside this man’s brain?

For me, though, it was a question of more than idle curiosity. As a science journalist, my specialty is understanding how our brains work when faced with life-or-death danger. In the course of my research, I’ve talked to pilots who saved their airplanes after a wing started to come off, hikers who have fought off mother grizzlies, and snowmobilers who have survived being swept away in an avalanche. But never, until now, had I ever come across someone who’d thrown himself out of an airplane without a parachute.

Pastrana has been prodigiously prolific over the past decade, hurling himself into a procession of stunts that have earned him a reputation as the baddest daredevil since Evel Knievel. There he is, performing the first-ever double backflip on a motorcycle at the 2006 X Games. Nailing a backflip on a standard-issue child’s Big Wheel. Jumping a motorcycle into the Grand Canyon. And on and on.

The most amazing thing about these feats for me isn’t the level of athleticism and skill required, but the fact that Pastrana can keep his fear in check long enough to carry them out.

I caught Pastrana by telephone as he was about to leave on a six-week tour of Australia with his barnstorming troupe of stunt riders, the Nitro Circus. When I put him on the spot, he explained that the difference in his mindset is that in the grip of fear he’s still able to think clearly — an ability, he says, that he shares with all top athletes.

“When all hell has broken loose and everything is going wrong, you have to be able to rationalize what’s going on and make the best decision,” he explains. “Some people, when fear sets in, they just go stiff. But others react in a more positive way than they could without the fear.”

PHOTOGRAPHY: POLARIS ImAGES/EYEvINE

Words: Jeff Wise

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us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Find out what makes him tick

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on in this manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brain? Pastranaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s power of positive thinking in the most hair-raising (and self-imposed) situations, enables him to focus like few others

Heroes

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inside The Mind of Travis PasTrana Co n t r a ry to Co m m o n b e l i e f, Pa st r a n a i s n ot i m m u n e to f e a r . s o h ow d o e s h e k e e P Co o l w h e n h i s l i f e i s o n t h e l i n e?

1) BE PrEParEd. “The scariest thing for me is when I go into something unprepared. When I jumped a Big Wheel on the megaramp, that was scary. I didn’t know if it was going to blow up on the takeoff. It’s not made to be going 55mph and withstanding 4Gs.” 2) USE YoUr FEar. “When I’m not nervous, I’m not 100 percent focused on something. When I jumped out of the plane without a parachute, the part that scared me the most was that I wasn’t scared enough. I had to deliberately re-set my mind: ‘oK, Travis, you have the rest of your life to find those other [supporting] jumpers and make this work.’”

3) TrUST YoUr CrEW. “The hardest part about putting the jump together was finding people that were a) good enough and b) willing to risk being involved with a stunt like this. But once I found a good crew, we all trusted each other. The guys that I was jumping with had 10,000 jumps apiece.”

4) CommIT YoUrSElF. “Before I did the double backflip, I was scared all day. I didn’t know if I would decide to do it or not. and then the second I was on the jump, and I knew that I was going to do it, the fear just went away. It was like, ‘Well, oK, it’s inevitably going to happen — let’s try to make it work.’”

PHOTOGRAPHY: CARLO CRuz/REd BuLL PHOTOFILES, WILLIAm HALSEY, GETTY ImAGES (2), CHRISTIAN PONdELLA

For most of us, intense fear is a disorienting emotion in which our brains work in an unfamiliar way.

But for Pastrana it’s a familiar place. According to family lore, he flipped a go-kart at age 3. “my parents let me do stuff that most parents would never even associate with,” he says.

His father, an ex-marine, was one of six brothers who all enjoyed things like driving fast and jumping off bridges. “That was the kind of family I grew up in and it definitely pushed me in this direction,” says Pastrana. “I rode my first dirtbike when I was three years old. It was kind of a normal thing to do.”

Jim deChamp was a childhood friend of Pastrana’s who shared his passion for motorcycles and BmX bikes. “You know how most parents get mad at you for digging ramps or building something that looks kind of dangerous?” he says. “Travis’ dad would be like, ‘Oh, do you want me to go get the Bobcat and make it a little bigger?’”

By age 7, Pastrana was already an established prodigy, a sponsored rider for Suzuki. A string of National Amateur motocross titles followed; at 14 he became World Freestyle Champion. The next year, his ambitions carried him to a much larger audience, with his debut performance at the 1999 X Games. A natural showman, he combined stunning athleticism with a goofy low-key personality that made him a breakout star. The youngest athlete there, he took home the gold medal in the motoX Freestyle event.

His ambition was not without cost. “I used to crash every day in practice,” Pastrana remembers.

“Some were worse than others.” He’s lost track of the number of bones he’s broken. during one particularly horrible crash when he was 14, he missed a landing ramp at 50mph and broke his back, his spine separating from his pelvis. He was in and out of consciousness for three days, and wound up spending three months in a wheelchair. despite his physical agonies, Pastrana pressed on. “He’s not fearless,” says deChamp, who now rides in the Nitro Circus, “but he has the ability to get himself into the right mindset: ‘I know I can do this, if I just stay focused.’ He can block out negative thoughts and just focus on what he’s doing. And that makes it actual fun for him.”

For Pastrana, fear is most difficult to control when he knows he’s unprepared. The first time he tried to backflip a motorcycle he was scared the entire day before the attempt. He was 16, and performing in his second X Games. “There was no way to prepare for it,” he says. “There was no test.

It was just, ‘OK, I’m going to go huck this, and the first time I’m going to crash for sure, but maybe it will be close enough that I won’t break myself, and I’ll try again and figure out from my mistakes.”

He still vividly remembers the results: he came flying off the bike and broke his foot. But he’d figured out the maneuver, and later became one of the first to stick it.

Pastrana went on to rack up nine gold medals at the X Games. He also turned to rally driving, and clinched the Rally America championship four times. This year, he cut the season short to pursue

Heroes

another passion: showmanship. Together with two partners, he owns the Nitro Circus, a touring show that combines astounding feats of motocross and BmX skill. “We really push ourselves,” Pastrana says. “It’s pretty entertaining.”

And he continues to cook up new stunts, the patented Pastrana jaw-droppers destined to swarm over YouTube. Though he’s tight-lipped about what he’s got in store, deChamp lets slip that they’ve been mulling over an attempt to go waterskiing behind an airplane. “We were really close to doing it once before,” he says, “but the plane that we were going to use crashed a couple of days before.

We thought maybe that was a sign.”

(Clockwise from above) Pastrana testing red Bull’s wings-giving qualities; Showing off his rally gold medal at the 2008 X Games; His record-setting New Year’s jump in long Beach this year; The FmX star giving love back to the fans after performing the first-ever double backflip at the 2006 X Games

Back at Long Beach harbor, Pastrana’s two-second ride through the darkness felt like much longer.

“When adrenaline’s flowing, when you really think you’re going to die, time just stops,” he says.

He hit the landing about 10 feet in. As he expected, the ramp was slick. Throwing the car into a sideways slide, he braced for impact. WHAm! The windows blew out with the collision, but, in the crumpled roll cage, Pastrana was unhurt.

Climbing out through the window, he ran back up the ramp toward the crowd. He waved to the spectators on the shore, then ran off the edge and did a backflip into the harbor.

Needless to say, you can see it all on YouTube.

Jeff Wise is the author of “Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger.” Check out his blog at jeffwise.wordpress.com a profile of Pastrana at us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 For more Pastrana zaniness, go to www.travispastrana.com

Heroes

Carl Craig

He’s been making the music of the future for 20 years. He’s reinvigorated jazz, recreated drum ’n’ bass and brought the bass drum into concert halls. Now he and his Detroit friends celebrate techno’s 25th birthday Words: Florian Obkircher Portrait: Dorothy Hong

Name Carl Craig Date/place of birth Born May 22, 1969 Westside, Detroit, USA Family Married to Hagi Craig, two children Occupation Musician, DJ, re-mixer, label operator, festival curator, cultural ambassador for Detroit Current album Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald – Recomposed Vol 3 (2008) Web planet-e.net

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There’s whispering, restrained coughing, a clearing of throats. All eyes are directed to the front. It’s dark, but the stage is bathed in a faint blue light.

The silence that descends on the Royal Festival Hall in London on an evening last February has something spiritual about it, reminiscent of a church service, or that short pause in the cinema between the trailers and the main feature. Every single place in the sloping rows of seats is taken. Everyone sits and waits, spellbound and expectant.

And then, a few seconds later, there is applause from the 2,900 concertgoers as three men walk onto the stage. Francesco Tristano, in his late 20s, with brown, curly hair and a white shirt hanging out over his black jeans, sits at the piano. The other two – Moritz von Oswald and Carl Craig – are a little older. One is in a black suit, the other in a grey jacket. They take up their positions behind two consoles decked out with laptop and synthesizers.

Not exactly the typical set of instruments played here on the banks of the Thames. Although used for the odd pop concert, the Royal Festival Hall is usually home to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which plays there 40 times a season.

Craig and Oswald send synth soundscapes floating around the concert hall while Francesco Tristano plays gentle chords on the piano. The waves of sound gradually become less frequent. Tristano plays more quietly and comes to a stop. The light on the stage gets slightly dimmer. In a club, you’d call this a break, that moment two-thirds of the way through a techno record. The calm before the storm.

Suddenly, drums thunder. The screen flashes into life. The audience makes noise. Craig grins.

“It was a wonderful concert,” the Detroit techno pioneer gushes afterwards. “When you’re deejaying in a club, you know exactly how the crowd is going to react. You take out the bass drum, then bring it back in and the crowd is going to go wild. But it’s different in concert halls like the Royal Festival Hall, or where we played our last

concert, in Bologna, a place where only orchestras had played before. It’s uncharted territory. So you’re even happier when the crowd goes wild if they’re sitting in an auditorium.”

Carl Craig has always been on the hunt for new horizons, whether working as a sound researcher or, like now, as a middleman between high culture and subculture. He’s the ambassador – the pioneer who gets techno out of clubs and into concert halls.

It all makes sense when you consider the body of work of a musician worshipped on the electro scene. Twenty years after his first record, the 41-year-old still reinvents himself almost every year. From the beginning, he had more pseudonyms than many other producers had releases. And he has gone down in the annals of electronic music history with almost all of them.

Producing under the name 69, he created electronic, futuristic jazz tracks in 1991. The following year, as Innerzone Orchestra, he invented drum ’n’ bass with Bug In The Bassbin. In 1994, as Paperclip People, he wrote the anthem ‘Throw’, a 10-minute epic located somewhere between disco and house, which finally catapulted him to the heights of techno stardom and would prove groundbreaking for subsequent Detroit names such as Moodymann and Theo Parrish.

He has been nominated for a Grammy for his remixes and classical record label Deutsche Grammophon asked him to interpret Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. “That’s what it’s all about with electronic music: inventing something new and promoting techno as a blueprint for futuristic music,” he says.

Born in Detroit in May 1969, Craig is the son of a post-office employee and a teacher. Though his mother tried to get him to listen to Alvin and The Chipmunks, he preferred the music collection of his brother – his elder by nine years – from Led Zeppelin to Parliament and Funkadelic.

In 1985, Juan Atkins, a friend of his cousin Doug, set up the Metroplex record label. He

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us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Listen to Carl Craigâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concert at the Royal Festival Hall at the South Bank Centre, London

Music man: Carl Craig near his sound studios in Detroit. He works on new tracks there four days a week

Techno meets high culture Francesco Tristano, David Brutti, Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald (from left to right) in concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London as part of the 2010 Red Bull Music Academy

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released the single ‘No UFOs’ under the name Model 500. It had a drum machine, synthesizers and voice distortion. If Kraftwerk gave robots a voice, Atkins taught them how to dance. It was electronic music without the fuss, dance music that sounded as if it came straight from the future.

A new genre had been invented which, under the name ‘techno’, would go on to conquer the world.

“Berry Gordy built the Motown sound on the same principles as the conveyor belt at Ford’s,” Atkins explained in an interview at the time.

“Today they use robots and computers to make their cars and I’m more interested in Ford’s robots than Gordy’s music.” His words proved a prophetic swansong for his hometown’s musical tradition, as soul gave way to a tech-heavy future.

Craig was 15 at the time. “I flunked out of high school that year, I remember that much,” he says with a laugh. “Basically, I never used to go in. I just sat at home and played on the computer all day.”

It was also a time when drive-by shootings began happening in Detroit. “My parents were extremely worried because I was at an age when you have a magical ability to attract trouble. So they always wanted to know where I was. Which drove me completely nuts, of course.”

The one advantage of hanging around at home all the time was that Craig listened to a lot of radio. He started imbibing the radio programs by the legendary Detroit DJ, The Electrifying Mojo – the first person not to give a damn about style boundaries. He would mix ‘New Wave’ by The B-52s with Kraftwerk, Prince with earlier Detroit music.

One such track would change Craig’s life. “When I first heard ‘Nude Photo’ by Rhythm Is Rhythm, I thought, ‘What the hell!’ I’d never heard anything so crazy. Pure science fiction. So futuristic. Plus, it was funky and had a great tune.”

So he called his cousin, Doug, who’d already released a techno record. “And he took me with him to our uncle Hugo’s house. He was the technology freak in the family,” Craig remembers. “He had a good stereo. Doug took along a synthesizer that Juan Atkins had lent him and we got started. We

were really lousy to start with. The big hit at the time was ‘Axel F’ by Harold Faltermeyer, from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. We played it over and over again. We must have driven our uncle completely crazy. But I was hooked.”

After that, things began to happen very quickly.

In 1988, Craig met techno pioneer Derrick May. A year later, his first record, ‘Crackdown’, was released and his mentor May took him to London, where rave music was in the process of heralding a second Summer of Love. And where everyone was taking ecstasy. Craig was 20.

“We played in the Country Club (on the London-Essex border). We’d already understood that our music was going down well in Europe, but we hadn’t grasped just how well. All of a sudden, we were playing in front of 4,000 people. It was really huge!” he says with a nostalgic laugh.

Carl Craig talks of that time now, with a hint of wistfulness in his voice. And that’s in spite of the fact that he must have been interviewed about the creation myth of the Detroit sound hundreds of times. But techno is more than just a music genre, and Detroit is more than just another struggling post-industrial city with the reputation that comes along with that label: derelict, destitute, dying.

Craig and most of his colleagues still live there, and they wouldn’t dream of moving away. Why is that? Just because. “There’s a new documentary film called A Requiem For Detroit,” says Craig. “It goes on about the city’s decline, shows the empty buildings and presents Detroit as if it was some desolate war-zone. Sure, the city’s been through a lot in recent decades, but that’s why we dreamed of a new, futuristic Detroit when I was young. And we’re still trying to bring that dream to life with what we have. If we can’t build any new houses, we can at least make our environment a better place through music.”

And that’s exactly what Craig is busy doing.

And not merely as a producer and label-operator.

The Detroit Electronic Music Festival, which he helped found exactly 10 years ago, has become the biggest dance festival in the US. As Detroit’s cultural ambassador, he’s always committed to encouraging new talent.

Craig has now brought Detroit’s greatest sons together to celebrate techno’s 25th birthday, a project called D-25. Veterans such as Kevin Saunderson and Stacey Pullen are there, along with newcomers like Monty Luke. And, Juan Atkins is, of course, scheduled to make an appearance.

This year they are on tour celebrating the sound of the Motor City, at clubs in Europe, Asia and Australia.

All through the night. And on towards the future.

Listen to Craig’s Festival Hall performance at us.rebulletin.com/print2.0. Discover his thoughts on his most important tracks at redbullmusicacademyradio.com

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: RICHIE HOPSON/RED BULL PHOTOFILES

Heroes

PhotograPhy: Sven hoffmann

Print 2.0

us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 More about the man whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s planning to freefall from space

Heroes

Felix Baumgartner He has BASE-jumped from the world’s tallest structures and flew his wingsuit across the English Channel. His next project will see him freefalling from space, and redefine the limits of human endeavor Words: Christian Seiler for more than two years, the austrian helicopter pilot and all-round daredevil felix Baumgartner has been working on his next great adventure. this groundbreaking project, red Bull Stratos: mission to the edge of Space, scheduled for later this year, will recalibrate our knowledge of the human body and raise the bar for human endeavor. this is not hyperbole: the guy is going to break the sound barrier during his freefall from the edge of space. no one has ever broken the sound barrier without a machine to power them. here, he explains how and why he’s doing it, and how a little boy who dreamed of being a superhero is about to realize his fantasy at the point where technology and tenacity come together – more than 22 miles above the earth…

I. The Leap From ouTer Space Red Bulletin: What is Red Bull Stratos: Mission to the Edge of Space all about? felix Baumgartner: It’s about breaking four records: the highest manned balloon trip, the longest freefall, the fastest freefall and the highest jump in the world. In a capsule attached to a hotair balloon, I will ascend to a height of around 22.5 miles, at which point I will leave the capsule, wearing a spacesuit, and accelerate in freefall to a speed of 808mph. Doing this will mean breaking the sound barrier. In august 1960, Joseph Kittinger climbed to 102,800 feet in a helium balloon over new mexico, and then jumped out of its gondola. he was in freefall for 4 minutes 36 seconds, and almost

reached the speed of sound when he was clocked at 614mph [the speed of sound is 768mph]. I want to break these records.

Who’s on your team? art thompson, an aviation expert who, among other things, helped develop the famous Stealth Bomber.

I’m also working with the David Clark Company, which makes the suits and is one of naSa’s most important suppliers. then there’s Kittinger himself. and red Bull: without them, I’d never get my projects off the ground.

What are you expecting to get out of this? a huge amount of data, allowing analysis of what happens when extreme pressure is applied to the human body. after all, no one has yet gone faster than the speed of sound without a machine powering them.

What do you think it will be like for you? everything around me will be black. I’ll be alone in the stratosphere. When I jump, I’ll be going on a journey that no one has ever done. I will be the first person to break the sound barrier alone. that’ll be a record for all eternity. as such, a piece of me will become immortal.

How far have you got with testing?

I’ve done preliminary tests in the pressurized suit, at a simulated height of 131,233 feet, and I coped well.

The suit increases pressure to replace the atmospheric pressure which decreases the higher you go… yes. Without that pressure, your blood would start to boil. most military pilots have pressurized suits for altitudes up to 47,520 feet. hardly anyone has

Name Felix Baumgartner Born April 20, 1969, Salzburg, Austria Profession Helicopter pilot, BASe-jumper Highs and lows Broke the world records for highest and lowest BASe-jumps Spaceman His next project, Red Bull Stratos, will set the bar for human daring.

Watch the skies...

Web felixbaumgartner.com

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“ as a child, i always wanted to fly like our superheroes ”

been up to 118,110 feet like this, because such an extreme height is of no interest to the military.

What does it feel like 118,110 feet up? the suit inflates and the pressure increases: any movement is agony. the human body is not at home up there.

So how can you do a parachute jump under these conditions?

I’m learning from scratch. for starters, because of the helmet you can’t see if the parachute has opened. a mirror has to be installed for the purpose. and then you need total oxygen supply.

How much time are you spending in the suit? as much as possible. Kittinger told me I have to go singing and dancing in the suit. you shouldn’t 42

even notice that you’ve got the suit on. otherwise you’ll be suddenly and hopelessly out of your depth when you get to 118,110 feet.

What does he mean by that?

Imagine you’re sitting in the capsule. there’s not much space. It’s cold. you can’t feel your hands and feet. you can’t sweat, because if you do your visor will steam up. It’s not normal, so I have to prepare as much as possible.

And how do you jump from the capsule? there’s a sliding door that I can open, and there are two rails fixed to the outside, which I hold onto before I get going.

How big is the balloon?

It’s 475 feet tall. the skin is as thin as a normal

Heroes

plastic bag. that’s what makes getting the balloon started so hard every time. If there’s a skin tear, you have to pack the balloon up and start from scratch.

What’s the toughest challenge for you? only this: returning to earth alive.

Are you afraid as zero hour approaches?

I have respect for what I’m going to do, because never before have I had to rely so much on technology and my team.

And what about the moment you leap? You’ve got to have something as good as, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap...” exactly. Whenever I think about it, I get palpitations.

PhotograPhy: Sven hoffmann, Wolfgang luIf

II. earLy yearS When did you begin parachute jumping?

When I was 16. you’re not allowed to any earlier than that.

And why did you want to do it? as a kid I read all the superhero comics. I always wanted to be like Batman, Spider-man, Superman.

I wanted to be able to fly, and in my way, I’ve achieved that.

And what inspired you to go from parachuting to BASE-jumping?

In 1995, I watched a video of two guys jumping off el Capitan in yosemite national Park in California. not long after that, I saw rainer nowak jumping off the olympiaturm [the tower in munich’s olympic Park] on tv. I was totally fascinated by the idea you could parachute jump without an aeroplane. It comes very close to my idea of being able to fly.

Your maiden jump was off the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia in 1996...

It was just as I’d imagined it in my head thousands of times before. I was totally focused.

And with that leap you had joined the BASEjumping world.

I was energized. I would travel around, looking for places to jump from. I was always on the lookout.

Did it ever go wrong for you? only once, when I hadn’t taken one of the most important rules to heart: never let someone who isn’t either a BaSe-jumper or a parachutist control your parachute. my brother released the parachute much too early. I was spinning in the air, had to avoid a power cable and broke my leg when I landed. I was out of action for so long that I lost my job with a ventilation systems company.

Did that change things for you? yes, a lot, but all for the better. I started doing casual work as soon as I could, and that meant I had a lot of time to train.

And what happened to you as you completed more jumps?

I became more cautious. When I found a bridge in the north of Salzburg that was only 164 feet high, I asked the man who taught me everything about BaSe-jumping, tracy ‘Space’ Walker, for advice. he said, “If you want to kill yourself, do it on something big.” he was right. I mean, no jump is worth dying

for, but if you screw up jumping off the statue of Christ the redeemer in rio, at least that has a certain glory about it.

III. To The exTreme The project that got you noticed was your 1999 leap from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. How hard was it to get onto the roof?

I sat in front of the towers for a whole week to give myself an overview, checking for uniformed security staff and those who were on patrol in civvies. I had to look like a businessman so as not to arouse suspicion. no long hair. no jeans. no searching gazes.

How did you get the accreditation you needed to get into the building?

I went up to one of the security men and asked him to take a picture of me in front of the towers.

By the time I gave him my camera, I’d already taken a photograph of his ID. Back home, I made a copy of the ID for myself using Photoshop, laminated it and that was that.

How did you get in carrying a ’chute?

I had it in a briefcase, with a small hand-held camera. I was wearing plain glass spectacles to look a little more serious. I got to the top unchallenged, but spent an hour looking for the staircase to get out onto the window-cleaning crane. Below me was a garden I used to guide me in the right direction. I jumped, landed and disappeared. It was all perfect.

But I wasn’t happy until I was back in the hotel and could watch the recording. at that point, the event had become a story, and could be publicized.

“ with the parachute up and me in the air, i could start enjoying it, the city, the sea ” That same year saw you BASE-jump in the most spectacular setting: the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio. a Brazilian friend suggested it. the main issue was how to get onto the statue. there’s a spiral staircase inside it, which leads out onto the arms, but we would have had to break open three locks.

I thought that would be disrespectful, and so I looked for another way. I’d just seen The Rock in the movie theater, in which the hero uses a crossbow and I thought, “that’s it. Why don’t I fire a rope over Jesus’s arm with a crossbow and climb up?”

How hard was it to get that right?

I experimented with an elaborate system of arrows and different types of rope on a crane in Siezenheim, in austria, and it worked. I had done my homework on all aspects of Brazil – the shock came when we got to rio and went to Corcovado [the mountain on which the statue stands] by taxi.

Jesus’s hand, which is where I wanted to jump from, wasn’t over a sheer drop, as it had appeared to be 43

Heroes

“ if everything goes off without a hitch, i’ll turn my attention to my new career as a professional helicopter pilot ” the visitor platform – on the correct side, perfect.

We attached the climbing rope, fixed it in place and I climbed up it. everything went well.

You had a bird’s-eye view of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

I did, but I was only thinking about the jump.

Whether we’d calculated correctly. Whether everything would go according to plan. and then I saw a security car coming up the switchback. two guys got out of the car in their uniforms and were ranting and raving. and then I heard our helicopter approach. It was time. I was stressed.

How did you calm down?

I looked Jesus in the face. oddly, I suddenly felt very meek under the circumstances and thought to myself, “he won’t let me down.”

And He didn’t... a step forward, and then it was as quick as lightning. Parachute up, a turn to the right to get past the visitor platform, the stone balustrade fell away underneath me and then all of a sudden I had time and space. now, with the parachute up and me in the air, I could enjoy it for the first time. this city. the sunrise. the sea.

Did it feel as if all that enormous effort had been worthwhile in the end? not at first. When I got back to the hotel, I just felt empty and relieved. But the next day the pictures were in the papers all over the world.

And didn’t anyone complain that the statue had been desecrated?

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on the contrary – a Brazilian church newsletter printed the picture, along with the headline, “the lord was his witness.”

IV. a man can FLy How did you come up with the idea of your freefall crossing of the English Channel?

I didn’t. following the Brazil and malaysia jumps, offers came flying at me. two aerodynamics students from munich offered me a wing construction made out of carbon fiber, which, supposedly, I’d be able to fly with.

What did you do to get the plan off the ground? my team of experts and I carried out endless jumps, but testing prototypes is dangerous. one time the wing broke and shredded my parachute, so I had to use the emergency spare. another time, I couldn’t bring the wing down and went into an extreme tailspin. after two-and-a-half years, we were ready. on the day, we started at 6 a.m. in france [on July 31, 2003] because the wind blows toward the mainland. We climbed up to 32,808 feet and flew over to the english coast.

How did you know when to jump?

We had a traffic-light system on the plane. the countdown went three, two, one, then the light turned green and I released myself via the hatch, right over the english coast. I got an almighty blast in the face from the headwind.

How did you get your bearings in the air? from a plane that was flying ahead of me.

And how fast were you going?

I got up to 224mph but that felt like nothing at that height. all I could see under me were clouds.

I had serious doubts whether I was really getting any closer to the target. I was in freefall for sixand-a-half minutes – but it felt like an eternity. only when I passed through the clouds could I see Calais directly below me, and the observation tower that we had selected as a point of reference.

I was on target.

Were you worried that you might not make it? of course. It’s extremely important to know your own doubts, but to know at the same time that, hey, you’ve always managed it in the past. that gives you real self-confidence.

How evident is your self-confidence?

It’s unassailable.

That’s quite a statement.

It is. But with the Channel crossing, I did make man’s age-old dream of flight come true.

V. From aboVe To beLow The following year, 2004, you BASE-jumped into a cave 656 feet deep. a Croatian colleague came up with the plans for a jump in his home country, in mamet Cave in the northern velebit national Park. the cave had a bottleneck and became wider further down. that sounded appealing.

PhotograPhy: Sven hoffmann

in photographs, but directly above the visitors’ platform. that meant it wasn’t a 2,296-foot BaSe-jump, but one of 95 feet. the conditions had suddenly and dramatically changed.

What was the biggest problem?

We had to devise a system that would guarantee an immediate opening of the parachute. from a height 95 feet, you’ve got just 2.5 seconds before you hit the ground. after test jumps over water, we got the parachute open and stable after 1.5 seconds. that gave me a second to spare.

What about the other factors? the weather forecast for the planned jump day was good. We’d hired a couple of cameramen and a helicopter pilot. We had to get to Corcovado by 8pm the night before, because after that the area is sealed off and away from the roads, it’s just jungle.

We spent the night sleeping on tree trunks, because of the bugs on the ground. then it began to rain in the middle of the night – heavy Brazilian rain – and we had to cancel it. that happened to us five times.

How did the sixth attempt begin?

With a crossbow shot in the dead of night. a couple of seconds later I heard the zing of the arrow hitting

What was the biggest problem?

Knowing when to open the parachute. When you enter a tunnel, for example, at first you can’t see anything and you instinctively slow down. So at mamet Cave, I can’t see anything but I’m traveling faster and faster.

How did you get around it?

By using an acoustic signal. I had six seconds in total, and I had to release the parachute after five seconds and land in a 164-foot radius; that’s how big the cave was at the bottom.

How did you practice for the jump?

By suspending a hot air balloon at exactly 623 feet [the height from which he would jump above the cave floor] and simulating the cave’s dimensions on the ground. the tests showed that I needed a special parachute made for me, one that I could land in a narrower radius with.

And what about the jump proper?

It was dead quiet around me. I hadn’t slept the entire night. I’ll never get used to the moment. It’s do or die, there’s no way around it. you can feel yourself accelerating in the darkness, sensing the wind getting louder and louder, and you know you’ll run out of air beneath you eventually. But you mustn’t be conned by your fears into opening the parachute too early, or you might not live to tell the tale.

How did you feel after the landing?

I’ve rarely had such an adrenaline rush after a jump.

Was it your most difficult jump? yes, I think so.

Would you do it again? not for love or money.

PhotograPhy: garth mIlan/reD Bull PhotofIleS, aP ImageS/reD Bull PhotofIleS

VI. The Search For meanIng Do you sometimes ask yourself what is the point of doing what you do?

I know that I bring joy to many people. and I know that people need heroes, especially when times aren’t great. I don’t question what I do. I listen to my inner voice, which tells me I’m on the right path. I’ve calmed down as far as BaSe-jumping is concerned, because I’ve achieved a lot. But if I’m faced with a new challenge, I put everything else on the back burner and pursue my goal flat-out.

Aside from the superheroes when you were a boy, who do you admire in real life? the naSa astronauts. It was huge for me when Buzz aldrin, the second man on the moon after neil armstrong, took an interest in my Channel crossing. I live for that kind of encounter.

Do you think that Red Bull Stratos will open other doors for you?

Why not? maybe Steven Spielberg will ring and make a film about me. arnold Schwarzenegger has smoothed the way for us austrians in hollywood.

What will you do next?

It looks like it will be my final project. If everything goes off without a hitch, I’ll turn my attention to my new career as a professional helicopter pilot.

Find out more about Felix at us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 and his record-breaking project at www.redbullstratos.com

The unique equipment for the Red Bull Stratos: Mission to the edge of Space must be rigorously tested to survive altitudes of more than 22 miles high

faster than a bullet – how a real-life superhero is made The Red Bull Stratos project is as much an exercise in scientific advancement as groundbreaking adventure. The technical experts on Felix Baumgartner’s team all have space experience – some are former astronauts – and the majority of outside partners are established in space science and engineering. Extensive testing is required for the development and construction of the capsule, the balloon, the parachute and Baumgartner’s special jump suit.

In attempting the highest manned balloon trip, the highest parachute jump and the longest and quickest freefall, Red Bull Stratos will provide invaluable research data. This information will be used to help improve safety on future space flights.

Baumgartner, 41, has been preparing for Red Bull Stratos for almost two years, and alongside his physical training, similar to

that of astronauts, he’s also had to jump through administrative hoops. One of these was getting a balloonist’s license in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He has been spending the lead-up period to D-day carrying out tests of the suit, helmet and parachute in pressure chambers, a wind-tunnel and 25,000-foot skydives from a helicopter. The actual Stratos space-dive mission is scheduled for later this year.

Despite the meticulous preparation, several unknowns remain. Most will be revealed when Baumgartner is hurtling back towards Earth at a speed of almost 810mph.

“We don’t know how the body will react in the supersonic area when I’m careening back down to Earth,” he says. “None of the experts have been able to tell me what will happen when I’m traveling faster than a bullet.”

Felix Baumgartner with Joseph Kittinger, the ex-USAF Colonel whose jump from 102,800 feet set the world parachute descent record in 1960

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Heroes

Pioneer

gary fisher

From roots in California’s hippy counterculture to its gradual absorption into the mainstream, the mountain bike has evolved into a sophisticated machine. And one man has been there all the way Words: Paul Fearnley Portrait: Emily Shur

Name Gary Fisher Born 1950 Lives San Francisco, California, USA Big Daddy Inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 1988; Smithsonian magazine honored him as the Founding Father of Mountain Bikes in 1994 Bad Hair Day He was kicked out of the Cycling Federation in 1968 for having long hair, but was reinstated soon after Web fisherbikes.com

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The genesis is blurry. The French have claims. As do the British. It would be impolite, however, to deny ’70s Marin County’s cradling of the worldwide rush that is mountain biking. There was something in the air up there: The osmosis of a genius idea.

But even the bike bums of northern California, credited as being the founding fathers of off-road cycling – and there are quite a few – admit to a tangled web of local influences. First, there was American sociology professor John Finley Scott, off-roading his modified bikes as early as the ’50s.

Then came the downhill stoners of the Larkspur Canyon Gang, followed by the ghostlike ‘Pale Riders’ of the Morrow Dirt Club. All played their roles, but they’re walk-ons compared to Gary Fisher.

A rebellious road racer, Fisher held the baby, nursed it, guided it through its growing pains, and today, more than 30 years later, remains its most fervent proponent and wisest counsel. Not once has his love for it waned, and though that’s true of most of his contemporaries, he is the daddy of the founding fathers.

“I thought it would get big in the bike world,” he says, “but I never thought it would go beyond that.

I never thought my name would be in textbooks.

That’s crazy. I just wanted to make a bike and have a good time on it. It was that head-down mentality – ‘Let’s see where it takes us’ – that really worked for us.

“There were pockets of people who had bikes similar to ours doing things similar to what we were doing but those things died out. The seed never took hold. We propagated a tree. We had it together enough to come up with this thing called the mountain bike. And we made enough of them to make a dent in the world.”

‘We’ was a group of like-minded cyclists at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Fisher was a ‘punk kid’ whose promising junior road-racing and cyclo-cross career was cut short in 1968 because his hair wasn’t. Having spent four years providing light shows for San Francisco’s influential music scene,

including the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company, he returned to competition and helped found Vélo-Club Tamalpais, more denim and T-shirt than suit and stuffed shirt. Named after a nearby mountain, its riders were quick but quirky.

Marc Vendetti and Joe Breeze would cruise to its meetings on salvaged-for-$5 fat-tired single-speed Schwinn ‘paper boy’ bikes of the ’40s. They called them ballooners, beaters, bombers, klunkers…

Whatever, the idea caught on – Fisher’s first was an old Shelby Traveler – and it wasn’t long before hippy-dippy fun gained cultish overtones.

“In America during the ’50s and ’60s, the whole notion of society was to get away from the outdoors, become more urban,” says Fisher. “The authorities didn’t want hippies living out there – which they were – and so they put locks on all the gates. That’s when bikes became the magic key.

The authorities didn’t know about us. You could be out there all day and not see a soul. We had a private party going on in the woods.

“It was an antidote. I’d go out on a long road ride, train hard, come back and go out on a ‘klunk’ in the afternoon. It was hilarious, but it helped my road racing. All this crazy stuff a natural rollercoaster can give you… I was ready for anything. I became a real good bike-handler. No one else was doing it and that gave me an advantage.”

Ah, the competitive instinct. Not even Marin County, aka ‘Haight-Ashbury North’, was immune.

‘My klunker is faster than yours!’ soon bubbled to the surface. “And everything changes when you put a clock on it,” laughs Fisher.

The heft of their 42-pound junkshop/yard sale bikes meant downhill was a klunker racer’s only option. So the precipitous and twisting Cascade Canyon gravel fire road, which plunges 1,400 feet in a fraction over two miles, was selected as the showdown venue. The cascade canyon race, in October 1976, was won by Alan Bonds, roomie to Fisher, and race promoter Charlie Kelly at the

Pedal power: Fisher, at his home in San Francisco, still designs, rides and races bikes

Heroes

Making tracks: Repack downhill races in Fairfax, Marin County were an inspiration to the early mountain-bikers

‘Klunker Kamelot’: 32 Humboldt Avenue, San Anselmo. He was, in truth, the only competitor not to take a tumble.

This result was supposed to have been definitive but a rematch was demanded and the races – now known as Repack because you had repack your pedal-back brake with grease after it had fried dry on the descent – came steep and fast for three years thereafter, as did the technical innovations fostered by its competition.

Fisher, an avid and capable tinkerer – welding, soldering, brazing, lathe and milling machine – was the first Marin-eer to equip his klunker, a 1938 Schwinn, with derailleur gears. A purist at heart, he wanted to ride up as well as down mountains. He wanted to stop too, so fitted drum brakes front and rear, the latter salvaged from a decrepit tandem, and motorcycle levers and cables.

He had probably been influenced by the mysterious Morrow Dirt Club riders. In December 1974 they arrived unheralded from Cupertino, 75 miles south, to tackle a cyclo-cross in Marin County’s Mill Valley – and promptly disappeared for the next 20 years. Fisher says he had his racing head on that day and paid little attention to the strangers and their advanced mongrel klunkers. But a photo of the start shows him perched on his racer and taking a sneaky peek. (He was too smart not to notice.)

This was the cross-pollination that made the area such a fecund breeding ground. Repack was its hothouse. Its local renown grew quickly. Nobody asked Fisher, by now a Category One road racer, about his out-of-county exploits, but everybody wanted to know if he’d be at the next Repack, if he thought he could beat its gathering wave of out-oftowners. In December 1977, he risked it all and set a record – 4 minutes, 22 seconds – that still stands.

“First prize was various bike parts, not, as everyone thinks, a bag of pot. That would have been a little too hot. Charlie [Kelly] had enough on the line just putting the race on: no insurance, no permits, nothing. True outlaw racing.

“If you take people there today, they think, ‘Hey, this thing is steep.’ It was good to ride, but part of 48

Work-in-progress: Fisher’s Klunker with modifications that added weight, but increased the overall speed of the bike

Paper trail: The Fat Tire Flyer newsletter was started in 1980 and was a revelation for mountain-bike enthusiasts. The final issue was in 1987

winning was definitely not crashing. Every now and then a dozen or so try to break the record in an unofficial, bandit-type way. The closest they’ve got is about six seconds. The record is decent because we did it all the time, knew every bump and jump, and the conditions were perfect that day. But it would be beaten by 20-30 seconds if you held a UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Downhill there.”

Klunker donors were in short supply by 1977 and the few that remained were incapable of withstanding the strain of flat-out rough-road racing. So Kelly commissioned a custom-built lightweight frame. The first he wasn’t happy with; the second, designed and built in eight months by Breeze, was much more to his liking. Its maker had one too, and won with it first time out at Repack in October 1977. The klunkers’ number was up.

Fisher missed out on the first batch of 10 Breezers. Keen to incorporate his own ideas in any case, in early 1979 he made contact with Tom Ritchey of Redwood City, 50 miles south. A star junior road-racer, Ritchey was a superlative framebuilder too, accurate and fast. His proficiency set Fisher thinking. He already had a wider view of the new market that was forming. He was that bit slicker – in a good way – than his fellow Repackers. In 1978, while his Marin buddies trucked their bikes a thousand miles to Colorado to join mining town Crested Butte’s boozers-with-klunkers on their annual crossing of the 12,800-foot Pearl Pass mule track, Fisher, by now writing regularly for Bicycling magazine, jetted in from New York. He was with them absolutely in body and spirit. His mind, though, was perhaps elsewhere.

When his coach informed him he wasn’t ever going to be number one on the roads, Fisher, with Kelly as a partner, took an ill-prepared plunge into business in 1979. Theirs wasn’t the first company to mass-produce mountain bikes – ex-motorcycle racer Mert Lawwill just beat them to it – but it was the first to specialize. And it was called MountainBikes.

Fisher gave the sport, the phenomenon, its hook.

“The first bike cost $1,320. That was everything custom-made, everything nice. That was the basic

Heroes

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: WENDE CRAGG (1), STOCKFILE (1)

“I feel good about selling bikes to people” Fisher is evangelical about cycling

standard: nice. You could buy a full-on custom road bike for $900. But we used to say, ‘Hey, you don’t buy a cheap parachute.’ The first year we sold 160.

The second we sold close to a thousand.”

Suddenly, everything was moving apace. A local TV station had syndicated its January 1979 news article about Repack via its CBS affiliates, and mountain bikes went national.

Fisher’s ’80s were understandably helter-skelter, with bumps and divergent single-tracks. Kelly had no love for the permits and legalese required by sanctioned sport and big business; hands-on innovator Ritchey wanted to remain (and has) at the high end of the market; Fisher wanted to drive prices down and generate mass appeal.

“I feel good about selling bikes to people,” says Fisher. “I don’t think that can hurt. Any time you’re out riding and meet somebody on a bike, it’s a better way to meet.” Hippy meets entrepreneur was,

In a spin: Fisher rounding Repack’s Camera Corner on a 1941 Schwinn Excelsior

however, a tricky balance. “When you start out with a bunch of people and a couple of them become really successful, invariably one or two of the others will say, ‘Well, you know, I woulda been there too – but he did some really bad things and I don’t wanna be like him.’ That’s human nature. I like to be able to answer any critic, evaluate what I’m doing – but then there’s the impetuous side of me: I just go ahead and do stuff. I’ve done that a lot. Too much.”

Fisher wobbled but didn’t crash. He bought out Kelly, and the original company, in debt, was wound up in 1983, to be replaced by Gary Fisher Bicycles.

By which time Specialized of San Jose, California had, with Japanese input, produced its iconic (and heavily Ritchey-influenced) Stumpjumper, the original massively mass-produced mountain bike.

By 1991, according to Fisher, after the first peak of mountain bikes, his company was “too big to be small, too small to be big” and was sold to Anlen of Taiwan. It was an unhappy time, Fisher no more than a puppet president. Fortunately, the more understanding and flexible Trek of Wisconsin came to his rescue in 1993, acquiring the company and allowing Fisher free rein to fast-track his innovations. Since then, he’s been happy (literally) in the saddle of Gary Fisher bicycles: racing hard or riding gently, on the road and off, mountain or urban; listening intently, talking engagingly – he does an excellent, but I’m guessing unknowing, line in Bill Hicks-type sarcasm and delivery – innovating constantly. Trek’s in charge in the background, but Fisher’s the man upfront. It’s an arrangement that suits and works.

Approaching 60, Fisher has fewer options on the hair front but still cuts the honed figure of a hardcore cyclist. (Think Hulk Hogan’s triathlon-ing brother.) He’s a ‘punk’ statesman now. He knows that America’s love affair with the automobile is unbreakable but contends it is not unshakeable.

He is evangelical about the spread of high-school mountain-bike leagues and the fanning network of single-track trails that has fueled America’s second mountain-biking boom. He even has San Francisco politicians grabbing center-line action on electricassist bicycles as they scratch through traffic to be first to the next sound bite/photo opportunity.

Hell, even George ‘Dubya’ loved his mountain bike. (Fisher laughs at the irony.)

His successor in The White House has yet to be convinced, but if anybody can persuade Obama to swing his leg over a klunker, it’s Gary Fisher, the hippy entrepreneur.

For more about Gary Fisher, pedal over to fisherbikes.com

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photography: tami chappell/reuters

You’re out!: José Reyes applies the tag as the Atlanta Braves’ Yunel Escobar tries to steal second. Turn to page 72 to discover the Dominican streetball game that produced the Mets shortstop and a host of MLB stars.

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Daredevil pilots, musical maestros and big-hitting athletes 52 red bull air race takes to the skies of nyc 66 in la with m.i.a. 72 the caribbeanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s baseball star factory

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us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Amazing action from the Red Bull Air Race World Championship

The final race of the 2009 Red Bull Air Race World Championship took place along the Front Maritim in sun-drenched Barcelona, the second time the championship had visited the Catalan capital. Brit Paul Bonhomme capped off a powerful season by scooping the final and the series win. The first Barcelona race was held in 2006 (picture).

all eyes on the skies

Barcelona, rio, Budapest, london, â&#x20AC;Ś the red Bull air race graces some of the world's greatest cities. new York, You got next

PhotograPhy: Daniel grunD

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Monument Valley provided one of the most breathtaking settings in Red Bull Air Race history in 2007. Thirteen pilots snaked through the Air Gates, set up amid the sandstone spires of the Navajo Tribal Park, with Hungarian veteran Peter Besenyei grabbing the victory.

Taking place with the blessing of the president of the Navajo Nation, the Monument Valley Red Bull Air Race marked the first time a race was held over land. While Monument Valley attendance was limited by organizers, 105,000 people watched the race over a San Diego Bay dotted with white boats in May 2009 (right). San Diego hosted a race three years in a row from 2007 to 2009, but the US race in 2010 will take place in New York City.

PhotograPhy: Daniel grunD, tom lovelock/reD Bull air race via aP images

the faster theY weave through the course, the Better, on a demanding mission onlY the Best pilots in the world can complete

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Red Bull AIr Race Pilots are in constant training to build up their g-force resistance.

Hard turns can generate forces of up to 12 Gs, three times that of A drag racer.

The clouds move in over the City by the Bay as Brit Nigel Lamb competes in front of San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Marina district. The city served as the final stop of the first official Red Bull Air Race World Championship in 2005, where American Mike Mangold was crowned champion. San Francisco hosted the race again in 2006.

photography: Balazs gardi

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more than a million spectators attended the 2007 race, making it the Biggest sporting event in Brazil's historY

PhotograPhy: Balazs garDi (2)

Carioca cab drivers were counting up their money with relish following the stupendous viewer success of the Red Bull Air Race in Rio de Janeiro in 2007. With the Sugar Loaf and Christ the Redeemer providing the setting, German Klaus Schrodt (below) put on a show for the locals looking on from Botafugo Beach. The weather wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as cooperative this past Spring, when driving rain made it impossible to race on the second, and final, day and Hannes Arch was declared the winner after finishing first in qualifying.

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the skill required to flY at low levels and extremelY close to the air gates can't Be learned overnight. everY air race pilot has Years of acroBatic flYing experience.

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PhotograPhy: Balazs garDi

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Kirby Chambliss scored a thrilling victory at the 2008 Red Bull Air Race in front of 40,000 spectators in the British capital.

The American defeated Franceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Nicolas Ivanoff in a gripping final over the River Thames after home favorite Paul Bonhomme hit a pylon and failed to make the finals on a rainy, windswept afternoon when most pilots, including South African Glenn Dell (pictured), would probably rather have been inside the O2 Arena than flying past it.

PhotograPhy: Balazs garDi, Joerg mitter (2)

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Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge (left) links the northern and southern halves of the Dutch shipping capital, where the Red Bull Air Race was held in 2005 and 2008 and American Michael Goulian (pictured) finished 7th; The technically demanding Chicane is one of the more appealing viewing experiences, as the pilots – in this case South African Glen Dell in San Diego – weave elegantly in between each Air Gate. Texas-born Kirby Chambliss (below, left) is one of the championship’s most successful competitors. The 50-year-old 2006 World Champion was an accomplished aerobatics pilot before joining the Red Bull Air Race in its inaugural year in 2005. He’s since gone on to win the overall crown once, in 2006, and has finished no lower than sixth in the championship’s short history.

the air gates are the thorn in everY pilot's side. theY measure 65 feet tall and are made of a light spinnaker material that collapses easilY when hit.

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from ‘chocks awaY’ to ‘permission to land’, here’s everYthing You need to know aBout the world’s most exciting motorsport Words: Matt youson

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Arch, Hannes Hannes Arch is the 2008 Red Bull Air Race World Champion and an Austrian superhero. Skiing, mountain climbing, paragliding… if it’s dangerous, Arch excels at it. For example, he was the first man to BASE-jump from the north face of the Eiger. He was Red Bull Air Race runner-up in 2009 and wants his crown back.

Danube The Air Race equivalent of the Indianapolis 500 or the Monaco Grand Prix takes place in Budapest during Hungary’s National Day celebrations. Around half a million spectators line the banks of the Danube every year to see the planes race under the city’s famous Chain Bridge and do battle in front of the parliament building.

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Carbon-fiber Race planes are almost exclusively constructed from composite materials. Of the two types of plane currently racing, the Edge 540 has a carbon-fiber skin over a tubular steel body, while the MXS-R has an all-carbon monocoque. Both planes have carbon-fiber wings.

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G-Force Pilots fly up to 12G – anything higher results in instant disqualification. By comparison, the Olympic luge at Whistler generated loads of 5G. The pilots can handle G-loads higher than those experienced by an astronaut or a fighter pilot thanks to an innovative G-Race suit and many hours of G-tolerance training.

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Arch’s nemesis, reigning World Champion Paul Bonhomme, is a crisp, cool and infinitely elegant pilot. Others may be faster, but the Englishman almost never makes mistakes. He’s been known to fly a 747 for British Airways, though in a style more obviously suited to flying a Spitfire – another of his hobbies.

fly against the clock one last time for the ultimate prize. Unlike in previous rounds, all four pilots are in the air at the same time, and are held incommunicado while airborne – and because they are not aware of the times posted by their rivals, each is compelled to fly absolutely to the limit.

High-definition television coverage and live webcasting of these magnificent men in their flying machines has won the prestigious Sports Emmy for Outstanding Technical Team (Remote) for the past two years, beating heavyweight broadcast rivals such as NBC.

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Final 4 Super 8 then Final 4. With each successive round the slowest four competitors are eliminated, until only four pilots are left. These four

As with all forms of motorsports, air racers are constantly in search of more juice. Their six-cylinder, race-prepared engines are forever being tweaked to drag out just a little more horsepower. Actual figures are secret, but around 350hp is a good number.

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Incorrect flying The most common form of penalty a pilot will receive is for incorrect level- or knife-flying.

With a 15-degree arc of leeway, pilots will be hit with a 2-second penalty each time they go through an Air Gate with wings askew.

A 2-second penalty is also given for flying too high, whereas flying too low, or deviating away from the specified course, results in instant disqualification.

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Judging Air Race infractions are monitored by the judges in race control who, backed by replay technology, rule on such infringements as over-G, incorrect level flying or exceeding maximum entry speed, meting out penalty seconds or disqualifications.

The stewards are under the control of the race director; at many races this is Cmdr. James DiMatteo, former commanding officer at the US Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as Top Gun. Nobody argues with Jimmy.

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Knife-edge Pilots must fly through blue gates with wings level to the horizontal plane, but when they reach a red gate, they must have wings level to the vertical plane. This is known as ‘knife-edge’ flying.

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Lisbon Eight countries in five continents will be visited during this year’s Red Bull Air Race World Championship, the last of which will be a title showdown over the River Tagus, in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.

Before the finale, the championship will visit Abu Dhabi (UAE), Perth (AUS), Rio de Janeiro (BRA), Windsor (CAN), New York City (USA), Budapest (HUN) and Lausitz (GER).

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Matt Hall The rookie sensation of 2009 is a genuine championship contender this year. Hall, a former combat instructor in the Royal Australian Air Force, has the rare distinction of flying combat missions for the USAF in the Gulf while on attachment, and is decorated by both nations.

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New York After gracing San Francisco, San Diego and Monument Valley, the Red Bull Air Race has this year found a new home in the US, racing on the Hudson River between Manhattan and Jersey City.

PhotograPhy: matthias hangst/reD Bull air race via aP images, tom lovelock/reD Bull air race via aP images, BoB martin/reD Bull air race via aP images

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grand prize is the honor of being crowned World Champion. There are 12 points on offer for victory, 10 for 2nd place and then on down to 1 point for finishing 11th.

Alongside Bonhomme and Arch, Texan Kirby Chambliss is the only other champ racing in 2010.

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Ontario New York is part of a North American double-header, with the Championship making the short journey from Windsor, Ontario, home state of our youngest pilot, Pete McLeod. At each round, the Air Race builds its own hangar complex, race control tower, and, if necessary, a temporary race airport.

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Qualifying This takes place the day before the race. Each pilot gets two runs through the course; the 10 quickest pilots advance to the Top 12. On the morning of Race Day, the other five pilots get another chance to qualify for two wildcard slots in the Race. One point is awarded to the fastest qualifier, who also has the advantage of flying last in the race.

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Pylons The inflatable pylons that form the Air Gates have been specifically developed for the Red Bull Air Race World Championship. Made from an ultra-light fabric similar to that used in spinnaker sails, they are designed to disintegrate when hit by a plane – of course, the point of the air race is for the pilots to fly between them. Hitting an Air Gate incurs a 6-second penalty. It takes the gate crews about 2 minutes to inflate a new pylon. If the venue has gusting winds, they might get through 100 Air Gates over the week.

The battle between the technical brains that prepare the aircraft 250 m is as fierce as that between the pilots. The technicians are preoccupied with taking weight out of the planes and making them more aerodynamically efficient.

Most technicians are talented pilots in their own right.

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Ultra-light Weighing in at a minimum of 1,188lb (compared with a 1,364lb F1 car or a 3,400lb NASCAR) race planes are the lightest and most nimble racing machines on – or off – the planet. Most Red Bull Air Race planes race at the minimum, but that doesn’t stop technicians searching for ways to make them lighter – taking weight out of one area means it can be put back in a place more beneficial to the aircraft's balance.

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This season, Czech Air Force pilot Martin Sonka and Brazil’s Adilson Kindlemann are the championship’s rookie pilots.

Like those before them, they had to meet strict entrance criteria: first, placing highly in either the World or European Aerobatic Championships, and then graduating with a superlicense from the rigorous course at the Red Bull Air Race qualification camp.

Manufactured by MX Aircraft of North Carolina, this all-carbon machine is the new kid on the Red Bull Air Race block. A bespoke design for racing, it replaces the MX2 plane, which enjoyed occasional success in the series.

The new design is lighter, meaner, faster and more responsive.

At each end of a track, the race plane needs to make a 180-degree change of direction. The fastest way to achieve this is a tight upand-over loop – a high-G maneuver sometimes called the Half Cuban Eight. In the stripped-down racing world, it’s called by its less frilly name: The Vertical Turning Maneuver.

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As with any aircraft, while the pilot is busy managing pitch and roll with his hands, his feet are busy on the rudder pedals controlling yaw. In a knife-edge, flying only 30 feet above the water, controlling yaw has to be an instinctive, automatic act that only years of experience can provide.

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Zivko Edge 540 Despite the advances made by the MXS-R, the Edge 540, made by Oklahoma’s Zivko Aeronautics Inc, remains the dominant aircraft in the championship, having been flown by every World Champion since the inception of the series.

Widely used in aerobatics, the plane is heavily adapted for racing, and, more recently, has been produced in a bespoke ‘V3’ specification for the Red Bull Air Race. 540 refers to its roll-rate: 540 degrees per second.

Air Race action at us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 More on this year’s championship at www.redbullairrace.com

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M.I.A. ConfIdentIAl Pop music’s most vocal star traded drizzly London for the Golden State to record her latest album. She met The Red Bulletin to talk about Texan rave, motherhood and whether it’s time to consider herself a musician Words: Tom Hall Photography: Brigitte Sire

Eric Stenman, a polite, bespectacled studio technician, sits calmly at the mixing desk in the main production room of Red Bull Studios in Los Angeles. Staring through the glass pane into the large empty recording space, if you suspend your disbelief, he could be at the bridge of a starship looking out into the unknown. It’s a place full of quiet potential. Screens glow, the odd digital console hums into life then dies back down.

We sip coffee. We wait...

“Not many new studios of this caliber are being built because of the economic challenges the record industry faces,” he explains. “If it was here just to make money it’d be kind of a losing battle. A lot of younger bands would never be able to afford this. It’s a very modern facility that Red Bull uses to try and help people out early on…”

He’s suddenly interrupted. “…it’s the goblin’s belly!”

An unmistakably rowdy South London accent bursts the silence as M.I.A. and her assistant clatter through the double doors laughing over a totally unrelated conversation. Realizing they have company, she turns and extends a hand.

“Hello. I’m M.I.A.” Prior to that entrance, for a recording studio the silence was almost deafening. We sit among muted 66

blue walls and brown leather couches in a windowless air-conditioned room. Outside, only a few feet, yet a world away, the mid-morning Los Angeles sun shimmers off billions of smog particles that both smother and illuminate the city like microscopic confetti.

From the outside, the multi-million dollar complex looks unremarkable enough – part of an office building in a non-descript parking lot. Cars rush by on the freeway into Santa Monica, a beachside tapestry of stately art-deco cut together with 7-Elevens and shabby Mexican restaraunts.

Art-taco? Nearly. In Los Angeles you can find your American hero on the walk of fame, but the subway train to Hollywood Boulevard speaks Spanish. Yet this dusty frontier town pulls in talented outcasts like a sponge, somehow triumphantly succeeding in being the entertainment capital of world.

Maya Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A., is one of those outcasts. Dressed demurely today in black trousers and black shirt, the only hint of the riotous get up she’s well-known for is a pair of oversized gold earrings and some white heels, which, on anyone else, might look a bit lame.

“I’m only gonna buy clothes from Wal-Mart from now on,” she says, taking a seat, “I’m rebelling

Seeing things differently: M.I.A.’s visual background made her want to challenge herself by making albums.

“I wanted to work with what I felt weakest at,” she says

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against the rebellion, against the Lady Gagas. I’m gonna look so boring, but I’m appropriating it.

Making it mine.”

She smiles, like she’s daring someone to call her out on it. But it’s exactly the kind of about-face that fans should be used to.

Over the past five years M.I.A. has developed from an abrasive outsider into an individual force at pop music’s high table. Phrases like risk-taker and maverick are thrown about all too regularly these days. We all know Britney goes crazy sometimes and Lady Gaga’s tabloid shtick can have construction workers choking on their sandwiches. But do those stars ever say anything that sticks in the throat past lunchtime? M.I.A. does, not only through her expansive musical vision, but purely by who she is.

Case in point, ‘Born Free’, the dark and disturbing riot of a video that went viral after its May release and had nervous office workers around the world prematurely shutting their YouTube windows.

The video was the first off her new album, the quixotically-named /\/\/\\//\, due to drop in midJuly. It will be the London-born, Sri-Lankan-raised singer’s third, following 2005’s Arular, and 2007’s Kala. Both were defined by cut’n’paste mutated dance music that have borrowed and liberally pilfered musical styles from all over the world. It’s mash-up party music created with fierce artistry.

You could describe it as an anything-goes sound, but that wouldn’t account for the discerning taste and strict temperament of this former student of Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. Along with regular musical collaborators Wes ‘Diplo’ Pentz and Dave ‘Switch’ Taylor, she’s brought underexposed genres such as the traditional Tamil music of her homeland and performers such as The Wilcannia Mob, a group of five Australian Aboriginals to the mainstream, all the time underpinned by the avant-garde dance and hip-hop music that unites her sound.

“I came from a visual background. The first two albums came around because I wanted to challenge myself and work with what I felt weakest at,” says M.I.A. who, before music, was an accomplished artist whose provocative designs earned a nomination for the alternative Turner Prize in 2002.

“At that time Bush was in power, you couldn’t say what you wanted to say. The mainstream was like super… no, hyper-safe and boring. I was desperate for something else... like...”

She pauses, as if she’s in deep thought. It’s an unnerving trait. But normally something arrives on the other side so simple and fully formed that you wonder why you never saw it coming.

“I wanted to make people feel confident enough to mess something up,” she concludes. She sees album number three as a turning point in her career, for reasons somewhat difficult to understand.

“On this album I definitely want my voice to be heard. I don’t want any gimmicks or tricks. Finally I’m confronting it. Am I a musician or not? And if I’m not, it’s like ‘Get out!’”

Three albums in, it might be a bit late to be asking that question. Since the release of Kala,

M.I.A.’s profile has rocketed, with Grammy and Oscar nominations and a bonafide worldwide hit with ‘Paper Planes’. The producers on that track, Diplo and Switch, were back in the studios for this album as well. The three have shared a like-minded random approach since meeting on M.I.A.’s first record. It’s the kind of relationship that days earlier saw them scaling a fence into the next parking lot to ‘borrow’ a country and western band.

“We were out the back having a cigarette,” says Switch. “All of a sudden we heard this clanging and whooping and cheering with a rockabilly singer and curiosity just got the better of us. So we ended up hijacking the band.”

“I needed them for a Texan rave song,” adds M.I.A., like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“She finds motivation in strange places. When me, Wes and her get in a room things get pretty weird!” says Switch.

Diplo dissects that chemistry further. “We have a good writing partnership. We try to shake things up. Perhaps M.I.A. will start with a beat, then maybe one of us will bring a lyric, but then we’ll do something crazy like hijack a country band.

That’s our greatest asset. We’re always looking for the next accident.”

And accidents can happen. M.I.A. is the first to admit that her background doesn’t lend itself to music superstardom. The thing that sets her career apart from the legions of DIY pop imitators is how far from the mainstream she actually began.

She says she can’t even sing.

“I was totally well known for being tone deaf at college,” she says of her time at Central St Martins.

“I used to walk down the corridor singing whatever was on the radio like ‘Wonderwall’ and I was so off. It was so bad. Everyone used to notice.”

‘Wonderwall’ might be a sacred text to the deadly earnest British pop evangelist, but try telling that to Jay-Z, who M.I.A. performed with at the 2009 Grammys. In the USA, the musical religion is parties, money and most of all, hip-hop. M.I.A.’s try-anything-once spirit has bypassed the UK’s indie-snobbery and fast-tracked her to acceptance in that ultra-competitive world.

“It’s so strange because I didn’t even try,” she says and laughs. “Americans got it by not getting it in a way. They have fewer preconceptions than in England. I used to try and explain my viewpoint to English people and they just didn’t understand. Now I’ve got this international platform and it’s so important to make a statement because that is so rare. It’s so rare to have anyone say anything these days.”

The statement she refers to is her outspoken views on the Sri Lankan government. Some rappers are raised in ghettos, but M.I.A. spent the first 10 years of her life in a civil war zone.

Her family fled Sri Lanka to the UK in the mid-1980s as refugees due to her father’s involvement with the Tamil military struggle.

M.I.A. speaks out regularly on issues such as the systematic prejudice she says is enforced on her ethnic minority, the Tamils, by the 69

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Sinhalese Sri Lankan government. “I think the refugee mentality is really important to everything I’ve done. Even when I was an adult living in London I lived on loads of other peoples’ couches, rent-free, just trying to get by. All my clothes were made up of a bit of somebody else’s. Some see that as eclectic, but it’s actually just bred from my situation and necessity. If I wear something now, it’ll be in American Apparel two weeks later,” she says and laughs. “They do it better, cheaper and faster!”

Now living in Los Angeles, the birth of her first child in 2009 has meant music has become an even more important part of her life.

“If I didn’t have a baby I’d probably be taking this job for granted. But I still want to do it. I’m making time for it,” she says. “Music is about life experience and you can’t fake that, you can’t repeat the same process twice because each record you make, different stuff has happened to you.”

The provisional track names on the studio whiteboard hint at the fun she, Diplo and Switch

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had. “My new album is going to hopefully reflect America, my son is half-American, but because of my family background I can’t leave the USA for fear of not being allowed back in,” she says. “Sadly, the place we come from is viewed as controversial. And that’s awful because it’s just not true.”

It’s a paradox that M.I.A. will have to deal with as her star rises ever higher and her outspoken views reach ever further into the mainstream.

But she feels no need to pander to anyone else’s version of success.

“I don’t think I do pop. We got on the radio with ‘Paper Planes’ by sampling gunshots and cash registers and doing something messed up” she says, “But people still say to me, what are you doing?

Cash in! Make that Euro-trance hit!...”

She inserts one of those endless pauses that seem to be holding the world up at gunpoint. Then smiles.

“I just can’t think like that,” she says finally. “I don’t know what a pop song is.”

Sound out M.I.A. on redbullmusicacademyradio.com

THE NEW SOUND The Red Bull Studios in Santa Monica is a world-class facility that has hosted sessions from artists as diverse as hip-hop superstar Nas (above) to up-and-coming acts like The Cab. Never heard of The Cab? That’s kind of the point. The studio uncovers the freshest sounds – and they could come from anywhere.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT DOWNS/RED BULL PHOTOFILES (1)

Making a statement (below): M.I.A. leaves her mark on the Red Bull studio wall

The Yas hotel, yas island abu dhabi

Abu DhAbi ViP PAckAge comPetition

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Be Our VIP Guest At The 2011 Red Bull Air Race Opening Round In Stunning Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority has teamed up with award-winning Etihad Airways and the iconic Yas Hotel to give one lucky reader and a friend luxury return flights, five-star accommodation and VIP hospitality at the 2011 Red Bull Air Race in stunning Abu Dhabi.

On this fabulous trip – worth US$20,000 – the winner will experience the famed Arabian hospitality, stay and travel in unparalleled luxury and watch one of the world’s most dramatic motorsports as the 2011 championship takes to the UAE capital’s clear blue skies over its dramatic Corniche.

Fly with Etihad to sample the service that earned it the ‘World’s Best Airline’ in the 2009 World Travel Awards. Passengers now flying with the UAE’s national carrier to 60 destinations travel in the utmost comfort, whether in Etihad’s Diamond, Pearl or Coral zones. Our winners will fly in Pearl

Zone and experience luxurious seating, extensive entertainment options, ambient mood lighting and signature cuisine.

On arrival, the winners will be whisked away by limousine to the stunning Yas Hotel, the only one in the world straddling an F1™ race track, for their relaxing five-night stay.

Being only a stone’s throw from Ferrari World – the largest indoor and first Ferrari theme park with over 20 rides and attractions, including the world’s fastest rollercoaster – winners will have an unforgettable experience on dynamic Yas Island.

Then be our VIP guest in the exclusive Red Bull Air Race ‘High Fliers’ Lounge, to watch the world’s best pilots fly at speeds reaching 370km/h as they navigate dozens of inflatable air gates along the city’s sweeping waterfront.

For your chance to win, simply log onto www.adta.ae click on the ‘competitions’ link and follow the instructions.

Etihad pearl zone

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MORE THAN JUST A GAME

From Pedro Martinez to Mariano Duncan, Major League Baseballâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wealth of Dominican talent honed their skills on this island nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pot-holed streets, playing a unique version of Stickball and dreaming of glory Words: Drew B Glazer Photography: Tara Darby

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hroughout this sprawl of tenements, tangled power lines hang like vines. Most residents here, in one of the capital Santo Domingo’s poorest barrios, can’t afford electricity.

They grab what they can by splicing into the main lines – the resulting citywide blackouts are legendary and frequent in the Dominican Republic.

When I visit Villa Francia one night in May, a DJ has found enough power for his massive speakers to fill the area with pulsing reggaetón. Several hundred people are out and dancing – from noodly little girls in tank tops to old men whose wrinkled faces are hidden in the shade of low-pulled baseball hats. But this isn’t a dance party. The main event is a fiercely competitive and uniquely Dominican version of street baseball called vitilla, and it’s about to begin. This asphalt playing field is normally a busy junction, but tonight it’s blocked to traffic with rocks and tires.

The vitilla itself is the discarded plastic top of a gallon watercooler bottle.

Good pitchers, like the trash-talking hurler in tight jeans here, can fling them at great speeds, and when they do, they buzz towards the batter like hockey pucks. Some put such spin on the vitilla that it drops over the plate like it’s suddenly taken on water, or hooks to the left as if pulled by a string.

The pitcher lifts his leg high, and with a flick of the wrist, sidearms the vitilla toward the batter – a man with rosary beads, wielding a broomstick.

The vitilla soars on a level. But it hangs over the plate just long enough for 27-year-old Carlos Sierra to make solid contact. The sound of the wood striking plastic is the clipped snap of

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a wishbone. By the way Sierra runs hard to first base – the head-down charge of a bull – it’s clear that this is anything but fun and games.

“This Carlos – he’s one of the best,” a man wearing a tracksuit tells me as he jabs an elbow into my ribs. He should know. His name is Nelson Gerónimo, and he’s one of the neighborhood’s dozen or so buscónes, or scouts. They’re constantly looking to help elevate local talent to lucrative Major League contracts, for a cut, and are often the first contact for professional scouts and agents. “Did you see how hard he hit that? Did you see how fast he swings?”

Exactly when this type of baseball got started, and how it became a de facto training program for dozens of penniless future stars, is hard to pin down. But street folklorists I talked to seem to agree it was sometime in the 1970s, when these plastic caps suddenly started popping up in the trash. They made great baseballs for the thousands of kids who couldn’t afford $100 leather gloves and bats, or even balls. “Up to then, we used to decapitate one of our friend’s sister’s dolls, pull the hair out, stuff the hollow head with a cloth, and use that as a ball,” Gerónimo tells me. The 48-year-old former player is leaning with his hands on his knees, never taking his eyes off the action.

Dominicans have played pelota, or ball, for more than a century. Cuban immigrants drawn to the Dominican sugar industry brought the game with them after learning it from American sailors a few decades earlier. Baseball has become by far the most dominant sport in both Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Unlike most places in Latin America, Dominicans wouldn’t know what to do with a soccer ball if it rolled up and hit them on the foot.

“Everyone here put a ball and glove in their crib instead of a baby doll,” Gerónimo tells me.

Obsession has led to success. The Dominican Republic has become the go-to place for teams to find and sign young talent. Nearly half of American Minor League players are Dominican, and some 90 players are playing at an elite level in the Major League, including some of America’s biggest names (many of whom are now, sadly, tainted by the seemingly never-ending steroid scandal), players such as the hulking Red Sox power-hitter David Ortiz; bona fide star and three-time MVP Albert Pujols; and ace pitcher

Pedro Martínez, whose rocketing fastball has turned some of the best batters in the Majors into human windmills.

Poor American kids spend hours honing their skills on the basketball court, hoping it will lead to a professional contract. Their chances are about as good as getting chosen to fly the Space Shuttle. But everyone here seems to know someone who ascended from vitilla to the Major Leagues. Like dozens of other street ball players I talked to, Carlos really expected to be one of them.

But now, here he is, showing me a trophy

from 1997 in his tiny but immaculate apartment. It’s just upstairs from the vitilla game. He lives there with his wife, two young daughters and three nieces and nephews whom he supports.

“As long as I could walk, I played vitilla and baseball,” says Carlos.

“Everyone wants to arrive at the day when all the other kids see you on television and see you as a hero.

Everyone hopes to play in the US.” Hunger cut short Carlos’s dream 13 years ago. The way he tells the story, he was one of the best hitters in Villa

Francia. But his family, like most others, needed extra income. He quit school – and baseball – to work at a corner store and sell empanadas on the street.

“People everywhere in the country are trying to find a way to leave their economic problems behind,” he says.

And for many, vitilla at the very least serves as an emotional escape from nagging hunger and poverty. Still, last year, Carlos and his neighborhood team managed to make some money from the game by beating hundreds of other players in the first national vitilla

A simple game played on the pot-holed streets of Dominican Republic towns with discarded watercooler caps (left), vitilla has managed to produce top Major League Baseball players with astounding regularity

A dose of gritty realism – the need to work his way out of poverty – put an end to Carlos Sierra’s Major League hopes a decade ago, but he still has a trophy as a memory (top left). Meanwhile, Carlos Valdez (bottom left) and Miguel Prieto (bottom right) still dream of success. One of the hundreds of hopefuls (top right) heading to the showcase (this page, above) hoping to impress the Major League scouts that turn up to these events

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tournament, and walked away with 50,000 pesos, or about $1,400 – not to mention a little bit of glory.

“Wherever I go now, they call out my name,” he says, scooping up his daughter, who had her arms around his legs. “I was at a mall far from here a few months ago. And I heard someone say, ‘Is that the vitilla champion?’”

For some perspective, I rang an expert on Dominican baseball – Professor Allan M. Klein of Northeastern University in Boston, who is working on his fourth book on the sport.

“The Dominican Republic is the only country I’ve run into where there’s zero correlation between education and opportunity, so baseball becomes a very legitimate resource,” Klein says. “You don’t go to school, because there’s no point in going to school. I’ll tell a black kid in a rough US neighborhood, ‘I know you want to go in the NBA, but you’d be better served getting a bachelor’s degree because we live in a country with a relationship between education and opportunity. But here, for a good reason, baseball becomes a rational response to an irrational problem.”

Beyond players, there’s an entire baseball ecosystem that pervades the Dominican Republic. It includes trainers, scouts, agents, managers, coaches, predators and parasites – all of whom hope to win the lottery of latching onto a successful prospect. Every Major League team has an academy here now.

Promising teenage prospects are plucked from ghettos like Villa Francia, put in dormitories, fed well, and trained into moneymaking, wiry baseball machines.

It’s a rare opportunity, though maybe the best, to climb out of poverty here.

My new friend Nelson, by many accounts, is a benign force. He’s someone who has channeled his love of the game, not lust for money, into coaching neighborhood players and organizing vitilla tournaments, maybe helping one of his kids become a millionaire – and making a little scratch himself. Like many people I spoke to, he swears that vitilla helps develop Major League skills.

He spends most afternoons and evenings hunting around the city for good games.

“The vitilla is lateral, so it’s harder to hit. It’s the best training for hand-eye coordination. If you can hit a vitilla, you can really hit a baseball,” he says.

In vitilla, like in the hard streets of Santo Domingo, you adapt to the tough terrain – or lose. So kids who move up are masters on a tight lawn, deep green and flat, where it’s easy to spot the ball.

“EvERyONE wANTS TO ARRivE AT THE dAy wHEN All THE OTHER kidS SEE yOU ON TElEviSiON. EvERyONE HOpES TO plAy iN THE US.”

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“FOR MANy, viTillA SERvES AS AN EMOTiONAl ESCApE FROM HUNGER ANd pOvERTy” And the gloves they are given make the ball stick like Velcro, compared to the bare hands they’ve used to stop a speeding ball. And imagine the power behind a solid maple bat, compared to the splintered and skinny broomsticks…

I want to see the next level of play – young teenage players with promise who were plucked from street games and informal neighborhood leagues to train in elite academies. So the next day, I tag along with Luis Scheker, a baseball scout based in Santo Domingo for the Seattle Mariners. We’re driving east to San Pedro de Macoris, a city about an hour away, nicknamed the ‘cradle of shortstops’ because of the number of players, from Tony Fernandez to Mariano Duncan, who have gone on to major league success at the position. Along the coast road, windswept coconut palms are framed by a choppy gray sea.

“We’re getting more and more interest from the Major Leagues to find 78

better talent,” he says chewing a wad of tobacco, a habit he picked up while playing for a Minor League team in the US more than a decade ago. “We prefer 16- and 17-year-olds, before they develop their style. Sometimes we visit as many as seven baseball academies each day.”

Today, we’re headed to what is called, in Spanglish, ‘un showcase’. Dozens of pro scouts like Scheker were called by the manager of a respected baseball academy to see his new crop of players.

Like a swarm of mosquitoes, they buzz from showcase to game, looking for fresh young blood.

By the time we arrive at the crumbling arena, the sun is high and hot, and players from Los Rookies baseball academy, in immaculate white uniforms, are showing the skills that they’ve spent their young lives honing.

The owner of Los Rookies hands each

scout a roster listing prospects’ height, weight, where they were raised, and best attributes. The scouts pore over every statistic. They wield stopwatches and radar guns, measuring milliseconds that, literally, could determine whether a 15-year-old will become a millionaire.

“The time it takes for a Major League player to field the ball, scoop it from his glove and throw it is 2.1 seconds,” Scheker tells me, looking up from his clipboard.

“I will only consider someone who can do it faster.” Scheker doesn’t seem all that interested in today’s showcase. With a wad of tobacco bulging his cheek, he’s looking everywhere but at the players.

It’s hard to tell if he’s unimpressed or attempting a poker face to avoid tipping off competing scouts. He won’t say.

One player caught my eye. He was well over 6 feet tall, with the tautness of a bamboo shoot. But while most of the other players were darting around in a manic fury, he relaxed placidly

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (3)

Action

on a bench in the shade. The stakes were so high, but this young man, Deion Sanders Herreria, was so calm.

“There’s no pressure here,” he assures me. “God is watching me today.”

Maybe it’s the confidence that comes with being named after the fleet-footed Deion Sanders – a player never overly burdened by what others had to say about him.

The Dominican Deion Sanders plays baseball five hours a day, seven days a week (more, probably, than the American one ever did). To unwind on most afternoons, he’ll play a pick-up game of vitilla until dark. It’s clear that he’s one of those who has gone all-in for a shot at the Majors: he dropped out of school years ago and refuses even to consider the possibility that he might not sign a Major League contract.

“You have to fight to get into the Majors,” Herreria says, allowing his mouth to stretch into a smile for just a fleeting moment. “Look at how many players there are here.”

The director of Los Rookies calls Herreria’s name, and he sprints to his place on top of the gently sloping pitcher’s mound, hoping it’s just his first stop to the top of the world.

As he stands on the sidelines taking notes, I ask Scheker if he runs into many kids like Herreria – those who don’t have a back-up plan. He spits and shakes his head. “Most people are like that,” he says. And he blames his entire country for expecting too much from baseball for too long.

“Honestly, I think it’s a sacrifice to society. More than anything, these kids are identifying with distant heroes – the successful ones. And now, we Dominicans don’t have anything else that we’re good at.”

But for now, all that matters is striking the plastic vitilla with the broomstick bat. For Carlos, whose team finished third at the Red Bull Clasico de Vitilla tournament last October (this year’s will feature a team from New York), repetition is the key to success.

He’s up to bat again, taking a few practice swings and blowing a quick kiss to his pudgy one-year-old daughter, who’s in the crowd, dressed in pink. The pitcher looks behind him, checking the player on second base. He winds up, and releases the vitilla.

Carlos swings hard. And when the wishbone cracks again, he runs like hell, as if he’s fleeing something.

Watch the highlights from the Clasico de Vitilla at www.redbull.com

LIVING THE DREAM From the Dominican streets to the green grass oF america PeDRO MARtinez One of baseball’s most feared arms (top left), he’s in the elite club of pitchers to strike out more than 3,000 batters.

He got his start hurling a doll’s head on the streets of Manoguayabo.

DAViD ORtiz They don’t call him Big Papi for nothing – this 6 feet 4 inch, 224-pound giant (top right) has one of the biggest swings in the Major Leagues. He averaged a staggering

42 home runs over his first six years with the Boston Red Sox, and honed his bat speed playing vitilla as a kid on the streets of Santo Domingo.

JOSe ReyeS Hours of street ball in the island’s tobacco-growing north led this athletic shortstop (above) to become a dominant offensive machine for the New York Mets. His solid swing gets him on base, but he really makes an impact once there – his

fast feet have carried him to the top of the Mets’ career stolen base rankings.

MAnny ACtA He’s the skipper of the Cleveland Indians, and, at just 41, he’s one of the youngest managers in the Major Leagues.

Like Sammy Sosa, Acta developed his love of baseball and sound fundamentals playing street ball in the sugar cane-growing region of San Pedro de Macoris.

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More Body&Mind Gear, clubs and tunes that will lift mind, body and soul

PhotograPhy: Naish/red Bull Photofiles

82 salzburg’s hangar-7 museum 84 get the gear: surf legend robby naish 86 behind the velvet rope at new york’s top clubs 88 listings 92 nightlife 98 mind’s eye: stephen bayley’s new york

High life: Robby Naish catches a monster wave in Hawaii. Check out the gear the champion surfer never leaves home without on page 84

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pilatus porter pC-6 The Red Bull Skydive team’s very own airdrop plane: its impressive paint job illustrates the parachutist’s aerial choreography.

Cessna Ce 208 amphibian Caravan Able to put down on land or water, this plane began its life in the USA. It made the trip over the Atlantic to Austria in 2000 and is often used for business flights.

bell 47 g-3b -1 The first civilian helicopter, this striking machine joined Hangar-7 in 2003. It had been used as a crop duster in the wine-making region of the Rhine.

Seventh Heaven north ameriCan t 28b trojan Purchasing the Trojan was a dream come true for Sigi Angerer, The Flying Bulls’ chief pilot. Built in 1954, it used to be a training plane with the US Navy.

loCkheed p-38l One of the best examples of a restored P-38 in the world, the Lightning was developed during WWII, where it was an effective fighter plane.

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You may never have heard of Salzburg’s Hangar-7, but behind the rather unremarkable name stands one of the finest aviation collections in the world

douglas dC-6b The ‘crown jewel’ of Hangar-7, this luxurious plane has chauffeured many a celebrity and head of state and was once owned by Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia.

fairChild pt-19 This model was built in 1943 and was sold to the US Army. It ended up in England until bought by The Flying Bulls for restoration and an engine overhaul.

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ChanCe vought f4u-4 “Corsair” During WWII the Corsair shot down 2,140 enemy aircraft. This one was built for the US Navy in 1945.

It is one of the greatest attractions at Hangar-7.

north ameriCan b25j “mitChell” One of the most powerful war planes in the USA, the bombers were named Mitchell in honor of the Air Force general Billy Mitchell.

air space: the airy museum within sight of the runway is the perfect spot for displaying aircraft

pHoTogRApHy: ReD BuLL pHoToFILeS (15)

This not your average aircraft museum. Hangar-7, nestled against the main runway of Salzburg Airport, is home to a mouth-watering collection of vintage aircraft, carefully watched over by chief pilot Sigi Angerer, who has overseen their restoration over 20 years. Most make regular appearances at air shows as part of The Flying Bulls Show. Their home was designed by Austrian architect Volkmar Burgstaller.

Its curved, wing-like shape is a homage to flight, with 1,754 glass roof panels that allow the sky to flood in. Its vast interior also houses the Ikarus Restaurant – and a rotating cast of top chefs – Mayday and Threesixty Bars and Carpe Diem Lounge, and HangART-7 project which hosts exhibitions showcasing international artists. Flying, food, art – Hangar-7 might, quite simply, be the place where big ideas take flight.

alpha jet This plane was – and still is – in service in many defense forces. Technically reliable, The Flying Bulls now have four restored, demilitarized models.

for more information on the museum, restaurant and bars, visit www.hangar-7.com

eC 135 Added to The Flying Bull’s fleet in April 2006, this light twin-engine helicopter features the latest technology, including digitally controlled engines.

pt - 17 stearman A magnet for visitors to Hangar-7, the Stearman was developed in 1934 as a training plane for the US Army. This one was discovered in a barn in California.

bell Cobra tah - 1f A true movie star, this American combat helicopter has starred in the TV shows JAG and Walker, Texas Ranger.

bo 105 Cb The only helicopter suitable for aerobatics. There are two engines, dual hydraulics and the main rotor is made from titanium, which is light and flexible.

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Get the Gear

Robby Naish’s Essentials Robby Naish has been conquering the waves for three decades

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He’s master of the waves with world titles in three disciplines. Now he’s the stand-up guy bringing boardsports to its feet. And for that, he needs gear. “To have fun, you need toys,” he says

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Still life: Marie Welton. Portrait: KoleSKy/SanDiSK/reD Bull PhotofileS

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Print 2.0

us.redbulletin.com/print2.0 Portrait of a surf legend

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1. Naish 11-foot 4-inch Stand-Up Paddleboard Naish Carbon Blade paddle www.naishsurfing.com “If stand-up is on the plan, then this board will cover everything from flat water to decent-sized surf. And this paddle is lightweight and strong, with great reflex.”

2. Quiksilver Robby Naish Signature Boardshorts www.quiksilver.com “Yes, I know: they are mine, but they’re my favorites. I designed them, using camo and my bad-ass skull print.

You can only buy them in Europe!”

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3. Naish hot sauce “We have Flaming Skull, the hotter red pepper sauce; Black Label, hot; and Mean Green. I love spicy food, so we made hot sauce for fun. We mainly give it away – but it’s killer.”

4. Quiksilver Backpack www.quiksilver.com “It has my life in it, necessities like my passport, driver’s license, credit cards, cash and sponsor stickers.”

5. B vitamins, Aleve and Advil “Vitamin B1 is for concentration, B-Complex for stress relief. Aleve is for lower back pain I occasionally get if I overdo things. Advil is for all other aches and pains.”

6. Sunscreen “Lots of it, SPF30 minimum.”

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7. Neosporin, Band-Aids, bandages and tape “I am always getting cut up!”

8. Apple iPhone www.apple.com “The main reason I have this is for pictures and video of my family. Of course it’s a phone too, and I can check my emails. As I don’t travel with a computer, this is essential.”

Surf the world of Robby Naish, www.naish.com

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Gotham and Gomorrah Rooftop dancing? Check. Mechanical bull?

Check. Belly dancers in flaming skirts?

Absolutely. Variation is the only constant in the lounges and slick restaurants of New York’s decadent nightlife 1. Johnny Utah’s

2. Kiss & Fly

25 West 51st street Mechanical bulls are a rare breed of wildlife in NYC, but this cowboy bar (left) features one as the main attraction. Most riders are tossed off in mere seconds, and must console themselves with a large quantity of margaritas and fajitas. For a unique dining experience, ask to be seated in the bank vault, where your table is protected by a massive steel door and surrounded by safety deposit boxes. www.johnnyutahs.com

409 West 13th street This ornately designed, circularshaped nightclub (above) is packed nightly with an international crowd unafraid of showing off on the circular dancefloor. The music is straight from Ibiza, a rare and welcome change of pace for hip-hop heavy NYC. Make a new friend at Kiss & Fly, and then head downstairs together to the plush couches of the RdV lounge. www.kissandflyclub.com

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Words: Justin rocket silverman. photography: getty images (1), emily gilbert (1), patrick mcmullan (1), Jonathan lucas auch (1)

3. tenJUne

26 little West 12th street This Meatpacking District staple consistently delivers a high-energy dance party with no lack of aesthetic stimulation. Unlike some nightclubs, the statuesque clientele is as likely to be on the dancefloor as it is on the VIP balcony above. Tenjune’s subterranean space (below) also has the perfect dimensions to lend it the feel of an intimate party, even when the room is full of strangers. www.tenjunenyc.com

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high Res to come

8. highline BallRoom

431 West 16th street The High Line (above) is the city’s newest, and most lofty park, built on elevated railroad tracks running above the West Side. Sharing its name is the Highline Ballroom, which used to house massive nightclubs but has been reborn as a concert venue for marquee acts ranging from La Roux to 50 Cent. The stage also hosts an eclectic array of DJ sets and even the occasional pole-dancing competition www.highlineballroom.com

4. le Poisson RoUge

158 Bleecker street This theater was once the Village Gate, where Billie Holiday and Miles Davis performed. Dustin Hoffman was even a waiter here (he was eventually fired). Now two young friends from the Manhattan School of Music have transformed LPR (left) into the city’s premier avant-garde music venue, and the place to hear live performances by an eclectic range of musicians we’ve never heard of but wish we had. www.lepoissonrouge.com

5. hUdson teRRace

621 West 46th street New Yorkers have a passion for rooftop bars that make summer a much more scenic, not to mention intoxicating, experience. The spacious deck of Hudson Terrace (above) is ringed by plush banquettes which, as the name suggests, overlook the Hudson River. This makes the lounge subject to delightful breezes and epic sunsets, and it should thus be avoided by those who do not enjoy delightful breezes and epic sunsets. www.hudsonterracenyc.com

9. avenUe

116 10th avenue The Big Apple’s first ‘Gastrolounge’ (above) offers an eclectic food selection, but the more popular form of calories arrive via tableside bottles, to be shared with dancing models.

There’s also a great deal of calorie burning going on, and the lack of a dancefloor just means tabletops have to serve the purpose. Wass Stevens, NYC’s most recognizable doorman, guards the velvet rope. Tightly. www.avenue-newyork.com

10. 48 loUnge

1221 avenue of the americas Midtown’s pre-party lounge, this airy spot (left) gives off an easygoing elegance and downtempo cool.

Perfect for setting the mood before a night that will be anything but easygoing. 48 Lounge takes preparty snacking as seriously as it should be taken, and offers up a full menu of delights like honey and pineapple glazed meatballs, or sliders (mini hamburgers) made of either curried chicken, pork or filet mignon. www.48nyc.com

6. amnesia

609 West 29th street Two VIP balconies vibrate with bass as aerialists defy gravity above this highenergy dance party (left) – the location of the official Red Bull Air Race afterparty. Circular banquettes mean you won’t get a bad seat for crowd-watching, but the view might be obstructed by a cocktail waitress in lingerie. www.amnesianyc.com

7. JUliet sUPPeR clUB

539 West 21st street This swanky restaurant (right) looks like a nightclub, but is disconcertingly full of diners. Until the clock strikes midnight. Within minutes, dinner has been reborn as a rollicking dance party.

The Sunday, booze-fueled brunch party and cabaret show (think belly dancers with flaming skirts) is not to be missed. www.julietsupperclub.com

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hot SPotS

neW york red BullS – dC united 07.10.10 The Red Bulls will aim to deliver a performance fit for their impressive new Red Bull Arena, as the Major League Soccer regular season continues.

Red Bull Arena, Harrison, NJ, USA

Check out our pick of the world’s most exciting events

PhilAdelPhiA PhillieS – neW york yAnkeeS 06.17.10 Philadelphia will have revenge on their minds as they open a three-game series against the team that beat them in last year’s World Series.

Yankee Stadium, NY, USA

PgA uS oPen ChAMPionShiP 06.17 - 06.20.10

PhotograPhy: getty images, stuart gibson/red bull Photofiles, Christian Pondella/red bull Photofiles (2)

The major tournament returns to Pebble Beach for the first time since 2000, when Tiger Woods emerged the victor.

After a promising start to the 2010 season, Colombian upand-comer Camilo Villegas is tipped for a strong performance.

Pebble Beach, CA, USA

red Bull FlugtAg 07.10.10 Bayfront Park in downtown Miami is about to get a whole lot busier as Red Bull Flugtag descends for a day of (brief) airborne delights. Teams spend months building their elaborate flying machines in preparation for the glory moment when they step off into the air, (usually followed quickly by water), in front of a 70,000-strong crowd.

Miami, FL, USA

red Bull BAttle de toro 07.15 - 07.17.10 This three-day, under-16 soccer tournament is a sporting Battle of the Alamo, pitting top Texan talents against emerging Mexican stars. Eight teams compete to win the chance to play against the Red Bulls’ under-16s at the new 25,000seat Red Bull Arena in New York, before the team’s MLS stars kick off against some major league competition.

San Antonio, TX, USA

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ASP World tour 07.15 - 07.25.10 As the 2010 competition approaches the halfway mark, defending world champion Mick Fanning from Australia is looking for his first win to get him back into the title race. But with plenty of waves to catch before the winner is crowned in December, the contest is wide open.

Jeffreys Bay, South Africa

MAkkA Pro/red Bull under My Wing 07.16 - 07.18.10 Jamaica’s annual pro surf meet is a must for the world’s best. And this year, reigning world champion Mick Fanning is holding a workshop at the event to share his surf secrets with the country’s next generation of surfers.

Makka Beach, Bull Bay, Jamaica

red Bull MAnny MAniA 07.17.10 The skateboarding contest that tests manual trickery has been touring the country in search of the best. Now the regional heat winners are set to battle it out in the national finals. The Canadian championship title brings a spot in the world championships.

Vancouver, Canada

red Bull CAMP heSter 07.17 - 07.18.10 There’s no better place for the football stars of tomorrow to learn new skills than with the greats of today. Expect lines when Chicago Bear Devin Hester takes to the field for two hours of expert tuition for 15 to 18-year-olds.

Chicago, IL, USA

SuMMer X gAMeS 16 07.29 - 08.01.10 The annual meeting of the world’s best action sports athletes, these games include skateboarding, rally driving, motocross and BMX with competitors angling for gold.

Los Angeles, CA, USA

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red Bull X-FighterS 07.22 - o7.23.10 The home of Spanish bullfighting welcomes a contest of the two-wheeled kind, as the high-octane, airborne action of freestyle motocross lands in the nation’s capital.

Madrid, Spain

red Bull CliFF diving World SerieS 07.24.10

red Bull Cole Whitt driving SChool 08.01 - 08.31.10

After the heat of Mexico, it’s back to Europe for the world’s best cliff divers. Reigning champion Orlando Duque is pulling out all the stops to defend against last year’s number two, Britain’s Gary Hunt.

Kragerø, Norway

Top midget-car racer Cole Whitt is taking over the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to share the benefit of his winning ways with up-and-coming young drivers eager to learn from the best in the business.

Indianapolis, IN, USA

ForMulA one gerMAn grAnd PriX 07.25.10

red Bull Air rACe 08.07 - 08.08.10

Midway through an unpredictable season, Red Bull Racing’s Mark Webber will be hoping to repeat the near flawless drive that won him his first taste of the podium top spot in Germany last year.

Hockenheim, Germany

Moto gP uSA 07.25.10 Spanish rider Dani Pedrosa placed third overall in the 2008 and 2009 seasons, despite a win here last year. In 2010, he has nothing but that elusive championship win on his mind.

Laguna Seca, CA, USA

FivB BeACh volleyBAll grAnd SlAM 07.27 - 08.01.10 Land-locked Klagenfurt may be an unlikely spot to host a beach volleyball contest, but bespoke sand courts with mountain vistas make it one popular stop. Teams battle for a share of the $300,000 prize, among them champions Brink and Reckermann from Germany.

Klagenfurt, Austria

WrC rAlly FinlAnd 07. 29 - 07.31.10 Defending champion Sébastien Loeb has started this season as he finished the last – on winning form. Consistency will be crucial in securing an overall win, and the path to ultimate victory is never easy in the unpredictable world of WRC. Jyväskylä, Finland

o’neill ColdWAter ClASSiC 07.26 - 07.30.10 Local surf star Jordy Smith knows these waters well. As ambassador for the third leg of the surf contest, he’ll be eager to show what he’s made of.

Cape Town, South Africa

red Bull PrinCe oF iSlAndS 07.30 - 07.31.10 A mass start sees 100 windsurfers set sail for five hard-to-reach checkpoints in an effort to be crowned Prince of Islands. Entrants plot their own course, so strategy and endurance wins the crown.

Istanbul, Turkey

After the high-speed, midair battles over Ontario, Canada and New York, the action heads to Europe.

Briton Paul Bonhomme, the defending champion, faces stiff competition from fellow countryman Nigel Lamb, former world champion Hannes Arch and one-towatch Australian Matt Hall.

EuroSpeedway, Lausitz, Germany

red Bull MAnny MAniA Pro FinAl 08.20 - 08.22.10 The world’s best manual trick skateboarders gather for a showdown in central NYC, ready to demonstrate their best combinations on a bespoke course before a crowd of 10,000. With athletes including US rider Zered Bassett and Austrian Philipp Schuster, competition for the coveted world title is guaranteed to be tough.

New York, NY, USA

red Bull ChiviChAnA 08.28.10 Used as a mode of transport and for street games, the chivichana is a low-to-theground wooden kart. This unusual contest tests the skills of more than 100 Havana locals on a specially constructed track, with obstacles, turns and jumps to negotiate.

Havana, Cuba

MotogP indiAnAPoliS 08.29.10 Last year, this circuit proved troublesome for some riders used to finishing nearer the top of the table. Valentino Rossi failed to get to the end of the race and Spanish title-contender Dani Pedrosa ended the race in 10th place. With only six races to the 2010 series finale, mistakes here could be costly.

Indianapolis, IN, USA

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nighT sPoTs From club nights to four-day festivals – here’s our guide to the world’s best music The Pains of Being Pure aT hearT 06.16.10 They’re heading to England to jump on the festival circuit, but before they go, the band from NYC bring their brand of melancholy pop to the capital.

Black Cat, Washington DC, USA

The naTional 06.16.10 While on tour with new album High Violet, the indie rockers from Ohio take the chance to play in their adopted home city.

Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY, USA

PhotograPhy: brett kramer, marcelo maragni, benita liPPs, Dan Wilton

Beach house 06.17.10 The American dream-pop duo have won some famous fans with their ethereal sounds, including MGMT, Grizzly Bear and The Strokes. Now, with a contribution to the Twilight: New Moon movie soundtrack and the release of new album Teen Dream, a younger generation may bring them further into the collective consciousness in 2010.

Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, OH, USA

sonar 06.17 - 06.19.10 It was once a well-kept secret but no more: the Spanish gathering boasts one of the best collections of electronic acts on the world calendar.

Jetting in for 2010 are The Chemical Brothers, Roxy Music, Dizzee Rascal, LCD Soundsystem, Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke, while the Red Bull Music Academy Sonar Dome features the grime stylings of Goldielocks, plus Moodyman Tokimonsta.

CCCB/Fira Montjuic 2, Barcelona, Spain

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Joe shanahan The music promoter from Chicago takes you on a very personal tour of the windy city.

From a renegade hotdog stand to great record shops and his fave jazz venue, on page 96.

KidKanevil 06.18.10 Fresh from a stint at the Red Bull Music Academy, London, and the release of his third album Basho Basho, the hiphop producer from Leeds, England, is now on tour.

Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands

hurricane/souThside 06.18 - 06.20.10 There’s a customarily strong line-up at these twin festivals, which take place in the north and south of the country. Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Queens of the Stone Age, The Hold Steady and Kings of Leon are just some of the acts that will be ferried between the two sites.

Eichenring Scheessel / Neuhausen ob Eck Bodensee, Germany

MaTT KowalsKy 06.19.10 Mixing electronic music with live band performance, the Polish DJ, producer and programmer fuses electro, dance and jazz sounds as only he can, bending ears on the international scene and earning him an army of loyal fans.

Confashion, Warsaw, Poland

hercules and love affair They band from New York have made disco acceptable again and created remixes for Lady Gaga. There’s a new album coming soon too…

See page 95.

more body & mind frighTened raBBiT Catch up with the Scottish folk rockers in Cologne, Germany, on the brink of their first major US tour. Read all about it on page 92.

healTh 06.20.10 If you haven’t heard of HEALTH, you soon will. The style-conscious rockers are touring with new remix album Disco2 released this month, planning their online television series HEALTHvision, and releasing their own line of designer clothing.

Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, USA

celTronic fesTival 06.23 - 06.27.10 The music and arts festival has always been the perfect excuse for five days of hard partying. But with this year marking the festival’s 10th anniversary, expect Northern Ireland’s second city to come alive with the sound of grinding beats and bodies. In addition to the usual mix of folktronica, dubstep, experimental and ambient sounds, disco revivalists Horse Meat disco will be adding some retro flavor.

Various venues, Derry, Ireland

glasTonBury 06.23 - 06.27.10 Controversy of the “guitar band vs. hip-hop” variety in recent years has done nothing to harm the popularity of the historic music gathering, which sold out as fast as ever this year. The musical genres have remained mixed with über-band U2 and Dizzee Rascal headlining, alongside Muse, the Scissor Sisters making a welcome return, and the sounds of the much-loved Stevie Wonder.

Worthy Farm, Pilton, England

red Bull Big Tune 06.24.10 Hip-hop producers of the future go head-to-head in a battle of original tracks.

The producer with the ultimate Big Tune will record with an A-list artist at the Red Bull Studios in California.

Denver, CO, USA

wavves 06.24.10 d-edge A stable of the best Brazilian and international DJs plus state-of-the-art visuals keep this São Paulo club at the cutting edge of cool. Read more on page 94.

On-stage controversy and a transient backing band can’t stop the irrepressible melancholy pop-punk of San Diegan Nathan Williams.

Knitting Factory, New York, NY, USA

fesTival weeK-end au Bord de l’eau 06.25.10 In just three years the laidback gathering has attracted a cult following, thanks to its summer-holiday-with-amusical-backing-track ethos.

Festivalgoers can take part in a pétanque tournament (we’re not sure, either), see street arts and play summer sports while the likes of Benji B, The Bamboos and many more provide the soundtrack.

Lac De Géronde – Sierre, Switzerland

holy ghosT! 06.25.10 Leaving the hip-hop sounds of their past behind, New York duo Alex Frankel and Nicholas Millhiser have embraced disco to form Holy Ghost! and show no signs of turning back.

Making Time, Philadelphia, PA, USA

danciTy fesTival 06.25 - 06.26.10 Foligno, in Italy, is taken over in the name of dance for 48 hours of hedonism in historic settings. Electronic music reverberates off 14th-century frescoes inside a medieval church, as music lovers wander through narrow back alleys to reach their next destination.

Germany’s Henrik Schwarz brings his beats, Prins Thomas his psychedelic ponderings, as old and new seamlessly blend.

Foligno, Italy

sea sessions 06.25 - 06.27.10 The stunning coast off Bundoran is the perfect setting for a surf music festival.

Revelers can watch big names this year including Paul Weller, Fun Lovin’ Criminals and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.

Plus it’s only a short walk down to the beach to catch some of Ireland’s world-famous waves.

Bundoran, Co Donegal, Ireland

onra 06.26.10 The French beatmaker creates hip-hop and electronic sounds layered with samples as exotic as vintage Vietnamese pop classics plucked from the back streets of Saigon.

Peer Pressure, Ghent, Belgium

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frightened rabbit Cologne

Green Room

Rabbit, Run The Scottish folk rockers appear to be a band on the brink. With an ambitious US tour looming, Nick Amies wonders if cramped vans and broom-cupboard dressing rooms will soon be a thing of the past

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Scott Hutchison loiters on the pavement outside Cologne’s Luxor club, toeing one of the tires on the band’s tour van with his boot. “The worst thing is the boredom,” the Frightened Rabbit front man says wistfully. “There’s no bunk bed to escape to or PlayStation to lose yourself in, just faces and feet for miles and miles.”

The white VW, the type designed to transport bags of concrete rather than rock bands, lists wearily on a tired axle.

Surely there’s a luxury coach parked around the corner? “No. This is it,” Scott says. “We’re doing it old school.”

The feeling that Frightened Rabbit are still paying their dues is reinforced backstage where the toilet attendant doubles as the band’s in-house security guard. “He takes his job very seriously,” deadpans Grant, the other Hutchison and the Rabbit’s drummer. “It would take a brave man to try and take a leak without paying.” The dressing room may resemble a broom cupboard, but it’s still cozy and clean despite its diminutive size and its proximity to the Gents. “The level of

backstage comfort does tend to vary,” Grant says ruefully. “Sometimes there’s none at all and we’re sat at a cordoned-off section of the bar with everyone staring at us. But we’ve been pretty well catered for and looked after on this tour so far.”

It’s possible, however, to detect a creeping enthusiasm in his voice when he begins to talk about the Scottish folk rockers’ upcoming American tour and its promise of more spacious environs.

“We’re flying straight out after this European tour to do a six-week stint in the US, including gigs at Webster Hall in New York, the Metro in Chicago and the Fillmore in San Francisco,” he says, a boyish grin flickering briefly on his lips. “When these were booked, we were like, ‘Really?’ These are around 1,200-capacity venues, but now we hear they’re selling out so that’s a big deal for us.” Then, as if he feels that he’s getting too carried away, he adds: “Saying that, who knows what the backstage at Webster Hall is like. It could be lame.”

Since Scott Hutchison started performing solo sets under the Frightened

PhotograPhy: benita liPPs

Wild things: The band on tour in Germany

Erykah Badu 06.26.10 The ‘Queen of Neo Soul’ takes to the stage at the mother of all Big Apple venues, alongside Maxwell and Jill Scott.

Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, USA

Awakenings Festival 06.26.10 In the headlights: On stage in Luxor; (below) arriving in style at the club

Rabbit name in 2003, the band has slowly expanded in personnel and scope, but beckoning fame has yet to separate it from its humble roots.

“We had expectations when we started but no ultimate goal because that puts a cap on things,” Grant says. “We just take things as they happen, a bit at a time.

We’re happy with the trajectory it’s taking.

It hasn’t been an instant thing. It’s been gradual and slow. But we were playing to about four people in Austin three years ago and this June we’re going to play Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park with Snow Patrol. We’re constantly being surprised by new developments with the band.”

They aren’t the only ones. Critics who were alerted to the edgy post-folk style of Frightened Rabbit’s first album Sings the Greys were persuaded to stay interested by the more ambitious follow-up, The Midnight Organ Fight. Expecting more of the postrelationship angst and soul-baring that poured from the broken heart of Organ Fight, the third album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, came as quite a revelation when it was released in March. While there is still a theme of isolation running through this new set of more muscular songs, it is an album full of bruised hope shot through with a resolute desire for positive change.

That change may be just around the corner. Frightened Rabbit appear to be a band on the brink, and it has dawned on the crowd tonight that catching them in the claustrophobic surroundings of the Luxor may soon be a thing of the past.

Frightened Rabbit certainly sound gigantic when they eventually take to the stage. Rolling out emotive epic ‘The Modern Leper’ from Organ Fight as an opener could be considered a brave move, especially on their Cologne debut. Lesser bands may have opted to keep their big guns in reserve just in case, but with powerful songs such as ‘Living in Colour’, ‘Skip the Youth’ and the rousing ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’,

The hugely popular techno festival celebrates its 10th year with a stellar line-up including Derrick Mat, Laurent Garnier, Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills and Dave Clarke. And with four of the six stages indoors, even the weather can’t disrupt the celebrations.

Deelplan Houtrak, Spaarnwoude, Netherlands

Ruhr In Love 06.26.10 …with electronic sounds. The annual festival calls together all lovers of techno, house, hardcore and trance. This year sees a dizzying international tribe of turntablists jet in to pack out the festival’s 35 stages.

Olga Park, Oberhausen, Germany

Blaxtar 06.27.10

Frightened Rabbit have huge tunes in spades. In fact, it’s the anthemic quality of much of the new material that suggests the band themselves had bigger things in mind when they wrote them.

Barely an hour later, the Frightened Rabbit show comes to a close. The Luxor wants the band done by nine so its regularly scheduled club night can begin on time. While the crowd seem less than happy to be denied a longer set, the band begin packing away their gear without complaint.

With no road crew to speak of, Frightened Rabbit’s work – at least for now – includes packing themselves up and moving on. But as the white VW once again braces to take the strain of five Scottish blokes and their equipment, one gets the impression its days of toil may soon be over. Perhaps there is a luxury coach waiting around the corner.

Check out Frightened Rabbit’s latest album The Winter of Mixed Drinks and see their tour schedule on www.frightenedrabbit.com

The Dutch rapper has been well known in his home country for more than 10 years. He rhymes in Dutch, a move that doesn’t seem to be hampering his plans for international success.

Walter Sisulu Square, Soweto, South Africa

Henrik Schwarz & Bugge Wesseltoft 06.28.10 German house DJ Henrik Schwarz teamed up with Norwegian jazz innovator Bugge Wesseltoft for a live project, performed during the Red Bull Music Academy in London. The fusion of deep house and jazz changes constantly as they travel the world creating their own sound.

Philharmonie, Cologne, Germany

Them Crooked Vultures 06.30.10 The rock supergroup enters the final stages of its first world tour. But with members of Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age, there was never a band so prepared for the long haul.

Hove, Arendal, Norway

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rosKilde 07.01 - 07.04.10 Denmark’s answer to Glastonbury is a sizeable affair, with more than 80,000 festivalgoers pitching up for the 2009 event. With Gorillaz, Muse, Jack Johnson, The Prodigy and Prince among those joining the happy campers, 2010 looks set to be even bigger.

Festivalpladsen, Roskilde, Denmark

rocK oTocec 07.02 - 07.04.10

lighTning BolT 07.04.10 The Rhode Island rock duo bring the noise but shun the stage, taking to the floor for their energetic live performances, tightly surrounded by the crowd – whether that’s in a venue, on a sidewalk or inside a parking lot.

Eyedrum, Atlanta, GA, USA

lollaPalooza 07.06 - 07.08.10 This is one of the biggest dates on the festival calendar and for 2010 it has a fitting line-up. Despite the event’s rock roots, there’s clearly room for everyone at the weekend shindig. The Strokes, Lady Gaga, Green Day, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, MGMT, Cypress Hill, Erykah Badu, Hot Chip and The XX are just some of the A-list acts who will be taking to the stage in Grant Park. And small visitors will find plenty to keep them occupied at Kidzapalooza.

Chicago, IL, USA

all good fesTival 07.08 - 07.11.10 Now in its 14th year, the four-day folksy festival returns to Masontown, the place it has called home since 2003. You can expect a mixed bag of sounds from a range of acts including Furthur, Old Crow Medicine Show, Femi Kuti and Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad.

Marvin’s Mountaintop, Mansontown, WV, USA

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d-edge são paulo

Cutting Edge If long, sweltering nights are your thing, then Cassio Cortes finds São Paulo the place to be Scarlet lights glow softly in the low light, painting the faces of the people lined up at the bar as they begin to fill up this small black box of a place.

Outside, traffic flows through São Paulo’s decaying Barra Funda industrial district.

Were it not for the line of people on the pavement, most drivers wouldn’t even notice D-Edge’s unmarked facade.

At around 1 a.m., the “light jockey”, Johnson, gets to work. Two hundred light bars covering the floor, ceiling and walls begin to flash primary colors to the beat of the music. Behind the DJ desk, bar and dancefloor, custom lightwalls mimic giant green graphic equalizers.

“Sometimes we start out on a Saturday night and the after-party goes on until Monday morning,” says the owner, Renato Ratier, an accomplished DJ, who conceived D-Edge in partnership with designer Muti Randolph back in 2003. Since then, Ratier has become firmly established on the Brazilian electronic scene, blending everything from breakbeats to industrial to the unique ‘favela funk’, all served up by premier DJs. The club’s mission is to be progressive and stay at the top of its

game, and it has certainly achieved that, with Britain’s DJ Mag ranking D-Edge as one of the world’s top 100 clubs for three years running.

The club is open every day of the week and partying always continues into the small hours. Up to last year, only 400 could squeeze into the space, but in March the club was extended into a neighboring building meaning that now another 1,000 souls get to enjoy the bliss.

German DJ Phonique is working the pick-ups, and your watch, which is constantly changing hue on the dancefloor, reads 3 a.m. The women, all improbably beautiful, stare you straight in the eye, even though you don’t feel particularly good-looking. Then it hits you: it’s not you, it’s the mood. Dark, exciting and inviting – all at the same time.

Check out club D-Edge at www.d-edge.com.br

PhotograPhy: marcelo maragni (2)

For 34 years, fun lovers have headed to Slovenia for this threeday gathering, among them Asian Dub foundation, Stereo MCs and Fun Lovin’ Criminals. But with tickets usually selling out before the acts are even announced, it’s clear that this festival is more than just the music. It’s renowned for the unusual array of activities it offers, most notably the mud wrestling. At least no one will complain if it rains.

Rock Otocec, Slovenia

Hercules and Love Affair are Kim Ann Foxman and Andy Butler

hercules and love affair vienna On the Record

A New Affair After Andy Butler and his band Hercules and Love Affair made disco cool again two years ago, he made remixes for Lady Gaga and Goldfrapp. Florian Obkircher caught up with him in Vienna as he wrapped his latest album RED BULLETIN: You’ve just finished your new album. Who heard it first?

Andy Butler: Apart from those who worked on the album, I just played it to two friends of mine in Tel Aviv, a sound engineer and an editor. I was pretty nervous because I really value their opinion. But I could breathe easily again. They loved it.

You kicked off a bit of a disco revival with your hit, ‘Blind’, two years ago.

How did that come about?

Disco was an important part of my life at the time. I used to rummage around flea markets looking for old ’70s hits and read a lot about the disco and gay movements. So it was a completely natural thing for me to grapple with that sound in the recording studio too. And to bring it back to life with people like Antony (Hegarty, the singer from

Antony and the Johnsons, who also sings on Hercules and Love Affair’s debut album, Hercules and Love Affair).

Are you carrying on with that trend in your new album?

Yes and no. This time I’ve concentrated more on the music I grew up with, so it’s more classical house and techno.

Which is why it made sense to get Patrick Pulsinger on board as the producer. But don’t worry. My passion for disco still burns just as brightly as it always has.

There are two classic songs on the album which ooze an even more classical disco sound than Blind did.

How did you come across Patrick Pulsinger?

A mutual friend recommended him to me. Patrick has a fantastic studio in Vienna with a whole arsenal of analogue synths. I’ve known his music for ages.

I worked as a music journalist in New York years ago and wrote a review of a record produced on his Cheap Records label.

Have you had any time to look around the city on top of your work in the studio?

Yes, but not much. I’ve been really impressed by the churches: The Votive Church, St Stephen’s Cathedral and so on. And I also went to probably the best exhibition I’ve ever been to in my life, Edvard Munch und das Unheimliche (Edvard Munch and the Uncanny).

I love the mystical, surreal side to his paintings. It’s really inspirational.

Who has influenced you musically?

I listened to a lot of Cocteau Twins when I was writing stuff for the new album. But also folk stuff. I’m fascinated by simple,

soft music, by songs like Terry Callier’s The Golden Apples Of The Sun. Or some of the songs on Sinéad O’Connor’s album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got – songs that are just simple guitar and a great voice.

Should we be expecting more guitar this time around?

No, I only use guitar for rhythm. But, yes, I do listen to a lot of guitar music. I even went to a Metallica concert recently.

Is it true that you’ve recorded work with Kele Okereke, the singer from British indie band Bloc Party?

It is. We met via our managers. They thought we’d get on. We met up for brunch when Kele came to New York and we hit it off straight away. So we decided to try and do something together. Then we met up again in Vienna and made a fun dance track.

Have you already got a title for the album?

I’m toying with the idea of calling it Blue Songs after one track on the record, which I wrote five years ago.

But we’ll see, I’m not sure.

Today’s your last day in Vienna.

How will you take your leave?

I’ve got friends here from Barcelona, Berlin and Paris. They surprised me for my birthday yesterday and came to celebrate it with me. So we’ll probably take it a bit easier this evening. But I have promised myself I’ll do one more thing before we leave. We want to see another Klimt.

The new Hercules and Love Affair album comes out in September. You can find live dates and Andy Butler’s blog at inlovewithhercules.com

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joe SHANAHAN CHICAGO

Resident Artist

Indie City Chicago’s indie music scene was shaped in large part by music promoter Joe Shanahan and his legendary venue, Metro. Who better to take us on a tour of the windy city?

Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and in every neighborhood you’ll find a bar that you can feel at home in. There’s a place in an area called Andersonville that’s called the Hopleaf that I’m a big fan of. It’s well run, independently owned and they play great music. And it’s within walking distance of my house.

I always seek out that independent spirit. Another place I like is called the Hideout. It’s this non-descript little bar on a forsaken piece of land in the middle of the city where all the garbage trucks park. But a husband and wife along with a couple of twin brothers opened up a little music room there and I take people there all the time.

I saw Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (musical stars of the film Once) there.

They’re Oscar winners but the Hideout’s good enough for them.

I think the music and art community embrace each other in Chicago. I like to go to a record store called Dusty Groove to buy music. For me, the tactile experience of going in and actually looking through CDs, which are almost antiquated now, and certainly vinyl is something I can still enjoy.

For art there’s enough large upmarket galleries like the Rhona Hoffman to go to if you want to visit them, but why not check out the little loft spaces controlled by artists in Wicker Park instead? You’ll find just as unusual talent there.

Eating in Chicago, my favorite restaurant right now is called Publican. It’s got the holy trinity of beer, oysters and pork! But I also love this great little hot-dog stand 96

called Hot Doug’s on the Northside.

It was quite strange, but around three years ago the city council banned foie gras in restaurants because of debate over the practices that go into producing it. Many high-end restaurants instantly took it off the menu, but there was this renegade hotdog stand on the Northside of Chicago that served like duck sausage with foie gras, raising a middle finger to the rank and file and risking a $200 ticket for it!

There’s this little place called The Violet Hour, I think named after a T.S. Eliot poem, that’s great to relax in. It has almost a quiet library feel to it, but they do play music

picked by the staff, who have great taste.

They have a drink called the Hemingway that I have to say I’m a big fan of. I can’t remember what goes in it but it’s certainly rum. Yeah, a blinding amount of rum!

Another nice spot is this legendary Chicago jazz room called the Green Mill in the Uptown area. It was originally associated with the Al Capone era of gangsters and has this kind of ‘speakeasy’ vibe to it. The place looks probably exactly like it did when it was first opened in the 1930s. In America that’s old! They have great jazz and it’s a place my wife and I will go and have a quiet drink because there’s no talking. It’s just

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oxegen fesTival 07.09 - 07.11.10 Revelers at this star-studded Irish event will be faced with the tough realization that, at any given moment, they’re missing out on someone unmissable. To mention Eminem, Muse, Jay-Z, Vampire Weekend, Gossip, Hudson Mohawke, A-Trak and Black Eyed Peas is just to scratch the surface. And don’t forget to see what’s happening on the Red Bull Music Academy stage.

Punchestown Racecourse, Co. Kildare, Ireland

dour fesTival PresenTs carl craig 07.16.10 The Green Mill for the best jazz; Metro has hosted some of the biggest names in rock; rum-based cocktails rule at The Violet Hour

Though he’s equally happy turning his skilled hands to electronica or jazz, the Detroit DJ is techno royalty.

In Belgium he is joined by fellow legend Mad Mike Banks, of political techno collective Underground Resistance, on the keyboards.

La Plaine de la Machine à Feu, Dour, Belgium

main Photo: brett kramer. aDDitional PhotograPhy: mark susina (1), anna szabo (1), getty images (1)

hard la 07.17.10

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Metro, 3730 N Clark Street Hopleaf Bar, 5148 N Clark Street Dusty Groove, 1120 N Ashland Avenue The Violet Hour, 1520 N Damen Avenue Hot Doug’s, 3324 N California Avenue

strictly music. You can chat between bands, but not while they’re playing.

And then of course if you want a loud night there’s my main venue, the Metro.

When I opened in 1982 there were four names I had my eye on. I thought, ‘I’ll truly be successful if I ever book George Clinton, James Brown, Iggy Pop or Keith Richards.’

It’s 27 years later and three of them have played here. I like to embrace new things. In the 1980s there was a conduit of DJ talent exchanging between here and the Hacienda in Manchester. They’d bring Manchester dance music and we’d send over Chicago house to them. I’ve been influenced a lot by English DJ culture. I booked New Order to play in 1982 and they came over telling me they were going to start a club. When they finally did I went over there to see it and, whoa, it was mental. I’m still looking for new sounds.

I enjoyed Grizzly Bear and when Simian Mobile Disco played, I was there too.

People ask me why I never got Keith Richards in. Well I have this other smaller club called the Double Door. The Rolling Stones played there instead.

Read more about Joe and his music and food melange at www.metrochicago.com/history/

NERD, Flying Lotus, Theophilus London, The Gaslamp Killer and more join M.I.A .for this inaugural two-stage festival put on by her NEET Recordings label. For anyone forced to miss out on the live action, Red Bull Music Academy Radio won’t miss a beat at RBMARADIO.com Los Angeles State Historic Park, CA, USA

The revoluTion conTinues PresenTs carl cox 07.20.10 At 47, the house and techno legend from England shows no sign of retiring.

Ibiza has practically become the DJ’s second home, and no summer would be complete without a residency at clubbers’ favorite, Space.

Ibiza, Spain

aPPleBliM 07.23.10 The Londoner takes heavy bass, Afro percussion and Middle Eastern samples and fuses them with dubstep and techno beats to bring his own sound to the dancefloor.

Basement 45, Bristol, England

erol alKan 07.30.10 The man behind the Kylie/New Order mash-up can do no wrong.

At the Emmaboda Festival he’ll be in good company, with a line-up including Wavves and Friendly Fires.

Emmaboda, Rasslebygd, Sweden

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D

We’ll go to Yonkers Where true love conquers In the wilds

We’ll have Manhattan The Bronx and Staten Island too It’s lovely going through The Zoo

and as these words were being written, Bob Moses was getting to work. By the time he had finished, he had to his credit the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the triborough Bridge, Henry Hudson Parkway, shea stadium, Co-op City, the Long Island Expressway, Jones Beach state Park and the New York World’s Fair. although committed to public works, Moses had bizarre racist theories.

For example, he thought black people disliked cold water, so adjusted the temperatures at East Harlem’s thomas Jefferson Pool to deter their participation in watersports. and, although he did not have a driver’s license, Moses sacrificed swathes of the city on the altar of the automobile.

New York does not inspire indifference.

When he visited in 1936, the architect Le Corbusier (who later designed the uN Building which Moses’ clearances had made possible) called it a “magnificent catastrophe.” Nehru said, “No one should see New York for the first time.” right now, nearly 10 years after the terrible events of 9/11, there’s a spectacular melancholy in Hart’s “we’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.” Not many visitors to Ground Zero leave the site joyfully whistling show tunes.

But then I remember my own first visit, nicely timed between airline deregulation and equal opportunities legislation, so there were handsome women serving stonking cocktails on uncrowded planes.

I always ordered a Manhattan. actually, I always ordered several. and I can still taste them now every time I see that amazing skyline from a yellow cab on the Van Wyck Expressway. the glitter has, I find, not all rubbed off.

And tell me what street Compares with Mott Street In July

Stephen Bayley is a former director of the Design Museum in London and an award-winning writer

Mind’s Eye

My Kind of Town Stephen Bayley is well-versed in the artistic splendor of New York City whose vast ambition was the equal of the task he gave himself to fashion New York as an expression of his machismo. “When you operate in an over-built metropolis you have to hack your way with a meataxe,” Moses said. Marshall Berman, a cultural historian displaced from his childhood home by Moses, accused him of glorying in the devastation he caused.

Before Lennon met McCartney, Lorenz Hart was the greatest lyricist in popular music. His Manhattan was, at least before Penny Lane, one of the best songs about a city. With astonishing economy and audacious rhymes, Hart conjured up the swagger of New York:

USA: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bulletin GMBH Editor-In-Chief Robert Sperl Editorial Office Anthony Rowlinson (Executive Editor), Stefan Wagner Associate Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editor Andreas Tzortzis Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Production Editor Grant Smyth Photo Editors Susie Forman (Chief), Fritz Schuster Deputy Photo Editors Markus Kucera, Valerie Rosenburg, Catherine Shaw Design Erik Turek (Art Director), Claudia Drechsler, Miles English, Judit Fortelny, Markus Kietreiber, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Werner Jessner, Uschi Korda, Ruth Morgan Contributors Nick Amies, Stephen Bayley, Cassio Cortes, Wesley Doyle, Paul Fearnley, Drew B Glazer, Tom Hall, Florian Obkircher, Dr Axel Schäfer, Christian Seiler, Joe Shanahan, Justin Rocket Silverman, Günther Wiesinger, Jeff Wise, Toby Wiseman, Matt Youson Production Managers Michael Bergmeister, Wolfgang Stecher, Walter Omar Sádaba Repro Managers Christian Graf-Simpson, Clemens Ragotzky Augmented Reality Martin Herz, www.imagination.at General Managers Karl Abentheuer, Rudolf Theierl International Project Management Jan Cremer, Bernd Fisa Finance Siegmar Hofstetter. The Red Bulletin is published simultaneously in Austria, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Poland, South Africa and New Zealand on the first Tuesday of every month. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bulletin GmbH, Am Brunnen 1, A-5330 Fuschl am See, FN 287869m, ATU63087028. UK office: 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP, +44 (0)20 7434 8600. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 1 90221 28800. Printed by Brown Printing Company, 2300 Brown Ave, Waseca, MN 56093 Write to us: email letters@redbulletin.com

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own Wall, from girder into street noon leaks. say what you like about London as a world city, it does not produce many lines like that one. It’s from Hart Crane’s poem To Brooklyn Bridge, part of a 1930 philosophical exploration of america in which the bridge is a metaphor for… just about everything New York: boldness, transit, physical presence, opportunity, romance, occasional suicide.

Like Venice, New York defies cynicism.

It always astonishes. Every uptown, midtown, crosstown, downtown part is familiar from the movies. Visiting is like the old joke about the credulous tourist complaining that Hamlet was “full of quotations.” Like Venice, it is difficult to say anything original about New York.

Like Liverpool, New York is defined by the intense singularity of its physical presence. Indeed, Liverpool, a city of great departures, was once called the New York of Europe. But New York is a city of arrivals. “oh to be young and come to New York,” tom Wolfe said.

He came from Virginia and stayed.

Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) is the great New York book. Wolfe was an outsider: but almost everyone in New York has come from somewhere else.

It’s not a melting pot, it’s a boiling pot.

New York is the worldliest of places, a Gomorrah of greed, but moves people to mystical tears. Like Liverpool, its citizens have an intense pride which can turn into self-indulgent sentimentality. New Yorkers are all convinced of their city’s specialness. the rest of us know the city by its architecture and its soundtrack. Yet two of the greatest architects of its reputation were not architects. of course, in this there is something distinctively New York. the first was Lorenz Hart (1895-1943), the second robert Moses (1888-1981). In their different characters is some of NYC’s fabulous variety.

Hart was gay, witty, sad, cynical; he drank himself to death. Moses was a city planner, a tough political operator,

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