Looking Sideways: 10 Things
Here are ten things I thought were worth sharing this week.
Congratulations to listener and reader Chris Collicott, who is the winner of a brand new Yeti cooler! His question was chosen by Nick Hayes following the recent Open Thread q&a about all things Right to Roam. To catch up on that discussion, click here. Massive thanks to my friends at Yeti, and to my
pal Lyndsay for the help with that.Looking Sideways is proudly ad-free and reader and listener supported. Thanks to all my paid subscribers, who help keep the podcast and newsletter free for everybody. To support Looking Sideways with a free or paid subscription, click below:
1. The old Gen-X shred WhatsApp groups have been chirping all week with the news that this year’s British Freeski and Snowboard Championships is being held at Cairngorm Mountain in Scotland! This throwback of a shindig takes place between April 1st and 2nd - find out more here.
2. In which Bethany Hamilton weighs in on the issue of transgender participation in female sport. There is, of course, a perfectly legitimate debate to be had around protecting women’s spaces. But personally, I’m not sure views like the one Bethany puts forward above are particularly helping the discourse (to put it politely).
3. A counterpoint, above, and some related links if you’re interested in explaining this contentious topic in more detail. Try this thoughtful take by Jamie Tworkowski that at least begins to examine why Hamilton’s approach is so problematic. Click this link for a podcast that explores the ‘equality versus fairness’ debate when it comes to trans participation in female sport. And click here to read a piece by
which explores ’Why “Trans Women Are Women” Created More Problems Than It Solved’. If you have any more links on this topic that listeners/readers might find useful, please feel free to share them in the comments below(I appreciate that some readers will probably find the tone of a couple of those links problematic, but personally I am just interested in none-judgementally understanding as many different informed viewpoints on this complex subject as I can, hence why I am sharing a variety).
4. Timeline cleanser: A recent edit from my pals at The Skateboarder’s Companion featuring Sussex’s own Evan Johnson who was deservedly just picked up by New Balance Numeric.
5. I’ve had quite a few people message me about the new Natural Selection Duels format basically saying ‘I don’t get it’. So this explainer from the the NS team comes at a good time. Watch it above.
6. With rumours flying around that Any Day Media, the crew behind MPORA, Whitelines and Outdoor Magic, have lost their funding, it feels as though the recession is really about to bite in our industry. Let’s hope the impact isn’t too severe on our last remaining endemic titles; and take it as a reminder to always, always support your favourite media: we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
7. Last year, my pal Will Renwick ran all 189 of Wales’ mountains in one trip. He’s now made a film about this frankly bonkers mission, which he’s showing on a tour around the England and Wales this spring. Find out more here.
8. An extraordinary New Yorker interview with Salman Rushdie about this recovery from the attack that almost killed him. Read it here.
9. My pal Matt Georges is one of Europe’s great snowboarding photographers. He also runs a creative studio with a sideline in beautifully presented books. His latest is a collaboration with Vans about the Arctic Roses trip I shared last week. As usual, the book looks like a proper thing of beauty - find out more here.
10. Finally - a plug for my day job. My company All Conditions Media is undergoing a big new rebrand/repositioning, 12 year after the last one. We’re also on Substack, so read our latest post above (and give us a follow if ya fancy).
Hope you enjoyed this week’s selection. Leave a comment, or if you’re paid subscriber who has any feedback or questions about the newsletter or recent episodes of the podcast, you can contact me directly in the subscriber chat thread.
