https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Park_in_Kameido
That trick is called "chainsaw massacre." Definitely one of the cooler downtime tricks in my opinion, but such a bitch to clean all the dexes.
I honestly don't know. I told Ivan that if the first shipment magically shows up on my doorstep at some point, I'll send him payment for the extra bags. At this stage though I think we're treating it like a lost parcel and Ivan is going to ask for insurance compensation for it.
Me too. I think the bar needs to be very high, especially given the format. Anybody can look decent on video since you have unlimited attempts to film. So to make BAP this year, I think you'd really need to showcase a super high level. I'd also expect they'd factor in a bit your past history playing at tournaments as well. Looking at the registration, I think the names that jump out for me shredwise are Worek, Rafal, Dante, and Hogan. Probably in that order.
OK, let's give this a shot.
I think it's a great goal for players to push their limits and become the best player they can. That's a worthy and respectable goal. Many times, a player achieves that goal and then BAP recognizes them. That's totally fine, but where things got problematic in the late 90s and early 2000s was when up-and-coming players started confusing and conflating BAP invites as validation of them reaching their goal. Players started focusing on getting a BAP invite instead of focusing on becoming the best footbagger they could be. This was doubly frustrating when you'd see scenarios like:
A player becoming super good, but not getting a BAP invite for several years or ever (Olaf, Ricky Moran, Suderman, Justin Dale, several others).
A player getting a BAP invite, even if they weren't as high level as other non-BAP shredders (Abshire, Lasse, Toby Robinson, etc.)
The original idea of BAP was for players to want to be super good, and then BAP acknowledging that feat once they achieved it. When that got flipped on its head (players wanting to be BAP more than wanting to be good) it became problematic. I also saw firsthand how much stress it needlessly created for so many young players when they'd validate their self-worth based on whether BAP acknowledged them or not. At the end of the day, why does the opinion of like 50 strangers matter more than your own opinion of how hard/fun your own game feels? It doesn't make sense and it didn't seem healthy for the development of the game. My personal experience confirmed this, as I only really blossomed as a player once I stopped caring about other people's perception of my game. Accepting BAP in 03, 04, or 05 would have felt hypocritical since I only reached that level of play BECAUSE I stopped caring about other people's opinions.
Flash forward to 2020 and BAP feels a lot less consequential. I think historically we'll look at BAP as a force that helped raise the technical level of shred in the 1990s, and in the 2000s probably pushed some players to crazy levels at the cost of also making several aspiring players burn out prematurely. I don't think it had much of an impact in the 2010s and expect that continues in the 2020s. The challenges footbag faces in the 2020s are very different than in the 1990s. I think we need to worry more about the low numbers of new players much more than we need to worry about pushing the technical bounds of the sport. If anything, you could argue that the crazy technical levels of the sport now HURT our ability to attract new players.