maybe its a conspricy....
but on to other things does anyboday live in LA or get the LA times because there is a disturbing paintball article in it
July 20, 2002
Inland Valley Voice
Paintball makes its mark on loyal players
Regulars at Inland Empire venues absorb as much skill as they can from the experts.
By Pam Noles, Inland Valley Voice
There are people who enjoy this type of thing, trapped in a bunker with live fire coming from two sides with several team members down, which leaves flanks exposed. It's loud, each thok!thok!thok! of the opponent's ammunition hitting the huge vinyl barricade with a mighty force that makes the whole thing shake like gelatin.
Sweat and fog from panting breath make it difficult to see anything clearly through the facemask, which also restricts hearing because the straps press tight against the ears. Someone behind is shouting nonsense, sounding just like the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoons -- whaa whaa whaa wah-wah -- and he's gesturing frantically toward the corner ahead. What does that mean? Does that mean go forward? Is he hurt? Frustrated? What is he pointing at?
Maybe it's OK to peek. Raise the gun. Lean out slowly.
"Even though no one's ever really died from paintball if ..."
Thok!thok!thok! One hit to the top of the head, one in the chest, one splatting against the center of the facemask, shooting drops of oily paint through the breathing holes, leaving a taste of bitter almond.
Kill shots, all. And every single one of them hurts. A lot.
Less than one minute into the game, and dead.
Again.
There are tens of thousands of people across the country who do this every weekend. Firm statistics are hard to come by, but there are leagues throughout the country, playing fields and stores catering to players in nearly every region, and more and more people are discovering this extreme sports. Last year, 120,000 people trekked to Corona, home of the oldest paintball field in the country.
The faithful love the idea of a newbie trying out the sport. Each of them were newbies before being hooked, and so they are generous with advice.
"Don't be nervous. Just go out there and think about all the times someone forgot to put paper in the Xerox machine, picture that person on the other team, and you'll be fine."
That's Alysia Chang. She lives in Alhambra. She's a 4-foot-9, 35-year-old paintball player whose mom is relieved she got into the sport because it meant her child would no longer pursue her other hobby of jumping out of airplanes.
"When you're out there, it's such a skill-based sport. There's very little luck involved," Chang said. "I would be lying if I said that it did not hurt, but I would also be lying if I said you didn't ignore it after a while."
Two years ago, her brother arranged a paintball gathering as a team-building exercise for the office and asked her to fill in when someone dropped out. It was her first time. Since then, Chang's only missed five weekends, traveling all over to play at arenas indoors and out. She plays on a team, Hybrid, which is ranked 13th in a five-state circuit. She swears this will be one of the best workouts one can have. The weight of the gun works the arms, the running is all about cardio.
She doesn't mention the health benefits of panic and anxiety. Perhaps there are none.
Chang is complete with her advice. Wear loose clothing, wear gloves, wear a little bandana around the neck if possible, she said.
"The ball's going 200 miles an hour. They're about the size of gobstoppers and they hurt," she said. "Even though no one has ever really died from paintball if they followed all the safety precautions, it's nice to have something around your neck to protect it."
"It's an adrenaline rush I need in my life ... "
Impact Zone Paintball is in a warehouse right next to the 60 Freeway in Pomona, formerly the home of an insulation company. There's nothing to set it apart from the other industrial-strength buildings in the area until pulling into the parking lot. It is filled with normal looking guys, accountant types, maybe somebody's brother, dressed in camouflage and bright paintball player gear, casually pulling weapons out of the trunks of Camrys and Ford pickups.
An old hockey rink converted for use as a paintball arena fills the 55,000-square-foot warehouse. As far as anyone knows, it is the largest indoor paintball field in the West. Black netting drapes from the edges of the rink up to the ceiling to keep the ammunition and splatters on the field. The space can break down into one, two or three fields, offering a total playing area of 22,000 square feet, strewn with large items used for barricades and hiding.
Risers are placed along one side of the rink for spectators; picnic tables give players and spectators plenty of room to spread out their equipment or food. Two pizza parlors nearby deliver right to the door. Sometimes the arena sets up a barbecue, offering a plate for $5. Players may bring their own food.
Impact Zone offers tournament-style play, which means two teams face off shooting until most of one team is decimated. Then they do it again. It's fast and furious play, with most of the action happening in the first minute.
David White, chief administrative and financial officer, said one of the goals is to make paintball a user-friendly spectator sport. At an outdoor place, the players go off onto the field, often a converted golf course, and friends and family won't see them again for hours. At Impact Zone, the friends and family can take a seat and take it all in. Workers squeegee the windows at regular intervals.
"Indoors, the family can enjoy the action," White said. "Paintball is really a social activity."
Safety is huge at Impact Zone. Masks are mandatory on the field, plugs in the guns off the field. All players must sign a release of liability, just in case, and parents of youths ages 10 to 17 must also sign a medical waiver, authorizing the use of emergency medical treatment should paramedics need to be called.
"We've never had to call them," White said. "Never."
Robert Serrano of Ontario got into the game six months ago, drawn in by his 12-year-old grandson, Robert III. They were driving down the 60, saw the building and zoomed into the parking lot.
Playing has offered a new way of relating to his grandson, Serrano said. Age has little meaning on the paintball field, where strategy, tactics and aim win out over brute strength.
"I challenge all grandfathers to bring their grandchildren," he said. "Look at me, 48 years old, doing this and having a great time."
A tool and die cutter by trade, Serrano is patient explaining the proper way to hold a gun -- not by the barrel, but the handle as if it were a Tommy gun -- and trying to explain the finer points between aggression and tactical smarts. He is a nonverbal cheerleader, just visible on the other side of the thick plastic, giving a thumbs up, holding his arms out to remind of proper gun handling, wincing when he sees a head strike find its mark.
Like many others hooked on the sport, it didn't take Serrano long to purchase his own equipment and stop sinking money into rentals. He'd be out there playing this day, if it weren't for his hand being in a cast. (No, not because someone shot it.)
"I can't stop. I do it every other week," Serrano said. "It's an adrenaline rush I need in my life."
"There are still some guys who, when they get beat by a woman .... "
Pomona resident Andrea Martinez, 20, is chief operations officer of Impact Zone. The company is a youthful one -- of 32 employees, 30 are under age 23 -- and believes in providing opportunity. Martinez has been playing the sport for a year, and she's earned quite a reputation for her prowess on the field.
When she holds a gun, explaining its basic function, describing the custom and costly modifications done especially for her, there is a confidence. The other players are respectful and silent when she speaks; one player standing behind her, who must be new and not know who is doing the talking, is hushed by a companion when he tries to speak over her. Martinez doesn't notice.
As head of operations, she's in charge of all referees. It is true, she explains, that counting kills on the floor is in part based on the honor system. In tournament-style play, if a player is hit anywhere, even on a spot not traditionally thought of as a killing strike, the player has to wait out the rest of the game behind a net barrier. The best rule of thumb is that if paint is on the body, get out of the game.
"You get to play again in five minutes anyway, so it's not that big of a deal," she said.
The referees will tap out a player who perhaps doesn't know he was hit, or perhaps was trying to cheat, but that is actually not their first function on the field, she said.
"The refs are there primarily as safety monitors. Masks sliding off, shooting from too close range, the testosterone getting too much, we have to watch for that," she said.
Martinez plays on a team named "Vengeance" and is working on putting together an all-woman group. She started in paintball through scenario playing, a style offered by most of the outdoor arenas, but loves the fast pace of tournament style. It's thinking on the fly, flowing tactics with the situation.
Andrea has run clinics for kids, and is thinking of putting together clinics for women. She has been known to take a group of new child players and turn them into a lethal force.
"I'd really like to see more women playing, for it to be so common that it's just two athletes playing each other," she said. "There are still some guys who, when they get beat by a woman, they got beat by a woman, you know?"
"Don't get scared and don't keep hiding ... "
After just a couple of hours of playing, the elite players are drawn to each other, talking guns and equipment, talking strategy. They stand out among the newbies and the walk-ons: They have their own equipment, they are the consistently not shot down within the first frantic moments of a game, when the referees shout go and everyone piles for cover. These are the players who can actually get from one side of the field to the other without getting shot.
Aggression, several keep insisting, is a good thing. But not too much.
"Don't get scared and don't keep hiding because then you don't know if they're sneaking up on you," said one longtime player. "But don't put yourself out there to just get shot."
Balancing those two demands -- don't hide, but don't go out and get shot -- is one of the keys being a successful player. It's not easy. The elite players are a pretty nice bunch, provided they feel they're talking to someone with a least a shred of common sense. If they feel like they're talking to an adrenaline-driven killing freak, they're a bit cold.
Unless, of course, they themselves happen to be an adrenaline-driven killing freak. They exist even among the elite.
"The bruise comes out in about two days ... "
Jasmine Hamlett, 25, of Los Angeles, stands out in the crowded arena. She wears a blue dress, a straw hat, heels. She looks like someone's girlfriend, come to cheer him on.
She's actually out for blood. Driving along the 60 on her way from Los Angeles to Moreno Valley, she spotted Impact Zone and took the exit, thrilled to see the arena.
"I always wanted to do it, but never knew where to go," Hamlett said. "I always thought it would be a fun date thing."
Really?
"Oh, yeah. What a great way to get to know somebody. Shoot them."
The first thing she asked was how much it hurt. They told her it hurt, but then you almost get used to it. Which is very close to being true. Hamlett decides to come back "with a lot of padding on" and see for herself.
Nearby, a player is explaining the art of timing bruises.
"The bruise comes out in about two days," he says. "In three days, it will be as big as it's going to get. Then it turns into a ring."
Hamlett has already left the building, so she doesn't hear this. Nor does she hear another woman player explaining why she never plays in summer. Bruises do not go well with summer clothing.
"I don't know if I had kids if I would want them to do something like this .... "
The youths are deceptively cautious. Several members of the Retard Riot, one of the teams in the Impact Zone youth league, are all vigor and bravado, speaking not of the game in terms of strategy and tactics, but in terms of inflicting maximum pain.
"I like it because you get a gun, then you shoot them and it hurts really bad!" says Long Nguyen, 14, a freshman at Ontario High School. he has many bruises. he has been playing for three months.
"You can hit 'em over and over again," said Ontario resident Brian Ho, 12, a seventh-grader at Oaks Middle School.But later on, when these ever-so-tough kids see a group of elite adults who are having fun, but not at the expense of players whose skills aren't up to their level, the boys all want to play with that group. It's not always easy to be around larger and skilled players whose idea of having fun is using the weak as target practice. This doesn't happen often, but it happens enough for them to be pleased when a group of older, better players treats them as something more than fodder. They are almost peers.
It's not easy to be young on a paintball field. Take the child who, while resting up after being shot at too close range, asks a competitor how the rest of the day is going.
"Have you," the child asks with his eyes wide and brown, "shot anybody but me?"
A woman watching the action on the fields wonders how it all balances out. Her husband would love this place, she says. She's finding it interesting, fun to watch.
"I don't know if I had kids if I would want them to do something like this," she said. "But on the other hand, it's a way for them to get out their aggression."
That can be the dilemma, when introduced to paintball. In real life one must not shoot someone, but in paintball, that is the point. In real life, one does not get up and walk away from a head shot. Here, that is how the game is played.
In real life, upon realizing that a mostly peaceful person could take so easily to this obvious blend of violence and sport, there is a bit of worry. Does it trivialize violence to so obviously play at war? Is it acceptable to take to such a game so easily, and eventually find it fun?
What does it mean, when the bullets stop hurting, just as the expert players said they would?
There are clinics for women and young people planned at Impact Zone. Signup has begun for adult leagues, and plans are underway to organize a separate league for police and firefighters, who have paintball among the sports in the fire and police Olympics.
If the natural aggression is there, perhaps it wouldn't be too much to take advantage of these opportunities to learn technique, strategy, form.
Thok!thok!thok!
Because one day, it would be nice to not get shot in the head so quickly.
see if you are lik me you think the words kill, death, gun, or amuniton or ideas like
Just go out there and think about all the times someone forgot to put paper in the Xerox machine, picture that person on the other team, and you'll be fine."
or
She doesn't mention the health benefits of panic and anxiety. Perhaps there are none.
or
She's actually out for blood
thesse kind of articles make it look like we are nothing but violent people lookin for an exuse to hurt somebody
even though they are tryin to put out a positve message the do more damage then good
