By Isaac Kimball, Bangor Daily News, Maine Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 7--Picture this: You and half a dozen others crouch back against a wall of netting as you peer through plastic facemasks across a field of inflated obstacles. A whistle blows. You sprint across the field and dive be-hind whatever cover you can find, as myriad little flecks of color come hurtling through the air in your direction.
You start shooting back but then a 'pop-pop-pop' sounds off to your left. Taut with adrenaline, you feel the sting as paint splats on your exposed elbow, eliminating you from play. It's disappointing, yes; but no worries, the game will be over in three minutes, and you can play again.
What is this? World War III meets Jackson Pollack? A bored teenager's day-dream, or his mother's nightmare? No, it's paint ball, and for one store in Bangor, that 'pop-pop-pop' is the sound of business.
Splatz Extreme Sports Gear in the Broadway Shopping Plaza in Bangor has been selling paint-ball equipment for almost two years, taking advantage of the sport's enormous growth. While paint-ball has had some image problems over the years, it now supports several small businesses in Maine, and has even spawned its own regulatory organization.
The rules of paint ball are as easy to understand as its appeal. Players shoot paint-filled plastic balls at each other, and are 'out' as soon as they or their equipment is hit. Two main types of paint ball are played in Maine: woods ball and speedball. Woods ball is basically what it sounds like, with players or teams moving across a large wooded area to capture an objective or eliminate a competing team. Similar variants involve courses built to resemble a castle, a fort or an ur-ban setting.
Speedball is played on a small netting-enclosed course made of inflatable obstacles and surrounded by netting to protect spectators. Teams attempt to eliminate each other or cap-ture each other's flag. The television-friendly nature of speedball has helped participation in the sport increase by as much as 25 percent a year.
A paint-ball player for 17 years, Portland-area entrepreneur Brian Hanson first opened Splatz Indoor Paintball in a 36,000-square-foot building in Port-land in 2001. The inside of the building was set up as an urban tactical range. After looking around for a year and a half for a second site, Hanson chose Bangor because of the absence of paint-ball businesses in the area.
Splatz Extreme Sports Gear opened in Bangor in August of 2002. Hanson opened an outdoor paint-ball range on Outer Hammond Street in Hermon in August 2003. The Portland indoor range closed in January of 2003 when its lease ran out, but Hanson has been looking for a new site, and does have a shop in Portland with the same inventory as in Bangor.
Hanson is no newcomer to the business world. At 34, he says he has had some 17 businesses in the last 10 years, some of which worked better than others. He opened coffee kiosks and other enterprises in Novosibirsk, Siberia's largest city. In the United States he has been involved in both the fish trade and the club scene.
Lining the walls in the Bangor shop are brightly colored objects that resemble guns. However, Hanson and other paint-ball enthusiasts carefully refer to them as 'markers,' since 'guns' is a term not popular with parents and teachers. Hanson's shop in the Broadway Shopping Plaza boasts the largest inventory of these and their attendant projectiles and safety gear in the state. He also offers about 14 brands of skateboards along with skateboarding gear.
Hanson says the markers have come a long way from the first set, which were improvised from a tree-marking device for foresters. They are 'high-tech stuff' -- computerized and programmable to regulate the velocity and firing frequency of the balls, and are machined from ex-pensive materials.
Paint-ball markers vary widely in price, some costing as much as $1,500. Hanson says a basic setup for tournament play is likely to run about $2,000 including safety gear. Though he believes the economy is picking up, Hanson acknowledges that a sluggish economy might discourage people from getting into paint ball.
'But for those who play,' he says, 'it's their chosen sport,' adding that the cost of play has decreased over the years, so that a person can play all day for about $40.
Hanson says his biggest competitors are online. His youthful market is very comfortable with the Internet, what Hanson calls 'the great pricing equalizer.' That is why Splatz focuses on customer service, and why the staff is certified by the manufacturers to service their equipment.
Hanson says 80 percent of his customers participate in both paint ball and skateboarding, which, after inline skating, are the second and third most popular 'extreme sports' in the world. The majority of players are from 13 to 20 years of age, and about 80 percent are male. Explaining the game's addictive appeal to youth, Hanson says, 'It's an adrenaline game.' Hanson adds that those not interested in other team sports often try paint ball.
Splatz and several other paint-ball businesses are part of the Maine Recreational Paintball League, which allows individual players, teams, fields and retailers to come together to address common needs and concerns in what is still quite a young industry. The MRPL meets monthly to compare notes.
League president Josh Biermann of Portland says the MRPL was founded about four years ago to promote cooperation between paint-ball fields, with safety as the major focus. Safety classes and referee training, Biermann says, were seen as part of the solution to the sport's reputation as a dangerous or violent pastime, what he describes as the 'black eye' on paint ball.
Member paint-ball fields in the league enforce a maximum paint-ball velocity of 300 feet per second, though some fields opt for even lower speeds. According to Bangor police Officer Jason McAmbley, his department's standard issue handgun fires a bullet at 1,200 feet per second. Factoring in the threefold difference in mass, a paint ball has 1/50th the kinetic energy of a bul-let when leaving the muzzle, then loses energy rapidly due to its greater air resistance.
Players must check their markers on a 'chronograph,' Josh Biermann says, not just at the begin-ning of play but throughout the day, as temperature and other changes can affect the expansion of com-pressed air and especially CO2.
While it's difficult to make money in the paint-ball business, Biermann says, and a lot of businesses have come and gone in Maine, the number of players has continued to grow. He believes the MRPL has had 'an amazing influence' on peoples' impression of the sport, noting that parents who would never allow their children to participate are often impressed by the training and safety regulations imposed by the league. 'It's safe danger,' he says.
Brian Hanson holds that paint ball promotes positive values like teamwork. In woods ball especially, where refereeing is next to impossible, and even in speedball, the acknowledgement of hits is honor-based. Paint balls can sting, especially in the cold, and any player caught tagging an opponent more than two or three times is removed from play.
Wayne Doore, who works at Flying Dutchman Field in Dover-Foxcroft, says he never sees players get mad or trying to hurt each other.
'It's a glorified game of tag,' Doore says.
When asked if paint ball is connected to youth violence, the MRPL's Biermann says, 'I couldn't disagree more,' explaining that he has never shot a weapon in his life, and that he wouldn't participate in paint ball if it struck him as militaristic.
While there have been incidents of vandalism involving paint-ball markers, Biermann says the culprits are not 'real paint-ball players.' In other words, they are not likely to be members of a team or to have played at a field. Those committed to the sport, Biermann says, would avoid doing anything to give it a 'black eye.'
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