ACM NEWSLETTER 63

WATCH & READ: MAKE PLAY HAPPEN

The trademark signs of a great ACM video shoot? Finishing up with a dip in a sunkissed English river, and firing up the coals for a BBQ cookout. It’s the type of wrap party that, like a lot of what we do, blurs the lines between work and play - which is precisely the theme of this, our third instalment of Passenger’s Make Play Happen series, helmed by ecological home grower and forager Poppy Okocha. We met Poppy in her edible garden in Devon, which is central to everything she cooks, writes, teaches, and harvests for a living, and played a pivotal role in our journeys home with bellies full of the best chargrilled courgettes we’ve ever tasted.

WATCH: MAX THORPE // DISCOVER WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF

Of all the conversations we had at Kendal Mountain Festival this year, the chat we had with Max Thorpe might have been the most unexpected. As Head of Development for our client Shackleton, we would have been very happy to talk shop with him at our team dinner. Instead, he had all of us hanging on to his every word with his personal story of epic rowing challenges, rogue waves, mid-Atlantic fires, ocean rescues, and heroic comebacks. Shackleton has recently made full use of his jaw-flooring tale in their new video series, so you can get all the incredible details straight from the (sea)horse’s mouth.

WATCH: THIS IS FREEDOM ROAD

Sticking with the Now That’s What I Call Kendal: Greatest Hits theme, it would be irresponsible of us to avoid throwing in one of our top picks from the slew of cinema that we enjoyed at this year’s event. Of our favourites, Alex Tiernan’s shadowing of inner-London MTB crew BikeStormz’s adventure to the longest downhill road in Britain is the piece we’ve revisited the most since last weekend. Not only is their trip the first venture out of the city for a number of their riders, but it also sends a poignant message of acceptance, empowerment, and inclusion. At six minutes, it’s the perfect length to watch while your tea brews, too. Stick the kettle on, yeah?

WATCH: MANERA - BACAN

Left, Left, Left, Right, Left isn’t only the barking call of a parading army general, or the start of a PlayStation cheat code buried deep in the recesses of your mind. It’s also a pretty accurate representation of the wave ratio in Chile. Famed for an infinite scroll of dreamy peeling lefts (and the 30ft bombs of Punta de Lobos), it’s a case of go goofy or go home along this skinny finger of South American coastline. But not for Arc’teryx’s Canadian regular-footer and cold water specialist, Pete Devries. Bacan follows Devries as he finds the proverbial needle in a veritable barn filled with haystacks: a nugget of right-handed gold, way, way south of the equator.

WATCH: AUSTIN SWEETIN || BLUR

November’s single-figure temperatures are the starting gun for stoking up our fire, but more importantly, firing up our stoke. While we can’t give you an honest recommendation for the best local kiln-dried logs for your burner, we absolutely can come through with the type of winter edit that’ll kick your snow season into gear. Right now, it’s the off-script powder slicing of Blur, the new one from wildman Austen Sweetin, that’s turning our dials right up. Jury’s out on its utterly genius/bonkers soundtrack, though.