Professional Thrill Seekers

WHAT: FACES….A Collector’s Edition of Outside Magazine WHERE: Newsstands and online at www.faces-mag.com HOW MUCH: $9.99

If you’ve been cruising newsstands lately, you may have noticed this jumbo-sized, ode to adventure sports. Faces is, in fact, a special collector’s publication, produced by the staff of Outside magazine. The 160-page, coffee-table quality book features exposes on 20 Red Bull athletes. It’s a motley crew that includes everyone from big wave surfers, to rock climbers, to base jumpers and, yes, even mountain bikers. Darren Berrecloth, Kyle Strait and Hannah Steffens all get the star treatment, which amounts to 22 pages of mountain bike coverage in all.

As for the coverage itself, well, it’s the quality you’d expect from Outside: well-written prose, smart photography….yeah, it’s definitely worth a read. The magazine itself is a self-publisher’s wet dream: heavy cover stock, beautiful 4-color spreads, clean layouts. Faces definitely transcends bathroom literature, earning a spot instead on you’re your book shelf.

But here’s the real question: Is Faces truly worth ten bucks? That depends. If you’re only buying it for the cycling coverage, if you don’t give a damn about base jumping and snowboarding and kayaking—if you’re sick to death of the very word adrenaline, well then, you’d be better off using that money to buy a year’s subscription to any of the cycling rags on the market. The Berrecloth, Strait and Steffens profiles are good, but 22 pages is, at the end of the day, merely 22 pages.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in a time capsule of the latest professional thrill seekers, Faces is a worthy purchase. Faces is on newsstands now and should hang around through January 31st. You can also buy it online at www.faces-mag.com