NOTE: Due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, the event has been postponed by Knife Rights until further notice.
For more than 140 years, the Bowie knife has been outlawed in the state of Texas, the very same state in which the knife was born.
But thanks to a new law passed a few months ago, Bowie knives (along with daggers, swords, spears, dirks, stilettos, and poniards) will be legal to carry nearly anywhere starting Sept. 1.
In celebration of this momentous enactment, Knife Rights is sponsoring the Texas Bowie Knife Liberty Celebration at The Alamo on Sept. 2. The knife advocacy organization is promoting the event as a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bowie) event in which the public will be able to proudly carry a Bowie knife in public for the first time in their lives.
The event is brief but there will be a special showing of historical Bowie knives in the mission’s collection and presentations about the history of the Bowie knife.
It also coincides with the famous mission’s “First Saturday at The Alamo” program that transforms The Alamo back to the times of the 1830s.
After centuries of looking for the best defense against a knife attack, we’ve finally found that the answer has been literally right under our noses: gigantic fake breast implants.
Sure this is a cheap story and cheap topic to cover relating to knives, but it’s been in the news and it seems like there’s no way to avoid it.
Apparently, a Florida woman was attacked by her ex-fiance’s new girlfriend with a knife. The woman said she was trying to calm the new girlfriend down before she suddenly took out a knife and stabbed her. The woman said the next thing she knew, she was covered in water.
That water turned out to be the saline water from inside her implant, which was just strong enough to save her from getting a punctured lung. The woman, who wishes to remain unidentified, said the $6,000 to get implants was the best investment she’s ever made. The new girlfriend is probably feeling pretty foolish after grossly misusing a knife and ultimately puncturing an implant.
But, if you think this is an extraordinary story that’s atypical, think again. Another case of life-saving breasts happened not long ago.
A while back, a Russian woman got into a pretty intense fight with her husband that culminated in him pulling a long knife on her. However, when he tried to stab her in the chest, the knife became lodged in what one Russian news organization called her “silicone body armor.”
The ironic part of this whole event is that her husband encouraged her to get the implants five years ago. Although he was trying his best to stab her in the heart, his own vanity was blocking his vapid attempt at murder.
Since the Internet is packed with so much cool knife information, we’ve decided to make it easy for you to get your knife news all in one place: here. Each Thursday, we’ll be hooking our readers up with a quick summary of new knife information, products and articles across the web. Here’s the skinny for this week.
Blade Show announces qualifiers for World Cutting Contest
The folks over at Blade Magazine have announced the qualifiers for the 2011 World Cutting Championship, which will be held on June 11 at the Blade Show in Atlanta, Georgia. The crew is headlined by Donavon Phillips, the 2010 Blade Show World Cutting Champion, who is shown above. Other qualifiers are: Dan Keffeler, Ted Ott, Gary Bond, Evan Martin, Bud Robbins, Lars Rosenblad, Jose Diaz, Michael Eubanks and John Czagas.
Don’t buy a a set of kitchen knives, just buy the ones you need
That’s the advice of a cooking article this week in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which gives the following advice.
You will waste money on specialty knives you won’t ever use. Spend the money on the best 8-inch chef’s knife, 4-inch paring knife and 12-inch serrated-edge knife you can afford. Those three knives will cost $130 to $150.
A review of Gerber’s new portable saw
Gerber has a pretty badass saw that’s on the market and the guys over at the Southwest Gerber blog just gave it a solid review. The saw is about 13 inches long, has an 11-inch blade and weighs in at around one pound. Here’s a snippet.
Probably the most important aspect of the Gerber Gator Saw for that matter, is that it comes with an intensely sharp blade that will maintain its edge retention for a long time under normal use. While it’s a great saw for camping jobs and smaller tasks, as one reviewer said, it’s not designed for “sawing down redwoods.
Knives and lipstick aren’t two items that usually go together very well (unless of course they’re combined to make one of those cool lipstick knives), but somehow Rep. Jenn Coffey embodies both of these by being a woman and the ultimate champion of knife rights.
So, who is this Jenn Coffey? She is a representative in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and the author of a new book titled “Knives, Lipstick, and Liberty: One Woman’s Journey.”
In the middle of last month, New Hampshire governor John Lynch signed her bill into law that according to Knife Rights means “New Hampshire now has no knife laws which stop law abiding citizens from buying, selling, owning, carrying, possessing, transporting, collecting, or lawfully using any type of knife.”
If you’re going to Blade Show 2011 in less than two weeks, you’ll have a chance to hear Jenn Coffey speak and get autographed versions of her book. Her story about how she went from an everyday woman to a politician and knife rights advocate will be heard at her workshop “Got Liberty? How to Repeal Anti-Knife Laws” on Saturday June 11th at 2:15 p.m.
Does strapping on Roman armor and facing off with adversaries armed with swords and tridents appeal to you?
If so, you should check out the Gladiator School of Rome, where wannabe warriors don ancient attire and learn the ways of the gladiator.
The Italian school offers lessons in Roman-era combat, complete, of course, with togas, shields and combat skirts.
A recent Bloomberg article reported that the training was especially popular among CEOs, who feel the lessons in combat beef up their business acumen.
Giovanni Bonmartai, the CEO of Europe’s largest printing-supply store, said the skills he picks up in the gladiator’s ring transfer to corporate negotiations.
“Business is still hand-to-hand warfare,” Bonmartini says. “And it’s all encapsulated in the body: anger, excitement, challenge. That’s why I come to the arena. This is an invigorating perspective and perfect preparation for the negotiating table.”
If you happen to be in Rome, a two-hour session at the school will run you 30 Euros ($42). Not convinced? Check out the video below.
Blade magazine will host its 30th annual Blade Show from June 10-12 in Atlanta, Georgia.
If you’ve never been before, the Blade Show is essentially the Super Bowl of knife collecting; if you have the time, it’s definitely worth checking out.
The event, which will be held at the Cobb Galleria, is the “world’s largest combined show of handmade, factory and antique knives.” It will feature 700 tables and approximately 175 factory booths.
An award for the 2011 Knife-of-The-Year will be given for factory knives and there will also be inductions to the Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame.
Other highlights are: the 9th Annual BLADE Show World Championship Cutting Competition, forging demos and seminars on how to collect and make knives.
The Riverview RV Park in Vidalia, Louisiana was packed to capacity last Saturday. In addition to the crowd of weekend campers, a British car show had attracted a throng of onlookers. They gawked at the shiny automobiles, seemingly unaware that in the back of the park, along the sandy banks of the Mississippi River, the ghost of one of America’s finest knife fighters was being resurrected.
Jim Bowie died at the Alamo, with a pistol in one hand and his famous Bowie knife in the other. How many member of the Mexican army he slayed before he was killed, no one knows. When the Mexican general Santa Anna heard of his capture, he ordered his body buried, saying that Bowie was too brave a man to be burned like a dog on the funeral pyre; he later changed his mind.
It was in Vidalia, where Bowie first garnered fame. In the legendary Sandbar Duel, he used his Bowie Knife to kill one of his attackers and slice off the forearm of another. Newspapers covered the story, with lurid details of Bowie’s incredible fighting prowess, and a hero of the frontier was born. His Bowie knife, distinctive because of its long, curvaceous blade, grew a reputation of its own.
Every September in Vidalia, population 4,553, they celebrate the legacy of Bowie with the annual Jim Bowie Festival. When I arrived last Saturday, it was just in time to catch the awards ceremony of the Little Mr. Wee Bowie Contest. A dozen or so aspiring Jim Bowies, between the ages of 3 and 6, dressed up in their burliest frontier gear. They wore chaps and cowboy hats and Ms. Vidalia, replete in her gown and tiara, crowned winners in each category.
This was only a warm-up for the main source of entertainment: a theatrical reenactment of the Sandbar Duel by the Natchez Little Theater. With a corn dog in one hand and an oversized jug of sweet tea in the other, I watched in awe as the ghost of Bowie came alive in front of my eyes. With the grace of a ballerina, Bowie dodged bullets and swords before slicing and knifing his foes into pieces. He was shot twice and stabbed once and ended the fight sprawled on the ground.
After the reenactment, attendees were serenaded by musical numbers from actors dressed as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I bought a five-dollar frontiersman hat and sat on the riverside bathing in the warm autumn sun. On the other side of the river sat Natchez, Mississippi, full of regal estates and haunted plantations, relics from the Old South. But in Vidalia, history was chronicled with little flair except for the blade of a knife. Bowie, now dead and buried for 164 years, would appreciate it that way.
Check out the video below for video footage from the Jim Bowie Festival in Vidalia,
