Okay. There's like somehow like all this hubbub about the Look Pivot? Like, I don't really get it, but, like, here goes.
The basic design of the Pivot was finalised in the late 60s. If this is good, bad, indifferent, maybe just interesting, I don't rightly know. The Nevada N17 doesn't have the name recognition of, say, the Rossi FKS, but both heels have a giant heel lock like an overgrown cow magnet floating on two small arms that connect to a turntable/Lazy Susan thingie that now also holds the brake but didn't back in the olden days***. I'm not sure when brakes started appearing on bindings in general, but companies didn't settle on their current position under the heel until the late 70s or early 80s. I imagine the toe position both complicated the toe's release and the anti-friction device (with it's much cooler sounding acronym, AFD) and caused/allowed/was disabled by icing.
Toe pieces were, and still are, different throughout the binding line. Today there are three options, from an 11-din heap of plastic to the 15- and 18-din all-metal, single pivot, rotary release toes that are shared with Look's race bindings. For a minute back in the 90s there was this cool wing-release toe that looked like a futuristic football stadium at the front.
I have thoughts on binding toes. Rotary-release toe pieces tend to have longer elastic travel, which all the pundits and all the freeride bros in the liftline yammer about incessantly as though that's the measure of not only a binding, but a skier. It's like the dropper post, um, drop that all the endurbros yammer about incessantly in the coffee store in Hyde Park. "How much drop you got?" "240 mil." "Yeah? I GOT 75 MIL IN THE TOE." Something like that. More important to me, the skier who never leaves the ground but has a good bit o' that ol' kinetic energy goin mach stupid at 265 el bees, the release is very smooth.
Wing-release toes do the job, but with a little more fuss and a little less comfortably. There's usually a lot of plastic, although that is a function more of price-point than structural necessity, and in, say, an old Salomon 912 from back in the day, there was a good bit of plastic even in a rotary toe.
At any rate, though there has been a good 30 years and more of R&D into bindings and the cost of rotary toes should therefore not be prohibitive or even high, even Salomon has quit that shit. It makes me sad. There are only two readily available in the retail market today, and they are not coincidentally the 15- and 18-din Pivot/SPX Race toes. Why does this matter, if Bob St Pierre says he likes the new Strive 16, with its awkwardly low toe and knockoff 747 "colourway"? Because I said so.
The Pivot challenges the modern gear frenzy. Everyone goes on and on about new this, new that, and the upper tier of the Pivot family has with minimal exaggeration only changed to meet the fashion of the day. The big news last year was the new Pivot 2.0, with a new heel and unchanged toe. The refinements boil down to some reinforcement on the sides of the cow magnet where all the young kids are scraping the paint off cos they ain't got that good mid-Aughts steez like I do, a little extra magic oomph of some kind in the pole-box for a less disfiguring release, and a small--7mm, give or take--increase in forward pressure adjustment. The Pivot is touted as the new hotness every year by online mags and whatnot. It just isn't, though, and that makes me happy. The new changes, those small and easily overlooked things, are welcome. They do not improve the experience all that much, but they do signal that Look isn't *ahem* looking to drop the binding any time soon. (Speaking of which, if you have a line on any mid-Aughts Salomon 916, 914, STH 16, or STH 14 bindings, I want em. Especially if the brakes are wide or if they're in any wild non-North American colours.)
I think about ability a lot. Having it, not having it in certain circumstances, being good enough at something, say, baseball, to enjoy it, but not good enough to keep playing it beyond high school. Or the mountain bike, on which I can confidently ride a lot of trail, until things get weird. Then I just get scared and lock up. On skis, the point of locking up is much further into the deep end, not quite in over my head.
I occupy two fairly rarified worlds, both in skiing where sometimes not metaphorically I am the best skier on the mountain, and in bikes, where I have 21 years worth of career experience and see so many skilled riders who cook their gear each year. There is a stark lack of context. This is visible in multiple ways, but for my purpose here it is in the choice of gear. Esoteric and--importantly--really expensive choices are made, justified by some imagined need. I can see it happen all around me, folks "needing" XTR cranks at {checks Shimano for retail} over $300 without chainring, or an XO1 cassette at $530, when as the kids are saying, we have cranks and cassettes at home. Only in this meme, the crank is $125 WITH chainring, and the cassette is $220, and both serve their purpose with the same exact functionality. Only folks with top-tier ability will know the difference.
This top-tier ability, coupled with the theory of the aspirational product, supports this almost arcane buying habit. If my wording is sounding circular, bear with me. We are surrounded by folks at or above our ability and financial levels. We exist in a space largely populated by like-minded folks, at least when it comes to gear and experiences. There is a much, much larger populace who indulge in the same activities, about whom we feel not so much more superior than, but entirely separate from. And this, especially in the 18-din version, is where the Pivot 2.0 comes in. Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we? All the guys on the FWT are slammin Pivots on their 120mm freeride skis, jackin the din to 45, and gettin free RedBull for life, that must be the ticket. New criticism, this abjectly is not. Nor is it original, or rarely repeated. This is Marketing 102. (101 must be how to weaponise languistic incorrectness.)
In my rarified worlds, even absent the RedBull-type circuits, not only is the large recreational populace who also participate in our sports ignored, the gear they use is as well. The building is 7 floors high, but we always take the elevator to the 5th and act like that's the basement. A $125 crank that's as expensive as many bikes people ride is "entry-level". A 14-din binding that's above most skiers' heads is similarly "just barely enough". We're exposed to really, really expensive gear early and often, and I think that inures us to our shelling out serious, usually hard-earned ducats.
Sometimes this circular reasoning, this ignorance of the function of something as theoretically simple as a ski binding, goes above mere marketing susceptibility. Look doesn't really advertise in any memorable way. They don't need to. They are one of 4 main binding companies out there, and due to the realities of our late-stage capitalism, they are supported by a gigantic holding corp of one variety or other while simultaneously being required equipment on the bulk of skis sold by this same holding corp. The Rossignol Group of which Look is an integral part is not unique or insidious. This is just business, as they say. You can agree or not.
Nobody skiing resorts in between "work from home" shifts at the local coffee store needs an 18-din binding. I, and they, don't need a 15-din kit, or even 14. I'm a stocky dude, aggressive, skilled, skiing three days a week, and I'm a 9.5 on the holy sheet. The highest I've ever charted a customer was a dude who at like 6'6", 250 el bees, with a not-crazy long foot, and he was a 12. I could barely test his toes with our Vermont Safety cos the correct torque was like eleventy-fortyleven moon units or whatever. He skied daily, pro patroller that he was. What these medium-build cats who've never stood atop a no-fall zone in 13" of Cascade, um, "powder" think they need with a knee-killing 14-din setting on a Pivot 15, let alone 18, is beyond me. Ours not to reason why, I guess.
The Pivot, separate of its corporate genesis, is THE binding of the moment. There have been others, like the mythical green spring--don't ask me cos I don't know--Salomons of the late 90s and early 000s, or the Marker MRR Turntable of the mid 80s, or, poetically, the Pivot-lineage Look Forza circa the page turning year of 1990. Look doesn't have to advertise because any marketing collateral is good money thrown after bad. There is nothing so powerful in marketing as out and out lust, and when you can have your cake and eat it, too, you do.
So, how does it ski, you ask? I need more experience with the binding mounted on other skis, but my first impression is that it skis like any other good binding. It disappears under your foot, letting the boot talk directly to the ski while the ski talks directly to the snow. It releases as it should, doesn't over-damp the snow feel like a plastic Marker from their venerated--but not really all that great--Royal Family does, and looks good doing it.* Yeah, I said it. My favourite binding, the 900s Equipe of the late 90s, is definitely form-follows-function in its appearance. Its replacement, the 914, had a little more elegance, but still didn't rise visually too high above the rabble. I find this æsthetic comforting, sometimes even pleasing, but I do like me a little steez.
So, where do we go from here, you ask? My hope is that Salomon sees the continued success of the Pivot lineage and brings the old 747 family back. I don't see any reason why they would, other than sheer cussedness, and they aren't Sámi. Not much incentive there. Basically, where I go is I scour the ski swap every November, check the internet periodically, and try to have a few loose sawbucks on hand specifically for that 997, or that STH14, should I or you come across one.
In the end, I hear endless justification, fluffed-up statements of need, or comparisons to friends who totally ski every week at Mt Shredly, but I almost never hear the only two legitimate reasons for buying a Pivot 18 or 15. The first, stated a little less succinctly over our time together at the old shop by Ryan (the Owner) than I'll type out here, is if a given skier is aggressive beyond his or her own skill, preferably if that given skill set is still rich and deep like Ryan's. If you have the ability to get yourself into that sketchy situation and the willingness to schralp yer way on down, crashing and injury possibilities be damned, then maybe the elastic travel and superior retention is for you. Otherwise, all I can say for myself is "I just want one". There is no need to justify yourself. If you have the--uff da--DAMN NEAR $500 for this kit, by all means. Send it. Them new "colourways" is right. Otherwise, why do we need new bindings when we have bindings at home?! (I have three pairs, jetzt, heute, and two of them are even full sets.) Or if you don't, Evo's got a Salomon Strive 12 on sale for like a buck sixty. It's good enough for all of us. Yes, even me, that most refined of consumers.**
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Title is from the seminal 90s Gen X identifier record Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? by the Cranberries. But you knew that.
* Well, there's a few recent "colourways" that Look could have skipped. The Forza re-release didn't cut any mustard, let alone THE mustard, for an example.
** Granted, you will hafta put a, like, 6 mil gas pedal under that shit, but, like, that's why I'm here.
