Arts: We Have Finally Found ?The Skipper?

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Brow Beat We Have Finally Found "The Skipper" By Forrest Wickman Posted Monday, Aug 06, 2012, at 12:15 PM ET When a video of "The Skipper"—a man who travelled everywhere by skipping—appeared on Reddit in April and began to go viral, many fans demanded that the Internet band together and track him down. The top comment on YouTube read, "WE MUST FIND THE SKIPPER NOW, AND SEE IF HE IS STILL SKIPPING." One Redditor posted an Ask Me Anything request for "The Skipper."  While at that time we unable to track him down, Brow Beat did unearth a 4,000-word Miami Herald profile of the man—whose real name is Bill Martinelli—from 1988. The profile, "A Leap of Faith," revealed how even through tough times in the '80s—including losing his girlfriend, suffering a possibly homophobic beatdown, and losing a legal battle that threatened his right to skip for a living—Martinelli had never lost the bounce in his step. However, in the more than twenty years since, there appeared to be no further mentions of The Skipper and his whereabouts, and whether he was still skipping remained mysterious. So you can imagine my surprise when I got a message from Kim "Skipper" Corbin—creator of skipping advocacy site iSkip.com—revealing that she had found "The Skipper." As Corbin detailed on her site, she had been looking for Martinelli for years, but it was only after the Martinelli video went viral that she was able to recruit the help of others to track him down. It turns out that while The Skipper, as Corbin reported and ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hey Mitt, Stop Outsourcing Your Feminine Side The Olympic Games' Biggest Scandal: Bronze and Silver Medalists Stand at the Same Height on the Podium Words Mean Things	Advertisement
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