Mask restrictions will be in effect indefinitely at Mike Clark’s business and his customers don’t mind a bit.
That’s because they don’t want to get shot in the face.
Clark has been running Barrie Paintball, located on Line 10 of Essa Township just west of the city, for 22 years and has been reminding players to keep their masks on for just as long.
While the nasty coronavirus that make our face diapers necessary put the screws to many area businesses, his actually thrived (when it was allowed to be open) he tells BarrieToday.
“Over the two years, we were shut down a year in total,” Clark says, “and there was nothing much we could do except work on our (paintball scenario) fields and kind of improve the place.
“We eliminated our food services. We didn’t put up any of our big tents where people used to congregate when they were gearing up. We changed the upper parking into an expanded safe zone (that’s where markers - they’re not referred to as guns - are put on safety and the barrels are covered) so we could spread our picnic tables farther and father out between groups," he explained.
With those and other changes in place, it was time to rock, says Clark.
“But when we were open I was very, very busy because all the competition was closed,” he says.
“We had people coming from Ottawa every weekend, people coming from Windsor for the weekend, Hamilton, Sudbury: those were the four corners and everything in between. We were just uber popular.”
Many of the indoor and outdoor paintball operations in the province went belly-up for the same reasons, he adds.
“They couldn’t sustain their overhead. In this industry we have tremendous overhead, especially the taxes,” Clark says. “They couldn’t sustain it because they didn’t own their property and couldn’t borrow money on it and stay open. Most of the indoor operations are gone and quite of few of the outdoor ones are gone too.”
Their loss turned out be his gain, allowing him to purchase more equipment for the business and expand his facility for the growing number of Airsoft avids.
“Airsoft is an adult-only game, much tougher than paintball and not for the squeamish,” he says. “They’re much more serious than paintball players, who are always laughing and having fun. Their field speeds (how fast the Airsoft ball is travelling) are higher. They’re running 450 feet per second where paintball is only 300.”
Clark says his 50-acre operation is a little unique in the province.
“One of the things people like about us is we have so much acreage and so much room. With 17 different fields, people can be spread out tremendously in much larger areas,” he says. “That was our big advantage over a lot of other places is the amount of room we have.
“We have the largest CQB (close quarter combat) field in Canada. Up until two years ago some members of the Canadian military were training here,” Clark says. “We now also have Georgian Bay Volunteer Search and Rescue training here once a month for practising rescues and body recovery.”
The heavily-wooded rolling hills of Barrie Paintball - some of the trees are 100 feet tall or more and the hills can be 300 feet high - is a perfect spot for the game, he adds.
“We strive for realism,” says Clark of all the fields with their buildings, barriers and barrels, a school bus and, of course, airplanes.
“We have real F-5 fighter jets along with 17 or 18 other different planes in all. I’ve got tunnels that come up from underground into buildings, old military jeeps and personnel carriers.”
After a few dozen people pop off rounds and rounds of paintballs, the bush and the players begin to look pretty colourful.
Not to worry. The spherical gelatin capsules, which leave the occasional welt, contain primarily polyethylene glycol and other non-toxic, water-soluble substances as well as brightly-coloured dyes.
Clark says it was pretty much an “accident” that he started Barrie Paintball.
“I was working at Honda at the time and they took us out to a paintball park and I enjoyed playing it,” he says. “We had so much fun we came back and bought all of our own equipment and we played here for pretty much a whole summer.
