THE HISTORY. THE ORIGIN OF AISLING

One day in 2004, Jonathan Sawyer, the inventor of aisling, was buying groceries at his local supermarket in Los Angeles. He was thinking about something he had read in a newspaper article recently: “The average American shopper spends 6000 hours in his or her lifetime just shopping for food, which is the equivalent of shopping day and night without stopping for 250 days.” As he looked over the store that afternoon, everyone seemed bored pushing their little carts around, and it struck him as sad that people had to spend so much time doing an activity that brought them so little pleasure. Aren’t we Americans supposed to be obsessed with shopping? Shouldn’t this be more fun?

That was when the idea for this new sport came to him. Suddenly he pictured carefully choreographed routines set to music, people gliding and spinning and cartwheeling through the aisles with their carts as they collected products from the shelves for points. But he also felt that this sport should be inclusive – that athletic prowess and physical fitness should not be a necessity, that character and shopping-style and originality should be just as important. Each competitor should be able to ‘shop’ the aisles in his or her own way. Sure, the idea was a little goofy, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. “Sometimes,” says Jonathan, “right at the edge of ridiculousness, we find some grace.” He decided to call the new sport aisling.