Well, nothing's really happened today, so here's a bunch of pictures from the past few weeks (since I got my new lens, pretty much). Riders are Butlin, Brazel, Taliban, Tim and... actually, that's it. Apologies for double-posting the Taliban trails shot.
Whilst there, spotted this old Farren Downes vid too. On the Ride to Glory video he was ridiculous, so criminally under-rated. Either way, this video's cool.
Aversion are back on it, go there to see Vince Mayne do things on bikes.
Joe Rich's new video is up, and also features no riding...
Continuing in the Dig Are Awesome series of posts on their site, next up is the Paul Buchanan "Solo Missions" article. Well worth checking out. If you don't know who he is, educate yoselves, fools. Click here!
Josh Betley's got another cool Felt webvid up, that weird playground wall-bank spot looks soooo good. Either way, it's more of the same creative, smooth, flowy riding that Josh is becoming known for.
Well, I ballsed that up... No love for Rampworx! Although I didn't really get much good stuff done for Nike it was still awesome meeting Will Smyth (Editor of Dig) and talking about zines, magazines and the internet, and also properly meeting Ricky Adam (Learnt a load from seeing how he dealt with everyone, all good!) instead of just bumping into his around the world. Big thanks to all the other filmers/photographers/riders, had a fun time even if I got all emo in the morning, haha.
Anyway, in BMX news:
The D-Watt$ frame is almost ready to buy. Saw one at Seventies, they're sweet! This is one built up for Mark Love, check the spec out here!
Dan Boiski has a web-vid up for Animal UK, potentially another vid from the Animal UK team soon? So I hear, anyway. In related news, Boiski rules at riding ramp too. Was a treat seeing him ride Rampworx.
Dig and Vinyl have a new webvid up. Interestingly (Well, not really 'interestingly', but hey...) uses the same song as the edit I had with Lloyd a while back, which reminded me that I actually sorta like this song, and that that day of riding was fun.
If you want to buy coloured parts that, in the UK, will only be colourful for about 2 days out of the year, then here's your chance! (Having said that, this weekend the UV index is up to 8, so you never know...)
Alex Kennedy broke his nose doing a twist to fakie at FISE today/yesterday, head over to Ride's site for some Mini qualifying video footage and some pics. Mark Webb got smooth?
Lastly, Lotek have put a Mike Hoder edit up (a few days ago - I forgot, alright?!):
I think the thing from this article that properly epitomises it is probably that ridiculous double-set wallride gap. This probably won't work, but hey ho.
Basically, growing up, I only really had Trafaelio and You Get What You Get as inspiration, and that pretty much meant I was all about Steven Hamilton and Garrett Byrnes. Garrett's general outlook on life seemed pretty rad, and that, coupled with his awesome riding style, made him a sort of 'hero' of mine in BMX terms. His riding may be different these days, but it's still awesome as is the man himself.
To put it into perspective, this article's just under 7 years old. Amazing.
If only there were more interviews like this nowadays. I love old school Dig (And new school too, in fairness - the newest issue (Max G on the cover) has some rad stuff too).
Well, everyone seems pretty happy posting up many-months-old Chase Hawk, Brad Simms and Aaron Ross videos for some reason, but if everyone's just doing reposts, then it's all about this, courtesy of RTRBTN. No huge budgets, no 'pro' demands, no nothing - just pure riding with a sweet sound-track and some awesome people. R.I.P. Tommy Boyd.
If you want to see some fairly bold claims about Sunday video that aren't really justified, click here. I'd go so far as to say it's better than Electronical, slightly. I think most people who I've spoken to about Electronical have the same opinion as me, so assuming that's a global trend, you should all be able to work out what that would suggest the Sunday video was like. Ian Schwartz is by far and away the best thing about that video.
been a while....
here's a new venture I'm starting up.
http://casebmxmagazine.blogspot.com
please get in contact if you'd like to contribute in any way, shape or form. thanks, Mike
Streetphire's not the only new site - Mpora have a bangin' new site up too. This post isn't influenced by my pic of Lloyd being the Nike6.0 Media Apprentice pic, haha. But yeah, seriously, go there and check it out - it looks awesome. I've often been critical of old Mpora layouts, but this new one's really, really nice...
EDIT: It seems to not be working now? It looked TNT when I saw it earlier, so it'll be cool to see it up for real.
Dudes. Streetphire is an awesome site, and you should probably all check it out after you check here every day. Just maintain that order, right? Anyway, yeah, head over to Streetphire.co.uk, and if you don't see a pic of Lloyd doing a rad smith on his shiny new bike then press F5 'til you do. Alternatively, clear your cache, update your bookmarks (http://www.streetphire.co.uk/v6) or RSS feeds.
But yeah, there's a cool little Will Evans remix section there that I'm not going to embed here 'cos it'd be on the 'rude' side of 'harsh', not to mention I'm actually sitting next to H-Man as I'm typing this and he'd probably do terrible things to both me and my bike, perhaps simultaneously. So yeah, click here for that article.
There's plenty of stuff to check out on there, from the new 25fps and 50mm sections to the one-of-a-kindVimeo video stream player on the right of the page. I don't know coding and stuff, but H-Man seems pretty keen on it and makes frequent mention of it so I'm guessing it's pretty 1337. Check it.
"You heard it here second" and all that kinda self-congratulating blog poster jazz.
Yep, that's what I am. This is effectively the third bit of content I've stolen from In The Gnar in a row, but if they're going to keep posting rad stuff, well... there we are. I can't really rate that site highly enough, and similarly, I can't really rate Nick's other project, Holeshot highly enough either. Those zines cost you pretty much nothing, but they're all really good. Same goes for Cult too. Just two of the many print zines out there. I'm not really trying to be 'down' on online zines here or anything, but there's something fundamentally awesome about holding something in your hands that you know someone the other side of the world has physically laboured over to give you that opportunity to have a view into their world. It's eye opening stuff, and again, cheap. I got a copy of Cult #2 and also got a rad T-shirt (And a bunch of cool stickers too (and a badge))) for the price of a new tyre. I'd rather run my current tyre a bit longer and have some awesome literature and clothing and paraphernalia, if I'm fully honest. But hey, that's me.
Anyway, content - sweet trails action. I mean, I don't ride trails (Largely 'cos I don't know the location of any, and seem to just have issues when I ride 'em), but this video made me really, really want to. May have also been a peripheral effect of seeing blue skies and sunny weather whereas currently it's pitch black and raining a whole load outside, but who knows. Anyway, Mike Saavedra - tip of the hat.
EDIT! By the way, I noticed just now that a bunch of the Vimeo embedded videos have been weirdly sized. Hopefully got that covered for the most part now, so you won't have to watch any more webvideos on a piece of pixel real estate about the size of a stamp...
Well, tonight the usually awesome InTheGnar was awesome in that it reminded me of the Newrick video, but also kinda sour 'cos it had a pretty awful fixie freestyle jam video. I mean, they were talking about it in a negative way, but it still made me think about fixie freestyle which I consider a negative thing to have happen to you. Seriously - Southampton dudes - you ought to be super glad that this hasn't really kicked in with you guys. Getting snaked really, really slowly by people who are physically incapable of performing tricks is pretty infuriating. Seeing someone really slowly roll around the bottom of an awesome concrete bowl setup is pretty bad too... Anyway, yeah, enjoy.
Wellity wellity. Having been relatively quiet on the news front recently, suddenly everything's on the go?
Kink have their 2010 completes up on their site. They've made some sweet completes in the past, seems like that's a trend that's going to continue. Click here to see 'em all.
Adam Grandmaison has a surprisingly good "Legends" things up on Ride UK. Some good video parts from 5 different riders, worth checking out definitely. Click.
Also on Ride, I saw this video of Aaron Ross talking about his new shoe/doing some riding. If you want to hear Aaron say "Shoe" a bunch of times, click play...
In other Aaron Ross news, Up, Up & Away's 'scraps' edit is now online. Not many scraps for a big video? Good teaser either way.
Dennis Enarson's also popped up with a rad web-vid for Demolition, got some cool tricks in there.
For all you media types out there, the Nike Media Apprentice results are going to be up in the next few days.
Mutiny have a cool little vid up of Joe Simon, Ryan Smith and Mat Roe all building up some fresh bikes. Gotta be pretty sweet getting everything new, box-fresh like that. I'm generally too busy being overly concerned about whether my new frame/forks/bars/whatever will feel better or worse than my old ones to really be able to appreciate it all fully, so I guess if you're sticking with the same setup getting it all shiny and new has gotta rule.
In semi-related news, Gaz/Joe, if you happen to read this - shotgun on Roey's old Cosmotron? Called it...
In the continuing TWW posting trend, Monday's passed so it's Tomorrow We Work side two time. This time - the Nearly section and the Team2Street/Confuse Americans section. All good.
Mike Mastroni has a new webvid out on Defgrip. Due to this slow internet connection, after 20mins of downloading I can see a quarter of it, which limits me pretty much to dolly-shots and a pedal hang-five. I know Mike's capable of more, so I'd imagine the rest of the video would be worth a shot too. Apparently, in an hour and 8 minutes I'll be able to know for sure. 'til then, good luck everyone.
EDIT: Having watched it, that was a bit of a let-down after the length of time it took to load. I'm all for higher production values 'n' stuff, but more 'proper' riding/less filler/less ambient stuff wouldn't have hurt? Meh, I couldn't do any better...
I got the chance to heads up to Leeds to act as generator carrier (Yay) for some of these clips. I don't think I've ever been that cold before. Every day was sub zero, we filmed mostly at night, I didn't have enough layers. Sitting in the back of a van with no seats with the constant smell of spilt petrol... man, that sucked.
Weird. Video picked 'cos it was the first one I found on here, and equally 'cos that section, rider and song are all awesome in equal measure.
Clickity. Or, alternatively, if you have something you want to see, clickity. If you find anything good, leave it in the comments or something. Or whatever.
To quote Vampire Weekend (Man, Dan Cox'sTWW section was good...), "I stand corrected". According to Sam:
Just for the record, mini diggers are incredibly boring to drive. Their scoop capacity is about 1/2 a wheel barrow, which is reasonable but the excruciatingly low top speed means they are only of use if your earth source is in the immediate vicinity of the required site...
So, fair play to Bob Manchester for not looking super happy.
In unrelated news, a whole host of Seventies riders appeared in London today to film for a web-edit or to generally gather footage/have a fun time in the capital, and plenty of retarckulo tricks went down. Yeah, it's a word. Anyway, big 'fair play' goes out to Derek Strickland for being insanely good on a BMX. Hero.
First time I'd ridden in approx. forever, certainly reminded me in one easy dose why I love riding so much, even if I did get my first puncture in approx. forever^2. Manny to 180 up some stairs = tube-killer.
I don't really have anything else to post from the BMX media today.
Doing a wallride and seeing that coming out in front of you has gotta suck.
Seeerheeeo Layyooo has an interview up on Etnies. Click "Part 2" in that link for "Part 2". About 48 thousands times better than any other online interview I've read for some, some time. It's amazing how far doing bad interviews can take you in life. Anyway, John Povah actually has some clue what he's talking about and has an interest in the subject, so it's an interview in which you can actually learn something about the other person. Not that I'm saying that standard "Top 5", "Top 3", or generic-sets-of-questions-that-you-ask-every-person style interviews aren't particularly interesting or compelling, but... well actually, I am. They're just not that great. I'm aware for an online interview you're not going to give it your all, but if you aren't, why bother doing it? It makes no sense. At least research the person you're talking about instead of just firing boring, generic questions at them in the hope that they'll provide something interesting? This is a bee I've had in my bonnet for some time, so you're all going to have to deal with me just letting fly there. Again, that's referring to online interviews. Offline dudes (aka "The mags"), top drawer - keep 'em coming. The new Dig, for example, is really good. Just some online dudes... Jeez, I don't understand how they can be that popular... Speaking of Dig, Edwin fragments from when he was 16? Bueno.
Tangent.
Jersey and the pleasantly named Nailz went to Scotchlandshire for a 'wee' holiday, here's a video of what happened all the way up there.
Speaking of holidays, "Yer Man" Jason Phelan went over to Barca with a bunch of dudes from Liverpool. This is what happened:
Of Montreal. Who the hell wouldn't like Of Montreal? People of questionable taste, that's who. What's not to like about this music? Courtesy of Mutiny.
The intro to SOBP's up too. Been a fan of Ryan Smith's riding since Overexposed, set to a Joy Division song it's pretty much going to be a non-stop cavalcade of things I enjoy.
Eclat have got some things in the pipeline re: their plastic seat/post combo. CLICK MEEE. Do my eyes deceive me, or is that seat further back on the post than it was before? Looks like the seat's pushed back a bit, which is all good in my opinion. Speaking of, that Eclat Gonzo pivotal. Kicked back pivotal seats: More of them, right now, thanks.
Don't think I posted this up, but Sunday posted that Jim C had an interview on Defgrip about Up, Up & Away - here it is. Kinda weird in some parts, didn't really get who/what he seemed to be semi calling out, but there we are. All adds to the mystique and subterfuge. Either way, it doesn't really matter because there's going to be a new Ian Schwartz and Joe Cox section to watch. That's win.
What's not win is what's happened to Dan, who, having made it through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Borneo and a bunch of other places unscathed managed to get his laptop, mobiles, iPods and some other electrical (Almost said "Electronical", damn you Odyssey!) items. Sour buzz, but life moves on...
First up, an entry into the Nike 6.0 vid/pics thingy comp majigger. Some of the shots seem kinda weirdly composed, but tip of the hat for the riding and painting...
Also looks awesome compared to a lot of other entries 'cos it's on Vimeo not Mpora?
Secondly, Federal had Ty Morrow over and took him round the UK to meet the rest of the team. Nice touch! Anyway, the dude's awesome as are all of Federal's riders, so check it out.