Contrast?

In a week filled with news about the X-Games, here comes Ruben showcasing the other, awesome side of riding:



You just can't really beat that style.

Speaking of, not really anything style-wise in here, but these tricks are ridiculous. Stevie Churchill is pretty nuts. Bonus fact: That skatepark looks almost like my idea of a living hell. If you added a couple more scooter kids in there, you'd nail it.



Cult and Federal are doing a joint UK tour soon, check out the details here, then think about how nuts that line up is.

Seeing as it's sort of related, here's a video of Bruno riding a prefab park pretty damn well.



Lastly, Dan posted this up on Facebook today - pretty old school now, and how many of these people even live in Southampton any more? Cool video regardless.

Joel Nicholls Trowbo Street Edit

It's been a while since I've seen Joel. He was one of the first hard core street riders that visited the shop (many years back). When he moved to Southampton for his Uni studies, he ended up inspiring a whole load of local kids to run pegs and ride brakeless!

Here's a little edit he and his skater friends put together of some street spots in Trowbridge.

T-t-tunnel Vision, T-t-tunnel Vision!

From the moment I got the e-mail from John a few days before the Nike Tunnel session to driving back home at midnight on the Sunday, that "Chuckle Vision" theme tune overlaid with "Tunnel Vision" was pretty much all I could think about.

The basic premise for the whole gig was that a bunch of shops - including Pijin - were asked to head over to the Nike Tunnel (as seen in the Tunnel Jam vids/pics/articles) to film some riding and generally have a rad time. While the Pijin edit's not going to set the world on fire - primarily because no filming went down - the "have a rad time" aspect of things was certainly covered.







Nike know what they're doing when it comes to putting events on. This was the third Nike-sponsored event I've been to, and that also meant I received the third free event-specific T-shirt from them. Yeah yeah, T-shirts are T-shirts, but the free food, drink, grips, transport and riding session were also signs that Nike are more than happy to spend their money ensuring people have a good time. I'm well aware that in the past there were issues raised with Nike's manufacturing ethics, but bear in mind that times change and they really do invest in BMX rather than just squeezing money out of it. People often complain when 'corporations' get involved with BMX and people see it as purely a money thing, and even though this could be construed as a cynical ploy to get us media types all singing Nike's praises they're still out there putting their money where their mouth is. Paying local unemployed riders to build a skatepark (that Nike are also paying to maintain) is a pretty cool thing to do - rather than just paying people to come from further afield specifically to build it then do one - as is allowing people like the Pijin family and friends to go and have an awesome time there, all for free.











Anyway, that aside - the Tunnel. The vast majority of us hadn't actually been to the Tunnel before, so for all of us it was a new experience rumbling down narrow country lanes in a massive coach before having to get out ("I'm supposed to stay on site all day." "You won't make it down there." "But I have to be on site!") and riding down some bumpy road to get to the tunnel itself. When you first go into it, the first thing you notice is how cold it feels. According to Carlos, it stays at about 11°C or so pretty much all the time because of how insulated it is. Walking through some massive metal doors, past the rowdy generators, past the mini then down a narrow, pitch black path with the ramps all lit up ahead of you was a surreal experience. While everyone was filling out their "I'm not an idiot and won't sue you guys" disclaimers out, I snuck in before everyone else. Getting into the ramp room was ridiculous. The ramps aren't small by any means, so just seeing a sort of wooden snake run built into a long tunnel that just seemed to disappear into the distance was out of hand. The few times that the generator died and plunged the tunnel into darkness highlighted how mysterious the place was, and the way that even with the lights on if you walked behind the end ramps and just looked down the tunnel it just disappeared in a murky blackness was pretty spooky. Hearing Ben talking about Peugeot 205s, original VW Beetles, The Sun shoots and all the other crazy things that have gone down there also helped lend it a certain mystique.











Seeing people's faces when they got into the tunnel was priceless. Even the more street guys there were more than keen to have a session, and it was cool to see everyone throwing down the moves. There were a few riders there who I hadn't really seen ride in a year or more, and the improvement and progression in that time was nuts. The "You might as well try it because you won't get to ride here again and it'll just annoy you" attitude certainly helped get a few moves done - Antonio waiting 'til the dying seconds of our time there to drop the 3 off the top of the sub-box setup to flat for one, as well as guilt-tripping Joel into wallriding it all down to flat. In case you were wondering, no matter how many times you see someone carve over the top of the doorway to the ramps, it never gets any less scary to watch. Everyone there did something cool at some point, so me not necessarily commemorating it in either photographic or text form isn't a slight in any way. If you were there, you know what you did and I know what you did, and that's the main thing...









Late nights after a long day at work and a load of riding never really make me write in the most coherent way so I'm going to draw this mess to a close. Huge thanks have to go out to Sam from Nike, Paramedic Daves, Ben for opening the place up for us and telling us some pretty crazy stories about the tunnel and John/Pijin for helping out with everything else. Big thanks from me, Joel and Butlin to John for letting us stay in the shop the night before too - Guitar Hero, Bomberman, pizza and Oragina - 'nuff said. In the current age of online bitterness, petty bickering and the other distractions in the BMX world, it's still cool to know that there are people out there trying to make things better, and trying to get riders hyped on riding again. Everyone left the tunnel pretty spent after giving it all day, but even though the bus was pretty quiet on the way home you could still tell that everyone was buzzing from it, and that's pretty much what it's all about.

Awesome...

Ever wanted to see a dog on a conveyor belt? Get in there... From Seventies.



They've also been gradually putting all (but one, eh Ollie?) One More Brew sections up online - Joel's Southampton edit all up in herrrr:



If any of you dudes at the shop happen to read this, cheers for the quick postage, awesome picture, and comedy address. You're all winners.

Joel's new vid...

Looks like Joel's done his last edit from Southampton? P5...

Joel Nicholls - P5 from Project Five on Vimeo.

Namedrop.

From the Seventies mailshot I just got:



"It¹s arrived!!!

One more brew the highly anticipated collaboration between Seventies and Project 5 is out!!! Filmed over the winter months, each section is filmed and edited by a different person including Ben Green, Charlie Jobling, Dario Demarco, Joel Nichols, Kyle Harvey, Matty Lambert, Ollie Wainwright and Rich Wilson

Each filmer/editor has shot different scenes from around the UK over the 2008/09 winter months and it features riding from the cream of the UK scene, priced at just £7 retail!

Features amongst others Niki Croft, Alex Kennedy, Donnacha Carrol, Tom Sanders, Dan Westlake, Ben Lewis, Jason Phelan, Dan Lacey, Scott Ditchburn, Taliban Tom, Bombhead and TONS MORE."

Big time!

Photos 'n' stuff.

First off, big thanks to Joel for the floorspace and films for the last few nights, and to John for the tasty food. Cheers dude! Thanks to everyone else who rode/hung out at P1 and P2/was around this week too, it was rad.

As a result of my camera charger not arriving 'til I was already in Southampton, I stretched my budget by buying a £2 disposable camera to document some stuff, so here's a few pics from the past few days. Quality: High.



Joel with a shoulder-on-strip-light-high carve on a vert wall in a location so secret I had to be triple blind-folded, knocked unconcious and dragged to it to keep it under wraps. If I don't update for a few days, well, they'll probably have caught up with me for posting this...



Protection at Joel's place.





T-bog and a Euro at Hoglands by Joel.



Truck-to-fakie.



Carlos, drunk and lurking.

Canon EOS30D for sale, highest bidder...

Skip to 43 seconds in...

...for a fairly accurate representation of Carlos at approx. 9am yesterday, haha. Also some quality chucking-up-over-a-balcony footage later too. Stick around for the rest of it though, some good old school stuff. BMX trips rule.

Long-video-tastic

Well, due to Carlos feeling a little fragile today, P2 work's hit the buffers so I've decided to use Joel's net connection to hit up the Blog, and on a reasonable day too - full length videos from Derelict, Carhartt and... well... that's it, but that's pretty much an entire hour of BMX which should really be enough. Oh, there was a Sunday video too that felt like a feature film even though it wasn't, but that was more 'cos I just didn't really want to watch it anyway...

First up, the Derelict video (Seen over on Deluxe - from their full length vid released in early '08:


Derelict BMX - Never Gonna Win (2008) from Dave King on Vimeo.

Secondly, the Carhartt Gran Canaria vid (Features Stefan Lanstcher, Bruno Hoffmann, Owain Clegg and some other people who were reasonably forgetable. I don't think I've seen a bad Stefan L or Bruno H part, and although this video dragged at times, there's still some awesome riding.


CARHARTT RAVAGE GRAN CANARIA BMX TOUR from woozybmx.com on Vimeo.

Speaking of awesome riding, if you live in Southampton, come ride some street tonight? Do it, you won't regret it...

In genuine news though, Fly are the latest company to get ESPN'd, go check that out here.

Erny crafting some kind of drop nose Pivotal hybrid, seen over on Mutiny:



Lastly, 'cos I need to go use Joel's shower, here's some online Joel action, his interview on Ride re: OMB. Ch-ch-check it!

One More Brew deadline...

You may have heard of a little video project called "One More Brew"? 10 UK filmers have been tasked to come up with a 5 minute video edit of riding antics over the cold winter months. This is no easy feat considering the dismal weather recently and finding spots/people willing to brave the slippery outdoors to pull off some stunts on 2 wheels.

Deadline is by the end of the week and if you're in Southampton and can do the odd trick on 2 wheels, get into contact with Mr Joel Nicholls! He will be out and about, trying to squeeze more footage onto his video camera...



Contact Joel on :
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=852400371
http://www.myspace.com/buildbmx
joelnicholls@hotmail.com

GSport Ratchet

Joel got his new ratchet hub today... first impressions are very good. It looks and feels chunky, solid and well made. Converting from right to left hand drive was pretty straight forward - didn't need any tools as everything just pulled apart with a bare pair of hands and no brute force. Weight was a bit hefty though, 568g on the Pijin scales.

Let's just see how well it holds up after Joel has chucked it down a few 10 sets..

Bits 'n' bobs.

Segment have a few new designs up on their site, including this hoody which looks pretty rad:



In other "New Product News" - Odyssey are capitalising on the keen interest in Chase Hawk's bikecheck (Oh wait, that was 8 months ago...) and have released the hard anodised red Hazard Lites to the general public. Head over to their site to check 'em out, their new Flash widgets kill this blog. Might want to put the kettle on to boil and make a tea/coffee while you're waiting for their site to load, too...

Apparently, the Duffs 4130 shoe is "Iconic", or so I'm told. Personally, the only recollection of it I have was thinking they weren't all that nice, and that was it, but hey - that's me. Regardless, the new 4130 Low is out in plenty of Nike 6.0 biting colourways, so check out TK Maxx in about 3 months and grab yourself a bargain in their shoe section.

How awesome does this place look to ride?



Just ask Ruben.

Mike Aitken continues to progress, this time literally in leaps and bounds, jumping up onto an 8" high ledge with both feet. Considering the trouble he was/is having with movement on his right side, that's pretty amazing. Plenty of other updates on Mike Aitken.com too.

If I could embed audio on this blog, I'd probably get Hman to say "Subrosa" just 'cos it cracks me up, and also fits in to this next piece: Subrosa's new grips, frames and forks are now in the UK, according to an e-mail I got earlier. The Alameda, Rich Hirsch's signature frame, looks pretty damn sweet, although the seat-tube doesn't look as kinked as it used to? Might just be my eyes. Head over to their site and check out the pics on their - you can zoom in and pan around them to your heart's content, which is pretty cool, and certainly beats squinting at tiny 'detail' photos...



According to this video, Joel made it up to London and it wasn't raining, which suggest to me Joel's CGI skills are pretty godly. When did that happen?!


Reflex from joel nicholls on Vimeo.

Lastly, gonna try out these post labels and see if it makes finding stuff on here any easier. We'll see...