Skate-It

Matt, Carl and I hit up Skate-It in Manheim last night. The park was small and filled up with skaters real fast around 5:30 (which rendered it almost unrideable) but we had a good time. The mini was slippery but had a good pop and the park stuff had some interesting things to play around on. We are probably going to head back up next week. Below are a couple shots of Carl that we shot...check Flickr for more.

New Ride

Federal Notorious frame.

So not a lot of new things are going on due to the winter weather so i figured i'd show off my new frame. I had to say goodbye to my united frame just because i wanted to get a 21.25 top tube since i'm a taller dude, should work out for me.

Rode the new manheim park tonight... small but fun before the crowd shows up.

Winter Motivation

A few clips to get you motivated for spring...Steve, start getting ideas.

Busy Barend from OrganicBmx on Vimeo.

Dialed 603 Fall 2009 from Johnny Herrick on Vimeo.

Abe Rowland, Welcome To Jefferson State from Marcus O'Brien on Vimeo.

Even More Spring

I have so much free time I don't know what to do with myself...not working as much as I thought over Christmas break. So, here are so more pics from earlyish 2009, I think in May. This session produces some of my favorite pictures of the year; the time of day produced lighting and colors that are mint. My radio trigger also decided to work that day which provides a bit of fill light from the left. Matt with some more footjams, whip and lookback. Also one of the few pictures of the year of yours truly: photo by Matt. Skate It on Wednesday for those who might see this and are interested: Matt, Steve, Carl and I are heading up.

More Spring

In May Matt, Steve, Alex and I headed down to FDR for an early morning session. I had not been down in a long time so it was good to ride there again with some of the new terrain; surprisingly, for how close it is (relatively speaking), we don't get down there much at all. I have always found it difficult to ride FDR fluidly and so I spent some time shooting (which it is quite hard to do with the light contrasts, especially early morning. For more on that see here) and chilling.

Steve's always finding something unique. Tireslide/chink. Damn bikers.

Alex Steckler: Table hip

Early morning rush hour.

Matt is building a sweet collection of masks. As far as I know, he only has two but any collection that includes a Darth Vader mask is sweet in my book. Spiderman comes out for the ride home.

Wow

It seems trail building these days is just as much about the aesthetic of the jumps as it is about rideability. That's fine by me...check some French trails below.


Swamped from http://digfourvictory.blogspot.com/

East Coast Recreation

This will only have relevance to a negligible amount of the world's population, however, after watching that old video footage the other day, I figured I would post this piece of Lancaster Co. BMX history for those to whom it means anything. East Coast Recreation was, as far as I know, the only indoor skatepark that Lancaster has ever had that allowed bikes (for that matter, the only other indoor parks period was More and the current one in Manheim. Any others?). It only lasted a couple years and then classically was shut down amid a swirl of conflicting rumors. It was formational for me in the sense that it opened just as I started to get serious about riding. It received some attention from the wider BMX scene as it has an appearance on FBM's Albert Street and was frequented by the Little Devil crew numerous times.

The only contest that I have ever entered was held there and a while ago I found a flier from the contest that I had kept. Check it below. I don't know any of the dudes on it except for Jeremy Smith in the top right hand corner.

May 2009

With my switch over to digital a while back I had to get used to the whole process of digital archiving. It is interesting to have a ton of pictures in one location that are dated so that you can see the progression of how things went. This batch occurs right after the heaviest part of the digging season for us this year at the end of May. We spent April and the better part of May putting a ton of work into the creation of Matt and Steve's line. This is one of the first sessions of the year that went down (I think).

This was the fourth jump in Matt's line. Blackie came and put it instantly to work. One hander.

I love the lighting created by the off camera flash. Matt reaping the fruit of his labors.


I have to laugh when I see this. I was not expecting Matt to get this high and thus framed the photo accordingly. Headless turndown.

Digging

Matt, Steve and I began some digging today at a spot just down the woods from Smith. It seems to be a decent spot, has good soil, and be fairly secure. The lay of the land is ok with a few things that may be fun to work with but the trees are a lot denser and much will need to be cut down to get any bigger stuff going. We got some brush cleared and a couple rollers started today in spite of the frost. Obviously not too much more will go down this year unless weather warms up a bit but we will keep this updated.

2009 in Review: Footjam

I have always been attracted to the media side of BMX. Last night Steve, Matt and I got together to watch footage from about ten years ago that I captured with a video camera I had bought when I was fourteen. It was a good time reminiscing on some of the earlier years of BMX (high seats, small bars, heavy bikes, no attitudes). It had a buch of footage from the old Lancaster park (East Coast Rec) along with Quarryville/Lancaster street and the early years of the Smith trails (if Fashion looks at this post, it even had some footage of you from Minersville that, I guess, Dave Adams had taken). To say all that, taking pictures of BMX continues to interest me (sometimes more than actually riding) and this year has provided plenty of good ones. Over the next couple weeks (as I have time) I am going to post some of the highlights from the year for interests sake while riding weather diminishes and also as a way to pull them all into one location.

I will start small as I need to get crackin on studying for finals so here is one or two from the beginning of the season.

I think that it was just this year that Matt started getting foot jams and this shot was shortly there after. I warmed the colors up a bit and like how the picture captures the action: finger on the brake, eyes on the reentry, leaned in, locked in, and loaded.

It seems to me that from looking at the trees, the image of Carl is the earlier one. Carl is always full of picture producing moves and this one is no exception. The composition could be a bit better but I am into the angle, the super steep angle of the bike and the onlookers in the background.

i don't know about everyone else but i'm ready for another rays trip... or something

All the same?

This post is the product of a couple days of thought about two things, in particular, which have led to broader applications about the state of BMX. The more that I peruse the BMX media/literature which saturates the internet, the less and less diversity, or freestyle (if you will), I see characterizing much of today's riding. The edit below is an example of what I mean. The style of riding in it is representative of 90% of the other web edits that hit the web this summer: barspins, nose wheelie variations, tuck no handers, barspins, 360 to flat, barspins, foot jam variations, and more barspins. I am by no means implying that the riding is in anyway sub-par, but where are the classic BMX disciplines: mini-ramp, vert, big street or the flat-inspired park that characterized much of the late 90's/early 2000's (such as this). In essence, why is everyone doing the same thing on their bicycles. (Catty Woods reached similar conclusions about the lack of trails riders in a recent post.) This, of course, is only a generalization (generalization only being helpful some of the time) and there are plenty of dudes out there being original and not worrying about what is the trick of the moment. Nor am I implying that there is necessarily one form of riding whic is in some way superior. Judgments regarding preference in art are subjective and will vary from person to person.

In addition to concerns of style, one only has to look at a Dan's Competition catalog to see that the bike of choice is big bars/little seat/one brake (or none)/small sprocket (this description fits 95% of the complete bikes in Dan's.

This homogenization of style can be, I believe, largely attributed to the internet and the efficiency of disseminating what is going on at any moment in the world. I could waste a lot of time laying out the pros and cons of the internet (of which, there are much of both) but I will not. I need to get some school work done. There is much more that could be discussed about this (though I am not sure who would want to join the conversation and if we would reach any significant conclusions).

Anyway, watch the aforementioned video below. It is good, as I said, but it is simply representative of most of what is being produced today.

Hoang Tran Subrosa Villicus Edit from Subrosa Brand on Vimeo.