The Albion Issue 14 by The Albion BMX Magazine

Photo: George Marshall

Dan Lacey | www.federalbikes.com

Dan Dan Boiski Boiski

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The Albion is a free, independent bi-monthly BMX magazine, available in bike shops and other selected stores throughout the UK and worldwide via subscriptions and as a free online download. It offers a guide to the present, a review of our past and a look at our possible future, through original and unconventional articles that cover the whole spectrum of BMX.

16 Departure A Homage To Mike Escamilla

48 Holding The Room Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton Holme

20 How To Steal A Bike Interview with a Bike Thief

64 Snakes & Ladders Shawn McIntosh

24 Going Backwards To Move Forwards Freecoasters

80 Taj Mihelich You Can’t Win BMX

28 Soapbox BMX vs Skaters vs Everyone

104 The 100th Monkey Collective Consciousness

32 Colts Dale Armstrong

106 Strays Photo Section

40 Colts Troy Merkle

116 The Rise & Fall of Baco

Vol: III Issue #14

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H I g h

D u k e

G R A N T D a v i d

A L M O N D F O O T W E A R . C O M

Editor Daniel Benson benson@thealbion.cc

Associate Editor George Marshall george@thealbion.cc

Publisher Tim March tim@thealbion.cc

Associate Editor Steve Bancroft banners@thealbion.cc

Art Director Robert Loeber rob@thealbion.cc

Contributors Scott Marceau, Rick Wagner, Chris Wright, Ted Van Orman, Lard Galloway, Sandy Carson, Chris Rye, Devin Feil and Nathan Beddows. Thanks Mark Noble, Alex Allen, Chic & Crawford @ Unit 23, The Irish in Barcelona, Andrew Merrall, Alice Marsh, Pat King, The Shier Family, Amy Silvester, John Povah, Lard, Shad Johnston, Stew Johnston, Peter Fulgoni, Ryan Chadwick, Stefan Gandl (Nuebau Berlin), Jambul and Dan Barber.

Cover Artist Taj Mihelich

NOT FOR RESALE The Albion BMX Magazine is avalible at all good bikes shops. and selected stores. See thealbion.cc for more details. Logo and icons designed by Ross Teperek. This issue is typeset using the Plantin font family, designed by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1913 and the (NB) Neubau Typewriter font family, designed by Stefan Gandl. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form without premisson from the publisher. The publisher cannot accept responibilty for errors in articles, advertisments or unsolicated manuscripts. The opinions and words of authors do not necessarily represent those of the publisher.

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This Too shall pass Since we started this magazine we have come to learn about life experiences outside of our own. We have chatted at length with riders of all ages and various backgrounds about the good times and the bad. Too often we have learnt that seemingly normal people have suffered dark monstrous pasts. For issue 14 I travelled to America to interview the legendary Taj Mihelich and the charismatic Shawn Mcintosh. They are two very contrasting individuals from two different eras. Setting out I could not foresee any parallels between the two. I was wrong. I sat on the flight home back to England thinking about the two men I had come to know. I was struck how both of these individuals had remarkably similar and sad stories. As children both suffered a tough upbringing, at the hands of drug abuse and alcohol addition. I felt sadness knowing what these two had endured. Both Taj and Shawn left broken homes at 16 with nothing but their bikes and burning desires to strive for better lives. No one else was going to do it for them. Hearing their stories was a valuable reminder no matter how hard life can seem, there is always someone worse off. For Taj and Shawn, BMX became a source of hope and provided a way out, it was their saviour. Both found refuge and help from the BMX community. BMX has helped lift them out of the darkness and kept them on the straight and narrow. As BMX continues to grow as a close community, let us continue to help each other and leave no one behind. The words ‘This Too Shall Pass’ are tattooed on the wrist of Taj Mihelich, to remind him to enjoy the good times and that bad times won’t last forever – a good lesson for us all.

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Departure

A Homage To Mike Escamilla

Departure

—

Words and Photography by STEVE BANCROFT

The first 24hrs of shooting for Jason Phelan’s interview was exciting and under normal circumstances would have been a memorable one. It started out with him learning to ride a full loop during a surreal session on the set of Danny MacAskill’s latest filming project and ended up with Jason lying unconscious on the cold oil stained concrete floor of an industrial unit in Dumbarton. Jason had always dreamed of riding a full loop – ever since watching Mike ‘Rooftop’ Escamilla do one in Etnies’ seminal video Forward. It only took him about ten attempts with the Red Bull airbag in place before he felt comfortable enough to give it a shot without. And like the professional dare devil he is, he cruised all the way around the full loop in complete control and got spat out the other side into a volley of air punches and hi fives. He was beyond stoked and after a good night’s sleep back in his makeshift, plywood bedroom at Unit 23 Skatepark, he woke up amped to continue his homage to his long-held hero Rooftop. The guys at Unit 23 are an extremely practical bunch and a week or so before they had fabricated a transitioned rail so Jason could tick off a grind to flip – another trick he’d dreamed of for a long long time.

Departure — 17

The rail was secured to the floor, a few warm-up grinds were slid and Jason was feeling comfortable and confident. With a thumbs up all round he gave it a go. Pedalling flatout through the damp back ally he hopped into a smooth 5050 and things were looking good as he hit the curve. He pumped through the transition fine and committed to the spin. But the unfamiliar act of taking off from metal pegs rather than rubber didn’t give him the rotation he was expecting and he found himself in the worst possible position. Stuck halfway round with no momentum to spin either forward or back he flew through the air completely inverted. When he landed his shoulder hit first, then his head. Coming down from ten feet to flat caused his body to crumple and after a short slide on the abrasive surface his body lay twisted, limp and void of consciousness. Rightly concerned, his friends rushed over and after a scary 15 seconds or so he came round and sat with a skewed expression of his face as he tired to get unwinded. Miraculously – apart from a few suspected cracked ribs and a bruised shoulder – he was okay. But the worst part about it was that the impact to his head had completely erased his memory of his momentous loop the night before. Bones heal and bruises fade but the loss of that memory will bug Mr Phelan for a long time to come. If anything good could come out of an experience as bad as that, it’s the reinforcement of Rooftop’s position as one of BMX’s all-time legends.

How To Steal A Bike An interview with a Bike Thief Interview by GEORGE MARSHALL Illustration by CHRIS WRIGHT

If you’ve lived in a city there’s a good chance you’ve had a bike stolen. There’s nothing worse than returning to the spot you locked it up, second guessing yourself that this was actually where you locked it, as that dread comes over you and the reality sets in – ‘it’s been nicked.’ Only 4% of stolen bikes are ever reunited with their rightful owners, the rest, sold at knock down prices or stripped for parts. Given such percentages and the high price of bicycles, bike theft is big business and for some, a genuine career choice. The Albion met up with a guy who had made stealing bikes his 9 to 5. Our anonymous thief talks about nicking BMXs and Bromptons, lock-ups stacked full with stolen bikes and what locks to avoid if you want to keep this guy’s hands off your pride and joy.

Albion: How did you start stealing bikes? Anonymous bike thief: Hang on – do I get paid for doing this? No… Really? I’m sure magazines have money. What’s in it for me?

How To Steal A Bike

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We don’t. We’re a small BMX mag. How about a Zippo lighter or a knife? I’m not allowed knives, but a Zippo would be safe. So what you want to know? How did you start stealing bikes? Just from growing up on the estates and that. Whereabouts? Islington [North London]. Tell me about the first time you stole a bike. It was a Brompton [an expensive fold-up commuter bicycle]. It was locked with a D Lock round a short pole, so I just lifted off the pole. How long did it take to become more of a serious occupation? I was serious from that first day. I stole ten bikes that first day. Every single day after that I just wake up and go stealing bikes every day. Every single day… swear down. What’s the most amount of bikes you’ve stolen in a day? I never kept count. Do you know what a Fire Brigade Cupboard is? [shake my head]. At the bottom of estate blocks there are big empty cupboards. Well we got a key for one. I remember we filled one of them floor to ceiling with folded up Bromptons, all stacked up. Must have been 30 or 40 bikes in a day. What do you with them after? Sell them. I had buyers I’d phone up. They’d drive down and pay me cash. Have you ever nicked a BMX? I nicked one you know, and it had the drive on the left side and it had only one brake. It was a proper pro BMX, really strong but really light. How much did you sell it for? £60. I haven’t got buyers for that kind of thing.

How did you sell the bikes? I had different buyers for different types of bikes. One for Bromptons and Bianchis, one for hybrids and one for highend road bikes. Some would break them down, some sell them on as-is. The most common bike we’d steal was the hybrid, we called them ‘Sixty Quidders’. If it was all working and fresh you’d get £60. You must have made a lot of money? Yeah. I made so much money I ate take-away every meal. I never ate at home. I always spent the money that night and start fresh the next day, unless it was like £600 for a high-end road bike. Did you ever think about the person and how gutted they’d be? No. You can’t. Usually with the Sixty Quidders, they are insured and you get a new bike. Talk me through an average day stealing bikes. We’d leave from Islington walking. A group of you? Minimum two of us, maximum six. Anything more than six and you start getting arguments and stuff. Splitting the money gets hard. Usually you get £60 for stealing a bike so six makes it easy. How much would you get for a thousand pound bike? Thousand pound bike ain’t that much. A bike that retails for a grand you’d get about £100, maybe £200. The most I’ve ever sold a stolen for was £1,200 cash. That was an eightgrand bike retail, some high-end road bike. Was stealing bikes a full time job for you? I used to wake up, wash, go out and steal pedal bikes all day. After we were done we’d go and smoke a lot of cannabis, then go to bed, wake up and do it again. That was the life – every single day. What time of day would you steal bikes? During the day. We never used to rob bikes when it was dark. As soon as it gets dark we head back to smoke. We never used to rob from our area. We’d go all different areas. We’d go to the underground car parks for big offices. But we’d never go back to the same places – that makes it obvious. What tools would you take with you? On a daily I’d take cable cutters, battery-powered angle grinders, forty-twos…

An Interview With A Bike Thief

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

"We didn’t care if we got confronted by people. If I’ve got a cordless angle grinder and I raise it to your face, you’re not going to keep coming towards me."

Are you familiar with the locks? Do you know which ones are good and which ones aren’t? You need the right tools for the right locks.

How To Steal A Bike

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Forty twos? Forty-two inch bolt croppers. They’re really good, they can cut through anything, even D-Locks. But they’re big to carry about. Sometimes we used to carry them about on a motorbike. The taller guys would carry the poles and fortytwos.

What are easiest locks to get through? Any cable locks are easy. The grey and black Kryptonite locks are shit and really common. How would you get a D-Lock off? You just get a big pole and lever it off. How long it takes depends on the lock, there’re different grades. You can pop off a bad D-Lock on your own with a small pole, in about 30 seconds. Better locks take longer and need more people and a longer pole. The orange and black Krytonite locks are really strong, to break them you need some big fellas, a big pole and some time. You can get through any lock if you had the right tools for the lock. What are the worst locks? Cable locks. You just cut them with a pair of small cable cutters. You can rip open the cheap cable locks with no tools. Sometimes you can’t get through the lock. Carbon fibre bikes usually have high-end parts. If we can’t get through the lock, we’d just get our cable cutters and cut through the frame around the lock, and ride it away to strip it down and sell the parts. You can do it with steel frames as well but it takes longer. Have you ever had any confrontations? Yeah… fuck [Laughs]. We were once taking a pair of highend suspension forks from a mountain bike that was well locked up. So we were just stripping it. My mate was undoing the stem and the handlebars. Then this massive Polish geezer walked and grabbed my mate and said, “oi that’s my bike,” and head-butted my mate. My mate was rolling on the ground as the Polish geezer took the allen keys off him and

put his stem back on and rode off. That fella was huge, I’m telling you.

Have you ever stolen bikes in the middle day in busy areas? Plenty of times. Passers-by just keep walking. No one says a word. There have been times in busy areas where loads of people have been shouting at us but that’s rare. We didn’t care if we got confronted by people. If I’ve got a cordless angle grinder and I raise it to your face, you’re not going to keep coming towards me. I’ve seen it happen. You’d never sell the bikes yourself on the street? No never. I wouldn’t approach someone trying to sell a bike. You get the owners searching for the bikes. How long were you doing it professionally? About a year. How many bikes did you steal in that time? Oh my god. I’ve got no idea. It all depends. We used to steal shit bikes just to get around on just so we weren’t walking around with tools. I’ve been arrested for being equipped before. We’d nick bikes just to get about. I’d steal a bike, go round the corner and see a better bike, throw it on the floor and steal the better one. On a bad day I’d only get two bikes. Good day over 20… For a year. You do the maths. How did it all come to an end then? I went to prison. They caught me with CCTV and finger prints. I got eight months, four in, four out. Now I’m out and I work full time in a bike shop. I’d like to be a locksmith, but I can’t do that now. Now you’re out, don’t you get the temptation to still steal bikes? I will see bikes I could sell for a lot on a shit lock and I will keep walking. I can’t carry any tools with me now. I’m keeping clean now. I think that’s a good place to end. Is there anything you’d like to add? Where’s my lighter?

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Going Backwards To Move Forwards Freecoasters: Progress or fleeting fad? Words by STeve BancroFT Photography by GeorGe MarShall

Freecoasters

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[a] Bruno hoffman, Full cab, Barcelona.

Progression usually only concerns itself with moving forward – building on the past to realise new possibilities in the future that make things better. But where today’s BMX world is concerned – with so many of the obvious tricks having not only been mastered but pushed to the point of either exhaustion or ridicule – it seems like the best way to move forward is backwards. For those who don’t know, a freecoaster is a hub with a built in clutch system that allows you to roll backwards without the pedals and cranks rotating in unison with your freewheel. Whilst it’s not by any means a new invention, during the last few months more and more creative and influential riders are lacing one up to their rear hoop and riding backwards – and things are set to get crazy. The thought of people like Dennis Enarson, Bruno Hoffman, Alex Kennedy, Rob Wise and multitudes more all pushing BMX in a different direction. A compassless state of mind that could care less about what direction it’s going in is a very exciting prospect for BMX indeed. The mechanics of a freecoaster are simple and complicated and not ideal. Unlike a conventional rear hub it uses a clutch system. In its simplest terms the driver has a thread on it and acts like a screw, so when you tighten the thread (read: turn cranks forward) it locks the clutch and driver together (engages) and when you wind the thread back (read: turn cranks backwards slightly – or release pressure thanks to a spring) the clutch and driver release (read: disengage). The slack (read: the gap between the clutch being engaged or disengaged) is adjustable to change sensitivity and the setting of which is down to several unique factors, the first being how much slack you like, then the question of how many times you can take being thrown backwards violently onto your head or pitched forwards onto

your face due to your preferences in slack. That’s about it. Over the years the designs have gone from cumbersome and inconsistent, to slightly less cumbersome and inconsistent, to not very cumbersome and pretty consistent. Freecoasters developed from the coaster brake (if you’re unfamiliar with these then think about the pedal back brakes found on those big beach cruisers and kids bikes), essentially flatlanders discarded the brake part and adopted the refined design to stop their pesky cranks from spinning while they were whirling, scuffing and rolling around backwards while climbing all over their bikes like monkeys up a tree, while at the same time not seizing up their wheel when they applied backwards pressure to the cranks. Back then – pre BMX specialization – people still rode more than one discipline, so crossovers between flatland, ramps and street were inevitable. Late 70’s freecoaster pioneer Bob Haro led the way as did Mongoose sponsored Coaster using pool rider Tinker Juarez. This style of riding was then adopted by new torchbearers on both flat and transition. The eighties was a transitional period for freestyle BMX with riders like Pete Augustin running one and Dennis McCoy too. Then there were legends like John ‘Luc-e’ Englebert, Rob Ridge and Kurt Schmidt. Luc-e took fakie riding to the streets with big stair hops, grinds and cab variations while Kurt let the freedom loose in the skatepark with moves like fakie-ing up to lip tricks and into 360 airs. Rob Ridge has been halfcabbing spines for a decade. Further down the line a bunch of mid-schoolers adopted the “new” hardware and things teetered on the cusp of snowballing from there. Dan Cox, Ian Schwartz and Bruce Crisman all

Dave Belcher Photo: Dolecki

broke new ground and went fakie better than anyone before them, with the culmination being Ian’s epic two song part in Sunday’s Up Up & Away. But despite lashings of critical acclaim the percentage of riders exploring going forwards by going backwards was barely a blip on the scale at approx 0.3%. But now, in 2013 – with freecoaster hub technology better than ever – we have an exciting new wave of fakie advocates, all riding silently in reverse whilst going forwards, all looking over their shoulders for new possibilities. And why not, all the cool tricks have already been done forwards, we all know that: The fufanu, the icepick down a handrail, and the mid-pack trails 360, they’ve all long ago been perfected and performed daily the world over. Learning one of the staple BMX tricks is a truly wonderful thing – the first time you spin a perfect three, catch the backside and carry on through the pack is nothing short of life changing – but unfortunately it’s a feeling you can only experience once. . . or so you might have thought. . .

Freecoasters

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After the BMX basics have been learned things have the potential to turn ugly fast, people can get stuck in a monotonous rut of adding more and more of the same tricks together or linking up hundreds of staple tricks into long

Think back to when you were 14 - how much fun it was to learn all the basics? In many ways the freecoaster opens up those innocent days when learning the basics was fun. Uncomplicated and simple tricks are given a new lease of life when you approach them backwards, from the humble hop to the straightforward feeble. Freecoasters used to be a bit of a lottery – even with the slack adjusted to suit and with a strict maintenance program adhered to – you could still get pitched over the front or the back in a heartbeat. But thanks to some Vorsprung durch Technik the kickings to the back doors and the boat races have all but been banished to the first aid incident book of history. So now they’re as good as dialled, why is it that freecoaster use isn’t more prolific? You could argue that you can learn many simple tricks going backwards with a conventional cassette hub, and you’d be right, but all that pedalling backwards while stood up / crouching down and looking over your shoulder and wobbling all over simply looks and feels as awkward as pulling teeth. Maybe some have shy’d away from freecoasters because they see them as gimmicks. . . but man, that’s no excuse for a BMXer, no one on a 20” bike is that cool. Everyone loves

"We have an exciting new wave of fakie advocates, all riding silently in reverse whilst going forwards, all looking over their shoulders for new possibilities"

moves that start to resemble either trials riding or gymnastics routines. The only exceptions to this rule are the people who come up with quirky new variations, and there are some legitimate new ones being discovered, but when people spend too long splashing around down in the dregs it starts to kick up a smell. With riders like Bruno Hoffman spinning full cabs down MACBA, as seen at the start of this article, or Alex Kennedy popping legitimate fakie hops over rails - as seen in his excellent Cult ‘Talk is Cheap’ section - and flowing stylish backwards tom-trickery, the arrows to the future seem to be pointing backwards. Tricks that have never been seen before not only feel good but look good– no gimmicks, no multiples. With the freecoaster’s current rise in popularity and an ever growing chunk of today’s leading professionals going fakie, it seems the most attractive direction for BMX progression could be going backwards, not forwards. One point that may help justify a decision by BMX to “stick it in reverse” is that BMX is pointless, that’s always been the glory of it. A bike is a vehicle. Traditionally a vehicle is used for transportation between two points. As BMXers we simply dismiss this fundamental point and just ride aimlessly around in circles jumping and spinning about. Sure we do a lot of pedalling, but we never actually get anywhere. We are already the backwards members of the bicycle world.

a gimmick. Everyone used to love having to explain to the homeless drunk in the car park what a Gyro is and how it works – and the freecoaster is even more mind-warping to an intoxicated vagrant than that. . . it’s even more technical – how anyone could not want to get into that situation is beyond me. With the technology dialled and a group of highly regarded professional riders pushing the envelope with the freecoaster, it has the momentum to become a mainstay within the BMX community. The freecoaster has always been there, rolling backwards alongside passing fads, but its only ever been adopted by a few individuals who kept its legacy rolling. People always enjoyed the riding of Crisman, Cox, Shwartz and so on, but for some reason that respect and appreciation never quite transcended into the general consciousness of the BMX community. Maybe now, with this current surge in highly talented professionals switching from cassette to freecoaster, we’ll see a new generation of riders taking it up from day one, in the same way that many riders today might have never had a brake on their bike. After all, many naysayers claimed that riding brakeless was just another passing fad, a ‘gimmick’ pushed by highly original riders like Mark ‘The Gonz’ Gonzales and Troy McMurray. Whether the freecoaster becomes part of the woodwork, much like riding brakeless did in the late 90s, is something only time can tell, but with so many riders trying to break new ground, there’s the potential for this original piece of hardware to become more commonplace on rider’s wheels in the future.

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Soapbox

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Soapbox - Skaters vs BMX vs Everyone ‘Nothing can unite the divided but love’

[a] Snotty, one hand one Foot, 9am Burnside

Words by TiM March Photography by GEorGE MarShall

Prejudice noun Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason (reason = a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event) or actual experience (experience = practical contact with and observation of facts or events) Prejudice: “Preconceived opinion not based on reason or actual experience”

There’s a general unifying umbrella that we’re all begrudgingly thrown under, usually for marketing purposes by larger global brands, but more critically for this article; simply because there are similarities between most, if not all, of the ‘freestyle’ or ‘extreme’ sports that are hard to deny. The lack of a team, the lack of a coach, easily accessible terrain (depending on where you live) for doing such activity and a general lack of rules other than some vague boundaries relating to style, which generally change with the seasons.

This attitude and beef between BMXers and skaters was made evermore apparent in the mid 2000’s as both activities boomed, especially on the West Coast of America. It came to a head in 2009 when Thrasher published an article called ‘BMX Jihad’, a kind of narrow minded and badly thought out call to arms, for equally narrow minded skaters. Not everyone bought it. Scenes went on as normal, but the seed was laid, in what was a respected magazine and in turn it slipped into general consciousness on both sides. As both activities have continued to boom, there’s been simmering tensions ever since. Last month, a skater called security on a group of BMXers who were riding the same spot as him, the heavily sessioned MACBA in Barcelona. The skater in question later apologized for his actions, but the damage was done and by acting that way in the first place it only perpetuates and reinforces the myth that it’s a skater’s right to public space more than it is a BMXer, scooter rider or anyone else for that matter.

The tensions at the skatepark are the same tensions that exist in everyone’s day-to-day lives; they will never go away. As activities such as BMX, skateboarding and scooter riding grow, the terrain becomes more congested, causing more collisions, more confrontations. It’s extremely naïve to think it’s your god given right to dominate a public space that’s been built with taxpayers money as a space for everyone to use. If you want a space that’s your own go out and build it, then, in my opinion, you’ve got the right to make the call on who rides there and who doesn’t. As BMXers, it’s an argument that we’re surprisingly well versed in, what with the etiquette of riding peoples’ trails. Back in 2010 a skater told me that ‘he doesn’t have to ask to ride [a BMXer built spot in North London] because of all the ledges BMXers had ruined.’ The guy thought, without question, it was his right to be allowed there and wouldn’t ask permission

While there might be similarities between the activities in question, within each one we’re made to feel increasing like it’s ‘us’ versus ‘them’. A slippery slope, if you consider that the definition of racism seems eerily pertinent in this situation “The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” You only have to switch ‘race’ for ‘hobby’ and you see how close, if not identical that attitude can be.

—

My feelings about this have changed as I’ve gotten older. The problem has been creeping up on us all, stealthily, like the poor lobster that’s put in cold water and then has been slowly bought to the boil.Tempers flare and everyone wants space and freedom to do what they want to do. But now the life you live is not like it may have been in the late seventies when skating and BMX first came to your country. Now your toilet roll is branded, your sweat glands too, your shitty sweatshop-bleached-white-$1.99branded tee, your mass produced iPhone, everything you wear, hold, drive and ride is an extension of your skin, and every single bit of it is bought to make you fit in with your chosen peer group, where you feel you belong, where you’re comfortable.

Ultimately no one group is blameless here. Certain groups of riders perpetuate hate and ridicule against other groups. Sadly for some that means dissing the scooters, hating the MTBers, hating the skaters who hate you back. If we divide it up some more, those who hate the XGames, those who love it… Divisions appear and the shit goes on and on and on. So why do we do it? Where is the voice of reason? Well, I hate to say it but immaturity and the inability to reflect and understand how your brain works goes some way to explaining. How you’ve been brainwashed to believe you’re better than someone else because you think you’re different. Brands do this, the media does this, all because they can make money from you by making you feel different and special within your own group. How are you defined? By the shoes you wear, the bike you own, the music you listen to, the job you have, the food you eat, the films you watch, the drink you consume? Where you go to school or who your parents are? But you have to ask yourself: does purchasing make you a better person? And why does it matter to you that you feel you are better? Because you fit in, are you bullied because you have got the wrong shoes on, the wrong make of bike…? BMX is not a family anymore than being defined by the colour of your skin is being a family. What matters are the relationships you have with people, not the stereotypes that we are demographically portrayed as. Individuals we may be, but better than our brothers and sisters?

Skaters vs BMX vs Everyone

So if some people derive a similar enjoyment from riding BMX bikes, scooters, blades, skateboards, surfboards, skis, MTB’s and so on, then what divides people to have issues with other riders, skaters and the like? People that might be thought of as different and inferior from their own sub-group? Is there a reason why such a division would occur?

A persons right to use public space is a broad subject, much larger and more complex than an argument between subcultures. An assumed hierarchical right to a public space, based on how much or little damage someone does to it can only lead you into murky waters. Take the well-sessioned Lloyds Amphitheatre in Bristol. Walk down the slope towards the curved ledges and take note of the well-worn sandstone on each side. At the top the ledges are much lower than peg height but still have the tell tale sign of deep groves appearing at the joins in the stone. Somewhat ironically, with the current trend of riders using plastic pegs, it might be us BMXers who actually end up causing the least damage to a spot and make the other narrow minded individuals take their heads from the sand to think about their share of the damage and responsibility.

30 — Soapbox

"BMX is not a family anymore than being defined by the colour of your skin is being a family. What matters are the relationships you have with people, not the stereotypes that we are demographically portrayed as. individuals we may be, but better than our brothers and sisters?"

even if it was out of courtesy for the hard work these guys have put in making this spot. Sadly it’s an opinion that still seems to permeate out from narrow minds occasionally, on both sides of the coin. Going back to the recent example of the skater who called security on BMXers in Barcelona, it wasn’t a skater who called them, it was an asshole decision made by someone who skates and dislikes BMXers. A basic prejudice, much like a BMXer hating skateboarders and scooter riders, which we know some BMXrs do. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be limited to the average lone idiot. That hate sometimes comes from and is promoted by magazines, magazine editors, shop owners and professional riders amongst others. And sometimes the sponsors are in agreement with this way of thinking, due to it being part of their marketing philosophy. DC’s refusal to let BMXers in their parks, even though they had a BMX programme at the time seems pertinent here.

I understand why it appeals to people in the same way I understand why there are haters of X Factor and One Direction. I grew up at schools where bullies and ignorant people ply their trade. These divisions appear in the same way racial prejudices do; they are due to the belief that we all come from separate groups called BMXers/ Skaters/Bladers/Scooters and that the members of those groups share certain attributes which makes one group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior to another, which brings us right back to the beginning of the story. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if you ride a scooter, bike or skateboard; you can choose to be open or narrow mined regardless of the tool of your fun. It’s dogmatic to hate every skater, or every scooter kid, and vice versa. I understand how we need to feel different in our groups, it helps you feel like you’re part of something, but it’s a dangerous game to think you’re superior to someone simply because of what object you choose to put under your feet, that won’t get us anywhere good anytime soon.

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Dale Armstrong West Yorkshire’s resiDent ruDe ‘en.

Words & Photography by Daniel Benson

Dale armstrong â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 33

[a] Pegs to hop over to ledge ride, leeds.

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"i just don’t watch BMX anymore, i don’t have time for it. i’m up, have a smoke, then boom, i’m out and riding all day, every day. it’s how us West Yorkshire boys do it."

[b] Tall access hop, leeds.

Dale Armstrong – if the names rings a bell it’s not because he shares his second name with an astronaut. It’s because last month Dale decided to do an equally momentous feat and do what some people have called, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, dead man drops of all time. Scratchy phone footage and a photo appeared of Dale falling back to earth from what appeared to be the side of a motorway, almost like jumping from a motorway bridge, something that other people would do if they wanted to kill themselves. Not Dale though. He held on but unsurprisingly his wheels gave in beneath him, but other than that, he came away unscathed. If I’d seen this video and nothing else from him, I’d be liable to think of him as a one hit wonder type of guy, one with a deathwish and a general disregard for his own health and safety. But I’d been lucky enough to see some footage he’s been collecting over the past months and it showed a very different side to a rider I think we’ll be seeing a lot more from. You see, Dale isn’t that crash and burn type guy, he’s got an amazing amount of skill on his bike that the pictures and the forthcoming footage will undoubtedly show. He’s one of those guys who can pop into nosewheelies like he pops into a manual, the sort of guy whose trick repertoire goes beyond the usual stock grinds.

We roll back down to Jambul’s, passing the nearly naked girls in the park and sit outside the rows of back to back houses to get the last bit of the sun before it drops beneath the rooftops. Dale rolls up a well deserved blunt, cracks open a beer and we get some words on tape.

Dale, now on a high from a productive run, has no issues clearing a massive access hop on the way back to the house. He makes it look easy, which I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. He even does it in a train as his tyre starts to deflate.

—

The sunshine brings its own problems at the next spot. An estate’s worth of kids all swarm around Dale as he tries a backwards crook down a rail in a park. It’s stressful to watch, as children run up and down the stairs and hang off the rail, getting in Dale’s way. Somehow he blocks it out and within a few tries (and with absolutely no bottled or bitch runs) pulls it clean as a whistle. While we pack up, the ice cream van turns up and all the kids – 30 or 40 in total – find a new distraction when Yankee Doodle starts ringing out from the van.

Dale armstrong

Although Dale’s from Halifax, we meet in Leeds on both visits I make to the North. On our first meeting it’s piss wet through and for most would be a write-off, but he still managed to nollie ice a rail, a move that’s normally reserved for your Nathan Williams’ of the riding world. On the second visit the weather is much better. It’s the first sunshine for a while and all the female students in Hyde Park strip almost naked and lay out in the park, like some mass nude sunshine hysteria. Dale takes the sunshine as a cue to fire out three bangers in little over two hours. He tears his arm open on a pebble dashed wall at one stage and we debate what to do. ‘Do I smoke a ten bag or get it stitched up?’ Dale asks. Luckily Jambul just happens to be one of the most well prepared and street smart street riders you could possibly have around. He whips out a first aid kit, complete with antiseptic wipes, butterfly stiches and bandages. Within ten minutes Dale is back at the top of the stairs and within two goes grinds the rail and hops over into the ledge on the other side, probably riding over a chunk of his own flesh in the process.

36 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Colts

[c] Backwards Crook, leeds.

Dale armstrong â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 37

[d] nollie to ice, leeds.

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[e] long Tooth Hanger, leeds.

Albion:Who do you normally ride with? Dale: Jambul, he’s my boyo innit? Ginnners, Ben Powers.

Have you travelled much with riding? Nah, furthest I’ve been is NASS probably, down in Bath.

Albion:That drop… talk us through it? I walked past it stoned up and I told people that I was gonna do it, so I jumped it. I didn’t think it was that big. I did it the first try and blew out, then went back again and blew out my wheels.

Do you want to get out more? Yeah course I do! I ride every day. I want to ride new stuff. If I’ve got a bag of weed and some spots I’m sorted for the day.

Fancy doing it again? Maybe, if I can get some decent wheels. You did a similar big drop when you were younger, right? Yeah, I was in school, chilling with my mates. I spotted this roof so I jumped up there and checked it out. It went into a small grass banking. I’d just started riding so I told everyone that I was going to jump off it after school, so I rode up there and did it. The tyres sank so far into the ground it was like I was grinding the grass.

Do you work? Nah, just ride everyday. I don’t want to work a job and be unhappy, I just want to do what I can while I still can. Even if you’re not young, I don’t want to go through life working a job I’m not into. I’d rather just ride and do my thing. Do you want to move to Leeds? Yeah, I’d like to move through here. Be with Jambul, he’s yer boy here. Knows every spot there is.

One of those bikes from Halfords? Yeah, ninety quid special from mum and dad. Legends.

You said you weren’t feeling it the last time I came up. I thought you did OK, but I can see what you mean after today.You hammered it out. Yeah you caught me on a bad day last time. The night before I met you I’d been out until 4am, I felt like dogshit. And it was raining… I actually don’t mind that though, street points.

How long have you been riding? Since I was 17.

What are you filming for at the minute? My Wethepeople edit, I need three more clips for that.

How old are you now? 23. I’ve just got a nice new set up so me and Jambul are out every day doing it for West Yorkshire.

Who do you look up to with riding? Jambul [laughs]. Nah there are others, when I was younger I used to watch all the stuff Animal put out. I just don’t watch BMX anymore, I don’t have time for it. I’m up, have a smoke, then boom, I’m out and riding all day, every day. It’s how us West Yorkshire boys do it.

What bike was it on? A Magna or GT or some shit.

What’s your crew called? W-Y. Dubwhy. West Yorkshire. Just so people know. We’re not trying to bite if off DUB or whatever.

Jambul skates around the street in front of us. He’s undoubtedly had a massive influence on Dale, their whole crew of mates in fact. A bit of a kingpin, the guy who knows all the spots and carries all the tools, but has no problems banging out some big moves when the need arises. Dale chugs on the last bit of the blunt and drinks some beer… He needs sorting out, Jambul. Nobody can rail ride as good as him, hands down. Rail ride, rolling spinny B, rail ride to 360... ‘He’s not a bad lad. People got the wrong idea about him.’

ALEX BOYD PROUDLY DISTRIBUTED BY

WW W. S H I N E R . C O . U K SALES@SHINER.CO.UK 0117 20 20 120

40 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Colts

[a] Feeble Kinker, Laguna Beach, CA.

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He had it rather made there in the back – he had a side pocket next to the seat where he kept his snacks and blunt wraps, ample leg room (away from any puking Ryan Howards trying to redesign your shoes) and a large window for unobstructed Instagram photos of the Pacific Coast Highway. He couldn’t see the piles of I-5 traffic during midday rush hour… better; he chose not to see it. A couple days into the trip, after a particularly aggravating excursion to an LA suburb, I aborted my position as shotgun-sitting navigator and asked Troy if I could join him in the back seat. He replied with something along the lines of, “of course man, for sure” pushed his skate magazines and camera bag to the side and made some room.

Words & Photography by SCoTT MarCeau

When we first got the van, people scrambled over sitting shotgun or closest to the power adapter. Arguments ensued and rationalizations spilled from every mouth. Troy quietly climbed into the last row, content with sitting alone, away from the yammering of the middle row and front seats. He brought with him his camera and a stacked iPod. From day-to-day, Troy was completely fine with any spot the crew decided to voyage to and didn’t critique the sometimes absent-minded piloting used to arrive there.

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While spending nine days in Southern California with a bunch of people I don’t know terribly well, things got rocky. At one point there was a fistfight over a hacky sack. Every day, issues ranged from taking the wrong exit off the freeway to not eating enough In-N-Out. Tempers flared and headphones were implemented during the longer van rides. Out of the seven people in the crew, only one person never complained a bit -– not a peep of harshness or negativity. That person was Troy.

Troy Merkle

He recognized my frustration and offered me a herbal remedy. Although the method sometimes proves antithetical to stress-reduction, it did the trick and would continue to for the remainder of the journey. As bickering from the front of the van continued, I felt much better taking a literal back seat to the entire situation. Once every drive or so, Troy would excitedly point out a photo from a magazine and comment on its difficulty or composition. He’d propose a spliff at all the right times, and always have a blunt rolled for after the last spot of the night. I caught a glimpse of Troy’s phone - the background wallpaper displaying boldly the phrase: WORK HARD AND STAY HUMBLE. ‘Wow’ I thought to myself, ‘if there’s one way to describe Troy’s approach to BMX, it’s that.’ There is something to be said about the people in this world who keep their ego in check and put their whole heart into their craft. Even if they aren’t immediately recognized or given proper credit where it’s due, they keep at it and constantly improve upon themselves. Other people might climb faster up the ladder or take an easier route to the top, but there are those who stick to their guns and persevere until their time to shine naturally arrives.

Colts

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Closing out Daily Grind’s DVD released last year, Troy’s riding is a fusion of flatland-inspired manual links and precision handrail moves. If you were on BMXBoard in its heyday, you knew Troy as ‘Troyboy63’, gaining widespread popularity with a hang-five to barspin in a trailer for the PerspectivesBMX video in 2006. To tell the truth, I think he has one of the quickest barspins in the game. When he’s not riding down round rails, you can find Troy working on some flatland link in any given parking lot or doing rocket icepicks Ratboy would approve of. He’s not shy to throw in a quick no-footer during feeler runs. If there were ever a fine purveyor of the rail feeble, it’s Troy. Watching the expansive number of edits online that include Troy, he always seems to have the most noteworthy clips. Not necessarily the burliest gaps or tallest rail-hops, but clips that make your eyes open wide and you say to yourself, “Damn, that was cool”. Dig deep enough and you’ll see him do a polejam to no-footed barspin in an edit from 2009. While riding his local flat rail spot, I talked to someone about a grind I don’t see done very often. Troy was within an earshot of who ever I was talking to and remained quiet. Now, I’m almost positive that he hadn’t forgotten about it, but rather he was too humble to blurt out something like, “oh yeah, I’ve done that.” Sure enough, in a dated web edit, Troy does what we were talking about – a fakie round rail feeble, fast and perfectly. Troy is a studied photographer with a degree from the Ohio Institute of Photography & Technology. I found it particularly awesome to see that he has a motion-sensor camera rigged up in the woods in Northwestern Ohio. Following @troymerkle will keep you updated on all sorts of forestdwelling animals candidly caught in the midst of their habitual forages for food or animal poon. Troy is a pretty quiet guy who doesn’t like to stir the pot. He rarely says anything negative about anyone and, as cliché as it sounds, chooses to keep a positive mental attitude. His Twitter profile states, ‘My name is Troy. I am alive, I like it when people are nice to me. I collect things and ride small bikes for fun.’

"There are those who stick to their guns and persevere until their time to shine naturally arrives" Albion: Tell me the basics. Troy: Troy Merkle, 27 years old, living in Dayton and grew up in Van Wert, Ohio. I’m sponsored by The Daily Grind. What is your day-to-day life like? Alarm goes off at six am, I hit snooze and wake up when it goes off ten minutes later. Make some coffee and watch the news before we leave for work at seven. Depending on the job we are working on I’m usually off around four or five pm during the weekdays. I try to ride flatland after work at least three to four times a week. Then during weekends I skip town and ride street with the DG dudes wherever they are shredding. When did you start riding and what got you into BMX? When I was young I rode around on a little blue 20” Murray. My dad built me a set of little kicker ramps that I would jump off as far as I could. I started racing when I was 12 and learned about the sport from there.

Troy Merkle â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 43

[b] Downside Whip, Laguna Beach, CA.

44 — Colts

"The last few years I’ve tried to cool it with the web videos and make sure it’s quality over quantity."

How did your hometown and immediate area play a role in your riding style? I lived so far out that I had to build whatever I wanted to ride. When I was old enough to drive I would skip town on weekends. It really made me appreciate spots because they were few and far between in that area back then, and still are. Tell me about your motion-sensor camera in the woods. My father and I mounted a motion sensor camera in our woods near where my parents live. I set up some food and things to attract critters. I’ve gotten about 400 images of deer, raccoon and squirrels in about two months. Some of the shots have come out super good so far. How many video parts have you filmed? I’ve filmed five total. Perspectives Let The Good Times Roll (2004), the Season Bikes DVD (2005), Perspectives Goin’ For Broke (2007), Shook Like Totally (2007) and the Daily Grind DVD (2012). And how many web edits are out there with your name in the title? Any idea? I couldn’t tell you how many there are total. Quite a few I imagine. I’ve been at it for a long time. The last few years I’ve tried to cool it with the web videos and make sure it’s quality over quantity.

How do you suppose you got so good at rail rides? I think it’s just muscle memory and confidence. I just imagine myself riding down the rail, picture it in my head then go for it – ‘If you go there in the mind, you will go there in the body.’ Being ready for a feeble or smith in case you miss helps also. When did you start riding a freecoaster and why? It was 2005 when I built my first freecoaster. I was always pumped on the things people were doing with them. It just seemed to open up new tricks and allowed me to be a bit more creative. Once I started riding one I knew it was for me and I will never go back. How into flatland are you? Do you ever have a strictly flatland session, or is it just something fun on the side? I honestly ride more flatland than anything. During the week when I’m gone for work I will take both bikes with me but I usually only ride my flat bike. I’ll just find a random place to post up after work and do my thing. Then on weekends I meet up with whoever is riding street to film and get things done. What was it like riding for Giant and what happened with that? It was a good time while it lasted; That’s about the best way to describe it. Chris Arriaga, Tony Cherry, Alex Raban and myself

Troy Merkle â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 45

[c] Rocket Ice, Santa Ana, CA. [d] Rail Ride, Irvine, CA.

46 — Colts

[e]Tyres to Bars, Dayton, OH.

were assembled for Giant’s BMX program. After about a year we could tell things were at a standstill and we were pretty much left in the dark about everything that was going on. We began filming for a Giant DVD, but after over a year of filming we were informed that they didn’t want to put out a DVD or even possibly continue with the program. Chris did his best to keep us on our pedals and we made the best of the help, they gave us which was basically $200 a month and a frame about once a year. It’s a shame because it could have been a pretty good thing. Now they just use the website and Facebook page we built to post photos of mountain bikers riding dirt jumps and call it BMX.

You rode for NOS Energy Drink for a minute... What was that like? About four years ago a good friend of mine worked at NOS doing their marketing and promotions. He asked if I was into it and they sent a refrigerator and about 30 cases of the stuff. And that’s about it.

Whatever happened to Season Bikes? I’ve been asked this quite a bit over the last few years. Season was a company that my roommate started out of his closet and turned into a legitimate BMX brand. About as quick as he got it built up and got things going, he burned it to the ground even quicker, which was a shame because the team and products were amazing in the end. I will spare some details, but after multiple sketchy business ventures and burning quite a few bridges he left the BMX world completely and Season disappeared pretty much overnight. But as wild as things got sometimes, Season was a good time in my life. I wouldn’t change for anything.

What’s your favorite thing about Ohio? Can you see yourself living anywhere else? End of summer and autumn is the best thing about Ohio. Just perfect weather and scenic colors. I’m totally down for living somewhere else. There are way too many interesting places to stay in one area. At some point in my life I’m gonna have to live near the ocean.

Do you drink that stuff? I did back then. I tried to give a bunch away because I knew it was the cause of all my migraines. But it’s easy to drink when there is a wall of it in your kitchen.

What’s your favorite thing about Dayton? My friends. They are the best. I’m proud of all of them and honored to be a part of the crew.

HOLDING THE ROOM ~ ALEX ‘FATHEAD’ BARTON -HOLME Words and Photography by DANIEL BENSON

"We’re going to drop the sleek and stylish approach and make the company into more of a dickhead – ‘Perfect, when do I start?"

y phone rings almost instantly after emailing Alex asking for his phone number. “All right. Why do you want my number? Do you want me to come and fuck yer girlfriend for yer?” It begins instantly. ‘It’ being what the majority of what this following interview is all about.

Holding The Room

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I don’t bite and manage not to laugh; “No. I was wondering if you want to work on an interview for the magazine?” Fathead, as he’s lovingly known amongst friends, suddenly becomes serious, “Yeah, we can do that, don’t see why not,” answering like I’ve just asked him if he’d help me move a fridge freezer down to the skip, with a begrudging tone that you give mates when they ask for a shitty favour. He lets his guard down over the following few days when he sends me a string of messages with titles that he thinks would be suitable for the interview, ‘Highlander: An Underdog’s Tale’ or ‘Gladiator: Stories From A True Warrior’ are a few choice examples. He also suggests shooting a portrait in the scrapyard he used to work at, posing with his top off, greased up, carrying two tractor tyres across the yard. I notice he’s excited about it, and I was too. Alex Barton Holme is truly one of the most interesting, loud and downright bizarre BMXers I’ve ever met. There never seems to be a dull moment in his company, hilarious and sometimes obnoxious, he’s the centre of attention, commanding conversations like a politician, or some 60-something social club owner. He’s a verbal tour de force, one of life’s great prototypes, truly one of a kind.

[a] Over pegs, Harrogate.

Fathead’s hometown of Harrogate is a strange place, a wealthy northern spa town that seems like it’s been begrudgingly transplanted at birth from its southern brother of Bath. There’s a Victorian opulence that runs through the place, but with this stubborn Northern vernacular that seems to run through Fathead himself. If I’m being honest, I didn’t like the place on my first visit. It’s a hotbed of Tory curtain twitching, a town that appeared to be based upon wealth and status, quite unlike its northern neighbours. After a few trips I warmed to the place, probably due to the company of Fathead and his equally hilarious sidekick, Dan Barber. He seems like a contradiction in his home town, a stray BMXer in an dry spot, like Little Britain’s ‘only gay in the village.’ It’s undoubtedly sculpted him into the character he is, along with an array of friends and acquaintances that don’t fit the usual trajectory a BMXer takes. Normally you hear Alex before you see him. He empties out his whole lungs when he laughs, all teeth and smiles. If you wander into a conversation, he’ll be stood in the middle, like a master ora-

tor, commanding conversations on subjects that he probably knows nothing about. He’ll tell me himself that, “he talks a lot of shit” speaking off the cuff. In a normal scenario, Richard ‘Cleggy’ Rowlands and Dan Barber will be sat facing him, dragging his talk through a minefield of funny situations and verbal cul de sacs, all of which Alex seems to skip between with ease. Cleggy in particular enjoys playing this game, like the after trick warm-down chat has become his main reason for making the half hour drive from Leeds to Harrogate. The scenario often reminds me of a game show, Cleggy as the presenter and Dan and Alex on opposing teams, with people like Coxie, Sandy or myself as guests on the show, but the conversation is more Ricky Gervais. Deadpan English humour with a mix of tall stories and current affairs, an ability to relentlessly take the piss out of each other without it ever becoming malicious. Conversations about Fathead often miss out the obvious. He’s extremely talented on his bike. I like to think that even if Fathead could only just hop up a curb, there would still in some way be a place for him in the magazine, just off his personality alone. When I ask him his key skills, he replies, “Talking, bullying people, making cups of tea, stories” and misses out BMX altogether. I mention that to him and he replies, “yeah, that too.” He’s great at all those things, but with a personality as large as his, it can overshadow his BMX abilities. I rarely see riders as consistent as him. He’s consciously gone for a ‘less is more’ approach to what he rides and in doing so he’s managed to become extremely consistent, pulling tricks quickly and cleanly. He tells me that “It’s not some uncontrolled flukiness” and continues, “I know what I’m doing. I just don’t want to waste people’s time. If they’re out riding or shooting with me I want them to get a good return on their time spent riding with me – I don’t want them to be standing around in the freezing cold whilst I repeatedly bottle out of doing a rail.” I bring up one criticism that comes up occasionally with Alex, that some of his mates say that he never comes out of his comfort zone. It was meant as a compliment too, about how dialled and controlled his riding is, but on the other side of that is seeing some ability that could be pushed even further. “Yeah, I could I’m sure. Maybe it’s a fear of injuring myself, but at the same time, I know where I am with the things I can do, I don’t think it’s worth the injury to push it to that next level. I just like doing what I can and doing it as well as I can. Progression comes through that, but it’s a much slower process than actively going out and trying to learn a new trick.”

Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton-Holme

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52 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Holding The Room

[b] Tailwhip Gap, London.

You really notice that ‘slower process’ with Alex. The almost methodical way he manages to snap clean 180s out of any grind, or how he can pop high 180s out of manuals smoothly and consistently. It takes time and lots of repetition to become like that. It’s not something that is achieved by taking risks.

Working is something Alex has done since he was 12, beginning work at that age as a kitchen porter in a restaurant called Pinocchio’s. “I’ve done everything. I can do anything, any job, that’s a fact...”, he tells me. The job stories just tumble from here, one hilarious story to the next. At 15, he left school.

Or working on a landfill site at 17, driving 65-ton dumper trucks. “Driving around in one of those things, wanking my head clean

Working on an apprenticeship as a civil engineer led Alex into some comically grizzly situations such as raking out heroin needles from the bottom of a sewage tank. “There was a breakdown in cell two, covered in shit. Someone needed to go down there to clean it up. ‘Get me a fuckin’ rake boys’ I said. ‘You can’t do that’, they said. ‘Fuck off, I’m down there.’ and I was, for a day, raking out needles. I took a picture of it for my coursework for my apprenticeship, so I could walk in and show them that photo and go ‘I’m getting my apprenticeship… that’s going through.’ There was no way they were failing me after seeing that photo.”

—

“I got out as soon as I could.You know that two-week revision period you get off from school – didn’t do any of it. I was walking home one day and I saw a guy up on a roof and he looked liked he was struggling, I shouted up ‘Do you need an ‘and mate?’ and he said ‘Aye, go and get changed.’ So I came back and he said, ‘lift these tiles up there.’ So I did that and didn’t think about what I could be getting from doing it, then two weeks passed… 520 quid… A massive wodge, all in twenties. I went back to school and there’s these teachers and lads saying ‘You’re not gonna do anything, you.You’re gonna fail in life. You can’t go about telling stories and laughing all your life. Life’s not one big joke.’ I pulled this wodge out of my pocket and said ‘That’s not a fucking joke, is it?’ I put the money back in my pocket and said ‘Now let’s sit these fucking exams’ I went in there and bet this lad Dan Lloyd that I could beat him in every exam. I’d get every one done before him, I put a tenner on it, and I won him.” “Did you win him on results?” I ask. “Nah, did I fuck, but I got a tenner out of it though.”

Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton-Holme

I’m fascinated with all the transitory, dead end jobs Alex has had. He’s 23 and his resume reads like that of an ex-miner struggling to find work after all the pits shut. Landfill sites, sewerage works, scrapyards and call centres. You can see how some of this work has moulded itself into him, the banter from the site, the conversations to strangers in the call centres and the scrap yard. A cocksureness in dealing with the public, dealing with volatile people and situations. In the quiet moments, which arise occasionally, when there’s no one around to show off to, you get the impression of a very smart and sharp guy. After his Dad passed away in 2010 and with a strained relationship with him mum, Alex would tell me, in jest, that he’s an orphan. “I usually only use that angle with the girlfriend, when I’m trying to apologise for being a dick about something – ‘sorry love, you know the only reason I’m like this is because I’m an orphaned child.’ Works every time, no comeback to that.” On a more serious note, he tells me that “you have to grow up fast when you don’t have the support of mum and dad, you can’t stumble. If you thought, ‘tomorrow mum and dad are gone’ a lot of kids would fall on their arse. You’ve got to run just as you’re learning to walk. At 18 or 19 most kids are still learning to walk, living off their parents, but when you don’t have that, you need to switch on and start talking to people and work out what you want to be and what you need to get from life.”

Holding The Room

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

"He’s got no running water, no electricity. He holds the front door open with a box of wet leaves to let some light from the street in"

off at 17, that’s livin’ mate. I took a photo of the dumper, so when I was chatting birds up in town and they went ‘oh what do yooou do for a living? I’d just pull out the photo and go ‘I drive that.’ I was just wanking all the time in the truck. There was a camera in the back, so you could see when the foreman was coming.”

[c] Short step to rail hop, London.

After a late night in Harrogate I’m given two options for our journey home. “Right, we can go to Rick’s or Chris Rigg’s house. Your choice. One or the other.” Chris Rigg’s name had come up regularly. Apparently Fathead’s dad had found Chris Rigg ten grand in one day, after Chris had gone through his own dirty divorce and needed to get some cash to get himself sorted. After that, they were friends for life. Fathead had spun some yarn about Chris being a local hard-man, not the sort of guy you want to be fucking around with. We’d ridden past Chris’ house countless times and Alex would always stop and shout up to his house, “CHRIS!…. CHRIS!…. CHRIS!...” but he’d never come to the window. The thought of going to a local hardnut’s house at 3am and waking him up worried me, so I asked about Rick.

—

“I’d heard this foreman called Martin had grassed me in. I told my dad, ‘Dad, I’ve got a disciplinary hearing, probably going to get sacked.’ He goes, ‘Right, who is this fella?’ ‘He’s just the foreman, says I’m being lazy.’ ‘Are you being lazy?’ ‘Yeah, little bit.’ ‘Right, tell ‘em you’re been bullied.’ ‘What?!’ ‘You’re being bullied.’ ‘I can’t say that Dad.’ ‘Right, I’m coming in with you.’ ‘What! No way. No way.’ ‘I’m coming in with you, I’ll be sitting with you.’ So I walk into this room, Dad comes in, smoking a fag. ‘Can you put that out please?’ One of them says. The other asks him, ‘and who are you?’ ‘I’m his official.’ I just go ‘It’s my dad.’ So it’s two women, both really nice, from the apprentice board. ‘So what’s been happening, Alex?’ I start going into it all, ‘Well, sometimes I’m not enjoying it.’ I start telling the truth about how I’m feeling and about the job, ‘I don’t really want to be there. I think I could be doing something else. I don’t want to turn into one of these blokes I work with…’ My Dad suddenly stops me, looks at the women and goes, ‘It’s because he’s being bullied.’ ‘No, I’m not…’ My dad looks at me, and goes ‘Yes you are,’ then turns to the women. ‘Thing is, ladies, he’s that scared of these people, he can’t admit it.’ ‘No, I’m not being bullied.’ My dad just goes, ‘See, he’s in denial. He’s coming home in tears every night.’ He made me sound like a right little gay. I got sent back to site and everyone thought I’d grassed them up, or made up this bullying story, so no one would talk to me, which turned out better actually. I actually got away with doing less.”

“We used to live up in Bilton, it was my Dad’s first house after his dirty divorce. It was damp, so damp that the duvets were wet when you went to bed. There was this ginnal that ran down from the pub, right down the back of the houses and right to our backyard. Every morning someone would’ve walked down it and thrown up on the car. One night I heard some noise in the garden, so I ran into my dad’s room to wake him. ‘Dad! Someone’s in the garden?’ ‘Urrgh, what they bloody doing? Taking a piss?’ ‘No, I think they’re trying to break into the car?’ He perks up ‘What?! The bloody Opel? Someone’s trying to break into the Opel Omega?!’ It was actually a Vauxhall Carlton but he’d had it imported from Germany just because it was left hand drive. ‘Easier to park,’ he’d say. He had ‘Highway Maintenance’ stickers on the back, just so he could drive down the hard shoulder when the motorway was busy. He had a transit done up as an ambulance too. Anyway, my brother Tom goes out there with a baseball bat, but my dad overtakes him on the way out and goes for this guy, but he whacks him over the head with a bit of wood. He was a big guy, my dad, a 20 stoner, not easy to knock down. My dad either had a hammer or grabbed one, got up and went for this fella with it, whacking him down. So this guys goes down, Tom walks over to him as he’s not moving, checks his pulse. ‘He’s not breathing… I think he’s dead.’ Whilst I’m looking at Tom in shock, Dad’s gone and opened the boot to the Opel Omega, rolling a dust sheet out in there, saying, ‘Get him in ‘ere. Come on, lift him in.’ Just then this guy starts making this snoring noise, as he’s coming round. My dad shouts ‘GETTHEFUCKOUTOFERE!’ and the guy runs off. He turns to us, ‘Right, get to bed,’ That’s all he said after that.”

Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton-Holme

It’s when talking about that job on the landfill site that Alex begins to talk about his dad. I’ve caught a few stories about him, but never on record. You know who he’s talking about because even if you walk into a conversation mid way through, Alex will have adopted this throaty tone of voice that makes me think of the Welsh crooner Tom Jones if he’d worked on a building site all his life. It’s his dad that provides the final and largest piece of the jigsaw. When he starts talking about him, a lot of things start to make sense about Alex himself. He starts with a story about going into a disciplinary hearing, after becoming workshy and disillusioned with life on the landfill site.

He continues straight into another about the time they thought a burglar was in the garden, trying to nick the car…

56 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Holding The Room

[d] High and Long Feeble, Harrogate.

“I met Rick doing the scrap. He’d had some old car by his house so I asked him if I could take it off his hands. If you want to see how bad your life could be, go round Rick’s house. He’s got no running water, no electricity. He holds the front door open with a box of wet leaves to let some light from the street in. He used to sell hair supplies, had a successful business, nice car, wife, the lot. Then it wall went tits up and now he’s on his arse. He still had dyed hair until recently though.”

— 57

“I brought this girl back and she didn’t like me, at all. She thought I was a dickhead, talking about BMX, ugly, not interesting. ‘Do you want to watch Voices?’ I asked. She fucked me off and went to sit in the back room with my dad. I thought fuck that, and carried on watching BMX videos. I’ve walked into the back room after a while to see what she’s doing and he’s sat there talking French to her and she’s talking French back. She looks at me and goes ‘come on you, let’s go upstairs.’ As she walks out the room, my dad grabs my arm and goes ‘give her one from me.’ That was it, took by the hand upstairs. It was a fucking awful do as well. Hated every minute of it. But that was it. Done. A week or so later I brought another girl back and the exact same thing happened, she ended up sitting with my Dad all night. ‘Would you like a drink, young lady?’ ‘Oh, well, I’d usually have a vodka and Coke.’ How about a Tia Maria and Coke?’ ‘Oh sounds lovely.’ That one came round a few times, one time she came in and went ‘Where’s your dad?’ ‘He’s probably asleep on the sofa’ I told her that, big mistake. She walks in there and he’s asleep, just in his underwear, with his big brown cow bollocks hanging out of the side of his Donnay pants. I came home another time and he had all these passport photos of these girls from my year. I went, ‘Dad, why have you got them?!’ ‘I met her mother in the pub. Lovely woman. I told her that I’d pass on the photo to my son.’ He was pimping me out. Another time on holiday in Greece, he goes ‘Right, see that girl over there, you’ve got to go and get a kiss off her.’ ‘No way! I’m not doing that!’ ‘Well if you don’t I will.’ So the first couple of times I went over and got blown out, my dad laughing at me. Third time I thought, right, I’m having him here, so I goes ‘Excuse me, could I please have a kiss?’ I’m about 14 and she’s 18. She says no, so I go, ‘look, if I don’t kiss you that big fat guy over there will.’ So she did. I walk back all happy and he goes ‘what the fuck did you say to her?’”

Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton-Holme

The thought of sitting in the dark with a guy that sounded suicidal wasn’t that appealing, so I opted for waking up the local hardman instead. We walk up the hill and Chris’s light is on. Not a good sign. “Right, when we get there, he’ll offer us a cup of tea instantly and then as you walk into the front room his computer will be open and he’ll be buying car parts.” Alex knocks, the door opens. “All right Lads, come in, come in. Two cups of tea?” I notice a bit of embellishment from Alex. Chris turns out to be a sound bloke, not the nutcase I was expecting, although when I bring this up with Alex on the way home he assures me that he’s a fucking psycho when it comes down to it, and he wasn’t lying about the computer either, I think Chris was buying wheel trims off eBay. He asks Alex about his new job, about his girlfriend, gives him a bit of advice about both. I get chatting to Chris about how much he hates visiting London, but has to so he can see his son. Fathead passes out on the sofa, snoring, like it’s his own house. You realise that whilst he might have had a rough time with his family, there’s still some fatherly figures close by. Walking back, I’m expecting Fathead to take me to Rick’s, but luckily we bypass and go straight home. Even now, weeks after, I can’t think of anything as depressing as a guy who has to keep the front door open with a box of wet leaves, to let some light in from the streetlamps. We walk back, I push Fathead along in a shopping trolley for a while and he tells me about the time he first brought a girl home.

58 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Holding The Room

[e] 360 gap, Harrogate.

"You have to grow up fast when you don’t have the support of mum and dad, you can’t stumble. If you thought, ‘tomorrow mum and dad are gone’, a lot of kids would fall on their arse"

Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton-Holme — 59

[f] Rail Hop to Feeble, London.

60 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Holding The Room

[g] Over Icepick, Harrogate.

He tells me that his Dad gave him the best piece of advice he’s ever been given. “It’s the one good thing he told me,’ he says. ‘Go on then,’ I ask. ‘Fuck ‘em right and they’ll love you forever.” We head out the following day and Alex fires out the over ice, 360 and the half cab in a few hours. He’d been sweating the icepick for a while and needed a bit of persuasion to get up to the school in question. He offered a few procrastination spots, including stopping in the pub for a beer. He’s got a strange way with doing things sometimes. If he’s scared of it, he won’t look at it until everyone is set up, then just turn around and do it after a few feeler runs. He told me after, with the over ice, that he just imagined himself pulling it over and over again, until I gave the thumbs up. It couldn’t have been any more perfect, probably exactly like it was in his head. He’s got an amazing amount of bike control and can hop as high as anyone I can think of. After a few false starts, he’s found himself a place on the UK S&M team, amongst guys he grew up looking up to. Just like Marmite, some people just don’t get Fathead. He can easily rub people up the wrong way, which is what happened when he decided to call out Nathan Williams and Dakota Roche in an old Streetphire interview.

— 61

For the last few photos, Fathead comes down to London. I think he’s paranoid about all the schools he rides in Harrogate, which given how good they all are, and how rubbish everything else is, isn’t a surprise. We cover some distance, nothing huge, but enough to tire Fathead out to the point that he starts pining to get back home, sitting relatively quiet in the park (for him, anyway) after the session. It’s like we’ve ran a dog around the park too much. When you get Alex on his own, he’s much mellower than when there’s an audience. I think back to when I was in my early 20s, a twist of contradictions, shying away

Alex ‘Fathead’ Barton-Holme

“I started calling people out who, subsequently I’ve met and are actually really nice guys. Supposedly Mozza [Ian Morris] got a call from Robbo saying ‘Who’s this Fathead kid?! Why’s he talking shit on Dak like that?’ So that interview got a bit of weight and a few people saw it. Mozza took a dislike to me, big time. I might have been in line for some flow deal, after riding at a few of the DFTU jams and a couple of people started to take an interest, but that put a halt on that, if it was going to happen. Cleggy had to put in some real groundwork with Mozza and 4Down to fix that. Anyway, they were reshaping the S&M team, Clegg called me and said ‘You ready? You’re the S&M guy.’ I was so happy. I’m still not sure if he likes me. I’m still on probation. I should go ‘Look Mozza, I’ll come in for six months and do sales for you. Big companies, I’ll sort out some deal, some big multi-million pound deal,’ and I’d still be in probation. It’s fine though, I think he’s got a soft spot for me really. I’ve got a lot of respect for 4Down and the guys they hook up, it’s a lot of the guys I always looked up to. People like Newrick who put out something as influential as NSF, I respect that he’s getting something back for his talents. Marv makes the effort to put out his videos. People doing stuff for the love of it, without any goals or aims, just to maybe get a few likeminded people hyped and keep some friendships tight. It gives you a lot, BMX, but it isn’t really that materialistic, which I like. Guys like that remind you about it. I like working with James and I like S&M. I can’t see myself on any other team. I wouldn’t fit. I can’t imagine being on, say Eclat. A big loudmouth like me, shouting my head off and annoying people. It doesn’t fit, unless they all want to change their team to be based around being obnoxious, it wouldn’t work. ‘We’re going to drop the sleek and stylish approach and make the company into more of a dickhead.’ ‘Perfect, when do I start?’”

62 — Holding The Room

"I just like doing what I can and doing it as well as I can. Progression comes through that"

[h] Barrier Half Cab, Harrogate.

from work and growing up, much like I am now. You don’t see that with Alex, if there’s a problem, he deals with it. If he needs some money, he earns it. He’s already some way into paying off the mortgage on the house he owns with his brother, another responsibility I can’t even face now, never mind at 23. He doesn’t have any great hopes that his bike will lift him out of something and take him somewhere, I think he’s quite genuine when he tells me that if anything, he’d just like to have a positive influence on a small group of people and maybe

get out of Harrogate to see friends a little more regularly. He also tells me that he knows that one day, he’ll make a shitload of money. I know he’s half joking, but he’s got talents that you don’t see in many people, the ability to talk and engage with others. For all his skills on his bike, which are plain to see in the photos in this interview, it’s his knack for conversation, of talking to people, of knowing what to say, having the gift of the gab, that’s where his genuine talents lie – something that I’m sure will take him places in the future.

SNAKES & LADDERS ~ 64

Shawn McintoSh a Life of Up andS downS Words and Photography by GeorGe Marshall

snakes and ladders

—

"If you want to do anything with your life, you’ve got to get the hell out from where you grew up"

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Creating an issue of this magazine is a battle against time. As a labour of love, this magazine would be best put together in a world without time and a world of unlimited resources. For this issue I had a plan A, B and C, all pencilled in months in advance, and all were struck off by late contest invites, injuries and packed calendars. The grains of time slipped closer to deadline and I had pages to fill. Ideally, interviews are shot over a long period of time – some can take up to a year. Bones can break and heal over the course. Yet now I found myself having a single week to create an article to the high standards set in stone when we first started The Albion two years ago. I needed a rider who could deliver, someone trustworthy and motivated. I needed a machine, a robot that could guarantee results. I therefore had doubts when my editor Benson suggested a stoner, called ‘Shitty’. Having never personally met Shawn ‘Shitty’ McIntosh, I go online to do some research to gauge his ability to pull off shooting an interview in a week. From watching various videos, his riding is unquestionable yet I’m not convinced, his low-slung waistline, weed smoking and his colourful name suggest he isn’t the editorial machine I need. I voice my concerns back to Benson who softens my worries with a glowing character reference from Steve Bancroft, having spent time with Shawn for issue one. Four days, three text messages and five flights later and the landing gear drops on flight DL 794 to Medford airport in American North West state of Oregon. I was on my way to ‘Shitty Town.’ Grants Pass ‘Will anyone be here to collect me?’ I wonder, as I walk off the small plane at the equally small airport. I sit and wait for my bike bag. In strolls Shawn, on time and with Fit teammate Pat King in tow. Shawn walks as if to a slow rap beat circling in his head that could explain his low-slung jeans, a silver chain round his neck

and backwards cap. “I figured we’d spend a few days in my home town of GP [Grants Pass], and then head up state to Portland for a few days. Maybe go camping or something… whatever. It’s cool we’re shooting this in Oregon. I want this interview to show where I’m from and how I actually ride and grew up. I’ve got some shit here I want to do. You hungry?” Shawn asks me as the three of us sit in his two-seater Isuzu white pick-up truck and head to his hometown of Grants Pass. Shawn’s deep voice has the swagger of a rapper, yet also the reassuring calmness of all an American workingman, an unlikely blend of Clint Eastwood and Lil’ Wayne. Hearing his plans, any concerns I had drift away, sensing a definite drive beneath his laid-back front. After a short drive we enter the Grants Pass, passing huge old wooden barns and trailer parks on the outskirts. It’s a bright sunny afternoon and the air is fresh. Great pine-forest covered mountains surround the small town that hugs a crystal clear river – it’s a rugged, beautiful place. The odd logging truck rattles through the streets. The buildings downtown are mostly old, made of brick and few are taller than two storeys. The town is easy to picture in the days of the Victorian gold rush; it has that old Americana, railroad town character. “It’s an old logging town, before that it was a mining town. Those industries have died off now. It’s a sweet place to live, but there’s not much work here now,” he tells me as he pulls into the driveway of a well-presented wooden house, on a quiet street. The small driveway is crowded with various cars, bikes, motorbikes and grind ledges. A huge trailer home and a speed boat is parked on the street next to a well maintained rose garden. Our arrival is greeted by a pack of barking dogs from inside. “This is the Shier family home. I just moved back here from Long Beach [LA]. My family set-up was pretty fucked when I was growing up. My buddies, Jason and Justin’s parents took

shawn McIntosh â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 67

[a] Foot Jam, Grants Pass.

68 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; snakes and ladders

[b] Over pegs and gap into the road, Grants Pass.

shawn McIntosh

—

70 — snakes and ladders

me in. Their dad Rick runs a painting business that I used to work for. I slept in that shed for a long time,” he says as we drink cold beers in the back garden, pointing to a large and elegantly painted shed. “You can dump your bags in Jason’s trailer, we’ll be staying in there, but not tonight – his girl is staying over. I don’t know where we’ll sleep – the house is full.” I awake the next morning with the dawn sun burning my face, the bright light made more painful after a night in the local saloon bars. The drinks were hard and cheap. “You come all this way from England and my boys make you sleep on a trampoline?” a kind voice says to me as I sit up on the springy surface struggling to balance. “This is a home of stray dogs and stray BMX riders. You’ll fit right in. Would you like some coffee? I’ve made a fresh pot,” Justin and Jason’s mum Wendi tells me. During my stay at the busy Shier household we often sit in the front yard, drinking beers, smoking or riding the motorbikes up and down the street and watching the constant flow of suspect characters enter and leave a house across the street. “This used to be a good neighbourhood of just families,” Shawn tells me one morning lighting up a cigarette. “Now there’s two meth houses right next to us, that’s one across the street and there’s another one two doors up. I think they cook up from one house and sell it out from the other. The police raided that house a while back and pulled out of a tonne of electronics. People were coming from all over town and claiming their TVs and shit.” The Medicine After dark, Shawn, the Shier brothers, sometimes their dad Rick and various friends, sit drinking and smoking in Jason’s trailerhome on the drive. From hearing them reminisce old stories and watching old video footage, there is a clear, strong bond between the Shier brothers and Shawn; beyond friendship. They have each other’s backs. From overhearing chats it’s clear the strong group of friends are familiar with hard times. “Look there’s Monk,” Shawn says watching an old skatepark edit, “That’s my old friend Kory

‘Monk’ Hayes. He shot himself. He lost his mom a few months prior and he was into a lot of drugs. I wear this silver chain to remember him.” Shawn says raising a finger under his necklace. Conversations between Shawn and his friends constantly refer to the ‘homies’ – beers for the homies, shoes for the homies, frames for homies, and most of all, weed for the homies. Without exaggeration, during my stay I saw enough weed to fill my bike bag. Yet every gram down to the last bud is entirely legal and above board. “Oregon is pretty chill on medical Marijuana.” Shawn explains as I shake my head in disbelief holding two shopping bags of Oregon-grown Marijuana. “As long as you have a weed card from your doctor, which is easy to get, you can grow weed in your yard.You can drive round with it, but you can’t get high and drive. You’re allowed to grow six plants and you can grow plants on behalf of other people, so you can legally grow a lot of plants. Every neighbour is growing it. If you look over the fence you see all the tops of the weed plants. People grow it in summer and dry it, so they have their medicine all year.” Later during my stay with Shawn, he tells me more about his childhood and his exposure to drugs from a young age. “I grew up surrounded by drugs and the problems they cause. My parents split up when I was in kindergarten. After that I was living between many different houses. Both of them were moving all the time around the town or on the outskirts. My parents were doing all kinds of shit when I was younger. I was surrounded by all kinds of crazy shit a kid shouldn’t see.” “I remember my mom was dating this crackhead dude, he was cooking up meth or some shit at the house we were staying at. One day I was getting up for school, it was super early in the morning. There was a bunch of noise outside. I go outside and there were 30 dudes all dressed in black, wearing body armour and had machine guns. They raided our house. They came in all shouting and made me get on the floor… I was 11 years old. It was pretty traumatic.”

shawn McIntosh â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 71

[c] Table gap from the small kicker into the deep bowl, Burnside, Portland.

“I was surrounded by shit like that till the age of 15. I got fed up and left. I got a job washing dishes at the local bar and grill, and started making a life for myself. At first I room-mated with my buddy and later I came to live here with Justin and Jason’s family.” “I disowned my own family. After I moved out I didn’t talk to them for four years. I’m back to hanging out with my mom. She’s straightened up. She married some church-goer dude, they’ve got two daughters. She’s now a ‘stay at home’ mom, she doesn’t eat meat, doesn’t smoke cigs, doesn’t drink – nothing. She quit everything – cold turkey… Proud of her. I don’t know about my dad.” “He was the one that got me into racing when I five years old. I raced until I was in sixth grade [12 years old] at the local track in town. Eventually I sold my race bike and got a skateboard. I was out skateboarding one night and I noticed Chester Blacksmith and his crew running around town, grinding rails and stuff. I was just intrigued by that and knew I had to get another bike. It was around the same time the skatepark got built in town and I just rode that every day. Chester grew up here as well and was my main influence as a kid – he’s a few years older than me.”

snakes and ladders

—

A Snake Having abandoned his family at a young age, Shawn did what he could to make a better life for himself, working various jobs and relying on the good nature of friends and the Shier family. Yet even with the bad influences of his own family behind him his problems weren’t over – trouble lay ahead. “A local kid stole my friend’s bike. The same dude had previously stolen three or four of my other friends’ bikes. One evening we saw him riding our buddy’s bike. We pulled up three or four blocks ahead of him. We got out, waited for him, beat him up, took the bike and drove off. A couple of miles down the road the cops pull us over. My knuckles were all bloody. The cops asked what I was doing. I said I got into a fight with my girlfriend and I’d punched the wall. The cops says, ‘I don’t think so’ and slaps the cuffs on me...” “There I was, 18 years old, doing 45 days in jail waiting to find out if I was going to prison. I was looking at getting five years, ten months for a Measure 11 charge. Jail was like a grown up detention hall. I was in maximum security. It’s only two people per cell. You go into your cell at six pm, the door buzzers pops at six am for your breakfast, then you go back to sleep. The door pops again and then you have from ten in the morning until six at night where you just chill with the other inmates. There’s TV, board games, people play cards or reminisce with their dudes or whatever.” “My sister hung out with all the riff-raff in town. When I was younger I saw all these dudes she’d hang out with. When I went to jail I walked in and I knew four or five of the baddest dudes in there. I got taken care of, they hooked me up with food and everything. Despite getting an easy ride it was a total wake-up call. One of the older dudes in there who’d been in and out of prison all his life asked what I’d done. I told him I beat someone up. He asked if I made him bleed. I said, ‘yeah, he bled all over the place’. He heard that and said, ‘Yeah, you’re going upstate for five years.’ I cried myself to sleep that night. My life was over. If I had gone to prison, I would just be getting out now and my life would be fucked. I wouldn’t have anything in my life at all. I would be leaving prison and going to be a piece a shit, you know? Prison is a school for criminals.” “I got an attorney. They told me if I accept the felony charges of robbery and assault I would not have to go to prison, but I would go on probation for three years. And that was that. I got out of jail after 45 days and spent the next three years cleaning up my act, working every day and checking in with my probation officer.” “At the time I was with a girl and working for a landscaping company. I couldn’t just get up and leave town. I wanted to get away, but as I was on probation I had to have a steady residence and a steady job. The girl already had a kid. I had to play the whole dad thing for a while. The kid wasn’t mine, we got together when the kid was super small. We had a house out of town in the wilderness and I did that whole family man thing. I worked six in the morning to six at night, for six days a week. I worked my ass off. I never had time to ride. I was fed up with my whole life.”

shawn McIntosh â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 73

[d] Long rail down a narrow stair set, Roseburg.

[e] Smith, Portland.

snakes and ladders

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

"There I was 18 years old, doing 45 days in jail waiting to find out if I going to prison. I was looking at getting five years"

Shad Johnson, owner of Goods BMX shop in Portland, remembers Shawn’s move to the city. “When Shawn first arrived he was a skatepark rat. He would come to the park and show up the older guys. You’d do an icepick grind on a quarter and he’d follow and do an ice to fakie. That was Shawn, but everyone liked him. It was good for Shawn to get out of Grants Pass. If he hadn’t left he would have just been one of those dudes at the skatepark who had all the potential to do something with riding,

“I would never have thought any of this was possible. I could not be happier with the way my life is now. Without BMX I’d be in prison or a drug addict… I nearly went down that path. Before any of this I did mix with the wrong crowd for a year or so. I did mess around with some hard drugs, meth and coke, and all that stuff. It’s not a good thing to get into. I’m glad I got out of it. All my close friends can’t believe I actually beat it you know? Very few people try meth and get off it. I’m still addicted to cigarettes, but I kicked everything else.”

“I sold all my shit and moved up to Portland. Justin Inman needed a roommate and I said ‘hell yeah – let’s do it.’ I had been laid off from my landscape job just before my probation ended and I got unemployment cheques. I lived off unemployment cheques for six or seven months up in Portland. I spent the summer with Inman. My entire life setting changed. My life became riding. Riding became more important than anything else. I rode Burnside in the mornings, street and trails in the afternoon, I rode it all.”

Enjoying his newfound freedom and under the wing of pro rider Justin Inman, it didn’t take long for Shawn to make some early steps and follow Chester’s path as a professional rider. “Lotek was my first sponsor. I was down at Burnside one morning and Rich Hirsch [Lotek Owner] was down there – I’m shredding you know,” he says with his characteristic laugh. “Rich hits up Inman, ‘what size is Shawn?’ He tells him, ‘same size as me’. From there on we got the Lotek order to the house doubled. Rich also put me on his bike company Stranger, but I wasn’t paid. After six months my unemployment cheques ran out. Boom, I was broke, then within a few weeks I got the call from Fit. B-Dubbs [Ben Ward] hit me up and asked me to ride for Fit and I started riding bikes for a living. The timing was crazy.” Shawn joined the ranks of the Fit team immediately after a dramatic exit by the some of the team’s key riders. In the years that followed, the addition of Shawn became central to the brand’s revival, alongside Ben Lewis and Tom Dugan. A move down to LA, the heartland of the American BMX industry, further strengthened ties with his sponsor and completed Shawn’s journey to becoming one of BMX’s most popular street riders. The benefits of international travel, new sponsors and signature parts were all soon to follow.

—

“I didn’t want the life I had. I was too young for being a working family man. In the end, it wasn’t my deal, I was uncomfortable raising another man’s kid. The day after I got off my probation, I left. Straight up – peace,” he says, reliving the moment of liberation. “I’d been jumping through all these hoops for the last three years and it was time to get my life back. It was time to be me, to relax and ride my bike.”

but instead just got some chick pregnant or whatever and he would have disappeared.”

shawn McIntosh

The Ladder As Shawn put his head down and kept a low profile, fate shone differently on his old friend Chester Blacksmith. Chester had moved from Grants Pass to Oregon’s major city of Portland and had become a pro rider, travelling the world and living a life Shawn could only dream of. “Seeing Chester do good and travelling the world through bike riding really opened my eyes. Chester proved it was possible to get out of this small town. Seeing Chester’s life really gave me the drive to make it.”

76 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; snakes and ladders

[f] Dollar Tree roof gap, over the second roof and into the bank, Grants Pass.

shawn McIntosh â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 77

"I go outside and there were 30 dudes all dressed in black, wearing body armour and had machine guns. I was 11 years old"

78 — snakes and ladders

"You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends"

After spending a week of getting to know Shawn, I find it unsurprising that he has overcome such testing challenges and slippery temptations. Under the smiles and laughs of his carefree exterior he has the drive to overcome. He has a balls-out attitude I witnessed at close hand as I saw him pedal down a roof at a blind dead-man gap. I doubt few could succeed if they met the same challenges that Shawn faced from a young age; many would choose the easier, darker path. Through his drive to improve his life, natural talent and the inspiration and support of his friends, Shawn is a self-made success story and he is de-

served of the charmed life he now enjoys. The darker times of his life have only made a stronger and wiser man. “Looking back, moving to Portland really was the big turning point in my life. If you want to do anything with your life, you’ve got to get the hell out from where you grew up. You’ve got to see new things, meet new people and try to understand the way they think. What I’ve learnt is choosing your friends is the most important thing in life. You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends.”

TAJ MIhelIch “You cAn’T wIn bMx”

Words and Photography by GeorGe Marshall archive photography by saNDY CarsoN, Chris rYe and larD GalloWaY

I’m a vegetarian and I dislike being asked why. I lower my head with a groan when I hear the question. I can barely remember my script of reasons. In recent years I’ve preferred to give a dumb answer in the hope of avoiding debate. I tell relatives I saw the film Babe and it changed my life forever. I tell other men it’s because ‘I hate animals so much I won’t even eat them’, and when riders ask I answer: ‘Because Taj is.’ All three answers are ridiculous, however the last is admittedly not far from the truth. Taj Mihelich was arguably the most influential and most admired rider of the first decade of the 21st century – a golden era of BMX. It was a time when BMX gained independence and looked in the mirror. Rider owned companies took the helm, the chest protectors came off and riding became style-conscious. Leading the revolution was Taj, with infallible moral integrity. He lead by example and like disciples we followed, we wore mesh caps, took off our front brakes and some of us even stopped eating meat. “Arrrrhhh… I’ve got no plans for the next few days,” Taj tells me from the driver’s seat of a large white van in a gentle voice, sounding somewhat nervous and shy. Taj is living on the road. The Mercedes van has everything he and his only companion, a friendly Corgi called Monty, need. A bass guitar rests beneath a camp bed, a small amount of folded up clothes sit in a cupboard and a fleet of bikes of various size hang in the back. “Everything I own is in the back there. I sold my house in Austin and all my belongings in a garage sale and bought this van. I’m not sure what I’m doing or where I’m heading. I’m trusting my intuition and it’s telling me it’s time for a change. I might end up back in Austin, or maybe I’ll fall in love with another town and start somewhere new. I thought tonight we’d find somewhere to camp-up in the country and do some hard talking.” The three of us drive away from the city of Milwaukee where Taj collected me and we head deeper into the countryside of Wisconsin. We pass the time by chatting over many mutual interests such as different forms of cycling and illustration but I avoid the topic of why I’m vegetarian. Later that evening we camp up beside a lake and start a fire. Thinking Taj was a non-drinker, I am surprised when he passes me a can of Canoe Paddler Wisconsin lager and opens one for himself. “I didn’t start drinking till late in life.” He tells me, taking a sip and facing the fire. “I had a lot of alcoholic step dads around me as a kid. I never met my real father. He was into doing heroin, drugs and drinking. He left when I was two. I never wanted to be like my dad or step dads. I didn’t drink for years and I’ve never messed with drugs. If someone drank booze, I wouldn’t talk to them. I started to feel like I was afraid of it because I’d turn into those people who were shit to me as a kid. As I grew older I realised I didn’t want to be afraid of alcohol and I thought I should be able to drink without losing my life to it. When I was 31, I did a tour of the Guinness Factory and at the end of the tour you get a perfect pint of Guinness, that was my first drink apart from a few sips growing up. I still don’t get into liqueur but I enjoy a beer or a wine. I’m mellowing out.”

I’m shocked to hear the story of his father. From his unusual name, old photos of his dreadlocked hair and gentle caring manner, I had pictured him growing up in a commune of peace and love. My assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. “My mom was a hippy – she called me Taj. She raised me on her own in Michigan. There would be a different step dad every few years. The cycle would be; she’d be single, we’d move, she’d meet someone and we’d move in with them, then she’d divorce them and we’d move on again. “The last step father I lived with was psychotic. My mom and him had a kid when I was 14. He didn’t want me in the same room as my half brother. Often the family would sit in the living room watching TV and I’d be told to stay in my room. My step dad didn’t want me to be a part of the family. He thought I ate too much but I felt like I was starving. It would be so bad I would steal dog food, I was that hungry… it was brutal. My mom saw what was happening but wouldn’t do anything to help. She’d told me, ‘I love you both, don’t fight back when he yells at you so we can all be happy.’ I wasn’t getting physically beaten, but he wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of me. He would get two inches from my face and yell I’m worthless and everything I did sucked. I believed him. The only thing I could do was stand there and fucking cry. The only strength I could find was from just standing there and taking it. It was brutal. I wet the bed until I was 16! I even went to the doctor about it but they couldn’t understand it. “I didn’t have anyone to share my problems with. Our dog was my only friend. I felt a connection with animals, I thought: this dog is awesome – he likes me and wants to hang out with me, and how is he any different from a cow or a pig, or any animal we eat? I couldn’t separate the two, so I didn’t eat meat. My step dad used to force me to eat meat, which me made me associate that with him. “I was closed off as a kid. I couldn’t look anyone else in the eye. I just walked around with my head down. I’ve always been shy by nature, but it was made worse by having to show up at a new school every year. I didn’t have any friends growing up. All that stuff is what drove me to bikes and I guess the upside to it is that it’s what made me focus on riding. Most of the time riding was something I could do alone and where ever I was, and get away from my situation. BMX was always something I could lose myself in. I started out racing but it was dirt jumping I really loved. When I hit a jump I just wanted to go as high as I could and land hard. I had all this angst to get out. I rode with all my emotions on my sleeve. I think that’s why people noticed me riding. I didn’t know how to express my emotions in any other way. I had no one to talk to. “One night I scraped the fork on my teenager buck teeth. My step dad freaked over table manners and threw the kitchen table at me with all the food on. It was a pinnacle moment and I thought ‘fuck this – I’ve got to get out of here.’ I had no idea things could be better, I just I couldn’t take it anymore. I left the house and walked down the street and into the country. I stayed with my aunt for a bit and

then I left town. The bed wetting stopped the day I left the house…arrrhhh it’s cold.” Taj says with a shudder in the night air. “I’m going to grab my hoodie from the van, are you warm enough?” He stands, finishes his beer and walks away into the darkness of the night. At the age of 16, a very shy and vulnerable Taj had no choice but to leave his family and make a life for himself alone. “That was the lowest point of my life. I felt like I got dropped off on a curb with no life skills, no idea how to live, no idea how to be happy. I was truly convinced that I was not worth anything. I’m almost 40 now and I want to be truly past all that but looking back it’s heavy to see the state I was in.

Taj Mihelich

—

82 86

“I feel like I was born at 16 when I started out on my own. During this time I was full of hate and was so self-righteous. I was so ignorant to the world. I had to figure everything out on my own. I started out pretty much believing there was an absolute black and white, right or wrong. If you didn’t believe what I believed you were wrong – simple as that. I shunned people and blocked out huge parts of life because I didn’t know how to deal with things I didn’t understand. I feel like the rest of my life since that point has been an adventure in opening up.” When Taj left his home, he left with next to nothing but he did have one possession that would take him further than he could ever imagine, his bike. “During that time I put everything into riding. I have no idea what gave me the confidence to, but I entered my first dirt jump contest at 17. It was at the NBL Grands race in Kentucky. Fuzzy was in it, he was an idol of mine. He was wearing full race kit. I was wearing torn up shorts, mismatched knee-pads, two different water skiing gloves and I had two odd tyres. I came second in the contest and BMX Plus ran a full page photo of me doing a Grizz. It blew my mind. You’d never see a photo of a kid dressed so ratty in BMX Plus. That contest started things for me, not long after my ‘5% discount bro’ deal with Albes, it turned into a real sponsor.” Although still very shy, Taj began to make a name for himself as the gnarly quiet kid at the dirt contests, going higher and landing harder than anyone else. His days alone without friends were about to change. “Suddenly people began to come up and talk to me. That really helped my shyness

and getting praised for something helped my confidence. I started to think maybe I wasn’t so terrible. In the early days those contests were like a pilgrimage. You’d see the same riders at every contest all over the damn country. That became my extended family. Ron Kimler practically adopted me in the beginning and started to take me to my first contests even though I had no money to help pay for the trips.” At 18 Taj left school and devoted all his time to riding, joining the small number of pilgrims that attended competitions throughout the country. Eventually this path led him to the cold northern city of Iowa and the home of Standard Bykes. “Rick Moliterno and his company Standard were my first bike sponsor. I was over the moon when he asked.” At Standard Taj found himself at the heart of one the most progressive scenes in America, befriending teammates Joe Rich and Sandy Carson. With BMX still in its infancy, it was a time of rapid progression. Taj added to the evolution of tricks, inventing moves such as foot jam nosepicks and even pulled the first downside foot jam tail whip back in the dark ages. But at a Standard team photoshoot at Scrap Skatepark, he experienced a tragedy that would affect him and his outlook on BMX for years to come. “It happened at my very first photo shoot. One of our good friends and probably the best rider out of us, Jeff Crawn jumped the box and his forks blew up. It happened right in front of me. At the time we knew it was bad. Later that evening we found out he was paralysed. Seeing my friend get paralysed really upset me. After the crash, I rode around in circles all night. I had to be on my bike. The only way I could handle that emotional overload was to keep riding. It also inspired me to write a story about the incident for Ride BMX. I’d never written anything before, but it helped me find another way to be able to express myself, other than riding. “Bikes were dangerous back then. BMX bikes were kids bikes – they were bullshit. That’s why I can’t get into the old school bike collector thing… those old bikes were terrible! It was so important to support the few companies that were making products that weren’t going to kill you and that put on events, so they could survive and we could keep riding.” “Not long after things started to get weird at Standard. In truth it was never much of a sponsor, I

"i turned down so much money over my career"

[c] 360, Road Fools One, Phoenix [Rye]

Thanks to Taj’s growing popularity, a race inspired geometry and American Made quality, The Hoffman Taj frame was a hotly sought after frame on the market that Taj could be proud

At Hoffman Bikes in the late ‘90s Taj again found himself surrounded by individuals even more hell bent on the progression and evolution of BMX. Taj was not a spectator, as testified by his video part in UGP’s Face Value. “On Hoffman you got to go on the Sprocket Jockey tours with Mirra, McCoy, Hoffman and Miron. We’d earn money doing shows at hillbilly state fairs four or five times a day. You’d make 75 to 100 dollars a day. I’d go on the road for a month and make a few thousand bucks. At my first Sprocket Jockeys show, Mirra hung up and blew up his spleen. They needed someone to fill in and that was me, even though I didn’t ride vert. I learnt to ride vert on those shows. “Doing shows all day you get beat up.You start doing tricks you know you can pull because you don’t want to get hurt. I could do pedal to pedal tailwhips, back then not many people could do them. That was my hard trick for the show. I had two ways of doing them; burley and land 50% of the time, and this other way I could pull them every time but they felt stupid and robotic. “All of sudden I realized doing shows made riding feel really contrived and it felt like it was becoming a job. I quit doing shows because I realised I was riding in this formulaic way. It was my only income but I liked riding to feel completely on the edge, sketchy and loose. I wasn’t going to turn it into a job. It was a lesson in standing up for myself… right or wrong, I was starting to be strong enough to follow what I thought was best.” Today the notion of the world’s best five riders sharing a ramp deck and riding five shows a day for $100 is unthinkable. The Sprocket Jockeys Tour was in a period where BMX and money

89 83

“My first pro contest was the BS in Kansas [1994]. In practice I jumped the box and crashed head on with Leigh Ramsdell, ripping my head tube off my Holmes. As it happens a guy called Paul Murray was moving to Oklahoma to weld for Hoffman Bikes, and had all welding gear in his van. In the middle of the contest floor there was the 220v plug socket he needed to run his welding torch. Fifteen minutes before the contest starts, he grabbed his gear and welded my head tube back on right in the middle of the contest. I did my run with my head tube so hot it burnt my legs when I did no handers. Afterwards Mat bought a new Holmes and we built the Taj frame based around that.”

—

Wiser from his experiences at Standard, Taj left and headed south. “My only plan was to head south till it got warm. I ended up in the Hoffman Bikes convoy after a BS contest, sat in the van with Mat Hoffman. Over a long drive from Chicago we got into a few deep, long conversations. He asked me to ride for Hoffman Bikes. For some reason it took me a year to say yes to him, which was weird because Mat was such a hero of mine. I accepted. I rode for Hoffman but I couldn’t ride his Condor frame because I didn’t like the geometry. After all my sponsors I was still riding a Holmes.

of. Taking inspiration from racing and adapting it to Freestyle was an evolutionary idea. Taj later continued to draw from racing, sparking the move to 36 spoke wheels, the introduction of cassette hubs and smaller sprocket sizes. At a time of 40lb bikes, four pegs, front brakes, platform frame designs and triple bolt seat clamps, Taj led a decade long movement toward refined, light-weight design.

You Can’t Win BMX

never even had one of the bikes. I never wanted a Freestyle bike. I always rode an S&M Holmes race bike. There was a famous time where Joe [Rich] asked Rick [Moliterno] for some money to go to a contest, Rick replied ‘No sorry, I have to super-charge my other Mustang this weekend – I can’t afford to help you”. We were all like WTF? He wasn’t making a lot of money but he certainly wasn’t giving the team any money. I think he just got what he could out of us young kids. We didn’t think to negotiate with him because we looked up to him so much – we assumed he had our back. We’d get the ‘we can’t give you any money, we’re only small but we’ll grow, if we all work.’ I just got fed up with things and felt like it was going nowhere.”

Taj Mihelich

—

84 90

[d] 1 foot moto, 9th Street, Austin. [Carson]

were unacquainted. However, the tide was about to turn, the world of BMX was about to change. “I heard from Mat that TV were interested in screening the comps. I had a terrible feeling about it. Miron said, ‘It’s going to make everything huge, we’re all going to get money’. He wasn’t necessarily for it but he could see what was going to happen. To me all I could see was the death of what I loved about BMX. “When Mat worked with the TV companies, he did it with the best intentions. It was good to ride on a big stage at those first Extreme Games and show people what BMX was. But we shared that stage with freestyle bungee jumping, a dude jumped off a building wearing a Kayak, another jumped dressed as a cow. They were making up sports. It was embarrassing. I remember being disgusted to see BMX turned into a ‘sport’ that you could win. They were making a joke out of riding in my eyes. “They were manipulating contests so they could make it presentable for TV. They took out so much of what I thought was awesome. No longer could someone try the same trick 45 times with the crowd cheering and pushing him on. The cameras needed to change tape and everything had to be on a schedule. They stopped the riding between each run to wait for the commercials to end. You’d be cold and the crowd would be bored. There was no energy, it was cold and calculated… it became a challenge of: ‘if you could ride your best in the absence of all that energy. If you fall, you lost.’ “I remember I was winning Dirt by a good amount at the first Extreme Games. I knew on my last jump that if I pretty much did anything and landed it, I would have gold. In my brain I thought it would be a total cop out. It made sense to me to try a trick I had never done before. So I tried something new, fell and got second. It probably doesn’t make sense to anyone else, but to me it felt like I would be letting myself down if I took the easy way out. I wanted events like that to give me the energy to push

myself and be creative. It would be worthless if I just did what I had to do in order to ‘win’. “In that way the big contests have hurt BMX, they reward consistency, playing it safe, practising in a foam pit over that magic no one can replicate. I would never want to say anything bad about the contest riders but no one goes into the X Games to try something they’ve never tired before, they do dialled runs… I miss that wildness of contests.” “There is nothing wrong with wanting to win…” Taj pauses for a second to weigh it up and chucks another log on the fire. “… but maybe there is. For me, you can’t win BMX. How can you win something so subjective and personal. The whole idea of trying to beat someone else, or thinking that riding really good will earn you a win is against everything that BMX is to me. Maybe what you do hits a nerve with the certain group of judges at a contest and you end up winning, but you didn’t really win. It’s BMX… you can’t win BMX.” For better or worse, the introduction of the televised contents in the mid ‘90s changed BMX, and for none more so than for the riders at the top. As Miron predicted, a wave of new money entered BMX, but for Taj it wasn’t a simple case of cashing in. “I was a top rider at that point and potential sponsors would say we need you to get a podium finish in the X Games and be on TV. I rebelled against that, I didn’t what to be competitive. I’ve turned down so much money over my career. I can see how other people could go the other way and accept all the endorsements. Dave Mirra is a badass, he should have a video game and all of that, but that wasn’t for me. I would always run it through my moral compass, and think ‘are they helping BMX? Are they good for us?’ I was so incredibly strict. I never wanted bike riding to turn into a job for me. I wouldn’t let my contracts have stipulations or requirements. In truth I had a really unique career. I did make decent money but I had contracts that just said, “you be you… do your thing and we’ll support you.”

You Can’t Win BMX — 85

[e] Downside Whip Gap, Derby Backyard Jam. [Galloway] [f] Disaster, Derby Backyard Jam. [Galloway]

Taj Mihelich

—

86 92

“I couldn’t endorse products I didn’t believe in. That attitude comes from my early days as a racer. When I was racing all the pro racers were sponsored by Oakley and all wore Oakley Razer Blades. I was convinced you had to have a pair. I was 13 years old, poor as shit and spent $130 on a pair. I get to the track and realised you sure as hell didn’t need them. It sunk in. I’d been duped. The guys in the magazine wore them only because they were sponsored. When I started getting in the magazines and getting sponsors I decided I would never want to do that to little kids, I would ride for companies that made shit I would actually buy. It’s funny looking back now. Oakley got its start in BMX and is now huge. They even helped me put on the Texas Toast Jam and made me special Toast Oakleys for the event. It’s growing up I guess… a company like that can still be a part of and help BMX even if you don’t really need to wear sunglasses to ride. I just couldn’t get it back then.” With the arrival of television coverage, the old BS contests that had once provided Taj a lifeline from his lonely childhood were no more. His extended family had been replaced by jocks and suits. Taj was openly against the contests, yet was still an integral part of Hoffman Bikes, who organised the contests with ESPN. Taj found himself in a difficult position. “I felt more and more alienated by the whole contest world. At the same time Mat moved the production of Hoffman Bikes to Taiwan. The first bikes I got from there were terrible, the geometry was really fucked up. They were really inconsistent and badly made. I was against the move to Taiwan, Mat was convinced he could make good bikes

there. In the end he did it and opened that door for the entire industry, but at the time I was too impatient to wait around for things to get fixed. I couldn’t deal with the fact there was product with my name on that I wouldn’t buy. I have all the respect in the world for Hoffman, but I knew I had to move on. Mat knew too, he is a lifelong friend and told me he knew I had to do things on my own. I left Hoffman with the intention of never being sponsored ever again, to not be a part of the industry and just ride my bike.” While Taj’s old Sprocket Jockey teammates enjoyed lucrative endorsement contracts and the wealths of prime-time television, Taj turned his back on the new contests that quickly came to be dominated by the new role of the TV pro. He was after a new direction entirely. “I wanted to keep that part of my life [BMX] pure and not screw it up by having a sponsor. After almost a year of riding without a bike sponsor, I began to get the idea I could maybe make BMX more how I wanted if I started a company that showed riders what I thought BMX should be. I thought I could carve a little corner out of BMX that was my way. That’s where T1 came from.” Whilst on the much celebrated and groundbreaking video Props Road Fools 1, Taj announced the start of his new company Terrible One, with long-term friend Joe Rich, who shared the same values and outlook as Taj. “We wanted to show that BMX isn’t all about competition. T1 was always more of a vehicle to show what BMX could be, rather than an actually functioning company. T1 was more of a symbol than a company or a business. We were making money from our

[g] Wallride to downside whip, San Antanio. [Carson]

You Can’t Win BMX — 87

[h] Gap to curved wall, Austin. [Carson]

sponsors, so we didn’t have to rely on T1 to pay our rent. We certainly didn’t pay ourselves. From my past experiences we wanted to pay our riders, make the best bikes we could and show the world BMX isn’t just what you see on TV. We supported riders such as Paul Buchanan and Garrett Byrnes who were amazing but as far from podiums as you got. Through all of this, Joe and I would occasionally go to some of those ESPN contests, maybe we’d do well, but that was not to be our focus. I think we did accomplish our ideas with T1. We inspired a lot of people to open up doors… to make BMX how they wanted it to be.

Taj Mihelich

—

88 94

In the early 2000s, Terrible One quickly grew into an iconic and respected brand. Taj and Joe’s little corner of BMX grew into a dominant force in the industry, opening the sluice gates to a golden era of BMX, captured in the video Etnies Forward and the Props Road Fools series. It saw the rival of Backyard Jams, which restored the original atmosphere of the old contests that Taj so loved. No one personified this time more so than Joe Rich and Taj. The two were the inseparable guardians of their own beloved world of independent BMX. From the outside it was an unshakable friendship, but on the inside cracks were beginning to appear. “When we started T1 we knew business could ruin friendships. The pact we made in the beginning is that we agreed, if we stopped being friends, we’d just close the company down and not let it ruin our friendship. That pact stuck for a long time. We both worked really hard, it was hard to know when to stop. It was ours, no one else was going to do it. “The company grew. We’d struck a nerve with riders and people wanted what we were selling. We had two full time employees who had families and team riders who we were paying well. We’d become a full company and people were counting on us to make it work as a business. I took that seriously and that’s where Joe and I started to have a difference in opinion. Joe didn’t like the responsibility or the idea of T1 being a business. I would argue that it could still be ethical, moral, and maintain our ideas as a business… I wasn’t trying to get rich from it. “Before I continue, I should make it clear, Joe and I are no longer friends. Anything I say about him needs to be taken with that in mind. If anything sounds negative, just remember this is only my side of the story, but I’ll try to be objective. When we started we had different ideas and met in the middle. That middle ground produced some great stuff. But more and more we were going in opposite directions. We got to the point where there was no middle ground, it was just us fighting. I think we just grew into very different people. “We had issues over the product a lot towards the end. This was about the time that stuff made over in Taiwan was starting to get as good or better than the stuff we could make in the USA. It became harder and harder to justify making stuff in the US. The nail in the coffin for me was the T1 Bars. They were a big seller for us. All of a sudden all the bars from Taiwan were cheaper, stronger and lighter. I thought ‘how can we keep on making our

bars in the US?’ But Joe wasn’t into it. To order bars from Taiwan meant we had to order a lot of bars and so we had to run the company as a business to sell them all. I started making changes to run the company more like a business but Joe hated the changes. I can’t really blame him for wanting to keep it as a hobby, but with everything riding on it. It just wasn’t for me anymore. “T1 really started to effect our friendship. We stopped wanting to see each other out of the office, we weren’t friends. That’s when I left. One day I walked into the office and told Joe, ‘we’re not friends anymore, we have an agreement that if we’re not friends we’d close it down, so let’s close it down, let’s try to save the friendship.’ That was the end of it. A few days later Joe called me and said, ‘I agree with you, you’re right, but what would you think if I kept the company going.’ I had some apprehension about it, it was my baby and I didn’t want to let it go on without me. But I knew T1 meant a lot to some people, we were getting photos of kids with T1 tattoos. I said, ‘alright, you keep it going, I’ll give you my entire half, I don’t want anything for it, go for it.’ “I walked away. I tried being just a rider for a while and it didn’t work. I’d walk into the office and see something happening I couldn’t handle. It was a learning experience in letting go. I gave Joe my part of the company so I had to accept him doing whatever he wanted with it. I stopped riding for T1 and went back to that mindset I had when I left Hoffman of never riding for anyone again. Things seemed good between Joe and I for a few years but then he stopped talking to me. I don’t know why, he won’t tell me. We were friends for 20 years and then one day he just tells me ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’ Since then I can’t go to a BMX event without the fear of seeing him, I’m a nervous wreck. I really don’t know how to reconcile it all. I guess it’s just a lesson in learning that some things are out of your control.” Hearing Taj’s words, it is obvious he is still very sad by the fallout. Mildly drunk and the camp fire burning out, we call it a night. The next morning we drive to Ray’s indoor skatepark. With the park empty I watched Taj drop in and pull a perfect deck manual and fufanu in his first run in three years. As the session progressed the pain of an old back injury raised its ugly head and to shoot a photograph, Taj put himself through an ordeal of suffering that I found uncomfortable to be a part of, but I was also honoured to be a first hand witness of his mental strength. Later that evening in a nearby Mexican restaurant we discuss his injury. “I was always very fortunate with injuries throughout my riding career. I got hurt of course and I did have some serious concussions. Once I got knocked out and lost a lot of memory. I got home from the trip and my girlfriend wasn’t there. I called her up, ‘Where are you? Where’s all your stuff?’ ‘You threw me out’. She told me. I had no memory of it and she moved back in. A year later I remembered she was cheating and we had broken up, and I’d completely blacked it all out. Apart from that and a burst spleen, I never tore a knee tendon

[i] 360 Invert, Austin. [Carson]

You Can’t Win BMX — 89

Taj Mihelich

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

You Can’t Win BMX — 97

[j] One handed fast plant, Rays, Milwaukee. [Marshall]

and my shoulder never popped out. In that sense I feel like my body was made for riding, especially those heavy bikes of the mid ‘90s.

Taj Mihelich

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“My luck ran out a few years before I left T1. I did a really fast backwards grind on the ramp, missed my back peg and fell into the transition, twisting my back. I was instantly fucked. For a couple of weeks after that I crawled around my apartment on my hands and knees. I pissed in a bowl because I couldn’t stand up. I went to the doctors and they told me I needed surgery, then I went to another doctors and they told me to never get surgery. In my last years as a pro rider I’d go to a contest and I wouldn’t practise because I knew as soon as I pulled up hard I would be unable to walk for a week. Riding became miserable, it was just pain.” Without a bike sponsor and his back injury becoming worse, a new opportunity came from an unlikely place, the opposite corner of BMX. “I started to get into other bikes because I was able to ride those without the pain. I bought a road bike from Giant, and then I bought a mountain bike from them. When I bought my third bike from Giant I joked with them ‘you guys should sponsor me, I’m buying so many bikes’. They said, ‘we have enough budget we’ll sponsor you’. I thought ‘oh shit’. I can’t say I don’t support this company because I’m buying their products. I had a huge ethical and moral dilemma. They were a massive corporation that before, I would have never supported. As soon as I got scared of the idea it became like a handrail or a jump. I had to just go for it. It was one of those things where I needed to prove to myself I could do what I felt I should. Also it was as far from T1 as I could get.” Remembering the surprise at the time of Taj’s decision, after an opinionated career being very vocal in his opposition to corporate bike companies, I ask Taj if he could see how some people regarded the move as hypocritical. “Of course, but honestly, worrying about what other people thought was half the reason I did it. I had to prove to myself that I could make this decision without worrying about what other people thought. Things had changed. I felt like I’d done my part for BMX. No one was going to buy a Giant BMX because I rode for them, and the bikes were actually quite good. They weren’t dangerous. I didn’t feel relevant anymore, I felt like an old guy doing his thing. I had back problems and I was close to retiring [as a professional rider]. What do you do if you’re a professional BMX rider at the end of his career? When I was younger I

thought the cool thing to do is just quit. Move on and let the young kids come in, but I was still in love with bikes. In fact I was starting to really enjoy all kinds of bikes. I was expanding my mind I feel like… opening up to other ways to fulfil my life you know? What attracted me to Giant was they wanted me to go to the Tour De France, and go to some downhill races, and experience all these other forms of cycling.” “During my time at Giant, my back pain got severely worse. Nothing non-surgical worked so I went to see a surgeon, guess what? He recommended surgery. He waited till I was literally prepped up in a gown for surgery to tell me the success rate was only 70%. At that point I felt like I had no choice, I was in constant pain. The surgery did help stop the constant pain, but ever since the surgery, just bunny hopping up the curb has been really painful. No amount of rehab has ever helped. I’ve been to see ten different rehab specialists. “The failed surgery forced my early retirement as a pro rider. I always pictured what I’d do when your career ends. I saw myself with some money saved, going to school and starting a new life. What happened was I got hurt, had a surgery and I woke up with a lady leaning over my bed with a clip board saying, ‘do you have $50,000 to pay this bill sir?’ Shortly after the surgery I received a letter in the mail from some guy at Giant who I’d never met and couldn’t spell my name telling me I was fired. It was the faceless nightmare I always feared riding for large corporate brands would be. Suddenly I had no skills, no job and I thought I was going to lose my house. I was in a scary situation. “I was told before the surgery that my insurance company would pay for it. But they pulled some sleazy shit there and told me I had to pay the hospital costs. Luckily the ARF foundation came to help me. The ARF’s insurance agent knew the right legal things to say to my insurance company and got the bill down to $20,000. That was in a realm where I could pull it off without losing my house. Even with the help of the ARF it was a low point.” As his old rival Dave Mirra was also retiring with enough money to never work again, Taj was filling out his first resume since he worked at a juice bar in ‘94. He went back to college to study woodwork with the thought of leaving BMX for good. But BMX wouldn’t let him go and was there for him when he needed it. His long-term sponsor Odyssey cleared a desk and created a job

"suddenly i had no skills, no job and i thought i was going to lose my house. i was in a scary situation"

You Can’t Win BMX

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Taj Mihelich Mihelich —— 100 94 Taj

for him. At Odyssey, Taj now continues to follow his love of all bicycles through his new creation Fairdale Bikes, building bicycles that focus on the fun and spirit of cycling. As ever Taj continues to give back to BMX. For the past two years, he has worked himself into the ground to host the Texas Toast contest, an event that aims to restore that energy he fell in love with at the early contests when he first left home. The corner of BMX that doesn’t believe in competition, is alive and well. Texas Toast is just one further example in a catalogue of acts of generosity in which Taj has given back to BMX. Our community has rarely seen anyone so unselfish. On that first evening by the camp fire, I asked Taj why he thought, he more than anyone, approached BMX with such moral integrity and unwillingness to exploit BMX for his own gains. “Early on I realised BMX had been awesome to me. It had gotten me out of bad stuff and lifted me up.

I wanted to keep it as pure as I could. I couldn’t let anyone tell me how to do it, or even define it for me. It was one good thing in my life and I wasn’t going to fuck up by doing something I didn’t believe in. So as much as I wanted to look after BMX, it also looked after me. We grew up together in a way. We both started in pretty small dark places (BMX in the late 80’s having crashed pretty severely) and in a way I think we both matured together. BMX tucked me under its wing and taught me life, friendship, happiness, love… all of it.” I left Taj to continue his and Monty’s trip into the wilderness. I bid him farewell and wished him the best of luck finding whatever he’s looking for. He now enters a new chapter of his adult life aside from BMX for the first time. I hope without him, BMX can maintain the course he set for us. Such noble characters of unrivalled devotion and sacrifice are rare. If BMX was ever in need of a winner, surely Taj Mihelich would be he.

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The 100th Monkey

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The 100th Monkey The Collective Consciousness Of BMX (AKA: Why any monkey can noz now) Words by STEVE BANCROFT Illustration by ChRIS WRIghT

Five years ago, rolling a brakeless front wheel manual was a coveted act reserved only for the most dedicated and talented individuals in the upper echelons of the BMX fraternity. With such a tiny sweet spot to find and with nasty OTB crashes a given – most riders didn’t even bother to try. However, nowadays the case is very different indeed... Back then, no matter how many thousands of hours were spent flicking up the back wheel in car parks by mere mortals, the status-defining trick was seemingly out of reach for all but the paid professional. But now, in 2013, the noz is a staple trick that is seemingly mastered by any monkey within the first few months of picking up a bike.

The answer is this: The noz has now entered our collective consciousness. As a result, the knowledge of the trick has been etched into the field of collective consciousness, making it increasingly easier for others to achieve.

At first, the knowledge spread slowly through the pack as the monkeys watched and mimicked the new skill. After a few months of slow but steady spread of knowledge, nearly half the island’s population of monkeys were washing the sweet potatoes in the river - and then something happened that baffled the scientists. Once the 100th monkey had learned the technique a critical mass was reached – a tipping point if you will – and from then on all the remaining monkeys on the island started washing their potatoes. After the 100th individual learned the trick, the knowledge that was once only available to those who had been taught was instantaneously passed to the whole species. Monkeys on nearby islands who had had no contact with any of their educated neighbours suddenly started washing potatoes

And from there, just a small handful of years ago, the number of riders around the globe who learned how to nose manual reached a tipping point. The 100th kid in a car park pushed his weight forward, lifted the back wheel and locked into free rolling noz and at that instant a cosmic shift occurred and the knowledge became universal. And thanks to that transition we get to where we are now with riders like Mike Curley and Chad Kerley nozzing in complete control at their heart’s content. Now, when someone tries to learn the noz, rather than starting from scratch, without even knowing it, they tap into the collective well and the knowledge that flows there – two weeks later they’re cruising around town on their front wheel. Those who noz should pay respect to those early pioneers who spent time and spilt blood learning the noz before the trick entered the collective consciousness – thanks to them enduring year after year of bloody knees and grazed palms the trick is now attainable to any monkey with two feet and a cheap complete. Line based street riding is currently enjoying a boom in popularity – the stringing together of existing tricks into flowing combinations – but we should be wary of heaping too much praise on the individuals who make careers off the back of this style of riding. Theirs is a skill more attributable to a group effort rather than an individual achievement. Thanks to the efforts of our forefathers, all the knowledge it takes to add together or link existing tricks is freely available through the collective consciousness. If you want to learn a trick that lots of people can do already then all you need is to download the technique from the universal cosmic mind – it’s that easy! And that’s why creative riders at the forefront of BMX progression who are inventing genuinely new tricks should be celebrated more than they currently are. Riders who walk their own path walk alone, isolated, with only their environment and history to tap into – they don’t have the luxury of logging on to the collective consciousness – there’s nothing up there to help them – these are the true progressives and they should be held aloft and lavished with cash and naked girls (or shoes, parts and plane tickets – whichever is deemed more suitable).

105

The concept gets its name from a study conducted by a group of scientists monitoring the behaviour of Macaca Fuscata Monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima. They discovered that the primates were fond of eating the sweet potatoes that grew on the island, but only if the earth was washed off them first. They taught one young female monkey how to wash the root vegetable in a stream and watched as one at a time – through direct interaction – the rest of the pack copied and learnt the skill acquired by that initial individual.

Back in 2001 UK flatland legend Phil Dolan locked into the first brakeless nose manual and from that initial seed the trick began to take root. The spread of knowledge was slow at first as Phil was way ahead of his time and there weren’t many flatlanders at that level, but a few years later progressive street riders like Steven Hamilton and Joel Moody invested the hours and took the trick to the masses – and from there its growth in popularity stepped up a gear.

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The theory of collective consciousness is a hard one to grasp; at its simplest, an example that demonstrates the theory is the crossword in the Daily Telegraph. Each morning a new and notoriously tricky word puzzle is published by the broadsheet newspaper and is subsequently attempted nationwide by thousands of people and – and here’s the point – your chances of successfully completing it are substantially greater if you try it later in the day than in the morning. Why? Because more people have done it by then.

The number 100 is used here hypothetically to illustrate the existence of a specific tipping point, in practice there is no set number for when the transition of knowledge extends from a singular conscious entity to that of a collective whole.

The Collective Consciousness Of BMX

Why is this? Why is a previously prestigious manoeuvre that was at one time only seen at the end of legendary video parts now dimea-dozen at every skatepark and street-spot from here to Timbuktu?

without prompt. After it reached critical mass the knowledge entered the collective consciousness of the species and became freely available to all members.

106 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Strays [a] Jason Phelan, Toboggan Gap, Barcelona. [Steve Bancroft]

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108 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Strays

[b] Dylan Stark, Whip Gap. [Devin Feil]

110 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Strays

[c] Alan Cameron, Turndown, PMP Trails, Auckland, NZ. [Ted Van Orman]

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[d] Sam Jones, Crook, Blackburn. [Nathan Beddows]

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The rise & Fall oF Baco ~

JusT Because iT didn’T lasT Forever, doesn’T mean iT wasn’T worTh iT Growing up in Wisconsin in the late 80s and riding BMX bikes, nearly all of your interaction with like-minded individuals came from the magazines. As time progressed, local events became my window into what was going on in the sport. All the mags (and later videos) came from California, where it was seemingly always sunny and life was golden. That limited worldview of BMX changed one summer day during a local freestyle contest. I met a group of riders from Green Bay. They were insanely good at flatland and pretty fun to ride with too. I struck up a conversation with one these flatland studs named Chad Degroot, who at the time was just another rider from Wisconsin. He mentioned they had made a video and were interested in selling them. I gladly paid the $10 to see what these guys were up to. The video was entitled Baco-Vision. It was wild to see riders on the screen who were within driving distance of us, guys I’d just seen earlier. The video was unlike any freestyle video I’d

seen up to that point. It was filled with mostly flatland riding, but was also peppered with funny skits. Even in the early videos their personalities were on display. Chad Degroot, Chris Rye, Mark Hilson and later Dave Freimuth formed the core unit responsible for the riding, filming and editing of the Baco series. The videos opened my eyes to a growing network of riders that existed outside of the sunny enclaves of California. The videos and the riders of Baco fame went on to put the Midwest on the map as a major force to be reckoned with in BMX freestyle. The videos got crazier and crazier, the riding more and more advanced. The list of riders who had parts or cameos in the ten-volume series is literally a who’s who of top riders from a fifteen-year span, stretching from 1990 to 2005. What other group (or company for that matter) has done what these guys have done... and for so long? This band of deviant riders left a dent in BMX that all the corporate money and squeaky-clean whitewash for mass appeal has yet to repair.

Words by Rick WagneR

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I. Origins: The beginnings of the Baco crew can be traced back to the early days of the first wave of BMX freestyle, a time where a rider from middle-America had limited options for interacting with other like-minded individuals. You were exposed to riding not from television or movies or the Internet, which did not exist at the time, but by friends or older brothers or the two outlets at the time: print magazines and live demos put on by traveling teams of BMX pros. All four of the members met in some variation of this formula. Chad and Rye met one afternoon in Degroot’s parents’ garage when Chad stumbled upon Rye and his older brother in their garage doing tricks like decades and boomerangs in BMX leathers.

"Many of the top pros of the day, including an up and coming kid named Ryan nyquist, proudly ran the sticker on their bike, largely oblivious to the real meaning behind the colorful rainbow"

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“I saw my brother and Rye and I was like, wow only rock stars do this shit!” said Degroot. “There’s a uniform for this, and I was intrigued by it. I was just some dorky kid. My parents dressed me and it was at this time that I realized after watching them that you could take a bike and do shit with it.”

Freimuth returned from his first semester of college in Minneapolis where he had pretty much given up on riding due to the lack of fellow riders in the area. That all changed one day when he was walking on campus and ran into Kurt Schmidt, Joel Hurlburt, John Wold and Jamie McParland. He started riding again with these guys, consistently building up his ramp riding skills. On a trip back to Wisconsin, Freimuth traveled to Green Bay to see Dennis McCoy and Joe Johnson who were doing demos all weekend at a car dealership. He also wanted to ride with Degroot and Rye who, by this time, had gotten their hands on a video camera and were making videos entitled Baco-Vision I and II. Hilson also attended the demo with his crew and had begun work on their own video entitled Thrash’n Menasha, named after the small suburb just south of Appleton where they all lived and rode. It was shortly after this meeting that the four would connect and start riding, filming, traveling and living with each other pretty much non-stop for the next ten years. All the while, they documented the insane progression of their riding skills and the wild antics that would become the legendary ten-volume series.

At the same time thirty minutes south of Green Bay, Hilson was splitting time between his mom’s home in Appleton and his dad’s place on the other side of the state. Hilson was riding mostly flatland with Baco co-stars Mark Fluette and Kurt Emmerich, all progressing at a furious pace. Freimuth was off in the woods riding his own backyard ramp and also killing it, with plans to leave for Minneapolis to attend college. Both Freimuth and Hilson were a few years older than Degroot and Rye and had been riding in their own scenes having never crossed paths, only hearing rumours from travelling skaters about how good the other respective rider was. In those early days Degroot and Rye began to not only ride flatland, but build funky ramps and other obstacles. This was in an era when the ramps had names like Ron Wilkerson’s Enchanted Ramp or McGoo and GT’s creation, Stonehenge. Degroot had been obsessed with eating an inordinate amount of these new grocery-store wonders known as Baco Bits, imitation bacon chips crushed up to garnish salads. Thus the first two-foot grind rail made from PVC pipe and 2x4’s was christened B.A.C.O., an acronym for Bad Ass Coping Obstacle. Numerous other ramps followed after the demise of the first, all sharing the B.A.C.O. name, one of which was a three-foot high spine that was eight-feet wide and went to vert. Degroot and Rye met Hilson and his crew at a kids’ festival demo. They built a halfpipe and sessioned it all day. Hilson heard about this and went up to check it out and brought his bike along. Hilson recalls: “We didn’t know them at all, but we were immediately impressed because Chris [Rye] was doing five-foot airs on this vert ramp. It was hilarious though because he would be taking runs and slowly, air by air his helmet would tilt down over his eyes to the point where he couldn’t see.”

Video Generation The late 80s would be described by most riders today as prehistoric in terms of the equipment they used to document riding. This was all about to change though. Video cameras, whilst still cost prohibitive to the average 17-year old BMXer working for minimum wage, were finding their way into the hands of both Degroot and Rye in Green Bay and Hilson and his crew in Appleton. “I had always been fascinated by cameras,” says Rye… “When I was younger, my uncle who lived in Algoma, had this real old school Zenith camera that was actually tethered to this big thing that you would have to carry around that was the recorder. He would let me mess around with it sometimes when I would visit. I had this little hamster that I took along. I was really young at the time, so I would film the hamster cage with the hamster in it, stop the camera, take the hamster out and start filming again so it looked like it disappeared. Just stupid fun shit like that.” Perhaps it was this innate desire to film that would one day lead Rye’s passion to produce some of the most legendary videos and video series the BMX world would ever know. Hilson and Rye shared similar stories of convincing their parents to co-sign for a Best Buy credit card and spending thousands of dollars on cameras that were cumbersome and gigantic by today’s standards. All motivated, not by some get-rich quick BMX career scheme, but by a desire to document what they were doing on their bikes, alongside some pretty wild antics off them. They began filming everything! Degroot, Rye and Hilson spent endless hours in parking lots racking up new trick after new trick. They took the cameras with them into grocery stores and filmed each other jumping out and scaring each other. Pretty soon this footage began to pile up, which led to the inspiration

The Rise & Fall of Baco â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 119

[c] Mark Hilson putting in time at the parking lot, 1991. Green Bay, WI.

120 — The Rise & Fall of Baco

"i remember watching the rats at night, after everybody was gone, go into the pizza oven they had to eat the crumbs. So i would slam the door shut and turn it on, and the next day they would use that oven to cook pizzas for kids." — chad degroot

to patch it together for a video. By 1990 they had made their first video, Baco-Vision. Comprised of mostly flatland tricks, sprinkled with a little ramp action, this video is today resting in Rye’s video safe never to see the light of day. They had made only twenty or thirty copies using Rye’s camera and Hilson’s Super 8 camera to dub the entire thing. While Rye doesn’t care to talk about the video, Hilson remembers being excited by the fact that they had edited this video themselves. Baco 2 and 3 followed roughly one year after the debut, each one capturing the insane level of progression by all three riders and their filming and editing abilities. It was in 1991, the crew began to travel to contests and jams put on by riders for riders. There was no unifying contest series anymore, the major bike companies had either stopped making bikes or drastically cut their offerings and their teams. Nevertheless, BMX was on the cusp of its own rider-owned rebirth, and the DIY ethic of BACO struck a chord with riders across the country at a grass roots level and the videos became popular. Mark recalls an interesting situation with Mark Eaton. “We had recently finished Bacovision II and skipped school to travel 20+ hours cross-country by car to Norfolk, VA, to what was

being promoted as one of the biggest BMX events to date with almost all of the big time pros in attendance. I ran into Mark Eaton at our hotel. He had just finished whatever number Dorkin’ in York they were on at the time. I went up to him and asked if he would trade us a Bacovision II for a Dorkin’ in York. When he replied, ‘Sure I’ll trade you’ at that moment I felt like we had officially arrived and were finally a part of the same world as the people we grew up seeing in magazines. For just a second I felt like that, until he went on to say, ‘Yeah, give me $17 and a Bacovision II and I’ll trade you for a Dorkin’ in York.’ I was abruptly bitch-slapped off of the cloud I was floating on at the time, especially knowing that $17 was exactly how much they were selling them for anyway.” The guys also started to travel to the lovely state of Iowa where their Midwest BMX role model Rick Moliterno had set up a skatepark in an old bowling alley and called it Rampage. The contest series The Kong of The Skatepark would draw riders from around the country, but especially regular attendance from the hardcore riders in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana. They began to make the five-hour trip on a more regular basis. Both Degroot and Hilson moved into Rampage for a

The Rise & Fall of Baco â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 121

[Prev][c] chad at work on some high tech editing equipment for Baco 5. appleton, Wi. [d] Dave and chad running the table. [e] &D Mechanically designed early video covers, pre-photoshop. [f] assorted Pride static stickers. [g] early Baco transplant, kerry gatt. [h] chad, Standard shorty days. [i] Pre-Jerry Springer show hotel party. [j] chris Rye.

122 — The Rise & Fall of Baco

short time. Degroot recalls, “I remember watching the rats at night, after everybody was gone, go into the pizza oven they had to eat the crumbs. So I would slam the door shut and turn it on, and the next day they would use that oven to cook pizzas for kids.” The skatepark served as a gathering spot for many wild nights. Interestingly, these nights never included alcohol. The wild beer soaked mayhem would not creep into their lives until much later. Homosexuals? As the videos and the riding progressed, we see the transformation of a small group of local riders to become nationally and then internationally known riders and video producers. Starting with the third installment we see a definite shift in the content of each video. The uncensored music or the short clips with sexual undertones thrown in between riding were things that simply had not been seen in BMX videos up to this point. Compared to the videos put out by GT, Haro, or even the Plywood Hoods, the Baco videos were a raw look into these guys’ lives and what they were into at the time – with no regard for whether this was appropriate for BMX or not. There were no sponsors to piss off; they didn’t even advertise the video. An early review of Baco 3 in Freestylin’ Magazine called it ‘the sleeper hit of the summer’. The shift from Baco 4 to Baco 5 can be seen in the subtitles of both. Four was subtitled Hardcore Underground Dope, 5 simply Homosexuals. This title and the subsequent installments, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Pride, and Straight in 98 would baffle and amuse many of the riders that viewed them. All four guys are particularly proud of volumes 4, 5, and 6. Degroot’s personal favorite was Baco 6, “It was an era where Dave was just inventing tricks. I started pushing it far. It was just such a rad era. The music was great. Everything went together so well, it was such a good well-rounded video. I obviously like all of them, but 6 is the one that stands out for me.”

Again, this is at a time when being gay was not as mainstream as it is today. There were no movies or television sitcoms depicting openly gay individuals. It was people’s reactions to these stunts that were endless sources of amusement to them. Ironically, none of the four members are homosexuals. I never once sensed that they were doing it to make fun of gay people, rather they were using it as a way to shock young riders. Done purely for the reaction by people, the antics escalated to newfound proportions. Hilson, egged on by many a Midwest BMX company owner, spread his seed on another Midwest rider’s hand after he had been the first one to fall asleep that night at a Hoffman BS Series contest in Lake Owen, WI. It was after this incident that, much like their riding, the stunts and pranks got crazier and crazier. Some of which made their way into the videos, but many other clips and incidents would be saved for future projects. As the non-riding footage began to pile up, it wasn’t long before the guys realized they had a ton of footage of things that simply were too raw even by Baco standards to be included in the videos. Enter Baco Uncut 1 and 2. Rye claims that this was probably Freimuth’s creation because he was such a huge pervert. These two videos had minimal BMX in them, maybe a few gnarly crashes, but mostly wild sexually charged antics. The two videos included not only the Baco guys and their extended cast of BMX friends, but also complete strangers that responded to the request for footage at the end of Baco 7. Never officially released, the video could only be viewed if you knew Degroot, Rye, Freimuth, or Hilson. Freimuth recalls, “Those were viewings where you had the view finder on the camera turned out and ten guys huddled around it watching and freaking out.” Uncut 1 however, had a mass showing after a Baco contest in Appleton one year where the guys actually rented a projector and put it out there for anybody sober enough to see. Degroot recounts, “Uncut 2, that was the one I had to shred a few years

Subtitle Here â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 123

[k] Dave Freimuth comes up with another new trick.

The Rise & Fall of Baco

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[l] New Zealands finest, Kerry Gatt.

back because I actually put effort into starring in that one. That was a wild era for me, where things were pretty loose. I realized right before I got married that this video is gone, it doesn’t need to exist any more.” He forgets that his buddies Freimuth and Rye both have master copies up in Wisconsin, which I had the chance to see on one of my trips to interview them. Perhaps one of the most infamous moments in Baco history was Hilson and Degroot’s appearance on The Jerry Springer Show. At the time, the show was on heavy rotation at their house in Appleton. Every night around 11:00, the group would watch as the show would showcase the most ridiculous guests, airing out their grievances for all of America to see. Hilson was particularly fascinated by the show and began to call the 800 number at the end of the show to ‘talk to Jerry’ about getting on the show. It was after weeks of calling the show’s answering machine that one night while Hilson was out, the producers called back wanting to put them on the show. The end result was a concocted story of how Degroot who was straight, and Hilson who was gay, hung out together and went to clubs and attracted girls. Completely made up for the show, years later Degroot said he posted the clip on YouTube but later pulled it down, only to realize it had been reposted by someone else. In retrospect, neither Hilson nor Degroot thought the clip would gain the notoriety that it did. The idea that future employers and new friends might be able to call it up on their computer simply by typing their names and Jerry Springer, never crossed their minds. They had no idea their appearance on the show would live on forever courtesy of the Internet. “It still comes up maybe weekly for me,” according to Degroot. “I mean, I have neighbors and they have kids, and I have kids

and they play together. The lady next door, great lady, one day she was like, ‘Ya know I couldn’t sleep last night so I Googled your name...’ and at that moment I looked at her and I knew what she found and she knew what I knew and we both did a ‘Hell Yeah’ cool guy nod and we just let the kids play, and to this day every time I see her I think she is looking at me and thinking about Jerry Springer.” Hilson expressed disappointment though that they had held back fearing that if they got too wild it simply would have been cut from the show. All of the talk about being gay surprisingly never led to any confrontations or accusations that any of the guys can remember. It was never meant to be defamatory to gay people it was more a way for the guys to push other people’s buttons and then sit back and laugh at their reactions. When Baco 7 was in production with no title, Freimuth came up with Pride. The inclusion of a rainbow flag static sticker that stuck nicely to chrome BMX tubing was a trend that took the BMX world by storm. Many of the top pros of the day, including an up and coming kid named Ryan Nyquist, proudly ran the sticker on their bike, largely oblivious to the real meaning behind the colorful rainbow. In California, the company handling the duplication and sticker insertion was also clueless. Their sales rep for the company reported to Rye that she was seeing their stickers all over bars in San Francisco. We’ll never know how many unknowing riders bought Baco 7 and thought ‘Hell yeah I’m down with Baco – I’m gonna run this sticker’ only to find out that it was, in fact, the symbol of gay pride. One particular incident began to make some of those involved think that things may be going too far. Rye remembers, “Chad was going down to Arizona and Hilson and I were at Chad’s parents house in Green Bay before Chad left for the winter so Hilson wrote this love letter to Chad telling him how much we was going to miss him and how he couldn’t wait to see him again. He hid it un-

[m] Over rail by Baco prodigy, Brian Kachinsky.

Like many friendships that endure the passage of time, the Baco guys have struggled to keep their bond alive. Each of the four riders by the late 90s had chosen a slightly different path. What started out as a tight-knit crew of friends living together, going on trips, filming and riding, had begun to splinter and dissolve. Chad and Dave became household names in the BMX world leaving Standard Bykes for greener pastures with companies like Schwinn, Haro, DK, and Huffy. Chad eventually made his way down to Florida to escape the Wisconsin winters and ended up creating a new life there. Chris and co-founder Marco Massei created Props Video Magazine putting out 78 issues in all and a total of 18 Road Fools videos. Mark Hilson stayed local creating two indoor skateparks in the Appleton area by the names of Funbox and Undercover.

Will we ever see Baco 11? Degroot and Freimuth both have tapes that were to be used for the next video, but are sitting in a box somewhere. The stuff Degroot had filmed he actually released on the Internet because it was starting to show its age and it was time for him to put something out there to promote his new brand Deco. They have almost become like members of a former rock band trying to decide whether or not what they did in the past is worth reliving today. While a few seem to entertain the idea, others seem to be content with letting that ship sail in order to pursue current and future projects. Times

125

The Decline

Degroot and Freimuth produced Baco 10 without the input of both Rye and Hilson due to internal conflicts at the time. 10 was the only installment to make it to DVD. Degroot was excited about the video, but disappointed at the sales. Degroot and Freimuth were left with a thousand extra copies each, making the video one of the most gifted videos ever. If you entered a Baco contest or went to an event that Degroot and Freimuth were sponsoring, chances are you walked away with two or three copies of Baco 10.

—

None of this seemed to deter the endless parade of riders that were now flocking to, of all places, Appleton, Wisconsin to live and ride with the crew. Kerry Gatt from New Zealand, Dylan Worsley from England, and Jim Rienstra from Minnesota, along with numerous other riders that stayed on the couch for a few nights or weeks. All came and stayed with the Baco guys at their house, and made their way into the videos. Some like Jim Rienstra showed up not knowing what to expect, all his friends back in Minnesota told him all the Baco guys were gay – which is probably exactly what the Baco guys wanted them to think.

I can’t help but wonder what might have come of Baco had things gone differently? It’s a topic Chad and I discussed. Why didn’t Baco turn into the next UGP or Little Devil? It was not for a lack of trying. Chad spoke candidly about trying to get things rolling. “When I was doing Mesh Skatepark I would make Baco and shirts and Albe’s and Christoph Huber in Germany would buy so many of them that I actually incorporated the name and created the company. Dave and I had a cheque book, I started paying Mark Mulville to wear Baco clothing, I was so convinced it was going to take off and just being not very business savvy at the time and a lack of advertising caused it to dwindle away. I was really bummed at the time because it was a big step to take our own money and pay someone.”

The Rise & Fall of Baco

derneath these place mats on the kitchen table where Chad’s parents would be sure to see it. Weeks later they find it, causing Chad’s dad to lose weeks of sleep over the possibility of his son being gay. When Chad returned home he and his dad had a man-to-man talk about a letter Chad had no idea existed. It was after this that the joking around about being gay stopped.”

126 — The Rise & Fall of Baco

[n] Dave Osato, Chris Rye, Chad Degroot, Dave Freimuth and the ever present video camera, Florida.

are different now, three of the four members have families with kids, house payments, and some even have ‘real’ jobs outside of the BMX industry. Even the industry itself has changed; many of the riders today have sponsorship obligations for footage and coverage that would make inclusion in a new video difficult if not impossible. Will we ever see a Baco Blu-ray box set? Of the four, Degroot seemed the most interested in the possibility, although he questioned whether they missed that window of opportunity five years ago. Would there be enough interest in the final product to warrant the thousands of hours it would take to make it happen? Not to mention the time and distance factor between the four now. When the videos were originally made it was because they were a crew living and riding together, a fact that just is not true any more. Legacy In the end these bikers, against common opinion, pioneered a do-it-yourself ethos that still survives today. They were at the genesis of the rider-owned company era and perhaps more importantly, they did everything the way they wanted it done. They embedded into their videos a sense of personality that has

become practically extinct in the current era of quick robotic web-edits. The personality that you got from the videos made me think I already knew them all well when I came to write this. Their wild antics predated the MTV Jackass phenomenon of doing crazy and questionable stunts on camera for the viewing audience and, more importantly, their own amusement. Aside from the antics it’s the riding in the videos that stands out even today. They were truly a product of the first wave of a video generation of BMX that still thrives to this day. I wonder if they ever thought way back in 1989 that these bikes would take them so far? One last story, lest you think the Baco guys have gone soft in their old age; Degroot recounted an incident that happened recently at a BMX event in Florida where a rider let Degroot brand his leg with the Deco logo in exchange for a frame and fork. Why Degroot had a Deco brander roughly the size of a brick, six inches by three inches, made and to hand is beyond me, but after politely having someone remove his kids from the scene so as not to mentally scar them for life, Degroot put red hot metal to skin, once again shocking and entertaining the surrounding riders, a skill he seems to have mastered and not lost from his BACO days.

Ollie Palmer, Secret Barn, Tiverton. 07.06.12

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