last post ever?

"hip hop went from selling crack to smoking it."

right now im covered in bug spray. i have two different sets of trails' clay and bug's bites on me and my clothes, 4 minute mile is playing from the beginning, and im getting up in 9 hours to go ride a few berms in and get a full set of trails running via-one roller and a clayed landing. after writing that paragraph, it's become quite clear to me that i should probably get hired by fatty patty and write for fuckbmx but live bmx i love trails and i hate trails and contradiction is the new sprocket chunk or whatever he's doing these days.

yeah, i still hate you you fucking loser. write a post about it.

after a nearly 40 minute phone conversation with a distant yet dear friend and very innovative bmx rider, which followed a most likely full blown falling out with a close friend of mine that ive been riding with since we all started doing this shit to ourselves, a way more decent than normal hole in the wall with jerk chicken and some dirt weed, i've come to the conclusion that this industry is fucked. FUCKED. i recall being younger and riding down the road somewhere, seeing a kid with a dope bike and being like "that kid must ride." now i go outside at work for a cigarette break and joe, jim, chuck, and charlie all have 1400 dollar bikes and are trying to tailwhip off of curbs but can't manual the length of the shopping center i work at. people are saying a whole lot but not doing a whole lot. big business is infiltrating something that was previously so small and so dear to people that had integrity that you can get sushi in the same factory that your fucking bike came from, bike parts are becoming like apple computers where theyre designed to break now because people figured out that theres more money in shit that has to be replaced, theres fucking tubes missing on street frames, trail frames have roadbike dropouts and might as well have a tree with hairy balls engraved in the damn headtube, people are praying in the woods, fucking people over and ruining lifelong friendships over sets of doubles and piles of unshaped clay and debris, ive had it. street moves revolve around tailwhips, i heard a kid today say that a tailwhip is a "street move." ive fucking HAD IT.

actual bmx riding was supposed to be fun. the skills used to consist of creativity and all out badass lack of regard for well being, or at least an attempt; now people say "oh, to make a video, you NEED the new sony hd blowjob maker so i better get one to film this curb bump chunk walk" or "oh, that kid has seat guts, thats so weird, that 20 foot high tabe he just did was gross" or "yo like my parents bought me a lexus but im going to like, be shitty bro, its all about being shitty, im gonna rip my pants before i do this tuck no hander so i look ratty, yeah, ratty" or my favorite "fuck that guy and all the work that he did, im going to nightjob my own trails and wear other peoples shoes so they dont know."

this used to be about fun. not about pretending to have fun to be cool, or pretending to hate it to be cool, or forming a click within an alleged brotherhood of people just to be that elite group thats better than everyone else. this website was originally about fun but it became a fucking wild rabid dog compared to the way it was meant. i just ended up burning myself out on anything public, jams, filming dudes that shred, and even including going riding at spots ive been riding for almost a decade now. it just became so fucking apparent that everyone was on some sponsor trip, and that was last year, now its just "yo its so gay to try and get sponsored im going to just have fun. its all about fun." sounds to me like they figured out they all couldn't pull kissing ass into sponsorships, and resort back to the "roots" of it all. grow up and really reconsider why that short, spraypainted, low, annoying to fix, half fucking structurally unsound pile of metal is the world to you, or why you spend half your paycheck keeping it running and the other half on food and gas and beer and your buddy forgot headphones for his ipod so you spooted him 5 bucks so he could have the focus to do that rail he talked about last night and then that fuckin whats his name, yeah fuck that kid but i love him, he forgot his wallet at the car so you bought him an arizona on the corner of some spot you just found by making a wrong turn in the city on the way to the train and then you finally get there, miss your train, and hit up uptown for a while to kill time, all repeating and changing and all for the best years of your life...only to end up older and wondering where it all went and what the hell is this thing called BMX now. it truly saddens me to the point that i dont know where to go with it all. i honestly tried to make something cool for my friends to enjoy, to motivate and to provide people that i knew with an outlet for opinions but it just caused so much shit. more shit than even i could complain about.

oh and a sidenote, for all you young ones out there who are maybe just getting into this riding thing, i only have one piece of advice for you. if your girlfriend ever gets pissed at you for wanting to ride your bike, for WHATEVER reason; its her period and she needs a tummy rub, she thinks youre cheating on her, she wants to go to the movies, even if she wants to fuck. whatever the case, tell her to fuck the FUCK OFF and just keep doing what you love. fuck that shit, "yo i quit, i love my girlfriend." i bet she loves a lot of dudes. besides, bmx is in your blood, at least in mine. corny, but fuck off. its why i haven't quit even at 26 and running, even within a career. but this thing, this greater picture of whatever the fuck is going on, the fuckbmx.com's, the trail god's and the condescending responses to "hello," the floating leaves in hi def and the quick buck companies making things from rusty scrap metal, the comeupbmx.coms, if thats even the url, fuck all of it. ALL OF IT. ive wanted to ride lately and its not my knees, or the bike setup im running, or even the lack of spots thats killing me, its all of you. and you know, i never realized how fucking pretentious it was to run one of these sites, like all of what goes on in my head on a nearly daily basis is THAT important that people actually want to fucking read it. holy shit. but theres just so fucking many of you out there that id be calling out people til 2am and id just get even more fucking bummed. if youre not pissed about things going to shit, you're not really paying any mind to it, you're just another sheep. and for the sake of the people that actually LOVE riding, live this shit, breathe it, stress out about no job because they cant fucking afford to fix their bike or get to the trails, do them all a favor and stop being "that dude," ride your fucking bike, have fun, and shut the hell up.

fuck, its what im gonna do. and shit man, if i suck at everything, how hard can it possibly be.

belmar story, part one

the scene by the lip during pro practice. photo: stick
i hate to recylce words, especially my own, but bmx is a funny thing.

there are reasons, extensive ones, why i support the companies i do with kind words and buying and running their parts; this weekend's belmar jam in binghamton is the epitome of why bmx exists, and why i outwardly and uncompromisingly support FBM and love bike riding and the community that exists in its orbit.

there were hundreds of people there, all for the same reasons, and likely there are hundreds of personal perspectives on the event. this is how it went down through my steps.

i have no idea what time i picked frank up. i had just about the worst week possible and was looking forward to getting loose and seeing some shit go down, so needless to say i picked frank up as soon as i could. he had just blown most of his paycheck on a high-end digital SLR that he charmed his way to getting for about 200 bucks less than the fellow wanted, so he was a little kid in a candy store, hard on and all. chuckie davis was grinning as always as they rolled up to his house. time was wasted til about 8 or so, and after getting frank a new memory card for the camera, selling some tires to get some extra money, and not really packing much at all, we three were on the way to get mario. kaz had work sifting out seaweed at the fish store til about 9; john lee was already sleeping, so it sounded, and obvious nick-not-driving delays ensued. the ride there was fuzzy, no coffee surprisingly, and taking way longer than i remember. we rolled up to binghamton at a whopping 230am, awoke john lee from dreamland and hit up the floor of his studio apartment. snoring, all of us forgetting pillows and blankets, most likely spooning goin on between frank and chuck, and corner cramping from my lanky ass finding the smallest space to crash in were all that embodied the 4 or 5 hours of sleep i got. john woke up to some ghostbusters-esque fire alarm clock thing and i was ready to go- crew got ready, i packed a 50 pound bag of tools and camera, psyched to ride some street, not really knowing what to expect out of the belmar. breakfast at a cracked out diner that apparently has been having its grand opening for the better part of a year, black and tan with eggs and we were off.

the belmar resembles that house we all know; for sale for 10 years, never occupied, run down and creepy, the one that you think is haunted and/or a squatter pad. this time, it was renovated into a bar, and dave king could be found in the back yard doing donuts in a bobcat getting the mud out of the way for spectators. at the end of the yard-turned-runway via clay and quickcrete, a 24 foot jump by-stockade high lip and a monster vert-dirt creation with coping at the top of it and "ride-n-dirty" spraypainted switch handed and half cocked. the bar opened at 10am and thats when it got really hazy. all i know is by the time it was set to start, storms were on the forecast and the first dozen and a half runs were full speed and bailing, sometimes casing and awful "was that a rock or a crack" sounds eminating and bouncing off the ratty fences, littered with banners from red bull and company sponsors, crandall nonchalantly commenting with a random obscenity, and everyone i went with basically looking like their dreams had just fallen apart. i didn't even think the jump could work, nutter and dave king kept dialing in the lip after a few runs and noon comes and the party starts. people start rolling up in packs, sometimes resembling the pages of a bmx magazine, other times looking like a homely pack of hunters and gatherers, all with bikes. it was a catastrophe that i wouldn't trade for the world, drinking dollar 50 PBR's and taking it all in as people were hucking themselves over the jump and dying. crandall called the AM practice to start, and mario somehow got hyped up enough to not even look at the lip, just crank full speed and overclear first run. i couldn't believe it. frank followed with a nice moto-whip first run, chuckie not too far behind.

the contest started, best of 4 runs, footage to come. the ameteur contest was so nuts that as it worked out if you cleared it every run you placed top 15 out of a good 35 kids. if you tried a trick you placed top 10. darryl nau is possibly the craziest motherfucker to ever announce a conest..."up next is everyone's favorite burn out mario mirabella, mario hails from long island and will most likely be burning some bowls behind the porter john after this run, so if you're down to party meet mario by the shitter..." frank cleared every run, chuckie bailed i think every run, mario couldn't figure out the ever-changing lip after 5 runs in all to crank a turndown. frank actually pulled a fakie 360 on the vert wall and didn't place higher than mario. money dwindling from cheap beer on ice as souva didn't take a feeler run to be predecessor to his downside whip attempts, somehow getting the fuck its with the downsides and trying to 180 the monster. souva fucking rules, might have taken offense to me offering him a beer being straight edge and all, but time heals all wounds. some dude won, frank chuck and mario all got garbage bags full of prizes, and here come the pros.

by now i dont know what the fuck was going on, all i know is dan p'simer and clint reynolds have the "style cat of the year" awards and beat out bmx legends by blasting out weird enough trail variations that A: i didn't think were humanly possible and B: i couldn't remember because of afformentioned beer prices. you know what, just understand that doyle can do whatever he wants, the place was swarming with balls out riding as soon as they put the plywood on the lip, and some seriously insane shit went down that pictures, words, or video footage couldn't possibly do justice to. the thick feeling of comradery in the air and the tops of peoples lungs being put to the test after every run says it all.

long live bmx, and long live the belmar.

part deux to come, a shitload of pictures and more words.

-nick