Ride Editor, Keith Mulligan’s custom-made sticker board.
If you haven’t been over to ridebmx.com - aka bmxonline.com - aka bmx.transworld.net, get over there and check out their new site, which launched a couple weeks ago. Much more user-friendly, with content from the magazine and new blogs from their editors, the new site has a ton of reasons to visit and hang around for a bit. Personally, I’m just happy to see the funky photo gallery navigation/pop-up thing go away.
Keith Mulligan, Ride’s editor, wrote a “favorite things” post about a week ago, and most of them are of the vintage variety. From his first BMX racing trophy in ‘81 to the plexiglass board his dad made, covered in hella-cool stickers of various eras, it is definitely worth a read. BTW, what BMX rider hasn’t had a certain place to stick, or horde the many stickers collected over the years? I know I do.
Check it here: Mulligan’s Favorite Things
Phil at Super Rat is doing a cool contest of sorts to get people excited about what he’s got going on in the shop and reward them for participation - wisecracks, sarcasm and innuendo are all welcome.
Basically, he’s got a small inventory of BMX parts and Super Rat schwag to give away for free. All you have to do is post an answer (in the comments of the site) to the question he posts on a Friday, and by the next Friday, he will pick his favorite. The winner gets the weekly freebie sent to them. Easy, eh?
This week’s giveaway is a Super Rat 7075 t-6 bottle opener, simply for posting your best hangover cure, and Phil says he’s got sprockets, stems and other parts to pass along in the upcoming weeks.
Check it out here: http://www.superratmachine.com/category/freebies/
Nike Lab Interview - Olympic BMX Uniforms
My friend, Andy, (thanks, man) sent me a great link to the Nike Lab, a series of interviews with their designers, and there are a couple with John Martin, who led the Nike/Freestylin’ collaboration and is leading up their Olympic BMX effort. As most of you know, the 2008 Olympics in China will feature BMX (in the form of racing) for the first time in the Olympic games.
Hit these links to check out the uniforms and the shoes they’ve designed for the riders. Interesting to see the inspiration from the early Haro Designs uniforms and hear about their design process.
I just found out about a skatepark jam/contest coming up this Saturday, July 12 in Topeka, KS. Teams of riders from different cities will compete against each other in a sort of advanced game of B.I.K.E. This is all going down starting at 10AM, at the Rip-On public skatepark.
From MySpace user TY! (sorry, I don’t have his real name - will update when I do), who is organizing City Battle 2:
“The first city battle was a game of bike. We had 6 cities/teams and about 23 riders…City Battle 2 will be more riding and less sitting around, more of a jam style. Lets say I turndown the 8′, Team Topeka gets 1 point but if Trent from Manhattan pulls one on the same obstacle the point is taken away. So basically its going to come down to which team has the biggest range of tricks and creativity.”
The Rip-On Skatepark is located at 23rd and Washburn in Topeka, near the Washburn University campus, by the soccer fields. Get a hold of TY! via his MySpace page for more info. Definitely check it out if you’re near the area.
I’ve known about the Internet Archive for a long time, and have used it for work and personal research for years. Between the Wayback Machine (a website archive - here, check out RideBMX’s site from Sunday, June 18, 2000), and the Live Music Archive, you can literally spend hours finding hidden gems of all sorts.
The sweet spot, to me, however is the Moving Images archive. Especially the vintage films found in the Prelinger Collection. You say you want a Chevrolet World’s Fair movie? Check. How about some AFL-CIO union worker training films? Sure, no problem.
Well, this being a bicycle/bmx-focused site, and all, you know where I’m going with this. So, I wanted to post something a bit more light-hearted today, so here’s some TRUE vintage for ya.
There is some great bicycle safety film footage from the 50s-60s that is too good. And in the case of “One Got Fat“, the gem above, it features a bunch of kids riding with creepy-as-hell monkey masks and running into steamrollers and other obstacles in suburbia. Seriously, the masks are waaay creepier than anything from Planet of the Apes.
Here are some others to check out. The first one reminds you that you should never be a “showoff”:
You and Your Bicycle
Drive Your Bicycle
Bicycle Safety - shot in Lawrence, KS
Great discussion over on SPRFLS today, regarding limited edition parts/colors/etc. Something that’s been on my mind as of late, and Russ fired off a new post that got some discussion going. The second day in a row that the comments have really been flowing over there.
Check it out and participate in his comments section…
Here’s an excerpt of one of the responses:
Wasn’t it a similar mentality that lead bike shops to having massive amounts of inventory during the late 80s, that now lead to guys with major “scores” of NOS (new old stock) bright green Skyway pegs, dug out of these shops … how many sets of DiaCompe Nippon calipers did a dealer have to carry when they were manufacturing SO many colors?
Doesn’t get much more American than the USA-made blue, white and red Standard Bykes S250 that I just built. Yeah, I know, the majority of the parts are imported, but this one was built on the cheap, and American-made components are getting harder and harder to find.
Check the specs over at the BMXMuseum.
Oh, and don’t forget about the red, white and blue Skyway T/A wallpaper I posted last week.
Posts
