Fixed Mag promo vid

If you haven't read it yet, do so here!

"Grand Canyon Band - Don Stone" music video

Starring our very own and recently clean cut Sam Miller.

Cycling in Bangalore

There is something beautiful surrounding all the smog and pollution that Indian vehicles make. Most often they are packed to the brim with people or goods while emitting a thick disgusting black exhaust. When I left the airport it seemed as if my cab driver had absolutely no regard for neighboring vehicles and was haphazardly tooting his horn to some disjointed tune in his head, but I soon realized that there is a lot of order in what could be regarded as chaos.

The other evening, a coworker and myself went for a walk where I got a feel for the traffic and pedestrian patterns. I only learned one thing: speed bumps are the only obstacles that remotely resemble traffic signals. Vehicles will be going at a good clip and very abruptly slow down to traverse the speed bump. These speed bumps aren’t the type you can fly over by any means. There are no lanes to guide mopeds, motorcycles, bicycles, taxis, flat bed trucks, buses, rickshaws, pedestrians, feral animals, cows and scooters. There are no traffic lights to navigate the intersections of roads; it is every man for them self.

When I first got on the road I felt as though I was in the final level of Frogger’s evil bastard brother that is far too difficult for anyone to ever beat. Soon, however, I started to get into a rhythm. I was flowing with the traffic. I found out that the excessive beeping is very useful to know where the cars are. After a few km on the road, the erratic driving became what can loosely be described as graceful. The intersections are really interesting. I think that the only analogy I can draw to these intersections was when I worked a checkpoint for the Toys for Tots race on the weekend before Christmas in front of the FAO Schwartz and Apple Store near Central Park. They are just jam packed with a bunch of indecisive people looking around.

I am slowly inching my way closer and closer to the main city. The area that I am staying in is touted as the Silicon Valley of India. Needless to say when you call Dell to get your computer fixed you are calling a few km from my hotel. It is difficult to navigate the streets here because there are no real road signs except for some sparse highway numbers, so in order to get around you need to find landmarks. But when you are new to an area, mostly everything looks the same.

That is all for now. Once I get more comfortable with riding I will post pictures/video. I feel really uncomfortable taking pictures at the moment because I stick out like a sore thumb.

----------------------

I am riding my Surly with rear brakes because I didn't have time to find a way to have the BMW forks accommodate a front brake. Tom lent me a set of bullhorns which are worth more than their weight in gold because it is really hilly out here.

Einstein couldn't trackstand

I'm currently reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein, and on the first page there is this photo of him riding a bike with the following quote...

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."



What a punk. He probably couldn't ride backwards either. I'm digging those riser bars though...

3BANCHO Website

3BANCHO has a new website up. If you were a follower of Kyoichi Ozaki's blog on afromania.org, this is where it has moved to. It has an online store, which does have an English translation, but currently it only has the Afromania threads in it. I'm assuming eventually they will put all of the 3BANCHO gear on there as well, hopefully including this "Banchognolo" tee which I hadn't seen before...

Lee Stoetzel - Natural Cycle

I arrived at Philadelphia International airport about 3 hours early. Check-in and security took all of a half an hour. I decided to wander around and hopefully avoid buying anything at the outlandish prices that they charge in the airport.

While I was walking around I ran into something that all of us fixed gear nerds had heard about several months ago. Philadelphia International had two of Lee Stoetzel's pieces on hand. The one that particularly caught my eye was the fixed gear bike. The size of the bike and how perfectly craft this piece of art is lost in pictures. With that said here are some pictures.

Milk Magazine

Brian Fu from hkfixed.com sent me a couple copies of the current issue of Milk Magazine which features a two page spread about Bootleg Sessions v.2. Thanks Brian!

Safe and sound

So I just arrived at my hotel. I'm so exhausted from the 26 hours of travelling. I can't make heads or tails of the time right now. This shit is going to be a fucking adventure. I'm really excited for what is to come.

I want to thank everyone who made me smile these past few weeks. You have no idea how much it means to me to know that you guys reassured me that I'll always have a home to go come what may.

Holy cow this is real.

Oh and check out the new Gaslight Anthem. It's fucking awesome.

The Perfect Spot

I don't need much room to do my thing, and last night I found the most unbelievably perfect spot for a nighttime session right down the street from where I live...



It's on the front of a Chase bank building, and I have no idea what purpose it serves. There is no window there, no door, no ATM, nothing. It's just a well lit covered patio with the most perfectly smooth and level concrete you've ever seen. If I had designed and built my ultimate trackstanding spot, it wouldn't have turned out nearly this well...

I'm outta

see ya'll in hell

bangalore bound

Circle A Cycles

I'm sure most of you have heard of Circle A Cycles. They have been putting out some beautiful frames for quite awhile now. In fact, the first "other" fixed gear bike I remember seeing in Indy several years ago was a gorgeous light blue Circle A that was owned by Scott Spitz, the man who put out the long since defunct Leapfrog 'zine.

Anyway, Circle A not only makes great fixed gear frames, they also make some absolutely killer flatland BMX frames, like this one...



Even if you couldn't care less about BMX bikes, you have to appreciate how this thing was built. Here is a photo series that takes you from start to finish.

And in case you haven't seen this in the past, there is also a photo series that shows how they built up a bike for Brian Fu from HKfixed.com...



Note that it is fully barspinnable...

Photos

I've been meaning to make posts about a lot of these photos, but I haven't got around to uploading them until now. Heres a slew of photos to look through. Some are from BMX road trips I've taken the past couple of weekends and some are from this past weekend in NYC. No fancy photography just friends and good times.

The New Whats Next

So I guess this what happens when you put some of the sickest riders, a professional artist, and some awesome camera equipment.

Chris Habib (http://www.visitordesign.com/) put together an amazing video in under 24 hours of Tom Lamarche, Ed Wonka (who's on the come up), John Prolly, and Wilis Johnson.



My boys are killin it! Consistency is the new hot trick.

I can't wait to see where everyone is when I get back in a few months.

This is why I love my Profile hubs

I'm going to be living in York, Maine for the entire month of July, so I decided to ship one of my beater bikes out there so I could just leave it there to ride whenever I hit the east coast (I work two months of the year in Boston/Maine).

Anyway, I was messing around on the beater today before boxing it up in order to dial in the setup a bit. Recently I've been doing this new thing where I jump completely over the top tube to switch my feet on the pedals, which I'm sure is pretty intense on the drive train. I've been doing it on my Milwaukee with the Profile hubs for about a month with no problem, so I wasn't really thinking about what might happen when I tried it on the beater which has some POS Formula hubs or something.

Well, on my very first attempt, I land on the pedals and BAM! The hub strips instantly...



As you may have guessed, I went down HARD. Not fun. So kids, remember... if you're doing anything other than straight up pedaling forward and using brakes to stop, then don't mess around with cheap hubs. Get the real deal.

Noon Tricks

I saw these on Kyoichi's blog, and I really enjoyed them, so I had to repost them. Not sure who these guys are (maybe Kyoichi can fill us in), but the kids in Japan are smoothing things out big time and coming up with a lot of sick stuff. Great to see this shit going down all over the world...!

New Reload Bag

So this summer I am going to be working at General Motors in Bangalore, India trying to finish up my Ph.D. degree. Its scary and exciting all at once.

Unfortunately, I will be heading out there during monsoon season. I only have a messenger bag that is water proof and I find them terribly uncomfortable especially when I am walking (which I will be doing a lot of). I decided to splurge and get a Reload Midpack Backpack. Besides the fact that the bag is waterproof, the dimensions of the bag are exactly the maximum size allowed for carry on luggage. This is one of the first production with the new revamped design.

So far the bag is incredibly comfortable. The shoulder straps and waist are soft and stiff. The new adjustment mechanisms are so freaking convenient. There are 2 D loops that allow for easy tightening and loosening of the straps. The position of the sternum strap offers a lot of room for adjustment to accommodate different sized loads and body types. Also, there are several straps on the body of the bag cinch down different loads making sure things don't shift while the bag is being used. This will be ideal for some of the hikes that I plan on doing while I am out in India. With all the adjustments on that bag it is hard to fathom the bag not fitting anyones frame.

I decided to go with the colors from the 80s Philadelphia Phillies uniform. It came out great.

Big ups to Roland at Reload for getting this bag done in time for me to leave. Thanks a lot!

Mishka Summer Line

Mishka NYC just released their summer line, and it has a lot of killer stuff in it. I'm much more into the subtler stuff, and they have a great selection for my personal taste right now. Here are some favs...

Fixed Magazine pages peek

Saw this pic at the Fixed Magazine blog...



Looks sick. I'm really impressed that the Fixed Gear London guys were able to put this together. Doing a DVD project is a pretty serious amount of work, but doing a magazine has got to be a tremendous pain in the ass. Can't wait to see it.

Cadence Lid

Got the new Cadence "Dugout" cap today. Hell yeah.

No Frills

All content.


Untitled from Bootleg Sessions on Vimeo.

One take.

See you in 3 months.

New Video

Don't know much about who did this video, but there is some ill shit in it.


Unfinished from Tony West on Vimeo.

The switching of the Fuji Track Pro and Brooklyn Machine Works parts really weirds me out though

We Are Villains

One of the things I love about the Bootleg Sessions Project is seeing all of the different places that we get orders from. Sometimes we'll get orders from interesting sounding web addresses, and I usually take the time to check them out to see what they're all about.

Last week we had an order from Jay at wearevillains.com, which sounded pretty killer, so I checked it out and discovered that it's an independent clothing company in Toronto that is putting out some really nice stuff. I saw this shirt with the old school razor in the shape of a "V"...



...and really dug it, so I contacted Jay and we worked out a trade. He also sent me an image of a piece that is coming out in July...



Wicked. May have to pick one of those up as well. They only make 25 of each style though, so I guess I'd better not sleep on it...

Spike Jonze

Me and Spike Jonze go way back. He is now best known for directing movies like "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation", and perhaps for inspiring Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (the prick photographer who ignored his young wife in Tokyo was based on him, I don't care what Sofia says). He is also known by many as the director of some of the most killer skateboard vids to ever hit shelves, including "Video Days" and "Yeah Right!"

But for me, Spike Jonze will always be one of the triumvirate of young kids who put together Freestylin' magazine in the '80s. Loved that shit back in the day. That's why it's cool to see this video...

Saturday with Spike

He still gets out and does his thing. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Crushes

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/mis/720230834.html

go get em tiger!

Prolly chillin'...

Here's a vid
That Prolly did.
This vid he did
Without one skid.

When you have a little kid, everything becomes a Dr. Suess rhyme. Yes, the middle section is running backwards, so it looks like Prolly is going forwards when he's actually not. Tricky. Smooth stuff. If you're going to mess around on a track bike, you might as well make it look like you're not even trying.

Enough with the hardcore though homeys, it just doesn't fit! Come on now, am I wrong? You gotta groove it when you're riding fixed, it's all about the rhythm!


Slow and Backwards Saturday from John Prolly on Vimeo.

Portable Launch Ramp

Matsuyama, Hiro, and Myctc show off this awesome design for a portable launch ramp. This is a great idea.

Cadence Collection Summer 08

More here!