Bizhouse Grip Rings

Got a set of Bizhouse grip rings for my beater build. I used to not like these too much because I thought they were too hard, but I guess they've started using a softer compound recently, so I'm going to give them another shot...

Halloween is coming

Got the kid some new scoots as well...

Saw this interview today...

...with Jonathan Burkett from MASH:


The quote in bold reminded me of a line near the end of a song by Ice Cube called "Steady Mobbin'"...

The hoe said, "Pappy could you slap me
On the ass, hard and fast,
And could you please try not to leave a gash?"
I said, "Yeah, but I don't play sex
Without puttin' on the latex."

Ice Cube killed it back in the day. Steady Mobbin'...



...and here's my all time favorite Ice Cube song, Jackin' for Beats. Gotta love how he's wearing a shirt with his own mug on it...



Wait, what was the point I was going to make when I started this post? Eh, I forget. Oh well... one last classic Cube song for you...

Skate or Die

Before there was EA's "Skate," there was Konami's "Skate or Die." And I'm talking WAY before, like about 20 years or so. I found a Java version of Skate or Die that you can play online, so that's pretty much what I've been doing today. The only part of the game that is even remotely entertaining is the freestyle ramp section, everything else pretty much sucks. Keep in mind that this game came out before street skating was even a twinkle in anyone's eye.

Here you can see me stretching a nice invert...



...and here I am blasting a huge ollie air 540...

Club Homeboy

I was cleaning out my office yesterday when I found this...



Most of you won't have any idea what this is, but the few of you who do understand how completely hardcore it is. Member #7323, dated 06/1989. If you were a member, you'd better represent!

The most important part of a new build is...

...the bar ends. What, you thought it was the frame or the wheels or something? Hell no. Got a new set of Dog Collars from Profile (thanks Christian!) for the beater I'm building up...



Love those things. I also got a tube cutter so I don't have to hacksaw my bars down to size anymore...



I haven't tried it out yet (obviously, since it's still in the package). Hopefully it works, the hacksaw thing kills my shoulder after awhile.

Sproket Grind @ Brooklyn Banks

Let's see you top that shit, LaMarche!

Chi-town

The wife and I went to Chicago this weekend to visit some friends. Beautiful city when the weather is decent. We stopped by the Adidas store while we were there...



...and of course I got a new set...



We also happened to witness the "Tour of Oakbrook" which was randomly taking place right outside the hotel where we were staying...



Sorry to say, this lame photo is about as exciting as the "tour" got. The rest of the trip was great, however. Chicago is only 3 hours away, I need to get up there more often.

New tires

Got a new set of Vittoria XN Pros this week. My current set is completely worn down after about 4 months... not too long considering how expensive these things are. I had heard they were changing the way they made them, note how the new pair has small knobs along the edges, and I was pretty worried about that. But, I think these might actually work better for me as they'll give me a better way to catch the rollback, and hopefully they won't wear out as quickly.

The new style...


The old style...

3BANCHO and JAN are blowing up again

Lots of stuff going on with our friends at 3BANCHO and JAN Market! JAN has their new frame out (details)...



And I'm dying to know what this is all about, a collab between Nike and 3BANCHO? Kyoichi, we need more info, and if they make a size 14 or 15, I got dibs! No chance of that though I'm guessing. Still though, that's effing sick!

Trackstar NYC + Vapors Magazine

Vapors Magazine has a little blurb posted on their website about Trackstar NYC. Definitely one of the coolest bike shops I've been in. If you're ever in NYC, make sure you stop by there...



Hit up King Kog in Brooklyn as well. Both shops support the shit out of a lot of different bike events and therefore deserve some serious love.

Also, the new Vapors Magazine has been posted on their website. It's the annual sneaker issue. Looks like I'm not getting much work done this morning...

Vision Street Wear suede high tops

Vision Street Wear, or rather the lame-ass corporate conglomerate that purchased the rights to the name "Vision Street Wear" after the real company went kaput, have brought back the old suede high tops...



I loved these shoes as a kid. I still love the style in fact, the classic logo in white on the heel of the all black shoe just looks so damn good. If they made these in a size 14 (they don't), I might grab a pair just for old time's sake. The originals could take some serious abuse...

Fronts

Drew is a cat who works for Ben's Cycle, the shop behind the Milwaukee Bikes line, and he's my kind of guy because he's always messing around with different ideas and putting stuff together. He gets an idea, and pretty much whatever it is, he tries it out, which is the way I am as well. He sent me a pic today of some wheels that he built up around BMX front hubs...





Clean. I'm super excited about another one of Drew's ideas that he's working on, but I can't talk about that, so I won't. But I want to, dammit! So much going on right now...

Balance Bike

Gave my kid one of those crankless balance bikes for his 4th birthday a few days ago. About 5 minutes after he got it he was already coasting around the block like he was born on the thing. I'm pretty sure he's going to be a bikehead just like his old man...



It looks a lot like some of the weird new flatland BMX frames that are coming out these days...



...except I think my kid's balance bike may actually be a bit bigger than this thing.

Wellgo x Powerstrap!

I personally love Wellgo platform pedals, you can get 'em cheap and they're like landing pads for my size 14 feet. Drew from Milwaukee Bikes wrote me today letting me know that he has been messing around with attaching Powerstraps on a set of Wellgos, and the end result looks killer. Check it out...



Here is Drew's description...

"I've been experimenting with BMX pedals and toe straps. Stock BMX pedals have reflector holes in them and work damn near perfect for power grips. I used all the stock hardware; I just had to bend/rebend the stainless bracket a bit in order to clear a part of the pedal. These are the standard length; I would recommend the X-longs. Stock pedal / stock strap with a little bendy-bendy and you have an off the shelf system."

Profile Racing news

In case you didn't see it on ProfileFixed.com, the guys at Profile are coming out with two killer new products in the near future... a fixed/fixed Profile hub, and a spline drive system that will allow you to legitimately run Profile cranks on your FG. I can't tell you how excited I am about the spline drive system... if you've ever had a BMX bike, you probably know how legendary Profile's BMX cranks are...



No word yet on when these will be ready, but I'll definitely keep you posted!

Don't want it THAT much...

Awhile ago I mentioned my desire to somehow get my hands on a copy of the extremely limited edition Freestylin' Retrospective book. Well, one popped up on eBay last week, without the box or any of the other items that came with the original release, and ended up selling for a whopping $710 bucks. That's a lot of bread for a book about bikes. I have a feeling that eventually they're going to do a wider release of this thing, and that guy who just dropped 7 Bens is gonna be kicking himself. At least I hope that's the case...

All that training on the local pedestrian trail finally pays off

They held an amateur crit around in downtown Indy this morning, so I went down to hang out and see what was going on. The guys in the final race were hauling ass, no joke. Still though, the most entertaining thing was watching people who seemed to have no clue that something was going on (all of the streets were blocked with barricades and cop cars) somehow find their way into the middle of the circuit and get screamed at by all of the spectators to get the hell out of the way...

Comptowns

Moxy

Got my unborn daughter her first toy today...

Red Bull Attacks!

Had a 3 hour session with pro flatlanders Andy Cooper and Bill Nitschke this afternoon. About halfway through, one of those Red Bull Mini Coopers with the giant can on the top pulled into the parking lot. Two attractive girls popped out and started chatting us up. One of them said, "This is just like the movie Rad!" which kind of blew us away since it probably came out before she was even born.

They watched us for awhile, gave us several cans of Red Bull (I gave mine to a homeless guy who was hanging around), and took off. Kinda weird that they just drive around all night looking for people to ambush and give drinks to...



Bill, Andy, and me. Photo by Nolan Phillips, who turned 4 yesterday.

So much going on...

It seems like there is a ton of stuff that is happening right now, and I can't really talk about any of it yet. That's one big problem with becoming a habitual blogger, having to keep certain things under your hat for awhile becomes pretty difficult.

One thing I can talk about is the fact that I recently finished an interview with Colby and Colin from Macaframa which will be published in the next issue of Fixed Magazine. 100% psyched about that. They are a couple of really good doods, and it's great that they're finally getting close to getting the film finished. It's going to be debuted on Sept. 24th in Las Vegas, which is (not by coincidence of course) during Interbike... wish I could be there for that, should be a hell of a time.


Macaframa from MACAFRAMA on Vimeo.

Dunks Designer

I'm pretty much an Adidas guy and have been for years, mainly because they fit me better than anything else, but I definitely have respect for the way Nike does stuff. They have a Kicks Creator on their Dunks site now that has been chewing up quite a bit of my spare time at work for the past few days. You can basically design your own Nike Dunks down to some pretty minute details...



Fun stuff. And when you're done with your design, you can send it into battle against other designs that people have done, and they get voted on by others on the site. I have learned pretty quickly that I'm never going to be a shoe designer, ha ha...

Summer in the City...

Looks like the "girliecat" that went down in Seattle over the weekend was a rousing success...






For the record, I have absolutely no idea what's going on in that last photo. These are just the pics that Laila sent to me. I have to say, this is definitely one of the best things we've sponsored...!

More pics here, here, and here.

Sneek Peek

Looks like Archie's Grobags has something up there sleeve. Looking forward to trying these .

Beef

Why would I want to just tell the time when I can also tell the temperature and observe changes in air pressure?



It's amazing what people will just give away sometimes...

The OG Sneakers

They don't get much more OG than this... 1959 Chuck Taylor All-Stars, complete with the blue labels on the heel and the "Player's Name" print inside the tongue. My dad bought these when he was in high school, back when people actually wore them while playing basketball...

Future.Tense tonight!

The first edition of Future.Tense is going down tonight in Seattle. Note that pretty much all of the sponsors (Homework, 3BANCHO, JAN, Huge Blocks) are from Japan... looks like Justin made some solid connections during his trip, ha ha.

Brand Obama

I get it now... Obama is planning to wipe out the record debt created by the Bush administration simply by licensing his image to street wear brands! Pretty damn genius if you ask me...