In the past few years, events have been popping up where the main focus is doing tricks with some side events for going fast. On the west coast Dustin and Cadence were welling up interest in fixed gear freestyle running the Fast Friday while blogger extraordinaire John Prolly was getting the ball rolling on the east coast with Peel Sessions.
The Mash trick jam was preceded by an alleycat, but Peel Sessions was specifically meant to showcase fixed gear tricks along with some trackstands, footdown, skids, and sprints. Prolly picked the coldest, windiest day for a bunch of bike dorks to sit under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and compete for a whole ton of schwag.
John had let us know about this event about a week in advance. Tom and I had been deliberating about taking the ride up to NYC with hopes of getting back to Philly in time for me to get to work and Tom to get to high school. At the 25th hour, Tom called me and said his friend Cahill was going to drive up. They picked me up at Drexel and we cinched the bikes to the trunk with an army of tubes stacked onto the trunk of a ragged old saturn that made noises that woke the dead above 3000 rpm. We forged through Philadelphia and Central Jersey traffic, stopped to grab some pizza around New Brunswick, and on the last leg of the trip sat in the worst fucking traffic ever in Staten Island.
We made it to Peel Sessions with some time to spare, Prolly was setting up to take control and we went and dicked around at Brooklyn Machine Works. After about an hour we headed under the BQE where hoards of people were starting to congregate. The most amazing thing about this event was, IT STARTED ON TIME. How often can you say that happened?
The event went off with out a hitch. Everyone had a great time and everyone left with something thanks to the generous sponsors. A full recap can be found at John's now defunct blogspot url. There are ton of pictures from Jose once again. In fact as we were packing up for the ride home, now with Wilis aboard, Jose snapped a pick of the bike rack and it went on the be the Bootleg Sessions v1 cover. We all thought that the janky set up captured exactly how we pictured the Bootleg Sessions even to this day. On top the pictures, there is a video of Wilis's flawless winning flatland run from the one and only Jonnystiles.
We wound up getting home around 4am and some how making it to our respective jobs the following day. It is safe to say that stopping for Fat Sandwiches at Rutgers gave us the fortitude to make it on with our normal lives.
It's great to see that a number of Peel Sessions have happened since. This is event is certainly a great model for future events. However, it is getting to the point where tricks are leaving the ground and events are going to have to expand onto other terrain.
2 comments:
Tony, these posts are so sick. Its funny to think that, when i first began riding i looked up to all of you guys and wished that i had a scene like this where i lived, in GA. Now i ride with all of you, and i feel like now I'm a small part of what is truly a family. When i came out to Peel Sessions the Thursday before the previous (most recent, #10) Monster Track event, there were so many people there, people that i had never seen before. The session that night was ridiculous, and I was smiling the whole time while riding. Similar events followed that Sunday when you and Tom came up. It was really some of the best times that i have had in a while. Its so great to experiences things like this, and to think that its all so new still, in a sense.
That video of Wilis is still insane, and so fluid.
Great post.
-hfwido
I still love that photo from J. Martinez that we used on the cover of v.1. That just says it all to me.
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