Prague.

Mexican John, subway booster.

I went to Prague in 2007 as one of the destinations of a 10 week BMX inter-rail adventure. I didn't really enjoy Prague for various reasons. I'm going back there next week to visit Cairnsy. Here's a piece I took from my travel journal and wrote up for Brainmind issue 3 about the Prague leg of that trip. When it was printed in Brainmind the text was tiny and it was full of mistakes making it quite hard to read so here it is in it's revised form. With the added bonus of blurred print photos from the trip.


Prague, what a hell hole. I'm so glad to be finally out of there. We just got on the train after one of the most stressful mornings of my life. An American Leslie Nielsen lookalike with a gold tooth and a fluorescent green jacket said 'Right on' to us for getting our bikes on the train unreserved. I wonder if he realises it was his fault the woman wouldn't let us reserve our bikes because he was a couple of spaces ahead of us in the reserve bikes line. Im sick of this reserve bikes bullshit. I met a German flatlander in the station, he looked nervous, worried even. He was as white as a sheet and he asked politely if it was alright to sit with us. I presume for safety. He had missed his lift in Dresden and had to rendezvous with him in Prague as he was on-route to the BMX Masters. I said 'no way, the Masters, me too”.

The German said 'I fucking hate this place.'

I shook my head and told him 'I couldn't agree more' with the whiff of piss in my nostrils.

I had just spent an hour with Joe tooling round grotty streets and filthy avenues looking in vein for a socket to strip down a bunch of stupid BMX bikes. Every shop employee we spoke to absolutely loathed the English and would refuse to help in anyway. For a while we went through some used car lots trying to buy a car for the equivalent of 150 euros. we were that desperate to escape Prague. Things were looking bad. We had already been told in absolute terms that we weren't getting on the first train that we had safely boarded. We were subsequently thrown off bikes and all by an angry fat inspector.

Czech yourself before you wreck yourself.

Lewis was then told that the compulsory reservations we had to make were not possible to be made by an angry booth bound rail employee. We can presume we were told to fuck off but can't be sure due to the language barrier. I knew I was leaving one way or another and began stripping my bike as did lewis which was easy due to the simplicity of no pegs. Lewis' stone age brain began to clunk and he had a revelation similar to the dawn of time the invention of the wheel or the first creation of fire with flint and tinder. 'We should wrap our bikes in sleeping bags.'

Brilliant. Lewis you're a genius, even a stopped clock has to tell the correct time twice a day. The others with pegs removed what they could and wrapped the obvious wheeled vehicles in tents, bivvie bags and other miscellaneous tarpaulin products.

Once out of the very centre of Prague early this morning there was no chance of any vegetarian food. I was starving cranky and felt like I had rapidly rising blood pressure. This was stress of the bleeding gums variety. The unbelievably crammed train pulled in and it was every man, woman, child and pigeon for itself on the rampaging and unruly platform. We all boarded the train at different points with our bikes in various levels of disguise and managed to reconvene somewhere near the bike carriage. Sweating and in a state of disbelief we were finally all rolling on our way back to Berlin where Joe and I had planned to continue on to Cologne and the BMX Masters. The others are going to Melt techno festival. I still have the ebb and flow of unvented anger and frustration in my chest and shoulders. For a while I wanted to kill now a serious maiming is all I want to deliver. On to Berlin with the hopes of catching a night train to Cologne or failing that, sleep in a park.

Joe, hip hop pose in a tree.

Prague was not easy on me. We didn't have much time to check the place out and ended up trying to do too much for fear of not doing anything. Upon arrival we got lost straight out of the station which incidentally I had to check wasn't Beirut by mistake. The word grim didn't even touch the battered and exposed wire reinforced concrete surroundings. The place reeked of human piss and was awash with bums drug addicts and lawless children. Top three worse train stations I have been to. Evidence of heroin injection, prostitutes pulling at knickers, cars burnt out, barbed wire on every fence and the only thing not boarded up was a McDonalds restaurant.

Setting off quickly we rode uphill for almost 10 miles in the wrong direction. I was initially Surprised that it wasn't raining but 2 minutes out of the station it started. Mexican John had been to Prague before so it was supposed to be easy. But a misaligned landmark and being on the wrong side of the river all meant we were up shit creak. We passed a bank that had a sign on the door no dogs no motor bike helmets no ice creams and no .357 magnums. Yeah lads if you could just check your firearms at the door this is a bank. The part of Prague we had ended up in was rough as it comes. We got directions to a tube station after giving up on the riding fun. On the way up to the station we saw a near fatal car accident. Everybody drives at one hundred miles an hour and is late on the brakes. Its hard to ride a bike here especially with no brakes in the wet. We had to jump the tube because we finally realised they don't use Euros here and we haven't any Koruna to pay for it. Apparently they march you to the cash machine at gun point and make you pay the fine here. The inspectors boarded the stop before the centre and began creeping down the carriage checking tickets. I turned my face the other way so as not to look suspicious. About 4 passengers from us the speccys caught someone else while they were processing him the train pulled up and we all bailed off at triple speed not easy carrying a 30 lb. hiking bag and a bmx.

It was fairly smooth, we found a cheap apartment, changed some money, locked the bikes and ate at a pizza place where we all ordered for two. I was starving no longer.

Prague is full of bums. The buildings look like there from the third world and the cars are either Lada or Skoda the likes of which I haven't seen since 80s England. There's barbed wire and gun outposts everywhere and every corner smells of human piss. Wild dogs roam the overcrowded and dangerous traffic streets. Many of the population appear miserable, hostile and dangerous. Outside of a few glitzy and swanky restaurants and a fancy church in the centre the city sucks.

Rad spot shame about the rain.

Day2 Praha. We go to the bank for yet more Imperial credits or whatever the currency is here, we then eat a huge quantity of scrambled egg in the apartment. We ride about after breakfast. We see a skatepark made of wood but it is still being constructed. No riding. We find some ledges. Wally guns a couple. he's successful on the first and not so on the second. A broken thumb possibly. I'm in a wingy mood and pretty tired so I ride around not as fast as everyone else. This probably pisses my friends off. I feel bad about this but I feel like shit with the onset of a bad head. A monument surrounded by marble banks is fun but a torrential downpour starts after five minutes. We hide under a huge and ancient willow tree. The rain causes giant spiders and beetles to fall of the leaves they attack and bite us. One bites my neck. I want to cry for my Mam but I must be a man. I decide to laugh as it usually lifts my spirits. Usually. Our bikes get locked to the bench under the tree and we make a run for the Egyptian steakhouse for beers. There's a little child running about the steakhouse doing a good job at pissing me off. Wally's thumb is massive and black. He puts ice on it and he remarks that the pressure is unreal. It does look like it could burst at any second. Wally is good at laughing through the pain. He's been injured a lot in his life time and his pain tolerance is high. Plus he's just generally tough and good spirited.

Wally oversized thumb under a tree in the rain. 

More beers and then its dry out. We ride too fast on cobbles constantly uphill through intense traffic and trams that try to kill you at every intersection. More bums. More dehydration. More barbed wire. In the centre of Prague there was a perfectly flat and slightly under cover spot. There was a guy dressed hip hop and doing some serious flatland moves. It always shocks me to see BMX-flatland because it virtually doesn't exist in Northern England. This dude threw down the moves but had bad English. I asked him about street spots but he could only recommend flat car parks. We rode with him for a little while and did grinds and mannys on the ledges around his spot.

A monument is good to ride and we find the Steven Hamilton spot with the fattest rail in the world. We can only ride the little trannys as there is a huge bulldog faced security guard at the front of the property. I'm starving and dehydrated again. We decide to go to Main train station and find out how to get the hell out of the czech republic. The area surrounding the train station is fortified with concrete road barriers stacked one on top of another forming 6 foot high concrete walls. These walls run down the middle of roads and across lawns. At the corner of every barrier wall there is a gun out post with many mean faced looking guards standing about looking bored and brandishing fully automatic weapons. Its hostile. Its post apocalyptic. This city has beautiful aspects but it has the cheapest and nastiest aspects also. somewhere in between good and evil in the city everything got pissed on and fell to pieces. The rag tag atomic survivors comprising its populace look angered and homicidal. The place reminded me of cheap science fiction with concrete set pieces and the ever familiar gun posts dotted amongst holed tarmac and security fencing. Many low budget and unoriginal set designers must holiday in Prague.

Wally, ledge grinder.

The train station is like a demilitarised zone. Although retaining some fascinating and original design the place has gone to ruin. It's like industrial 80s russia but with more barbed wire and less charm. It even lacks the colourful Communist murals. Bums of all ages sit around weeping and soiling themselves or burning backy with yellowed rag bound fingers or passing strange beers. Their lives look depressing and base level, they're just another part of the city no more important than the pigeons or the man hole covers. The bums are a feature of the street to be trodden on or avoided. Some bums bicker and squabble over alcohol others sit silently staring at the cracks in the pavement with piercing eyes and tatted beards. Some huddle together-women and children in grey coats with scabby lips. Some lie alone on the numerous benches. A few mooch back and forth looking for cigarette ends or spare change. Some hassle the tourists. We receive no hassle, I put this down to being with lewis who shares more than a few characteristics with the homeless. today he's wearing the Clinic T-shirt that he wore for a year straight when he lived on my couch in Heaton road. The T-shirt used to be black with a white print on the front. Its now grey with sun bleached brown shoulders and the print is indistinguishable. As many of Lewis T-shirts end up it has large gaping rips in the arm pits. Lewis is the only man I have ever seen that rips T-shirts in this way. This clinic shirt isn't a one off, virtually every piece of clothing he owns is ripped in this peculiar way. Today lewis is sweating profusely and has large clumps of wiry underarm hair on display from the custom T-shirt vents. His beard has long passed uber cool NME indie stubble. It has gone past dirty but cool skate beard. but it hasn't yet reached ZZ Top fully dedicated to the beard lifestyle length. Lewis beard is basically routed in the homeless and helpless street urchin gap.

After coming up short amongst barricaded and barbed wire entrances we finally found our way into the station. For an international station it was pretty small. There are mainly cattle trucks standing at the platform and very few people about. Down below in the catacombs of brown tile there is a ticket office. The staff are literally burning up in the non air-conditioned heat. We ask for routes and times to Berlin and it looks like we have to leave extra early for a direct route.

The looming grim and decomposing brickwork forces us back to the safety of our sixties wood panelled apartment. We drop our bikes off in the room under the strictest rules not to and head straight out into the safer tourist areas of the city to eat. Mexican john takes us to a Blues restaurant with Blue Note posters, Thelonius monk vibe and live music. This place is really good and super cheap. Whilst listening to acoustic cover songs we get some reasonable beers and tremendous vegetarian burritos. Its got to the stage of the trip where we have ridden so much that I've lost all my stored up energy and I've been getting hungry twice as fast. On the road I have learned just to eat whenever I can even if I'm not hungry because an hour later I will be hungry but then there will be no food. John got stuck to one of the chairs by his belt loop much to the amusement of two tourists sitting next to us.

That evening sleep has me instantly. I have a dream about Blob, he's out at a mastering place putting the final touches to NSF2 on Vinyl. The sleeve looks amazing jet black and then he has this huge stockpile of them in a truck. I pull one out and it really is a piece of work. It has that new vinyl smell, the static grips the paper of the in-sleeve which is full of movie stills form the feature and the quality is of the best reissue I have ever seen. I was left thinking it was a classic and it needed to be preserved as such and what a way to do it. Well done Blob. I awoke rain streaming down the windows seriously disturbed and uneasy, how the hell can this thing be viewed?

Cruisers.

Cruisers are the epitome of hipsterdom in certain areas, ridden by thousands of mustachioed fruitcakes in cool neighbourhoods across the western world. The stereotypical modern day cruiser rider will cycle lazily between coffee houses wearing a tweed jacket while smoking a pipe and dreaming of the glory days of Victorian England where workhouses, cloth caps and syphilis were abundant. Era escapists, curmudgeons and europhiles all flock to the cruiser, it's practical simplicity is in sync with the Utopian values of uber cool super cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Berlin.

Some hipsters have a lot more in common with steam punk-world of war craft types than they would believe. The line between the weekending steam punk in his dress down brass, brown leather and walnut time machine operating garb and hipster high fashion never becomes more blurred than when riding a cruiser. To the average onlooker the differences could be almost imperceptible. The only true difference is that the Hipster's mind would be filled with smug and snickering irony of the fabricated situation, whereas the steam punk's mind would be fully and sincerely lost in the imagined era he portrayed.

In Europe if you ride a cruiser it's a normal event, it's ingrained in the culture, it's as normal as wearing shoes or using the toilet or spitting green phlegm while smoking outside a pub. In England if you ride a cruiser it makes a statement of smug superiority or lost in time delusion.

Having said all that I think cruisers are rad bikes. It's a shame the bicycle wasn't embraced or held in high enough esteem in England for it to avoid the stigmatising it received when the motor car came along and stomped all over it culturally in the early 1900s. The macho ethos that cars went faster, were more expensive and made more noise so you must be either a sissy or pauper to ride a bike is a detestable one. A stone age low brow attitude held by the moronic masses who, having been brain washed by television and radio advertisement rejected the bicycle as a mere stepping stone on the journey of transportation which supposedly culminated in the mass production and affordability of the motor car. An attitude still held by 99% of taxi drivers to this day.

First up is Luke's True Amsterdam cruiser pictured above. This thing has a fully upright position, full steel guards and chainguard, singlespeed coaster brake hub, and massive leather saddle. This thing was acquired in Amsterdam by Luke. It has been involved in a serious road traffic accident and the fork legs/steerer tube are seriously bent and make the steering track to the left. You have to fight this thing every inch of the way when riding. About a year ago Chink was tooling through KFC car park with it and managed to bend the chainring somehow and it hasn't run since then. Luke brought it into the shop and when I had a look at it I found it had a bent chainring but also the hub cones were super loose and the chain was completely stretched. All these problems combined to the point where no matter how tight you kept the chain it fell off the moment you started pedalling. Once the hub was tightened and the chainring straightened and a new chain was fitted this thing went back to riding like a dream. Well if your dream is to ride in a never ending circle.

The above bicycle is a 1930s English touring bicycle converted by one of Nick's mates. The handle bars are homemade, the saddle and stem are second hand. There are no cables on this bike as it features the Sturmey Archer kick shift rear hub which is a 2 speed hub with built in coaster brake. To change gear you just have to lightly kick back with your legs and it shifts quite smoothly. Nick's mate was having trouble with spoke length and period correct ovalised steel rims so I ended up building the rear wheel for him but other than that he put the whole thing together himself, and I think he did an awesome job. Apparently the SA kick shift hub takes a bit of getting used to when pulling away from a standing start and expecting to be in the same gear you were in before you braked.

I had to put this one in for T2S and Billy Lad. I spotted this out on a promotion when the food festival was on last year in Newcastle. Everyone loves Irn Bru everyone should love cruisers, the perfect bike for the city, just don't try and pedal up Byker bank.

Chain Breaker.

I ordered a CT-4.2 Master Chain Tool from Park Tools earlier in the week. It arrived on Thursday and I got all giddy and acted like it was Christmas morning. The construction of this chain tool is super robust, the body is finely constructed using investment cast techniques and the replaceable pin system relies on an additional thread that is totally separate from the pin making it less likely to incur damage. The Pin is allowed to spin freely and the handles are extra beefy enabling added leverage to annihilate even the most stubbornest of chain rivets.

I've always been a massive fan of the CT-3, it's my personal chain tool and I've owned one for many years but it has its limitations. The CT-3 has extremely tight jaws and many modern BMX chains wont fit. If you have a half link chain you can forget about it. The CT-4.2 has an alternate system to the jaw system used by virtually every other chain tool on the market. When extracting a rivet with the CT-4.2 the chain sits in a machined cradle holding the plates in a much firmer way and resulting in a much more positive split. Park have machined a slot in the body of the CT-4.2 so you can easily view the protruding chain rivet when extracting it. Because both the plates are cradled there should be less chance of them becoming misaligned when you marry the chain back together. In the instructions Park inform you that the CT-4.2 will work on most 10 and 11 speed chains but not Whipperman, I don't think I've ever seen a Whipperman chain but I do know that Sean Burns used to ride for them.

It was typical pre-Bank Holiday hysteria at the shop on Thursday and inevitably I didn't get much time to mess with the CT-4.2. I split a couple of stock 8 speed KMC chains with it and it went through them like a frenzied Jedi through a platoon of battle droids. Looking at the cradle I'm not sure wether it's going to handle Shadow Conspiracy chains and the like but time will tell. 

Park make some awesome tools but they come at a price, this chain tool retails around the 60 quid mark and that's a little expensive for the open market. At the shop we destroy between 3 and 5 inexpensive chain tools a month so it'll be interesting to see how this one fares in our hectic workshop environment.

Mysteriously Park claim to have patented the colour 'blue' in a statement on the side of the CT-4.2's box, I found this to be a brave statement and it left me a little confused for the remainder of the day. Do park mean that they own that shade of blue or simply everything that is blue. It was getting a little foggy inside my head. The constant Bank holiday pandemonium continued all day but so long as ElBoosterino kept the black coffee flowing I knew I could power through.

The man,  Elboosterino who's other nicknames include, Alfred E Neuman, Tito Jackson and Lemon Squeezy. 

Rob (Da Albatros) Cairns.

I miss Rob Cairns. He's been in Leeds for what seems like forever and now he's in Prague. He's one of those dudes who really keeps the scene together. Through his kindness, generosity and relaxing attitude. Rob, with no conscious or concerted effort on his part helps all those around him to gel and feel wanted. His presence lifts spirits and his enthusiasm is infectious creating enthusiasm and energy in the session. Whether tooling across town on his fixie in his reckless and inherently dangerous style or hopping large on his BMX it's all smiles positivity and fun times. It feels like a lifetime ago since we bombed red traffic lights and I miss it. When riding in the city with Rob I feel like I'm struggling to keep up not due to fitness but due to Rob's throw caution to the wind style. Rob survives traffic situations on a bicycle not through skill or second guessing what's going to happen next but by sheer Karma. The gods are looking out for him. He's spent so much time with so many people bringing good vibes and positivity into their lives that his Karma bank is filled to capacity. He glides through seemingly deadly situations without a care in the world knowing this mystical force is protecting him. Average mortals would be crushed under a bus daily choosing to ride as Rob does, but not he, he has that Karma stored up and like a Buddhist superhero guided by Kamma Niyama he keeps on surviving in style.

BMX in Newcastle feels the loss of Cairnsy from the scene and longs for his return. The short discourse on the phone I had with him related that he was happy in Prague, he had found some good people (as he inevitably will in any situation), had found some good bars, had a nice apartment with a balcony and was at peace. Our phone conversation left me feeling increasingly down from his disappearance. A few days later and Mexican John and I had hatched a plan to go visit him. A couple of days ago we booked flights for the start of May from Jet2. I only mention the flight provider due to being, for want of a better term 'shafted' from Easy Jet in September. The crux of which meant that Easy Jet had left me stranded in Paris with no chance of returning home through them or any of their cohorts for another 10 days. After sleeping in an airport over night and spending a fortune on Euro rail tickets I made my own way home. Easy jet promised to recompense to the tune of 300 nicker of which I'm still to receive. Now I'm sure 300 quid is nothing to your average frequent flyer, but if like me you sometimes only make 400 quid a month then it's a pretty big blow to your finances. The only upshot to this whole Easy jet debacle was that it give Rob Cairns a chance to pull something off in true Rob fashion. Having Paid on to the Euro Star and passed through customs Rob text me concerning the logistics of how I was getting home. I relayed the details of our train times to him. With only half an hour remaining till we set off I imagined he'd jump on a later train. Not Rob, he booked the same train as us, threw his bike and belongings in a box and made a 20 metro stop dash across rush hour Paris. He fumbled through Euro Star security and ran up the platform as the Euro Star doors were closing just managing to leap on to the train. What a hero. Its these instances of rushed insanity and absolute chilled and relaxed level headedness that make Cairnsy so fascinating.

By his own admission, Cairnsy hasn't always been the uber chilled free spirit he is now. After his aggression filled early days playing ice hockey he went through a confused period of clubbing, fake tans, high fashion and debt riddled mistakes. But you learn by your mistakes, especially if that mistake is a DnG belt, a hot hatch and a pair of fake tits for a loved one who subsequently dumps you a few months later. Strength is only learned through failure. Cairnsy's strengths once guided our little scene and like glue held it all together, we need him back because things always feel on the verge of falling apart, we need him back because he relaxes me and stresses me in equal measure keeping my balance of life correct and we need him back because life just isn't the same without him.

I miss you brother, I can't wait to see you in Prague.

Bunny What?

Whaaaatttttttt?

I have to get some of this down my neck. I'm into Mordue in a big way, I love their ales, I drink them almost every time I'm at the pub. How on earth have they done a BMX specific beer and I haven't even tasted it yet. I want to order a load of bottles and cover my frame in the stickers. What? As if? I'm dumbfounded. Has anyone seen this beer on cask anywhere? According to this awesome beer blog, the dude only made 10 barrels of the stuff. This label would make the raddest headtube badge ever. I wish Mordue had put a BMX'er on the label behind the Millennium bridge. The bridge has got nothing to do with bunny hops. I guess you can do bunny hops on it but it's not much better than flat ground. If I had my way there would of been a picture of Newrick doing a wheel chair access launcher in silhouette as the picture. I need to find this and drink the barrel dry.

Scott's Raleighs.

Both chainstays snapped completely through.

Too many stair drops and bunny hops lead to the demise of Scott Taylor's beloved Raleigh fixie. A frame like this was never built with the abuse in mind that Scott dished out to it. On his daily commute Scott would regularly drop six stairs and ride down big sets. This abuse coupled with a complete mechanical neglect and the harsh northeast winter filling the tubes with snow and road salt finally finished this bicycle off for good. A sad day, a loss of a faithful friend, the end of the road.

The rear triangle of Scott's bike virtually fell off when I removed the rear wheel.

Scott bought a Raleigh Team Banana frame and fork from recyke-y-bike and we swapped all his parts over. The new build went together in ten minutes with no set backs CycleCentreCrew style. Fixies must be the easiest bikes to work on and customise, with the addition of an NSF sticker and some T2S throwups in permanent marker the Banana was ready to kill the streets.

Old Vs not so old.

From Team Banana to Team too street, Scott was elated to be back on a bike and exercising his spindly little pigeon leg. The rotted out carcass of Scott's old bicycle is destined for Robby Ford's scrap metal recycling program. We toasted the bicycle's memory at the Cumberland Arms and looked forward to more fun times aboard the Banana.

The Albion

I first saw Ride Magazine in 93 and continue to buy it to this day, before that I had only seen BMX in print via some 80's annuals with race photos and a single copy of BMX NOW from 92 (the one with Alex Leech on the front cover doing a vertical smith stall with crust punk haircut and S+M pad set). Being a young and impressionable teenager I poured over these early publications obsessively. I absorbed every advert and every photo and I reread every article over and over. There was no Internet, if you wanted to see BMX and didn't know anyone with a stash of old mags it was impossible. You couldn't go to a library and research BMX you would simply find nothing. It was the dark ages, BMX was still in its recession. In these core years you simply couldn't find out anything about BMX. I tried so hard to find BMX but there was simply no avenues to look down. BMX wasn't going to turn up on TV, I remember having a KHE flatland catalogue with 1 page and looking at it for hours.
Ride Mag was hard to find and it only came out once every two months, when I did find a copy my friends and I would study it religiously. I would read it to the point where it fell apart in my hands. It was so precious, it's difficulty to obtain raised it's esteem. It was my first glimpse into an alternative subculture which was exciting and edgy. The ramps were covered in graffiti, the streets were dirty and poorly lit, the stair drops looked super dangerous, many of the riders had crazy rope like hair (dreadlocks) and they wore outlandish fashions, listened to punk rock, had mean expressions and were generally bad ass. All the photography was either black and white or grainy as hell colour. What was this world I was looking into? I could barely believe BMX existed, I knew it was the thing I had been looking for my whole life and desperately wanted to be a part of it but I was also a little scared of it.
What grabbed me most about these early days BMX publications was the writing, the stories were intense and often tinged with morality, the politics were bordering on anarchistic, and the characters were so rich and diverse. Everything was driven by a punk DIY energy in those days which drew me in, BMX was for outsiders, drifters, losers, punk rock squatters, alternative lifestylers and dropouts. I loved to ride my bike more than anything in the world but it was the lifestyle of BMX that shaped me as a teenager and continues to live within me as a man in my 30s. A lifestyle which I feel the media no longer portrays.
The Albion is the first ray of hope for a return to those glory days. I enjoyed every word of it. It was full of the marijuana smoking, motorcycle riding, law breaking, death wish visionaries and shit talking renegades that got me hooked on BMX in the first place. No magazine has grabbed the essence of the lifestyle like this in the last 15 years. If you haven't seen The Albion yet, go out and grab one. Read it cover to cover and remind yourself how special it is and how lucky you are to belong to the world of BMX.

Fortini, grammatical mistakes, and myxomatosis scares.

Fortini quoted me on Shithawks. How embarrassing that he quoted from a grammatically poor piece of text.

In the above quote I missed an apostrophe from - it's, and the possessive apostrophe from - Auntie's. Expect more bad grammar, misused quotations, inappropriate metaphors and obviously made-up words coming at your ridiculous face via the medium of this blog for the foreseeable future. C4 also quoted the only line I have seriously considered removing due to the possibility of offending Ratty. I eventually thought-fuck it, Ratty calls me a goth plenty. Fortini has changed blog formats from Wordpress to Tumblr to shake things up a bit. I want to see more modded BMX shit, Fortini has nearly completed his welding qualification and he's been promising a fully functioning sidehack for too long now.

I was riding home around 12 o'clock on Monday in the dark after the Earth gig on my road bike. I had been drinking for a good few hours and had consumed around 7 pints of ale which is a lot for me. On the bicycle journey home I can remember weaving haphazardly up some of the roads, I can remember seeing 10 or so youths standing around a flaming mattress underneath the Metro bridge, I can also remember noticing a semi-crushed bunny rabbit a little too late on the dark roads next to Whickham Thorns. It was dark, I was drunk, I was moving quite quickly, I'm still certain that the rabbit was twitching when I rolled over it with both my wheels. Road wheels are thin compared to that of a cars and I felt them slice the rabbit's body quite deeply. The sensation transmitted through the wheels and frame of the bike, and also sonically, was fairly disgusting and of the most squelchy and lumpy kind. Not pleasant. I didn't have the stomach to turn around and finish the rabbit off with a rock, so the poor guy probably had quite a night before reaching his final demise.

In the light of day (Tuesday) I inspected my bike with a slight hangover only to find thick and dark red blood globules all over the chainstays. I nervously checked further discovering more huge globules of blood on the underside of the toptube. In this bigger globby patch of blood was lodged a thin bonelike stand with rancid brown sinew protruding from the end. I don't clean my bike very often but I instantly decided that I must in this case. I went to the kitchen looking for a damp cloth but got sidetracked making a cup of tea. I immediately forgot about the horror scene bicycle for the rest of the day. I ended up riding to work the following day (Wednesday) with the rabbit's entrails and bodily fluids still covering my newish blue paint job.

Black T-Shirt Of The Week. Week 1.

Burzum.

Burzum shirt front.

Burzum shirt rear.

Varg Vikernes from Burzum is a murderer. He killed fellow musician Euronymous, this alone is reason enough to not wear one of his T-shirts. Yet still I do. Morals have to be arrived at, millions of students/young people wear Che Guevara T-shirts without even a tinge of irony and he killed people. "Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savouring the acrid odour of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!" 
Che thought his agenda was absolutely correct and he was willing to do anything for his peoples, including murder and execution. 

Varg also had his reasons for murder, I don't necessarily agree with them but Varg believed that Euronymous was going to try to kill him, which is a scary threat to live under. Varg killed Euronymous before he had a chance to kill him, or that's how he saw it.

Varg was also responsible for numerous church burnings through the early 90s which brought the tiny Norwegian Black Metal scene to worldwide notoriety. Church burning is a touchy subject, it's likely to offend even the non-christians, Varg believed that christianity had destroyed his ancestry, that christians had burned away the Norse religion and the cult of Odin from Norway, they had even built christian churches right over the sacred grounds of Norse paganism. Now you have to put that into context, if a bunch of axe wielding lunatics landed in Jarrow burnt up all the churches and built pagan statues to honour the thunder god Thor, we would be pretty pissed about it. Hang on a minute, didn't that actually happen? Biscop's monastery in Jarrow was ransacked and burnt in AD 795 and again more successfully in AD 875. My point is, one religion simply replacing another by the medium of fire and murder tends to leave people at the least disenfranchised and usually on the verge of holy war. Now I'm an atheist so I find all this murder to be sickening and totally pointless but to deny it went on or turn a blind eye as Christians inevitably do is disrespecting the very ideals our ancestors died for. 

Varg like Che wholeheartedly believed in himself and his ideas, he was doing what he believed was correct. My thoughts are a little different concerning the matter, if Christians have made a mockery of the Norse Gods by burning the churches and leaving everybody slain or converted-I believe we should learn from this and not simply repeat their actions in a vengeful way a couple of hundred years later. 

Learning is better than repetition, education leads to enlightenment and progression in human thought. Nevertheless if I'm going to wear a T shirt glorifying a murderer I would prefer it to be of someone who's values I share a small common ground with and understand (conversely I don't believe the students wearing Che T shirts understand the murdering blood soaked past). No, I don't believe in many of Varg's views some of them are the worst racist trollop your'e ever likely to hear. Black metal's views are muddied and extreme, NSBM is obviously wrong, Satanism although I find funny I don't believe in. What's the point in replacing Christianity with another structured and unnaccepting religion? I find the Satanism in Black Metal to be a useful tool to upset those I disagree with, just as Sid Vicious wore a Nazi sign T shirt, he didn't believe in the values of the third reich he simply wanted to upset the stiffs (or he was just wearing what Malcolm McLaren had told him to wear).

So if wearing a Burzum T-shirt is bad because Varg killed one person, has some extreme views and burnt a couple of churches all in the name of what he believed in, wearing a Che Guevara T Shirt must be really bad because Che killed more people, had extreme views and no doubt burnt buildings of other organised institutions. On this lineage it must be really really bad to wear a What Would Jesus Do T shirt because he, although indirectly, has been responsible for the senseless murder of billions of people worldwide over a 2000 year period, has caused the burning of tens of thousands of other religious buildings and sacred grounds and has caused the mental enslavement of billions of people. That's a lot of trouble caused from a misunderstood book written about a fictional character in sandals with a beard. Varg's crimes seem to pale into insignificance after hearing of the atrocities people have committed while using baby Jesus as an excuse.    

O'Death

I went to see O'Death at End Bar a couple of years ago wearing this Burzum T-shirt. I don't do my research on bands, very often I wont even look at a myspace page. O'Death I thought, they sound sick, they're a fast punk country band with bluegrass elements I was told, should be good. I never twigged for what I was in for. I don't know if O'Death's name stems from Hosea 13.14 "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction? "I will have no compassion". Or wether their name comes from Corinthians 15.55-56-57 ""Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ". Alarm bells didn't go off in my head, but why should they? I'm an enlightened and excepting 21st century guy who enjoys many christian themed bands.

I first got to the gig with girl-X we sat down and got a drink in. Richard Dawson was the support and was just going on to do his set. The bar was not that full and I saw what I presumed to be O'Death in the corner of the room waiting for their chance to perform. One of their member with a beard stared at me intently. Strange I thought, I wonder if he recognises me. The O'Death member stared at me solidly clearly making eye contact and scowling a little. I got a little nervous and uncomfortable, I shifted in my seat a little and eventually made a little smile at him. This had no effect upon him and he continued to stare. I turned to Girl-X drank my pint and enjoyed Richard Dawson's set. By the time Dawson had finished O'Death had moved from the couches and were getting ready to go on stage.  

O'Death's set was amazing, sort of like a folk version of municipal waste, well they had that kind of energy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I still felt the guy with the beard had it in for me. After the show I went to the merch stand and looked at the merch with a clearly agitated merch dude looking on. I liked the vinyl version of the album, I picked it up and asked the merch dude if I could buy it? The dude looked at me and just shook his head. Hmm, I thought is he busy or something? unlikely I was the only one at the stand and the bar was now less than busy. I asked the merch dude 'do I have to wait for the other dude to get back?' presuming the current merch dude was simply care-taking the stand until another responsible money handling merch type was back. He again shook his head this time saying 'nope'. Ok I thought, strange actions, normally merch guys throw the merch at you forcibly, in my experience they don't make it hard for you to acquire merch. That would negate the whole point in there being a merch dude in the first place. 

We were in a bit of a hurry because Girl-X was needed at work in a club across town. I told the merch dude that I had the correct change of £12 and could I just give it to him for the album. At this point the merch dude went from uncommunicative and agitated to animated and annoyed. He said 'you can't possibly pay for this album, you don't have enough money'.

Girl-X asked him how much it was (it was clearly marked 12quid) the merch guy replied £666 pounds to this guy you slave of satan. Admittedly I wasn't on form, I still hadn't made the connection of O'Death being a christian band and my wearing a decidedly unchristian Burzum shirt. The merch dude went on to say that he wouldn't sell me the record for any price, and that I was the enemy. I then realised that this hostility was because of the shirt I was wearing and its connotations. I then told the merch dude that I was exactly the sort of heathen he should be selling records to, that it was easy to preach to the converted, that Jesus had said teach, teach the unbelievers, that christian morality should compel him to try and convert me and by not selling me the album he was denying the core values of his faith.

Well in my head that's what I said. In reality I sheepishly said 'Oh, ok then, is it ok if I give Girl-X the money and she buy's it from you.' 

The merch dude said that it would be ok on the condition that he didn't see her hand the album to me inside the venue. Girl-X now about to be late for work grabbed the money from my hand threw it at the merch dude and snatched the album. Off we went into the night with the Christian item with us.

Refusing religion of any kind is scary to a lot of people, people find safety in believing in an afterlife, it also allows them to procrastinate in life believing as they do in a glorious and meaningful afterlife. I don't believe in O'Death's religion, I think it wrong and harmful to individuals and society at it's core. What had the merch dude's action said about his morals that he supposedly so strictly adhered to. You can pull anything from the bible and twist it to your own uses to the point where it seems pointless to quote from it. I'm sure Jesus smashed up the temple because much gambling and money based debauchery was taking place, didn't Christ tell us to consider the lily (Luke 12.27 "Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these"). Which is commonly meant to mean do not reach for monetary wealth as it will eventually find you. The merch dude still took my money even though it was through the conduit of Girl-X, my devils advocate as it were. If he believed so strongly why did he eventually fold.

The merch dude was upset by my T-shirt to the point where he wouldn't talk to me with any civility, if he had taken a few moments to find out about my beliefs before he judged me he would have found I was very accepting of christians even with there atrocious and bloody past. He would have found that while not believing in Christ I still have quite a knowledge of the scriptures and of christianity's morality (all western culture is built on these morals so it would be crazy to not have some semblance of knowledge on the subject). But no, the merch dude judged me upon my appearance and my flag as it were, he looked at an image inspired by an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st edition) module called The Temple of Elemental Evil with the word Burzum above it and made a judgement. The merch dudes T-shirt had vaguely demonic imagery of it's own I refrained from making a judgment on him. The whole scene left me annoyed, the merch dude clearly believed strongly enough in something but money was all it took for him to fold. Besides we have already established that wearing a burzum T-shirt is bad, But wearing a vaguely demonic O'Death T-shirt is really really bad due to it's direct association with and shared ethos of Christ, who inadvertently caused the slaughter of billions.

I may not believe in what Varg believes in but at least he rigidly sticks to his beliefs. Money should never force a change of opinion. I think in hindsight I would have loved to have had a proper conversation with not just the merch dude but the whole O'Death band to ask them why they can't look past Christianity's blind all encompassing self righteousness and try to accept others beliefs. After all we are all but one man, entitled to our own opinions, non of us can be right or wrong completely, we can only believe what we think is right based on the morality of or education. That is why educating yourself is so important so you can make the correct judgements when the time is right. I'll always try to engage people on a level ground and accept their beleifs as I would expect others to accept mine, it is the only way we will ever progress past the kicking-each-other's-heads-in stage of society.

O'deaths video is pretty good, I still think they're an awesome band, check them out.



Not as good as Burzum though.

Trainers

Alex's battered shoe sole at the wastey.

When are bike companies going to make a BMX shoe that can handle the rigours of riding brakeless? Lotek soles tend to last the longest for me and they make quite a stiff and protective shoe. Protection is important to me but the thinner a shoe gets the floppier and less protective it becomes. I can't stand bruised heels and twisted ankles. Limping in pain to work the day after riding sucks, it's embarrassing having to move much slower than my mates between pubs with a swollen foot and if I have to sit through another general dressing down from my Mother ending as she always does with 'aren't you getting a little old for all of this dangerous bike riding malarkey' I might loose it.

The hills of Whickham have been tearing my shoe soles to pieces. The 35 mile an hour breakless descents have been melting my shoe and tyre giving off that strong burning rubber scent and pebble-dashing my seat stays with hot rubber fragments. I do enjoy the experience of skidding and foot scraping down a hill but it's starting to get a little costly. Nathan Williams is coming out with a shoe named 'The Brake' on Etnies, it features a dual rubber density compound sole so theoretically it'll be super grippy on the pedal but hard as nails on the tyre for braking. I imagine the harder compound will cause a bit of slippage when footjaming, when moonwalking on the dancefloor and when standing tiptoed to pee the highest in pub urinals.

Dual is cool.

To be honest I think the Etnies shoe sole idea is a sound one although the upper styling of 'The Brake' isn't really to my tastes, its more the sort of thing Ratty would wear sockless with a shoe string belt holding up some of his Aunties flannel half mast pants coupled with an antique Barbour jacket over a bare chest. Just not my thing. Shoe technology is obviously improved since the advent of riding brakeless but I still feel it has a little way to go. More annoying than anything is throwing shoes into the dead shoe tree in Armstrong Park with pristine uppers and daylight shining through the vanquished soles.

Sloane Rangers take note.

Earth

Earth and Sabbath Assembly at The Cluny, Monday the 4th of April.

I'm at the point where I'm really excited about this gig. Earth are absolute rulers, I like the new direction of their latest album. I heard Angels of darkness demons of light I described perfectly as a super slowed down Shadows album. The guitar parts have that Hank Marvin feel accompanied by a monolithic sloth like drone ebbing at and fogging the speakers.



Here's an interview with Dylan about drone. When speaking of his earlier band he describes it as 'a combination of flipper and cinderella' 3 chord punk and they did Greatfull Dead covers, this I cannot imagine.



Also to be excited about is Sabbath Assembly, I saw Jex Thoth last year at Roadburn and I was blown away by the psychedelic folk revivalism. She was dancing with candles, cavorting like a fairy and floating about the stage singing sweetly. Sabbath Assembly is Jex Thoth's other band with Dave Nuss.



Tickets are 12 quid and still available, get on this.