I feel increasingly cut off. Out on my own, out on a limb, out of my mind. Perhaps this blog will help me. Expect to find random descriptions of life, bike riding related diatribes, fruitless spleen venting and musical confusion.
I finally found a spot in Whickham. The only spots I knew about are round the town centre where the shops are, they consist of rough rock flatbanks and grindy plastic benches. The spots are quite fun but are full of people. I found a miniaturised version of a Mike Hoder style gap from his New York edit but I haven't got the balls up to do it as yet. Here's the new spot I found in Whickham's shadiest housing estate (it's far from shady). The spots not incredible but it's better than nothing.
I like the history of objects, an old writing desk with all the papers in the drawers, science fiction stories, entries for periodicals, the history of a man and his thoughts. An old toolbox with the saws, chisels and planes of a craftsman, all used to create greatness in mahogany. An aged military uniform and medals, all the action it would have seen, all the conflict and emotion. An old guitar, an old pipe, an old gun. Objects we carry with us and hold dear through our lives, they see all that we see. These objects become chipped and scratched and they break. These scars define specific moments and add to the rich lifeline of an object. Objects often change owners many times, if something is built to last, if it was made well it will continue on through its users being reliable, strong and dependable. It's a fascinating tale untold by the mute object. Objects are seldom loved like a bicycle, riders feel a bond to their bikes in a way other objects can only imagine.
Standard Bykes have a history of near indestructible frames and componentry. Rick Moliterno always had the mantra that you should be able to beat the hell out of a bike week after week and have it coming back for more. James Newrick bought his Standard TRLS 250 from Scott a trails rider from the middlesborough area. James recalls meeting Scott in a multi story car park in Newcastle and buying the frame out of the boot of his car after driving a hard bargain. Scott was a smooth trail rider and exclusively rode Standards for years, the frame James bought was in good condition.
I can imagine the excitement of a newish Standard to James, at the time it was the pinnacle of BMX frame technology and Standard had one of the hottest teams around. When I first owned a Standard I was nearly in shock, it was something I had wrote off as far too expensive to ever justify.
James went on to ride this frame for a good number of years. It was the frame he rode when he filmed his NSF3 section so you know he kicked this things ass.
After a while James became sick of the head tube gusset that connects top and down tube of the frame. James could no longer get away with the look and he decided (much to the disapproval of every one in the Buff House at the time) to remove it. He did so using Carmine Fortitis Dremel, Newrick managed to break the Drill bit and Carmine flew off the handle in typical Italian style. "You don't fuck with another man's drill bit."
In the above classic video section the TRLS 250 goes through 4 paint jobs as far as I can tell gloss black, silver, bright red and matt black. Newrick hammered the bike putting untold dents, gouges and stress on the newly gussetless frame. But still in line with Moliterno's wishes it was ready for more.
I think Newrick finally retired this frame when he got on S+M. Leaving this frame to rot in Ninth Ave's shed. It wasn't long before Lewis came along scavenger like and picked up the frame and adorned it with his rag tag charity shop assortment of parts. The bicycle although nothing like it's former glory was still running in it's new unhinged form and served Lewis well. Lewis brought this bike when he and I travelled Europe in 2007 for 10 weeks, this bicycle made it up the French alps, it went to Barcelona and Tarragona in Spain, it rattled over the cobbled streets of Prague, Lyon, The Hague and it bunny hopped curbs in Super cities like Berlin, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Lewis owned TRL250 sans pedal, Amsterdam.
Here's an entry from my journal that concerns the above mentioned bicycle piloted by Lewis in Amsterdam from the 2007 trip:
We finally sweated it out all the way to the city then on to the train station to meet Lewis. Lewis was haggard looking, not slept, soaking and possibly stoned. Not too far from how he always looked. He broke a broad smile upon seeing us. Good lad. After following Lewis' example a much needed falafel sandwich paved the way to an expensive and water logged camp site. More rain looked imminent. At a not worth riding suburb located skate park John took it hard to the elbow jumping a 4 foot skatelite spine, a great start to the riding. We rode about in the rain, I winged a lot and didn't see anything noteworthy. I was soaked with a nasty case of shit stripe from my tyres in a city that held little interest for me. I felt for Lewis in the rain. I've once heard his ride described as Homer Simpson's spice rack in bicycle form. This isn't far from the truth it is a rusty and malfunctioning collection of hand-me-down parts clashed together much akin to Frankenstein's monster only without the loving touch of life giving electricity. It is in a word, rubbish. The plane ride from England had not been kind and the turbulence had rattled his pedal loose and lost his locknut forever in the hold. At one busy city intersection Lewis' pedal fell off sending him first into oncoming traffic then back into a grass verge. Then it fell off again and again and then again causing him to almost fall into a canal. Then it fell off again. Joe was eager to smoke some cheeb. A couple of coffee shops later and the kids were crabbed out, Squidward represent. I stuck to the coffee, the first was black, good and hit home warming the very core of me the second was milky and sickening. I doubt many people order coffees in these places. The sun was finally out and around 6 we found a skatepark with a big bowl and no locals. No one dared to jump a big hip with 'bad memories' emblazoned on it. Through crab-o-vision the crew managed to carve some decent lines and bust a few fly outs. Lewis' pedal was still a nightmare and after much personal distress I removed the rusty pedal axle from his cranks using a crafty triangulation technique learned from years of working with bikes. Then Lewis covertly stole a plastic pedal off the most sorry looking Amsterdam lady cruiser locked up outside the park. Ninja.
By the end of that trip lewis had covered the bike in hardcore dance stickers, added to it's rusting appearance and generally neglected it. He went on to ride this frame until 2010 when the componentry reached a terminal stage and it became unridable. Around summer time, Lewis' girl friend contacted me with the thoughts of getting him a run around BMX for his birthday, I was up for it, I got him a cheapish Mongoose and asked his girl if she could bring in what was left of his old bike to see if I could salvage the Profile cranks. After far too much work I managed to remove a cross threaded pedal and re-tap the left hand side crank arm, find some axle bolts, accquire some bearings and get the set up installed on his new ride.
This left the TRLS250 frame in my possesion, it hung in the loft with a broken Jim C pedal zipped tied to it until winter at work. Around October I had to take it home because we needed to clear the loft. I tried to give this thing away but no one would have it. I was narked, it was a classic frame with a strong heritage, but all anyone saw was American BB, regular headset, rust, bad stickers and mangled dropouts.
On Feburary 15 of this year I had to move away from Newcastle so I layed the Frame on EL Boosterino and told him to build it up as a project bike and he had quite a bit of enthusiasm for it.
It took him till now to get it built up.
This things looking pretty street.
Front pegs only for the ghetto taxi on Carnsy's old FBM forks.
The perfect bike for leaving outside the shop while diving in for a 20 deck of snout.
The only new components are a pivotal seat and post and a Comet tyre.
This dropout was hacked off in the Ninth Ave era after it closed up from peg abuse.
Bike maintenance has never been high on the list of priorities for the owners of this TRLS 250 since Scott gave it up.
The perfect beer garden bike, sat at the least perfect beer Garden in the North East(The Chilli where rush hour cars sit in gridlock and spew foul emissions at you and the sun never shines).
How much longer can this frame keep giving joy to its subsequent riders and how many stories has it left to tell?
Giant black smoking fires are becoming a weekly event in Byker. Last Thursday it was Pizza, this week it's the scrapyard, what's next? Ringtons, Morrisons, The Wall?
I had loads of work on so I didn't see much apart from a gridlocked Shields Road, heaps of black smoke from the back door and arcing hose-power in the distance. The entire area reeked of burning plastic and I heard a few distant explosions.
I would have liked to view the flaming spectacle a little closer like last week but we're getting our workshop done out at the Cycle Centre so we had to tidy all the cupboard detritus and miniaturise it into the new ultimate storage cuboid.
The tidying unearthed some hilariously outdated products from cycling's wobbly history and also some excellent finds like this bag of random pegs dating back to the mid 90s. Team 2 Street ain't got shit on my peg collection now. I particularly like the blue knurled screw-on numbers.
Atmosphere of the night, black, it's all black. The best photo I could get.
I went to see Black Heart Procession at The Sage on Saturday night. I went alone as everyone I even mentioned this gig too just said 'No, BHP are far too miserable'.
I like BHP because they're miserable. Sometimes I'm miserable, sometimes huge black clouds descend upon me and I feel inescapably suffocated and suppressed. Sometimes I want to lie in bed all day with the curtains drawn playing my guitar and avoiding the world. Sometimes the voices of human beings around me grind me down and irritate my skin. Sometimes I'm in a mood where I have nothing but contempt for the human race, the general public disgusts me and I feel violence filling up inside. On days like these I need listen to something that can meet me at my level musically.
The Sage is a good venue to go too alone, a good proportion of the attendees are either grannies going to see the Sinfonia, couples on dates only concerned with each other or weird musically obsessed types in anoraks and child molester glasses. I must belong to the third group but I wear neither anorak or glasses. Hopefully I'm a part of forth group comprised of super cool types hot on the pulse of today's realest music-driven to see gigs with an unstoppable iron will-endlessly strong in the face of any adversity-the music becomes our lives and we become the music. But I'm not, I'm an anorak without even wearing an anorak, a dweeb, an odd and slightly scary outcast figure that parents warn their kids about.
The Lake Poets was the support, the name suggests a crew but it was only one guy. He was kind of enjoyable but he got a bit overly emotional about Sunderland and I couldn't relate to it. I mean seriously, how can you possibly love that place? He had already started playing when I went in and there was only 3 candles lighting the ominously black venue of hall 2. I went from bright sunlight adjusted vision, through the musical airlock and into total darkness. Unaware of the seating plan I just froze on the staircase, I could sense people around me and I could half make out some occupied tables at the front. I didn't know what to do I just sat down on the staircase and waited for my eyes to adjust. After a song or two I realised where I was and was relieved I hadn't ploughed through on to where I thought the seats were as I would have ended up tripping over a couple of hippie dudes and made an almighty calamity in the middle of a quiet set.
In the interval I got a pint and milled about with the aged Sinfonia fans as they said 'Eeee isn't that little lad good, eeeey'.
I went to the Black Heart Procession merch stand and asked the Sage employed camp as Christmas but super nice teenager in charge how much the albums were.
He said 'There only £10 each for all the vinyl.'
'Wow that's reasonable' I said.
He said 'yeah it's OK but I haven't sold anything yet, I've never heard of them anyway, they only sold 12 tickets before tonight so we contacted the band and asked if they, you know like, wanted to cancel or anything but apparently they said that the whole tour had sold badly and that they still wanted to do it'
'Only 12 tickets?' I said. I thought this band was big?
The merch guy went on to say that 'usually by the interval a band in hall 2 would have taken £400 at the merch stand.'
The merch guy further made his point by saying 'this gig is so poorly attended we're letting people in for free now.'
Shit son, that's crazy. Have Black Heart Procession fell off or something. I saw them in 2006 at All Tomorrow's Parties and you couldn't get near, 12 tickets?
'I had better buy a couple of albums then'.
Six-Black Heart Procession's album released last year was critically lauded how could the music loving public be so fickle as not to come see them only 12 short months later. It was only 12 quid, I have this theory that any band from America is automatically worth a tenner if only to cover their travel expenses so technically speaking this gig was only 2 quid.
Back inside hall 2 I sat in the dark and lost myself in the set, I became one with the candle lit darkness and my brain went soft. Pall Jenkins sang and played a wood saw with a violin bow while Tobias Nathanial played sombre guitar pieces. An hour spent wallowing in self pity and self deprecation. It was awesome and it was incredibly intimate. Well it had to be intimate there was only 27 people in attendance.
I came away thinking Black Heart Procession are awesome they just need to up their Myspace and Twitter game.
There was a pretty wild scene outside of the Cycle Centre on Thursday. Mamma Mias pizza place across the road started smouldering around 11.30. The bright orange wifey who works at the tanning place next door to Mamma Mias was running about in a complete flap trying to call the fire brigade.
It wasn't long before the fire trucks turned up and a healthy crowd of radgee spectators were revelling in the spectacle. Above you can see a mid 50s punchbag faced working girl getting a healthy lung full of black and noxious smoke before trying in vein to get an even closer look.
Much more fire trucks turned up, the tanning place went up in flames as did the aromatherapy place above. The police tried to shut down the road but a few jakeys were resisting claiming that their business (whatever they claimed that was) would be effected.
There was almost a riot when Greggs was closed around lunch time.
'But what aboot me pasties man, the bairnseses ar half starved'
'A need a fookin stottie pet'
'Am chokin for a sausage roll man ya daft gadgee'
Were all phrases made up on the spot by me but it was exactly the kind of banter being tossed around by the toothless heroin addicted retards of Shields Road. There were glimpses of a Marie Antoinette style scene-'but the people have no bread to eat.'
'Well let them eat cake.'
Unfortunately Jackson's doesn't serve cake it only serves fosters, brown ale, shoplifted sports wear and under the counter suitcases full of dickie meat.
The emergency services were rolling hard now, the whole street was shut down and the fire was far from under control. Baguette Nation caught fire much to my amusement. I've hated Baguette Express or whatever it's called ever since I ended up with a piece of chicken in my mouth while eating a supposedly vegetarian sandwich.
The block was swarming with fire personnel now. The windows began to explode at the tanning shop. The whole block smelt of disgusting fat fires. Jackson's was experiencing one of there most lucrative dinner times in history as low life's supped watered pints and watched the ensuing melee. Speculation at this point was rife. Apparently Mamma Mia's had recently changed hands, the term 'insurance job' was flying through the air more frequently than Brown Ale bottles in The Grace at closing time.
After a good couple of hours half the block was ruined, a bunch of local businesses were destroyed finding a load of local people out of pocket and out of a job. The fire was more or less extinguished and no one was hurt which is the most important thing. The fire investigation team were thoroughly going over the premises and I'm guessing they found something supernatural because...
....they had to deploy the Men In Black to erase all our memories.
The new Ride cover has been posted, it must be out sometime next week. I'm pretty stoked because after initially being totally nonplussed about my involvement in writing a NE scene article I think what I eventually wrote came out pretty good. Hman first mentioned the article a few weeks ago at which point the deadline was already looming, he forwarded me a load of old images and after a good look through I was totally uninspired. I hate covering old ground and would prefer to do anything but look back with hazy soft focused blinkers about the heyday of our scene. Although I hadn't yet said anything to Hman, I had decided against writing the article. The NorthEast would not be represented in the scenes issue.
A few days before I was scheduled to go to Prague Beddows rang me. He got me enthused about the piece gave me a few pointers in the direction of which he thought it should go and generally relayed the details of what he wanted in a much more coherent fashion. Although I despise pressure and avoid it at all costs it does tend to bring the out the best in me. I was relieved to get something together that Beddows was stoked on and the article which ended up being called 'What happened to the NSF?' has made the cover contents. Check it out when it hits the news stand.
Carlton Reid is high in the chain of command at Bike Biz magazine. A magazine based at the cycling industry in the UK. The mag makes for a largely boring read, concerns itself with commuting, electric bike promotion, dream road set ups, half hearted consumer advice (which obviously this being an industry mag the general public will never see) and insulting local bike dealers. Carlton comes in the shop quite often and he ropes us into fitting high end cable sets to his MTB or retrofitting an Xtra-cycle to his ride. About 18 months ago he asked me to write an article about a fixie tool and in exchange for the article I could have the tool. Hmm I thought that sounds like a lot of work for a tool I don't particularly want. I decided to give the article my best shot and collard a pretty good photographer for the pictures, thinking who knows he might ask me to do something in the future more worth my while. Anyway I emailed him the finished article, he seemed surprised it was of such quality and said he would definitely run it with a few minor tweeks. Carlton even asked me to submit a kinda CV/manifesto of myself so they had some background on me. I was fine with all of this as the magazine is very broad in scope and my style is a little angry for all tastes. However the article never saw the light of day, fine I thought, what difference does it make? But I felt a little dicked around and more to the point I put myself out for a magazine I had zero faith in the first place. Now Carlton kinda hangs his head and pretends not to recognise me when I say hello. Cycling is a weird world.
Here's the unedited article, it's probably of little interest as I say I wrote it with the broadness of the Bike Biz readership in mind.
The Pedro's Trixie tool reminds me at first glance of those ugly sharp and largely useless pressed sheet metal multi tools you get free with every department store bicycle. This is obviously of better construction and is reflected by the £18.99 price tag. Pedro's have an ecological ethos and create all of their products with preservation of the environment in mind. I'm thinking that when they tempered or heat treated the steel of the Trixie tool that they did not plunge it into whale blubber for it to cool.
The Trixie certainly feels solid and reminds me of laser cut BMX dropouts. The edges of the tool are super precise and defined. The 15mm wrench end of the Trixie is fairly self explanatory and fits my track nuts perfectly, the curved back of the handle sits in my hand comfortably and doesn't slice my palm like the aforementioned multi tool giveaways.
The most appealing part of this tool is the lockring wrench. If like me you ride brakeless fixed you have to have a certain trust in your lockring. It is your only way of stopping. It is inevitable that the lock ring will eventually come loose leaving you careering down the road desperately trying to get your feet in the tyres and come to a stop before you hit a bus. Tightening a track cog on the roadside is easy, just stamp down on your cranks. Tightening the lock ring however is a bit more of a challenge. The Trixie fits perfectly around my stainless steel Surly lockring and makes the ideal roadside quick fix getting you back on the road and in the direction of home.
The other features of the Trixie include a stepped 10, 9, 8mm wrench which appears to work well. A 5mm allen wrench which looks misplaced here and spoils the overall shape of the tool. My allen wrench didn't sit in my stem bolts securely and looks slightly malformed. The last feature of the the Trixie is a bottle opener for those mid ride brewskis.
Lastly the Trixie comes with wing nut bolts to mount the tool to the bottle boss mounts on your frame. Here the major flaw lies, firstly mounting this tool to your frame will look disgusting and ruin the simple aesthetics of your bike. Secondly for a tool marketed at track bike riders, most track frames don't have bottle boss mounts. Thirdly if you leave this tool wingnutted to your frame and then lock your bike outside of Heaton Perk coffee house while you sit rinsing the free WIFI and drinking watery Americana's in the cosmopolitan atmosphere, the Trixie presents a would be bike thief with all the tools necessary to steal not only your wheels but also your forks, stem, bars and seat, definitely an oversight in Pedro's design.
Providing you don't have this thing mounted to your frame I think it is an extremely well made tool that will sit perfectly in your tool bag. It is definitely the best solution I have seen for loose lock rings while on the road. The Trixie tool from Pedro's comes highly recommended.
