Bicycle Android

This blog is defunct, I moved out of Whickham over a month ago. Thanks for following and believing in me. My new blog is BICYCLE ANDROID.

Follow it here.   http://bicycleandroid.blogspot.com/

Golf fucking sucks.

see you later fuck faces.

I miss you Mr. Crimpy

I saw 2 dear here

Boring

Dead badger

For having drinks and talking about bogeys

buggy melee in the rain

Nalpalm

We got this offer sheet from Claud Butler today at the shop today. It contains the phrase 'Nalpalm the competition with these hot prices'. I don't want to stereotype people but the cycling community as a whole tends to come off a little liberal, leftish, chilled and even overly moral. So I can't really see why CB have used the mental imagery of 'napalming the competition' to advertise their bikes.
The physical act of napalming anything tends to be messy. When napalm was used in the Vietnam war skin was burnt from the backs of children, whole villages of innocent women and children were burnt away, kids were disfigured and disabled, adults were left with debilitating and painful injuries and could no longer work or provide for their families.

If it were me, I might have taken a step back at the CB board meeting and said hang on a minute there Claud, don't you think the phrase 'nalpalm the competition' is a little strong?

Claud Butler obviously have no qualms about using terrifying weapons to advertise lower end alloy 'mountain style' bikes. I'm now wondering how far they would go? What's next, are they going to H-Bomb Santa Claus and his reindeers at the north pole with a series of seasonal reductions later in the year, or use the human centipede to run an Easter special on tandems?

By buying into the 'Nalpalm the competiion' thing does that mean when we order the bikes from CB that they will literally dump a truck full of napalm on Edinburgh Bikes up the road, dissolving and burning away not just the bikes, the accessories and the brick work of the establishment but also the flesh of the employees working there? I have friends up there, what about Billy and Murphy? I like those dudes. On paper I guess you could call them the competition, will they be destroyed by the napalm wielding Claud Butler corporation? Do we suffer a napalming if they order the bikes instead?

I'd like to see one of the CB employees be made to ride through a Vietnam jungle on one of these bikes in the early seventies and see how well the bike actually performed. Are they as 'ALL' terrain as they claim? Could they handle a jungle full of flame throwers, pungee pits, hand grenades, land mines and AK 47 wielding guerrilla fighters all while being soaked in buckets of agent orange. How funny would the use of napalm be then when the riders aluminium Ravana frame dissolved away to nothing and they were left running for their lives?

I think of families that lost loved ones in the war on both sides, napalm is a terrible weapon with terrible consequences for its victims, don't romanticise it, don't have disrespect for those people who died in napalm associated atrocities and don't use a hideous weapon as a promotional tool for the so called green ethics of the cycling world. At the very least it's glaringly inappropriate and I'm sure I don't stand alone working as one of the many dealers who find it offensive.

Not that funny really.

Faster Faster Faster.

I was watching the team time trial in the Tour De France yesterday and was stoked to see Team Leopard Trek on the speed concept 9.9. I feel like I know those bikes inside out after assembling one for a customer last week. The speed concept 9.9 isn't your average bike, it's filled with more carbon fibre and technology than a formula one car. It has been subjected to extensive low speed aerodynamic testing making it one of the fastest bikes on the planet. In everything but a direct head wind this thing achieves thrust. It's frontal profile is like a knife cutting through a head wind. It is a technological marvel.

Getting this bike out of the box and all the subsequent packaging was a task in itself, it was easily the most comprehensively packaged bicycle I have eve come across. It was also the least assembled bicycle straight from the box, here you can see that the chainset has been installed and the fork but almost nothing else.

The frame profile is such that the Speed concept wouldn't fit well in our usual repair stands so I had to go and get the old faithful cast iron steam punk stand from upstairs. I had to pack the jaws of the stand with plenty of foam nip it up very lightly and then zip tie it all in.

I was fairly certain that it wouldn't fall out of the stand at this point but my anus was still twitching with a 7 1/2 thousand pound bike wobbling about in the steam punker. I remedied this and put my nerves in check by covering the floor in more foam padding just incase there was a mishap.

With the precise tolerances and materials in this bicycle everything has to be precisely torqued. There are a few jobs on higher end bicycles where I always use the torque wrench but never before have I built a bicycle using a torque on every bolt.

The tri-bars were an absolute nightmare to fit, the cabling for the brakes had been done euro style so it had to be all hauled out and refit the other way round. Total nightmare. With internal and concealed cabling of this nature it's best to stay calm and take your time, resolve yourself to a slow build and it all usually pans out. But I was building this bike on bike week so it was super busy in the shop, we kept getting distracted, Lynne was on a wind up mission all day and the customer was coming in to sit on this thing at 3pm so the pressure was extremely high. At around 1 pm I managed to get an inner cable stuck in the intricacies of the tri-bar interior and as much as Dave and I pulled, twisted and shoved this thing it just wouldn't budge. There was a tense silence in the work shop. Sweaty brows were abundant and tempers were frayed. I had to take a step back and try to think logically. After much duress we came upon the idea of rolling the inner cable up like a coil and forming a handle that could be spun and this got the stuck end moving and after a bout 10 minutes we edged it out the end of the hole in the bars. The relief was imense.

This bike is notoriously difficult to cable, all the gearing cable had come through wrong. The gear cables at the bb junction were sat wrong and they had to be shortened. This is a complex process of removing the brake shielding, removing the rear brake and cabling, removing a cable guide plate and then maneuvering two concealed cables into two distinct and opposing directions, not easy with people winding you up and fiddling with everything you remove.

"oooohh, look at that", "eeeh isn't it complicated" and "so how does that work?" were all sentences being fired at me while I struggled to comprehend the set up myself. What makes things worse is that the speed concept comes with zero instructions and almost no online support. A lot of this build was guess work, a lot of the Trek's cabling seems oddly arranged and counter intuitive.

Sram Red groupo was an absolute treat. Here you can see the rear mech and block, the block is machined from a single piece of material, it has a spiral of shortened indexing teeth and is one of the most beautifully crafted bicycle components I've seen. I was hoping this bike was going to come through with Di2 digital shifting because of the nightmare these things are to cable but the customer went for Sram red saving himself 1500 quid in the process. The time trail shifters have a confusing aerodynamically adjustable neutrality which had me stumped for a bit but when I worked it out the gearing on this bike was unquestionably solid.

Here it is all done. The lunch box out back makes the bike more aerodynamically efficient and you can carry power bars and the like. The Bonty water bottle is super aerodynamic also. This is a picture after the customer had been fitted on the rolling road for maximum aerodynamics and comfort. I love the full black paint, this thing is a stealth machine fast light, stiff. You don't buy a bike like this unless you're super serious about going fast, it costs the same as a small car and if you crash it it's gonna explode in a spectacular shower of shredded carbon fibre. I've built and worked on quite a few different time trial bikes but this was easily the most complicated and frustrating but the overall finished product was the most beautiful and efficient.

More Missing Animals.

My Mother can be a little strange, she loves to clown around and make the kids laugh, she loves to dress up in ridiculous outfits and get the little ones worked up into a frenzy. She always asks me how come I turned out so weird but I can't help thinking she's the weird one. Here's the newest addition to her costume collection. Many of her costumes are handmade, the intricacy of her work is exceptional and she has a flare for the ludicrous and comical. This elephant suit is shop bought however.

One Halloween Lewis wore my Mothers rabbit suit. It was a fairly well made pink fluffy bunny suit with green fur as the underbelly and tail. We all went out dressed up and getting loose in Newcastle. Lewis managed to pull some student lassy and went home with her back to Jarrow. The next day was a Sunday and we all sat around in the Buff House editing the now classic NSF advert where carmine pretends he's a mafia boss and says the Line 'NSF3-Christmas.' It was raining heavily outside so we concentrated fully and got loads of filming slash editing done for the advert. Everyone sat around still covered in fake blood that proved impossible to remove. Lewis finally turned up around 3 still in the bunny suit and similarly covered in blood. He was soaked, bedraggled and exhausted (a state Lewis reaches so often you can tell he secretly thrives on) and we all had a good laugh at him when he walked in. To add to the hilarity Fortini was probably smoking a cigar at this point.
Lewis in his infinite wisdom had pulled the lassy and jumped in a taxi not thinking that he had nothing on under the bunny suit. He had gotten his freak on or whatever he did, I don't know I wasn't there looking through the key hole and then he had slept off the concoction of rum and alka-seltzer he was drinking. In the morning realising he had no pockets in the bunny suit found himself penniless and 7 miles from home. He had left the love nest and walked to the metro thinking he'd jump it back to Newcastle, a practice which was a lot easier back in the day. Unfortunately as so often happens the metro service had been suspended between shields and town and the bus replacement proved a lot harder to jump. Lewis was faced with a 7 mile walk home in pouring rain wearing a pink bunny suit through some pretty dodgy housing estates. He received quite a bit of heckling but amazingly avoided a beatdown.
I returned the Bunny suit in such a state to my Mother that she subsequently binned it, she was however particularly tickled by the story of Lewis' walk of shame as some sort of recompense.  


NSF 3 First Trailer from Pete_G on Vimeo.

The Parrot poster post from last week got me thinking about the time my Mother tried to save a missing budgie, so here's a slight better punctuated version of a story originally printed in BrainMind issue 3.



Woman, are you crazy? AKA Let The Budgie Live.

A rare morning asleep at my family home. A soothing and deep sleep which is difficult to attain in the floral box room. A room which is always roasting hot and devoid of oxygen. A room stacked floor to ceiling with old boxes. A room that is continuously sweltering and claustrophobic. Through my dreary sleep I can tell that it is morning from the smell of burning toast that brings me back to Sunday mornings of my youth. But this is no Sunday, weekday work awaits me. Dragged form the safety of a borrowed duvet, not buy my alarm however, but by the commotion coming from my Mother's bedroom. I can hear her unmistakable squawk, she's hysterical, calling my name and asking for assistance. I rise from the bed scratching balls and pulling at my T-shirt to cover a hint of morning wood.
The sight I was confronted with beggared even my most deep seated beliefs. My Mother dressed in outrageous pink pajamas was standing one footed on a wicker basket hanging half torso out of her bedroom window. In her hand was the long handled fishing net that me Dad uses to dreg scum out of the pond she was waving this erratically whilst cooing and repeating "here Joey."
I approached rubbing sleep out of my eyes and presuming that I was dreaming. Playing Kirby's Ghost Trap last night might explain the Pink Pajamas but from where in my brain was this upstairs aerial fishing scenario? Now that I was beside my Mother I peered to see what she was fishing for and there it was the trigger for an ornithological escapologist flashback....
....Three weeks previously my Mother had received a computer printout through the letterbox detailing the loss of a yellow and green budgie in the Westoe area who went by the name of Carl. The bulletin mentioned that Carl was cold and timid and it included a phone number. I had found this document both preposterous and hopeless, as if you would ever find a budgie? It would have flown for never-look-back freedom the second it saw an open window most likely straight into the jaws of a neighbourhood cat. I had taken this missing pet notice for my collection and put it on the wall of my not so plush Heaton Attic/apartment where it had kept me in good spirits....
....Cut back to the current situation with my Mother, apparently insane, shouting "tweet tweet Joey, come to your Mam."
This was almost too much. My Mother, clearly in a heightened state, obsessively fishing at a rather scared and rigid budgie was possibly at first assessment of fragile mind. I thought carefully about what to lay on her. "Mother get down from there, You'll set you're neck or worse still fall out of that window" was the best I could come up with.
My mother brought her head in with hair ravished and wind swept and said "Oh there you are, here take this, your arms are longer than mine, get up here" she thrust the fishing net into my hand and ushered me up onto the wicker as she descended from it.
Shaking my head I leaned out of the window fishing net in hand but couldn't reach the bird which stood defiantly on the plastic guttering. "Well go on then, ENCOURAGE him" pleaded my Mother.
"This is stupid he needs an incentive, haven't you got any bird seed" I asked at which point my Mothers face perked up and she rushed off down stairs.
I stared at Carl. He looked surprisingly well for spending 3 weeks on the streets of Westoe, he looked strong and street smart, the Ray Mears of the domesticated bird world surviving on just his wits and instinct. Carl didn't want to be caught he was having the time of his life free from the cage and living off the land like Rambo in First Blood.
My Mother returned shouting "there is no seed, there is no seed, but we have this" in her hand was a large fresh butter croissant.
My mother had a long flagpole to which she offered the croissant and to the end with reams of selotape she wrapped them together.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.
"All birds love croissant."
"Are you kidding me" I replied "that croissant is as big as the budgie."
"So what?"
"Well how would you feel after finally escaping a lifetime of captivity you only lasted 3 weeks before you were knocked off a roof to your death by an enormous puff pastry doppelganger?"
"Don't be stupid I won't knock him off." My mother replied and with that she ascended the wicker, leaned out of the window and offered the croissant to the budgie (who was still well out of reach) and began a discourse "Here Joey, tweet tweet Joey, here's a croissant, lovely budgie, tweet tweet croissant."
I could barely look, what would the neighbours make of this scene, they were probably phoning the RSPB as we spoke. I could see it now, the newspaper headline reading-woman clubs much loved family pet to death with obscure French baked goods weapon.
As predicted Carl was not impressed. He took a second look at the croissant and then made for the sky never to be seen again. As my Mother disappointedly climbed down from the wicker the dog jumped up and made short work of the croissant.
Who knows, I thought perhaps Carl will go on to a better life and meet up with the rebellious activist group-the ex pets network.

The confusion is nearly over.

My novel The Dark Matter is pretty much ready for print, once I got amongst the Blurb program I found it pretty easy to use, It's full of bugs but you just got to work around these problems. I had to convert a bunch of files because Blurb couldn't read Mac Word files which I thought was really odd, and it was obsessively turning all my punctuation into wing dings. At present I'm just waiting for The Genius with the cover and then it'll be off to print. Exciting and scary times. I'm still not sure how many I'm going to get done so if you would like one and you don't think you are on my list let me know through the comments on this blog or Email:

ollybmx@hotmail.com

The synopsis for The Dark Matter is thus.

A story of a dysfunctional relationship set against an overwhelmingly mundane background. The city is all powerful and undefeatable in its neon lit omnipresence. Both man and woman are oppressed by the triviality of life, a relationship divided by modern world distractions and thinking, two people cohabiting the same space while simultaneously entirely unaware of each others existence, it's a mental journey of thoughts and cross thought processes. It's about searching for a reason to exist in a unforgiving and unrewarding world. It's a tale of obsession, madness, anarchist politics, wigga fashion and an insatiable lust for Custard Creams.

If this sounds like your cup of tea let me know and I'll sort you out with a copy. I'm selling them for what they cost me to get printed so depending on the numbers it'll probably be around a fiver.

I'll have more accurate information as the printing process develops.

Name is Jay-Z

I despair for the youth continued.

Hick town skateparks are all similar. The ramps are crappy and the kids who have never been anywhere think they're hot shit. If these same kids travelled about they would be a bit more humbled when they witnessed the skill that lies undiscovered all across the world. Kids can be cocky, they think they're rad in their blinkered little universe, but they have no conception of the full picture. Absolute rulers knock out rediculous moves for un-footage the whole world over. It's only when you travel about you can take in this bigger picture of the skills world wide.

My local skatepark is 3 miles away and is a fabricated metal monstrosity. It is plagued by clueless and cheeky micro scooterists. The layout is beyond unimaginative. Some of the metal sheeting is lifting up making it dangerous to ride. It's covered in broken glass. Every corner reeks of piss. The park at Whickham Thorns has few saving graces they are; through the week and in school time there is never anyone there and it has a pleasant setting in a wooded and country area with awesome views down the valley to Newcastle.

Overview of the driveways.

When I was at Whickham Thorns park yesterday the sun was shining, I learnt a few tricks and I generally had a blast on my own. At about 5 o'clock loads of 14 and 15 year olds turned up on Micro scooters. Some of these kids had cans of Fosters. Immediately they began asking questions.
"What kind of bike is that?"
No hello mind you, or how you doing, or hey nice day for it, just straight in for the kill. I replied as I always do to this question "A BMX."
"Nah I mean what kind of BMX?"
"A Kink"
"Oh"
"Have you heard of Kink?"
"No"
I turned about face to continue riding but the scooterist had more to say.
"How long have you been riding?"
Again I replied the same way I always do to this question "Since about 3 o'clock."
"No I mean how many years"
"Oh, about 18."
At this point the young scooterist seemed satisfied. Now I realise I was a little cheeky and patronising in answering his questions but after you've answered them for the millionth time, well you can imagine it gets a little tedious.

I call this quater the meat slicer.

The scooterists continued scootering and I continued riding and to be honest it wasn't a bad session. I answered a few more questions and they tried to clear the tiny jump box unsuccessfully. The scooterist without glasses fell off and hurt his knee, he lay on the grass in obvious pain for a bit so I went over and asked him if he was alright and he said that he was, he just had a dead leg.

ABC, another bike crew, get it?

More scooterists and Fosters drinking non scooterist turn up at this point. One of their number is a cheeky little gobshite and instantly starts heckling my tattoos. I ignore him best I can for a bit. He starts shouting trick names at me.
"Do a 540, Do a Tailwhip, Do a barspin"
I'm not some circus performer, neither am I at the park sorely for the amusement of slightly inebriated 15 year olds. Why does this kid presume he can control me like a freestyle puppet.
"Do a Backflip, Do an 820."
820, I found this particularily amusing as it showed a complete ignorance of freestyle and mathematics.
Eventually I had to confront him as he was begining to ruin my session and I said "Can you stop shouting tricks at me, I don't shout tricks at you, Shut the fuck up."
The kid was silent for about a minute and then he continued to shout out "Do you know Dyno?"
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't answer him instantly he began shouting more implausable tricks at me that he must have learned the names of from watching nitro circus.
At this point I got mad and said "Shut the fuck up you squeeky, no balls, can't do nothing, pussy, what's the matter? too pussy to ride the skatepark yourself, might get hurt might you, fucking pussy."
The thing is if you heckle someone you are obviously disrespecting what they're doing. This kid wasn't even riding the park so what gave him the right to heckle me? I now felt bad for loosing it and shouting at this kid and at the back of my mind I thought I probably looked like an asshole in front of all the well behaved and impressionable scooterists also using the park.

I've had a night to think about what I should have done instead and I think next time I'm in this situation I'm going to calmly go up to the kid and say "Do you know when you heckle someone that what you're doing is a form of disrespect? What do you do to people that disrespect you?"
Depending on the kid, his answer would be different but I'm willing to bet in this case the kid would have said either: beat them up, or get them beaten up by my brothers cos I'm too pussy to do it myself.
And then I suppose my response would be "Well in that case should I punch you in the face for heckling me?"
No
"No that would be totally inappropriate wouldn't it, it would be a complete overreaction. Do you mind if I ask you what you do with your spare time except of course drink cheap lager and heckle people?"
"Nothing."
"That's what I figured, you think doing nothing is an admirable thing and is deserving of respect do you?"
"HMM"
"Because I don't, In future if You're going to heckle at least have the skills in the bank to back it up."
But I didn't say this at the time because in the heat of the moment it's hard to think clearly and come up with something constructive, also the kid would have just talked over me anyway. So Fuck him. I'm not a school teacher anyway.


Its not all bad, one of the kids who was on work experience from last weeks post about Mike Hoder and disrespected Mat Hoffman amongst other things sent this letter in to work and totally redeemed himself.

What's most impressive about this is, he sent his thanks in the form of a real paper letter, no email or tweet or text message here, what a legend.

Harry, afraid of the real cheesecake.

Harry is one of the most promising kids on the scene, polite, respectful and full of enthusiasm, just the kind of kid I'd like to see at the skatepark. Maybe my disillusionment with the youth is down to my own continued ageing, or a changing of times and attitudes but I'm sure as a kid I was a lot more respectful to the older guys in the scene.

Mike Hoder (there's more to a man than the tricks he can perform).

I would say that Mike Hoder is one of my favorite riders. One of my favourite riders who is at the top of their game and who is still current. I just finished reading his piece in the Albion 2. I did nothing but reaffirm the fact that I think he's awesome and he's exactly the kind of antihero that BMX needs.

Last month we had 2 work experience kids in at work. I hate having 2 kids together on work experience, they stick together like glue and as a symbiosis they have more rebellious clout than they would singularly. They both rode BMX and being 15 years old were exactly the demographic we cater for at the shop. Saturday is the day when we Hoover-up these dudes pocket money selling grips, tyres, stems, chainrings and bars. I asked the young ones what set ups they rode, where they rode and how they rode. They quietly answered sometimes cockily as if I'm a clueless old man who's well past it Granddad. I asked them who their favorite rider was, but because one of them had 3 pegs, I already knew what his answer would be. The work ex kids answered in unison "Dak Roche".
The kids as they inevitably do asked me who my favorite rider was so I gave them the answer based on who's riding I can appreciate but who is also in the spotlight and I said proudly "MIKE HODER".
Nothing
The two kids kinda looked at each other dumbly.
There was an eerie silence in the workshop and you could cut the tension with a knife.
The kid with 3 pegs looked at me with a trembling lip.
I turned my eyebrow up in expectancy of his answer but he returned his gaze to the floor.
Confused I asked worriedly "do you know Mike hoder?"
They both shook their heads mumbling that they'd never heard of him.
eh?
OK then, I described some of the epic feats Hoder had achieved-Threeing El Toro, jumping off the top of the Seattle tower, his recent NYC edit.
Nothing
He rides for S+M
Nothing
He's got tattoos on his neck.
Err....
And before you say, no not Mark Webb.
Nothing, total silence.
I began to wonder, what the hell is wrong with these kids.
I asked them another question I was sure I knew what their answer would be. "Who's your favorite rider from Newcastle?"
In unison the little lads answered "DYNO".
"NO NO NO NO NO, Your favorite rider from Newcastle should be The Count."
"WHO?"
"Or Cookie, you know with the X pegs?"
Nothing.
"Newrick?"
Nothing.
I was beginning to think these kids were a lost cause. Was it I who was helplessly out of touch or was it them?

I was going to get in to the whole 'is it alright to wear Nike riding shoes debate' but I thought better of it when the lads said Mike Spinner was a better rider than Mat Hoffman.
What, think of all Mat has done for the sport, there is a good chance you would never even have heard of BMX if Mat Hoffman didn't exist, yet you fail to respect him. If there's anyone deserving of respect in BMX, it's Hoffman.
Nothing.

Was Marv right? Is it only the heinous trick ferrets that appeal to the kids? Can they not delve a little deeper and see the man behind the trick?

I despair for the youth.

Council Estate Mods.

Byker Style

What goes through the mind of a youth to think that sticking a pair of orange 26 inch elastomer suspension style forks on to a BMX is a good idea.

Chrome is something I can understand. I remember Ratty leaving his S+M PBR at Team 2 Street at Ninth Ave one too many times. As a form of revenge the bike recieved an all over chrome paint job courtesy of Sweet Jerry. Ratty-totally un-stoked, spent easily a week in my kitchen removing Silver paint from his tyres, grips and every other conceivable component with Nitromors. The full silver paint job in the above case is a little glam but I can get away with it. It's the front sus where I stumble. The geometry of this bicycle is ridiculous, it must corner like a bitch, the rider hasn't even shifted the bars forward to compensate.

I can imagine the scene, having freshly chomed up his Mongoose the lad takes a step back admiring his handiwork but he would shake his head, perfection is but an inch away, "you know what this really could do with? A set of Suspension forks so I can take any stair set in the Byker Wall by storm."
His aim was achievable, he snook into his cousins shed with a monkey wrench removed the forks from his Motorworld MTB and installed them dry to his silver dream machine BMX. This time standing back grinning ear to ear he would speak aloud "yes, that is perfection."

The collective mind of the council estate works in strange ways, strange enough for it to be perfectly acceptable to wear one Nike Tiger Woods glove, to wear your electronic curfew tag on top of your white sock like a badge of honor, to discard used heroin syringes where your families kids play, to be topless in January enjoying the slightest hint of sub zero sunshine, to gurn your chops off for 3 days every weekend and forget about your kids, to get your current lovers name tattooed on your leg above the previous ten like a shopping list, hit list or list of sexual conquests and to modify every form of transportation from mopeds, to hatchbacks to bikes until they become almost unrecognisable from their intended forms.

Modification of clothing in the council estate is frowned upon, if you have a rip in your tracksuit and you sew it up you will forever be branded a tramp, only modification of skin, mind and transportation is encouraged.

Council estate bikes have always intrigued me, I've seen 12 inch wheels fitted to the front of 26 inch full suspension bikes, Motor scooter front ends fitted to 20 inch mtbs, 3 foot seatposts fitted to pink 14 inch girls bikes and every other bastardisation of a bicycle you can imagine. As long as you can pop a sick gear 1 wheelie the bike is considered legit by the collective consciousness of the terminally unemployed.

When I first built my 80's Peugeot CPX up in 92 I can remember envisioning it as a stealth gloss black assassin bike akin to Kitt form knight rider or Street Wolf with cleaned up white mags and a silver lightning bolt on the top tube. This vision was a million miles away from its blue and rusting frame with Cdub bars and one yellow mag wheel. The black vision I had for it embarrassed and repulsed me thinking back later in 95 when I was a hundred percent into BMX fashion and up on all the cool components and styles. Conversely this imagined and modified Peugeot sounds super cool again.

I guess cool has everything to do with your point of view, your peer's attitudes and your subjectivity. I still wouldn't rock a MTB fork on my BMX even if Carmine did it himself, said it was Shithawks certified and sincerely swore down that it was definitely the next big thing.

Pole Jam Construction.

Gringo our mustachioed delivery driver for the Cycle Centre, piloted his TNT van straight into this pole after being distracted. He was looking at a scantily clad Shields Road 'lovely' and drove over this pole at the end of our loading bay.

We had to remove the side bars of Gringo's van so he could carry on with his round much to the disapproval of the locals drinking outside of Jackson's pub.
"You can't remove that mate, 1 of the bairns could get sucked underneath."
The resulting angled pole is quite loose and the ground surrounding it is pretty uneven but it's an extra fat pole so it might be of some use to a BMX.

Steve Kinghan DEDICATION.

Movie from jim newrick on Vimeo.

Yesssssss. I love the wastey, I love Steve, I love the boys, I love Newrick.

Do hippies dream of bygone Skateparks?

"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?"-Gaff, Bladerunner.

Adey

I still dream about the old South Shields skatepark. As often as once a month I flow about the place in my sleep. BMX dreams often bring about infinite trick balance and stunt based impossibilities but largely my dreams of South Shields are highly realistic and based on my own skill level. While asleep I'm jumping hips, wallriding the red fence, busting kickouts over the driveway and smashing into harsh flatbanks. I awake groggy headed, wileing out, confused, breathless  and filled with the overwhelming desire to session the park. Only to realise seconds later that it is gone.

Sure the new park is infinitely better for learning tricks and it's the kind of facility that my 13 year old self would have wished for with all my might to have and to ride. As I grew and also in hindsight I've realised how unique and awesome the old park was.
Things must move on.
I just loved that old park so much it hurts. I loved its concrete and its tarmac. It hurts to lose it. It hurts that I can never again have a 540 tyre tap session on the bowl. It hurts that I can never tool at it and blast the gap over the bowl again. It hurts that the place shaped my style and my friends' styles and that the younger kids who grew up after ride sort of different. It hurts that I had lines that I wanted to do there and won't ever be able to do. It hurts when I see footage of this place, it's like looking through photos of a long lost friend missing and presumed dead. It hurts my stomach when I remeber the old park, I begin to well up and feel sort of sick. I just fucking hurts.

I wish so badly that I could go back there, back to 95 96 or 97, back with my crew, back to spending all day everyday down there. The dramas, the fights, the falling outs, the battles with radgees, the bong smoking, the cider drinking, the bike progression, all these events were integral parts to my growing up. Fragile memories disappearing into the emulsion of a past life like tears lost to the rain. Good times, bad times and times that shaped a man. All now gone.

I'm an atheist and thus not allowed to enjoy an afterlife, even talking about it brings up waves of hypocrisy related nausea-If I was a good and deluded religious type and I was allowed to choose a place to spend my eternity it would be a sunny afternoon with my BMX at the old South Shields skatepark.

I find all this incredibly hard to put into words, the old skatepark is the only place that taps a deep well of emotion in me, more so than anywhere else, more so than my family home, or any place I've ever lived or travelled to.

Was the park really as good as I remember or was it just the era, the friends and the rose tinted nostalgia filling me up with warm thoughts. Through my youth the park was my retreat and escape from a life I hated. School would finish and I would race to the skatepark. I hated school, I loathed it, I had few friends, I was misunderstood and I was utterly unhappy there. I found friends and rad times at the park, I found an outlet for my aggression and energies, I found a way to be infinitely creative and I finally had something in my life that I was proud of and something that I truly loved. I also found something to keep me out of the house for long periods of time. The Skatepark scene was totally disassociated with the aggressive 2 faced sheep-brained asshole fuck-ups at school. I had my own friends and scene, I knew older kids that were so influential to my thinking that many of their views guide my decisions to this day. The park was something special and tight and unique and now it's gone.

I can appreciate the new South Shields park and I have had many awesome days there but for me it just isn't the same, the magic has gone.

I love my current friends in Newcastle and I ride in one of the healthiest scenes in the country and I'm totally happy with it, so why do I still dream of those glory days at South Shields skatepark night after night? What is my subconscious trying to tell me?

It's impossible to go back there.
It has been destroyed.
The old scene no longer exists in any sort of recognisable form.
My old life has been destroyed.
And on and on it goes.

Me

Mouse

Michael Knight

Near the new ASDA in Shields there used to be a well. It served the town folk well and was an important part of the community. It's now covered by a concrete slab.

All that it was, now gone.
Gone, forgotten, destroyed.
All those conversations and relationships and chit chat and banter and all that water.
Covered by the finality of a concrete slab.
Gone forever.

Life can be cruel.

Finally.

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.   

The search continues.

Bikes made to outlast their riders.

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?

Fire and pegs in Byker.

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.

Black Heart Procession.

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.

Fire on Shields Road Byker.

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.