"I know a man who wears a $600 pair of shoes and carries two guns with him at all times; one for starting trouble, and one for ending trouble." - Vic the Most
Just in case North Korea reduces us to a pile of rubble, here's five minutes of street riding that might make it all worth it.
Digging deep in the dirt, here we have a vid featuring Dustin Mata AKA Dirt and Ryan Lewis AKA Redwerm. Worms and Dirt. The opening smith grind clip is out of hand, and Werm holds it down with a manual to kinker. Is there an emoticon for a birdcall? Budman filmed this, as it is also his birthday today! Out of respect, I will not post the infamous Budman puking picture.
Keeping in the theme of street riding, Chef Chachi cooked up this sick vid featuring all his homies and a big ass barspin by Victor Galindo at B-40 Middle School.
Going down tomorrow at 1pm, Mayfair plaza! 408Dave has the right idea when it comes to jams, so you won't want to miss this one. Below are some pics Nate Delp shot to get you in that street riding state of mind!
A. It is undeniable that Mat Hoffman is the progenitor of BMX. From crazy airs, variations, and even handrails, he literally went head first to further every discipline of riding. And still does today. Hoffman will always be one of my favorite riders, and this diddy ESPN put up was a pretty good reason why.
B. Hoffman provides a perfect segue to Exhibit B. Without Hoffman, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have Butcher. Aside from being on Hoffman for most of the their riding careers (as I assumed for Butcher), you can really see the roots take hold in street riding for what Mat planted. People complain about how Butcher rides, saying that he's super sketchy and has gross style, but I think that's kind of why I enjoy watching him ride. That's freestyle, that's raw. I would much rather see Butcher jump a triple set rail hop to flat (at 3:25) rather than Mike Spinner do a 1080 or some other no-name barn footjam dance on a quarter pipe. I guess in mythological terms (because both Mat and Butcher are legendary), the Condor is like Zeus and Butcher is like Apollo or Hermes or some shit. This post also saves all of us time because usually whilst drunk, I try to find this section on a dubbed VHS and I'm sure most of the Country Clubbin readers who've experienced this have found it pretty annoying.
C. Which brings us to exhibit C. Mr. Mesta and Sprinkles. I like to rep the homies and I was digging this edit that they threw up on the facebook. I haven't seen it on any sites yet, so maybe this is the first embed. (Country Club Exclusive going straight to my head!). Good shit out of both of them, and for some reason it kind of reminds me of the two videos above them. Riding it all, doing their own thing. One of the finer points in BMX if you ask me. Plus, if anyone knows where that crazy looking blue and tan cement park is, leave it in the comments. Place looks wild.
D. It's all in the name, Xzibit and Young D. The title of the song is called "Figure it Out." Now go "FIGURE IT OUT, HELGIE!"
I recently found my buddy Mike Davis on facebook the other day, and needless to say, I was stoked. I think I first talked to him in a BMX chat room (remember those!) that was so over-run by barnies, we had to make our own one, mainly dealing with riding street. This is well before I graduated high school, so my mind is a little hazy for details. Either way, we eventually met at the Vans skatepark like so many people from the Bay Area did back in the day. I don't really remember any details from the session, but Mike would always roll with his cousin Brandon, probably about 3-4 other heads, and this dude named Chipper who crammed them all in a gangster looking car. They were all from Vallejo, which seemed like a pretty gnarly drive for a 2 hour, $14 session. They would also take Clif Bar stickers and alter them to say "Clit," thus the infamous CLIT CREW was born.
The first time I met up with Mike to ride street was a pretty epic day. During that time, I was riding with a lot of dudes from Santa Rosa, including Thomas Re, Bryan Porter, Chad Smith, and Garrett Ennis. I'm pretty sure we all mashed up there and met up with Mike and the Clit Crew. We rode this gnarly curved wallride that I would love to go back to if it's still there, some random street spots downtown, and the once great rail banger spot of all time - Glenn Cove.
Back then, around 2003 or 2004, handrails were my thing. It was almost like a right of passage. To this day, a rail will still make me stoked, whether it's 5 stairs, kinked, up, down, backwards, upside down, inside out, you name it. This school in Vallejo, I think it was a rich kid high school or elementary school, had it all. A basic 6 stair, 4 stair, double kinked, long, short, and a triple kinker that took me hella tries to finally do (probably one of the longest rails i've done to date). I can recount details about tricks and stuff, but now, what stands out the most is Mike's willingness to take us to such a dope spot. You really don't get that anymore. Times have changed, and people worry about a spot getting blown up, shut down, snake lines, and other really pointless drama. But Mike knew we liked doing rails, and he was all the more psyched to feed our cravings. I remember Mike was kind of known for not grinding rails, but he watched us, filmed us, and chilled us for the entire time we were there, like 4 hours or something. The spot was unfortunately capped, but to this day, it still was one of the best places I've ridden ever.
In the meantime, I found this video of him riding back in the day and got his permission to upload it. I have a bunch more Clit Crew videos that I will be gradually uploading too, but since he was kind of the early Godfather of editing, filming, and making efforts to blow up the Bay Area street scene, it's only appropriate to start with the real OG. Thanks Mike!
