Back Bone BMX

Russell Brindley AKA Rusty AKA Aussie Russ AKA Mista Barista fired out 3 tricks for the camera on Sunday. Take a lesson!

Friday night was the shop’s premiere for Subrosa’s Get Used To It DVD – we held it out the front & after some delays with a troublesome projector, & a feed from the BBQ we provided, the crowd & myself were able to bear witness to years of hard work & badass riding, condensed down into just under 40 minutes. Filming for a DVD is a tough thing for any crew, it’s something that we are – as a store – only just undertaking & to say that it’s a LOT of hard work would even then be an understatement. Rider obligations to other companies for web videos & content, rider’s location & schedules, injuries.. the amount of excuses not to film a DVD can stack up pretty quickly. And let’s not even start with the rapid-fire, want-it-now BMX content on the internet that unnerves some riders for fear of their clips becoming redundant (in some peoples eyes).

It could be a big claim, but the BMX DVD may just well be the most under-appreciated, yet crucial part of BMX. It serves as a way to time-capsule a period of great riding, a way to engage in watching BMX & talk about it with your friends, rather than making your next mouse click & all will be forgotten. It serves as a way to idolize riders too, which could sound lame, but in a lot of ways idolizing BMX riders, companies & even parts is a part of what has gotten BMX so far. If BMX was forgettable & nothing legendary, we all would’ve abandoned BMX when our drivers license was handed to us. DVD’s have helped with that unexplainable ‘thing’ that you can’t quite put your finger on but know it’s what keeps you coming back to ride your BMX day in, day out. This ‘thing’ about BMX is solidified in your memory & etched into your brain every time you watch your favourite rider over & over again in your favourite section when you get home from work or school.

So with all that in mind, the crew at Subrosa chose the less trodden path of the BMX DVD, which is impressive. They did an incredible job of putting together a really entertaining DVD & most of all, a really serious & straight-to-the-point BMX DVD. Not too much going on in the arty side of it all, but some very subtle art direction & technical video editing made GUTI even more powerful for me. Some videos can be over-cooked with filters, effects & motion graphic which can be distracting. While we’re focusing on the visual, most of GUTI is black & white, which gives justice to Subrosa’s whole image. For a lot of years, Subrosa only ever offered Black & White parts, so to tip the hat to their past with a mostly black & white video is awesome. There’s also something about black & white footage that makes you concentrate more on the riding & gives the riding a raw & powerful aspect to it, which compliments Subrosa’s image perfectly & cements their ‘Don’t Give A F**k, Get Used To It’ agenda for the whole video.

Music can make or break a DVD & in my eyes Subrosa did a great job with the music choice. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but you get a real feel for the type of team & brand Subrosa are & by the sounds of it they are a full throttle bunch. Stoner rock, Psychedelic rock & Metal make the basis for most of the soundtrack.

Onto the riding. It’s ridiculous! The Subrosa crew (apart from Mark Mulville) don’t really ride in a style that I relate to (trails & bowl riding), but I really enjoyed watching this DVD! Lahsaan Kobza has the opening section & it’s one of my favourite. He kills it, doesn’t overdo it with trick cramming & is one of those dudes that makes things look good when he does them. Full blown badass. Joris Coloumb I had never seen anything of prior to GUTI, but he has some incredibly original clips in it & a lot of ‘What?!’ moments for me. Scott Ditchburn’s part had me confused on the technically difficult moves he had going on in his section, let’s just say if you’re chasing some peg inspiration & want to see how far a pegs-hardway has gotten, his section should not be missed. Kyle hart’s part was as rapid-fire as the song, full of original moves & sick fastplant lines. The Skeleton Crew from the world over did not disappoint either & it was sick to see some Raph Jeroma-Williams clips too.
Onto my personal most anticipated section of the video, the Mark Mulville section. First off, let’s get it out of the way that his section is ALL TRAILS. It’s like Mulville decided to take all the combo tricks we had seen in Anthem II & see how far he could take them & get away with. There are so many tricks crammed into this section it’s incredible. Not to mention a lot of it is down the line, back-to-back. Very little setup jumps & very wild moves.
The last two sections belonged to Simone Barraco & Hoang Tran, who both brought real original moves & some incredible lines. It would be hard to pick who deserved the closing section, in the end it was Hoang Tran. Both definitely deserved it though.

In the end, GUTI got me psyched & is one of the best DVDs I’ve seen in a while. Not only did I get to watch a real good DVD, but GUTI had me thinking about the good old days when BMX video & DVDs reigned & were at the front line of providing BMX entertainment. If GUTI can make me think about the timeless videos I watched when I was growing up, then it must be good. Go get your hands on one here, gather round the TV & press play.
- Tyson

Riding in the afternoon when the sun is still up after 6pm is well & truly over in this part of the the country, so stumbling across a few photos of that time is always pretty sweet. A few Tassie friends Hugh, Knobby & Corey were in town for a mainland riding trip at the start of Autumn & camped near the trails. We’d arrive in the morning & they would be busy rolling up their swags, while cooking bacon & eggs over a portable camp stove. In the evening after work they’d be back there after riding the parks during the day & we’d ride the trails again until sundown. It was pretty sweet to see a few dudes that made it a point to be around BMX in some way, shape or form, 24 hours of the day!

As the temperature drops & the days get shorter, sometimes there tends to be a little drop off in the amount of riders at the parks & trails. So if you’re struggling with the thought of braving the cold, remember that riding is fun no matter the temperature, do whatever you can to inspire & motivate yourself & your crew to ride. Sitting around inside.. there will be plenty of time for that when you’re old. Winter & damp, cooler weather generally serves as a great time to build something out of dirt, whether to make some changes or build a new spot – making that Spring & Summer even sweeter when it does arrive. But for now, the forecast looks good (for Canberra anyway), make the most of it!

Thanks to B-Dog AKA Brendan Boeck for the photos!

We’ve been working with our friends at Vinyl for a while, stocking their kickass tees & their incredible new LP DVD (which if you’re a trail builder or an aspiring trail builder I suggest you own). We’ve had quite a few requests over the years for our tees & seats from various USA crew, postage has always been expensive & it’s a bummer. BUT not anymore! We shipped over a bunch of seats to Tom Arkus at Vinyl & sorted out getting our latest Tooth tee printed in the USA by none other than Catty Woods local Matt Trievel at AxelRad. So if you live across the Pacific, the tees are available at both the Vinyl website & our favourite trail website CanYouDigIt BMX – the seats are available exclusively at CanYouDigIt BMX.

Get on! Thanks a lot to Tom @ Vinyl & Matt @ AxelRad for helping to make it happen! Check out the kickass seat promo video above, our seats have never looked so classy.

Sunday was the last day of National Youth Week & we put on a friendly ‘battle’ at Belconnen skatepark to celebrate. We’re never a fan of putting on a ’45 second run’ sort of comp, so instead we held a series of mini-comps & games within the park. There was a game of BIKE, a game of footdown, a fastest time through the snake run, long jump, high jump & an impromptu ‘slowest barspin’ comp at the end, which actually got pretty serious & turned into a ‘what can I do in & out of a barspin’ comp.

In the end, the major prize went out to Aidan Chard, who absolutely destroys it! He went the highest, the longest, almost the fastest & won the game of bike with the elusive backflip.. off a 2ft ramp.

Thanks go out to those who participated! There was a lot of riders in attendance but participation is the key to these sorts of things & we put these on so you can have fun & ride, so thank you if you had a ride & most importantly, had fun.
Check out the photos below & click on them for a caption (& a bigger view).