bmx is cute.

Our lighthearted street riding magnum opus. The full dvd is now online. Thanks once again to everyone who put in work on this.



I think Ben still has a couple of dvd's. If anyone wants a hard copy, feel free to hit us up.

St Louis riders: Joe Albanez, Justin Bukowitz, TJ Henderson, Ryan Johnson, Chris Jones

Seattle riders: Shay Schiefelbein, Andrew Longstreet

Portland riders: Darus Albon, Dustin Anderson, Daniel Hamlett, Caleb Ruecker, Ben Piff, Tony Piff

TRICKS

From the 217 blog. Spotted here on bmxboard last night.

TJ reminds us that there's more to bike riding than just gaps, grinds, and manuals.



Like most of the people who responded to the post, I, too, would have picked a different song for the edit. But this is the same type of stuff that gets used in all the 217 videos, so I guess it's what they're into. The music was not nearly as bad as I expected, after reading everyone's responses and before clicking the link.

DDX responded to the video, "I hate freecoasters," a sentiment generally expressed in reference to the legions of stripped seat Ian Schwartz clones. Not to put too fine a point on a very dead horse, but I call DDX's attention to TJ's four pegs, 2 brakes, and gyro. TJ's freecoaster is, if anything, a midwest Moliterno/Friemuth reference.

...

While we're talking about tricks, I'll mention the Fresh Fish trailer, which turned a lot of heads this Spring, and which I'm sure you won't mind watching again.



The opening bangers belong to Andrew Longstreet, from Everett, Washington, another longtime friend of ours. Andrew's dirt jumping roots are obvious, and if you find his clips kind of "funny," you'll probably dig Andrew's sense of humor. I think this kind of riding illustrates the simplistic inadequacy of the tiresome Style Vs Tricks Debate. Andrew's footage is interesting and wonderful not because of the tricks or the style, but because of the context.

Still haven't heard where to get a copy of Fresh Fish. Is it out yet?

...

Andrew and TJ both have clips in our video, which you should probably purchase. (Buy Now button at the top of this page.) While you're deciding, check out the clip of TJ and Ben in the March 9 Bikes and Coffee post. Then go try to spot young Andrew in the 2003 DailyGrindCrew web video, discussed in last year's July 30 post.

Trailer up.

Put together a "trailer" today and hosted it on Vimeo, but I think it
got pulled down because they don't allow "advertisements." ...So here
it is on YouTube. If you watched the "Call For Footy" video from a
couple months back, you'll recognize some of these shots.



We got some banger clips at the last minute from Andrew Longstreet,
Shay Scheiffelbein, and TJ Henderson, and I feel really privileged.
Editing is all done. Trying not to let myself keep making changes.
Next step is to burn a test dvd to see how everything looks and sounds
on a TV screen. I'll tweak the audio levels, do a little color
correction, and that's it. I've been practicing with iDVD, and the
chapters and menu are done already. Once I've got a master, I may take
it to be professionally duplicated. That's a decision that I've not
made yet. Also not sure how many copies. 500? 100? Gotta' contact
mailorders and see if they want to buy some. I'd love to get a hold of
some old scene videos that people have made, but no one ever has any
copies. I can only conclude that they should have pressed more copies?

History.

In 2003, Ben edited together a three-minute video of our friends to share online. It was simply titled The Dailygrind Crew, referring to the website he was running at the time. First there was the popup-riddled dailygrind.freeservers.com, and, later, once he had filled up his allotment of free web-hosting space, there was the no-less-irritating dailygrind.8m.com domain. The sites remain today as shaky internet relics--a low-tech, unnavigable template; dated fashion and bike parts; youthful faces; and tricks we probably wouldn't bother archiving today. Ben could have taken the sites down, but he chose instead to leave them up as tributes to the happy years documented within.

All nostalgia aside, we were riding our hardest, truly, and I think it shows, on some level. No, that's not Adobe Aftereffects--that's authentic third-generation analog videotape shot with a VHS-C camcorder. To fully appreciate, download in high-res, ~57 mb.

... Or here's the YouTube, where it will just look like normal crap YouTube:


Locations/Riders: Everett, Washington: Phil Lastname, John Lastname, Andrew Longstreet, Shay Shefflebein; St Louis, Missouri: Ryan Johnson, John Haase; Portland, Oregon: Darus Albon and Dustin Anderson; and Ben and myself, jetsetting worldwide, riding and filming. Most of these guys are featured in the new video.

Here's another video Ben and I made in 'o4 or 'o5. Different concept. Call it "street riding." At 7mb, I really think you should just download the .wmv file, but here's the YouTube, in case.


After the session, Ben and I barely managed to load the block into the back of my Oldsmobile station wagon. As it was far heavier than I could lift on my own, it remained in my car for an entire year, ruining my mileage, before I finally dumped the thing in the alley behind our house. I can't imagine someone putting in the energy that removing it would require. It's probably sitting exactly where I left it three years ago. If anyone in STL is interested, I'd be happy to provide directions. And I would hope you'd post footage of whatever ensued.