Boxed Wine Fiasco

Big Time BMX

2009-11-17T20:22:00.003-05:00

Steven Hamilton Interview

2009-11-12T17:03:00.007-05:00

Issue #21 Cover: Steven Hamilton

2009-11-12T11:39:00.004-05:00

I'll upload the Steven Hamilton interview later.
http://disguisedisguise.blogspot.com/

Another Hamilton interview up at Dig: HERE

Mike McHue Interview Issue #1

2009-11-11T17:35:00.006-05:00

Brakeless 16 year old Mike Aitken 2000.

No need for many words to describe this gem of an interview of Mike McHue by "Opie Cords" or Eric Brown. He picked the pseudonym based on the President of the National Bicycle League's affinity for wearing short Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts while strolling the track infield at Nationals. Click on the images to read absurdity.

Nothing Changes

2009-11-08T15:04:00.002-05:00

Written at the beginning of 2002.

So Many Photos, So Little Time

2009-07-13T20:53:00.004-04:00

Ooops. Forgot the shit out of this thing. Pretty much the first day the weather here started to not suck, this blog was neglected. Pedaling around enjoying the outdoors beats the hell out of staying at work an extra couple hours re-hashing stories I've already poorly written once. Neglecting this isn't nearly embarrassing as missing my Dig deadline for article number 2, seriously terrible batting average going on.

Dig is on deadline again, so I am going to attempt to write something this week and will more than likely use this thing for some practice. See you soon?

50 cent taco night at the Belmar, mmmm.

Detachable Penis

2009-05-01T18:27:00.002-04:00

I don't know what made me think of it or how I let it slip my mind to begin with, but I forgot to mention to anyone after my last excursion to Taiwan I learned that some grip makers also make dildos. Injection molded rubber, same process. Maybe seeing Bill O'Reilly on the teevee at the bar made me think of dildos? No one over there seems to really want to discuss it, but what little info I could extract led me to believe, unfortunately, grips and dildos aren't made in the exact same facilities. Still, a pretty sweet connection.

It got me to thinking, I have a large stack of business cards from a wide variety of suppliers with factories in both Taiwan and China, and in reality, among other things, I could start importing sex toys. Which I have no desire to do whatsoever, but, if you are interested for a small fee I could help you import them. Just a thought.

I've been coming in to work late and haven't had the desire to stay here until super late after hours scanning, plus I sort of forgot I had this blog. I do have a new stack of slides to scan, when I find a couple hours I'll get on it.

Cotton Bad

2009-04-14T18:18:00.011-04:00

In such a crowded & nervous city,
I refuse to be the same,
in my own way, with my own style,
I want to be myself,
as free as a fish, walking along the city,
free my own pace,
as I wish..

Taiwan poetry is great, great stuff. (These are q-tips by the way).

Back in the day scooters were plastered with Taiwan poetry, not so much anymore for some lame reason. Luckily there's no shortage on t-shirts. This is possibly the most outrageous shirt I have ever purchased. I don't think I have to balls to wear it though. I don't know if this is the weirdest part of the shirt, but the girl appears to be at the very least, cute.

I wasn't able to capture a "Taiwan mini-van" but it's frightening how many small children and babies you can fit on a scooter.

Night market.

Two seconds after this little girl saw me she collapsed to the ground and began crying.

This type of shenanigans can only go down in SoCal. I showed up to the S&M warehouse to go to lunch and ended up spending the day shooting a porn star. Our buddy Salami, the same dude who set up the Action Sports Sex #11 deal, was the culprit on this as well. I have no idea what they were filming for and haven't the foggiest idea where the footage ended up, if anywhere.

The bummer was these photos could have been amazing, but Mr. Hotshit porn filmer douche wouldn't let me use flashes. I was pretty stunned that Troy McMurray kept his composure the entire day. Marvin Loetterle on the other hand of course acted a fool and said and did stupid shit all day, typical Marvin. Watching Troy eat Del Taco while a pantyless chick squatted two feet from his face was amazing. "Dude, JP, dude, I love tacos, dude."

Pucker Up

2009-04-10T18:51:00.002-04:00

This work week can kiss my ass goodbye. Here we've got adult entertainer Skye Lopez standing at some long gone trails in the 909, they had a name but it presently escapes me. The Action Sports Sex #11 shoot was the weirdest day at work ever, but this "work" day is up there somewhere. I didn't really have any spare time to do scans this week, but I did finish and submit my first article for the Boxed Wine Fiasco column in Dig which went to print this Tuesday. It involves corndogs. More Skye next week.

Leland's Pecker

2009-04-01T11:12:00.035-04:00

I’m still pretty discombobulated from my trip to Taiwan. Making as many decisions as you have to in such a short period of time under somewhat stressful circumstances and surroundings will crush you. I have been meaning to grab a handful of slide and negative sheets but kept forgetting. After waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning every night since being home then staring at the ceiling until I give up and head to breakfast and work at 6, I’m lucky I remember to put shoes on. Keep in mind, on Mondays I get to work after lunch, the rest of the week I arrive between 10:30 and 11:30.

Today I remembered to grab some before heading out the door, since I had already been up for three or four hours, I had time to dig into the bottom of one of the bins instead of grabbing whatever lays on top. I snatched these slide containers you see above. So far I have at least perused quickly what each sheet contained and picked ones I thought would have at least some usable stuff, not so with these, pure freestyle.

There is some real random ass shit here, which makes no sense. Normally, each container would have slides from one roll of film. It could have easily been four sequences of the same non-pulled trick, or the same person at one spot. The following visuals are quite the mix, enjoy.

This is part of a snake run at an extinct 70s skatepark in West Virginia. Some of my slides are marked with the month and year they were developed, we’ve got 06/ 2002 on this guy. Around this period of time Mr. Wizmerski, Bob Scerbo and Corey Martinez were heavy traveling compadres, as such, they spent countless amounts of time searching for spots. Wiz did the background research for this one. One of his techniques was pretending he was an old school gnar dog skater on message boards where he befriended several real gnar dogs that had info on countless finds like this one as well as other defunct parks, pipes, ditches, and pools. The location on this place was vague. We got to whatever city it was, found what we thought was the public park it was in and started asking random joggers if they knew about it. More than an hour later, and there it was. Thanks to all the skaters who spent what had to be an insane amount of time unearthing this beauty.

Brown Dickies Bob Scerbo. What the hell ever happened to that guy?

It’s only Rock n Roll, but he likes it, check it here: The Tombstones.

I’ve spent way too much time on Shitluck road trips. It’s just not healthy for anyone involved. Most of them are going to involve at least a little bit of camping at some point. This campground, the Crosseyed Cricket, was in Tennessee or maybe Georgia or somewhere in between Kentucky and Florida. The Enforcer Mike Tag was driving some shit-box VW rabbit, he used to have an affinity for those things for some reason, and it broke down at the Crosseyed Cricket.

We had places to be, the kids had drugs to do in Florida and we bailed on the car deciding it’d be best to swing back through after Florida and take care of it then. Tag didn’t much care because the car wasn’t his anyway. After a week of living life on the move and getting dumber by the minute, none of us could remember what highway or exit the Crosseyed Cricket was located at. It would have been too sensible to write it down. By some stroke of non-shitluck we tracked it down. All these Shitluck trips over the years have really been comprised solely of dumb motherfuckers, it’s a miracle they’ve gone only as shitty as they have and not worse.

The Enforcer again. This was in Atlanta, and Mike was doing a wallride to table at this exact location on the cover of Faction #17 (I think). It was my birthday so I splurged and got a hotel room downtown, and Mike, myself and Leland went out drinking and dancing and acting a fool. Leland made out with a bigger girl in the back of a truck and we thought we were crazy. Later than us that night the kids got back from scurrying around the streets by themselves. “Leland made out with a fat girl, what’d you guys get into?” “I got a blow job while sitting on a computer monitor from a crackhead lady that was living in a tent in an alley.” Sheesh, kids these days.

Jim Beam, a good start to bad things. I’ve mentioned before, John Povah at Etnies was always good to me during the Faction days. He buys a plane ticket for a back east trip, then pays for a hotel room during a contest weekend and the least I can do is some guerilla marketing for him. Binghamton, NY and one of the Bigglestown Bangers.

Leland’s pecker was bound to show up sooner or later, looks like sooner.

Hidden behind that hand is a BMX Icon.

This same dude the next night, in the same room sans naked broads, accidentally tossed my open camera bag across the room. I tried chasing him down the hall with an ironing board prepared to bash him in the head. Luckily someone grabbed it out of my hands. A lot of people would have been pissed at me if I maimed one of the greats.

Oh, Huggie Duggie. This was the weekend that sparked the Boxed Wine Fiasco revolution. Duggie, Chase Dehart and myself took a trip from Philly down to Austin to escape the harsh winter. There are better pictures to explain where the name came from. It might take another couple years to stumble across them, though. I haven’t seen Huggie Duggie in years and have no clue what has become of him. One of the last times I saw him he was in the filthy bathroom of the Ritz in Austin, TX kneeling on the pee soaked floor sniffing cocaine off the blade of a pocketknife. I think he’s gotten his shit together since then.

Isaac Hoefling at one of Sunday’s old spots that is now probably long gone. This was the first time I’d met Isaac and he was pretty green, just a young boy starting on the path to somewheresville. He’s had some wild adventures since.

A young Chase Dehart. You think he’s a bit socially awkward now? Wow, this was his first road trip, and his social skills were at the bare minimum to function outside of his house. He had knocked his front teeth out just before this, as you can see by the false teeth on his leg there, which he had to remove to nibble on cookies. On more than one occasion I caught him sniffing them.

Huggie Duggie and Chase decided to stay down in Austin, after almost three weeks I had to get back to real life. Plane tickets were too outrageous on such short notice, so I got a rental car and drove back by myself. A solo eighteen-hour drive (or 26?) is a good way to clear your head after an Austin adventure and get back to reality.

A lot of people were stunned when they stopped by any of the numerous Faction “offices” in Philadelphia. What the hell were they expecting? This was the number three set-up during the Philly days, as you can see it was a home office, like, as in my bedroom. There's the command center on the right. If you are wondering where your subscription is, it could have been lying in any one of these piles of crap. This was one of the more dialed spots, fucksake.

Creepy Paul Horan. I gave him that nickname the first time I hung out with him, mainly because he has a creepy vibe. A couple years back he went to prison for selling coke to an undercover cop for a period of six months while on his pizza delivery runs. I’ve spoken to him on and off since then and he’s pulled it together, still creepy nevertheless.

Mark Choquette at Whiteboy’s house in Sleepy Hollow, NY. This is one of those head scratchers. What the fuck was I doing at Whiteboy’s and who was I with?

More Ted Striker. The top one was around the corner from the first Faction “office” in the China Town section of Philly. We were shooting some randoms for possible S&M ads. This was kind of a stupid angle because you couldn’t see how high this was. The launcher and metal thingy were both sitting on the side of the road. He never really slid the icepick, so the photos were unusable.

The B&W photo (a color slide that I converted to B&W cause the scan was turdy) session ended up in an S&M ad for the then new Redneck LT. The trick was the same, but the angle was different. This was also right around the corner from “the Chinese Mansion”, more stories on that hellhole when they pop up. Worst. Office. Ever.

This could be my favorite BMX photo I’ve shot. It has that feel like it could be a James Cassimus shot from Action Now. Comparing any photos I’ve shot to anything he’s ever shot is quite degrading to him. Garrett Byrnes on Van Homan’s old driveway mini, CW bars. What in the flying fuck is LinkedIn?

Mei Wenti

2009-03-20T16:37:00.019-04:00

Mei wenti translates to "No problem!" I'm currently in Taiwan, the first day here I spent at the Taipei International Cycle Show ogling some of the most heinous bicycles (and other wheeled contraptions) ever assembled by mankind. I can only imagine someone posed the question "Can you make me the shittiest looking "fixie" ever?" Mei wenti!

Sometimes I think I have a heart and a little compassion for hapless people. Some poor bastard put a decent amount of money, time and effort into the above turd that will fail miserably, leaving in its wake a path of financial ruin. In the end, it's just too idiotic to feel those things.

Taipei was hit and run. I spent a full day at the show after a grueling 26 hour door to door journey, and too be honest, that was about all I could handle. Now I'm down in Taichung, as you can sort of make out from this pic, the air quality right now is piss poor.

Scooters, or motorcycles as they call them here, are everywhere. In Taipei they run the streets with absolute reckless abandon, Taichung riders have a bit more reserve. It's not uncommon to witness an entire family on one scooter. Yesterday I saw an elderly grandma with an infant strapped to her back hop on a scooter piloted by her daughter who had her toddler standing between her legs on the platform, frightening. Neither of those kids were long for this world. My goal is to document at least one absurdly freighted scooter.

I think I have finally discovered my million dollar idea, importing canopies for personal mobility devices, or Rascals as I prefer to call them. When the weather breaks in Binghamton I will be able to document the huge Rascal scene. It's really an epidemic. I've never seen a canopied Rascal in the States, and I'm positive those poor bastards have no idea what they are missing. I will change their lives for the better.

This appears to be a very unhappy ending massage if you ask me. Enough about Taiwan, there's an abundance of extremely weird shit to get into here, but I haven't partaken in any of it the four times I've been over so far. Maybe one of these days.

England's very own Paul Roberts aka Grotbags shot these two gems. I think this girl's name was Nicole, and the dude, obviously Nasty. These accompanied an interview and a bit of controversy. If you saw Nasty Dawg's Defgrip interview you know he's prone to make some off the cuff remarks during interviews. I wasn't involved in the process whatsoever, but I gathered after Nasty's agent called me, maybe him and Grotbags puffed on a few too many bad boys and Nasty was a bit too loose lipped.

So this agent of his called me late one night yelling at me telling me I had to pull the magazine off the newsstands. I don't think I used the term fuck off specifically, but that was my tone. She wasn't impressed with this response or being called lady. I hung up after the entertainment value wore off and never heard from her again.

Evidently, Nicole was on a modeling show while dating Nasty and spent most of her time on the phone with him balling. Apparently she was a front runner, but constant emotional break downs over Cory sabotaged her chances. Imagine the trim this dude has pulled?

I got word that Kevin Porter wasn't happy about my reporting that he has (or had, I haven't seen the guy in years) a severe case of diarrhea of the mouth. I like how he does supermans, that's a positive statement. I have no recollection why I was shooting photos of him at the Hidden Valley trails in SoCal.

This is another one that I have no idea why this occasion occurred. Vic Murphy, Home Ave. ditch San Diego. What an amazing combo, I'm totally into it. Amurrica and Jesus, he lost me there.

I like this photo because you can tell he didn't launch exactly how he wanted, but still boosted massively. Josh Heino on a very, very weird 411 Video BMX trip. What a failure that attempt was. Myself, Heino, Bobo Morales, Josh Stricker and Ian Morris headed from SoCal to Texas and back. The 411 dudes name was Anthony Moreschi, former Ten Yard Fight member, nice guy, absolutely weird to travel with. You'd think 411 would have a bit of money to throw around, of course they did, was any of it spent on this trip? Ah, hell no. I can only handle so many blood stained sheets and cock roach infested hotels in a row.

Fun was definitely had despite the low budget atmosphere. It would be impossible not to get into a decent amount of shadyness with this particular crew. I remember stopping at a random porn store/ jack shack and walking in on a drug deal going down, and Bobo dropping a ten through the peep show slot accidentally and demanding change. The highlight of the trip didn't revolve around the usually debauchery. It came in the form of Jimmy Buchans' infamous tail tap run at a contest in Austin. I've never seen a crowd of BMXers so visibly confused. Still to this day I can't believe that guy tried a tail tap for 3 straight minutes and never pulled it. I know it seems less memorable than pleasuring yourself to nude women, but it was one of the most surreal riding moments ever.

F-L-O-R-I-D-A.

It's 6am and I've been up for three hours and have a full day of work ahead. I don't feel like proofreading this mess for crappy spelling and poor grammar, I wouldn't know it if I saw it anyway. I'm going to an outdoor market/ freak show with Mcgoo on Sunday...I will finally witness the underbelly of Taiwan weirdness.

The Longest Yard

2009-03-15T19:59:00.007-04:00

Seriously, a never ending process. Weirdest journey ever getting these shoes done. I've been scrambling at work all day trying to get ready to zoot over to Taiwan on Tuesday. Not enough time and too much to do. Besides making MORE revisions to shoes, we've got 14 completes coming down the pike this year if you include all the colorways, add to that a couple hundred other things. I know people hate the word colorway, I don't make the rules, I just follow them, sorry.

I'll be hanging with this dude for at least a hot second, King Kong. Sweet dude. To say the majority of dogs are treated less than humane in Taiwan would be a huge understatement. I was glad to see his dog is well taken care of and happy. It makes up for his lack of missing fingers, usually the biggest factor in determining whether I'm stoked on the vendor or not, digit lossage.

Instead of posting squirrely photos from the archives, over the next week and a half I'll try to post up some sketchy Taiwan action if I'm not too busy sleeping or working. Enjoy the decent weather in the northeast while I'm gone, assholes.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

2009-03-13T19:38:00.013-04:00

A rare street riding photo of Chris Moeller, S&M Bicycles proprietor, taken during Props Mega Tour 2 or 3 in Philadelphia, PA. I lost count after Road Fools 13 to be quite frank. Where do I start with this crazy canine? After you’ve known a person more than twenty years, you are bound to learn a thing or two about them. Chris likes to get beat up, in fistfights, by men or women. Maybe he doesn’t like it, but he sure isn’t afraid of it. I witnessed him threaten to rip off a one armed tow truck driver’s good arm and beat him with it. It wasn’t shocking to hear about the time a girl was gouging his face with her high heels while her friend beat him about the skull with a huge metal pipe. The greatest beat down I personally witnessed was at some shitty spot in Orange County, CA on cheap beer night. Before Dave Clymer spiraled out of control into a speed induced paranoia and began roaming the streets, back alleys, dog houses and dumpsters of Westminster all while dragging around his trunk full of door hinges for eight grueling years, he was good at getting us out of the house to do stuff. We were surrounded by every conceivable early 90s OC douchebag cliché you can imagine, more than likely not much different than it is right now.

Chris was chatting up Busty Rusty, as she called herself, towards the end of the night. Imagine a red haired stripper with large fake boobs, Busty Rusty. I guess he smarted off to her friends and a huge dog pile on top of him broke out. Slammed, punched, stomped, kicked. The pile was so thick with dudes there was nothing we could do by the time we noticed it was him. We got kicked out pretty much instantly, except for Chris. Where was he? The rest of us sat outside on the curb waiting for a few minutes. The crew of douchmeisters who served him the pummeling were high-fiving each other and laughing as they exited the place. Then, out charges Chris, screaming, full speed at them. The biggest of them calmly squared up and punched him right in face as he karate kick launched at the dude. Boom, down he went. Slammed, punched, stomped, kicked again. The same dudes kicked his ass TWICE in five minutes. The cops showed up, Dave needed to pee, Ms. Officer wouldn’t let Dave pee, Dave finally ended up in the back of her patrol car. Dave went to jail for the night after he peed in her cruiser.

This one was found smushed in the corner of one of the storage bins. Kind of a lucky find really, as there were only 22 covers, Faction cover #18 as you can see noted on the negative sheet, also on Mega Tour. Stricker isn’t a big fan of me telling stories about him, so I won’t. He’s drunk, he’s out of control, he walks like a T-Rex, speaks in shrieking noises. Same shit everyone has heard before.

Mister Wizmerski, West Philly. I made a trip from Cali to meet up with Wiz to shoot an interview. This was well before the incarnation of Rock 'n Roll Wiz, it was pretty mellow the whole time. J.V. Homan the Third was kind enough to lend me his MTB to get around on during my stay. Holy crap was I out of shape. We did laps around the greater Philly area scouring Wiz’s multiple spots. Several years later the two of us were driving down to Alabama to shoot photos of someone else, he had a bum knee and had borrowed the same MTB to cruise around on during the trip. About halfway down from PA, my hitch mounted bike rack unlatched and fell open leaving the MTB bouncing down the road. We got off at the next exit to turn around and retrieve it and the car behind us told us someone in a truck pulled over and took it a split second after it was done careening down the road. Twenty-two or so years earlier Wiz fell out of his high chair as a baby and bonked his head real bad, he’s had shit luck ever since.

If any of you out there are long time fans of S&M, you know this guy getting schooled, Chris Stevenson. He was a good guy to have around. He was funny, easy to pick on and a real sweetheart of a fellow. If he wasn’t, Moeller wouldn’t have turned the other cheek while he was “secretly” drinking on the job for ten years. I think he would have been better off if he had switched his game up, blow lines of coke during the week and get shit-faced drunk on the weekends.

Pictured with Stevenson is one time S&M sales dude and former professional BMX racer, Brian “Bogi” Givens. For some odd reason, Stevenson was convinced he could take Bogi in a game of hoops. I know I didn’t mention Stevenson has no knees, but did I mention Bogi was a one time professional athlete? Moeller set up the match, piled everyone into the work van and headed down to the courts during lunch break. It’d be safe to say maybe Moeller antagonized him a bit. A massacre ensued. Notice in the picture Bogi is effortlessly, stylishly gliding through the air, while Stevenson does a stiff legged, two inch hop. Who would you have taken in a bet? The dude wearing checkered Vans and a mesh trucker hat or the dude with knee high socks and space age looking Nikes?

I never got to know Vic Ayala very well. I met him and Edwin at the same time. They told me I was pretty cool for a rich guy. Too funny. This is the same bank to fence as the Moeller photo.

Rob Darden at FDR. Out of all the years I lived in Philly, I only shot photos there twice. I'm not a morning person, and I'd rather avoid the wrath of grumpy gnar dogs. Rob was kind of an oddball fit for S&M, but he ended up fitting right in on what I believe was his first group trip. Hell, I think it was everyone's first trip together as a "team." The legend of Neck Harden was also born during this time.

I love to hate Marvin. See that chick's reaction? Plenty of people have the same when they encounter Marv. "No Marvin, I don't think you should go talk to your ex chick's new dude. It's just a bad idea." Marvin gets punched in the face within two seconds. "No Marvin, I think it's a bad idea to go over to her apartment." Marvin punches her window out. Who has to sit in the hospital waiting room until 5 a.m.? Me, that's who. Fucking Marvin.

Rachel Kenney, former Hurley girl. Rooftop pointed her in our direction and she ended up in several of the BMX Action issues, even the cover of #2. Robo's ex old lady Ane Jens shot this. I asked Rooftop about her about a year ago, he heard she was strung out on coke and was living in a garage with her fifty year old boyfriend. Ouch. Dating Shifty Shellshock can never lead to anything good.

Backside Boneless

2009-03-11T16:32:00.017-04:00

Minersville, PA. I only went there once, unfortunately, but it takes only one visit to feel the power of the place. If you have never sat in Pennsylvania woods while ogling perfectly sculpted mounds of earth as they are effortlessly bombarded by skilled dirt pilots, your journey as a BMX voyeur is truly incomplete. Shawn Shoener was the main revivalist and digger during my visit, X-Up peak lip launcher.

This is Kevin Porter being interviewed by Chris Rye for his closing statements on the last day of Props Road Fools 9 in the California (?) desert. I had a long running agreement with KP during the first years that I was stuck being in social situations with him. You see, although he's a genuinely nice dude, he's also beyond irritatingly chatty. Like, massive diarrhea of the face. To thwart off being bukkaked in the face with verbal diarrhea, we agreed that every time we crossed paths, I'd give him whatever change I had in my pocket when I was done listening to him talk. He was always penniless and I didn't want to listen to him talk usually for more than 30-45 seconds. How long do cordial pleasantries between acquaintances really need to be dragged out? Win win situation.

Notice that mountain in the background? Another complete loon on the trip was Ryan "Biz" Jordan. He was certain he could run up the mountain in less than, I don't remember exactly, but it was a pretty short amount of time to run to the peak of a mountain. Money was collected, Biz did one toe touch stretch and off he went, full retard strength...reaching the peak just under the time limit. I was standing at a urinal next to him once and he was arguing with his girlfriend on the phone, "You're not my father, I don't have to respect you." His thoughts on life are absolutely unique, and I could listen to him all day.

How did Brian Foster's gold, bronze and 2 silver X-Games medals end up draped around this porn performer's neck? She got paid 100 bucks. Not to shoot this specifically, that was just a coincidence. Her porn name was Drew, either she thought she looked like Drew Barrymore or someone lied and told her she did. I've got a bunch of shots of her in various stupid poses holding a variety of BMX products. Also, I didn't shoot this, Dave Cabrerra did. No clue what happened to the kid. I got so frustrated paying him $25 for photos and dealing with his shit attitude, I picked up a camera and started shooting myself. He launched my photography career, this term used loosely.

Money shots. I got paid $500 bucks for a shot that was within a few frames of this and looked almost identical used for an Etnies Josh Stricker ad. Thanks John Povah. He was always good to me, buying plane tickets and paying good loot. Van Homan spent a few years about an hour outside of Philly living in the first house he bought, and he was always asking people to make the trek out and visit him. To entice people and keep himself entertained as well, he built ramps like this one and bought a jacuzzi. I never even dipped a toe in it, mainly because 90% of the time I was there it was filled with naked dudes.

If there's one thing OSHA is dead serious about, it's safety in the workplace. Whether it's keeping metal shards out of a machinists eyes or protecting a porn starlet from receiving an eyeball shot of baby batter, OSHA is on the case.

Signage, logo placement, whatever you want to call it, it's a basic marketing tactic. I think it's safe to say S&M got maximum exposure out of this scene, which ended with the chick laying on her back, the same one as above, being pile drived in her butt. What a crazy day at work this was. Can't be sure if the S&M logos and frames were the first thing you noticed, maybe it was the dude yanking his ding dong back handed? They all did it that way, there weren't any fluffers, so each dude walked around stroking back handed to get ready or keep it ready for the scene. I could go on and on really, but I'll leave it at it's not every day a dude walks around your workplace wearing only socks and construction boots stroking his ding dong back handed. Action Sports Sex #11 S&M warehouse -

From the Liner Notes: 'The riders from BMX Action and S and M have teamed up with Robby D. to bring you another gonzo destroyng adventure. Big air, big tits, and sick sex on BMX!"

Yup, that about sums the experience up.

And Away We Go

2009-03-10T18:15:00.014-04:00

I've been lugging bins full of "archived" slides and negatives around for the past 8 or 9 years. They almost went the way of all the other crap I had been dragging around with them relating to BMX Action/ Faction. I guess to someone who hadn't been burdened with the thankless task, there was probably a treasure trove of BMX bullshit piled up. The only thing I truly regret unloading was the entire body of digital files, you know, the ones we sent to the printers. Every page, every Ad...tossed carelessly, without regard into a South Philly dumpster. Oops. I was relieved at the time, though. I think the term is cathartic. I haven't looked lately, but I'm pretty sure I still have almost half the printed catalog of 22 issues.

Today I got a new scanner with the sole purpose of digging through what appears to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 negs and slides, and posting them online. If I can remember who, what, when, where or why, I'll try to relate at least a bit of info on each photo. I grabbed the first few files laying on top of one of the crammed bins, figuring it was as good a starting point as any. I don't have a light table or loupe, so, even if its quality is turdy, I'll more than likely post it anyway.

This kid was wondering around (or maybe he was just wandering around) at the Backyard Jam in Hastings, England held in the beginning of July 2002. He has lots of ice cream on his face. Grammar and spelling and words and typing and stuff isn't my strong suit.

This here slide is full of filth and grit, literally, not just 'cause it's a shot of Stricker. I tried for 3 minutes to figure out the dust and scratch fixer upper mode on the scanner, then gave up. I like this shot because a magazine photo snob dude wouldn't bother ever showing it in public. It's not sharp by any means. I dig it for its rawnesss, which is how non-magazine quality photographers describe their poorly lit and sub quality photos, edgy will suffice as well. A fastplant booster is always good in my book. Dusseldorf, Germany on the same trip as the ice cream face kid above.

It's mildly difficult piecing the timeline of this together. I'm 51% positive the Backyard Jam was the first thing we attended on this particular trip before we darted over to Europe. Regardless, we (there were 8 or 9 or 10 of us on a loosely organized, completely unorganized trip all crammed into one van) ended up adopting Ryan Barrett for about a week, even though none of us had ever met the dude. Good guy, good rider as you can see. This journey reinforced my disdain for Marvin Loeterlle, and Crazy Little Scary Derek Devil Adams carried a ginormous suitcase with him the whole trip, stuffed with folded t-shirts, he lint rolled every one before he wore them. Fuckin' hell.

Well, yeah. I have a fair amount of shots like this, half nude or fully nude women (and the occasional dude, Leland Thurman) in random unplanned nakedness. April of 2001, on my birthday at the original Mesh Skatepark in Florida about 5 miles from where I grew up and not too far from the high school I graduated from. For some reason my dad is convinced I didn't graduate from high school, which is weird. I lived with him the two times I dropped out of college. Chad DeGroot was the conduit for this night. This lady and her friend at the beginning of the party announced "When we drink Jager, anything happens," and sure as shit, Jager started raining from the skies and by the end of the night this lady was totally nude and covered in red tribal inspired house paint.

If anything can make a lady look more kooked than standing in front of a barrel fire covered in red tribal inspired house paint, I'd venture to say this "grind box" scenario is it. Oddly enough this happened towards the beginning of the night well before the barrel fire tribal ceremony. Everything in between was equally as un-lady like. More soon.