“Road Rash” courtesy of Settles Bridge skatepark and my lack of skills. This stupid thing hurt SO BAD last night, it was practically impossible to sleep. Little better today. The fun phase where it isn’t bleeding but oozing some kind of clear sticky liquid is pretty much wrapped up though. It’ll be a couple of days til the tasty scab phase.
Yesterday I was over at Duncan Creek Skatepark drinking some beers and being the “creepy old guy riding a bike in a somewhat sloppy manner”. The place was practically empty except for one skater who was actually kind of rinsing the street area good and proper. After a while he said he was about to bail and hit Settles Bridge, which I had never heard of, so he filled me in on the details. This morning I decided to head on over…
Not that big, but pretty sweet! I got there about 11:30AM so I had the place to myself for about 1.5 hours, which was enough time for me to get a little feel for the place without looking to silly in front of a slew of heavy hitters. One interesting thing that happened is that I immediately rolled in on the tallest wall of the park. Liquid courage probably had something to do with that. I’ve been to duncan creek a bunch of times and still won’t roll in even on some of the smaller walls, so now I expect that when I go back there I’ll have some new opportunities open up since I know I can pull it on some bigger walls.
Settles Bridge has a couple if sick hips to mess around with, and a smooth entry into any of the bowls from either side. I damn near lost it a few times trying little (and I do mean little) airs on those hips. After a while I tried to focus less on where the airable places were and more on connecting lines and just carving, which was a lot of fun.
About half hour before I left a couple skaters showed up. I figured it was my time to get outta there, but before I left I wanted to take one more run. Of course on the very last line of the day my back wheel got hung up on the coping of one of the tallest walls and I ate it big time. One of the skater guys was quick to check my status and help me get my bike out of the bowl. I havce to give it up for the last few skaters I have run into while riding, they have been super cool to me and I def felt no biker vs skater type vibe at all which was awesome.
The whole time I was riding there I kept thinking how sick it would be to see some real actual -good riders- work that place. I may head up there at some point to scope it out spectator style.
anyway, the park was way nice, check it out if you have a chance
380 Johnson Rd
Suwanee, GA 30024
I wonder if they are having a “Harvest Jam” BMX contest at Skatepark of Athens this year? I am so out of the loop. The 2008 one was a blast and I got some great photos.
In other news, rumble strips suck if you are on a bike. The ones in the picture are from Peachtree Industrial Blvd, which is a road I am unsure if it is even legal to ride a bike on. It’s a divided highway with a grass median in the middle. Occasionally I have seen other folks riding there, but not many, so maybe we are all just “getting away with it”. Anyway, the rumble strips are freakin gnarly and as you can see, if you want to avoid them then you have to ride the edge that basically puts you almost out into the road. Since people whizzing by in cars are unaware of the rumble strips unless they run off the road, when they pass a biker who is hugging the outside edge they most likely think that they are doing it to -claim space-, which does nothing to help the car/cyclist relations around here. From the drivers perspective we are just smug cyclists trying to hog up their road. The sad thing is, it would be perfect if they would have ran the rumble strips up to the edge of the white line and then left some blank space at the furthers right edge of the shoulder. The same goal would have been accomplished, and the cyclists could have had a much safer way to use the road. Oh well. Just furthers my belief that ALL the bad road engineers get sent to Georgia.
While I was out and about I passed by Board & Bike, which wasn’t open but had this rad vintage Schwinn Collegiate on display in the window. It has just the right amount of wear to let you know it isn’t a restore, it has just been well taken care of. LOVE the generator lights. I am betting that this is an American made bicycle. Classy move for them to give this some window time.
Right now, the riding weather here in Georgia is PERFECT. Mid 70′s, no humidity, not too windy and lots of Fall color. I hope you are getting to take advantage of it.
Finally got the Joe Kid on a Sting-Ray DVD. Yes I know it has been out for a few years, but the pirated version someone gave me wouldn’t play correctly, plus ultimately I hope a little of the cash I laid out for it finds it’s way back to the folks who put forth the effort to make it.
So how did I like it? I loved it! So rad to see all the old school footage from the early southern California scene…so real and so pure. It was pretty interesting to see some of my boyhood heroes outside the confines of BMX Action Magazine and actually get a feel for what their personalities were like in real life. It was also great to finally learn the correct pronunciation of “Scot Briethaupt“.
I’m pretty stoked that they didn’t ignore the East Coast scene, with notable inclusions of Rockville BMX and The Plywood Hoods (York PA).
If you didn’t live, breath and shit BMX through most of your childhood, the film will probably not have the same impact as it does on an “old school head / low budget soul rider” like myself, but it is still worth the watch just to see some of the rare footage.
I am giving them bonus credit for having a grand total of only like 3 flips in the whole thing, because this is a video about BICYCLE MOTOCROSS not circus acts. That being said, there is plenty of - late 80′s pastel color coordinated full uniform corporate sell out- early freestyle footage.
Suprisingly, the riding I seemed to like the most was Dizz Hicks. He just had something totally different going on. Pat Romano kind of tried to cop a bunch of credit for things he may or may not deserve credit for, which is kind 0f to be expected since his approach was from the artistic cycling scene and not so much BMX, so he may not have been aware of any parallel or preceding history from the BMX scene. I am suprised that they didn’t mention how he also used to perform his act on ice, which was played up heavily in BMXA when he became a full fledged trick team member if memory serves me correct.
Perry Kramer made me kind of sad yet at the same time hopeful. You could tell a dramatic difference in his personality between the two major portions of interview footage of him they spliced throughout the film. At least they gave proper respect to the PK RIPPER, which I and a zillion other people think was the most perfect BMX bike ever made…at least during the true “golden era” of the sport.
Overall, I am glad I bought the vid, and recommend you try to catch a viewing if you get a chance. After you watch it, you’ll probably want to go out, find a suitable location, and bust a big flat tabletop. Nuff said.
Finally hit the skatepark for the first time this year. Just carved around and did some little airs. I am scared to go too gonzo because I don’t have hea lth insurance. You think about things like that when you are old. I did notice that drinking beer seemed to make the whole session more enjoyable, but the cop lurking around the parking lot kind of sketched me out. Good thing I know how to drink covertly. Can’t wdait to go back again. Pictured is my Giant Modem from a zillion years ago, which I bought used for $80 after I destroyed the rear triangle of my mountain bike riding it in the bowl.
wicked news! RT @ESPN_BMX: The 40 Yard Skatepark – new bike friendly park that’s opening in Atlanta, Georgia http://ow.ly/16zH5e
You know…I’m an idiot. My sleep schedule is completely reversed, which means I am up ALL night. So I have been watching the live race tracker of the FM24.08 race, and it only JUST NOW, at 4:30am, dawned on me that if I would have left for downtown a few hours ago I could have gotten some great photos from multiple locations along the race route, and I could have kicked it at Johnnys Pizza mixing and mingling with the bikey people. Maybe next year. Dang.
The race tracker is pretty cool though.
At least I am awake in time to go to Duncan Creek this morning. My calf injury is -almost- completely better, but I still have some stiffness. I am still walking with the sort of limp that would remind you of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor when they first get to jail in Stir Crazy and are trying to look like tough guys.
Yesterday I went, but I took it waaaaaaay easy. I am pedaling a little weird because I still don’t have the full range of motion, but I wanted to get out there and carve around a bit. I still pulled a few double pegs on the 1/4 pipe. My buddy Terry learned feeble grinds. He hopped up on one of the ledges and coasted one about a good ten feet and rode out of it like he has ben doing them a zillion years.
A couple of nights ago I was feeling all nostalgic and decided to search around and see if I could find some pics of my old stomping grounds from “back in the day”. I was pretty suprised to actually find some!
The first concrete park I ever rode was an old busted late 70′s era park that had been left to rot in Edgewood MD on Rt 40. My aunt lived in Belcamp, and I was constantly being driven to her hut for visits. One day I saw what I thought was a big concrete berm off to the side of the road, but somewhat concealed because it was down in a little valley. On the way home from that trip I made my mom pull over so I could see if it really was a skatepark…and it was! It looked freakin scary as hell.
The place was dying, but that didn’t matter. I just HAD to ride this joint. Unfortunately I was between rides at the time, so I didn’t get to ride the park til Christmas day (about 4 months later), which was spent out at my aunts. I had gotten a custom Skyway T/A for xmas, and I rode it all the way from Belcamp to the park, which had to be at least 7 or 8 miles in the freezing freakin cold.
The place consisted of two different snake runs and a big horribly designed bowl. This is the view from the top of one of the snake runs. If you went over the edge of that far transition, you dropped like 25 feet. I actually saw some guy jumping it on purpose one day. I thought he were freakin nuts. It was Brian Foster. He was at this place a lot because he lived pretty close. Wheel Power was the shop the local tough guys got sorted out by.
This photo is taken from the same spot but looking over at the rest of the park. One of the hot lines was to start at the top of the hill you can see in the distance to the top right, sweep around the berm, and then air out on the opposing wall. We would usually do this and land back on the incline we had just ridden down to get speed. One day out of the blue, Brian Blyther shows up with Spike Jonez and they are taking pics (they were in MD for a demo the day before at Rockville or something)…Brian takes the same line to start but then airs all the way across the dirt waaay down into one of the snake runs. It doesn’t sound that tough, but this pic is decieving. To get a feel for the scale, take a closer look at the picture and realize that there are actually 3 skaters standing on that far incline. It doesn’t look steep either but when you were standing up there it was no joke. Brian clipped his rear wheel on the lip trying that line and got a pinch flat, so I sorted him out with a tube. I always had tubes in my car in those days.
Here is a view of the main bowl, with someone riding around the vert edge. You can see how badly shaped this bowl was…the transition actually started to level off towards horizontal before abruptly kicking to full vert. The thing was horrible. There was no way you could do a proper air in it…no one was even stupid enough to try. You would just ride around the perimeter and sort of jump out of it right about the place the photographer is standing. You can also see the ring around where the bowl was usually filled up with water. I don’t know how many skateboards were ion that thing, but there were a lot. One of the snake runs butted right up against this bowl and if you lost your board and it went flying into air, most likely it was going in the drink never to be seen again. Yes it was as scary and as sketchy as it looked, but we loved this place. I was hardly a local, but I would get out there every chance I could. All edgewood pics are from the House of Steam blog.
Years later someone told me about Landsdowne. Landsdowne was a park that someone tried to open commercially in the middle of some neighborhood, but it never actually opened due to some sort of opposition. The thing is, the park was already completelt constructed by the time the opposition happened, so instead of dozing it, the county just let it ride..er uh, let us ride…whatever.
This is a fairly recent pic of the place. Once again it was first wave skateboard style snake runs, but this place was in way better shape than the edgewood park. In this pic, you can see two freshly planted trees on the left…that was all dirt when I rode here. Word is that the county gave the place a facelift not too long ago and tried to make it legit…enforcing helmet/pad rules etc, but eventually it just went back to the way it should be..free and underground.
Believe it or not, this park of the park rarely got used. It doesn’t really look it, but the walls are actually a little tight for riding a bike on. Mainly though, othert portions of the park were just more fun.
You can see the lighter colored cement where they paved over some sections that used to be asphalt. The main bad ass rider when we went there was a guy named Mike Forney. Man he could freakin rinse it!
I had stopped riding for a while, but then built up a Profile frame and fork with some Mongoose Pro Class wheels and green comp stadium tires, so I would have something to putt around on. I lugged that thing over to Landsdown one day because I heard there was going to be a contest there. Some dude named Hal was running the show, representing a little company he had started called 2B Homecooked or something like that. I dunno I think they ran a zine and had out some shirts…real lo-fi kinda scene. The place was swarmed with bikes (unusual for that era) and after a while he was running around trying to get people to sign up to compete. He came up to me and I was like “you’re joking right?”. I didn’t even have enough for the entry fee…but he was like “just give me a couple of bucks man and do it”, so I did. It was fun and there were some guys there doing some seriously sick stuff. To my suprise, I ended up getting the “Most soulful rider of the day” award, which was a big ugly chalice looking ornamental glass cup with a 2B sticker on it. I cherished that thing for years and I am really sad that I don’t still have it. A few months afterwards, Mike Forney gave me a copy of the Homecooked zine which the contest was featured in, and I got a photo in there busting a nice flat table over the one air-able hip…I still it somewhere among my memorabilia. I’m sure I’ll dig it out and put up a scan or something someday…
Ahhh, if I could only go back to those days. On the other hand…having had to ride parks like these, I feel like I -really- appreciate how slick places like Duncan Creek are. I guess thats why I feel like I should ride as much as I can and not take having a park that close for granted.
