Monday, June 1, 2009

Jon Byers Wants To Punch Me In The Face

Well, not me specifically, I guess. But ESPN posted the second part of their interview with Eastern's Jon Byers, and it included a question about people who aren't too receptive to Eastern's "innovations." This was his answer:

Well there is no shortage of hate or s**t-talking. Some kids just don't want change and progression and anything new to them is 'dumb.' If BMX didn't change and progress, all the bikes might still be 40lbs. You have to be open-minded to new technologies, processes, materials and ideas. It doesn't bother me, and if I have the pleasure of meeting one of these 'Internet' kids face to face, I'm going to teach him the proper way to eat a knuckle sandwich.

This, I totally agree with. Obviously anyone who dislikes your product is "hating," and the proper way to deal with said "hating," as a mature business owner, is to threaten people with violence. Henry Ford used to do the same thing. Heck, maybe if Rick Wagoner had punched some people in tha face, GM wouldn't have gone bankrupt: "Just shut up and buy the fucking Escalade, asshole!"

Anyway, there's a lot more to it, and it's worth reading in its entirety. One of the other things he says is this: "Ill-informed kids are buying stuff because it weighs five ounces lighter when they should put more weight into what they plan to do with it when making their purchasing decision." Now that's worth remembering, no matter what brand you buy. Thinking: It's better than a punch in the face.

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

A wise man once said you should never go to Interbike unless you wanted to get beat up by a drunken lunatic. I believe that was me.

Russ said...

You wouldn't hit a guy in a beard, would you?

JETT! said...

I would.

Anonymous said...

Not me personally attack you, but you certainly would get assaulted. Speaking of "in beards", I had a gay biker tell me he wanted to bury his face in my beard a couple weeks back, creepiest moment of my life. I made him buy me a shot.

Turtle Dick said...

http://aversionbmx.blogspot.com/2009/06/clean-snapper.html

Kurt Schmidt said...

Great post.

Russ said...

The days when I looked forward to getting beat up by drunk lunatics are long past. Or they never happened. One or the other. If I can't remember, it's probably the former, though.

Lettusdude said...

I'm not really a big fan of Easter. I don't hate 'em, but all of their complete bikes I've ridden have felt flimsy to me. My friends grim reaper seems solid enough, surprisingly, but he's of the smooth freecoasting type rider.

Why any company rep would publicly say he wants to punch someone in the face is beyond me. It's almost as bad as what Mcgoo posts on his Snafu blog

Lettusdude said...

I'm not really a big fan of Easter. I don't hate 'em, but all of their complete bikes I've ridden have felt flimsy to me. My friends grim reaper seems solid enough, surprisingly, but he's of the smooth freecoasting type rider.

Why any company rep would publicly say he wants to punch someone in the face is beyond me. It's almost as bad as what Mcgoo posts on his Snafu blog

Lettusdude said...

*Eastern.

I like Easter. There's always lots of food and drinks.

Michael said...

I hope one day he does hit me in the face with an eastern frame and it breaks in half

Eddie Haskel said...

"knuckle sandwich"

He just lost any cred he had with that... this ain't "Leave it to Beaver".

digahole said...

Come on, it's at least a little bit leave-it-to-beaver-ish. Mr Cleaver teaching his boys the ways of the world.

As for the rest of the cast you can divide these amongst yourselves:

"bachelors like globe-trotting, yarn-spinning Uncle Billy, free-loading Jeff, the tramp, and Andy, the alcoholic handyman" (wikipedia)

Anonymous is making fun of Eastern, again said...

I feel so empowered by Eastern's temper tantrum. *biggrin*

Jon Byers : please, change your diaper.

Russ said...

You'll be the one with the badge made out to ANONYMOUS, right? I'll watch out for you, tough guy.

Anonymous is making fun of Eastern, again said...

I have a punching bag in my room with a picture of smug face Jon Byers glued to it.

*BIFF* *BIFF* *BIFF* *PKOWW!*

Anonymous said...

What kind of jock threatens a dude on a blog for stating his opinion on bike parts? And threatening someone without giving your name? Get the fuck out of here.

traskVT said...

"Anonymous said...

What kind of jock threatens a dude on a blog for stating his opinion on bike parts? And threatening someone without giving your name? Get the fuck out of here."


that's so ironic it hurts. yet still awesome.

sam stanfield said...

well i guess ill informed kids keep buying eastern because it weighs five ounces lighter. fucking grim reaper? gimme a break, o wait, they do. in multiple pieces if you're lucky. bring back leigh's old 2003 ace of spades. thats the eastern i remember. that fucker was a tank and took everything i threw at it with a smile in the gash on the downtube.
word ver: houty

TraskVT said...

oh man, Russ, feel free to go to town with this one.... actually, i don't even think words will suffice...

http://www.macneilbmx.com/blog/2009/05/spanish-bbs-are-the-shit/

Unknown said...

rofl at anonymous posting as me on the macneil boards. Can you post as me here as well? It will alleviate some of my heavy load of trolling I do daily. I'll be at Interbike this year as well, should I sign your autograph "to anonymous" or "to my biggest fan"?

Anonymous said...

"The Nightrain"?????

JETT! said...

Unless I misread, he never mentioned "russ at sprfls" so why assume he's taking a shot at you?

Sure, you're critical of eastern, but who isn't?

Narcissistic much?

//JK said...

This is awesome. To think that Russ drives these pansies to the point of threats at interbike.


"you made fun of my bicycle part! I'm gonna jump you!"


-Kyle I

whensday said...

my feeble uneducated first look at that stuff ( also F1, sub-10, etc.) tells me to not touch it. i even think twice about test-bunnyhopping it on a friends bike. im NOT an engineer. any company should have at least one though. i dislike eastern-bashing, just as any bashing, but still, i get the image of an engineer heavily distracted by something else while this development was going down. difficult relationship, drugs, whatever, its fine. so i think, maybe a company that puts out any product at all should have more than one able person to check and recheck things on an enineering level. you could probably blame the gullible market though, or even a thriving online community thats unable to communicate the basic physics in a comprehensible and interesting way. its a very loud mediaworld and most kids start out quite uninformed, i did. im drunk. and GREAT POST by the way.

4nonymous said...

i liked medusa sprocket. it looks nice with 36 teeth. and the pedals, bent them but bent every pedal sofar (GO G!). also i got into bmx on a sequenze wishbone frame i got for next to nothing. didnt ever consciously buy an eastern part though.

Anonymous said...

is it me or are the verification words much better lately...
forshing
ptrable
roistled
friship
phydaze
i feel like just hitting refresh for another five minutes.

G.S.GUCCILIFE said...

Dude above,im with you....

Anonymous said...

Jon Byers response makes me laugh. Really, he made a bigger fool out of himself than he already does.

This reminds me of an Internet response by the owner of Alienation in Bikeguide, physically threatening George French and anyone else who didn't agree with him.

Well, given the terrible shitty gimicky products decorated with equally terrible horrible graphics by both Eastern and Alienation, I can say they both share the same level of immature-high-school-thick-headed-awkwardly-stupid kind of mentality.

Anonymous said...

From Jon "Knuckle Sammich" Byers

"From a technical standpoint, the Grim Reaper could have been our very first frame. We presented this concept to manufacturers about seven years ago and they just didn't want to make it."

Geee, I wonder why...

...and they still think the Hercules frame was of a competent design. They're so fucking clueless it's kinda sad...

Karl Rothe said...

sadly, Eastern and Alienation products sell really well. meat-head mentallity seems to be what the new generation of riders is getting behind, yikes.

traskVT said...

I disagree with the Anon above me. I think for the time the Hercules was completely on point with what else was happening, see: S&M Warpig, Kink Empire, etc.

What was that Solid frame?!?! THAT thing was fuckin nuts!!!) Overkill, yes, but it was probably the first time in a while that the street shredders didn't snap their bike every month.

man, check out that standover height on the Herc! they should just rebuild this same frame with some tiny-ass tubes and they'd be in UnKnown territory!

Anonymous said...

oops, forgot the link

http://bmxmuseum.com/image/100_1497_lg.jpg

Unknown said...

I loved this post.

In 1989, I slammed Jon Byers hand in my car door, accidentally. He threatened to punch me in the face too. I call bullshit then and now.

I would like to see some bmx company men show up jay and silent bob style at some kids doors. BMX needs some more face punching.

me said...

makes me wonder if ol' Nascar Byers would have ever ridden an Eastern on the famed Blue Ramp...

But, lest we forget, he rode for Bully - perhaps, just maybe, kinda/sorta, he appreciated (and still does...) the marketability of Bully, and not so much the workmanship of the parts.

Though, to be fair, RL never pulled the Nascar-card.

Duncan said...

As far as "mature business owners" are concerned, it's worth noting that Henry Ford was a Nazi.

Anonymous said...

WE have stopped selling all eastern stuff as they lie and dont respect the sellers or customers.

Unknown said...

hey Russ, i didn't specifically threaten to punch you and certainly not at Interbike. You've taken my comment out of context as it was kind of a joke in response to Mark's question and makes no mention of you - i don't know you from Adam. it's not the way we do business.

Bryan Byrd said...

To anonymous 2 posts above: Who were you dealing with at our company that was lying to you or your customers? I'd definitely like to know the reps name and your shop name if possible. You can email me at bryan@easternbikes.com

Thanks.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.