Over My Head

I spotted this Harry Main KHE complete on the Pijin blog last night, then traced the image URL (wow, am I interwebz savvy) to this Nike 6.0 "insider" blog post. Not sure where the 3.1 pound frame weight came from, unless Mark spoke to someone directly, because I couldn't find much about the bike on the horrifically designed KHE website (would a news link up top be too much to ask?). Harry does mention it in his Ride UK 20 questions interview, but only that the complete is going to weigh under 21 pounds (and that his first riding memory is from 2002—ouch). Anyway, yeah, photo:

Harry's a 17-year old, and this bike looks like is was designed for one. Light, bright, steep, low-slung, with big bars (I presume they're KHE's Centaur bar/stem combo), the new one-piece seat/post (the pedal looks almost bigger than the seat) and, of course, KHE tires. Basically it's every current trend in one easy-to-buy package that you should be able to find at Tailwhips 'R' Us. Blech.

I know the kid can do 720s and 900s and stuff (only because I looked at the 6.0 and KHE sites, since before last night I'd never even heard of him), but I still find it funny that a 17-year-old is getting a signature complete. Wouldn't it be best to wait just in case he decides to quit riding and take up autocrossing or Wii golf or heavy drinking? He is really good for being 17, though—does young Harry have a lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead?

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Simple is putting out a production frame with that shaved-headtube thing that Sunday's been testing on prototypes. Hmm.

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Gonna do something new for a while. Every day I'm going to post one Youtube video of a video/live performance of a song that was used in a BMX video. Guess which video (and which rider's part) and you win the right to be proud of yourself for the day.

Some will be easy, some won't be. We'll start with...well, you tell me.

Friday Quiz (featuring Farside)

I feel remiss for skipping last Friday entirely (not to mention Thursday), so you all deserve a decent quiz today. Maybe—just maybe—I'll post something over the weekend, too. Just to try and catch up. Anyway, on with the show.



1. It's hard to look threatening when you a) appear to have highlights in your hair, b) are wearing professionally worn-in jeans, and c) are recognized universally as more or less the nicest guy ever. However, one has to give Chris Doyle credit for trying as he brandishes his Demolition signature fork.

Which iconic image should they have tried to duplicate instead?


a) Malcolm X

b) Dirty Harry

c) Reservoir Dogs (with, perhaps, Brian Castillo)

d) John Rambo

e) Tony Montana



2. The UK's Segment Clothing made this shirt as a response to the "STREETS IS TALKING" shirt Fit made a while back:

Which discipline can we expect to respond next and how?


a) FLATLAND IS WHISPERING

b) PARK IS WHINING

c) VERT IS WITTERING

d) RACING IS LECTURING




3. This bike is:


a) Eddie Cleveland's fault.

b) The subject of Bikeguide's Bike Check of the Week.

c) A mass-market complete.

d) Your ticket to instant cool with just a swipe of a major credit card.

e) Most of the above.




4. There are big bars, there are bigger bars, and there are Solid's Roseanne Bars. Nine inches high and 32 inches wide, you won't find bigger bars unless you make them yourself. Assuming a little wider than shoulder width is about right, who are these bars designed for?


a) Andre the Giant

b) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

c) Sasquatch

d) Micah Kranz

e) Duh



5. Colony's new plastic pedals differ from all the other plastic pedals already on the market how?


a) Since they're Australian, they spin in the opposite direction of pedals from the Northern hemisphere.

b) They have black endcaps instead of white or red.

c) They say "Colony" on them.

d) They look like they should come stock on an $80 complete.

e) Absolutely nothing.




6. These stunning platform pedals are available from Bike Nashbar for the low, low price of $39.99:

What's the worst thing about them?


a) They only have three strings.

b) They're not available in 1/2".

c) They're not painted to look like Eddie Van Halen's guitar.

d) They don't offer a Dimebag Darrell version.

e) They exist.



7. This Nike Olympic trucker hat is supposed to be for the BMX team. You can buy one of your very own from Dan's for just $23.99:


If you were to buy one and wear it around, what percentage of people would look at it and think "oh, BMX"?


a) 22

b) 14

c) 9

d) 2

e) 0

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And now for something completely different. The audio isn't the best, but it's still worth it. Farside playing some New Jersey college in 1995. Wish I was there.







(Doyle made me think of them, so thank—or blame—him.)

Blazing Saddles

We here at SPRFLS would like to recognize the good people at Verde for introducing the 500th Pivotal seat "design" of 2008. (UGP alone released 347 of them.) Verde's oh-so-clever Timber seat will go perfectly with the station wagon your parents had in 1979, or the limited Mosh parts you sold on eBay back in 2005.


Recent research indicates that there are now 438.6 BMX seats for every BMX bike in the world, and even Warren Buffet is buying Velo stock. So if you don't have at least three or four seats of your own, you're simply not pulling your weight. You should be swapping your seat out daily to match your t-shirt and sneakers and replacing each of them every three weeks whether you need to or not.

But if you're one of those slackers who only owns one seat, maybe it's not your fault. Maybe there aren't any designs you like yet. So we're here to help. Here's five more seat print concepts we fully expect to see sooner rather than later:

1. Bart Simpson (Pivotal only). Not too hard to figure out how the figure would line up.
2. Stripped print. Get the trendy LITEWAIT look without having to actually tear off your cover and padding!
3. Paris Hilton's face. This also should probably be Pivotal only, for obvious reasons.
4. Kerry King armband. It doesn't get more metal than that. Bonus points if the seat has real six-inch spikes sticking out of it. (Like you sit down anyway.)
5. UCI World Champion stripes. We'd love to see SDG do one of these for Jamie Bestwick in recognition of his winning the last 317 vert comps.
   
6. Just pick the latest ridiculous Nikes off of Hypebeast and copy them. (Please do a better job than this, though.)

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Holy weird. It's 4 a.m. Eastern, and the movie Shadow Conspiracy just came on TNT. Charlie Sheen! Donald Sutherland! Linda Hamilton! Sam Waterston as the President! Ben Gazarra as the Vice President! Alistair Whitton as...oh, I'm just kidding. Well, not about the movie being on. We'll see how long I can take it.

Worldwide Pants

I know.

I know that girls pants have been popular amongst BMXers for quite some time, and it doesn't appear that they're going away any time soon.

I know that they make more sense than JNCOs and Wu-Wears.

I know that companies have to make things that people want to buy in order to stay in business.

Still, that doesn't mean I thought Animal, of all companies, would ever sell slim-fit stretch denim:



(Although I suppose they complement the kitten t-shirt.)

It just seems really weird to me. Would Ralph Sinisi wear stretchy pants? Scerbo? Vinnie? Tyrone? Edwin? Wormz? (OK, maybe Wormz.) The New Eras, I understood those. I even get the bigger pants, the 718s. Those make sense to me as an Animal product. But slim-fit jeans? Animal? What's next? Sunglasses? Baseball cleats? An all-skatepark video? What in the name of Will Taubin is going on here?

Anyway, we here at SPRFLS did a little digging and discovered Animal's upcoming Spring '09 line. Enjoy:


1) Checkered suspenders:




2) Tennis visor, as modeled by designer Whiteboy:





3) Regimental tie with hidden stash pocket:



4) Wolf shirt (as required by BMX law):



5) And, of course, Lederhosen:

Who Buys BMX T-Shirts?

Fit has a new t-shirt out featuring what appears to be an angry grizzly bear.




Let us ignore for the moment that it just seems like a more aggro version of Lotek's Nightwolf shirt:



Which, in turn, was just a bite of (I'm sorry, "homage to") countless other shirts that have been available at cheesy mall stores and mountain time zone gift shops for the past 20 years:




What's important here is this: Why have a shirt CALLED the "grizz air shirt" and not have someone doing an actual Griz in the ad? Is there no one on Fit who can do a Griz? For an example, see the classic shot of Stephen Murray below:



Griz Airs were popularized (if not invented) by Josh White back in the '80s, and later became a staple of a young Taj Mihelich. It would be nice if now they were more than just the name of a t-shirt. But oh well, it's not a tailwhip. Why even bother?

(I can't wait for the inevitable striking cobra all-over-print Matt Beringer shirt. Here, just re-brand this one.)

One-Sided Arguments

Well.

Apologies for the disappearance. Spent much of last week and the weekend watching the X Games—odd parts, too, not just the BMX. Nope. Since I didn't exactly keep track of what was on when, I just took what came: Jake Brown's return to Megaramp (and the ensuing multiple crashes of a drawn-looking Danny Way), the BMX Street final jam session (which seemed rather difficult to judge), a few minutes of FMX Best Trick (whose competitors seem about as culturally relevant as Mudvayne and Slipknot—and equally well-dressed).

I don't know, the X Games just seem to get increasingly stranger and more removed from real life every year. Pro skater Rune Glifberg bitches about the "Super Park" course enough to have an L.A. Times story written about it—then wins the event. Podium regulars Travis Pastrana and Dave Mirra both medal—in rally cars. Rally cars? Why not a demolition derby or monster trucks?

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Someone please explain to me the appeal of one-sided pegs? You know, ones like the Eastern Slit pegs, which have a bunch of undoubtedly NASCAR-approved slits cut in them, or the off-center machined Macneil Fashionably Lights or Colony One-Ways (which are aluminum, to boot). Or, of course, the new EXTERNALLY machined Fly pegs.



They're lighter, sure. Which is the whole point, I guess. But the fact that you can't rotate them—when you grind through one side, they're done—seems to be a steep price to pay. And on the internally machined ones you'll want to be careful not to grind on the wrong side by accident. (Of course they're all advertised as "park pegs" or for "light street," but whoever pays attention to that sort of thing?) What they are, more or less, are pegs that are pre-worn. If I'd known something like this would become popular, I would have kept all my old ground-down Kinks.

I'm also curious how the off-centered machining affects the strength of the peg as a whole. What if you hit one of the "thin" parts against an upright? What if you bail and the bike lands square on the end? Like a lot of parts these days, I understand the appeal of these if your sponsor is sending them to you. Otherwise? Not so much.

Please Stand By

We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. SPRFLS will return to its regularly scheduled programming on Monday.

Enjoy the weekend.

($10 and bunch of SPRFLS stickers to whoever sends me the head of Darkmane.)