Mudslinging

Finally, a new product I can wholeheartedly endorse:

For starters, it's exceedingly practical. This isn't a tiny driver that will save you six grams at the cost of a new chain a month, or a titanium-shelled plastic peg that will serve no purpose whatsoever. This is something that will save you from the embarassments of skunk stripe and wet pants, plus protect the bolts in your seatpost clamp and Primo Rod.

Secondly, it's a product that actually requires a bit of seatpost. You're not going to run that with the Macneil Nub.

Thirdly, just look at that bike! There's someone who doesn't care much about fashion—or someone who's been in a coma since 2001. Note the giant Kink sprocket, the sprayed DK Iron Cross pedals, the torn Hemmorhoid (ouch), the dinged-up 48-spoke rear wheel. Other than the tires, there's a bike that hasn't been upgraded since Trend was still around. (Although that was a "limited" sprocket when it was new, so obviously our rider wasn't completely immune to the bite of the hypebeast. Well, either that or he really wanted a gold sprocket.) Anyone want to venture a guess as to what kind of frame that is? Metal Kizz? Old Barcode? It's hard to tell without being able to see that seatstay junction.

All I could think of when I first saw this was the end of Taj's section in Forward, when he blasted through that wet drainage ditch and threw that downside whip. If only he had the Matt Wakefield Signature Mud Guard. Of course, if he did, one suspects it wouldn't be a Matt Wakefield signature product.

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Wait, am I thinking of a different video?

Wreckognize

I continue to find it difficult to identify with certain BMX bikes these days. Take this Tierra for example:


No, seriously, take it.

Super-steep, super-low, super-short rear end. It's probably the twitchiest, loopy-outiest bike ever (non-Killorado division). I remain somewhat convinced that Fly's entire research library consists of a GT catalog from the late '80s that has the Ricochet Trials in it:


I mean, they even copied the bashguard! Perhaps the layback is next. Or the tall forks/low bars combo. Although that could make footjam whips exceedingly hazardous.

Then again, the trials connection isn't that outlandish a suggestion. Fly is from Spain, and so is Montesa (or Monty), one of the companies that's been doing trials bike for the longest. So maybe Flys will eventually evolve to look something like this:

You'll note the fat tires, the colored (and drilled-out) rims and the plastic pedals. Also the complete lack of seat (the next logical step). Throw a topload and a set of Slams on there, and you're good to go. Well, maybe bump up the gearing a bit unless you like pedalling really, really, really fast. And just think of the things you could do with disc brakes!

I don't like where this is heading. Not one bit.

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Is trials cooler than fixed-gear freestyling? Only you can decide.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS A LOT OF VIGNETTING. AND HANS REY.

Photo Finish

I love this photo that FBM posted the other day:


To some, I'm sure it's just trash (what do you even do with old AODs and Old Boys—melt one down and make two Tierras?), to others it's treasure, but mostly it reminded me of something like this:


Just some vintage American muscle put out to pasture, waiting for the right person to come along. (If anyone from FBM is reading this and wants to send me a 21" AOD, I promise to build it. Doesn't matter how rusty it is.)

Speaking of photos, I was also amused by this one from Kink that shows the contents of Marsellus Wallace's briefcase:


I guess they're just regular ol' Badger Bars, which means they're 27x8 (unless the dimensions have changed), but don't they look really tall? If I remember correctly, GT made 10" rise bars back in the day, so why not? 30x10? Although I still can't think about tall bars and slammed seats without thinking of this photo:


That might possibly be the best photo (non-porn division) in the history of the internet (original is here). Dude's gotta do a Kris Bennett nothing just to hold on. Hit a big enough bump and you'd tear your arms off. I also love that the next exit is the Missouri Department of Transportation District Office. Here's hoping he was on his way to turn himself in for crimes against transportation.

Actually, scratch that first bit. This is the best photo in the history of the internet.

In actual product news, Éclat is making their new brake pads from a proprietary (and tasty) mix of cheddar, mozzarella, and Monterey Jack:


Brake hard enough on a steep downhill and they slow you down and melt simultaneously. And Sean Burns loves nachos.

I'm not even sure what to say about this. Maybe "blech." A 700c fixed BMX bike? Seriously? Brian Castillo done lost his mind. I can't wait until BikesnobNYC gets ahold of this. (For the record, Giselle has much better legs than that.) Then again hopefully he makes millions of dollars from the fixed-gear crowd and uses some of the profits to design a new Hellion that doesn't break.

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Finally, a little shameless self-promotion (what the hell, it's Friday). Nuno from Defgrip kindly asked me to contribute to their "Best of 2008" section, and I just made it into the last part with something that had nothing to do with BMX. Thanks, Nuno! (And Harrison, and everyone else over there.)

And in an epic, wide-ranging interview on BMXUnion, Taj mentioned this blog. Gulp. Thank you, Taj (and Kurt, the hardest-working man in BMX journalism right now). While I'll probably just re-read that quote a couple hundred times, you should read the other 10,000 or so words if you haven't already. A quick excerpt, regarding his much-maligned switch to Giant:

"I feel like BMX is a long way away from the dire state it was in in the early 90's and supporting rider owned companies was so important to me because they were the only companies making decent bikes. Nowadays most BMX bikes are more or less the same, and Giant probably makes half of them anyway. Also, having been in the "industry" for a while I'm sort of disillusioned by the idea of rider owned companies. BMXers can suck just as much as anyone else."

Yowza. It's a great read all the way through.

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Memories of STAs Past

**WARNING** THIS POST MAY CONTAIN NAME-DROPPING

This is going to be kind of like Taj's blog post about all his old bikes except for the fact that a) these are only my STAs (and not even all of them), and b) I'm not Taj. Other than that, exactly the same. But hey, that new STA got me reminiscing, and I figured I'd give a brief rundown of my STA past.

Oddly enough, I don't have any photos of my first STA. I'm pretty sure it was a '95—it had the dimples in the chainstay for tire and sprocket clearance and only the one gussett up front. When I got it, it was covered in some sort of industrial-strength reflective tape, which, when I pulled it off, took the paint with it. So the frame wound up mostly finished in that odd aqua primer Standard (or Waterford, I guess) used. Eventually the rear end bent (a fairly common problem with those, I think—the first time I met Ralph Sinisi he was riding a badly bent chrome STA), and I sent it back to Standard. They not only welded on a new back end, they re-painted and re-stickered it at no charge. I wound up selling it for $100 or something, as I'd already bought a new one. This was the time when Glenn Milligan was doing their videos, so it was possible to get a new Standard at cost. I jumped on that, and got a navy triple-gussett 21" STA:

This is the oldest photo I have of it, I believe. Note the monstrous Serfas gel seat, the cleverly re-arranged Standard sticker, and the ever-popular Dirt/V-Monster combo. And brakes! Those wouldn't last long.


And the sticker population continues to grow. The Sun-Ringlé ZuZu's Pedals broke and were replaced with an NOS set of Shimano DXs, and somewhere along the line Animal started making sprockets. Note also the Kink double clamp, and the dual chain tensioners. The bars were an old pair of PrimoPros that Grimaldo Duran bent and bent back. I never had a problem with them. (I feel like I've posted this bike before. Oh well.) Hüsker Du, the Misfits AND Sick of It All?

That frame served me well, and is currently residing in my parents basement sans most of the stickers. The only reason I bought a new frame was because the R-Model came out:



The initial build was easy enough—I just transferred everything over (and got a new seatpost). The R was 14mm, though, so I actually used those Kink step-down chain tensioners. It's reasons such as that why I have roughly 10 sets of chain tensioners in my parts box. Apparently I went back to Sun-Ringlé pedals, too—probably because they were black. Sigh.

My first cassette wheels! 36-hole Profiles laced to Hula Hoops...with a 16-tooth 3/16" cog. This is what we called being dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Note the first generation Skavenger sticker on the toptube. It's the one next to the Venom sticker.



Hey, it's almost modern! Apparently Standard/Waterford didn't see fit to primer the R-Models (litewait!), so the paint came off with the stickers. The Profiles broke somewhere along the line, so I went to the indestructible welded/CNCed GT cranks. And the pink DXs were just the right touch. This was probably my favorite Standard setup. (The Pixies and Celtic Frost. Yet another interesting mash-up.)

But then I found out you could get a custom frame built without mounts. So I placed a call to Pat Schoolen at Flatland Fuel and waited:

Hm, this could almost pass for a current bike. Somewhere along the line I'd been contacted by Chris Cotsonas at Odyssey, who'd started to provide me with some parts. (Another STA I have no photographic evidence of was an old black triple-gussett 21" with roughly milled 14mm drops and ground-down stays that was built with more or less the entire original Odyssey "group"—14mm Hazard 48s, a chrome Dirt Fork, Milk Bars, rear brake, Gyro, etc. That thing was a monster.) That's 28/10, NOS gold DXs (I had a pretty decent stash at one time), a Solid stem I bought at Ramp Rats in STL, and Bullitt Bars cut down to 23".


I'm not sure whether this was the last build on that frame before I got my first Edwin, but it's definitely the latest photo I have. This is right when the Jim Cs first came out. The white fork is a Dirt Fork because I wasn't sure whether the Race Fork would be strong enough. ("For what???" you may correctly ask.) That frame's in the basement now too, along with a chrome '96 and a raw '95 that's never been assembled. I didn't include those in the timeline because I never actually rode them—thanks, eBay!

Here's the one shot I have of the chrome one—I had just put the 1.5" wheels on it to roll it home.




At one point I actually had a brand-new chrome one that I bought from Dan's when they were still auctioning off obsolete product, but that's long since sold.

Man, it's gonna be awfully tempting to get a new one.

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Stranger Than All

The time has finally come to talk of the new Standard STA:

In theory, this is fantastic news—the return of an old favorite that's been tweaked for the modern market. The problem with that concept is you wind up getting a lot of stuff like this.

It's hard to judge whether the new STA works based on just one photo (especially with that navy blue distraction in the background), especially when it's just a bare frame. But after looking at it for a long while over the past several days, I think it does.

At first I couldn't deal with the toptube/seattube junction. It looked way too burly compared to the slim dropouts and chainstays—like the frame was half 2000 and half 2009 (which it is, kind of). But it's growing on me. Then again, it's going to look particularly weird with a tiny little plastic seat sitting right on top of it.

I obviously love the gussett.

I obviously hate the built-in seatpost clamp (and I'm glad to see it's optional).

I absolutely don't understand the idea behind having two different STA frames, a "light" version and a "strong" version. If you want a light Standard, wouldn't you buy a 250L? What's the point of making a 4.5 pound frame with that monster toptube/seattube junction? Isn't that counterproductive? And how the heck can TWO frames be Stronger Than ALL? The STA should be THE strongest frame. And if 4.9 pounds or whatever is too heavy for some, let them ride something else. Think of your roots, Standard!:

(That isn't my bike, but it's a great example of an early STA. I love the way the rear triangle looks tweaked downward (although the whole grinding on the stays thing wasn't much fun), and how they just looked unbreakable. One of my favorite bikes ever was the shit brown one that Rick Moliterno rode for most of "Domination.")

It'll be interesting to see whether the new STA catches on. Back around 2000, damn near every rider in New York had a Standard. Well, everyone everywhere (except for maybe California) had a Standard. Now I couldn't tell you the last time I saw one. In fact, I don't think I've seen an in-house built one yet. Everyone's too caught up in trying to be Chase DeHart (whose frame has also undergone some changes) or Chase Hawk or Chasey Lain these days. It's hard to keep them all straight.

I don't see it happening. I'm sorry. The seattube piercing the toptube is just another gimmick at this point, and just because it's an old one instead of a new one doesn't make it any better. The people checking for the old STA style probably won't be looking for a 4.5 pound frame, and the people looking for 4.5 pound frames probably won't be looking for STAs. All in all, it would have been better to bring back the Trail Boss. Or, given today's economic climate, the Cashius.

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Um, Metal Bikes aren't made by S&M anymore? When did this happen?

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Quick Releases

OK.

*deep breath*

The weather tomorrow is supposed to be Godawful, so I have no excuse when it comes to posting something of substance. I WILL post something on the new STA tomorrow—heck, I've been thinking about it long enough now. Perhaps I'll also post a retrospective of some of the STAs I've owned and loved (think flagpole seatposts and dinnerplate sprockets and no brakes). Or maybe that can be a follow-up post.

As for tonight, I'd like you to compare and contrast the following:

A) Fly's post about their new integrated dropouts.

B) Odyssey's post about their new G-Sport Rollcage rims.

Notice any differences?

I'll save you the trouble of figuring it out for yourself and just tell you. The Odyssey post tells you virtually everything about the Rollcages, from material, to weight, to the thickness of the damn sidewalls. Read it carefully enough and magnify the photos and you could probably make your own. (Yes Alienation, I'm sure you already are.) As for the Fly "update"? It doesn't tell you ANYTHING. I'm still not entirely sure what an "integrated dropout" is supposed to be and why it's supposed to be better. Maybe the language barrier is part of it, but damn.


In other news, this photo really depressed me:

That's a new FitEdLT built up. Hard to believe it's even an Edwin (I'm actually surprised it didn't spit that seat/post combo out). The s3ification of BMX is nearly complete. Between this and the imminent discontinuation of the Barcode, it's been a tough start to '09.


Oh, and if you run 11-, 13- or 37-butted bars, you might want to check this shot out (borrowed from BMXboard):


Best protect ya neck.

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Free Admission

Hm. If I keep this up, I can avoid writing about the new STA almost indefinitely. Friday came and went, and I thought it just better to ignore it entirely than come up with another half-baked excuse. Then I had things to do this weekend, and all of a sudden it was Monday again. And here I am at quarter of 10 planning on just posting yet another last-minute, catch-all sort of post. Dammit. I hate it when I do that. So just two quick things today:

• Props to Fly for openly admitting their Spanish BB2 was a failure. One would imagine, given the ease of installation and the cache of yet another new bottom bracket standard, they could have cobbled something together that would have at least sort of worked, then blamed failures on riders. (Most of them would have wound up on/in unridden Bikeguide bikes anyway.) Now, if they'd just admit the whole Spanish BB concept is the equivalent of Betamax or HD DVD, maybe we'd have something.

*Please do not stuff your headset in your bottom bracket shell.*

• When I think "Snafu," I think "cheap." So the idea of an $70 (approximated due to the 4x more expensive than a plastic pedal figure) aluminum pedal just doesn't set right. As it is, there are plenty of options when it comes to expensive pedals, and yet another Wellgo product doesn't seem to be terribly necessary. Not to mention Demolition already ran wild with the "Anorexia" name. Eating disorders are so 2001 anyway.

My favorite part about this release, though, are the smaller versions allegedly designed specifically for track bikes. This is fine, I suppose, if your goal is to die a horrible death. Riding a fixed gear in traffic (or anywhere else, for that matter) with platforms is about as smart as surfing on a 2x4. I could be wrong—there could be provisions for clips and straps—but I doubt it. Good work, fellas.

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I'll get back to the proper song vids when I write a proper post. You should also watch this.