When cycling my 12 mile cycle path route to work on my BMX overtaken by mountain bike’s, racers and folding bikes, I dreamed of owning an old school Hutch pro racer cruiser with skinny wheels and hard set gearing. The opportunity never arose, but I did end up getting a Freeagent cruiser set-up with skinnys and good gearing it was a gorgeous fast, bike. But after trying a mix of old and new cruisers, every cruiser I rode felt wrong, the top tubes too short, the chainstays too long, the bikes felt stodgy, with thick unnecessarily clumpy dirt tyres, but worst of all, they were difficult to manual or slow.
So I designed the Swift and thanks to Mark Noble at Deluxe on help with tried and tested quality manufacturing, the frame became a reality.
The swift rides with modern BMX geometry. So your body retains the same agile body position, to the floor, to your bars, to your rear axle as a modern BMX. With the added benefits of larger faster sleeker wheels.
The Swift also comes with limited edition graphics designed by type design legend Seb Lester.
Seb’s type design can be found everywhere, Intel logo found inside your PC, the New YorkTimes, GQ magazine.
Sebs client list is a who’s who of dream clients, and he’s recent breakout into type illustration has instantly created waves. Each letter is custom drawn for the Swift graphics.
Sh*t looks tight. Wish I had room ( money ) for another bike and especially another bike that looks like this!
Music, a design studio in Manchester got BMX as their nominated sport and created posters by getting BMX riders to ride around in paint in a warehouse. Each bike used started off completely white.
“Music were one of the 30 agencies invited by Grafik to design a poster celebrating an Olympic sport for their exhibition that was part of London Design Festival,” explains Music’s Ali Johnson.
“We were asked to design a poster for BMX, which was a stroke of genius/fate because Manchester is the home of British Cycling and Team GB. We enlisted the help of 3 young members of Manchester BMX Club and their coach Sam Foakes (former World No.1 Flatland BMX Champion) who helped us ‘make the posters’. It’s them on the bikes in the film…not us…we’d have fallen off!
We then persuaded Olympic 2010 BMX hopeful (and Manchester based) Shanaze Reade to sign 100 of them. All proceeds going to the British Paralympic Fund and the charity Right To Play.”
Another product that I like the look of yet have no information on. Man I could seriously do with a few lessons in the Japanese language. Actually I should really try and master my own first!
I know 700cmx seems to be gaining a whole lotta momentum right now but seriously this is the real sh*t and more over I find that this new wave of fixed gear trick riding to be somewhat limited.
Now I have always hated flatland as I don’t find it to be ‘Rad’ enough but never the less this is real impressive.
I have posted on this subject before here but after seeing the following frame I feel it has gotten worse.
Is that Killorado BMX not simply ridiculous? Just take a look at the length of the seat-tube for the answer.
This guy sums it it pretty good: The worst offender in this regard, of course, is Blackeye’s Cory Jarman, whose signature frame, the Killorado is an abomination against everything ever. It looks like a stripped-down girls bike from Toys R Us. I know he does 180 whips down stairs, but it’s ridiculous for the same reason it would be if someone hit 2,000 home runs while using a special aluminum/carbon bat. I hesitate to call it cheating, but it’s pretty freaking lame.
To those across the world wide web who like the posts of SPINWELL and link to them… Thank you! And I will continue to do the same also as it is you that has put in all of the work to find these gems that we all love so much.
And to those pirates who straight jack posts including those off other blogs and websites and then don’t link to them or sometimes even pass a found gem off as their own – You suck… infinitely. Oh and remember pirates, this is not a numbers war so burn your stats!
To say a quick thanks to those who have linked to me, here is a small list of blogs I read and link to regularly.
Go check them out if you havn’t already, they are great blogs and always worth tapping in.
Now to lighten the mood a little after my negative indulgence here is a vid of my favourite BMXer right now – Mike Aitken. This guy flows tighter over dirt packs than anyone I have ever seen. No big tricks like flairs or cash rolls, just a real simple, beautiful, effortless flow.
Look at it… the whole front end should not be there. I give it just a few weeks before everything attached to the headtube gets completely rejected, just like this dude and when it does I really hope he posts pictures.
I saw the bike featured here a while back in or on the cover of an old Supreme look book and since that time I firstly forgot about the bike and then upon remembering it I struggled to find a picture of it anywhere, until now.
Sometime back in 07 Supreme linked up with Brooklyn Machine Works to produce this one off ( ? ) 24″ wheel cruiser and just look at how sick it is. Forget the fact it has ‘Supreme’ written on the downtube this thing just oozes dopeness and it is exactly how I think a cruiser should look. Man those crispy amber wall Tiogas are the sh*t!
Remember last week I mentioned plans to rebuild Perry Barr/Great Barr BMX track?
Well a visit yesterday to Ade at Sprocket revealed the news that the rebuild has begun.
Those pictures were taken last week so I am guessing they have gotten quite a bit further by now but anyway well done to all the guys involved, you have done a grand job!… I can’t wait to see it again, that track was sitting there unloved and rotting for far too long.
LS your a genius… If it wasn’t for your comment I would have never found out about this:
I totally used to live minutes away from here, technically it is Perry Barr BMX track too not Great Barr but anyway.
Damn I remember countless nights spent here with my pals Mike, Andy and sometimes even the great “Rat Russell” ( Props to you James wherever you are ).
It is a crying shame about this track though like many. The people in charge of the track from a BMX club that I was unaware of had some money for a refurb so ( without a great deal of planning it seemed ) they went ahead and filled in some doubles and flattened some berms with the idea to make again bigger and better, I myself even hepled out with the ‘refurb’. The problem was though that they didn’t have enough money to finish it ( or so we were told ) so today it still stands unfinished and completely unrideable.
I think it was possibly a council scheme to get kids off the track due to a lack of supervision, you know the usual Health and Safety nonesense.
It seems now that there are plans afoot to return the track to it’s former glory in one way or another, I just found this out via the Birmingham BMX site: 2009 is an important year for Birmingham and BMX because this spring, Birmingham City Council, supported by British Cycling and Sport England, are bidding to host the 2012 UCI BMX World Championships at the NIA. Part of the legacy of the bid is to leave an outdoor international BMX race facility in Perry Park, which will be the home of the Birmingham BMX Club.
Result, I will be checking that site regular as when that building starts I want to be there, wheel barrow and all!
A friend of a work colleague passed by the store last weekend on this: A Rad as hell 1985 Skyway Streetbeat.
They said at the time: Forget the ordinary with Street Beat, Skyway’s new full-on freestyle machine. It’s light enough to grab max air, and strong enough to beat the street. “Max Air” ! how times have changed, you would sound a complete idiot spouting that lingo today for sure.
Peep all of the excessive tubing though compared to todays basic utilitarian ‘Freestyle’ bikes… Nowadays BMX bikes look like scooters with pedals on and this thing looks like a spaceship with wheels on… I love it.
Props to you emalie ( hope I spelt your name right ) you got a real nice whip there.
“Yo, if you want to see a sneak peak of the real deal 700c Fixed Gear PK Ripper Looptail, peep here…
Available this summer.”
-Todd Lyons
*SE Brand Manager
So here I am… I have posted about this before but the link sent has a real nice article on Todd Lyons and S.E bikes so get on over to Highsnobiety and read up!
