No tricks, no spins, no bullshit. He just rides likes to ride his bike real fast and I like that.

The ‘essential items’ series, if you haven’t already guessed is about cycling related objects and items that I can’t live without and these shoes by Adidas are exactly that.

I’v ruined countless pairs of Vulcanized soled Vans whilst riding bikes so I needed a tougher shoe. For a shoe to be harder wearing it will no doubt be a bit chunkier than a flimsy pair of Vans and yes, these are certainly chunkier but I must say they fit into my double clips like a glove.

Unlike Vans’ waffle soles the soles on these Adidas Busenitz are somewhat stiff, not carbon stiff by any means but stiff enough to transfer some power to the pedals. With Vans I felt like my foot would turn into a lower-case letter N, wrapping around the cages of my pedals like a hand around an ice-cream cone. Not good.

Now me, being a sucker for tradition and aesthetics I have to point out that these shoes, originally designed for football and reinterpreted for skating, look the biz in their O.G Cobalt blue colour option and I rock them with a happy face every single day. This colour please me.

What more can I say about these? Mad comfortable, stiffer than Vans, old school ‘hip’ factor 10, reasonably priced and very well made. Damn! I love these shoes and I have to give shouts out to Kris at Ideal for the recommendation. If you’re in the market for a casual shoe to wear on your daily ride, look no further. Toss your Vans and don’t look back.

Swoop and go a size up.

Lovely shots. 35mm Rules everytime and I really need to get out to SF, too. New York first though!

Jake Ricker via Tracko.

Super, smashing, great… This film is all of these things. It’s shot extremely well with some real amazing photography and the commentary is good too, two thumbs up!

Before fixed-gear bikes became de rigueur for urban aesthetes, they were the weapon of choice for Japan’s fearless Keirin cyclists. A gladiatorial incarnation of track cycling that dates back to 1948, the Japanese sporting phenomenon operates by an intricate set of rules that sees competitors jostling for position on steeply banked tracks at lightning fast speeds, all but encouraging spectacular crashes. In today’s film for NOWNESS, Jonathan de Villiers (whose fashion photography and portraiture has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wallpaper* and Fantastic Man) traveled to the national Keirin school in Tokyo and the Tachikawa and Yokkaichi velodromes to decode the strategy that governs the racing phenomenon. “I knew next to nothing about it when I went,” says de Villiers, “but I’m a big admirer of the anthropological documentary where you get taken into a whole different world. And what a strange, special and complex universe it turned out to be.” The state-run industry amasses tens of billions of dollars in gambling revenue each year.

Nowness.

Looks like a pretty cool store.
Thanks LS.

Gosh, I don’t know about this me. I am sure it works but if it fails it could be somewhat catastrophic, to the ring, the brake mechanism and maybe the rider too. Ouch!

Thanks Hardy for the heads. Via.

I only managed to watch about 40 seconds of this until I could view no more and no I did not cease because of a server time-out or a youtube re-buffering. No… It was down to the sensation of something food like ( I think it was my breakfast ) travelling back up my trachea into my mouth that halted the full watching of this vid!

Enjoy.

Olivier Pasqual.