The Neglected Mistress

As many of you may know – either through relation or observation – Ben and I are very much skaters at heart. In fact, I’m comfortable admitting that our interest in fixed gear bikes is rather recent and while not without precedent, our new found love. But skating has and will be the percocious high school whore that popped our cherry. Admitedly, she has kind of taken a back seat but I assure you, I will never retire four 50mm for two 700’s (back and knees willing).

So it was rather refreshing when I stumbled on this. It goes without saying that Cardiel, Speyer and Tsocheff were probably the best skaters if not of the 90’s but of the last 2 decades of skating. But re-watching their skating gives me boners left, right and center…metaphorically speaking of course.

Talk about aspirational. Watching this makes me want to skate the city red. It also quickly reminds me of how absolutely impossible it is to skate like these dudes. Sobering, yet amazing.

New Toy

Last night, Ben, Jacob and myself visited Brian Frank and his basement of cycling goodies. In short, Brian’s collection of bikes/parts and his stories of cycling yore is phenomenal.  Jacob walked away with a 1970’s Frejus sporting a wet-dream of parts ranging from SR to Campy to Wolber at a price that was unheard of (I’ve seen Supercycle’s on CL that were more expensive).

Myself? Well I took home a piece of cycling history. Not many people get to ride let alone own one of the big three so I was pretty excited when Brian said this frame was up for grabs. Needless to say, I’m pretty fucking stoked on this bike…track frame or not. Because no matter how you slice it, its still a De Rosa.

Finally Sounding Good (Again)

Far be it from me to be critical of skateboarding’s sometimes oddly-elected ‘forefathers’ but over the last 20 years there’s been no one easier for me to bitch about than Jason Lee. When Video Days came out I (along with every other skateboarder at the time) was blown away. The first incarnation of Stereo Skateboards was pretty much the best thing to come out in the 90’s. Ethan finally had a place to feel comfortable in dickies amidst the sea of bullshit that was quickly amassing over at the once great Dwindle camp. A Visual Sound was one of the best videos to date. Let’s not forget that this was more or less the same time that DC made it’s entry into skateboarding, things were changing.

After the extreme-games came about, Jason was long gone and Stereo was in the hands of Deluxe, which isn’t a bad thing but they really didn’t treat Stereo properly at all, it suffered the humiliation of having a team of children (J.R. Nieves, Dustin Dollin, etc…) who now are all great in their own right, but back then it just killed it for everyone who loved the pre-’98 Jason Lee/Dune ship. Stereo sank into the abyss officially at that point, for many it had already been over for a while.

Remember that magazine that was around for a while called BAIL? Oh shit, it still is. Well that’s how we all found out that Stereo was making a comeback, JLee was refreshed, invigorated and stoked on skateboarding again. Him and Chris Pastras were picking up the stuntwood and giving it another shot. Teeth clenched tightly, and ready for disaster I joined the few in hoping against hope that this reincarnation wasn’t just a money grab at the peak of skateboarding’s 2k popularity. For the first while the ‘new’ Stereo was stuck on a wretched sort of Adult Contemporary station where it was pretty apparent that they were trying (hard) to please us old folks and new kids all at once “Hey look at us, we’re back, we’re cool, hey…. it’s Jason Lee… remember? the knife song…. three flips…. backside 360’s…. anybody?” The sad thing was his skating was worse than his acting. At least Dune was there to keep things sort of legit.

Well, a few years in and they seem to have gotten it back, at least in my opinion. Here’s the new teaser for the upcoming Stereo film. It’s ten minutes long and unconcerned with vignetting. Thanks, and welcome back – this made my day.

Time Machine ‘77

Picked up one of those books you used to be able to order through Scholastic and such at the vintage bike show talked about a bit further down the page. It’s pretty much just a brief explanation of Track Racing from 1977 with awesome pictures of moustaches I can only dream of growing. There are a ton of pics so instead of posting them all here, you can take a look here. The pics were all taken by Robert F. George for Velo-News Magazine back during the 70’s bike boom. Anyhow, they are pretty big (download them if you want) so it might take a while to load the whole page.

Enjoy, —> cleek

b.