Washington Square Park circa 1988
TOMORROW!!!! BE THERE!!!!
I flew out to NJ yesterday to come check out the ThrashBike Street Coast Jam at the Brooklyn Banks. Nick Brandreth and Rick Nolte are the guys mainly responsible for making this thing go down, with some help from Adam Hauck and a wacky bunch of UK shredders all sleeping together in Adam’s sister’s bed… cozy.
So, let me introduce you to the English boys who have been a blast to hangout with weather it was playing Adam’s drinking game… “Wizard Sticks”, involving drinking, punching people, jousting and other nonsense… which we did until 4AM.
First we have one of the new BlkMrkt family members, Matt Jamieson from Sheffield, England. Matt is BlkMrkt’s first full-on brakeless/rigid fork street rider. It’s been really good to finally see Matt ride in person… pretty good shit and a good fit on the team.
Next we have Matt #2 from somewhere where they eat tea and crumpets. Matt2 rides for Union Street Bikes and is another funny kid from the UK doing hop whips and hop bars on his 24″… pretty sick…
Finally, there’s Toff… I don’t know why he’s called Toff but he is… at least he’s not Matt3. Toff is the youngest of the lot but that does not slow down his shredding or shit talking one bit. Adam has been breaking in the UK crew pretty hard but Toff is hangin’ strong and running with the “Wolf Pack” wild thru the streets of New York. Toff’s mom would not be proud. But Brooklyn Machine Works is.
I didn’t bring my camera bag today because today was about “Taking it to the streets!!!” Which we did in a big way!!! We all rode the Path train into Manhattan… to the World Trade Center. From their we cruised over to the Banks and met up with another 25-30 riders from NY, NJ, CA. the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, French Canada, Unleaded Canada… and, well from all over.
We rode the banks for about 2 hours the headed out for a 35 person street ride from the Banks to Union Square and every shred spot along the way. China Banks, Washington Square Park (my favorite spot to ride as a kid, I posted a photo above.) even making a stop to eat a dog at Gray’s Papaya… and that deserves a “RED DRAGON!!!!”, if you catch my drift…
After chillin’n at Union Square for a couple of hours… the place was packed… 1000’s of people just hanging out talking, playing hacky sack, just enjoying the Spring night and happy it wasn’t raining anymore. Now the ride uptown was nuts with 35 street riders hauling ass the NYC streets at 9 o’clock on Friday night but that was up hill sort of, kind of.
But back to the banks is all downhill and shit was pretty out of hand. There were a few close calls for some of the guys not used to playing traffic. That ride was amazing and one of the funnest things ever on a bike. There was one fixie guy with us and he was insane… flying, I mean fast… doing 1 hand wheelies and drifting thru corners on a big ass fixed gear road bike with 10″ wide bars and toe clips. Adam was stoked on the guy so you know he was legit… he thru a barspin while airing the really tight cobble stone China Banks… on a fixed gear road bike damn it!!!! Crazy.
After the ride back to the Banks we rode until about mid-night where is was time to get on the last train home where I would have to ride Toff on my handlebars back to Adam’s. Toff did manage to fall off my bars causing me to run over his foot, causing my bike to endo and my seat to catch my left… you know where this is going… just tapping it ever so slightly, of course causing me to double over while everyone else laughs their asses off.
It’s 3 AM and my stories over for now… more shenanigan’s tomorrow…. and photos!!!
night…
