Least Most

Focused on bikes, music, art, adventure and the overall pursuit of good times.

Posts from Least:

A nucleus of radical activity

I often think of Prov park as a living breathing organism.

A nucleus of radical activity that literally doesnt stop.This place, it has its own energy, a life force, Prana. Always offering and receiving the essence of artistic flow. These images were shot unknowingly with a busted flash unit and a 35mm Canon from the 80’s.

I present some moments frozen in time amongst this ever moving universe we are apart of. We were right there sharing it all; dusk, mid-summers heat, the serene whir of bicycle wheels gripping concrete garbed in graffiti and a gang of friendly neighborhoodlums. Summer in its most divine moments, separate from the trails but equally as amazing.

I am humbled enough to experience the people who love this bizarre thing called BMX.

Riders: Jean Phillipe/Chris Childs/Bobby Proctor/Chris “way way” Alvarez/Domingo Dasilva in Providence Rhode Island

– word and images by Mark Ducharme

Fair Weather Gathering

If you can get to St. Louis on September 21st, Ramp Riders is hosting a Fair Weather Gathering. AFA-style quarterpipe jam, BMX drag race and more. Check out The Weather’s Facebook page for all the details.

Pittsburgh’s Wheel Mill

A little while back Ryan Souva was invited out to the new Wheel Mill park in Pittsburgh, PA to get a preview of the place and snap some photos. The Wheel Mill has since opened to the public, so after checking out the photos, head over to The Wheel Mill website for more info on the park.

Nathan Halahan sending a no footed can can over the last box in the jump room

Mike Potoczny stretching a can can

Brothers, Lukas and Nathan Halahan taking their hands off next to each other

Lukas Halahan crossing it up

Nathan Halahan whipping out a nac nac

Mike Potoczny, tuck no hander, the right way

Ryan Baglia, one handed 360

Mark Potoczny laying it upside down on the Wheel Mill’s 6 foot mini ramp.

Mike Potoczny, opposite air, 1 footed x-up

Mark Potoczny, casually clicking a turndown

Ryan Baglia tucking the left hip in the jump room

Ryan Baglia with a toboggan over the same hip

Mark Potoczny wrapping up an invert

Mike Potoczny, one footed tire grab

Mark Potoczny knows his way around a turndown

Mark Potoczny was pretty adamant about shooting this perfect no footed can. According to him it has been years since he has done one.

Thanks to these wonderful dudes for inviting me, as well as a couple friends down to enjoy this incredible park. Can’t wait to get back down and see what else they have running.

Five Guys, One Van

Words by Will Bruce, photos by Jon Capozzi, video edit by Pete Kearney.

Over the past couple years, a group of riders from upstate New York have assembled to travel southward to break up the monotonous northeastern winter. In previous years we would stay outside of Orlando and ride Casselberry. This year, we traveled to the BMX mecca of Austin, Texas. The crew included Devon Swahlan, Toby Pettinelli, Brien Kielb, Jon Capozzi, and myself, Will Bruce.

Brien rented a 15 passenger cargo van with no back seats and limited windows. We decided buying lawn chairs from Walmart, duck tapping them to the van floor, and returning them at the end of the week would work best for the given situation. Only one chair got wrecked via being stabbed by a peg, but the duck tape just ended up spelling out words on the outside of the van. There was always a 30 rack of Lone Star in the back of the van with the occasional 2-liter of rum and Dr. Pepper as well.

Due to the recent rain, most trails in the area weren’t running. We ended up riding six concrete parks within 30 minutes of our Super 8 motel, fueled by booze and tacos. There were also seemingly endless amounts of ditches begging to be ridden. Other highlights of the trip include stops at Torchy’s, Shakespeares, the flea market, and seeing Django at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

Check out the photos and edit below. #5guys1van was used throughout the trip to organize our numerous Instagrams too. Most of the riding photos were shot by Jon Capozzi.

We all hit the liquor on the plane; Toby even got cut off from more by a flight attendant.

Capozzi at San Marcos

‘Prove that this is a beer’

Brien laying one flat at San Marcos

Flea Market life

Will tabling a hip at Round Rock

Toby doing a 180 t-bog between beers.

This was the prequel to seeing Django; Toby trying to keep it together.

Country Clubbin’ – Another Beer in El Rancho

Six or seven years ago I worked in a video store here in Santa Cruz. Previous to that I had been a student here and in some ways my time at the video store was a crash course in all things Santa Cruz. I met a ton of crazy locals, scratched out enough money for rent while working two jobs and pedaled around a ton, exploring a town that I had lived in for a few years but was, in many ways, new to me after college. Our video store was a bit of relic and while it had a DVD section the place was crowded with old VHS tapes. My co-worker who had been there longer, urged me to watch “The Lost Boys” and “Glory Daze”, as they were both set in Santa Cruz and I reveled in the feeling of sharing a town with some big screen characters.

It was right around that time that Andy Maguire moved to town and I remember one of our first meetings was a chance encounter down the street from the video store. He was by himself, riding a flat rail set up in shorts and a t-shirt at 11pm on a cold night. Andy’s decision to come to Santa Cruz has left a mark on this town. Literally, you can drive down almost any back street and his tire marks are on the walls, but truly, Andy has been a key ingredient in shaping Santa Cruz BMX in the modern era. His prioritizing of friendly outings over competitive filming missions, his well rounded mix of bizarre and classic riding, his encyclopedic knowledge of BMX history, his blog’s ability to blend low humor and the most intelligent witticisms and his occasional antics have all helped define what we think of as our scene. Thanks Andy. – Jackson Allen

Jackson sat down with Andy and asked him a few questions about his new video and Santa Cruz.

It sounds like this was a long time in the making. Does it feel good to be done? It’s on the web now, any plans for a country clubbin’ dvd?

I bought my camera in January and basically started filming up until a few weeks ago. There were several web-vids made from footage between then and now, but it was a little less than a year in the making. It feels great to be done, because it was a lot more work than I anticipated, but I’m happy with the way it came together. Of course, there are always changes I’d like to make whether it’s a short web-vid or a longer project like this, but in the end it’s about being stoked on riding with your friends and what you all accomplish in the making of it. Unless I can get some financial help, I don’t plan on doing a country clubbin’ dvd. It’s more important to me that people have access and enjoy the video, rather than try to make copies and sell it.

What’s the inspiration behind this more lengthy piece?

There were several factors that came together to make this project, but the main inspiration was riding with an awesome crew of dudes in an equally awesome place to live. As with any scene video, you want to share the good times and the shredding that goes down, but I also wanted to portray it in a really honest light. I didn’t want it to revolve around bangers and create some epic hype around our scene, because it’s really low-key here. I filmed clips of my friends that I was stoked to watch, and they were stoked to do. It wasn’t like we were trying to keep up or feel relevant to what you see in videos today.

From a video-making perspective, I was definitely inspired by Scerbo videos and old Ride videos like “Generation” and “Through the Lens.” These are good examples of having “honest” videos. I feel like in those videos, you get a sense of the riders having a session at the trails or at a street spot, and by filming the energy that goes into those sessions, awesome clips are produced. Another inspiration came from Glory Daze, a tacky angst-ridden movie from the mid-90’s set in Santa Cruz. The movie isn’t very well-known, though the plot is something I relate to a lot; you get to a certain age when people expect you to grow up and take life seriously, as if your youth and happiness are polarizing characteristics to maturity and success. I think most of us as BMX riders can relate to that, because most non-riders seem to feel that BMX is something you’re supposed to grow out of as soon as you get your driver’s license. Plus Glory Daze had really shitty punk-o-rama style music in it, which was something reminiscent of reading old ads in Ride BMX and videos from the era of “Generation.” So basically it was a combination of liking longer videos, wanting to make a video centered around my friends and where I live, and through the video just say “Hey, it’s OK to want to spend time riding BMX even if you’re in your mid-20’s and don’t have your life figured out.”

Unsolicited Limo Stunt Party

Evan Venditti and Steve Dailey are a lethal combination of reckless imagination and good times, in this most recent weekday stunt escapade, they take the infamous Green Limo for a test spin of another sort.
In these photos, Howard Tarpey documents the Moto Scum crew cheering on Evan, and towing him in on a 74 cb 750, to try and no hander over the length of the Limo.
Good Times for sure!

Tubing.

Some Photos and a Video, of John lee, Chris Hancock and some of the FBM crew after hours at the warehouse, eating pizza, Drinking beer, riding bikes, and hi fiving!
Video filmed and edited by Kenny Horton…

FBM Warehouse ramp session. from FBM BMX on Vimeo.

Dillon Leeper, Chris Hancock.

Fixtures.

John Lee.

Frames.

Eric Holladay

Welding.

Dillon Leeper.

John Lee.

Eric Holladay.

Dillon Leeper.

Chris Hancock

Chris Hancock, John Lee.

Slow Bikes, Fast Art

Story & photography: Chris Riesner

On the 18th of August dudes and gals came together from all over the bay area to race head to head against each other in a striving effort to be crowned; slowest on two wheels. This fiasco of fun was the 5th annual Slow Bike Race and went down at the Sandbox in San Francisco. The evening started off with local artists; Ben Kellgren, Kyle Emery-Peck Ben Sutter and myself (Chris Riesner) showing some recent works. While things were still a bit slow at the art show a few of us hit up Paul Brays private bmx ramps to shred. After some quick tranny flow runs and out of control flips (Mike Payne hitting the roof on a barrel roll!) we went back to the party where 3 kegs of local beer (thank you Drakes Brewing) had been tapped and flowing for free.

With brews in hand and anti-speed on everyones minds people began signing up to race. There ended up being 64 contenders all of whom had ridiculous alias race names such as “whistle biscuit,” “gravity porn” and “space man” (see photo of list below). The race was setup in a bracket system with two person dueling heats. Rules being pretty basic such as no fixah’s, no feet can touch the ground and if you make it to the finish line first you’ve lost. These basic rules make for an extremely simple yet competitive race.

There were a variety of different contraptions being raced from bamboo frames to purple road bikes with 20 inch wheels. But it came down to who had the balance and stamina to move real slow and real straight. Whittled down form the long list of 64 racers was a finale race between two; Captain Ahab (aka: paul Bray) and Yarrmon (aka: Derek Yarra). On home turf, Captain Ahab won the race and was given the gleaming gold watch (that some dude found in a rental car) and will forever be known as the SBRV’s slowest rider.

img01_2012-08-18_sf_slow-bikes-fast-art_ben-kellgren

The evening started with an art show featuring work from Ben Kellgren, Chris Riesner, Kyle Emery-Peck and Ben Sutter. Here’s Woodward West’s former BMX director Ben Kellgren (far right) showing his wood panel stippling art.