YERRRR! We out here in NYC busting wheelies and tearing up the streets with RRDBlocks, Lucas Brunelle & Ed Wonka and a bunch of other homies on our way to the A$AP FERG launch party. FERG teamed up with Redline to create a signature wheelie boy bike, and it’s fire. Plus it’s yellow. Shout out to the Bicycle Film Festival for giving me a reason to fly out to New York. The planets aligned with this one.
I am stoked to present volume 1 in a multi-volume photo collection of my on-going bike adventures around the Bay Area and beyond this year. You can always find me out riding any given day, but man do you really get going when the weather’s prime and those sun rays are beaming- this is California Dirt Dreamin’
Johnathan Ball, better known as JBALL has been riding fixed gear since… well you’ll have to ask him how long exactly, but a long time. Let’s just say that. He’s unreal on a FGFS bike and even better on 700c x 28c tires. From throwing bar spins off rooftops to spinning fish n’ chips till your mind melts, JBALL makes it look easy.
The morning of the second Tracklocross race here in Los Angeles, JBALL hit me up wanting to ride bikes. After shooting photos of the race, I met up with him in downtown and rode around for a couple hours stacking a ton of clips in a short amount of time. CLICK HERE to check out the video we made entitled “Second Nature”.
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I met up with Johnathan Ball in downtown Los Angeles and filmed this with him in a couple hours. JBALL has been riding fixed gear for forever and all those year’s of riding FGFS makes it really fun to watch him wield a track bike. Just look at those bar spin combos and fish n chip rotations. We’ll have to get together and film with JBALL more often.
Shout out to the lvl. 9 homie JEF for making the soundtrack.
Tadashi Nakamura has traveled from Japan to the States to stay with us on 3 separate occasions now. Each time we lived in a different city. First San Francisco, then Portland, and now Los Angeles. He’s been up and down the West Coast and we’ve filmed a video together in each one of those cities.
I’m really excited to release the video we shot for Chari & Co here in LA. We accidentally broke my fisheye on our first day of filming so we had to shoot things a little differently this time around. It was kind of a blessing in disguise really. It forced me to shoot differently and re-imagine how we come to the table. It’s important to mix things up every once in a while. Don’t want to get stuck doing the same thing over and over.
Shout out to Chari & Co for lacing us up and keeping us stoked on bikes. I’m pretty sure Tadashi stained every white t he owned by the end of this trip. What started out white would quickly turn grey by the end of the day. We had a lot of fun exploring alleys, getting sweaty and occasionally rolling around on the concrete. Keep your eyes peeled for the video piece as well as more photos coming out in the next couple weeks.
CHECK OUT MORE PHOTOS HERE>>
I don’t usually make these types of videos, but with my recent injury / move from Portland, I finally had enough of a reason to shoot something like this. It feels like I’m watching home movies. Perhaps I’ll make more of these for personal / historical reasons. I’m still healing from more than just a broken shoulder but wanted to take a second to give a major shout out to Jaynie, Ernie & Jeff for always helping me keep things positive. You’re the best.
Mike Schmitt has been in and around Chari & Co for years. I found out about them by watching all the old Grime Bikes videos back in the day. It seemed like they were always hanging out at Chari in NYC, and for good reasons. The more I got to know the people over at Chari & Co, the more I began to see what all the hype was about. Not only do they make some of the raddest street wear but they’re also very kind and generous people. It’s easy to want to support the cause when they’re such solid human beings.
I highly recommend you check out their webstore and or scope them out online. Mike recently did a series of graphics for them which can be seen HERE. I’m always inspired by the way they shoot their flat lays and the bike friends they bring into the mix for their lifestyle photography. Worth a follow for sure. Check out the video Mike & I filmed entitled “Strangers”. Shot during the same day these photos were taken. That’s enough for now, talk to you soon.
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If you’re looking for SF’s best local singletrack trails, then Mt. Sutro’s interior greenbelt and Twin Peaks are probably at the top of that list. Roughly scattered around the Sutro radio tower in the geographic center of San Francisco, lies a surprisingly fun network of trails to link up and ride. It’s pretty awesome having our own lush forest to rip around in, just a few miles away from most people’s homes.
Here’s a Trail Forks map you can peep if you want to check the trails out for yourself (and you should!)