https://wheeltalk.org/2020/06/29/fgfs-los-angeles-keeping-distanceOnce a week. It’s been good to get back on the FGFS bike again and even better to have a social distance session with the boys. The photo of JBALL hitting a table top is one of my favorite shots from the day. He brought a film video camera with him and we got a quick clip with that at our first spot of the day. The banks. After that it was off to the local high school to ride some surprisingly beautiful and uncapped set of ledges. If only more schools were built like that.
I’m looking forward to dropping off the roll of 35mm I shot on my 120mm Hasselblad 503cx. I just got a spool adapter recently and have never shot full bleed 35mm. It’ll be fun to see how the sprocket style film photos turn out. I took some top down photos / video through the view finder to help give you an idea of what we got. Stay tuned for video clips from this day as well as a solo part of Marco Marquez we recently finished piecing together.
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Cities within cities. LA is like that I guess. Century City is in between Hollywood & Santa Monica, but it’s basically a ghost town on the weekends. I met up with Marco Marquez there to stack some clips for a video we’ve been working on. The so called “city” is really only a 3-4 block radius. So after we got kicked out of the first spot it was hard to avoid being back in front of the same building dealing with the same security guard… Again, it’s a ghost town. Just us and security. A game as old as time.
A few clips, sand a couple heavy slams later we were back on the road. The only piece of concrete I guess we’re allowed to ride on. Haha. Marco did a couple surfs on our way to this cobble stone quarter pipe that I had spotted before. It’s mad bumpy and is a lot harder to ride than it looks. That being said, Marco still managed to boost up it a couple times for the photo. Keep your eyes peeled for the video part we just wrapped up and we’ll see you soon. This is Matt Reyes, signing off.
Marco Marquez has been flying under the radar for far too long. It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles that I really had a chance to ride with the man and let me tell you. He has one of the most explosive riding styles out of anybody I’ve ever seen ride FGFS. I’m talking double bar spins, 540s, wheelie 3’s. Tricks that are unreasonably difficult to do.
A couple days ago we linked up and rode a couple spots on the outskirts of Culver City. For those who don’t know where that is, it’s basically an imaginary city in the center of Los Angeles where a bunch of Movie studios are located. I think it’s a tax thing. Idk, who can tell. If you know more than me, please reach out and fill me in, I’d love to know more. Anyways. Marco is rad and we’ve been stacking a ton of clips in the last week, so keep your eyes peeled for a video of him tearing up LA. (Culver City to be exact) Haha.
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Happy holidays everyone. It’s high tide here in San Francisco and we decided to meet up at the Clocktower. As usual. We kept it close and rode wheelies / did fixed gear tricks along Embarcadero before ending up at one of my favorite warehouse spots along the pier. Santos said “JUMP YOUR BIKE” and he’s doing his best to lead by example. What a fine role model. Later that night, Jake 100 + the London fam rolled up to The City. Stay tuned for more bike videos in the Bay Area. RIDERS: Jakob Santos // Andy Sparks // Matt Reyes // Josh Boothby // Matt Bastard // Josh Silva // Designer Lamar
Tadashi Nakamura & I linked up with Marco Marquez and some of the other homies in Culver City and rode around for a bit. I’m always caught off guard by how explosive Marco’s riding style is. It’s unbelievably snappy and every trick is as textbook & tucked as it can possibly be. He took a little bit of a tumble hucking 180s over this blue brick barrier. Landed it clean the first few times for video, but slammed once we tried to take photos of it. It’s funny how that works.
Anyways, shout out to CHARI & CO for keeping our dude Tadashi freshly clothed so we had a reason to film for something while he was here. Keep your eyes peeled for that coming at ya real, real soon. More photos below.
Everything is better with friends and Jaoa Danaikrit is one of my closest homies. He’s like a brother to me and basically lived in Portland as long as we did. He’s a genuine force of positivity and an absolute pleasure to be around. We were able to create a handful of videos together while he was here, but this might be our favorite creation yet. I’ll stop talking now, press play, enjoy and as always, shout out to Jeff Osborn for the soundtrack.
Song: JEF – Cheer
We are strangers to ourselves. Sometimes when I look back at the videos we’ve made there’s a weird disconnect. Even though we were there every step of the way while making it, it’s still a strange out of body experience to watch yourself. Mike Schmitt really did a number on cutting this one together. After picking up an old JVC VHS camera, Mike transcoded the footage we shot onto a S-VHS tape, then recaptured it and edited this video. It really brings together all the clips considering they came from 3 different cameras.
Here’s a photo collage Mike put together using some of the photos I shot. I really like the process photos on the top right and the integration of video clips into the slides. (Click here to see the post in motion) Shout out to Chari & Co. for lacing it up with the sweet gear (Some of which Mike did the graphics for) and giving us a reason to get out and make something.
Filmed by: Mike Schmitt and Matt Reyes.
Edited by: Mike Schmitt.
Bikes by: Mash Transit.
A Turf X Wheel Talk production.
Bikes are fun. This is not an advertisement.
First off I’ll start by saying how good it feels being back in California. A place where the sun and weather are on your side. The Mexican food tastes fucking awesome and you can step outside in a t-shirt. All things I took for granted. Until now that is. I’ve been loading up on burritos and soaking up the sunshine now that both those things are readily available.
Last weekend I drove down to Norwalk to meet up w/ the boys. JBALL and Deacon Wong managed to get me in a car to actually drive to a spot. 9 Freeways later and there I was. Standing in a parking lot with Deacon waiting 2 hour for JBALL to arrive. Haha. Somebody get this mans a watch. It’s a good thing Deacon brought with him every toy imaginable: scooter, mini fixie, skateboard, etc. Actually that’s not that much, but in my mind he might as well have brought a pogo stick. All that being said, I’m glad he did because it really helped pass the time.
After sessioning some school for what felt like forever, we rode out in search of spots in neighborhood. First up was this rail that JBALL hopped with ease. (see photo for details) Then we went to this out ledge that was pretty rounded and made it difficult to grind. Stay on your grind. A young @CHASEFGFS came out and showed us what he’s made of. I snapped this sequence of him and wish I shot more because the kid is amazing. Once everyone had their fill, we made our way to the top of this parking garage where we ended the day. (Or at least I did, I think they went and rode a skatepark afterwards) On the drive home Slam Dunk Ernie talked about how much fun we had and some of the aireal clips we shot of Marco Marquez. We’ll have to do it again soon. Until next time fam.