After Dash 4 The Cash was over I ran home, grabbed my FGFS build, changed up my camera setup and rode with the boys in the Financial District. We’ve been meeting up every Saturday for a day session and it’s been great to see so many familiar faces back on 2 wheels. Press play, enjoy and we’ll see you soon. I love San Francisco. Filmed by: Matt Reyes & Andy Sparks
The boys are back in town. Every Saturday we’ve been meeting up to shred in San Francisco and this week was no exception. Immediately after DASH 4 THE CASH was finished we linked up and rode the Financial District. Which has been completely gutted and is incredibly desolate with everything going on in the world. SF is a ghost town and we’re taking full advantage of that. Stay tuned and keep your eyes peeled for the video from this day dropping tomorrow morning. Holler at your boy if anybody wants to meet up and roll around with us sometime. All bikes are welcome.
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Picking up where we left off. Last month I moved back to San Francisco. After nearly a decade of living here, and 4 years spent living in other cities I can honestly and confidently say that SF is the best and only real city on the West Coast. Good vibes and great friends are a hard thing to find everywhere you go, but the Bay Area has it in abundance.
On Saturday (September 5th 2020) we all got together at “The Island” and made our way up Market street to session both Wallenberg & The Museums in GGP. The gang finally convinced me to get back on my FGFS bike, and I must say… I’m sure glad they did. I almost forgot what it felt like to ride this bike and how much it raises my spirits. It’s like the old saying, “you never forget how to ride a bike”.
Steel is real. Matt “SLUMWORM” Reyes for MASH SF. I’ve been riding the MASH Steel frame for a couple years now and it’s my every day, all in one, dream machine. I’ve traveled the world with this bike, logged thousands of miles on it, and have used it in every way imaginable. It’s by and far the most versatile bike I’ve ever ridden and continues to put a smile on my face every time I get on that saddle.
15 Shots. Recently Mike T Schmitt made me aware of a thing called “sprocket photography. Basically shooting full bleed on rolls of 35mm. I already had a medium format camera, my Hasselblad 503CX, but had to order a 35mm adapter to shoot on that 120mm camera. The results were what you see both above and below. This made me remember why I love shooting film in the first place.
Out of a roll of 36 exposures I was able to get 15 shots. These are them. Every last one of them. Again why I love shooting film. Instead of capturing a thousand photos, then coming home and having to sort through everything, you shoot one shot. The shot. Then move on to the next one. It’s incredibly liberating not knowing if you got what you wanted. If it was captured correctly, exposed correctly, in focus, out of focus. It quickly becomes more about the act of doing, than the end result. But when the end result looks like this, who can argue that only shooting 15 shots is such a terrible idea. Haha. I’m sure there are tons of apps out there that try to imitate this effect, but you can’t beat the real feel of film. Riders: Johnathan Ball, Deacon Wong, Marco Marquez, Oscar Lopez
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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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Building up your bike is almost as fun as riding it. The rad part about fixed gear is how different everyone’s bike is. Each build is a passion project assembled piece by piece. The best part about fixed gear is that it doesn’t take much to put one together. Master Bike Co & RUFF Bike Co are both rider owned / operated brands that still produce FGFS parts. So if you’re looking to build up a bike or need something new, that’s your best place to start.
My bars are clearly shifted back, Marco’s wheels are more square than circle, JBall’s bike is solid as a rock, Oscars bike has throwback vibes and Deacon’s freshly painted MASTER frame had a sparkle attribute that won over the hearts of the judges. The judge being me, personal opinion of course, but Deacon had the illest whip.
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Who doesn’t love leftover pizza. The team really came together for this one, like knights of the round table. Actually this is just a bunch of clips from 2019 that didn’t make their way into other videos edits. I knew there were some extra clips floating around and I’m really glad I went back through to see what didn’t make the first cut. Check out nearly 50 screen shots as well as the custom soundtrack to the video below.