It’s been said before, but you can tell a lot about a person by the way they ride their bike. Chaotic loose cannons rarely file their tax returns before the deadline, whilst calculated, reserved riders aren’t usually the last to leave the pub.
Matt Miller is no exception to this rule. I met him briefly on a voyage to Philadelphia a while back and can say that not only was he a smooth rider, but he was also a real smooth, courteous character, a long way from the grubby-mitted street gremlins usually associated with 20 inch wheeled bicycles.
Anyway, cutting to the chase, here’s an interview with him about Chocolate Truck 2, Philly street spots and staying suave. Crew photos by Matt, shots of Matt by Naval and Ooti Billeaud. Interview by Sam.
Whilst visual documents of bicycle motions are by no means important in the grand scheme of the galaxy, it’s funny how much of an effect even the smallest decisions that someone made whilst piecing together footage of their friend’s riding can have on people half the world away.
Joe Cox’s videos, Voices and Tomorrow We Work, are prime examples of this phenomenon. At a time when even the supposedly simple task of capturing footage onto your mum’s Hewlett Packard desktop computer required the patience of a saint, he made well-crafted, thought-out videos that tricked a generation of riders into thinking there were spots in Sheffield. He must have helped shift a few Modest Mouse CDs too.
And beyond all this, Joe wasn’t just some ‘filmer guy’, lagging behind the crew with a load of tripods on his back—he was a highly-honed master of the bicycle, riding with a level of finesse that’s hard to muster on the rain-soaked, glass-smashed streets of the north.
Interview by Sam, photos by Newrick, Wozzy and Benson. Interview originally published in Red Steps Issue 5.
Back by unpopular demand, here’s some odds and ends from around the digital world that you may or may not enjoy.
Addy Snowdon’s rust-coated masterpiece Cast Iron Shore, is now up on the net. There’s obvious bias here but this sharply-edited slab of north west street riding is by far one of the best videos to grace the DVD format in the past few years and if for some strange reason you didn’t decide to fork out for a copy last year… then you’re in luck.
Strangeways Volume 5 is getting the red carpet treatment at 7PM Friday the 10th of June at the Thirsty Scholar just down from Manchester Oxford Rd station. Check the trailer here.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic, El Punto de Sabor is the new one from AM:PM, featuring a mix of golden age playground spots, massive handlebars, Ratkid Japan clips, high school choir cover-versions, Mike Hoder’s seat-post, complicated rail configurations at at least one pair of gloves.
Over 20 years after it was made, Standard’s 1998 video Domination still stands up majestically to the often damning test of time.The riding is fast, the clothing is dope and the spots look like the sort of everyday features you’d actually find in your town.
In this fairly long winded article, a decent chunk of the cast and crew discuss the making of this most bodacious video…
Thanks to Tedd Nelson for his amazing photos—and for all his help with sorting these interviews.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Conor Bedford (who’s smithing that sheet of metal in the above photo) rode quite fast over a variety of British surfaces and Tim Evans had the foresight to film it.
Paralellis a tasteful bit of ‘Brits abroad’ action courtesy of Infamous and the glorious streets of Barcelona.
Making a riding video takes patience. Making a riding video, sending it to the duplicators, then storing the resulting DVDs in a box under your bed for over a year without anyone else laying eyes on it takes a lot of patience.
Luckily, Addy Snowdon isn’t one to rush things—and whilst last-year’s lockdown malarkey could have easily sent him in search of his Youtube password to hastily upload the fruits of his labour to the information superhighway, he chose to wait things out until he could show it the old fashioned way—in a packed room, with good company and a selection of cold beverages bought from the local Tesco.
With Cast Iron Shore finally available for all to see, here’s an interview with Addy about the making of this fine video. Questions by Sam, photos by Clarky and Sam.
This is an interview with Joey Piazza about riding in New York, teaching kids at school, complex grind configurations, having the last section in his own video, that guy who had that horrific crash riding down an escalator, flatland, Union Square, goofy-footed grinding, not being indoors, the Caribbean and the new AM:PM video. It originally appeared in Red Steps Issue 5, but seeing as his new DVD is finally done, now seemed like a good time to upload it into the binary world. Photos by Seth, Wozzy and Russ Bengston.
A certain Chesterfield table-topper was recently heard commenting that’s it’s been a while since we did one of these articles… so here it is. Decent stuff on the net has been very thin on the ground lately, but there has been a few slabs of gold hidden amongst the digital dust and debris.
For starters, thesetwo videos from Jake Frost are more definitely worth a watch—featuring clips from the 90East contingent, as well as plenty of larking about, tomfoolery and shenanigans. I wouldn’t want to be an old TV in New England…
Talking about Instagram and its effect on riding is a tired subject by now, but the ability to serve up a full video straight in front of people’s eyes as they ride the bus back from work is a startling development.
Whilst we’re on the subject of everyone’s favourite time-sapping app, Bob Scerbo has been uploading loads of amazing old footage into the matrix—painstakingly piecing together disparate clips of people like Gonz (the bike one™) and elusive street pioneer Wilbur Barrick, as well as sections from FBM’s The Bar is Closed.
The third part of Jim Newrick’s Hit the North saga is here. Just over 12 minutes of North East street riding from Cookie, Count, Clarky, Wozzy, Jim, Jambul and more, put together with a level of attention to detail seldom-seen in the often formulaic world of bike videos. The riding is fast, the music is hypnotic, and no ridable surface is left unscathed—from the world’s smallest pole jam to some colossal concrete sea-walls. Describing a riding video as ‘a masterpiece’ might sound a bit gratuitous, but the term is certainly warranted here. The Street Shark has returned.
Bob Scerbo has uploaded his latest masterpiece onto the world wide web. Most people who lurk on this site will probably already have a copy of this sat on their shelf, but for those who don’t… drag yourself out of the Instagram worm-hole for a while, pour yourself a refreshing beverage and press the play button post haste.
Bogus awards like ‘Video of the Year’ are obviously pretty naff and mean next-to-nothing in the real world, but this mixed-media meander around the lesser-spotted corners of the United States was perhaps one of the most enjoyable videos to come out last year… and whilst it’s maybe too early to say, it’ll probably stand up to the test of time more than most.
CENTRAL LIBRARY 