mysticnegro.com Kranky v3.0

Thank you.  It’s like you took my bike and made it a production model that costs less than five bills.  You are awesome.

Fall/Winter Mixed Edit from Eric Stewart on Vimeo.

Hey, Devon on crutches…

Aston Martin’s new car, the Cygnet, is a Toyota (soon to be released as a Scion in the US)  iQ city car (think a Smart car, only smaller and cheaper) which has an A/M nose and a bespoke interior.  For over twice the cost of the donor vehicle Aston hopes to sell 2000 Cygnets to existing customers.  Let me restate that, Aston Martin plans to sell 2000 $35,000 cars based on a sub $15,000 car to a group of people who bitched and moaned when they introduced a “bargain priced” $120,000 car.

To convince people that this is not a bad idea, the Brits have released this video which is full of Parkour/Free Running (there is a difference, one is concerned with efficiency, the other includes flourishes think racing v. riding trails).  Ok, it’s not full of it, it kinda uses it really poorly and it’s just a really bad ad.  I guess there’s always a possibility that when a new sport is being used to sell an old product it will be done wrong.  This is pretty high on the “it makes everything look lame” scale.

Still, after seeing Jake Kooser’s Redline strapped to the back of his Smart car, I can’t dismiss this abomination and a bike rack as not a viable mode of BMX transportation.

Still flush with cash from gran’ma?  Want to be the Francis Ford Coppola of BMX but don’t really know where to start?  Revision 3′s Film Riot reviewed three enthusiast grade  HD cameras for ~$1000 and less.  Check it out here, and note that their biggest complaint about two of the cameras (lack of external audio input) probably won’t matter much if 90% of your audio is going to be overlaid with music you stole via Bit Torrent.  When you’re done you should check out the rest of Film Riot, it’s a good how to resource for the aspiring movie maker on a budget.

Hi, it’s me, George.  I’ve been paying attention to you for, what, three, four years now and, uhm, yeah, you’re slacking.  Hard. I don’t know, maybe it’s a sign of the times, maybe its just a cyclical downturn.  Ok, it’s totally a cyclical downturn, still, I miss the crazy.

You see, for most of the existence of this site I’ve basically been able to poke fun at the easy target that was the truly ridiculous “advancements” of BMX as the freestyle industry marched head first towards making every bike look like an 80′s race machine.  But now we’re here and, yeah, I’m bored.  I mean, how often can I point out that there is a strength/weight correlation that you can only ignore for so long or make fun of how every bike looks the same or scream “we’re all gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” while posting a picture of some part that’s been machined to within a picometer of its life?

Probably about as many times as I have.

But the thing is, without pushing those limits and making those thoroughly ridiculous parts, you never know where they are and you don’t get better, or you don’t get better faster.  Also, I find myself at a loss for content for this site, which makes the two people that read it very, very sad.

So, for me, please bring back the crazy parts that make little sense and bikes that endanger your life just by looking at them and ugly color schemes (thank you GT) and general ridiculousness.  I miss it.