As mentioned in the past on the message board, the Mayfair Theatre will be having a screening of the embarrassingly classic film from 1983 BMX Bandits on Thursday, July 22nd, at 9:00 pm, brought to you by Joe Mamma and Top Of The World. Everyone that can should make it out.

The Ten Pack team are on tour again this summer. You can expect assorted members of their team to roll through Ottawa some time between the 24th and 28th of June as they travel, visit shops, and film.

That’s right, we’re hitting the road once again this year for some summer tours and will be hitting a bunch of shops and spots all over Canada. We’ll be announcing exactly who will be on each trip and what shops we’ll be going to closer to each date so keep watching the site for more information and be sure to come hang out and ride with us!

Chris has already posted a few of his photos from the Toronto BMX Jam this year, but I thought I would post my photos too. My weekend was a little bit different, as I discovered the best way to have fun in Toronto the weekend of the bike show, after having gone for the last 8 or 9 years, is to spend as little time as possible at the bike show. Don’t get me wrong, the show always has incredible riding, and it’s a great time to catch up with loads of people from all over Ontario (and further parts of Canada) that I rarely ever get a chance to see. The monotony of it all starts to wear on you, and by Sunday I am usually BMX’d out for a long while. Click below to read more and check out more photos from the weekend, that don’t involve the contest at all.

This year we drove down Friday afternoon, intended to visit the show sparingly, and just cruise around Toronto with our favorite human, Leland Nightingale-Forfar. I wanted to carry as little with me a possible, so I brought only a point and shoot disposable camera, and it ran out some time Saturday evening.

We ended up going to Joyride, for the last 2 hours of their session. I was not in to paying the unusually high entry fee only to ride for a couple of hours, and had a flat tire, so I decided to sit it out. I fixed my flat and decided to pedal out to buy some beer. While riding in the designated bike lane with no lights attached, I encountered angry drivers, so I moved to the sidewalk. After crossing a bridge and carrying a lot of speed, I was approaching a group of teenagers who moved out of the way for me, only for the last in the pack to take a half step in my way just as I was going by. My handlebar snagged their arm and I got sent in to the ditch. After voicing my discomfort and frustration with a few choice words, I dragged myself out on to the sidewalk again, and limped forward.

Jeff turns the wooden berms in to a quarter pipe.

We settled in to Leland’s place around 11, and proceeded to take it easy. That eventually led to listening to metal on Leland’s cassette player, and Jeff started ripping off his shirt. If you’ve ever been on a trip with Jeff, this shouldn’t surprise you.

Rich giving Jeff a hand.

Hulkamania

We pedaled out to the bars, but with a combination of the time and size of the line in front of the infamous Dance Cave, we decided to just head elsewhere. We went down the street to The Lab, where the bouncer told us to go straight to the basement, which someone commented felt like hanging out in the “basement of your friends’ dad’s house”.

Dance Cave lineup. No dice.

Favorite human.

When pedaling back we passed the Dance Cave after it was letting out, and saw the expected crowd of inebriated riders all sprawling out on to the sidewalk and street. Green lazers, socializing, shit talking, and stickering commenced. For some reason we then gave the Montreal crew a walking escort to Sneakie Dee’s (?).

Greg Flag.

Shady Rob aka Sauga Rob.

We spent too much time in this shady Coffee Time.

The next day most of us went out riding around town, then made our way to the bike show to watch the Ottawa heat. We found out that Ben Kauffmann had a bad crash over the hitching post that results in a scorpion grind across the floor. Destroyed his second helmet, and he was pretty rattled, so he pulled out from the contest. Jorden Guth and Chris Chitaroni both decided to ride in the pro class and rode in their heat. After hanging out and shaking hands for an hour and a half (and getting a copy of the new BMXFU video – I recommend you track down a copy, you won’t be disappointed), we were eager to get out of there.

We went to this ledge spot near Lakeshore, and were surprised to find a diverse crowd already present. Mississauga riders such as Hans and company were already there, Jo Chen and others from Quebec were there, Montreal crew of Dewey, Greg Flag, and Sean Cooke rolled up with Miami Mike and a big Toronto contingent. We weren’t the only ones bored of sitting inside the bike show all day.

Ledge spot.

That night most people headed to the Dance Cave. The next day we opted to ignore pro finals and cruised around to spots all over and got a solid day of riding in, then ended it with some good food (and running in to Kyle Lafleur). The bike show weekend is always a good time every year, but if you’ve seen it enough it’s nice to get out and enjoy what Toronto has to offer. You’ll be surprised with the number of people you will run in to doing the same. The weather was great, and our host was even greater. See you next year Toronto Bike Show.

Dara, Jeff, Rich, Leland.

Goodbye Toronto.

Just another post to act as a reminder to everyone to do everything they can to make it to UAB this Sunday the 21st for the Orleans FUNdraiser Jam Tommy Hains is throwing. Should be lots of fun and prizes for everyone. There’s been tons of notice for this event, so all excuses are going to be pretty poor for non attendance. Click below to see the post with all the jam details.

*UPDATED – click below for more information and photos*

forgive the typos in the flyer, a casualty of carelessly working with pen and paper

Yo Sick Zine: Issue 5
8.5″ x 5.5″
24 pages
photocopy + laser printed card stock cover
photos, drawings, and more by me (Prashant Gopal) and contributions from Trent Barker
if you would like a copy and don’t live here, send me an email to prashantgopal at gmail dot com

Andrew Grant shares the cover with a stranger.

Some of Trent’s pages.

Some of my pages.

Tommy Hains sent this flier through for a FUNdraiser Jam he is throwing at UAB in Montreal for, get this, raising funds towards the Orleans box jump project. He wanted to get the word out as early as possible, so that more people can get the time off from work and organize rides to come (eyes looking at you East End kids). Everyone should try make it out to this event. It’s a little tough to read some of the print on the flier when I had to shrink it to fit, but here’s the details:

UAB in Montreal (1935 Avenue de L’Eglise)
Sunday, February 21st
1pm – 9pm
$10 entry – half goes straight towards the box jump fund
Prizes from Joe Mamma and UAB

Kicking off 2010; Jeff, Marc, Karl, and Jamie threw down with one of the most original BMX Jams that I have ever been to. As most people in Ottawa know, Jeff has a bunch of ramps stowed away in his warehouse that have been used for a bunch of things already (backyard jam, ghetto street jam)… well this time the 39C boys decided to take things to a new level by placing the ramps smack dab in the middle of their living room. I wasn’t totally surprised when they announced their plans to do this, as anyone who knows them knows that they like to leave their living room as little as possible. Beers and C-gars on the couch all day. What DID surprise me was the amount of work they put in to make it happen, very out of character for Jeff especially.

The Jam attracted people from all over, in fact there were more people at the party that were from out of town than there were Ottawa locals. Fan favourites, Pat and Lelo showed up for the jam and partied hard all night. Riding wise, the ramps were owned all night by Greg and Dewey from MTL, Corey from Vancouver Island and our own Big Ben Kaufmann. It was seriously a pro demo in there. Greg was owning the quarter to sub, Corey put a hole in the roof trying a flair on a quarter that shouldn’t even be comfortable to air, and Dewey manning up a sick icepick 270 on the same ramp were all probably the most notable tricks I saw that night.

After the riding chilled out, everyone got serious about drinking. Andrew Grant chugged a bottle of wine and then he and a couple of others started jumping and hitting their heads in the ceiling fan… which eventually led to a high kick smashing out the ceiling fan… which eventually led to wrestling matches between the ramps where Karl Oxenlostthefight got owned by Andrew, and then we watched Jeff and Jamie square off in a ruthless sumo wrestle. During this sumo duke out, they each had a smoke in their mouth, and at one point Jamie had Jeff pinned to the ground while taking a drag of his cigarette and ashing all over Jeff’s chesty nipples.

Its events like this that make me excited to be part of the BMX community. Nobody has this much fun over the age of 15 but us. We may be acting like 15 year olds; wrecking a living room, drinking in a terribly irresponsible manner, smashing our heads into a ceiling fan and play wrestling in a super gay way… but it sure beats the alternative; being a douchebag fun hater. So next time you don’t show up to one of these events (thats right, i mean you) remember that someday you’re going to have smelly kids, a shitty job and a wife that gets saggier and less fertile every day and you’ll wish you could go back in time and enjoy your life before it started to suck*.

*this scenario excludes the exception of Roland who has a kid and a wife and still has more fun than any of us.