This poor bastard took the business end of a 180 over the hitching post. Legs shouldn’t have that many corners….

I’m going to post a little video of some of the coolest bangers of the weekend later tonight. I’m sure you can already see them all over the internet though because as per always there were like 400 cameras pointed at every trick. Also, I apologize for not knowing the names of ANY of the riders above… Its hard to keep up with the newest 15 year old super pros. I miss the old days of watching legends like Taj, Van Homan, Brian Foster, and Ruben rock the bike show.

Tommy Hains has crafted up some Capital BMX t-shirts in effort to continue to raise money for the proposed Orleans Box Jump. I’ve been saying for more years than I can remember that I want to get some shirts made, but Tommy finally made it happen.

They run $20 a piece with all the proceeds going toward the box jump fund, with black ink on white cotton only, in sizes medium, large, and a few extra larges. To get one you can contact Tommy directly (tommy-hains at hotmail dot com), and he will get it to you. Get behind this Ottawa. Click below for more photos of the shirt.

Prashant threw a decent art party the other week. Not as nice as his cardigan, but really sweet none the less. even Sketchy Kid (Byron Carrol) showed up, so if you didn’t, you suck.

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.

This is a benefit Jam for aussie rider Stu Timm’s who had an accident December 11th, 2009. He has suffered a spinal crush fracture at C5 level and unfortunately has been paralysed from the shoulders down, So come stop by Ugly Ass Bike (UAB) and support fellow riders, have a sherd and grab some prizes. donate what you can please.

There is nothing quite like giving something your all and completely falling on your face. You know, like when you spend all year training really hard to win the big track and field meet only to show up and get murdered by all the kenyan kids with 6 foot long legs, or when you go into the exam and totally flunk it because you stayed up all night studying super hard for it, or when you ask out that super pretty girl and she turns out that you’re not nearly attractive enough. Failure is like fine wine; it’s bitter and if you sample enough of it eventually you get addicted.

I’m no prophet, but I predict doom for Markham’s new answer to the famous “Ray’s MTB”. This park, if you haven’t already heard about it, is a year round all bike training ground with all kinds of really cool ramps, all made out of a space age wood compound called “chip board”… I’m not a scientist or anything, so I couldn’t begin to explain to you how engineers have crafted this magical board for maximum strength and durability. Although I seem to remember how easily squirrels could bore through it and get into my cottage as a kid… before we changed the window shutters to ply wood… but again.. I’m neither a scientist or a carpenter so what do I know.

The park does look pretty fun, I’ll give it that. The ramps seem well shaped, and the little bits of video footage I’ve seen online show some pretty gnarly riding. However, despite their seductive shapes, I’m sure as soon as someone spills a gatorade on the ramps, that spongey wood will suck it all up and change forms dramatically. Perhaps a no water rule will be implemented, it seems that management has a hardon for ridiculous usage stipulations so anything is possible.

Of these stipulations, one is “No brakeless bikes” (as seen above). And this really makes me reflect upon the failures of EVERY SINGLE INDOOR PARK to open in ontario over the past decade. Every time they fold, and always because they can’t remain financially viable. Not enough clientelle. So obviously opening a new park in Markham, it makes sense to bar 70% of the BMX/MTB community’s riders from riding it. And not even that, all the pro riders in the Toronto area are brakeless. The most influential dudes in the area will never ride that park. Great choice guys! You’ve clearly thought this one through. If you should have banned anything it should be pegs, not even perfect brakes will stop pegs from making gnarly holes in all your chip board ramps.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a brake rider through and through. And truthfully I would really like to ride this park. However I can’t imagine when I’ll ever get the chance. The only guy I ride with that consistently has brakes is Jorden. And so on a roadtrip its not like he and I will go ride and all my other friends will sit out. Fuck no. We’re going to go someplace else.

I hate to wish failure upon these guys, they’ve publicly stated that they have invested their life savings in it, and I wish I could be optimistic about it but when you make such foolish decisions about the small details, I can only imagine what kind of boners they’re pulling on the big stuff.

I finished the newest issue of my zine (Yo, Sick) a while ago, but a combination of a busy schedule/laziness kept me from getting copies made and assembled. With that said, the regular amount of 50 of them are all done and ready to go. A little bit larger than past issues (5.5″ x 4.25″), and 12 pages in total. There’s some illustrations, photos, contributed photos, collage, and a few words. A little less on the BMX, and heavier on other random stuff. Issue 5 is already slowly in the works, and I’m hoping to do a lot more with it.

If you want a copy they are available at Joe Mamma’s new location, or just ask me next time you see me. If you live outside of Ottawa and want one, hit me up and I will mail you a copy.

Andrew and Boudreau in costume

Despite a forecast of terrible weather, the Halloween Jam took place as it always has and always will. The turnout wasn’t as great as previous years, partly because of the weather and partly because most of Ottawa’s scene thinks they’re too hardcore to have fun anymore. The Jam had some great costumes, including Karl Oxinnuzzen’s ‘Greased Up Deaf Guy’ outfit, Boudreau’s Bill Clinton outfit, and Rich’s homemade Predator costume. There were also on the other hand, a bunch of people who showed up without a costume… who does that? Its a halloween jam… show up with a costume, or don’t bother coming at all.

Regardless of the moderate levels of suck, there was a high level of awesome. Watching Karl do greased up tailwhips, having a couple of epic games of foot down in the bowl, and a monster truck rally where we had to ride our bikes over a pile of other bikes, each time a person was unable to make it over a pile and got stuck, their bike stayed in the pile, making it harder to get through… all of which made this year’s halloween jam a success.

vader nosewheelie

Pretty much everyone got some sort of prize. We didn’t have a 180 contest this year due to high winds, so all the prizes were given out for foot down, monster truck and costumes. Big thanks to TenPack for hooking us up on that front. They’re always pretty good to us, we had a bunch of parts, soft goods, videos, sadly though we didn’t get a copy of ten pack’s evolution DVD to hand out…

kyle tossin' the hots over the wedges

It was a nice change of pace to have the jam during the day, usually we do it at night and freeze our asses off. The sun actually made an appearance as you can see in the pictures, and we had pretty mild temperatures all afternoon. Although as nice as it was, Karl was still the coldest guy around and covered in vaseline to boot.