BMX-Chad DeGroot is Raw!

Does it seem to you that bmx gets more and more fragmented all the time? Lots of little boxes to

Either way, bear with me a second: You’ve got your low top tube trendies v. staunch high tt geometry enforcers. There’s your light weight digi-scale obsessors v. back-in-my-day heavy weight protectors or the roasted brakeless street slackers v. the protein shaking gyro gymnasts.

It’s getting harder and harder to choice the hard and soft goods and piece together a fitting bmx persona for yourself. That is what you're doing isn't it? Anyway it’s almost enough to make you want to put your seat post to a comfortable level, put on a front brake, Chicago your bars and do one-footed, x-up kickturns in your driveway.

My point here is acutually that there is a clear new division emerging. The Raw v. The Colour kids. Raw is definitely the mode preferred at my local park and has even been taken to new levels of rawness with the spray bottle of salt water used to create a very even layer of rust over a frame. Sounds dumb, looks good. Probably not great if you value your warranty, but at least you're hard. Here are some of the contenders in this new sub-sub-cultural divide:

Fly are definitely in the colour camp and their 2010 stuff will allow you to match your pedals to your cables, to your brakes, to your brake pads. You may now view a shitty quality image of said stuff right here.

Failure have a new Jerimiah Smith frame called the Flying Lion that is r-r-r-raw:



More shots here.

Mutiny have a new frame called the Lucky Strike that cleverly combines paint job and decals to mess with your eyes:



Bright. Looks like they've also got some new forks on the way.

The graphics on Colony’s Gnarkill frame are obscenely colourful:



But for the pinnacle of rawness. Chad DeGroot’s “brand” Deco Bmx which kind of looks legitimate, despite his website being the least legitimate company website imaginable – it’s an odd mix of porn (how are those two kids in the background not curious as to what's going down on the mini ramp?), new born babies and general freakiness.



But there is even a selection of bmx parts on show that may just be a product line… or they might be some stickered up things he found in someone’s garden shed. Actually the frame is complete with bullet tipped stays and a logo’d lasercut seat-stay bridge and seems very unlikely to be a hoax.

Upon further examination of this rawness, it appears there is a pair of forks with removable 990 mounts that will do their part to create harmony between the front brake and brakeless sub-sets. Despite this gesture, the level of raw product combined with a website unmatched in bmx for it’s raw female content, you've got to say that Chad DeGroot is raw!

Cheese, Wine and Meth

Melbourne just had a weekend of wind and rain and general anti-bike-riding weather that leaves you back to work on Monday feeling unsatisfied. But it does make for good AusBike weather. AusBike is like Australia's little version of what I imagine InterBike to be, but since there was some BMX stuff on show so I dutifully attened.

Along with the Australian distros like Triplesix, Kick Ass BMX and Elite Cycle Imports, Colony also had a stand showing off all their 2010 stuff like the Descendent completes and the new Phantom frame all built up and looking fine.

The Phantom is Liam Fahy-Hampton's new signature frame and I'll tell you something about him that you wouldn't know unless you've done the same exhaustive research that I have, unturned every stone and even read his team page on the Colony site. And that is that he enjoys fine wine and cheeses. That's a 100kg street ape that drinks shiraz and manipulates cheese with one of those upturned fork-knife things. That's cool, I like cheese. I wonder if Mike Hoder likes cheese? I always thought of him as more of a Meth kind of guy, but maybe he's just a Merlot man. Either way check this edit and you'll have to agree that he is in some way altered.

So back to Colony... Here's a few photos of new stuff and modified stuff for 2010:

Pivotals that look like... pivotals. Nuts.

New graphics everywhere and a little extra machining on their hub shells. Why? Why not?

Colony cranks now have an extra little hole on the crank bolt boss. Interesting eh?

Pretty sure the rest is business as usual. Like I said, AusBike is pretty small but I'll post up a couple more photos in the next day or two. Until then, just sit back and try to keep your excitment in check.

A Woman Walks Into a Bar...

2010 bikes have well and truly started to appear.

Subrosa are having an honest tilt at the "more is more" crown, with a humble tally of 17 bikes. But it's not won yet - Mongoose are yet to run.

Colony Descendant bike is having a fair crack at taking the "how low can you go" title from Blackeye's Killorado complete . It's a race to the bottom. But wait, this guy is already polishing his trophy, if you know what I mean, with his custom Solid from last year.

On that note, a joke:
A woman walks into a bar and asks the barman for a double entendre.
So he gives her one.

Anyway... I can't tell you much more than that other than the Kinks 2010's are out and they've kept it to a round number. That GT are doing a brakeless street complete that I can't find a picture of, and Verde are doing two completes that both look nice.

Over and out.

Bikes are Nice

Here's a little something from Fly on the new bits that they've got happening at the moment. Ideas are high, resolution is low:

Those investment cast bridges look particularly nice with different style for each of the models, though they do leave me with a little tinge of guilt since months ago I made the mistake of declaring that I was putting together a post about the investment casting technique that Fly and WTP have started using for for fork and frame dropouts. So now they've done a bunch of bridges too and I ain't done shit. Life's hard.

One thing that's distinctly missing from the layout above is the Fly cassette hub. You've got to wonder if it's hit the wall, cause none of their team seem to be riding it. There was that KP bike check the other day he was rocking Profile and Javier Ortega's got a bike check up on Transworld and he's riding a Mini too. I was really looking forward to seeing what angle Fly would bring to cassettes and how the hell they were going to get down to the 12 oz mark that they had put out there. So is it all over, or is it in an unmarked box headed for InterBike. Either way Javier's always got a nice looking bike for those that remain unoffended by the simple functionality of a brake:

Speaking of nice looking, when it comes to manufacturing precision machine porn, the Germans are going to win every time. They're just not that good at making cheap rubbish. You've only got to take a look at Svevo Bikes to confirm that. No new fangled T.I.G welded frames there.

Once Was New Shit

Verde are taking the style points with their 2010 completes. They've put out photos of the full range - on Defgrip of course - and they are looking damn fancy. Fancy good that is. Chrome, fats front and rear, tan-walls, built in pivotals, minimal decals and flangeless grips. No spec yet:

Colony have also put up a couple of preview shots of their two completes for 2010 - The Endeavour and The Decsendent. The Decsendent is built around the low, low slung Hell Stallion frame and will, as a result, make people raise their voices and talk angrily about scooters. Or they may raise their voices in lively debate about whether or not Colony have deliberately used Australian/English spelling for both of their completes so as to confuse their American market. Either way, no spec yet:

United have their four completes and two logos for 2010. They are nice enought to tell you how much hi-ten steel and/or how much CrMo you're getting on your complete, but they have not made it clear which logo they would like you to primarily recognise them by:

And just to keep things confusing, as all the 2010 bikes start appearing Lotek have posted up a 2009 "back to school" range:


They look nice, but there's been talk that the quality of the last batch of Loteks was pretty average, with the soles requiring very little persuasion to separate themselves from the uppers and seek a happier life on their own. But on the other hand, the Lotek team do have a lot of tattoos... so you should probably just buy some anyway. And if you do, you can be safe in the knowledge that there is now a Lotek warranty policy - if your shoes fuck up, you can pay $20 to get another pair - if you live in the US. If you don't, you could always just put your $20 towards a new pair of Orchids.

I don't think I should say too much about the MacNeil 2010 stuff. They've put their "Cruiser" bike and frame right at the top of their product menu and the bitter taste of negativity it's left in my mouth is just going to get all over any other words that come out.

Maybe it's just a personal hang-up and maybe it's just the label "cruiser", but I can only see them are the drunk uncles of bicycles - loud and obnoxious, styleless and bloated. The MacNeil incarnation is actually one of the less lame examples that you'll see. It doesn't, for example, have any flame decals and it will probably never be ridden by Paris Hilton. But really, couldn't they have just done a fixed gear like everyone else?

Last but not least is some Fly prototype spotting. See I notice, that Pijin notices, that Bike Guide notices these things.