For those of you who have been checking out the BMXNJ Facebook page and the ones who have noticed the integration of BMXNJ into my personal middaugh.org site, you may have noticed that I have been thinking of changes to my perception of BMX and bikes in general.
Over the past couple years I’ve been getting pretty jaded on the overall BMX scene. It’s become, at least to me, the same repetitive thing. I love the riding and have respect for a lot of riders but for me, it has lost the edge it once had. Something has gone missing in it for me as I have aged through the years. A lot of the people I am friends with grew up in the scene and looking at them now it seemed the term BMXer didn’t really fit anymore.
Some had stopped riding and become businessmen, artists, others kept on with it as a hobby and stress reliever, some had become collectors of the great history of what we did as kids and many had started riding other bikes that though the riding style was BMXesque the bikes were not 20″ double diamond hard tails.
Lastly I saw in the generations that were coming up that same diversity and that same need to want to “fit in together”, but no way to really express it.
In essence it looked to me like the term BMX had outgrown itself. BMX was derived from the term bicycle motocross. When the sport was new we were kids emulating motorcycle motocross. (Strange name though because motocross meant motorcycles racing cross country…so bicycle motocross meant…bicycles motorcycles racing cross country.) Now though we are WAY more than kids emulating motorcycles. We are people with diverse styles, bikes, ways of riding and viewing what we do as well as now having a lineage to look back on and say “this is how we got to where we are”
Which brings me to my point. I’m burnt on referring to the massive amount of what we all do as just “BMX”. We have evolved way beyond that. We look at things through a lens that the average human bean can’t comprehend. This has become known to the “mainstream” as “alternative” thinking. Although I am not anywhere near someone who wants to deal with the mainstream and all it entails, I do want to get the message out that all of us who ride bikes in ways that others just don’t “get” are all part of the same subculture. So to me and without coming across as hipster, it means collectively we are, Alternative Bike Riders. ABR for short.
We ride BMX, or Mountain Bikes, downhill, street ride, maybe do some flatland, perhaps collect old school bikes and show them off. We take rides on our bikes just to hit a curb or grab a drink at the local store. We rip it on a 20″, 24″, 26″ heck even a big daddy 29″ wheel. We create art, we create businesses, we work for “the man”, we are…everywhere. Together though we are people who ride bikes and see the possible where others see the impossible.
So what will Alt. Bike Rider be about? Whatever we are about, riding, art, writing, videos, life, opinions, activism, music. We are a diverse group of people unified through our love for riding a bike in…unusual ways. Most importantly for me it means that I don’t have to be pigeonholed just into posting videos or pictures of barspins, tailwhips, backflips and grinds, I can put out whatever is different and cool that is being done on or by Alternative Bike Riders.
I was one of the first generation of BMX riders, now as I am shredding on up near the big 5 0, I mean to be the first of the group of Alternative Bike Riders. A nomenclature more in tune with what those old BMXers have grown up to be and what today’s bike riders will become.
The ABR logo is a mishmash of my interests one more link to being an alt biker. The silhouette is my girl Christine in a pinup outfit chilling on my bike, the byline, “unity in diversity” signifies how alike and different we are. The dot is red for a reason…look it up on a color wheel and what its connotations are.
So…that’s the intro to Alt. Bike Rider for now… let’s see where this goes…Look for articles on the ABR lifestyle in Chateau Woo Woo mag’s future issues.