Friday, October 4, 2024

That one time I got a two page spread photo in a BMX magazine

 I don't have a laptop, can't save screenshots like normal.  But if you go to page 16 of this scan, in the Raleigh Hyper Shock bike test.  That's me in the Vision Street Wear T-shirt, doing a Shingle shuffle under the Huntington Beach Pier.  The sequence is David Morris, the other Raleigh team rider, who was a better rider than me, but from the Pacific Northwest, so he didn't get much coverage.  

The bike is the upgraded version of the pink Raleigh Hyper Shock freestyle bike I got when we did a bike test on one at FREESTYLIN' magazine.  The latter version, in this test, was chrome with a better color combo for the stickers.  I actually really liked the way the Raleigh rode.  It had Hutch Trick Star clone geometry, Torker-style twin top tubes, and a small loop frame stand that worked really well.  

The downside was that to hit the price point, they weren't all chrome-moly, and the handle bars were mild steel, too.  So I loved the way they rode, but I snapped 6 or 7 frames in a year, and snapped one pair of handlebars mid air on a bunnyhop.  That wasn't fun.  I actually nicked the jagged edge of the handlebars when I bailed, and cut my ball sack a little.  Not cool.  

If there had been a full chrome-moly version of that bike, I would have kept on riding them.  That was my second "factory sponsorship," after the horrific OTW (Off The Wall) bikes I rode for a couple of months in early 1986, while living in San Jose.  The OTW piece of shit bikes morphed into Air-Uni bikes, then eventually Ozone, which actually were good bikes.   Photos by Steve "Guy-B" Giberson.  May 1988 issue of Freestyle magazine (the Super BMX freestyle mag).  

May 1988 Freestyle Magazine scan

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That one time I got a two page spread photo in a BMX magazine

 I don't have a laptop, can't save screenshots like normal.  But if you go to page 16 of this scan, in the Raleigh Hyper Shock bike ...