The old Level Magazine was one of those titles that put the Life in “lifestyle” magazine — and it’s back online starting today! Editor/publisher/leader Chris Noble invited me to contribute, so I’ll be posting bits over there on a regular.
Here’s the history of the magazine direct from Chris:
In 1999, the magazine Level was born. Brothers Mark and Chris Noble, publishers of a BMX magazine and a core MTB magazine, got bored of going into their local newsagent and seeing nothing on the lifestyle shelves for them or their like. The …

My first column for ESPN, entitled “The Revolutions Will Not Be Televised,” in which I reminisce and ruminate as to why BMX flatland television coverage disappeared.

Here’s an excerpt:
When I started riding flatland BMX, there were only a handful of flatland tricks to learn, and it was easy to see where to start if you wanted to learn even the hardest of them. Curb endos, 180s, rollbacks, the core of the sport’s repertoire didn’t even require pegs. This changed quickly as the sport progressed. By the late ’80s, there were hundreds …

So, while I was in San Diego doing construction and selling cured meats at farmer’s markets (see my previous post), two of my bike friends back in Austin, Sandy Carson and Taj Mihelich, went up to Superdrome Velodrome in Frisco, Texas for some real wall-riding action… on their fixed-gears.
Apparently, the Superdrome is one of the steeper tracks in the country. Below are a few pictures. Check out Taj’s blog for the full story.

Earlier this year, Mark Lewman somehow conned Nike into funding the FREESTYLIN’ Magazine reunion book he’s been wanting to do since FREESTYLIN’ stopped printing pages in the early 90s. Having finally received my copy, I am glad he did.

My friend Ben Hiltzheimer once said that riding a motorcycle was a such head-clearing experience because while riding all you could think about was not dying. Riding a fixed-gear bicycle is similarly head-clearing. It’s chess not checkers. Being connected to the bike and its motion feels right in a way that riding bikes with freewheels and brakes never did, but you have to think several moves ahead.

I made a “Master Cluster” notebook. Check it out.

Not normally one to dwell on such things, I thought it would be appropriate to acknowledge a few recent deaths, as the lives of these people impacted mine in profound ways.

The mailbox at my parents’ house in Alabama is at the end of winding asphalt strip, the only interruption in acres of sporadic deciduous trees, save their house of course. One day almost exactly twenty years ago, some of the best mail I ever received happened upon that mailbox.

My friend Mark Lewman sent me this video clip a few years ago. It’s sort of a video zine called “UNCONSUB” that he made with a digital camera. At the time, one couldn’t share such things as freely as we do now (he sent it to me on a CDR via the regular mail), but now that we have the bandwidth, I thought I’d share it.

“The essence of culture is found in all its artifacts.” — Pete Robinson in Donald Antrim’s Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World
During one of our mid-session chats at the skatepark recently, my friend Greg mentioned that a lot of the older guys he skated with at various parks, guys who’d skated back in the late 70s and early 80s, started skateboarding again after seeing the Dogtown and Z-Boys documentary. I don’t know why, but this struck me as an odd phenomenon. I guess because it was a halo …