In the early 00s, I was trying to pull together a lot of influences. HEADTUBE [.pdf] was my attempt to return to BMX zine-making while maintaining my other, newfound interests.
The original idea driving HEADTUBE was to unify the bicycle-riding attitude across styles. Cyclists, mountain bikers, fixed-gear heads, and BMX all have different styles and terrains, but there’s still a view they all share. That shared space was where HEADTUBE was going to live.
I started a website for it around the same time as this first issue, and I ran that pretty diligently for a few years, then I moved on to other things. I never made another print issue, so here is a .pdf of the only one.
Inspired by Brian Tunney and his zine Larry’s Donuts is Dead, I’ve been wanting to restage this photo from a year-book shoot in 1986. Though you can’t tell from the background, I went back to the same church parking lot where the original was taken and did the barhop again.
Tunney does this with famous BMX photos and spots from old magazines. Despite my impeccable fashion sense, this picture didn’t even make the yearbook!
Once upon a buzz in the conquest of cool, there was a thing called brand hijacking. This was the phenomenon, sometimes frowned upon, of a brand being supposedly inadvertently associated with a certain subculture or movement. Think Pabst Blue Ribbon, Tommy Hilfiger, or Converse Chuck Taylors. It turns on the idea that the image of a brand belongs to the market, not to the company that cultivates that image.
Alexis ascending. [photo by Matt Coplon]The only antidote is an image so strong that there’s no other way to take it. Over the past several years, Alexis Desolneux and his crew of flatland misfits (Sebastian Grubinger, Michael Husser, George Manos, and Matthieu Bonnécuelle) have built just that. Heresy is a BMX brand that operates like an underground record label. Think Dischord. To wit, in DIG‘s 99.5 issue, Print is Dead, Brian Tunney appropriately called them his “BMX Fugazi.” They’re dedicated to their craft, independent as fuck, and really, really good at what they do.
My journey to Heresy took much longer than it should have. In looking for a new flatland frame to build up last year, I found myself taking several steps backward. Even when I thought I’d found a proper solution, it was only a stopgap. BMX lends itself to nostalgia in weird ways, and nostalgia is a quicksand that’s difficult to avoid. I realized I was caught up in a bit of it when I found Heresy. As their slogan goes, “You are your path.”
After watching all of their videos and finding out everything I could about the brand and the riders behind it, I built up my own Heresy frame with as many of their parts as I could get. Given my fast fandom, I knew I needed to talk to their leader.
Roy Christopher:Let’s go all the way back, Alexis: What got you into BMX in the first place?
Alexis Desolneux: I would say the woods near home which had many dirt paths and a few small hills, watching motocross racing on TV as a kid in the 70s or in dirt bike mags, finally seeing photos of early BMX racing in the US: It was mind-blowing and echoing what we were trying to do with our crappy little bikes in my small hometown next to Paris. I’ve always loved riding my bike, ever since I was a 5-year-old kid.
RC:What was the catalyst for starting Heresy?
AD: I started Heresy from going through rough times (a serious riding accident, losing my main sponsors while my wife and I just had our second baby…) and just realizing that I had no choice but going for what made more sense even if that meant starting from zero. But the origin is the riding. I really needed that AscenD frame to exist. I was also at a point where I had already contributed to designing products for other brands. I also had my first go with a short-lived project named L’essence in the early 2000s. In that sense I had no choice but to go for an all-or-nothing kind of decision. I was 39, and it felt right and exciting to create something from scratch, or regret it forever.
RC:Music seems to be integral to the aesthetic of the brand. Was that intentional from the start, or does it just come from being a music fan?
AD: It definitely is integral to the aesthetic of the project. But I let things go as naturally as possible with Heresy. Music has been fueling my riding and my life in general ever since I was a kid, I was exposed to what was considered dangerous music early on, thanks to my brother. I remember playing his AC/DC Back in Black tape in 1980 or his Kinks album when no one was home, I was a 9-year-old kid and loved it. Later, in the 90’s, I was involved in the DIY hardcore scene playing in bands, trading records and driving to shows all over Europe. That and the whole ethos about making it happen when no one will do it for you (which was a common thing is that underground music world) are foundation for Heresy. It goes beyond being a music fan and grabbing elements of someone else’s aesthetics to re-create an identity, instead we hope to pay hommage to those who inspire(d) us by seeing Heresy as a unique filter for an essence, or just a feeling, something that is shared by many about riding, music, and life in general.
Obscured, 2011. [photo by Stephane Bar]RC:The Heresy riders have styles that are not only different from riders in the sport but also different from each other. How did you go about assembling such a diverse team?
AD: I care about their passion, their fun, their free spirit, and their absolute commitment to make their ideas or vision reality. I sacralize the riding because in a time when BMX Flatland is growing, consequently its representation in the mainstream is spreading. It’s a predictable thing to happen in our society when a maturing sport is being developed and gaining recognition. I’m taking part in that process as a judge on some big events because I care to keep the progressive factor alive in flatland. But that’s a very different agenda from running a project like Heresy.
In that sense the riding is sacred because its nature is to exist before anyone else’s agenda affects it. Competition, advertising, television, show-business… flatland can be many things these days and these various systems will usually affect its presentation and push the riders to adapt, consciously or not.
Fine, but that’s just not what we emphasize with Heresy. We care to highlight the riding that remains unaffected, how an individual can self-express through flatland as a medium and expand his riding with no boundaries. Naturally, Heresy is also a representation but obviously miles away from another kind of representation like a flatland contest. There is a lot of light being put on the best contest riders these days, I just want to put light on other excellent riders as a contribution to make the picture more complete.
RC:What’s coming up for you and Heresy?
AD: Just riding as much as I can. It keeps me happy. It always did. For Heresy, new pedals, re-stock on pegs, BBs, headsets… AscenD frames coming out this year: V3 for the 19’’ & 19.5’’ sizes, V2 for the 20’’ & 20.5’’. We’ll also definitely have some projects with the team… Stay tuned.
“If I am asked to explain why I learned the bicycle,” writes Frances E. Willard in her 1895 book How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, “I should say I did it as an act of grace, if not of actual religion” (p. 73). I grew up riding bicycles, so I often take the fun and freedom they afford for granted. Having seen several adults squeal with childlike glee after riding a bike for the first time in years or the first time ever, I am reminded of my own love for what Alfred Jarry called “that which rolls.” Willard continues,
The cardinal doctrine laid down by my physician was, ‘Live out of doors and take congenial exercise;’ but from the day when, at sixteen years of age, I was enwrapped in the long skirts that impeded every footstep, I have detested walking and felt with a certain noble disdain that the conventions of life had cut me off from what in the freedom of my prairie home had been one of life’s sweetest joys (p. 73-74).
Willard was president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until the age of 53. Like most of the things she tackled in her life (e.g., women’s suffrage, politics, education, etc.), she took it as a challenge. As she so boldly puts it, “She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life.” Bikes can empower the weakest of spirit and liberate the most muddled of minds.
In Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy (Microcosm, 2013), Elly Blue argues that they can also fix the recession. Starting with the myth that cyclists don’t pay for roads and motorists do. Car drivers pay for about half of the paved infrastructure in the U.S. The other half comes from everyone, regardless of our choice of vehicle. Blue lives and rides in “bike friendly” Portland, Oregon, where its growing citizenry is able to pay higher rents because they don’t have to own or drive cars. I lived in Portland for a year myself, and it’s a great town to ride in. Out of the cities I’ve lived in since getting rid of my last car in 1998 (e.g., Seattle, WA, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, Flagstaff, AZ, Athens, GA, Austin, TX, Chicago, IL), it’s easily one of the most comfortable. That makes a big difference.
A quick aside: I used scare quotes around the term “bike friendly” above because it’s one of those phrases that gets tossed around during urban mayoral elections and the like by people who don’t ride bikes. I hear it regularly here in Chicago. The friendliness of your city to bicycles is not about how many miles of bike lane your roads contain. It’s about how your city’s cyclists are treated while on those roads. With that said, Portland is way ahead of most cities in this respect.
Blue concludes Bikenomics with a re-envisioning of the future as seen through increasing trends in bicycle use. From global warming and access during power outages to general health and safety, she makes a strong case for the bicycle as the best choice for getting around. As David Byrne (2009) puts it in his Bicycle Diaries, “Strangely, the recent economic downturn might be a great opportunity. Sustainability, public transport, and bike lanes aren’t scoffed at anymore” (p. 40). Here’s hoping that sentiment continues to spread.
If you’re looking for a close-up view of the machine itself, Richard Hallett’s The Bike Deconstructed: A Grand Tour of the Modern Bicycle (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014) breaks it down to the last bolt and bracket. As the former editor of RoadCyclingUK.com, Hallett knows his shifters. I’m learning and will continue to learn from Hallett’s thorough guide being relatively new to anything outside of a BMX set-up. As Isabel Marks (1901) once put it, “to the ardent cyclist no side of the sport is devoid of interest…” (p. 5). If you need to know more about the mechanical minutia of your rig or just love to geek out on gears and gadgets, this book is perfect for both.
As the sticker goes, cars run on money and make us fat; bikes run on fat and save us money. Exercise is essential, and our technologies tend to sway us away from getting enough. “The bicycle…” Frances E. Willard concludes, “will ere long come within the reach of all. Therefore, in obedience to the laws of health, I learned to ride. I also wanted to help women to a wider world, for I hold that the more interests women and men have in common, in thought, word, and deed, the happier will it be for the home” (p. 74). Everything is better with bicycles.
References:
Blue, Elly. (2013). Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy. Portland, OR: Microcosm.
Brotchie, Alastair (2011). Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Byrne, David. (2009). Bicycle Diaries. New York: Viking.
Hallett, Richard. (2014). The Bike Deconstructed: A Grand Tour of the Modern Bicycle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press.
Marks, Isabel. (1901/2013). Fancy Cycling. Oxford, UK: Old House Books.
Willard, Frances, E. (1895/1991). How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an Influential 19th Century Woman. Sunnyvale, CA: Fair Oaks Publishing.
From an early age it was instilled in me that people judge you by how you look, how you dress, how you wear your hair, how you carry yourself. My dad won’t leave the house to do business or see someone without styling and dressing appropriately. We communicate something through every stylistic choice we make. As Umberto Eco (1973) writes, “I speak through my clothes.” To wit, I have seen firsthand many books misjudged by their covers. Still, coming up with this stress on conformity alongside the drive for expression inherent in art, skateboarding, and punk rock, I can’t help but toy with the conflict. In the Summer 1988 issue of Homeboy Magazine, pro BMXer R. L. Osborn wrote,
My girlfriend doesn’t dig my Megadeth t-shirt. ‘You’re going to shave one side of your head? Holey Levi’s? Throw ’em away. Your hair’s too long. Your hair’s too short. Why does your hair look like a rainbow?’ Everyone feels the heat from friends, family, and whoever else about independent style, yet I can’t help feeling that sometimes envy is covered up with uncool remarks. Hey. let’s be straight about this, it’s your life, your feelings, and your own personal way of expressing yourself and showing the true you (p. 81).
The piece was accompanied by photos of street kids with wacky hair with odd angles and colors, leather jackets with lots of zippers, spikes, chains, and other scary accessories. I was 17 when that issue came out, and though Osborn’s proselytizing wasn’t the first time I’d been exposed to punk aesthetics, it stuck with me. So, when I saw my DIG BMX Magazine colleague Ricky Adam‘s new zine, I immediately thought of R. L.’s words.
Ricky Adam’s zine, Glad to See the Back of You (Trajectories, 2013), is full of tattooed attitude. It’s a compendium of punk self-expression mostly in the form of custom jackets with back patches. Back patches are largely the domain of bikers or crust punks, the latter of whom fill this zine’s pages. Punk back patches are often cut from old screen-printed t-shirts and hand sewn onto denim or leather jackets or vests along with other patches. The hand-done aspect of them is rarely disguised and gives the look a D.I.Y., provisional feel, and their literal patchwork lends them to subversive bricolage (see Hebdige, 1979). By mixing patches as signs together, punks engage in what Eco (1972) calls “semiotic guerilla warfare.” They express their lack of desire to reunite with the parent culture and celebrate, even parody, the alienation that causes it so much concern (Hebdige, 1979). The crust-punk style takes this alienation to the extreme. Its a war is waged against the established look via its sardonic and scathing rejection thereof (Brummett, 2008; Hebdige, 1979).
Greil Marcus (1989) outlines the complexities of punk’s signification this way:
[A] load of old ideas sensationalized into new feelings almost instantly turned into new clichés, but set forth with such momentum that the whole blew up its equations day by day. For every fake novelty, there was a real one. For every third-hand pose, there was a fourth-hand pose that turned into a real motive (p. 77).
None of this is new, and it might still seem juvenile, but the underlying sentiments haven’t changed. Who cares what’s been co-opted? And who knows what authenticity means anymore? My friend Mark Wieman recently observed how thick and long The Long Tail™ has become. There’s simply no real mainstream anymore, and when it comes to punk and authority, I still feel like my 17-year-old self. I don’t own a pair of dress shoes.
The punk aesthetic of doing it yourself isn’t about doing it like everyone else. It’s about liberating what’s unique about yourself, exposing what makes you you. As Osborn concludes, “Show us who you really are.”
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Ricky Adam’s Glad to See the Back of You is out in a limited run of 300 (mine’s #154), so get yours now.
References:
Adam, Ricky. (2013). Glad to See the Back of You. Leeds, UK: Trajectories.
Brummett, Barry. (2008). A Rhetoric of Style. Carbondale, IL: The University of Southern Illinois Press.
Eco, Umberto (1972). Towards a Semiotic Enquiry into the Television Message. WPCS, 3, University of Birmingham.
Eco, Umberto. (1973). Social Life as a Sign System. In D. Robey (Ed.), Structuralism: The Wolfson College Lectures, 1972. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 57-72.
Hebdige, Dick. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Routledge.
Marcus, Greil. (1989). Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Osborn, R. L. (1988, Summer). Page 65. Homeboy Magazine, 80-81.
Those disgruntled with our current “technopoly,” as Neil Postman famously called it, often argue for returning to a simpler time. This is, of course, impossible, as even their visions of simpler times include technology. For example, in The Nature of Technology (Free Press, 2009), Brian Arthur envisions a world where all of our modern technologies disappear, yet we’d still be left with some. He writes, “We would still have watermills, and foundries, and oxcarts; and course linens, and hooded cloaks, and sophisticated techniques for building cathedrals. But we would once again be medieval” (p. 10). As ludicrous as such an argument appears, I would like to return to a time that never happened, an alternate universe where bicycles dominated the roads, as well as the construction and spread thereof. I’m not alone in this fantasy. Many of us take to the streets on two wheels instead of four, and movements like Critical Mass try to take them over completely on a regular basis.
Critical Mass Chicago, 2007.
The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is… one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.
— David Harvey
For the uninitiated, Critical Mass is a monthly ride aimed at taking back the streets from cars, demonstrating the presence of bicycles, and reminding everyone that they’re on the road, too. The event is known for blocking thoroughfares, pissing off motorists, and regular arrests. Shift Happens: Critical Mass at 20 (Full Enjoyment, 2012), edited by Chris Carlsson, LisaRuth Elliott, and Adriana Camarena, is a twenty-year, global retrospective of the trials and triumphs of Critical Mass. It’s a monthly revolution that will start its third decade this week. The scope of these essays is as global as the movement, from Budapest to Berkeley and Paris to Ponce, and its birthplace in San Francisco, as well as from my beloved Portland to my current Chicago.
Strangely, the recent economic downturn might be a great opportunity. Sustainability, public transport, and bike lanes aren’t scoffed at anymore. — David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries
For a look at the social forces that created the bicycle as opposed to the ones it has created, it gets no better than The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (The MIT Press, 2012), edited by by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. I first encountered this volume — and its use of the bicycle as an astute example of technological change (in Pinch and Bijker’s essay “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other”) — in Andrew Feenberg‘s “Philosophy of Technology” class at San Diego State. It has since been treated to a much-deserved anniversary edition (the original version hit shelves in 1987). This collection established the approach of the social construction of technology (SCOT) as a viable methodology, and it’s not all about bicycles: eighteenth-century cooking stoves, twentieth-century missile systems, and thirteenth-century galleys get their due. The aforementioned chapter on the social construction of bicycles is still my favorite though.
The mere fact of riding a bicycle is not in itself sinful, and if it is the only means of reaching the church on a Sunday, it may be excusable. — 1885 reply to a letter from a young lady
If you’re looking for more focus on the bike itself, rather than its urban and sociological implications, there’s Bicycling Science (The MIT Press, 2004), by David Gordon Wilson, which is now on its third edition (its original having come out in 1982). This book has everything to do with human-powered wheeled vehicles — bicycles in the broadest sense of the term: from the general (e.g., basic concepts of human power, the history of the bicycle, etc.) to the specific (e.g., physics, aerodynamics, bearings, materials, braking, steering, etc.), and the weird and the future of bicycles. If you’re looking for the mechanical minutia of bicycles, Bicycling Science is likely to be the only book you need.
I’m admittedly biased, but I think the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions in the history of technology. I’ve been riding one since the age of four, and they’ve been my primary means of transportation for the past fifteen years. If you don’t ride a bike regularly, give it one shot. Bicycles are fun, and that one ride might be the door to a whole new world. These three books go a long way to covering both the history of that world and its implications in the twenty-first century. On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of Critical Mass, do yourself a favor, and, in the words of Mike Daily, ride first, read later.
References:
Arthur, Brian. (2009). The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. New York: Free Press.
Bijker, Wiebe E. (1997). Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Bijker, Wiebe E. , Hughes, Thomas P., & Pinch, Trevor. (2012). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Byrne, David. (2009). Bicycle Diaries. New York: Viking.
Carlsson, Chris, Elliott, LisaRuth, & Camarena, Adriana (eds.). (2012). Shift Happens: Critical Mass at 20. San Francisco: Full Enjoyment.
Harvey, David. (2008, September/October). The Right to the City. New Left Review, 53.
Wilson, David Gordon. (2004). Bicycling Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Woodforde, J. (1970). The Story of the Bicycle. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
As with most of the bikes I build, I wrote up my new bike over on HEADTUBE. It’s a sweet Fairdale Parser Express that I got from Taj Mihelich. He even posted it up on the Fairdale site.
It’s another BMX-inspired ride, what I like to call my “big boy bike.”
Check out the full post on HEADTUBE, along with all of my other bike and bike-related projects. Many thanks to Taj for hooking me up with this thing.
I’ve expounded elsewhere at length about how zine-making during my teen years informed my life’s path, and I’ve mentioned fellow traveler Mike Daily before, but I haven’t really given him due credit. Mike Daily is a founding member of The Plywood Hoods, one of the most influential BMX crews in the history of our little sport. He also made one of the first BMX zines ever: Aggro Rag. Echoing my own feelings about making zines, Daily told Jared Souney in an interview for ESPN BMX in 2010, “Working with the printed page in mind has always been my way of creating something, from the early ‘zine designs to my cut-and-pasted writing journals. I like to lay things out visually, so the collage approach helps hone poems, lyrics for songs and fiction/non-fiction I’m working on. It’s more of a calling than a career — that kind of gnawing feeling that compels you to make stuff.”
Well, Daily’s never stopped making stuff. From his novels and zines to his complete rebuild of his original CW California Freestyle bike, he’s stayed on the make. His latest missive is a new issue of Aggro Rag, the premiere BMX zine’s first appearance since 1989. Each of the 500 copies is signed by original Plywood Hoods Brett Downs, Mark Eaton, Kevin Jones, Jamie McKulik, Dale Mitzel and Daily himself. Contributors include Mark Lewman, Spike Jonze, Peter Relic, Drob Meyer, and Pecos B., among many others. There are interviews with flatland undergrounders like Mark McKee, Aaron Dull, Gary Pollak, Chris Day, Jim Johnson, Derek Schott, Gerry Smith, Dave Nourie, and several others, as well as Hip-hop undergrounders like Dark Time Sunshine and Sole. You can snag a copy right now, and I suggest you do so.
As for me, Daily asked me to interview my dude Aesop Rock, which I did gladly. It’s an honor to be a part of the zine I read so avidly in my youth. Here are two of my friends and heroes celebrating the release of Aggro Rag #13 at Portland’s Wonder Ballroom on July 19th, 2012:
If the return of the zine weren’t enough, this issue precedes the forthcoming 443-page book, Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection, coming out January 1, 2013.
It’s going to be so dope, but as Daily always said, “Ride First, Read Later.”
Aesop Rock posted the flatland compilation video I did during my comprehensive exams. So, if you haven’t seen it, head over there and check it out, along with other fun stuff from Hail Mary Mallon, Jeremy Fish, Kimya Dawson, Rob Sonic, Aesop, and friends.
Mad thanks to Aesop Rock for supporting my silliness.
Whilst I was completing my comprehensive exams for my Ph.D. studies, I rode my flatland bike as much as possible in an attempt to keep my head straight. The video below is a compilation of some of those sessions. Some of the camera placement is pretty sketchy, and I’m basically just doing the same five tricks over and over, but here it is nonetheless [runtime: 2:41]:
My girlfriend doesn’t dig my Megadeth t-shirt. ‘You’re going to shave one side of your head? Holey Levi’s? Throw ’em away. Your hair’s too long. Your hair’s too short. Why does your hair look like a rainbow?’ Everyone feels the heat from friends, family, and whoever else about independent style, yet I can’t help feeling that sometimes envy is covered up with uncool remarks. Hey. let’s be straight about this, it’s your life, your feelings, and your own personal way of expressing yourself and showing the true you (p. 81).
