RANTISH: wheeltalk 2013 revisited, response

MATT REYES | WHEEL TALK 2013 from Matt Reyes on Vimeo.
so why am i posting this up again? well a while back i got a little thing in my inbox about someone responding to my comment on hypebeast saying, "waiting on the hate from bmx riders and the "i didn't know you could do that on a fixie" comments."

now this is me being a smart ass, but i didnt really expect anyone to respond to my comment. the actual response doesn't show on the actual page, but here is what it said:

"Gnari manG to bhsk • 24 days ago −
I don't want to say i am hating because people can do w.e. they want(especially if it means riding any type of bike), but the truth of the matter is I'm just not impressed.
He was kind of smooth, but he was doing basic tricks. Also he didn't do a single big thing that would be intimidating to an average rider.
"wheel talk" if you liked this, you should check out Chase Dehart's part from "let em talk".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I hope this comparison can further explain my points, and will help you guys see the resulting stigma against fixies in the bmx culture."

the comments section closed before i could respond. so here is my response.



i don't care if you're not impressed. let's be honest here, if this were a bmx video, the tricks wouldnt be that impressive. granted, the tricks would look different had this been done on a bmx bike, but for all intensive purposes, it's not impressive.


Deal With it TV - Nick Koo from dealwithitSF on Vimeo.
(wheel size?)

let's throw in wheel size (because you know how much i love to talk about wheel size). along with a bigger wheel, there's more weight due to a bigger frame and bigger components. so there's a little more to throw around and balance points are different due to geometry variances. that would make it a little more impressive.

Jared Swafford Fixed Jams from jeremie infelise on Vimeo.
(ride a damn FGFS bike, BMX dudes do it)

now let's add in the idea of the fixed drivetrain. sure a coasting mechanism would make things a fuckwad easier, but that's not how we got here. because of the drivetrain FGFS tricks arent terribly fast, and are extreme difficult to make it look smooth. pedaling through tricks makes things look clunky and choppy, so when you have a dude like matt reyes looking hella smooth, it's respectable.


(joe's a good example of what smooth and big looks like on FGFS)

on the point of "big things"- hammers are possible on FGFS setups. they just look like ass. i love hammers because the technical aspect intrigues me. every hammer landing, however, looks like ass. but they are possible. personally i can appreciate smooth riding over hammering down.

so what do we have here? a war between bmx and FGFS? nah, that's a given. there's no stigma really, just two separate sections of freestyle bike riding. by the way, FGFS riders aren't dumb. we fucking watch bmx videos. where the hell do you think we get all the tricks?

</rant>

jmik