Derelicte AKA Homeless Chic.

There's a perfect bike for everyone

Carmine spotted this bicycle chained up at the monument today. It's a strange one. The frame is a 95/96 Homeless Mack, it has 80's era Araya wheels, a one piece crank, Primo wall tyres, cube MTB grips, rear mounted front chopper mudguard and most intriguingly a banana seat. Geoff Burns from South Shields used to ride a Homeless Mack like this. He had his painted royal blue and pimped out in chrome while he was at his most progressive riding street and generally causing mayhem at the skate park. Geoff's Mack eventually got passed on to the man, the myth, the weirdo, Paul AKA 'Small' Fortune another South Shields Skatepark local who for all the wrong reasons was a legend in his own right. Fortune must have rode that Mack for best part of a decade pulling boned out tyre taps and young girls with it on a daily basis. Now he and the Mack are missing. I doubt this is the same one because the aforementioned Mack was severely bent and dented.

Homeless logo detail on the back of the toptube.

I can understand the grips, I can even handle the mudguard-it does get muddy and wet around here-but the banana seat is highly unsettling. Whoever rides this must have a serious reach like an ape to straddle the mighty 21" toptube and way laid back banana seating position. Who would build such a bike and why? The whole set up screams 80s BMX enthusiast builds fraken-bike from rusting parts box in the garage for girlfriend or wife after being begged for an expensive beach cruiser. At the back of the BMX blokes mind he's presuming she wont ride it more than once or twice but now is feeling guilty as she proves him wrong riding to work on it day in day out in all weathers on the BMX equivalent of the TARDIS control pannel.

Am I the only one brave enough to come out and say that Dr. Who is shit.

Steam punk is cool, isn't it?

Homless Soul Bro, like mine but much much better condition.

The only Homeless I ever rode was a 92 Soul Bro that I got off Lemsip, a Harrow skatepark rider. I remember it being chrome and short and riding flatland on it all winter in a freezing multi story car park with cramped headroom, tramp inhabitants and miniature stalactites in the concrete. As soon as the thaw kicked in and spring came about I started riding street on it and after a lot of HBL grinding the dropout split in half as Homeless had welded two 3mm plates of steel together instead of using a single 6mm plate.

One of the 5 VHS that I still own is Homeless Trash, a video that proved to be monumental in the building of my character, it affected me at a core level and dictated the things I think are cool, the riding I like, and the music I'm into. Cheers Dave Parrick, you rule.


Kevin Gutierrez from edward koenning on Vimeo.