Cookie on Animal.

I was building Cookie's new wheels up this weekend. After having his bike stolen last month Cookie hasn't been riding but fortunately Bob Scerbo saw Cookie's interview in The Albion and was already a fan of his NSF3 section and decided to hook him up. For most street riders Animal is the dream sponsor, the pinnacle of street riding hookups, and the baddest street riding team in BMX to belong to. Cookie must be stoked.

The Animal hubs were super well made and had little griffins glued to the hub shells. The rear hub had asymmetrical flanges and since I was building these wheels at home I had to get creative due to a lack of jig or dishing tool. After a couple of minutes thought about using a pair of mountain bike riser bars which I couldn't find anyway the idea popped in my head to use a coat hanger. I took one out of the wardrobe and removed my girlfriends dress from it and left it crumpled in a corner. The legs of the coat hanger were spaced perfectly to rest on the rim and with the addition of a piece of cardboard as a marker I was able to accurately dish the rear wheel.

These wheels built up really nice, super tight spoking, stiff and light, the bearings were smooth and the cassette click was positive and loud. Purple isn't really Cookie's colour though, and after handing these beauties over the other day he has already hand bashed them in runny black hammerite. Nice.

I can't imagine Cookie ever running anything on his bike that wasn't black or green so a wheel as beautiful as this is as good as useless to him if the colour isn't right.

Cookie dropping the T2S Pedo mack.  

I hope Cookie gets an opportunity for the full section on the new animal vid, it would be amazing.