In Ikea with Steven

Still only showing the Non Drive Side, what are they hiding, what are they afraid of?

Flame on mother fucker

Randomised mayonnaise production, different flavours, different textures, different shades of white.

They used to have these stores, huge blue stores.

'What the fuck were they like?'

If you imaging the prison, it was kinda like that, only the food in the canteen was of slightly poorer quality and you had to pay for it. There was almost no chance of getting chivved. Unless it was sale day and then your chances were about even.

'How could a store be so bad?'

Well you know the locked broom cupboard on D wing it looked identical to that.

'Like white and cream with mildew in the ceramic flooring cracks, glory holes in every wall, and inflated man hood biro drawings'

Yeah

'freaky'

yeah real freaky

'I think your freaky and I like you a lot.'

Why would they travel in there droves to listen to a false prophet.

His propaganda was printed and delivered to every home.

The masses were brainwashed, it was inexpensive, it looked awful, it fell apart easily but somehow they thought that was what they needed it.

It completes them.

They knew the price of everything but the value of nothing.

How was everyone brought on side?

How do you influence people on such a massive scale?

The Blue demon, his thin tentacles reaching into the head of his victims, men and women were like malleable clay, their minds squeezed between the fingers of commerce and consumerism

blood drips crimson on the blue and yellow floor

A stressed perineum sat on a see through seventies sex chair in the very damaged section.

'Isn't it all slightly damaged'

This says very damaged fuck face.

My ego was damaged

My dick was soft, very soft, softer than it had ever been.

I noticed a clear fluid leaking from one ear and trickling down my neck.

There was a black coal like substance in the corner of my ocular cavity.

Tanhauser Gate .

Rain fuelled the anger, their minds were contained, fleshy overbite tooth grinder, Asexual platypus in a Toyota Prius.

A labyrinth of soft furnishing with a massively endowed meatball minotaur.

Pin stripped yellow polo.

The biggest woman I have ever seen directs us towards bed linen, but its all soiled, or it will be.

Man date massacre, men with men, men in suppression, eat a fucking kitchen knife cunt.

I took the job where you mop blood up all day, HIV Aids Hep C none of that shit bothers me, what do I have to live for anyway? Gets them tenners in see. I buy as much snout and pot noodles as possible from the tuck shop. All them snacks are mine. They see blood, blank stares, I see red of a different kind, I see a bloated possibility. I see sweetie wrappers and a man in a suit about to accept an award for excellence and we all know he deserves it.

Red, I'm seeing red.

My dick is so soft now, its almost liquid.

Blue, I'm seeing blue.

Step away from your overloaded cart, wave your husband or wife goodbye, pat your kids on the head, leave your car in the multi storey, leave your shoes and car keys on the bridge, walk slowly towards the river and dive down into the black waters.

Terraform basics for the space born set.

at the gates

in the shed

where my hand once bled

The neighbours have gone

there goes the neighbourhood

terraform, terraform.

sandal shoed activist of a thousand block party throw downs

a sadistic magician

monica ice cream

change the garden into a pool into a skate spot into a run down duplex apartment for goats

goats see good in the dark no phone torch

terraform terraform

has any one seen my candelabra

I left it behind some with indelible ink on an album sleeve

Taylor Swift will never find it

or maybe she will, people are constantly surprising me

where once I saw stupidity I now see complication and mystery

blood, sinew, bone, Fred flint Stone.

trouble at the mill

slaughter pig stab stab, bolt gun, kill.

43 percent of this pork contains 83 percent non pork ingredients, soya, duck, slazenger fur, paperclips, monkey wrench

Municipal waste is gonna fuck you up woaaaaaaahhhh

table tops at dawn, walk out for at least 30 paces, turn, twist the hips, pull on bars, rad stance, hold it, then relinquish the altitude.

for tips on form see Vic Murphy.

This is where the bee lives

I saw the bee the other day

no, this is where the bee lives

He bit me.

Medicated walrus man, in an Ellesse sweat top and bottom and middle.

have you any snout to offer me fine sir, any snout would do, any, honestly any, bensons, woodbines, it's all the same to me.

tiddle sticks, tiddle sticks we all have tiddly sticks.

tiddle sticks, terraform

swizzle sticks terraform

power percusion, terraform

Nezza's movie on loop

motorised stick, trench coat flowing, steam punk goggles, ham sandwich club

terraform

stay warm stay warm

killer bees on a swarm

terraform

did my candelabra show up yet or has Fenriz still got it.

battle jacket covered in needle point options from the tea pad

Not the the tea pad, that guys a jerk, needle point, ned the head needle nose ned

bing

bigger is better and muddier and smells a bit like shields road turds

watch you don't slip in those new balance mate, that would be tragic

brown shoe brown shoe change your pavement please.

more ice cream, like in 08 when you ate two a day for 3 months and never drank less than 10 beers

I'm all for differing body shapes

who's' to say what is beautiful

Bukowski, Kowalski, Kachinski

writer, butcher, ice hockeyist

philip knew the score, run to hills before its too late.

typewriter used to sound like a severe form of sexual intercourse when heard from the floor below

Ratty, how hard can the sex get?

never fucking stop.

don't give up don't give up don't give up

floor one is where the bread is kept

terraform the basement, squelchy underfoot, cleanest neighbours I ever had.

wool can be used as a warming garment, I'm in the shed, who's with me?

I want to drink a beer but I don't like drinking in the house

Maybe I should ride out into the wilds and drink it

what would Xavier do?

freaking read somebodies mind no doubt.

why are her arms so pulpy and delicious?

twist into the neck, 1960s BBC special effect.

shrinking parma violets and a wall mounted wood saw

bone drill bone drill bone drill

bone drill

power saw

text message terraform

It always seems to end this way

battle jacket potato

fucking hate potato

return of the night of the fucking hate potatoes

fear for you life, fear for you wife, those earth bound starchy bastards are out there

many a Bothan died fighting the fucking hate potatoes

seriously though a deadly potato?

like a potato that can hurt a man?

How the fuck would that work?

Fucking Hate potatoes.

Ride UK magazine is no more.

Ride UK magazine has been going as long as I have been riding a BMX. I remember seeing issue 8 when I first got into riding, some chump with a diamond back brought it into my art class. I couldn't find or afford to buy one until issue 13. I honestly haven't bought that many in the last two years, I feel that it morphed into something I could no longer believe in or that I could relate to.

Apart from 2013 and 2014 I have every issue.

In the world of BMX, it is a sad day for print.

Maybe there will be another BMX magazine available one day, a radical renaissance, but for now buying magazines is something almost nobody does and as a whole magazines are disappearing from our lives.

The internet masticates pulverises and excretes another art form.

What will be next?

Legendary Ride UK columnist Micky Moore AKA MR Pants very recently organised all my ride mags into numerical order, something I could never bring myself to do.

Cheers Mick.

So long Ride UK!!!

THE BLOCKING

Jim Newrick has been working on a sci-fi short of sorts and I gave him a little hand with some writing for it. I'm pretty excited to see the finished article now this trailer has confirmed how awesome/creepy the visuals are going to be.

Here's the trailer.



The Blocking from jim newrick on Vimeo.

NSF Jam?

Newcastle BMX Street Jam from Ryan Lilburn on Vimeo.

Ill video from the busiest jam the Town has ever seen. Much props to Dyson, Fraser and Lilburn.

The Man's got a point.

"I got a phone call a couple weeks ago asking what my thoughts were on a street jam in Newcastle DEDICATED to the/ our NSF movement. Initially i was flattered that someone would want to do that. A dedication to over 10 years of solid commitment and hard work from a small group of lads from Sunderland, Durham, South Shields and Sheffield.  As long as it was done right, Id personally have no quarrels with it. Then the flyer came out, which caused some controversy:

'NSF Revival Jam' 

a 10 minute photoshop effort of Robs NSF tag pasted over a snapshot of the millennium bridge? designed by someone none of us had ever met. All of our commitment over the years was worth more than that surely? Looked like what had started out as a subtle dedication to the name had been hi jacked and turned into a REVIVAL of some sort? which no one wanted or had asked for. The idea of a revival makes me think of the re introduction of 60’s style space hoppers in the early 90’s or when the Mini Cooper came into production again with a big union jack on the roof. Embarrassing shit like that. Some things need to be left back in the era they belong

The design of the flyer, in my opinion, goes against so much of what we stood for. There was always a collective control in quality of what we put out. Videos, t shirts, premier posters, music used in the videos we made, the riders and crews that we looked up to. We were all pretty much on the same page as far creative output and interest went. A great deal of passion and thought went into everything we did. I don’t think we ever collectively put anything out that i can look back and be embarrassed about

"Seems a shame not to have the name backing the jam, NSF is not somthing that should be ‘owned’ by anybody, it grew from being somthing small and personal to a massive following, and for the fact after all these years so many people were happy as fuck seeing NSF making a return to the scene. The people responsible should let petty things like rights or ownership go and let it do what it does best and rip up the streets of the town. Fuck names fuck differences and just session on”

Yes we did start as something small and personal. About 12 years down the line and to me, it is still something small, personal and very dear to my heart. The following and respect grew over those years, but that doesn’t suggest that it became a big free for all, where anybody could adopt the name and say they were part of it.  We created and earned that badge, through 10 years of solid passion and commitment for what WE had created. The 10 or more people who have it etched permanently into their skin via the medium of ink or scars are testament to that.

The Northeast Street Foundation definitely isn’t a product that can be bought or owned. You can’t buy or own friendship. I don’t own the nsf, although i  would like to think that after dedicating over 10 years of my life to it id get some say into how it is portrayed in 2014. After all it was the collective combination of like minded people, good creative ideas and friendship that got us the following and respect that we did over the years. We did not let it fall into the wrong hands or be portrayed in a way that we weren’t happy with. If we had let it slip, we wouldn’t have had the following or respect we had at the time. It most definItely wouldn’t be what it is today if we had

Dedicating a street jam to what we created back then is a nice thing to do, everyone loves a street jam. All it had to be was something along the lines of:

"Northeast Street Jam" (a dedication to the nsf)

everyone’s happy

An nsf dedication is one thing. An un authorized revival, along with a re issue of t shirts is something completely different. 

I feel like something very close to my heart that provided some of the best years of my life has been kind of manipulated into a thoughtless crappy version for 2014. similar to the re issue of space hopper’s mentioned earlier. Best left the way they were

If you feel the need to have a dedication for something,  at least think about what your doing, who your doing it for, and what they would be happy with. Otherwise don’t bother. If for some mad reason you feel the need to revive something that you had nothing to with, without consulting everyone involved. Then common sense should tell you that it most definitely won’t go smoothly

Think up a name, start your own crew, put on your own street jam, put out your own videos, make your own t shirts and zines. Build your own scene. It will provide levels of un matched satisfaction and reward you and your friends with some of the best memories. Do it yourself, don’t rely on a revival of something created over 10 years ago 

photo by Sam Ashley

(Chris Souter, James Newrick, Matt Wakefield, Olly Olsen, Rob Hate, Tom O’boyle, Joe Cox  seeking shelter from the rain/ Livingston Scotland circa ages ago)"

As seen on Nezza's Tumblr

I'll still be at the Jam but the planning has gone a little haywire and there's miscommunication in abundance! 

Sometimes the kids know not what they do. 

But were we any different?

I'm sure I've upset a bunch of people along the way, and still do. I'd like to think that I treaded carefully over the years with those who I had the most respect for, but I dare say there are those who see it differently.

The lesson is to be careful and respectful with that which is not yours.

Oh yeah and always ask permission before you reissue a shirt (duh)!

Much love

Mr Twisly.

Happy days!

Robotic Painting Process.

This picture all started ages ago when a took some photos of steam boilers at Tanfield railway. Tanfield railway is the most amazing scrapyard come museum where they turn a blind eye to you climbing all over rusting hunks of dilapidated steam trains.

I thought the boiler had a sort of robotic look so I split it in half on photoshop and made this comp to try and capture the look of a deflated and dejected robot so sick of his own existence or so tired after a hard life of serving his human masters that he could barely hold the weight of his own head any more.

I started out with acrylic on hard board and tried to get some of the shapes in, I was working at my now long gone studio space so I had plenty of peace and quiet and very few distractions.

The mood is starting to fall in place here but the colour is no where near strong enough for what I was thinking.

I think here that I had tried to follow the photo too faithfully and the piece had suffered. I think you should only use photos to inform the painting never let them dictate what it will be in the end. After all I should just be a photographer if I wanted the image to look like a photo. I was happy with the way the composition was going but the picture was definitely very lacking in dynamic and colour at this stage.

I made the switch to oils here and started to add some wild gold titanium aspect to the surface of the robot, maybe a rusting corroding bronze tint to his flesh. I also removed the arm on the left as it didn't fall correctly with how I imagined the anatomy of a robot would work.

I was definitely getting some good vibes at this point but I thought the face was a bit forever knights from Ben Ten and the background lacked a little in the contrast department.

Here it is all finished, I really like how the lighting came out in this, the way the head melts in to the rays of light from above and how the light breaks through the rafters. Happy Days. The greens on the dials and instrumentation are a little wild but as a whole I think it just about works.

Take Flight

I really like how this pigeon turned out, I might be progressing my photoshop skills after all.

South Shields, urban centre for drifters and low life's.

Just some sights from my hometown last weekend. Riding feels way more proper in South Shields, I guess its just what I grew up doing and the place has a certain magnetism for my style. Like maybe Shields was the creator and all that I am functions better there. Aint no chance that I'd ever move back though, it doesn't matter how much I miss those boys, theres just nothing going on there other than the riding. For some reason 30 people were out riding South Shields last week, it was like 1985, 1996 or 2001 all over again.

Urm? Why did I get fired again? 

Sticky tape shouts to the boys!

Sandman's hat, it's funny how spots go round and round, we stopped riding these flat rails in 2000 deeming them 'not burly enough', its 2014 and the kids are all over them. 2 inches above peg height is so 2014.

Papa Wu.

Pour a sip on the street for my Fallen Angel. 

Crushing Strength

Newrick is showing a short film about concrete architecture in the North East. It's being shown on loop at the Guildhall on the quayside as part of the Newcastle city futures exhibition. Depression, brutality, beauty and monolithic power all courtesy of Newrick's eye for a great shot. Don't miss it. 

23rd may - 10 June

www.ncl.ac.uk/apl

Another Pigeon

More Pigeons. I had to chop up and get rid of my table, I don't really have anywhere to paint and draw anymore! I do have plenty of time to practice my photoshop painting. One layer, multiple brushes.

Pump Up The VOLUME

BMX bikes got so burly in the early noughties that some of the components produced back then will literally last forever. So much material went into making these bikes it would take a close proximity nuclear blast to fully eradicate them from the face of the Earth. Even then they might survive in part. They are the cockroach of the bike world. Sprockets over a centimetre thick, plain gauge chromoly in super oversized tube diameters, USA BBs and beefed up headset cups, triple wall 48 hole Alex rims on solid spindle 14mm hubs with high flanges and freewheels, Mo-ped chains, Primo rod solid steel seat posts, the bikes of yesteryear were a brutal bludgeon compared to the razor sharp scalpel precise machines we have now.

This is what I believe to be a Volume Dinosaur and it came into the workshop for a freewheel replacement a couple of weeks back.

Everything on this thing is totally overbuilt, double clamp seat post clamp, stem the size of a house brick, huge super fork style ahead pretension nut, tiny thick gauge bars, meaty and thick alloy pedals. The primo grips must be over a decade old and have been revitalised with electricians tape.

Sporting the NSF sticker on the 39t chainring, this kind of shit makes me proud, No idea who the guy was riding this brute of a bike but he still carries the love for his northeast scene, and pledges undying love for his comrades of the street.

Getting this thing in the scales was no easy task

Woah!!!
Some Ebikes weigh less than this!

Props and maximum respect go to the rider of this beast, keeping it real in the most awesome way and worshipping the gods of Chromoly through his suffrage and effort out on the street !!!

The Satisfied Wizard

I've been looking at the signs above pubs a lot recently. Pub sign history goes back a long way and is highly politicised. The only reason that I'd ever want to be a pub landlord would be so that I could give my pub a crazy name. Here's a quick go of a pub sign with a bit of a fantasy slant.
29 x 40cm Oil on board

Sunday Mornings

Print is dead?

Bike Ownership

Have you ever thought about how many bikes you have owned over the course of your life, I just did. The list below is all the bikes I can remember but I kind of feel like there was more. I only included the bikes I actually rode about and loved (or didn't love) and had a relationship with, stuff I acquired and did up and sold on I didn't include.

The bikes I have owned to date are; 

Husky 12inch wheel brand unknown with basket on the front

Raleigh Mini 16inch Burner yellow and blue

Raleigh Mustang 20inch wheel 5 speed first wave of mtbs

Peugeot CPX 100, yellow mags

Raleigh Burner round tubes chrome, black tuff 2s

Raleigh Burner oval tubes chrome, black Araya rims

Diamond Back Silverstreak, gold components, retrospectively fitted gyro

Dyno Comp, Rob Ridge mega brake

PK Ripper, ball burnished loop tail 1982 ish

Dyno Slammer, first bike I owned with a diacomp 990 u brake

Homeless Player, awesome flatland steez

twin top tube Ammaco, no money option after snapping yet another frame

Hoffman Condor, chrome with orange flame graffix, dope

S and M Dirt Bike yellow, sketchy

Redline Freestyler, awful

Mongoose Expert, canti brake lug snapped off and forced me to be brakeless

Hoffman Deebo, continued the brakeless thing, heavy as hell with super forks

WTP KH01, first we the people frame they made

Standard Industries STA, the strongest BMX ever made?

another S and M Dirt Bike, classic (reissue)

S and M LAF, dope new wave thing, the first truly modern BMX

Kink Issue sean sexton, burly in times of weakness

The Make The Count, the ultimate frame with Newcastle livery, repping my boy Chris Lee

Raleigh Stonefly, cookie nearly died riding it down the stairs, rehab knee fitness rides

yellow Chopper copy with radial 20s and extended fork, beach cruising

KHE Cat Weasel russian prototype, good flatlander

GT Peace 29r (chromoly), 2006, first year of production 29rs

Fuji Crosstown, terrible 700c commuter but it became my first fixed gear experiment when it fell apart

Raleigh Record Ace 531c, gold, dope and fast

unknown 531 thing in blue, really nice fixed gear, good tight geometry, un-compliant fork

EAI Bareknuckle, still riding it as my winter bike 6 years on, ultra tight and fiercely responsive track geometry

Peugeot Premiere 53cm, too small for me but a fun fixed gear

Kona Honky Tonk, steel road bike for hill climbing commute when I lived out the back of beyond past Whickham

Scott steel mtb, with Kona project 2 forks

Cube Acid, 26inch wheels, current mtb, 1 by 9 gearing with a chain device for jumping and Shimano br-445s for stopping

Peugeot Premiere 58cm, fixed gear bike path and singletrack slayer

Giant rock rigid 5spd int gear hub 26

Claude Butler Stoneriver, singlespeed rigid aluminium pub bike

1938 BSA 821A, cruiser 3spd sturmey archer, proper vintage chiller

39 Bikes and counting.

1 for every year I've been alive and 5 to spare.

Compared with an estimated billion plus bicycles present in the world at this time this figure of 39 doesn't look that ridiculous. Most of my bikes have been pretty beaten up, or they certainly all end up that way eventually. I was toying with the idea of getting a carbon road bike soon, I'll try and look after it.

STA 2000

BSA 1938

Kink Issue 2011

Giant Rock 2008

Peugeot Premiere 1986

Pigeons.

I've been sketching in a digital way far more recently. I used to find digital art and photoshop  infuriating and awkward but something has clicked and I now find the experience freeing and colourful. Photoshop is so tidy lacking as it does the spillages and messy clean up of water colours or acrylics and the stained pants and smells of oil painting.

Here's a couple of sketches based around the same theme, I'm working on an idea for an oil painting but I'm not quite there yet.

Yo, birds of the same flock together
Congested on a majestic yo (no..no..no..)
My feathers and flames are one skin
Hallowed be Thy name in the beginning there was no sin
We in the ninth inning, and I'm God body trying to win
Flying against the wind
But now my shell is weightless and fireproof
But the truth is I'm proof of living fire
I'm not made of organics, not even wires
Just felt my body light up and heard the choir
See to the common fowl the phoenix is sire
Most high of all things to ever have wings
Existence is struggle, resistance is futile
Meanwhile we now possess the power of ten suns
To transcend and elevate into one
Famine, the disease and senseless dying is done
Pigeon bird got a breath left
Heart beat no more
Phoenix bird morph and we live off the G-force

Cannibal OX.

Sorry Lewis

Nothing lasts forever.

Clearing My Mother's loft is a roller coaster of dark emotion and youthful nostalgic hilarity.

Peugeot Fixed Commuter Number 2!

New Commuter

I built a new commuter for this winter out of an old Peugeot Premiere. I love old Peugeots, they ride nice, feel nice, and have quite a sporty look to them. Maybe they were slightly ahead of the game when it came to geometry. Peugeot made millions of this style of bike, according to the serial number this one was made around March 1986. Peugeot uses Mangaloy HLE tubing and welds them together in such away that the weld seem is incredibly thin. They achieve this thin weld look by welding the tubing inside and out, I still haven't worked out how they do this. There are so many of these bikes still running, the system must work.

How the bike looked when it was donated to me

Iv'e been looking for an old road bike just gappy enough to fit a set of Rocket Ron's or similar cyclo-cross tyres to for quite a while. When this Peugeot got donated to the shop it was the perfect candidate for a new project. I don't need another bike, I'm not sure anyone ever needs more than one, they just turn up and get ridden and loved and enjoyed and then they end up where I can't part with them.

I had an old fixed gear Peugeot with the same frame as this and in the same pearlescent white colour about 5 or 6 years ago and I loved it and I sold it to someone for 100 quid. I still see it locked up all over town still going strong, and usually wish I still had it.

There's nothing quite like stripping all the crap off these old bikes and getting down to just the frame fork and sat post (never throw a Peugeot seat post away, there a weird diameter and only come in one length). I love dissolving all the candle wax thickness grease out of the bb and headset, cleaning off thirty years of road film from the rear triangle and throwing out all the discoloured and rusted cable housing. Most of the parts from the bike were destined for the bin. The chainset was a moulded aluminium thing with non replaceable rings, the bb was in reasonable shape but had to be binned due to overly long square taper length. The wheels, bars, brakes and gearing system all went the journey also.

Fixed/Fixed Halo hub on velocity deep V with 16t Dura ace cog and surly lock ring

I had a reliable and bomb proof fixed rear wheel lying around that I built up about 4 years ago that has done a lot of miles but since there's nothing to wear out other than the bearings (which were fine) this set up was still going strong. The wheel fit great in the forward facing dropouts. I used a Kenda cyclo-cross tyre on the rear because it had slightly better clearance than the Schwable and it was incredibly tight around the chain stays.

Truvativ MTB bars

I used some Truvativ XC bars and only cut about 1/2 an inch off each side, the days of super skinny bars are numbered both stylistically and practically. When you only have one gear I find it helps tremendously to have wide bars when it comes to climbing steep hills. I put a cheap dual pivot road brake up front with a BMX style 2 finger lever. I had to drill a wider hole at the back of the fork steerer for the modern brake hardware.

The fork got modified considerably on this build, the original axle width was about 8mm but I had to grind the slots of the fork dropout to 9mm to accept the hub I was using, I also had to file the underside of the cast crown a little to give just enough clearance for the Rocket Ron tyre. I also had to chase the treads on the fork steerer, and file a little off the crown race mount in order to fit a new and non pitted crown race that would work with the existing headset.

The afore mentioned front wheel I built radially using 3 old 36 spoke wheels. I got the rim from a modern commuting wheel with a collapsed hub, I got the hub from a 70s touring bicycle wheel with an incredibly worn braking surface, and I lucked out on some old spokes out of a rusty MTB wheel which was tangentially built but worked spot on for 700c radial building.

The chain set is an old Shimano triple off a hybrid and the ring is a new 42t standard comuting middle ring. I fit a 107mm BB and the chain line was almost dead on 42mm. I used 4 pieces of brand new KMC 510 chain which were off cuts from 25 9 BMX set ups and attached them together for a free new chain.

Pedals were Wellgo and found in the discard bin at work as was the Giant road saddle.

South Shields in the sun in March

The bike rides great, I haven't rode fixed much in the last few years and it felt so natural and fun to get back on it. I built this bike for icy conditions and simplicity of equipment through the salty and corrosive winter but the frosts never really came this year. The bike has seen a lot of rain however.

The 42 16 gearing is a bit lighter than I normally ride but because of the slightly bigger tyre and the fact that I want to hit more gravel, pave, bike paths, tram tracks and woods on this thing it works out about perfect. It's awesome to have a fixed gear that feels this solid and because of the extra tyre girth I can still short cut over people's lawns or down the occasional 3 stair.