Random news from Queensland...

Stewart Munro of Cutting Room Floor media, responsible for past flatland videos Here Comes The Sun & From The Sky Up is heading off to the U.S.A tomorrow for the next few months for filming duties.

Also in other news, it's just been announced that there will be a future Back2Basics Jam to be held in Brisbane towards the end of this year... more info to be announced soon.

With the new Down Underground series due to be launched soon there it's great to see so many events on the calender!

Sequence Hook stem & pegs - reviewed by Ali

So I get this phone call a few months back, it was a flatlander asking me to review some pegs and a stem that Sequence had set him up with as part of some shady contra deal.

This flatlander also tells me to get some good photos taken of the products to go with the review.

‘Sure’ I say, ‘send ‘em on down’.

They arrived a few days later and I ripped into the package with all the excitement of anyone who loves getting free BMX parts in the mail.

After looking them over I paused thought to myself ‘humm, they seem to have been used quite a bit’.

Now used is okay for a written review, dings and missing grip tape don’t generally matter when no one can see them. What’s more if you’re unimportant like me, you’re often at the bottom of the list so it’s not uncommon to get a trashed review copies.

But really, how was I supposed to get good photos out of products that I’d sell for less than half price due wholly to visible wear and tear?

I jumped on the phone to the flatlander, ‘what’s the deal with these parts?’ I said, ‘they look like they have been used for ages’.

‘Yeah’ comes the reply, ‘sure have, I rode them for about six months’.

‘So why didn't you write the review?’ I asked.

‘Couldn’t be bothered’ he said.

There was a pause, perhaps even an uncomfortable silence.

‘Oh’ I said, ‘well, what did you think of them then?’

‘Honestly, the stem didn’t slip once and pegs are pegs’ was his evaluation.

Never have more profound words been spoken about BMX products. I’d suggest that at a minimum, when deciding which stem to buy, one that does not slip would be a great place to start.

I too ran the stem for a few months and sure enough, I can confirm that it didn’t slip once and I had no remarkable issue with it, indeed when installing it, it went together like Lego.

Which surprises me considering that the top part of the stem only had about 5mm of steer tube to grab hold of.

You see I run forks with a 165mm steer tube which I’m convinced were designed back when things like ridiculously long head tubes with oversized novelty internal cups were the domain of guys who wore cleats and shaved their nut sack.

As such, I don’t have a huge amount of slack in my steer tube, I don’t use spacers and the Brickhouse stem I’ve been running forever (which has a lower height than the Sequence Hook), grabbed hold of the whole tube. The Sequence did not. If I was going to run this stem over the long term I’d make sure there was sufficient room for it to fit to my forks.

Which would piss me off had I paid money for it – having to buy new forks that is. But it’s all a trade off, the stem is light because its had all sorts of bits cut out of it, so it has to be big to compensate for the missing material that would have provided contact and in turn grip.

I guess the law is: the more you remove of something means whatever is left behind is all the more important.

According to the Sequence website, the stems come black only and have 26mm and 50mm reach options, Flatlandfuel has them in other colours for some reason.

The pegs? Well, pegs are pegs aren’t they. I’m not a fan of grip tape, even the softer rubberised type used on this product. One of my main gripes is that the adhesive melts in the hot summers we get here in Australia. I personally think knurled is the way to go with pegs, if a little bit of knurling is hurting you hands then perhaps you should harden up.

Each peg is made from two different materials, I think its aluminium with a steel cap insert. I’m not sure how they get the cap to stay in (and I have seen it fall out on other models). They come in 1.5 and 1.65 inch diameter options and black only.

The thing about both these products is they are very flatlandy. By that I mean they are really trying to place themselves on the leading edge of flatland products.

The stem and the pegs both scream ‘I’m up with the latest in flatland products (or trends) and I care about weight’. This is not a bad thing, Sequence are clearly trying capture a part of the market but these products exist in the domain of pretzel top tubes and tiny chainrings.

Will I run the Hook stem and self titled pegs after reviewing them? No, but that’s not because they are bad products, it’s because they are not to my taste. I’m a wedge bolt skeptic and prefer knurled pegs.

You can’t buy Sequence products in Australia, so no supporting your local with this purchase, check out Sequence for more info.

Ends.

Jail time for riding a BMX???

There have recently been a few changes to the law in Victoria. Check this article, but basically the low-down is that they want to crack down on "bad cycling behaviour" & "property damage". The aim is to reduce the states road deaths.... makes you wonder what they'll put in place for cars???

Is doing this in an empty car park damaging??? Photo: Kristy Smith

Ali Finlay has kindly written a small response to this article:

Don’t kill anyone or you’re done for.

The Victorian state parliament changed laws in-relation to penalties for dangerous use of bicycles yesterday.

Read about it here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/18/2601834.htm

The story was all over the local TV news and I’m sure the papers are also giving it a flog.

What this really all means is that now if you happen to kill someone or cause an accident or fail to stop at an accident you’ve been involved in whist on your bike, you might be leaving yourself open to fines in the hundreds of thousands dollars and up to five years in jail.

I say now, because it seems previously if you happen to kill someone whilst riding your bike the fine was relatively small and you didn’t have to go to jail.

Or such was the case when a road rider named William Raisen-Shaw hit and killed 77 year old James Gould whist riding in a ‘peloton’ in Mentone.

Read about it here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/official-eye-falls-on-hell-ride/2006/08/29/1156816899914.html

And some reporting on the Coroners findings here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/coroner-slams-hell-riders/2007/07/26/1185339168515.html?s_cid=rss_news

In short the changes to the law bring bikes into line with motor vehicles when it comes to penalties if you mess up, which isn’t unusual considering bikes already have to conform to a minimum level of roadworthiness, just like cars.

Most flatland and BMX bikes do not meet the minimum roadworthy requirement, some lack at least one brake and when was the last time you ran a reflector, let alone pedal reflectors, wheel reflectors and front and rear reflectors?

Ultimately, if you don’t hit anyone when you're riding, then you’re okay and it doesn’t matter if the penalty is $500 or lethal injection.

But if you do hit someone, whether its on the way to your spot, or even at your spot (as I have seen happen) then you could be busted, twice as busted if your bike isn’t considered roadworthy.

So try not to hit people or things with your bike when riding and if you do, stick around and assist them in not dying or you may get some serious damage thrown your way.

Global-Flat, Technology & Flatland...

The next instalment from Ali Finlay....

Dear Flatland Australia Blog reader,

It’s a little slack I know but below is an essay I wrote for school well over a year ago. It was for a class called New Communication Technology and is about technological convergence. Basically I was lazy used the global-flat website as the basis for my analysis. It was pretty much the first thing I wrote for school after returning to formal education for the first time in ten years. I got 78 for the essay and the version below is almost identical.

This essay is relevant for three reasons; one it’s about global-flat, two it started a long tradition of me using flatland as a basis for essays and three, it was just after I wrote it that I worked out that my school marks way too soft.

ali

Martin Hirst and John Harrison in their text Communication and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast describe convergence ‘In the context of communications technologies’ as a process of ‘the coming together of telecommunications, computing and broadcasting into one electronic system’ (2006 p.65). They also argue that ‘technological convergence is itself the end product of important social and economic forces, in particular the process of commercial convergence’. (2006 p.69).

www.global-flat.com (Schulz, 2008), a website dedicated to the sub-culture of Freestyle BMX Flatland, shows examples of Hirst & Harrison’s definitions of convergence. Old forms of broadcast media like print, still images and video are available in electronic format. The front page of the site displays recent news and updates in a text box and can contain a link to another site, video or photo. The news updates have an archive going back to 2004 and are available by RSS or Really Simple Syndication feed. The site also makes its text based news available in different languages, however because the news has to be translated by volunteers the service can experience delays.

There are clearly defined links above the main content panel at the top of the site that link users to the Video, Photo, Events and About sections. The Video section contains a convergence of this old technology with the new technology of online and on-demand streaming and downloading. Users have access to a large library of videos at no cost. These videos are produced by the site’s production team and users. The videos are delivered by the older direct download process and the newer web based streaming. This reflects changes in the way users access videos on the internet. We again see the convergence of old and new technologies in the photo section. Here still images are presented in albums arranged by subject. Users are able to view the images on-demand, as well as give a rating and make comments on each individual photo. This is an interactive element to global-flat.com.

One example of economic convergence is the site’s ability to market itself to companies within the community. The site carries click-through advertisements for products and services relating to Flatland. Global-flat.com connects consumers to companies with relevant, desirable products. Companies and users utilize the reach global-flat.com has to market and develop interest around products and brands. The site content brings companies and users together via its news, videos, photos and forum posts, these can often contain an element of brand placement or endorsement.

Interactive is defined in the Concise Australian Oxford Dictionary (1997) as “1 Reciprocally active; acting upon or influencing each other” and “2 (of a computer or other electronic device) allowing two-way flow of information between it and a user, responding to the user’s input.” Interactivity is the act of being interactive.

Global-flat.com has interactive elements which are also linked from the top menu of the main page. The sites interactivity can be broken into three groups; online, offline and combination. The online group includes things such as the forum where users interact with each other, generally sharing information, discussing issues of importance to the community as well as non-Flatland related topics in a web based environment. This takes place on a PHP or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor forum, which allows for the direct linking and display of images and videos. The PHP forum displays elements of technological convergence combined with a high level of interactivity and interpersonal connectivity. The parts section of the site contains an element where users can construct a virtual bike using real world parts. The end goal is to produce an image that gives users the ability to view possible combinations and see approximate weights and then apply that information in the real world to setup and purchase choices.

The offline interactive sections include a Tricks page which is a detailed how-to listing videos and text that give people instruction on how to complete certain Flatland tricks. The use of this online information takes place in the real world. In the past limited portability options have meant this information could not be taken on location, recent developments in wireless broadband internet technology now enable such information to be accessed at a spot and applied rapidly.

An example of combination interactivity is where volunteers provide an updated list of parts and their relevant aspects. Users are then invited to give each part a rating. A problem with this interactive element is that users have a tendency to give ratings on parts they have only experienced through the internet. A direct example of this is when over 1300 users rated a product that was still in development phase and being used by less than three riders in the world. A possible issue with the part rating system could be that it gives the wrong impression to users who might access the information with an aim to making decisions about product purchases.

Ultimately, global-flat.com is not the first Flatland website to use media like videos and digital images in combination with things like forums and live chats and it will not be the last. The relative success of global-flat.com within the Flatland community can be attributed to its model of narrowcast and diversified convergent technology. It seems to be the quality and quantity of its content and a high level of interactivity and connectivity that brings together a small community. However as the site continues to develop content and interactivity, it may have to face issues of accountability and advertising declaration.

References

The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1997) Moore, Bruce (ed)
Hirst, Martin and Harrison, John (2006) Communication and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast.
Schulz, Martin (2004-08) www.global-flat.com

New Freestyle BMX magazine for Australia?

Alistair Finlay from Victoria wrote this interesting piece regarding the launch of the new BMX freestyle publication in Australia, BMX Life. Read on & feel free to leave a comment...

So in news that went unreported in almost every bmx circle over the last month (and by unreported I mean that I didn’t see it on any of the RSS feeds I get), Australia is getting a new freestyle BMX magazine.

Okay, that’s not 100% true, in fact Australia is actually getting about .5 of a new BMX magazine.

You see BMXPress is dividing its operation into two different publications.

BMXPress will continue on as a BMX race only magazine and a new publication called ‘BMX Life’ will be dedicated to freestyle. At this stage both magazines will quarterly, as opposed to once every two months that the old BMXPress was.

Issue one of Australia’s newest freestyle BMX magazine

So, in the end, having little more information that I just divulged above, I decided to give the self proclaimed ‘editor in chief’ of both mags, Warwick Wheeler a call.

Over about twenty or so minutes of a reasonably stock standard BMX conversation, Warwick talked about things like his flatland credentials, how he wanted to see flatland in the new magazine and his ethos of BMX photos.

Warwick’s seems an odd fellow, I had never spoken to him before and only really seen him at a few events where flatland was also on the bill as opposed to the bill.

His accent matches his name, which is to say he posses a tendency to pronounce every letter in the word and the overall result being you feel like you’re chatting over the phone to your plumber.

Except your plumber doesn’t use words like ‘gnarly’ and ‘scene’ or ‘underground’ (unless talking about sewage) and doesn’t hold stock standard BMX phone conversations.

During our chat, Warwick did kind of claim that the reason there hasn’t been much flat content in his publications in the past was because 2020 managed to attract all the contributors that used to submit stuff to him.

2020 - market leader

But it’s important to temper any critique about the volume of flat content in BMXPress or BMX Life with the knowledge that Warrick isn’t a flatlander. Unlike Holmes and Pollack, Warrick has never really been exposed to the flat scene and hasn’t kept up with the diversification of its culture.

Ten minutes on the phone with Warrick is enough to reveal this.

As such he has come to rely on the input of others for content. If those people haven’t been forthcoming there hasn’t been any content.

‘I can’t tell what is and isn’t a good flat photo the way I can with dirt. That’s why I go Stumpy to write the words for the BMXgames report in the mag’ Warrick says.

He plans on calling the usual suspects for help generating flat content for BMX Life (people like the afore mentioned Stumpy as well as Stu and the such like – so expect a phone call fellas) as well as hoping that aspiring flatland photographers and writers will get in contact with him.

The thing is, I’m not so sure if now is the time to be launching a new BMX magazine title.

Whilst sales aren’t down across the board for print media at the moment, advertising revenue certainly is, and whilst some industries are flat, on face value there seems to be no greater or less number of BMX related companies starting up or going to the wall.

The question is, can the local market place support one more magazine at the moment?

Warwick is placing his bets on it can and the idea that more magazine titles means greater protection against falling revenue saying ‘a title like Rebel Yell is at risk because if their advertising falls then where else is the money going to come from?’.

Rebel Yell – ‘at risk from falling advertising revenue’ says Warwick

This strategy however would be more affective if Australian BMX distributors, who are also the advertisers, weren’t so tied up in both the race and freestyle markets.

In the end, regardless of whether BMX Life sinks or swims in the long term, if Warwick’s plans for flatland coverage in the mag are even partly realised then it can only be good for flatland.

Online Survey: BMX Media in Australia

Ali Finlay, who will shortly be completing his University course, needs some help to complete an assessment task. He has put together a small survey on the access & use of BMX print media in Australia & will only take a few minutes - thanks!

Click Here To Take The Survey

If you have any questions or want more information, feel free to email Ali at alialltheway@hotmail.com.

A reply to Trevlon Hall’s INFRASTRUCTURE & THE FUTURE: An Australian Perspective

In what is fast becoming a quite enjoyable trend in flatland, that being the long and thought provoking blog post, Trevlon Hall has put forward a call to action with a result rather then an opinion that‘s mealy subjective.

The aim of this piece is to look at some of the key points raised by Trevlon and discuss weather it is even practical to attempt to apply them in Australia.

It is perceived by sections of the Australian flat community that Australia is in the second world when it comes to flatland. Compared to other countries, we fall way short on rider numbers, access to product, mainstream media penetration and sponsored riders and events. That’s not to say we don’t have some of those things, it’s just they aren’t on a level with other places.

However, this is also the way it is in much the rest of the world, in fact, despite all we don’t have in Australian flatland, what we do have is pretty damn good considering.

Trevlon’s idea, whilst noble in spirit, is completely impractical in Australia. If we use Melbourne as an example of how you might begin to move on his call to action, you would first need to look at obtaining land to locate a spot. For this you only have two options; government or private enterprise. That is to say you’ll need to lobby government for them to give you either money or land or both, or you can try and get money together via other means to buy the land outright and build your own space. The ways to do both of this things are many and varied, but they also cost a packet and in the case of government you’ll need many people supporting you.

When it comes to government you have three options; federal, state and local (all of which are currently broke I might add). Now, say in Melbourne and around Victoria there are twenty riders who ride on a regular enough basis to justify a legitimate dedicated spot and another 50 (and that’s being incredibly generous) who have an interest in flatland. That is no way enough people to lobby and convince either state or federal government to allocate crown land, as well as money to the construction of a flat spot.

You might have luck with local government, if those 70 people all live within the same local council, but they don’t, they are spread out all over Melbourne and Victoria, which is quite a large area. This means that even if you can get something together from the local council or through private enterprise, some riders just aren’t going to go because it’ll be to far away and others won’t like it because it’s not to their taste. The Imax experience has shown this time and time again.

The famous Imax riding spot in Melbourne

The private enterprise model would have you begging for money from everyone, and I can tell you, people don’t generally give big amounts of money for nothing. Now I’m not saying it’s impossible, just impractical.

But the real issue I see with Trevlon’s idea is the reasons behind it. His argument boils down to flatland exists, there for it has intrinsic right to a private space. I don’t agree with this, I feel if you want recognition for anything, you have to earn it, or there has to be a real need for it. Just because a few guys who ride kids bikes in an odd way feel they are entitled to it, does not in my mind make me think that government or big business should provide such recognition.

The example of tennis is used to suggest that flatland can pull itself up out of the street and into mainstream respectability. However I would argue that the example is flawed as flatland is deeply linked to the street and street culture. The ‘paradigm shift’ Trevlon calls for is removal of flatland from street culture in an attempt to attain higher status by having space allocated for something that already exists. This supposes that for flatland to gain respectability it must be allocated this own physical space and reject its association with the street.

The thing is that tennis has had hundreds of years to come and go, fall in and out of favour and so forth. Yet tennis was originally the cultural practice of peasants (as was soccer and rugby league), flatland has never been the cultural practice of peasants. The peasant culture of successive European basket-case nations throughout the last few centuries bears very little in common with today’s global street culture, of which I believe flatland falls within and is most suited to.

Flatlanders ride in public and trespass on private spaces because that is, what I feel, flatland is about. It’s about using what’s already there for a second different purpose, or recycling modern infrastructure. Why create more of what already abounds (well, in the developed world anyway).
The issue of getting hassled in public spaces is used to support the argument, however on the model suggested, it seems to me that you are just as likely to get hassled riding at an open dedicated flat spot as you are on a tennis court. I have found that the only people that hassle when you ride are drunks and bogans, so they’ll come and bother you no matter where you ride if its out doors.

I believe that Trevlon has raised some good points, and his cause is true, however when applied to Australia I think that such action would prove impractical, impossible and even unfair considering the wide range of selection most Australian riders have when it comes to choosing of riding spots. Yet he should also be commended for putting forward ideas, that if realisable might benefit sections flatland community without negatively affecting others.

Read Trevlon Hall’s original post titled INFRASTRUCTURE & THE FUTURE on flatmattersonline here:
http://flatmattersonline.blogspot.com/2009/05/infrastructure-future-by-trevlon-hall.html

Well known Victorian rider, Ali Finlay, has kindly offered to provide regular commentary to issues that face the flatland community in Australia & beyond. This has been the first of many installments that will be coming out... stay tuned!