STREET VS TWEAK 2
Posted by Mark on 17.06.2008, 04:13
For the second year, Street Vs Tweak has graced the sunny(ish) streets of Southampton, raising the bar yet again in terms of riding, awesomeness and having fun. It’s weird then, that I’m finding it so hard to write about… (Click on the photos for larger versions & captions)
Street jams don’t just happen - they take a lot of planning, date-checking, sponsor-sorting, prize-arranging, direction-giving and route-checking. That’s a lot of double-barreled things to be getting on with, and once again it largely fell to the shoulders of Street Dave, with the help of Mute of Project5 and a few locals.
With everything finally dropping into place, and the BBC weather check proving to be 100% inaccurate - luckily - the mass of riders who’d turned up to represent their cause were blessed with glorious sunshine and high 20’s temperature wise. Pulling up to MFI Banks to witness a sea of BMXers and a few confused shop-owners is a sight that last year got me excited at the prospect of what I was about to see get thrown down, and managed to deliver yet again.
Now, the thing I’m finding tricky here is how to talk about this. On the one hand, there’s the regimented trick list, talking about how last year’s King of Street, Adolfo, lost some skin trying to 180 over the barrier and into the banks at MFI, how Joel sent the gnarliest (And I don’t mean that in the MTB XTREME way, I mean genuinely the most haggard, sketchy rail around) double kinker in Southampton, how Mute slid a double kinker that Joel took him to as a joke, how Lloyd showed up and made a lot of people utter “Who IS that dude?” with a range of ridiculous whip or bars related lines - but that would, ultimately, be missing the point.
Those of you who read the Lynched in Leicester write-up will remember me talking about the feeling of riding through the city, totally in control of traffic, people, land-owners, police, PCSOs - all the people who would ordinarily be stopping your session were now powerless to do anything, as the apparent underclass of society got the chance to do their thing free from restrictions for a change. Yet again, and indeed unsurprisingly, Street vs Tweak gave out that same kick to anyone who, as we rode from spot-to-spot, would’ve looked around them. Gunning red lights, then looking back and seeing that there’s still another 50 riders to go through before anyone in a car’s going to get moving, is pretty awesome. Knowing that a simple love of little bikes can unify people into doing the extraordinary is cool, although I’m sure that’ll have been lost on the people stuck in their cars for a few minutes longer, or to the pedestrians who were at first glance pretty worried as the hordes of riders swarmed them on their way past (Or, indeed, to the staff at Tesco Metro near the Ocean Village double 7…).
To me, what strengthened this was the way that out of all the 100 or so riders present, almost every single person there was just a ‘regular person’. Still in uni, working the 9-5, or even still in school in some cases - not the “pro riders” everyone looks up to or who would be known to the general public. The way that people from all around the UK had travelled down just to check out what Street vs Tweak would be like, at their own expense of both time and money (and skin and blood for the unlucky few), was - for me at least - one of the most heartening aspects of the day. It’s pretty obvious that there are lots of people in BMX who’s main outlook on the rest of the world’s riders tends to be cynical and pessimistic, with every new webvideo being critiqued bitterly, every new photo ripped to pieces, every new sponsored rider being told they’re not worthy of their free product. As someone who has to generally be fairly immersed in BMXing to keep updating this site and Pijin’s Blog, it can get a little disconcerting when everywhere you turn there’s going to be people who, despite claiming to be doing something for the love of it, seem to only mention their hatred towards it.
Seeing the effort that the jam’s organisers went to to get this show on the road (Massive thanks to all of you); the extent to which people were willing to push themselves to do tricks that were either out of their comfort zone in terms of skill or fear simply as a result of Mute’s heckling on the megaphone; the way that even the people who didn’t ride much still cheered and applauded when someone landed a trick, no matter how good the trick itself was - it was all good. Knowing there are still people out there who are so passionate about riding and having a good time that they’re willing to sacrifice a considerable amount of their own free time outside of working and having a regular life to put on events like this to give other people the chance to escape their own lives for a while is reassuring.
What was equally reassuring throughout the whole day was how insane the level of riding had become. Last year, people threw down some pretty wild moves, but this year things were moved up again. The general standard had been raised considerably, and when you get to the freshly painted Hoglands and see some dude start blasting flairs way, way above coping, you can tell some people have been putting the work in whether it’s at their local park or their favourite 5-set. In the pre-event hype of Street vs Tweak, and indeed this year too, quite a few people seemed to get the wrong end of the stick, and seemed to think they were turning up to some Street Vs Park battle. Hopefully, they realised pretty early on this wasn’t the case (although a few park dogs did retreat to the relative sanctuary of Hoglands pretty early on…), and that the aim was to push each other and have a good time rather than assert the dominance of one form of riding over another.
Realistically speaking, there’s not much more I can say about Street vs Tweak 2. Now Dave is heading off out of Southampton to pastures new, it looks like someone else is going to have to step up to the plate and continue the SvT Legacy, because if this jam stops it’d be a massive blow not only to the South coast, but to the UK street jam calendar. Seriously - I said it after the Leicester jam, and I’ll say it again now - these jams are awesome. If you haven’t experienced rolling in a crew of 100 people through a city of your choice, you really haven’t lived. The atmosphere is always amazing, the riding is always awesome (Even the younger kids at SvT won prizes for what they were doing, so don’t be put off if you’re not the next Van Homan…) and you’ll always have a laugh. They don’t cost you anything to enter, so just roll up and see what goes down. The next P5 jam is taking place in Trowbridge on the 13th July, and now Mute has these organisational skills dialled it’s going to be well worth turning up to - not to mention the lure of virgin concrete parks…
Photo over-spill will be available on DISSRM site soon!