Sunday Sessions: West End Town
The title is somewhat inspired by the classic hit (Partridge voice engaged..) by the Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls, now we ain’t a bunch of girls but Mouse was bitch slapping himself today at the premise of hoping onto a curved wall bench ride so hmm maybe. Anywho lets get onto the main entertainment that is Sunday Sessions this week brought to you in full Technicolor, HD2000, World Wide Web Ready GIFS…
So waking up this morning after not many hours sleep I thought to myself lets hit up the West End of Newcastle as we normally start at the Wastey aka Ghettoplex (to me anyway..) aka Mr T’s easiest spot to meet us at and thats exactly what we did, we headed west. Marc Bell and Jamie Tits were first out of the house this morning meeting at Newcastle College for a quick warm up on a rough ledge spot. Jamie was manualing the crap out of it whilst Marc was doing high speed grinds and I was dicking about with the new setup and plastic peg sleeve.. it was like riding pegasus the horse, speed beyond speed.. anyways going off topic…
We met up with Olly and headed deeper into the Westend of Toon, first spot was this small five set of stairs with a mini launcher next to it. At first people were like hmm yeah not sure and then once the energy drinks were consumed by the Shields crew the party started. First off Olly did this sweet one footed xup out of the launcher and everyone was like “how f**king high you go??” I don’t think any of us knew just how much boost you could get off this thing, it looked innocent but it packed a boost.
Mouse rolled up straight out of bed still smelling of last night, not quite as nuclear as some but he told the story which won’t be posted up here of having a good eve.. must have been as he didn’t wake up until 1pm haha. Anyways he busted out the wall ride a couple of times and I went all Bear Grills with the angle, climbing up walls and hanging on to trees..
- Mouse – Wallride, Westend
- Mouse – Wall Ride, Westend
Then for the creme de la creme of suicide squads Marc Bell busted out the suicide off the booster and check the arm positions on that. Owain Clegg would hopefully approve of this. I always used to like taking photos with Owain in the craziest of spots and he used to do a damn good suicide too!
Next up we moved on to meet up with the rest of the crew Pete Greaves and Tom Bright before hitting up some food and bumping into Luke Thorpe and the Whitley Bay guys however lets not forget the random stranger who wanted to show us his skills on the stairs. He was very much into the riding and then proceeded to ask us about our bikes from Halfords. Good times 😛
Once all the Greggs and Subways you need for a Sunday Session were consumed we headed back up the Westgate Road up to a very long rail that was sessioned a few years back by Cookie doing an xup double pegs. This time it was Luke Thorpe, the man who has style for miles and a ghetto setup of pedals. He’s filming an edit with Ryan Lilburn at the moment that will be dropping in the next two months (and if we’re lucky we’ll be showing it at our next video eve come Autumn in Toon) So yeah with Ryan forgetting his tripod he made a makeshift steadicam rig into a steadi-stick with stones and we proceeded to digitally capture the crank arms, the slams, the “im over its” and then the pièce de résistance of pulled crank arm grind on a lengthy handrail.
- Bike down
- Try again? Why not
- Had enough..
And then BOOM, pulled it flipping sweet >
After that kind of hammer it was time to start to wind down the session and plonk ourselves on a nice street bench that just so happened to involve wall riding the shit out of it. Here we have the Mr Olsen and the Mr Greaves giving it a spin
Pete was so happy with his ride that he decided to let some steam off in the form of his tube bursting so loud that it sounded like he’d just unloaded his PP7.. Oh yeah and on the subject of PP7’s GoldenEye: Source has just been released bringing back the classic Nintendo N64 game into the modern day.. If you want to loose yourself in that then get it for free here > https://www.geshl2.com
Anyways onto the last spot before the end of the day, we re-visited the once Netto flat bank which is now sponsored by Asda and had a chilled wall ride sesh while the crowd watched like a bunch of Pokemon Go users…
Anyway Mouse loved it so much he went full pelt and did a nice and simple wall ride to boost out into the hip. The story was over for today, we all hit up college one more time before parting for the eve and having a pint with Mr T. Now you know what to do next time you’re out, hit up some of the places you haven’t rode in years, go re-visit, take a look from a different angle and session the crap out of it! Enjoy the week ahead 🙂