Ricky Feather has been a much loved rider up in the North of England for many years, way before this photo was taken in 2008. He’d been on a few NSF trips, stayed up in Newcastle numerous times and was always a real good laugh to hang out with. Turns out now he’s a real good builder of road and race bikes and if you haven’t already checked out his website head over there after you’ve had a good look at this photo below.
These red brick quarters must have been around since the 90’s but it took until the early 2000’s for most of the BMXers in the North East to actually ride them. Tucked away in a Gateshead Council estate before the likes of Google Earth and Street View and any sort of social media it was a question of talking to the right people to find out where they were and then a mission to weave in and out of the streets and alleys to find them. Back when I shot this photo with Mr Feather not many people could ride these let along blast a tweaked table out of the top of them. Ricky was always good at the table and this photo on the classic Nikon D70 does it great justice. Enjoy the snap straight outta the camera..
Be sure to also watch his amazing split edit that United did back in 2009, both Ricky and team mate Theo Simpson killed it in this edit and it would still hold itself high in todays standards!
G33K: iso 200 | 10.5mm | f9.0 | 1/500th
Ricky Feather and Theo Simpson Split Edit
My apologies for not putting a TT the other day, so in an attempt to say sorry i’m putting up two photos for the price of one. Back in 2006 when DFTU was running the streets and bedroom industries were all the rage a small clothing brand called Mass Transit were having a road trip in London. The trip consisted of Joe Fox, Marv, Mouse, Mike Mills, Dan Cox, Cookie, Will Herman, Ratty, DFTU Steve, Baz, The Mitz and Rhys “McFleece” Coren. I wonder if anyone has the video online from the trip? Ratty??
Anyways here’s two snaps for you from that time, the first one is of Cookie doing a x-pegs smith at St Pauls and the second is over Mouse doing a wall ride to table in some playground down in Laaandaaan. Enjoy.
G33K: iso 400 | 10.5mm | f4.0 | 1/8th
G33K: iso 200 | 10.5mm | f5.6 | 1/500th
Throwing it back to when I used to work for Federal Bikes and I was up in Milton Keynes at the time snapping away with Federal rider Derek Strickland. Charlie Jobling was on hand filming what was going down for their series of web edits that they were dropping regularly. It was coming to the end of the night, the batteries on the video light were going down and we were about to wrap up but Derek and I had unfinished business. Derek took us both to this crazy looking monument type thing that had a tight flatbank on it. I wanted to light up both Derek and the structure so after a bit of messing around with the lights I think we got it just right. Two lights are on Derek, the rim light being one stop brighter than the main light and then another flash was in the middle of the structure picking out the blue details from within.
G33K: iso 400 | 105mm | f4.5 | 1/200th
When I worked for Seventies I was very honoured to be able to meet some of the people in BMX that I had really looked up to and grew up watching as a teenager. Seth Kimbrough was one of those guys, even though he’s about the same age as me we’d get the videos and DVD’s arriving over here in the UK and all of us would be watching the lates moves from across the pond. Seth has always been an interesting and inspiring rider to watch with a style that for me is mixed between the midschool of the late 90s early 2000’s with burley tricks, gaps, grinds and the new school of technical lines. He has a banging section in The Shadow Conspiracy’s Into the Void video and you can see it after the photo.
The shot was taken on one of Seth’s UK visits to meet up with his friends and fellow team mates Bas Keep and Mad Jon (at the time Bas rode for Hoffman before Cult) and we headed North to the stomping grounds of the spot master Owain Clegg. After a day out riding street and the local plaza we headed back to Owain’s house to check out his extremely tight ramp setup he had in the back garden. Seth like a bloody pro he is was getting all over it and busted a few clicked tables for the camera.
I haven’t seen him in about two years, the last time I randomly bumped into him down at an art show in London’s Shoreditch, the last place I would have expected him to be but he was travelling with his wife around Europe. Pretty small world! I hope you’re doing well and enjoying the ride Seth 😀
G33K: iso 400 | 16mm | f8.0 | 1/250th
Seth Kimbrough in Into the Void
Taking it back to 2008 in this weeks installment of Throwback Thursday, this photos was taken during my time down at the Brighton Ain’t Ready house. The rider is Dakota Roche and he’s busting out a sizeable 180 over the rail, Edd Allen was at hand filming for the epic BAR video that came out in 2009 and featured Dakota and a whole bunch of other top names from all the best brands. Dakota’s section was epic and so as a treat i’ve embed the video below the photo.
G33K: iso 200 | 50mm | f3.5 | 1/30th
Dakota Roche – Brighton Ain’t Ready
A simple double peg down one of the most famous rails in England, Ponds Forge. This rail has been documented on and within the covers of Ride UK for years but was also seen in such classic videos as NSF2 (Joe section), Voices and Tomorrow We Work. This shot of Joe was taken almost eleven years ago while a bunch of rowdy northerners were on a visit to Sheffield to catch up, ride and get drunk with old friends. There was a strong crew out that trip and if you hit “read more” you’ll be able to see a great group photo of everyone who came down for the trip.
G33K: iso 400 | 15mm | f6.7 | 1/4th
G33K: iso 100 | 50mm | f5.6 | 1/320th
In January of this year Greg’s UK/JP video dropped, one of the spots that was featured in it is not far down the road from where we’re based. A huge victorian reservoir that’s been featured in the NSF video and on the front cover of Ride UK where Baz Keep was doing a huge table out of it. Last year Greg, Brad (his brother), Dave Summertime, Ross Thompson, Murphy and I went down to have a session and to snap some photos of something I’d wanted to shoot for years, even if it was just to take a photo of the sheer scale of the place. Read more
Year back, we’re talking like seven years or more Olly told me about this snake run that existed up in the hills of Blaydon in Gateshead. Back in 2006-7 time there was a lot less riders, google maps was something that wasn’t used day in day out and the top down view of places were coloured blobs on a small CRT monitor.. This was street knowledge, it may have even been Mexican John knowledge as he was the keeper of a lot of street spots, him and Olly would go out on missions to find these random, amazing places that were off the track. Anyways roll on 2007 and Olly and I decided we’d go for a long ride up a very long hill to find this place and it was a mission of rolling up and down streets looking for some signals or local kids you could ask. After a little while we finally got wind of a location, kind of like up this street, find an alley with green railings, next to a big field and you’ll find it but it’s kinda dug in the ground a little so it won’t be obvious.. great directions haha, we found it though and we sessioned the shit out of it for about two hours. It only really consisted of 2 routes and was over in about 15 seconds but it was bloody awesome to find somewhere like this in a city full of rails, ledges and stairs with hardly any transitions.
Here’s a sweet pic that we got from that day, Olly getting his table on, nice and clicked. Shot on the Nikon D70 (one of the best digital cameras I ever owned).
G33K: iso 100 | 10.5mm | f7.1 | 1/320th