From the Archives: Ralph Sinisi
My good friend Brian Tunney just posted an interview over on the ESPN Action site with East Coast BMX street legend and Animal Bikes owner Ralph Sinisi. During my days at Ride Magazine I flew to New Jersey to shoot an interview with Ralph prior to us all driving out to a 2-Hip contest on Long Island. This was around 2000, so I don’t remember what happened with my travel exactly, but for some reason I was delayed two days getting into New Jersey, which left us one night to shoot the interview. Ralph is a trooper, and a bad-ass street rider, so he fired out a bunch of cool stuff while we road around New York City all night long with a crew of Jersey locals (including the late, great Joe Tiseo).
The photo above caused the most stir. It got a lot of letters. Mostly from people that weren’t too happy that Ralph was grinding a car. I’ll admit, it’s not something I’d normally condone, let alone shoot, but it was a beat up car… I mean, the front was already thoroughly trashed. And it was a city vehicle. So you know, tax dollars payed for the shot. In reality though, if this car could still move forward it wasn’t too far off from the junkyard. And he did it first try so it was only one scratch. The car was parked in a very, very dark area not far from the Brooklyn Banks. You could barely see the car without a flash. We actually used the modeling light on my Q-flash as a flashlight so he could see the thing to begin with.
Base Brooklyn shirt, hard-cap knee pads over pants, four pegs, front brakes (any brakes for that matter)… things have changed in the last ten years.
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Comments ( 4 )
Mike Berard added this brilliant insight on Aug 27 09 at 1:03 amI remember this so well This was a huge shitshow at the time. Half the letters to RideBMX were punk-as-f@#k kids somehow trying to connect this to a youth movement and the other half were BMX dads condemning the whole thing. It was awesome. I’d love to read all the letters you got for this Jared.
Kevin Saborit-Guasch added this brilliant insight on Aug 27 09 at 5:41 amOh I remember that one. Good stuff all around. Also reminds me I have to take that whole pile of old mags back from storage at one point.
nick added this brilliant insight on Aug 28 09 at 8:04 pmDidn’t Taj respond to the letter? If i recall it was actually a good response
Kelly B added this brilliant insight on Aug 28 09 at 8:27 pmIt is funny that everyone has stated out with “I remember”.
That is exactly how I was going to start before I saw the replys. I had the honor of being (probably still am) freinds with Ralph around the time of the pic. That dude can sleep like no other person I know. Those mismatch knee pads don’t smell very good either. Ralph is great!!
