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.