*Actually more than once if you count the Latin X Games

Bruce Crisman is probably the most mild-mannered past X Games gold medalist. He seems more like a high school guidance counselor than a guy that beat Dave Mirra, Ryan Nyquist, and other big names to take a park gold in Philly years back. These days he remains one of the most skilled bike riders on the planet, and he’s pushed a style of fakie (rollback) riding in ways most never thought possible.

Bruce lives in Portland, and passed through the studio the other day with his new Shola line of products to be shot. I’m not sure what products I can let out of the bag at this point, but since an older photo of the grips is on the Shola site, I figure those are safe along with a portrait of Bruce. Check out the Shola site for more, and for info on the August 15th Shola video premier in Portland.

Shooting “Action Sports” contests can be a total mess. When I say action sports contests, I mean the contests put on by the TV networks or the larger outside corporations — they are the ones calling this shit “Action Sports” in the first place. True “inside” BMX and Skate contests are still fun to shoot, and far less of a hassle. The bigger contests require credentials, and even when you have said credentials you can’t get anywhere you need to be. X Games, Dew Tour… it’s a total fucking disaster no matter what pass you have (media, team manager, friends and family, etc., I’ve tried them all). Last year at X Games I actually had to borrow Mat Hoffman’s pass so I could where I needed to get a couple shots before I changed my ticket and went home early. Pathetic really. So this year I didn’t even bother to go, despite being in Southern California anyway.

I’ve been shooting the ASA Action Sports World Tour for the last couple years, primarily because I shoot it for the event organizer (ASA) and have a proper credential. Even without that “special” pass the events are a bit less restricted, and at least a bit closer to a true BMX contest. So a BMX publication could, in theory, go and shoot photos without the “We don’t give a fuck about you or your stupid magazine” attitude of X and Dew. During X Games this year they had a contest called the BMX Triples running in Costa Mesa, about 40 minutes South of LA and X Games. So Costa Mesa it was, and I avoided X at all costs.

This gallery is a selection of the photos I shot for the event and BFD.com (where you can find a replay of the live webcast from the contest’s final round and more photos/results). My friend Aaron Nardi also posted a gallery, and a cool video from the contest on his site. Check that out after the gallery below.

Note: Shot above is of Josh Hult doing a superman tailwhip.

Back in 1998 Brian Tunney and I did a one-off magazine/zine called nine-ninety (a name based off a popular model of BMX brakes). It was mostly black and white, with a spot color on the cover and center spread (which fell on the same printing form) and web-printed on a paper that was a step above newsprint.

At the time, Brian was living in New Jersey ocassionally contributing to Dig, and I was living in Boston working on a fashion/lifestyle magazine and finishing school. We started on a second issue, but it never came out. Unfortunately it wasn’t for lack of interest. I got a job working at Ride BMX Magazine, and they weren’t too keen on me doing two magazines at once, and Brian was contributing more heavilly to Dig. So issue two just fell to the wayside. Bummer.

We printed several thousand copies of the first issue, and gave them away for free at skateparks and through some of the BMX brands. Who knows, now that print is dead, maybe someday we’ll put out an issue two.

Every now and then someone will bring up nine-ninety, so I got the bright idea to make a pdf of it and put it online. What I failed to consider was that nine-ninety was produced write around the time when publishing was transtitioning from camera-ready artwork (in otherwards you provided the printer with layouts on boards that they’d take a picture of) to going from computer straight to film (these days they skip that entirely and go right to printing plates from the computer). Anyway, nine-ninety was designed in computer, and shipped to the printer on boards, so elements of it were somewhere on an old disk (probably a Syquest cartridge holding a whopping 80mb) and other elements were long gone. So my only option was to scan a copy. Well, 40 pages of scanning later, here it is. Not an ideal way to go about it,  but you can see what it looked like… pretty different than the BMX mags at the time. Issue 1 included a Dave Parrick interview, a story on the 1998 X Games, a feature on BMX on the Web (we were so ahead of our time!), an Erin Donato profile, and a feature on a contest at Impact Skatepark in New England, amongst other things.

You can download a PDF of the issue here. 8mb of BMX glory.

Freestyle Motocross rider  Jeremy Lusk passed away as the result of injuries from a crash at the X-Riders competition in Costa Rica. There is more info on the Metal Mulisha’s site. Jeremy was the 2008 X Games Gold Medalist as well as the 2008 Transworld Motocross Rider of the Year.

Mistakes they do happen, and if the wrong reporter came across this while doing research for his or her X Games story, well that could lead to an interesting piece!

It’s been a few years since I’ve braved the X. I gave up going largely based on the reasons above, though mostly for the Credential nightmare that always ensues. No type of credential is ever good enough to get you where you want to go. Athletes have trouble getting credentials for wifes and kids, never mind friends and family, and the media… forget about it.

This was my first year with a media credential. In the past I’ve had “higher level” credentials, but this year. I didn’t really plan ahead. I was not prepared for how little access a Media credential gets you, but once you’re inside the gate… well that’s about all it gets you.

Really I should have known, and it’s my own fault for not ensuring a proper credential to get things done. But now I remember why the endemic media stays away — it’s simply not worth it.

Fortunately I did not make the trip X-clusively for the X Games. If I hadn’t had to be in LA last week anyway, I wouldn’t have bothered. We all make mistakes.

So far my favorite photo that I’ve seen from the games is one that appears on Chris Nieratko’s blog on the X Games site. Scroll down to the photo of the camera man that received a “shark bite” care of Bucky. Apparently that guy had better credentials than I…