'Me local' Silksworth.

'Me local' as Ben Hennon says in his thirty seconds edit is now my new local, Silksworth skate park is now my new Wezza. Being from Peterborough I weren't really used to a great selections of parka I was basically stuck with Wezza which was two small quarter pipes and a small jump box, now for me and lads it did do us the job considering we learnt most of our tricks at that place but now I have to biggest opportunity of riding a good skate park every week. Now to start with its a concrete skate park, it has everything you can ask for.

The selection of street madness comes with ledges ,rails and nice flat bank hips. Good enough for a full blown pegs session on a cold winters night. Now although my peg trickery was not to any particular standard riding the park defiantly has given me more chance to put pegs to ledge, many of the BMX locals being into street because of back in the day 'Silky' was not available to them and all they had was the streets, which means more people to session street with me. Here's a video to shows some ledge session time.

Ledge Madness.. from Ryan Hendry on Vimeo.

Now this is were the parks selections of fine quarters comes in, with a range of size the quarter are giving names depending on the size from big to small, Big red (the penultimate), medium red, little red, big yellow, little yellow ,little green , the road to nowhere (vert), medium spin, big spine, little spine, hip into red and hip out of yellow. Now there's a selection. With lines everywhere it does not seem to get boring, really good flow and sizes. Now I've met quite a lot of local rider already and have also managed to get a few sessions done with videos and photos, all really good people and no hassle with chav's or radgy's as the mackems say so really good local park.

Looking forward to many session at the place any many videos will be coming out of it, just hold tight and wait till the deadly white stuff leaves us and all shall be well! Enjoy.

Riders, Me, Dchum, Jay and Ben.

Mackem Interview with Mark "Dchum" Davis.

As I have moved up to the north I thought it was only rite that I got an interview going to give everyone including myself a little bit more knowledge and understanding about the mackems from a mackems point of view, so here we go a Q & A with Dchum.

What does it mean to be mackem?

“It’s something I’ve never really thought about, but I’m proud of where I live, I love supporting the local team (Sunderland) and the BMX scene is as swift as it gets. Red & white army - mackem for life”

What’s a popular mackem food or foods?

“Chip butty splash and pease pudding hahaha without doubt the 2 greatest things ever!”

What about drinks?

“Double maxim from Sunderland”

What words in particular from the mackem dictionary do you use the most?

“hahaha erm hard one this why I man and mara”

A famous mackem story?

“It’s believed the term mackem was brought about when Sunderland had a booming ship industry the ships would be made here on the river wear then taken away hence the name mackem n tackem”

Who is your mackem hero?

“without doubt it has to be Wearside Jack”

Give me a little more insight into this Jack?

“A Jack the ripper hoax from Sunderland who had the police running in circles, he evaded capture for about 36 year’s”

Did being mackem have an influence on your riding?

“It was a massive influence on my riding both NSF 1 & 2 were made here and they are the streets videos known to man. I once read a quote saying Sunderland is street and always will be and it's true even the daft park edits have a street vibe n H-man said the 2009 edit was the streetest park video he had ever seen. SBR”

Snow.

Due to weather and lack of motivation to post because of this depressing weather here is a nice bit of dub-step made by my good friend James Griffin, 11 minutes of goodness, enjoy.

Dubstep Mix (November) by DirtyProspekts

Seaburn Jam.

So the Seaburn Jam was back in August now so a few months have past since but still can recall some memories of the day. So the jam has now ran for I think the last couple of years this on what i've been told, the turn out on the day was very successful with a lot of riders from Sunderland and Newcastle arriving. Now over the course of the day it featured a few random parts one example being Dchum t-bagging a Squid.

The set up for the jam was pretty cool considering the size of the park, the jam organisers being very committed and building in a new rail like they did last year, also they built a curved wooden wall-ride, an extension wall-ride and a sub box.

The amount of tricks sent during the day was pretty nuts and i've got a nice video below from the day that shows a lot of tricks one of which I cant even name. There were prizes given out for best trick etc and I think I got myself some new grips and t-shirt probably for being the new boy, weren't complaining though, so anyway enjoy the video and pictures.

Dynamix trip ends in R-Kade session.

As most of you know the weather is officially gone one hundred percent crap, what was going to be a nice session around the street of Sunderland sending some pegs for SBR video turned out being cancelled and a quick plan B was put in place, Dynamix skatepark session indoor and a quick train journey away. Not always that simple though, met Rax, Jonn, Jay and Kieran at the train station all on time for a 12:30 train, but no thats not happening train cancelled and replacement coach put in place and we were not welcome by the bus driver in anyway, so we had to wait for an hour till the train was back up and running. In this time I tryed changing my chain to a new Shadow half link that was a fail and oh wait plan changed again we're not going Dynamix now we're of to R-Kade with Lee and Karl so we hop in Jay's dads taxi to Lee's and we were set and of to Redcar.

Now this was all fine with me, sadly we had to leave Jonn as he had a party and this also meant that the £4 i spent on my adult train ticket was a complete waist of money! So the mission was now in full flow and nothing was stopping us, got to Redcar in one piece and the park looked pretty sweet. As we got our session on I and also the others could not help but be pretty pissed of about how unaware of this thing called 'snaking', scooter and skateboard riders were, now I have no problem with them but when they are being so ignorant and thinking they own the park, they just don't (rant over) so apart from that had a pretty good session everyone getting their moves out Jay getting whips done everywhere, Karl sending a whip over the jump box, Rax with his killer barspins and no handers and Kieran with his deadly pegs. Looking forward to the next session and will defiantly be whipping up a plan to take the boards and scooters out of the equation.

Quick thanks to Lee for taking us to Redcar and solving our problem and Rax for sorting me out some mullah for petrol!

Check his shop out to;http://www.thebmxbox.co.uk/

Irn Bru.

When out riding everyone has that one particular drink that they love and need to get themselves buzzing for a good session! When I lived in Peterborough I was lucky enough to have a very large Tescos near by with a mass of selection and for us boys It began with cheap bottles of Boost then when Tescos raised the price we moved on to whatever energy drink we could get our hands on, relentless,vitamin water,lucozade and even tropical juice! When moving upto Sunderland I obviously knew that I would still have this selection but that was all about to change! I was reunited with Irn Bru, I can't even describe the taste but its just perfect in everyway, they are always selling cheap and always does the job perfect. I'd like to take this time to thank Scotland for the genius creation they call Irn Bru!