Ryan Corrigan


From scrounging parts from a dumpster to being on FBM and running banks to wallrides, it’s a better life story than say your typical punk rock geologist with a red neck, playing footy in Arkansas. Ryan Corrigan knows it. Photo: Rusty Holeswatter


1. What is your very first memory of BMX?
I think when I was about eight or nine I saw some guy 360 over a couch off a bank – soon after I broke my frame jumping that same bank.

2. How did you feel when you got your first bike – do you have the same feelings now when you set up a new bike?
Christmas of ‘87 I think. I smiled for the next few years, it was a life-changing day. Nowhere near the same feelings now, I was a kid – you can never replace those emotions.

3. What was your first bike like?
A General Hustler, the RL Osborn low-end signature bike. The bars met up with seat, the pegs screwed into the frame and could screw into two different spots on the forks, oh yeah, dual toptube also.

4. What is your latest bike like?
Pretty nice these days, an FBM Outsider with FBM, Animal, and Profile parts. A lot has changed, I used to take parts out of all the bike shop dumpsters around Arkansas.

5. When & what was the first time you saw a rider do something amazing on a bike?
Within a year or so of getting my General I saw someone do a no-handed fakie wallride on a telephone pole from flat ground. Probably around ‘89 or ‘90. He was on a Haro Sport.

6. When & what was the last time you saw a rider do something amazing on a bike?
Tony Cordona, at a contest a couple weeks ago in Joplin, Mo.

7. If you hadn’t discovered BMX, what do you think you’d be doing now?
Playing soccer, a redneck in Arkansas, a geologist, a punk rocker, who knows – it’s a big world out there.

8. When it comes to riding, do you go for style or tricks?
I don’t feel I have ever been a stylish rider nor do I have loads of tricks, so I just do what I do.

9) Do you have to work on progression, or does it just come naturally to you?
That seems like the same thing, the more you ride the more you do different things and that in itself is progression. So I guess I work on it while I am out riding and having fun every time I ride.

10. What state of mind enables you to progress your riding?
State of mind? I guess the state of mind when I am not working and just having fun out on my bike.

11. What one rider has influenced you the most?
I would have to say the guy that helped me put on first pair of pegs who lived near me in Arkansas, Stuart Isbell, you can check him out now as a photographer at photostew.com.

12. What goes down if you have a bad day?
Myself and my bike in a vander-roll type crash.

13. When was the first time you tried something big/burly/scary?
It had to be in high school, probably around ‘93, when I would go out and try every handrail I could find.

14. When was the last time you scared yourself on your bike?
Every time I ride my fixed gear in traffic, or on my BMX, I don’t even know – I get scared easy these days with all my injuries I have had.

15. What was the last bike part you bought?
Luckily I don’t have to buy too many parts these days, but it was a new Kryptonite lock, some seatpost guts for my Thomson that was in the closet collecting dust.

16. What is the greatest BMX product in the last ten years?
Either getting rid of the shafted stems with the aheadset system, or maybe Chase Hawk – he’s about ten years old.

17. If you could choose two riders to go riding with daily, who would they be?
I would say Stew Johnson with no camera, and Leland Thurman with no Shitluck. It would be smiles all day with no bangers.

18. How would you describe your riding?
I got this one a lot when I used to work at the bar and I would usually say something like, “A lot calmer than a few years ago, but still having just as much fun.”

19. What is your favorite type of riding?
Nibbling. Not your spine nibblers or stealing tricks from your friends, but just going out with a handful of your friends and riding around sessioning what ever you come across, ‘cruising around nibbling’.

20. Describe an ideal day.
Wake up and realise I will not be building ramps for the next 12 hours, then hang out with the dog, go ride around, hang out with the girlfriend, drink some beers and hang out with some friends. Or wake up and have free life.

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