BSD | Warehouse Project
RIDE ISSUE 171 - JANUARY 2013
Thinking outside of the...
Okay so BSD made an amazing edit. If you’ve watched the DVD a few times then you’ll agree that’s a fact as plain as daylight. I’m not a filmer but I spend enough daylight hours huddled next to one at the bottom of a rail to tell you when an edit’s good or not and BSD’s is serious. I knew this was going to happen though. Maybe that’s why I opted to go with them as their photographer. Everyone likes to be on the potentially winning team. How did I know they were going to make a crazy strong edit though? Well it was obvious. They’re all sick as f*ck, they are all mates, they are thoroughly organised, they have Dave Sowerby cracking the whip and Grant Smith on the end of the phone. They had tools, plans, budget, transport and a lot of empty boxes. Most importantly though they had a plan. If you’ve got a plan on something like this you’re already halfway there…
What I didn’t know was going to happen this month was that our print deadline was going to be brought forward by a few very precious days, which as anyone knows me, threw my un-organised schedule out of the window, and why I’m firing this text out in a rushed and hurried fashion (excuses!). I haven’t been able to squeeze in all the photos either (but don’t worry the others will get seen on “Teh Interwebz”). Anyway, enough of my problems. Let’s meet the team and try not to take up too much valuable space for the photos in this article with cool stories. I shot way too many photos as usual, but here are some good’uns for you too see in all their printed glory. Anyway, this was BSD and this is what they got up to…
Alex Donnachie
Alex Donnachie is really good on a bike. Really f*cking good. The only problem is he’s never eaten a single vegetable in his life, ever, and therefore looks like he’s got some kind of degenerative backwards ageing disease. We did try to get him to eat some plant-based sustenance but he outright refused to put the Coco Pops down. However because it was coming up to Halloween he was allowed to eat them out of his favourite plastic pumpkin bowl named “Gabby”. I know this because I shared a… Travelodge room with Mike (Taylor) and Alex D. I nearly typed “Hotel Room” into this story here but then I remembered “Hotel Rooms” are places you usually take nicer female company to and errr Travelodges are cubes you share with other men when you go away on riding trips.
They lose their novelty after approximately 3 months of being a pro rider, or so I’ve been informed; I still get excited by free coffee. Mike Taylor did insist daily that Grant (Grant Smith – owner/director/not even here) had promised him that this trip was in fact going to be a holiday. Mike also convinced me that 9am was actually a “lay-in”. Everynight Alex would watch every single edit that was brand new on the internet that day on his phone and then try to quiz everyone in the room on said edits. This was a game he would always win because there was no 3G signal in the warehouse so no one was doing anything online during the day. Come the evening Mike would be deeply immersed in the Screw-Fix Direct catalogue or his private collection of Haynes Manuals, either that or constipated on the bog. I would obviously be in the 4th dimension of Photoshop, AKA my second home.
“Ha! You don’t know anything about the current state of BMX do yee Beddows? You’ve nae seen the latest Nearly edit, ye don’t know shite all…” Alex would aggressively exclaim and so on and so forth. I had to admit though, his knowledge of edits and stuff was pretty impressive. He’d usually know how many plays it was currently on, where every spot was, how many NBDs were in the edit, how many minutes in the banger was and if there was any dust on the lens etc. So anyway Alex would rattle on about edits and stuff and I would try and get him to eat a segment of orange or an apple or whatever, but he’d always refuse. “Fine” I’d say “Carry on looking like you’ve got rickets or scurvy, or whatever that disease is that most Scottish people get. I’ll make sure I put you in the article first so that way I’ll be all fired up to write a completely fictional tale about you involving plastic pumpkin bowls ‘n stuff.” Alex D would then try and tell me that he didn’t care. However, everything you read in print is true, so maybe this story about Alex D wasn’t even fake at all but actually completely 100% accurate and I was just trying masquerade his strangeness through this witty anecdote.” “Whatever” Alex would reply, and that was that. Travelodge banter done and dusted. Oh and did I mention that Alex is going to be the 2013 “Maoam Boy” – selected for his unbridled love and enthusiasm for sugar and all things sweet. They only wanted one person on the team so this all worked out perfectly then.
JASON TEET
Jason Teet is from Vancouver, Canada, a place I have always wanted to visit. We discussed this at length inside the Soot Canoe in between stories. I know that I will go to Vancouver one day soon because I have already astral projected myself there in my dreams, flown around the mountains, seen the Redwood forests, kayaked down white water rapids, rode concrete bowls and gone on some mad adventures involving beer, tents and pick-up trucks. A plane ticket will land on my lap, hopefully paid for by someone else, like they usually are. Either that or because my old buddy Orlando has moved there and I will be paying him a visit sometime soon. I don’t want to discuss Jason too much, don’t get me wrong, he was a top bloke, but it doesn’t feel right talking about someone you’ve only spent 5 days with. Sick guy though.
Dan Paley
Dan Paley placed first in the “Soot Canoe Championships”. The Soot Canoe Championships were basically a competition to see who could tell the oddest story inside of the “Soot Canoe”. The Soot Canoe was the nickname for Si Gibb’s Ford Mk 5 Escort Van. I’m not really sure why it was called the Soot Canoe, because although it was long and canoe-esc in shape and appearance, it was actually bright f*cking red in colour. “Soot” is obviously the Scottish word for “Soot” which of course describes the colour dark grey, not red. But anyway, I didn’t want to tell them this as it appeared that the nickname for the vehicle was already well-established and in-use. As if they were going to listen to some southern uni twat tell them what colours were what anyway. So basically, because we wanted a bit of space from the Travelodge in the evening, we would all get into the van and tell stories over a cup of hot chocolate from the Shell Garage next door. Dan would tell the best stories because they were always about this place called “Donnehh”, where he hails from and would usually involve him or his mates causing mischief. Of course none of the stories were real so that’s why I can’t remember them, they were purely for entertainment value only. Dan still owes me 25 quid for all the hot chocolate I bought him, but to be honest it was worth it just to listen to him go on about the most interesting/banal stuff that I wouldn’t dream of printing. But now we have here the dilemma of him remembering that he owes me £25 because he’s read this article. So just pretend like you never even read this…
Dave Sowerby
A man with a camera is just a cameraman. A man with a camera and a vision is an artist. Dave is certainly an artist behind the lens, thinking whole concepts, clips and edits through as he works on them as opposed to just documenting what’s happening. Most of the interesting or unique things within the BSD edit came from inside of Dave’s brain. Dave continues to push the boundaries of what can be done in BMX filming and edit making as well as keeping the flow of BSD edits coming out at a steady speed (a brand new one even went up today as I type this). I almost feel like I shouldn’t type much more about Dave, he’s a mysterious genius who keeps generally himself to himself; I don’t want to taint that. Cheers Dave, you killed it.
Sean Lafferty and Si Gibb
Sean and Si are an important part of the BSD family, forming the cheap labour part of the master operation. They both drove down from Scotland to Stroud in the “Soot Canoe” (Si’s red Escort Van) and were an essential part of the general running of the show. From assembling boxes to doing a Maccies run, from sweeping up to fetching ply; they were the ultimate dogsbody duo. After two days though Sean fell mysteriously sick. I mean I know there was a mountain of asbestos dust to breath in over the course of 5 days, but that shouldn’t hurt right? (Editor’s note: we were not in any way responsible for the asbestos dust, we didn’t even know it was in there until we found some hidden-away signage). Maybe it was the dust, who knows? This is just a cool story bro to introduce these two guys who appear throughout the article and edit. Sick guys.
Kriss Kyle
Kriss Kyle’s rate of progression definitely does not seem to be slowing down. He would constantly one-up himself during the day as clips were getting filmed, constantly pushing what he could get done. You’d think that someone this focussed on riding could potentially be a dick, but Kriss couldn’t be anymore funny or friendly to hang out with. In the evenings he would throw in the odd story or two when we were sitting in the Soot Canoe. He’s basically just a sick guy. Riders like Kriss make BMX exciting, you can only imagine what kinda stuff he’ll be doing in 2 years time… Anyway I don’t really want to add too much bulk to the text here, I’d prefer to just run the photos bigger, so let’s just do that.
Mike Taylor
Much like Kriss’s text, this is a difficult one. There is so much to say about Mike “Jersey” Taylor but we want to keep this to the point. He’s nearly at his 3 decade mark of existence and he is still dropping hammers. In fact that’s all he goes in for really, just big hammers. Like riding through walls, pegging over skips and barspinning through tight gaps. He’s just all about the hammers. When he wasn’t riding his dry sarcastic wit was as sharp as ever, and because he’s an odd job man during the daytime, donning the overalls was second nature. I’m pretty psyched Mike got the ender in the edit too, not only was that a serious hammer but that was actually the last trick of the whole week to get documented. I don’t think any other team would have stayed until 3:04am on the last Friday night of the week. We didn’t actually even leave the warehouse until way after 4am on the Friday night. That’s some serious commitment. We’re pretty certain that if all the teams had of been clocking in and out of the warehouse, Mike Taylor and BSD would have done the most overtime…
