Ride Lugged

So this is where BMX went with the artistic cycling thing. The cross over is linked back to a guy named Pat Romano who’s family had done the artistic cycling thing for generations over in Europe. He rode a fixed gear BMX bike that ran something like a 24-20 gearing. He was in the movie RAD during the dance scene…if you remember that. This was all circa 1984 when he started showing up in magazines with things like axle pegs and doing stuff that noone had seen before. Alot of what you see from the fixie 700c tricks circa 1900’s is still very much at play in what is considered modern flatland. What started out as pogos with brakes has transformed into rolling brakeless using balance and momentum to keep the bike moving. As far as I know, Kevin Jones was the first person I ever saw who could ride a wheelie and then slip over the bars into a straddle over the headtube and keep the bike moving and only on the rear wheel. That is called the “Time Machine” if you spin in a circle like most artistic cyclists do. I could go on all day about the similarities between the two worlds of BMX and Artistic cycling…but here is a short video featuring one of my favorite flatlanders, Lee Musselwhite.