CHARLIE CRUMLISH

When Adam asked me to do this video interview thing, I thought it was a neat idea, but once I started going through it really hit me pretty hard at what these clips represent. They range from 4 years ago to last year and each one really serves as a time capsule for that point in my life. I'm not gonna get all wack and preachy but I got pretty nostalgic watching these things, lots of spots gone, lots of friends have since moved away and the scene is real different nowadays.

This is the first video I ever edited and uploaded onto the internet. It started one day in school, my friend Ben Freedman showed me this wideangle lens he bought off this rollerblader for like five bucks, and with that, and his camera, I discovered another entire realm to riding. We'd film stuff after school or on the weekends, then edit on his computer in his room... a process which consisted mostly of us dragging clips at random into the timeline, dragging in transitions randomly, then hitting save and not letting ourselves look at the render. When it was finished, we'd be flipping out, like "Oh shit that went to the music so well!", haha.

Ben moved to Texas the next year, which was definitely a bummer. On a side note, we're still good friends, he came up and visited this summer and I'm going down to Dallas this winter. Anyway, when he moved, obviously his camera went with him, so I grabbed my little brother Bub's old hi-8 camera and filmed my friends and myself with it. I'm not sure if this is the first video I made after Ben left, but it's my favorite. I think everyone in this video except for Bub and myself have since moved away.

I moved to my current hometown when I was around 13 years old and I've been riding this bank on a regular basis since then. This thing is in a church parking lot about 30 seconds from my house. It is, hands-down, my favorite spot, ever. I've made a few since then but this is the very first bank video, and probably my first theme video.

My friend Cupcake got a camera sometime around this point, and we heard about the Aspire Video Contest. We filmed all summer for it and started to edit it the night before the deadline, I think. We had some nightmares with movie maker but somehow banged out this thing. I was psyched on it, but at that point I wasn't really thinking of production value at all, merely the tricks I had done. I sent it off, and ended up with second last place which bummed me out like crazy. A few weeks later, though, Jim Reinstra emailed me and apologized about the judging, and sent me some stuff. I think I still have one of those tires on my bike. Anyway thanks again to Jim, that really picked me up... although looking back at this video I can't say second last was entirely undeserved, haha.

This video is saved onto my computer as "Weird Stuff". I was sitting at my house one day, like a rainy day I think, and I got to thinking about riding in general. I believe I was watching a video and I noticed how riding at that point, or at least the video we were watching, was pretty generic, mostly the same stuff over and over. That got me thinking of how much more must be possible on a bike, or how many tricks are out there that people haven't touched or even thought of yet. I got super pumped and went out riding with my friend John Murphy to film a video consisting of different tricks. However, the result was pretty much a video of me riding on foliage. Since that point, though, I think I've put a bit more thought into riding than just doing tricks, it's more fun to just think of new ideas and concepts. Plus, the whole Aspire thing kinda taught me that riding isn't just tricks; I think I had more fun on this day filming than I did the entire time for Aspire.

A year or so after that, I got a camera of my own and started making videos, and this is one of my favorites for sure. My friend John Murphy and I had always messed around with rocket tricks, just seeing what goofy stuff we could do on our back pegs. Over the years we became fairly affluent with tricks of the rocket nature and this video is the product of those days.

My little brother Bub and I have always ridden together. I remember teaching him how to ride a two-wheeler in front of our old house when he was like three years old, and from that point on he's been my ever-present riding buddy. I'm pretty lucky to have him around, lots of my friends don't get along with their siblings but Bub and I have the same goofy sense of humor so we just click pretty much. He's awesome.

Charlie didn't write anything about this, but it's his latest work. Includes a lot of his BMXFU brothers and some of his best riding yet. BALLS DEEP!

Note: I am going to Chicago to visit my girlfriend for 6 days in like an hour. I'll try to do a post while I'm there if I have anything good to put up but if not I suggest you just browse Asshole Parade every day.