Moving.

What's up everyone,

I recently got the opportunity to step up my level of involvement with Mosh parts... and along with that came the choice to take over Giant BMX as well. It's a chance to do what I've always wanted to do: take a solid product and do my best to step it up, on my terms.

The only way to do this is to fully rep Giant on and off the bike, so with that, I've gotta step out of the United deal. Thanks to Ian and Dean for the best year I've had and for encouraging me to go for this. 4Down Distribution will continue to distribute Lavar, and Ian and I are going riding in LA this week, so things are cool. I've got big plans for Giant, as do these guys for United, so stay tuned.

Peace.

Germany

Took a quick trip to Cologne to see my family and my new baby neice! Even checked out the People's Store and met up with my ex-roommate Markus Wilke and the elusive Juse (hand blocking face).

Long Day

I'm visiting my sister & fam in Cologne right now, so I'll take you back to the hectic day before I left LA.

A few hours on the computer in the am, then visited my girlfriend Juli's office... crazy! Her health food business has gotten some wild press lately and her staff is having trouble keeping up with the orders. Watching five people doing their best to accomodate the demand is really inspiring. I come help out whenever I can.




We put in a long day and then had a quick dinner at her crib.



Back at the computer to catch up. That big dent is from me running over it with my car. Yes, I ran over my laptop with my car and it's totally fine. Long story.



Time to go, she's not happy.



Then a 2-hour drive up to LA. I've got a lot to do, but I'm about to leave for 5 days with no bike, so I need to ride. I stopped in Culver City and pulled these fools away from the Oll's pool table.



Oll's dog is dope.



It was late so we just hit the curbs out front.



We had a blurry manual contest.



Meron chilled with Skyler and Skyler's special friend.



And this fool Skyler posed with his Buick.



We broke a sweat, it was midnight, I had work to do. Home sweet home, had a Lotek box waiting for me!



Back at the computer.



Then packed up a Lavar order for Troublesome in Norway.



Time to pack for Germany. Hit the closet:



2:15am, packed, ready to to go.



Three hours sleep, off to the airport. Germany pics soon!

Defgrip is back!

Thanks to everyone who's been hitting me up about Defgrip! Sorry for being gone so long. For now it's .net, so update your bookmarks to WWW.DEFGRIP.NET.

Jim Bauer's Birthday

One of the baddest dudes around turned 29 the other night, so the crew went out to HMS Bounty to celebrate. The Bounty is a little Pirate joint underneath the Gaylord apartment building in Koreatown. A huge crew came out and we had a good time. I only got a few photos, so here they are:



Chad Shack and WIll Stroud, 9 to 5.



Mike Vincent and James Levan.



J. Kosman and G.P.P.M.



It's a long story.



Our boy Matt Rubin, his lovely girlfriend Kelly, and a dude's face with cake in it.



Jim's roommate Lauren brought a cake in the shape of Jim's face with a giant torch in his mouth. And this is the second time I've posted a photo featuring Cousin Danny and cake.





Tyler, Lauren, Emily.

Wrinkling with Alex

If you've checked out the front news page then you saw the link to Alex Valentino's interview on DataBMX , as well as a link to a website that can translate it into English. Here's an excerpt from the translated version:

You have makes race a long time?

I made 2 years of race what helped me much to learn the bases.

How did you come to the trail?

I begun the trail with a pal of race (joe), when one started to dry entainement of race... one wrinkled this trail (rouif Land) day and night and I met Tommy on a trail. One started has to wrinkle unit has Bagnol, St Paul and Valréas...

How would you describe your riding? You think that it is changing?

My riding... je in this moment, yes I do not know too much think that it changes day into day... it goes more towards the street.

Why did you remove your brake?

This summer I broke my brake at the time of a contest with Nyons and I have thus to wrinkle without brake for my run and I really liked...

270

The other day I met up with Fat Tony from RideBMX.com and shot this little how-to video. I'm riding my custom white brakeless Squad frame that Dean was nice enough to hook up for me a few months ago.
Click right here to watch me sound like an idiot.

PARTY!

The other night we had a party in Echo Park for our friend Jim's birthday. Chad Shack (I hope he's faking), Will Stroud, Chase Hawk, yours truly, Kevin McAvoy, Mike Vincent.



I had a PBR with James Levan.



Burns chilled.



Cousin Danny ate ice cream cake.

Holidays

I've been holed up in my apartment working for the last two days, so not much to blog about. Instead I'll take you back to the Holidays. On Christmas I woke up and walked to the beach in SD with my girl Juli.


Wearing slippers.


At night I chilled with my favorite stocking stuffer, a suction-sealer thing that preserves your wine after you open it!


Back in LA on NYE, I packed up Juli's car and took off north to Napa Valley.


We met up with Shannon and her dog.


Shannon has a vineyard which is next door to Francis Ford Coppola's house. The Coppolas let us take a hike on their private mountain. The dog chased turkeys and ate rocks.


I borrowed some really big shoes for the hike. After that we sat around in bath robes while we washed the poison oak off our clothes.


Then we met up at Carla's house.


We partied. I swear there were more than four people there.


We played the best game ever-- "Catch Phrase". Stifler's mom came and sat behind me.

SD to LA

For the last few years I've spent a few days a week with my girlfriend in San Diego (even lived there for a few months). If you haven't spent much time in California the you might think it's all the same... it's not. North County SD is beautiful, but it might as well be in a different country than LA. When I'm in SD I feel like I'm on vacation (except for that I'm usually working the whole time) and after a couple days I gotta get back to the grind in LA!

Here's what I woke up to this morning:

That was followed by a 3-hour drive to Mosh, meetings, a drive through Malibu to the Santa Monica skatepark, session, traffic, Trader Joe's, and then home sweet home!