When Kip Williamson started posting pictures of sick, sick custom-built bikes on Facebook, I remembered his name from the old UGP videos that got me through hours of bike maintenance at the shop in Seattle when I worked as a bike mechanic. His style as a video editor, flatland rider, and bike-builder are undeniable. The more I saw of his bikes, the more I knew we needed to get a closer look.

Roy Christopher: First up: Where are you from? How long have you been riding? What got you into BMX?
Kip …

I got this 1985 Haro Master Freestyler in the summer of 1986. It was my first “real” freestyle bike, and I rode it hard for two years.

I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently the pink ones are super rare. Most verions of this bike were white, chrome, or green, with the latter being ubiquitous in freestyle BMX from the bike’s release in 1985 until the sport’s initial downturn in the early 90s.
I held up the pink Haro contingent for those two years, competing in every contest my parents …

Here’s a guest post by my man Jason Childers. Enjoy!
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On Friday afternoon, A.J. and I took a little trip eastward to the decidedly rural towns of Bastrop and Smithville, Texas. Neither of these places is actually worth stopping for — unless you happen to enjoy skateboarding or riding the freestyle bikes. We happen to dig both, so we totally went there!

I kept eating shit on my left side for some reason. We even got one of ‘em on tape. Maybe my right brain hemisphere was outta wack.

There is a certain …

Yep, only a few more tweaks and my Dyno will be one-hundred percent dialed. It’s a tasteful mix of schools old and new.

This Tech 3 lever will have to go, but I thought I’d run it for old time’s sake until the new one comes in.

The Terrible One bars, stock Dyno stem, the 1″ threaded forks with 990 mounts I raved about earlier, and the one Hoffman Day Smith peg I always run (for fire hydrants, steamrollers, and hang-fives).

The classic Dyno Compe frame with its flipped GT downtube-as-toptube design.

It’s driven …

In the early 90s, AT&T ran a series of commercials that posed some futuristic, technologically enabled task (e.g., “Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?”), and then answered it emphatically (”You will.”), claiming they’d be the company to technologically enable such a task. I believe they’ve all come to pass except one. As Stewart Brand once said, “Technology marches on, over you or through you, take your pick.”

I can’t help but think that many of the technological advances we debate and marvel about were downright inevitable. …

Here’s my first column for ESPN, entitled “The Revolutions Will Not Be Televised,” in which I reminisce and ruminate as to why BMX flatland television coverage disappeared.

Here’s an excerpt:
When I started riding flatland BMX, there were only a handful of flatland tricks to learn, and it was easy to see where to start if you wanted to learn even the hardest of them. Curb endos, 180s, rollbacks, the core of the sport’s repertoire didn’t even require pegs. This changed quickly as the sport progressed. By the late ’80s, there were …