Just back from an epic trip out to San Francisco, and Martti Kuoppa hit me up with the qualifying results from the Chimera A Side contest, which determines the order for the 16 invited riders. First battle heats are below the qualifying results… Good luck to everyone competing out there in Japan. Congratulations to Yohei Uchino for the top spot. Finals tomorrow…
Wednesday and Thursday, the last full days of my trip out here to San Francisco. I missed the last few days updating the diary of my trip so f-it. You get a double day update in one post, Monday was by far my most productive day of the trip so far. Getting two clips really got me in the mood to capture my riding again, and on Wednesday I got another two clips! This trip has, despite my knee injury been the best yet.
Pete as always was in attack mode, right from the off at the Clocktower murdering the spot whether it was dialled lines, or brand new stuff. Because of his level of consistency, he’s able to have brand new tricks dialled almost instantly, it’s quite amazing to see in person and understand the process of how that happens.
To document, share and progress!
We are back doing the Flatmattersonline exclusive clips, and who better to start out with than San Francisco Flatland legend, Pete Brandt.
The whole idea, behind the FM exclusive clips is to push your own level. I have been out in SF for two weeks and watched Pete do Hitchiker dark side to halfpacker almost every go. So I said “Hey Pete, why didn’t you throw some hitchhiker turbines in there and make this line a little bit more tough for you?” Around 15 tries later, here we have Episode 1.
Pete is a savage!!
Who’s got the best clip, I’m putting this out to the flatland community?!!
Have you got a clip, maybe we can feature a clip of you on the site next week? Drop me a message and let’s get this rolling!!
Text: Effraim.
Photos: EC, Juan Lopez.
Around mid-day Friday, myself and Pete set off for the long drive to Los Angeles for the 10th anniversary of the One Love Jam in Newport Beach, California. We met up with Dylan Worsley about an hour out of SF, and travelled down with Dylan. Like last year, we stayed about an hour outside of Newport Beach, in Corona at Robert Castillo’s house. Friday was a full day of travelling, and when we arrived full party mode was in full effect, we were greeted by Robert, his wife Stephanie, Ruben, EZ Chris, and Bill Nitschke.
Day four of my trip out to San Francisco took a different turn than all the previous days with heavy rain for most of the day. That meant a Clocktower session was out of the question.
Luckily, Pete has a rad garage riding spot with a fast floor, and we could ride with tunes on!
Like the previous days, both myself and Pete worked on new tricks. Pete was working on his straight bar steam varial to pedal steam, and nailed it numerous times. The man is a machine!
I had a good session, working on individual parts of lines I am experimenting on and nailed a few stall tricks a couple of times. It felt rad to be riding, even though the weather sucked and get my third day of riding in a row under my belt.
We were going to be travelling to LA on Thursday, but if we did that would mean the One Love Jam poster boy, Dylan Worsley wouldn’t be able to make it. So we are travelling down today with Dylan, so we won’t make the pre jam. For any of you going to the jam, see you saturday. Looking forward to the 10th anniversary jam, come and say hello if your going.
Hope you are all enjoying these daily updates from my trip.
Day 3 of my trip out to San Francisco, and it was basically more of the same of Day 2. In the morning there was a small matter of presenting the 2019 Flatmattersonline Year end awards. After publishing the awards, I took the BART down to the clocktower and arrived for a session at 1:30, Pete showed up right as I got there. But he unfortunately got called to work, so his session yesterday was a bit more chopped up than mine.
It’s about that time where I announce the winners for the 2019 Flatmattersonline Year End Awards, both in editorial and reader categories!!!
The awards are now in their sixth year, and this year was noticeable to see the efforts of many of you to get in the mix for edit of year as the deadline drew closer. That in itself felt like a win win situation for us all….
This really is a chance for me to give something more back to the flatland community, and not just award one rider with an award. Nice in my opinion to have a mix that recognise the talent within our community, without a further a due lets get right into it!
BIG congratulations to all the winners (I will be in touch!), and also everyone who got nominated. Huge honour in my opinion to get nominated from your riding peers. Thanks again to everyone in the flatland community who took the time to vote, great to see such a healthy participation for 2019!
Effraim Catlow / Flatmattersonline, 11 years strong.
Yesterday, Tuesday 14th was my first full day in San Francisco. Once I had my bike built up I made the 40 min journey by BART to the Clocktower to meet Pete for a session. Pete works literally down the road from the CT, so regularly starts work early so he has the afternoon to ride.
I got off at the Embarcadero stop on BART, the Clocktower for all of you that haven’t been there is literally a 2 minute pedal if that to the riding spot. I met Pete at the spot who was already way into his session as I arrived at 1pm. The sun was shining, a little windy but hey it’s January. I was glad to be outside riding in a t-shirt, as I hear news that its blowing a storm at home. It made me feel even more grateful to be out here in SF riding with my child hood hero, some things in life you just cant script.
One of the things that stood out in my mind, was Pete saying no day is the same at the CT. Today we had some busker playing metal all day, as our soundtrack. Well mine, as Pete has headphones. And hardly any skaters the whole time we were riding, maybe 5-6. I met a skater from Berlin who was in town filming for a new part, then heading straight to Barcelona. Yesterday had totally different dudes from Monday, Pete said this is completely normal down there.
We rode for a good 4 hours back and forth sharing the spot, super motivating session. About three hours in Pete started talking about a new hitch he wanted to do. Straight bar steamroller step to the tyre bar flip to pedal steam, I started to relearn teakettle pivot to halfhiker in order to do something new with it, after I landed mine. You could tell Pete was not leaving till he got it, but unlike mine. Pete was throwing a line into the new switch, after about an hour he landed it! Today we both pushing the concepts further, where I for the most part ride on my own it was super cool to share the drive with Pete to get what we wanted and actually watch it get done!
After the session, I wanted to grab a tea at Starbucks across the road. Yes I know, I am so English! We reflected on the session, music, spots in SF, and started talking about Wednesday’s session already. When we headed back to the CT, there had to be over 20 skaters at the spot and again all different people from the day before. I asked Pete, how many skaters would you say live in SF? “Has to be around a 1000 skaters!”… Can you imagine going somewhere and asking the same question about flatland, that would be crazy to say, yeah there’s around 1000 flatlanders. We headed back to the house to meet Pete’s wife, Karissa and the kids. The first full day was a belter, more of the same today!
Yesterday was a long day of travelling to San Francisco from London Heathrow for my second annual trip out here to ride with Pete Brandt and hit up the One Love jam down in Newport Beach, So Cal.
