02 —
I Don't See What You See
DIG is one of the longest running and most influential BMX magazines ever, meaning Will is the longest serving BMX magazine editor, bar none.
Words by Will Smyth
Photography by Fred Murray
BMX Street riders are a strange breed. Never content with generic skateparks and regulated design, street riders have always looked for the challenge of conquering new spots, hiding in plain slight, in towns and cities around the globe.
Overlooking The Gnarly Bowl in Glasgow, during the 2015 Street Series jam. Glasgow was one of only five cities world-wide chosen to hold a Street Series event.
Alex Valentino – Aberdeen
via Valréas, France.
Street riding came to prominence in the late eighties as skateparks (which first boomed in the late 70s) were closing down.
Nowadays skateparks (which since the millennium are now an intrinsic part of most cities and suburbs again), are used by street riders as nothing more than testing grounds for developing increasingly difficult tricks, which they then take to the real streets for authentication.
Alex Valentino – Glasgow via Valréas, France. (Note: this is The Gnarly Bowl).
As architecture evolves, the search for new streets to ride is endless. And as riding increases in difficulty, cities are revisited with new ideas and new tricks, constantly raising the bar of legitimacy on old spots.
David Grant – Glasgow via Muncie, Indiana USA.
Dan Paley – Glasgow
via Doncaster, England.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Scotland where a sometimes brutal and futuristic architectural vision has created a dream urban skatepark that riders from around the world travel to, in increasing numbers. They don’t see what you see.
Alex Donnachie – Glasgow via Blairgowrie (Perthshire), Scotland.
Corey Martinez – Aberdeen via Decatur, Alabama USA.
