|Freestyle BMX: street|
|Around the Academy:
Riding street is just what the name suggests - finding an everyday urban obstacle and doing tricks on/over it.
Street (and ramp) bikes used to be ridiculously heavy.
This is because when people started to ride freestyle, they used race bikes which would fall apart as soon as they looked at a ramp.
To combat this, bike companies made bikes that were built like tanks.
They wouldn't break, but you couldn't really do anything on them either.
Nowadays, it's the fashion to have your bike as light as possible - but it all comes down to the old strength-to-weight question.
Basically, you want a bike that's light enough for you to do stuff with, but not so light that it breaks when you try and grind a ledge.
Street riding is great because everyone has a street near them and even if it's just a curb, well, sometimes that's all you need.
Street bikes usually come with pegs and a gyro.
Back in the day, nearly everyone had four pegs on their bike, but nowadays, many people just have one set of pegs, on their favourite side.
This is because they found that:
Having said that though, there are also many street riders (Butcher, Dan Price, Edwin Delarosa etc) who choose to ride with four pegs and NO brakes.
They feel that:
There's basically no right and wrong way of setting up your bike (unless you've got it set up so it's loose/doesn't work etc).
Everyone likes their bike set up a different way - BMX is meant to be all about freedom and self-expression, so don't worry if your set-up is different.
Makers of good street bikes and frames include: Hoffman, S&M, Standard, Fly, Volume, Dragonfly, MacNeil, Dirt Bros, Metal, FBM and Terrible One.
Some great street riders are: Taj Mihelich, Edwin Delarosa, Butcher, Van Homan, Garret Byrns and Joe Rich (all USA).