The wild places Bmx can take you…
” I do a lot of BMX shows in my time of riding, and every now and then I have the pleasure of doing shows that aren’t so common, in a good way. Corporate events is usually how they get labeled, and with my idea of corporate, some events don’t usually fit into that type of labeling, also in a good way. This latest event I just did, was this past weekend, ended up being a 3 day deal in none other, sin city, Las Vegas. Didn’t really know a thing about it until the day we showed up. I’m not sure if I knew it was for REDKEN, but I don’t think I knew what REDKEN was before we showed up. Then I started to see everything involved in the show, learned REDKEN, or reminded in a sense that it was hair products. Once I saw the product/logo, i thought to myself, “oh yeah, I’ve seen that before”. There were TONS of models present, a runway, dancers, hairstylist, fashion wardrobe people, production crew, non stop specialist and people involved. Then we got to throw BMX in the mix, on the run way. There was a lot of planning and compromising to get to a final result of how the performance was going to go for us. Everything had to look good all show long, even the setting up of the ramp for us to ride, it was ALL a show. Thats was made it hard to ride the ramp normal, and to its full potential. The BMX Freestyle Teams box jump is made up of 4 pieces, which aren’t a lightweight one person elegant easy setup. We come to a result of only using two pieces of the ramp, the lip and one half of the landing. We ended up riding a spox, 5ft wide lip to a 4ft wide landing, I know, scary haha. Pretty much made it work, and stuck to straight tricks only, wasn’t gonna bother with any spin tricks.There was 4 of us in the show, 1 flatland rider, and 3 ramp riders. We tried to do a back and fourth routine, but when we only get 2 minutes to ride, you make do with with you have, still try to put on a good show, and most importantly make sure the client is happy. Thats exactly what we did, I had a blast with the whole event in general, the people and crew and all the new faces I met were amazing. Very thankful for opportunities and experiences like this!”
-Jared Eberwein