FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

And..... it's Monday. Breakfast at DayDream in Costa Mesa with Mike de Wit. The week could have started a lot worse. Nice food place within a surf shop. Cali style. It was great to catch up with Choq and it was good to hear about the good news. Congrats. Mondays in LA. Not the busiest so all good. We hit the shops we wanted to visit. Some of them were closed so we had to come back for those but we started off at the new adidas flagship store at Melrose across the street from Cherry Los Angeles. For some reason Monday was a bank holiday which provided free parking. When you hop in and out stores it was nice not having to worry about parking meters that don't work and getting a ticket. We were in and out at Bathing Ape and discovered that the Palace store was closed. Next up: Supreme. We checked the same store a year ago so not much had changed. That goes for several of the stores we re-visited. We stopped by Kith and were still amazed by the curved handrail outside the store that has been hit on a skateboard. What was also amazing was that the Kith ice cream menu had "The Sylvester" flavour on it. Indeed, Nigel Sylvester has his own ice cream flavour at Kith, and it tasted good (had to try it). We took some photos of graffiti for future background use on Instagram. Might as well collect it while you're there. GOLF was checked, HUF was gone, Beyond The Streets was in between shows, Arc'terex has nice stuff and we strolled through the Carhartt store on La Brea. Next stop: In 'n Out Burger. We found one a bit North of LA. It was packed and a bit shady but the burger tasted good.

We were going to take it chill on Sunday as there was no need to get up early to follow the day program. We had no schedule and that was perfectly fine. With the sun shining once again (we could get used to that) we decided to go for a run on the beach to start the day. We did breakfast (cereal) in the hotel room as it had a fridge and a coffee machine with unlimited cups. It's not uncommon to pay $50 for breakfast for two in this area. Shit's expensive. Must be the sunshine tax.

We had not been to Huntington Beach just yet so we decided to cruise over, park the car, walk main street, watch some surfing from the pier, do some shopping, watch cars and grab lunch at Sancho's. The Masterpools happened to be at the same place. Lots of flatland riders had made it to Newport Beach for the One Love jam.

Saturday. Dilemma. Too much happening. The day after the Birth of the BMX Freestyle Movement book launch 4 things were on the calendar; the annual One Love jam only 7 minutes from our hotel in Newport Beach, the Roasta Mesa Bowl Jam put on by the S&M crew over at the Volcom Bowl in Costa Mesa, the last Vans Combi Pool session in Orange and the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Round 2 in San Diego. Choices, choices, not easy.

As you have probably noticed we have started a motocross platform at FATMX. Philip is venturing into that market and needs to soak up as much information as he can to gain as much knowledge as possible. We put the Rogue on the road again and headed south. Come Leucadia it is time to look for the Enchanted Ramp house. Only BMX-ers will do that. In Encinitas ramps are spotted on the opposite side on the hill. Little things, along with the coastline make traveling in Cali rather enjoyable. The cars and trucks are extra's. 7 cyber trucks a day were spotted on average. Wheels sticking out on the side on big pick-up trucks don't seem to be an issue. Let's just say things are different.

While at the "Fan Fest" we missed the old school BMX bikes that were on display last year. It was a nice addition to the pits. Also missing was a Freestyle MX show this year. Always worth seeing a few whips but the only things going sideways were the Dryfter scooters, a disappointing replacement of the oldskool BMX Bikes and FMX show. We managed to catch up with Eric "Big E" Bartholdus of former Powerlite fame who is now working for Yoshimura RD. We also caught up with Bob Morales