What's Good? Mitch Pike x TCU 'Young & Retarded'

Welcome to round fourteen of the latest LUXBMX journal segment, 'What's Good?'. To reiterate, we reach out to one of the homies and get a hot tip on the latest biking madness. It's called 'What's Good?' and for this instalment, I've worked with the Adelaide 1836 homie, Mitch Pike AKA Tha OG Mitchy P!

Ya boy, banana candy is metal. Photo taken from the dudes socials

Classic Adelaide spot, random up-ledge in a neighbourhood park, sturdy, quick and with a gorgeous run-in and out. Mitch with a beautiful table out of the grind, check out the footage of this clip in the following video. Photo taken from the dudes socials

After chatting with another Adelaide homie, Connor Bacalso, it became clear that Mitch would be a suitable candidate for this segment in being an avid consumer of BMX content and someone who is currently super active in the scene. Given the dudes willingness to take part and prompt reply, I'm thinking that Connor know's what's up. 

As always, working with a fella for this project is cool as I genuinely look forward to reading the dudes comments myself, let alone having the opportunity to share with a broader BMX audience. This one is no different and consistently so, is a great choice and one that I'm hoping a few of you might have forgotten about, hence this is a helpful reminder of a killer video and a wild time in BMX media - i.e. the TCU days. 

I'll let Mitch take over from here. 

"'Young and Retarded' has always been one of my favourite videos, so much so that I think my mates might be sick of hearing me talk about it, but one more time won’t hurt them. 

Watching it back now just over 10 years later I think this video came at a very interesting time for street riding. As someone that started really diving into bmx/mags/dvds and the like around the 2010’s (i.e. slammed slim seats and skinny jeans era), I’m always going to yearn for that style and time period (your favourite era of a band or sport etc, is always when you discovered that thing).

Dylan Stark, perhaps the black sheep of this crew. The dude brought some wild ass riding to this trip, helping the tech bois maintain a higher average speed, case in point this burly fence gap through a tree branch. Screen shot taken from the video 

This video sits on the turning point from those days to what we see more of in todays street riding. Everyone in this video is still running a cassette and the majority are still on metal pegs too. The riding’s a perfect mix between the faster, higher off the ground style of the late 2000’s early 2010’s and the slower, more technical, over the top freecoaster stuff we see today. 

Clips of note would have to be Leezy’s turn down to fakie in the drain and the smith to hang 5 to foot jam down whip in the small ditch. Stevie’s 540 bar over the sub rail out the ditch and Dillon Lloyds tuck no hander air in the same drain as Leezy. 

The riders in this video were super influential to me too. Leezy and Brock Olive being two Aussie legends were awesome to see killing it over in the states amongst names like Stevie Churchill, Broc Raiford and Dillon Lloyd. Leezy (who will definitely give me shit now if he reads this) being from my hometown of Adelaide just added that extra little connection and pride for a 14-15 year old kid at the time in the midst of a 3 year stint down in Hobart.

Leezy (AKA Liam Zingbergs) and a facial expression that makes me feel something, but I don't know what it is. Screen shot taken from the video

All of these guys were really just getting their start and finding their feet in the BMX world. Stevie I believe just got on Federal, Broc Raiford just scored the Volume gig, Brock Olive just left Colony for Premium and Leezy would be close after to go to BSD. Dillon Lloyd may have just got on Wethepeople at the time? Unsure. Either way, these sponsors would then shape their careers and video parts for years to come. Most of these dudes would even go on to producing signature parts and frames. 

For me and I’d imagine most street riders of my generation ‘The Come Up’ held a pretty special place in BMX. The video parts, how to series, blog posts, merch and just personalities to come out of that brand/company all contributed to getting me so stoked on BMX that I’d still be doing it ten years later and probably for the rest of my life. 

Brock Olive linking with filmer Tony Malouf, love this era of Brock too. Red bike, long hair, dialled lines. Screen shot taken from the video

With Malouf behind the lens and such a stacked crew in front of the camera, 'Young and Retarded' was always bound to be a classic. Not to mention a soundtrack that definitely spawned the vast expanse of my music taste these days. I could go on but I’ll cut myself off there while it’s still somewhat coherent. 

This video will forever be in my top three BMX videos of all time and anytime anyone wants to nerd out about it or this era of BMX hit me up. 

Special shout out to ‘Everyday’s a Saturday’ and the ECC videos it was a real tough decision between all of these."

Big chur my uso.

 And remember, friends are simply the family we choose.