best youtube find of 2009

I really don’t have time to be posting this, but it’s too good. Simon Barry was the best rider in Kelowna when I was growing up, the guys over at Color posted his part from an old video on youtube (there are also sections from Mike and Sam McKinlay which are totally worth checking out; Sam used to ride, I don’t know if he still does). The local bike shop used to put on demos and I remember being so pumped to see this guy ride. I also distinctly remember being at a demo back in the day; the announcer said Simon was going to do a “nothing” for his last trick. I thought he was just going to jump and do nothing and it was a stupid joke… my 13 year old brain had no idea it was possible to take all of your limbs off the bike in the air. There are lots of notable things in this video, possibly the earliest recorded session of the Summerland wallride (we always wondered who put tire marks on there before us…), old footage from Salmon Arm park (I think that’s where that hip in the beginning is??), the Queensway ledges, and some serious city park shredding (how awesome is that banger…). Simon also rode a Basic Small Town Hick (or maybe the big city bastard, it was a long time ago), which is one of my favorite bikes of all time. I grew up a little bit, and he came out to ride our trails a couple times, definitely a nice dude. After that he left town, was on the cover of Chase (Issue 4, which was also the first issue I had an article in), and seems to have disappeared from BMX. Anyways, check this out for a bit of bmx history from an area that doesn’t have too much of it.