archive

09 Jan

Posted at 23:06h in archive by

Screen shot 2013-01-09 at 10.53.04 PM

Today is a sad day in Canadian BMX, legendary Canadian rider Chris Silva has decided to put an end to 3 years of Sour Fever. Chris accomplished alot with Sour Fever. It’s quite amazing for a small Canadian clothing company to put out countless web edits, print over 700 pieces of clothing, hook up a stacked team of Canadian shredders, sponsor Canadian events/contests (including our Summer of Fun contest) and even put out full length DVD. It’s safe to say Chris did things right and gave back as much as he could to Canadian BMX. For all the info and for Chris’ top 10 Sour Fever blog posts click here.

08 Jan

Posted at 18:45h in archive by

To an outsider, the Maritimes have always had an awesome scene. Back in the day, one of the highlights of that scene was a series of videos created by Chris Nicholas. Chris was an awesome rider – he bombed huge rails, rode impossible pools, and in Deadline (2003?) he did a 5050 to second stage over crooked – maybe the first one. Chris was also one of the first videographers I knew of who used a DVX100 for bmx, and he was always doing interesting things with still cameras. Production wise, Hiatus was far ahead of its time. The motion graphics were dialed, the filming was on point, and the whole thing had a polished look that was unique and just really cool. All this was happening in 2005, in Newfoundland, for a local scene video.

The St. John’s BMX series introduced many of us to two big names in Canadian BMX – Jeff Evans and Phil Bartlett. In Deadline, Phil looked like he was ten years old. Two years later, in Hiatus, Phil had grown two feet taller and it was unclear that he was even the same guy. Jeff was also pretty young in these videos; he brought East Coast street style reminiscent of riders far to the south of him and totally owned the opposite grind variations of the time.

Chris has a long and detailed post on the history of their video series (including all of the videos in full) here: The St. John’s BMX Tetrology. He also took the time to answer a few questions about their scene of ten years ago and what it was like growing up riding in Canada’s most isolated province. Check that out after the link.

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07 Jan

Posted at 19:28h in archive by

A bunch of us were back in Kelowna over the holidays and it was too cold to ride, so we went skateboarding. Only a couple of us know how to skate; it was fun though. Big thanks to The Bakery for hooking up the session.

04 Jan

Posted at 11:22h in archive by

sean cooke - smith

Pretty much all across the country people are dealing with terrible weather, so I dug up this photo of Sean Cooke doing a smith grind last year in Spain to remind us that it’s not so icy everywhere and it will always get better. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

02 Jan

Posted at 07:33h in archive by

This is the trailer for the DWOK Mixtape from London, Ontario which looks really good. High-jinx and street riding from Mason Grey, Eli Taylor, Jack Leonard, and more.

31 Dec

Posted at 10:24h in archive by

top 10 - 2012

Another year, another slew of year end wrap up lists. In all honesty, this past year has been the best yet for Embassy. I feel like we’ve put out the best content we ever have, released a DVD that we were all proud of, put out some great products (hats and t-shirts that didn’t last long in our store and sold out fast), ran some fun contests, gave out lots of prizes, and proudly showcased Canadian BMX from all corners of the country. I went through the last year of posts on the site to find the top 10 most popular entries we made (based on web analytics), to share with everyone. In case you missed any of these the first time, or wanted to re-visit them, have a look at the top 10 posts of 2012 after the jump.

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29 Dec

Posted at 20:42h in archive by

This one goes way back, so much so that the video that this jam was featured in came out on VHS. At that point, jams still played the role of bringing scenes together (a role that’s largely been taken over by videos). In our area, this particular jam is often brought up as being memorable, and I think it’s for good reason. These are just a few things I can remember from ten years ago:

FBM Ghetto Street had recently happened, so we decided to build some additional ramps at one of the relatively terrible ’90s era skateparks in the Okanagan. By the end of the day, literally every shottily constructed ramp we built had been reduced to a pile of lumber.

Odyssey sent roughly $1000 worth of free stuff to give away and they sent it directly to us (not through a distro). This still seems pretty incredible.

Slinger and Lazer were all over the place doing awesome stuff.

We premiered the Salvation Video, which is pretty memorable to this day.

Cory Fester came down from Edmonton and did a bunch of awesome flatland inspired stuff, including the long downhill hang five at the end. To put it into perspective, this was before hang fives were a street trick. We were having a downhill manual session outside of the video premiere and Cory did the hang five in the video pretty much out of nowhere. I’d venture that most in attendance had no idea what a hang five was. Minds were blown, and fun was had by all.