archive

06 Nov

Posted at 21:36h in archive by

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klo34lguwmQ

It’s getting cooler, wetter, darker and even snowy in spots across Canada. Fall is in full force and winter is right around the corner, here’s a good watch for anyone who enjoys documentaries out there.

Dark Days was created by British film maker Marc Singer and features a soundtrack by DJ Shadow. The film follows a group of people living in an abandoned section of the New York City underground railway system, more precisely the area of the so-called Freedom tunnel which stretches North from Penn station past Harlem. Without giving too much away, Singer lived with the tunnel residents for a number of months, he decided to create a documentary in order to help them financially . During filming, Amtrak announced they would be forcibly evicting the homeless living in the tunnels in order to reroute their trains through the tunnel. This announcement, plus the police presence backing the decision, prompted Singer and photographer Margaret Morton to go to the coalition for the homeless for help. Eventually, Singer and Morton managed to secure housing vouchers from the department of housing and urban development for the film’s subjects, which enabled them to move out of the tunnels and into their own apartments. Cinevision, a New York City camera shop, supplied Singer with cameras for the two-and-a-half years of filming. When Singer ran out of money for film, Kodak supplied free damaged film for the project.

02 Nov

Posted at 21:01h in archive by

With daylight saving time ending tonight, what better time to launch Mike Fiz’s night drive mix. We all have a few months of darkness ahead of us, so why not have Mike’s night drive mix blasting to keep us awake. Check out a track list after the jump.

Embassy Night Drive Mix:

The title of this mix has a lot of different meanings to it. One can directly get some sort of idea from the opening track, which is taken from the movie “Drive”. I guess Drive can be in part responsible for this collection of tracks, because the feeling of that movie is sort of mesmerizing, in the sense that throughout the movie a lot of emphasis is put on the mood/feel of things. This gets me to what exactly inspired me to make this mix. In early August, my girlfriend and I took a trip to new York. As usual, we took the night bus and slept through the trip. I can usually sleep from the Canadian boarder to Albany, then Albany to just about hitting the turnpike leading to the Lincoln Tunnel. I always sit on the left side of the bus, just so I can get a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline as the sun rises. Maybe it’s just me but I am always amazed, falling asleep in one of the most depressing towns in New York state, where there is always some sort of fog, and then waking up to see the skyline to what was once the world’s biggest city.

New York is a pretty crazy city. Everyone who’s been knows how crazy it can get, yet when you get there at 5 in the morning, yes… there is still quite a bit of people wandering around, but the city is almost empty. It’s almost like you’re walking around in a forest of concrete. Anyways I’ll get back to the point. This time around I was unable to get a night sleep, so this mix is directly influenced by that night drive. Going in and out of the Appalachian Mountains, in and out of fog, one second we could barely see a foot in front of us then the other the moon was just staring at you, like it was there to give you company. All in all it was a pretty epic drive, that combined with me listening to Shlohmo’s BBC mix on loop is what brought me into putting this together.

I hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed that drive

(note: both covers are taken from the disposable camera we had on hand that week)

– Mike

DOWNLOAD NIGHT DRIVE HERE.

(more…)

01 Nov

Posted at 23:24h in archive by

I am always fascinated by what interests BMXers have outside of riding. The fact that a bike can bring people together even though they may have completely different interests or career outside of riding is cool. I have rode with Luis a few times and never had any idea what he did outside of riding until now. Luis is a Vancouver local who shreds Vanier, Hastings and nearly any transition you put in front of him, very cool to see what he does outside of riding and how talented he is at it.

31 Oct

Posted at 23:16h in archive by


Beal’s been taking it easy over the summer, too busy printing shirts but he hooked us up with some footy he’s been sitting on and it’s banging as you’d expect. Also peep the new Repset tee below, rep yo set.

31 Oct

Posted at 17:14h in archive by

Somebody get this kid a burger. Pascal Lafontaine is from a suburb outside of Montreal and has been shredding for the last little while. WARNING this edit may cause seizures, I guess there is such a thing as footage shaky enough to make steadycam footy look good. There’s some serious bangers in here though, check it out.

30 Oct

Posted at 09:31h in archive by

Last weekend MacNeil held a Halloween BBQ Jam at Railside Skatepark in Port Coquitlam, BC. The original date of Saturday got rained out, but the jam was quickly re-scheduled for Sunday. Even though the morning had some gloomy skies, a number of people showed up (some costumed, some not), ate some burgers and hot dogs, rode bikes, then as the sun started to go down had a rail jam for a case of beer. Whole event looked like a good time and brought together riders from all different corners of Vancouver. Marc Boudreau and Jeremy Deme were on hand filming, and edited this video together for them. You can check out some photos from the day on the MacNeil site here.

30 Oct

Posted at 00:47h in archive by

The Albion launched it’s issue 6 online today which includes this crazy picture of Cory Beal doing an insane maneuver on this rail in Barcelona. I remember seeing this picture in the printed issue a while back and thinking how ridiculous it was that Beal did this in and out twice. The first time on one of the first days of our Embajada En Barcelona trip, rolling his ankle super bad first or second try (see the trailer below). He ended up pulling it fourth or fifth try with a messed up ankle and it was the first spot of that day. A few weeks later he would do it again during his Barcelona layover with some English fellows for the above photo, while the rest of the Embajada/Hola crew we’re already back to Canadian winter.