Faulkner Bmx Archive 1980-1982

 Dave Arnold, Craig Borrows and Alan Woods.....50 mph plus downhill session

Mike Pardon: Styling over Chorley doubles

 Dave Arnold: Southport Skatepark

 Dave Arnold and Craig Borrows in the background

 Mike Pardon: Cheesy grin

 Tony Law: moody punk attitude

 Dave Arnold: Textbook Kerb -Endo, Wigan train station

Dave Arnold(Left) and Mike Pardon (right) Southport BMX track 

 Dave Arnold: Chorley Bomb-Hole

Same session: Handlebar malfunction

 Tony Law Jumping, Terry Lloyd lying down, Fenwick Carr Peace sign: Chorley Bomb-Hole

John Lee #3 and Mark Lavery #11 Chorley BMX track.

Here are some photos from the newly founded FAULKNER BMX ARCHIVE. We have just set up a Facebook group for these Photos......Here's some info from that group:

A group set up solely to showcase the BMX photography of Stefan Faulkner.

A school friend of BMX'er David Arnold and a keen photographer....Stefan put himself in the right place at the right time.
He had a great eye for a good shot, capturing events at a time when no-one else had the foresight to document what we were doing....we were totally in the moment and too busy 'doing it'... we never thought for one second how great it would be to be able to look back at these photographs thirty years down the line.
These shots are all took approximately between 1980-1982, in and around the NW of England. Mainly Chorley BMX track, Southport BMX track, Southport Skatepark and some downhill shots from Rainford St. Helens.
For me, they are a brilliant snapshot of carefree, happy times.....when the only things that mattered were when the next race was, hoping you didn't get a puncture and wondering if the holes in your Vans style #95's would hold out until you could afford a new pair!
Stefan has said that he has a bunch more images stashed in his vault, hopefully over time, this group will act as a platform for him to show them to the world.

We salute you Stefan!

I feature pretty heavily in Stefans pictures and I'm very proud to be involved with this project.
This archive has only been in existance for a couple of days and already there is dicsussions about the possiblities of a photo exhibition hosted both here in the North West and a venue in the South.

See the Facebook page here



THE ORIGIN OF "SKOOTER FARM"......

On my recent trip to Finland I saw a lot of bicycle choppers being built. This made me think back to a project that me and Capt. Highside did between us back in the summer of 1995.

The Captain was actually recovering from a broken foot that was the result of his first and only vintage motocross race and to fill his downtime he began playing around with some old cycle parts.

When I saw what he was doing, I got involved and like most things I seem to do, the project "snowballed".

The Captain did all the engineering and I took care of sourcing parts, paint, cosmetics and graphics.

This bike was christened "Subversion" and I came up with the name SKOOTER FARM CYCLE CONCEPTS...little did I know this name would stick and that over a decade later would be the moniker for our fledgling dirt track team.

People ask me a lot what the name means..... so I'll try to explain:

"SKOOTER" is an outlaw biker term for a stripped down, purposeful motorcycle. Originally spelled "scooter" I decided to change the spelling to disassociate the word from Lambrettas and Vespas.

"FARM" is a word that suggests homegrown productivity, dirt, agriculture and hillbillies.

So I guess the jist of it is..... motocycles built in outhouses and then ridden around in fields by inbreds!! ha ha!

Anyway, back to the bike, the frame and forks are a heavily modified, stretched Raleigh Burner.

The front wheel was from a unicycle and the rear is from some old moped. Other trick parts are a Mongoose Supergoose stem, one-off custom seat, faux-springer forks and the bullet head light and tail light.

The little guy sat on the bike is the Captains nephew, Tom, aged 9, up at Sunday biker hangout Rivington Barn when the bike was first finished.

FINLAND TRIP pt.3 ....Mitja the Madman

This is Mitja....a very interesting guy! He's an ex-Teddy Boy and sports a wild old school tattoo of Bill Haley that he had done when he was 13.

Thats his bicycle chopper. Last year, he rode this bike 230 km each way to a show in Nortalje, Sweden!!

He informed me that it is completely legal to ride a bike, row a boat or ride a horse.....completely pissed. It is however illegal, under any circumstances to ride on the back of a Moose!!

Mitja is a musician who loves 60's garage and 50's rock n roll and has been involved with organising PA equipment for the Hells Angels parties.

He told me all the band members and roadie crew were issued with "Access all areas" passes that said "DON'T HIT ME TOO HARD.....I WORK FOR YOU"

FINLAND TRIP pt.2 after the party

This is the morning afterthe party. Everybody was hung over, no loud music and the chance to chat to people.

I was very aware of the SCANDINAVIAN BIKER WAR in the late 90's between HELLS ANGELS MC and BANDIDOS MC. in which there was 11 murders and almost 100 woundings. Talking to Mitja, he told me the ROAD WEIRDOS was a neutral clubhouse that both Hells Angels and Bandidos visited from time to time when they wanted some fun. Apparently their own clubs have become too regimented and business-like. He added that the reason for the fun factor was a "No Guns" policy at this clubhouse....however, the thought crossed my mind as to how you could enforce such a policy!!

Talking to Kiatsu and Iikku I learned they really dug Raleigh Chopper bicycles and British TV shows ON THE BUSES, SAPPHIRE AND STEEL and KENNY EVERETT SHOW.....

Folks in the above shots, from the top of the page are:

Hese, Kiatsu, me with Mitja in the background, Iikku and Kiatsu, unknown Chopperdero member, Hese and ladyfriend, me in amongst some bikes, Mitja's bicycle chopper, 70's style Japanese-motored skooter.

Skooter Farm track opening day

Great party Friday night, thanks to all who made the effort and travelled up to Wigan. Saturday afternoon we held the opening SKOOTER FARM track session, which was a real hoot..a few small bikes and 10 or so riders. We even held a few 4 man races with start and finish flags and all!
Photos courtesy of DBA and SIDEBURN

Point of no return....

Full Frokkul Wheelie.....just about to loop out and land flat on my back. Summercamp, Les Deux Alpes 1998.

Downhill gravity bikes

This was a Summer trip to Les Deux Alpes in about 1998. We Just completed building our second major skatepark, 'Rampworx' in Liverpool. We had a heavy deadline we had to meet and to celebrate, me, Louise and Tim Stamp a good friend who worked alongside me on all the parks I built, jumped in the car and took off.

A great trip all round: snowboarding up on the glacier, skateboarding on the mini ramp, riding trials bikes up the mountains, para-penting down the valley and the Tour de France mountain stage coming to town during our stay.

The highlight of the trip turned out to be hiring these weird downhill bikes.

They had no pedals, crazy 20" wheels with ultra-fat 8"wide soft tyres, a beefy aluminium frame, and disc brakes.

The deal was to take 'em up in the cable car to the start of the snowline, and ride the bikes down.

At a rough guess I would say it was a 7-8 mile ride down. We togged up in all our skateboard pads and helmets and spent all afternoon, in the blazing 75 degree heat, blasting down the dusty mountain fire roads. It was definitely a case of "Go as fast as you want" and at some points, we were really hauling at 50 plus MPH with some very hairy corners and big drops if you were to get a wobble on and go over the edge.

Louise also came along on a 26" beach cruiser and on a more sedate journey down, she took these pictures.

Pre BMX dirt bicycle 1978

Here is a bicycle that me and a school friend Mark Scully built in the summer of 1978. This was during the fallow years in between barrel-jumping on our Raleigh Choppers and scraping pocket money together to buy the first Puch Murray and Mongoose BMX bikes from Winstanleys pram and cycle shop in the High Street.

As I recall, the bike seemed to take all of the school holidays to build and relatively no expense was spared (for two 14 year olds!).

It originally had 26 inch skinny street rims and convenional front forks.....but we wanted it to be more like the size of a Raleigh Grifter....so those are what the wheels in the picture came off.

We had a real problem with the rear suspension. Every time the spring compressed the chain came off the sprockets!!

we kind of solved this by switching for a stronger shocker and fitting a derailleur gear set.....but it wasn't that successful.

I can remember the sinking feeling of taking the bike out on its first outing and feeling really disappointed with how it handled.

Heavy, slow, cumbersome, spongy. These are just some of the words I could use to describe it.

We had plans of jumping over 4 cars on this thing!

God knows what happened to the bike but before long it was tossed aside in the garden with a puncture and forgotten about as the BMX became everybodies daily ride!

Incidently the very first thing we did with our first BMX's was paint 'em Kawasaki green.

Here a picture of Mark Scully and me from 1974, when we were 10.