Starting possibly with Eddie Roman's freestyle walking inspired approach to street riding in cult classics such as "Aggroman," certain riders have been pursuing a more creative approach to street riding, including S&M's Matt Beringer and Cam Wood, and more so on park, Eastern's Adam Banton. But as the ubiquity of the web video continues to grow, the creative brand of street riding that involves grinding anything on the bike and freestyle walking has brought forth a new generation of creatively-inspired, not just another rail street riding from the likes of Tate Roskelley and the above rider -- Minnesota's Erik Elstran. I know these are run-on sentences, but when riders are attaching skate decks to their pedals and doing "board slides" on ledges or handlebar grinding up stairs, it takes a lot of verbiage for me to explain what the heck is actually happening in this new sub-genre of BMX.
So yeah, some riders seem to prefer walking next to their bikes during videos, and since Eddie Roman first did it in 1988, more people have caught on to the growing trend. But there's more to Erik Elstran than just walking next to his ghost-ridden bike. In the above video, Erik sneaks in some really hard and creative moves in between what appears to be lots of goofing off with his friends in weird costumes. Jim C. of Sunday liked what he saw about Erik, and decided he would make a good fit on the Sunday Bikes am team. According to Jim, "Erik Elstran is simply one of the most creative riders in BMX today. We are beyond excited to have him apart of Sunday. He's on the am team now, but he will no doubt move up quickly if he keeps coming up with videos like this."
I'm really not sure if the recent surge in freestyle-walking inspired BMX will continue to increase in popularity or remain the path of a chosen few, but I do know that in between all that exercise Erik gets off his bike, he's doing some really hard, technically-inspired flatland/street riding.
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