The History of StuntBums: Part Two

ByeBye New York City

Summer 2010 we are no longer in our beloved New York City, instead we are in farm country, middle of nowhere USA. The redeeming points were; a big house for StuntBums brainstorming, cheap rent and a stunt spot named the "MEGA LOT" about 4 minutes away from the house.

We practiced, developed the site, worked some freelance gigs to pay the rent and put 40,000 miles on the rickety old StuntBums van, which was still covered in graffiti from Brooklyn. At Nashville XDL while watching the runs Saturday evening, I thought what a shame it was more people couldn't experience the show, so I pulled out my Flip camera and started recording each run. While we were far from Spielberging it at least people around the world could see what some of the best stunters in the world were doing in their runs.

After recording all the runs, we uploaded them that night, not the next week, not when we got home - which became a huge focus for the site: timely, up-to-date stunt news. Stunt fans deserve to know what's going down at events and be able to follow the careers of their favorite riders - otherwise it's not a sport...it's some underground private club.

Over the summer we slowly worked on our video skills (which were god-awful at the beginning) and learned what people like and don't like on the web. We played around with a stunt-wiki, athlete profiles and more failed ideas than you can imagine. It was learn as you go, a lot like stunting, so we felt right at home.

Check our first video:

And after a few months of practice we were able to produce this:

From X-Games to France

Highlights from the summer were X-Games, meeting tons of rad riders, driving cross country with our friend wedged in between our bikes on a lawn chair (not recommended) and of course tons of riding with our New York crew.

In July we learned that France accepts athletes with a "project" that could benefit both the French and American cultures and since we had been trying to move to Europe for years we thought... why couldn't StuntBums be that project? During the seven month application process we joked, what if, after all these times wheelies are our ticket into Europe, and well, it ended up being just that - wheelies are what enabled us to finally get visas and move to Europe.

After a long cold winter in upstate New York of paperwork to prepare for the move and StuntBums web redesign, we headed to Florida for one final American stunt event and then boarded a one-way flight to Southern France.