Karl Poynter will not go down as the most popular BMX rider. I think in his career days he was definitely an easy target but in my opinion unjustifiably so. First of all his riding is pretty cool. It’s something thats cool cause it’s different. Which is a terrible reason to like it but Karl’s riding is a true progression of what he envisioned his riding to be. You see the progression from his earlier clips in Shook’s Youth Gone Wild in the first Shook video. It’s something I can respect cause it’s unphased by what else is happening in BMX. In that sense it’s comes off as natural.
I guess it’s kind of weird to use that term with BMX but I think a better wording would be when not making your own style look forced. Style can be determined by a variety of factors. Some riders have to compensate because of their limitations. Someone like Tom White is precisely that. Can’t do tricks, so he goes bigs. Other rider’s style is almost regional and evolve from that. Chase Dehart and Jeff Kocsis has that going. Similar styles but branched off in different ways. Others riders directly imitate and progress upon their own which I guess is the most common thing. Someone see’s something they like and appropriate it for their own bag of tricks. Presently Yumi does a lot of peg bonk stuff that was pretty rare for the longest time. More than likely everyone is a combination of bits of pieces of each. Some steal from others to the point it’s terrible, on the other end other’s progress solely for themselves and the riding is almost unrelateable for a lot of people. Karl is on that end.
It is what it is you know? I can’t really describe as being anything else cause it really is that unique. He was definitely an early adopter of the freecoaster but people ragged on him for that too. It’s that whole cheating thing that BMX likes to conjure itself with. He used pedal pressure definitely more than Bruce Crisman and Ian Schwartz but look at BMX now. So much pedal pressure but no one cares.
He did those long fakie slider things, which caught on to a few people. For a while it became the new race to do the longest one. It was like Nosemanuel races of the mid 2000′s. Where it was such a simple trick but at the same time so unprogressed that anyone had a chance to be king of it. You’d see new videos where they’d showcase the longest one ever and that person would win it for the month til the next guy in whatever random country did a longer one. Chad Kerley more or less ended the nosemanuel game and I think Karl can walk away with the best fakie slider. Mostly cause of his dedication to it.
Then he has those manuels. Which were completely on lock. All in all he didn’t have a lot of tricks showcased honestly but neither did Hamilton or Bob Scerbo. Or a lot of the world’s favorite cult riders. I think a lot of BMX really is showmanship on and off the bike. Karl’s riding is certainly not burly which is automatic points. It’s not technical in a relatable way. The rest of him and the self package... well he’s a pretty normal guy. He paintballs which is probably an industry bigger than BMX. He’s from Indiana so he doesn’t get cool guy from cool place points. He was just an easy target for BMX at the time. I don’t know anything about him personally but he was sponsored for the longest time and he definitely had credible ones.
I try my best not to look at the past with rose tinted glasses. But then I feel like the real individualistic styles are slowly phasing out. It’s like the internet is making everything into this starter pack meme or another. We are what we consume and internet is so ubiquitous and unfortunately a large part of the everyday life of most modern people so it seems like people are becoming more a direct reflection of this mass media thing that dumbs anything remotely interesting into the lowest common denominator for more appeal. Not anything conspiracy related more.. sociological I guess. They say we don’t kill each other as much cause we quit using lead pipes for water. Apparently lead pipes increased lead poisoning which one of the symptoms was more irritability or something like that. Maybe I’m just unable to seek out these things and these things are harder to come out in the mix of millions of others using #bmx. I don’t know. I do like a good naturalistic style though. Something that feels real whether or not I personally like the tricks or the rider or anything. It seems like true expression of self which was art should aspire to be. Karl put out something different that feels like it has credibility while everyone else is trying to still draw something directly “psychedelic” or “tattoo art based” to please everyone else. I’m feeling it. I also think paintballing is probably a better hobby than social networking.
Karl Poynter
Ragged Wood by Fleet Foxes
Brighton Ain’t Ready (2008)
Edited by Ed Allen
