Interview: Pretty Shady Joe

Pretty Shady is pretty damn legendary within the trails scene, both as a producer of videos and as one of the best – yet most random – websites in BMX. With Pretty Shady 5 coming out on DVD right about now, I thought we’d catch up with Joe and see how things are going in Southern France.

BIO Name: Joseph Robert Hometown: Henley on Thames? Years shooting BMX photos: Point and shooting for ten years. Where you can see my photos: prettyshady.com Years Prettyshady.com has been online: Four years 11 months Number of visits Prettyshady.com gets a month: 12,345 ish Nikon or Canon or? The cheaper option…

What are you doing today? What’s the plan? On a summer’s day I usually have an adventure like a swim in the sea or something, but in December usually I’m either working or relaxing at home doing odd jobs in the apartment.

What’s life like in Southern France? It’s like I’m 55 years old and retired / on holiday every day.

Okay, what are some of the trails spots you’ve shot photos at? In 2002 I counted all the trails I went that year, think it was 34. I really enjoy having a look at different and new places. I find looking at new trails exciting because they are all so unique.

What are your stand-out favourite trails spots? Places like Chertsey or Bar End where you can trust the builders so that when you fly round a berm and off a lip you land on the landing as if by magic. It’s also amazing at trails when you’re up a roll in with friends and there is a whole choice of lines to ride and they work so well you can roll though them without much thought. Jon Robinson’s place is often like this and I remember we were doing random trains and me and Poll collided in mid air, his back tyre bashing my back as he jumped the famous left hip and I jumped the small line step up.

And are there any others you really want to take photos at, that you haven’t been to yet? I’ve been to so many places great places so I have covered everywhere I really want to go. Austin looks a great place for a holiday, Wingham is always a fun visit and I’d like to see a video of the run-ups plus whole line runs at Posh too.

Let’s talk about Pretty Shady dot com. Judging by your stats, it’s more popular than some media sites I could mention – yet it appears to be so random, like a personal blog; why do you think it’s so popular? Since it’s updated so often people go there just in case something good might be there. It was very popular in 2005, but recently with moving away from the good English trails scenes and lack of BMX action It only gets just a third of the visitors that it used to get.

What about the upcoming Pretty Shady 5 DVD – tell us all about it, when’s it out, what’s on it, who’s on it, when, where, how and why and how? It has good songs that I think will be new to you, all trail riding from big jump sports like Peynier, Greoux, Chertsey, Cothill etc with riders such as Liam Eltham, Scott Edgworth, Dropsy, Aiden, Bob Hawton, the usual bunch! The main video is 22 minutes with 10 quick songs, and then there is a gigantic bonus party section which has about 25 songs I don’t even know. It was made for the annex.

Have you duct-taped any cameras to toptubes this time? I’d like to make a whole video of just filming onboard footage following locals though trails. It would have to be a steady cam mounted at the rider’s eye-level. We filmed in winter a ‘day in the life’ with the camera mounted on a helmet, but since it was winter filming I didn’t put it on the DVD. I should upload that soon to the site soon along with the five-minute videos I used to make using two VHS tape deck a long time ago…

HD? Nope…

What video gear did you use? The cheapest Sony Mini DV camera there was and then ‘edited’ on Adobe 6.5, with Encore to make the menus. If you want to make a fun video you can make it using any video camera. FBM used to use a camera that they would sign out from the public library. Derelict’s HD footage is amazing so I’m looking forward to a beautiful DVD in a year’s time Dave!

How can we buy it then? From the site using Paypal or your parent’s credit card!

What’s going on with your road bicycle collection – it’s impressive. Where the hell do you get them all? I regained consciousness in an ambulance and decided I’d try and find a less dangerous hobby. So at the weekend I go round the car-boot sales and search for decent vintage bikes. It’s like fishing, sometimes I don’t get anything, another day I will spy something fantastic for two Euro behind some CD racks. There are a lot of unwanted CD racks in the world. Hopefully this old bike hobby won’t last too long! I’m looking forward to riding BMX next summer as I don’t think there’s a better cheep past time then BMXing in woods, if there is one let me know.

I asked Joe was French was for ‘car boot sale’ – apparently, it’s ‘vide grenier’ = which means, empty your attic…

Got any favourite bikes in there? Details… There are a few vintage Italian race bikes that are beautiful, but my favourite to ride is the tandem! It is always good fun.

How are you going to move it all to your new place? At the moment we are temporarily living in my parents’ apartment while they are away in Australia. I am currently secretly DIY converting their attic space into the secret storage space for bikes.

Do you fix them up and ride them round town? I don’t ride around town with the local fixed gear crew thankfully! I no longer own a car, so I have a bike with a big basket on the back for shopping, a bike to take to work, bikes to use instead of the bus, and the bikes for trips into the countryside.

Sweet ride…

What shape is your BMX in these days – having been featured on Ride US’s online homepage for an eon in that b/w photo cover? Other then paint, a tyre and a cable it’s not changed in two years. Ever since I stopped flying out at Slades Farm it has been happy, I’d like to thank everybody who’s kept this bike rolling over the years. See photos, oh I think the old little Primo stem fell apart…

Also – in this day and age, do you prefer print or web? It’s nice to sit in the annex and have a good read of a high quality beautiful magazine, but most the media I see is web media I look at while eating breakfast.

What about web edits – as a DVD producer, how do you feel about videos getting ripped and embedded online? There are videos used to promote shoe/jean/bike companies – Nike, Levis, Fit – so the video producers want their videos to be seen by as many people as possible. So for them it is perfect. If you want to make a fun quick video to show your friends it works out too. So web wins? The DVD is dead, long live the DVD: Anthem 2 soon, Derelict HD video will be amazing on my giant Sony Trinitron I got free from a removals job.

Stock question: what’s your favourite trails photo of all time? I love to look back at photos from hot summer days, there are so many good photos I can think off. Like Todge doing a superman seat grab with a whale on a trampoline. I’ll pick one…. A while back me and Poll stopped off at Chertsey 2006 really late in the year on a grey damp autumn afternoon. None of the lines were running but James Brooks thought he could get the big line dry enough. Sure enough, after some brooming dry dust about, it was possible to just about make it thought the line if you stayed on the narrow dry line. Bancroft had stopped in after being on a trip somewhere and started to set up for a photo by putting a flash in one tree and climbing another tree to the left of the jump. Our pedals were always wet because the woods were damp and super wet. The photo was on our none table angle side and before the jump was soft so you it wasn’t possible to really boost the hip. Plus with the constant wet pedals I didn’t want to try anything exciting in case my feet slipped, so my best stunt was a tyre grab. Mr Brooks sat up the run in for about seven minutes cleaning his shoes and pedals then fired out a fantastic turndown. Considering the horrible conditions, It produced an unexpected and unusual photo.

Photo: Steve Bancroft

Finally, if you were going to, say Catty Woods or Bar End, for a photo, or a video shoot for one day with just three riders for a part on Pretty Shady 6, the HD Blueray version in 3D out in Spring 2010 – who would you pick, and why? Liam and Pipe are good fun and easy to work with so they are always invited. I would like to take Dan Magerie but I am not sure he could be on top form for just a one-day shoot. BEN HENNON! Liam keeps telling me he’s a really nice chap so I hope one day he will have a riding holiday down here soon. I would also pick Rory O’Sullivan too because I’ve not seen him for a while and if it was just a one day shoot it would probably rain anyway so it would be good to chat to those guys.

Click on this! Prettyshady.com

Here’s the trailer for Pretty Shady 5!

 

posted by Patrick Best
on 08/12/08