Criminal Mischief

Criminal Mischief is a full-length BMX video from Little Devil, a small clothing brand from the Philadelphia area, released in 2001 and filmed and edited by Derek Adams. It mixes street riding with ramp and trails riding, and it is remembered above all for the closing section by Van Homan, which is widely regarded as one of the best street parts in the history of BMX.

Background

Little Devil was a small BMX clothing brand run by Derek Adams near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and it was known as much for its videos and its crew as for its shirts. Adams filmed and edited Criminal Mischief himself, and the video was made by the people in it rather than by a production company.

Van Homan, from Pennsville, New Jersey, was the standout. By 2001 he had already built a reputation for riding bigger obstacles than almost anyone else in street. Criminal Mischief gave him a full section to show it. The video came out on VHS, which was still the standard format at the time, and was also released on DVD.

Contents and sections

Criminal Mischief follows the full-length structure of the period: rider sections cut to music, with Van Homan's part closing the video. Sections come from Jason Enns, Garrett Byrnes, Josh Stricker, Pat Juliff, Nate Hanson and Matt Beringer, along with a split section from Marvin Loetterle and Kris Bennett.

Van Homan's closing section is pure street, while the rest of the video mixes street with ramp and trails riding from riders such as Kris Bennett, Pat Juliff and Garrett Byrnes. The filming is direct and unpolished, in keeping with a video made by a small brand and its friends.

Homan's section is the longest in the video. It runs into the credits, lasting a little over 12 minutes including them.

Standout parts

Van Homan's section is the reason Criminal Mischief is still discussed. It is built from hammers: large gaps, long and high rails, drops and transfers that were at the edge of what anyone was doing on a BMX bike at the time. What set it apart was not one trick but the accumulation. Clip after clip is something most street riders would consider a career highlight, and the section closes with an ender that has been replayed for more than two decades.

The section includes the Penn rail, which Homan ice-picked in 2000. He also re-filmed a rail-to-rail clip that had been stolen, and he tore his ACL near the end of filming.

The section also fixed Homan's style in the minds of a generation. Rather than technical combinations, he rode big, fast and committed, with the bike kept simple and the tricks chosen for their scale. That approach became one of the main schools of street riding through the 2000s, running alongside the technical, grind-heavy style that developed in parallel.

Impact and legacy

Criminal Mischief is one of the videos most often named when riders list the most influential street parts of all time. Van Homan's section raised the ceiling for what a street section could contain, and it was a reference point for the big-scale street riders who followed.

For Homan himself, the section made him one of the most respected riders in BMX, a status he held through the rest of the decade. He later rode for Fit Bike Co, and his section in Fit Life (2007) shows the same approach several years on.

More broadly, the video belongs to the moment when street riding moved to the centre of BMX. Alongside the New York videos that followed a few years later, such as Animal's Can I Eat?, Criminal Mischief helped shape East Coast street riding and contributed to the rise of street riding as the sport's largest discipline.

Soundtrack

Van Homan's closing section is cut to "Dear Prudence" by The Beatles and "Diary of a Madman" by Ozzy Osbourne. The Ozzy track was suggested by Stew Johnson, the filmer behind Anthem.

Related

• Van Homan
• Fit Life: Homan's later section with Fit Bike Co
• Can I Eat?: the New York street video that followed
• Street, trails and the rise of street riding
• Icepick grind, hammer and ender