Road Fools

Road Fools is a series of BMX road trip videos produced by Props, the company behind Props Video Magazine. The format is simple: a group of professional riders is loaded into a bus and driven across part of the United States, or later Europe, for a week or two, stopping at skateparks, trails, street spots and backyard ramps along the way. The first Road Fools was released in 1998, and the series continued through the 2000s. It is remembered less for individual tricks than for showing riders as people, and for turning the BMX road trip into a genre of its own.

Background

By the late 1990s Props had been covering contests and producing rider bios for several years. Contest footage showed what riders could do under pressure. It showed very little about who they were. The road trip segments that appeared in regular Props issues were popular for exactly that reason: riders relaxed, talked and rode for fun, and viewers responded to it.

Road Fools took that idea and made it the whole video. Props hired a bus, invited a mixed group of pros from different disciplines and sponsors, and filmed everything. The riders had little say over the route and no obligation to produce a polished section. What came back was a mix of riding, travel and the kind of behaviour that happens when a crew of riders and filmers share one vehicle for a week or more.

The first Road Fools, released in early 1998 as an issue of Props, took Joe Rich, Taj Mihelich, Jimmy Levan, Dave Freimuth, Robbie Morales, Sandy Carson and Derek Adams through Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. In 2000 the series made its first trip outside the United States, through France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and England.

Contents and sections

Each Road Fools follows roughly the same structure.

1. Introductions. The riders are named as they arrive, usually with a short clip of each one riding.
2. The trip. The bulk of the video follows the bus from stop to stop. Each stop is a session at a park, a set of trails, a street spot or a private ramp, filmed by the Props crew and cut with footage from the drive in between.
3. Interludes. Skits, pranks, interviews, arguments and the occasional injury. These are as much a part of the appeal as the riding.
4. Bonus material. On DVD releases, extra footage, crashes and raw sessions.

Because the cast was mixed, a single instalment might include street riders, trails riders, park specialists and flatland riders sharing the same spots. Watching a trails rider try a street ledge, or a street rider drop into a vert ramp, is a recurring source of comedy and occasionally of surprising riding.

Standout parts

Picking standout moments from Road Fools is difficult because the series does not work in sections. What people remember tends to fall into a few types.

• Unexpected riding. Pros riding terrain they do not normally ride, and sometimes doing something notable on it. Because nothing was planned, these moments feel earned.
• Personalities. Riders who were quiet in contest footage often became favourites through Road Fools because the cameras caught them joking, cooking, complaining or getting lost. Several riders are better remembered for their Road Fools appearances than for any contest result.
• The vehicle. Breakdowns, cramped sleeping arrangements and the state of the vehicle by the end of the trip are running jokes across the whole series.

Later instalments also ran themed trips, including trails-focused editions, which changed the terrain but kept the format.

Impact and legacy

Road Fools changed what a BMX video could be. Before it, videos were mostly rider sections or contest coverage. After it, the road trip became a standard format, used by brands, magazines and later by web series. The idea that a BMX video could be funny, loose and about friendship as much as about tricks owes a great deal to Road Fools, although the raw comedic style of earlier tapes such as BACO pointed the same way.

The series also did something for the riders. It put people from rival sponsors and different disciplines together in a way contests never did, and the friendships formed on those trips shaped the industry for years afterwards. For viewers, especially those outside the United States, Road Fools was a tour of American BMX: the parks, trails and spots that otherwise only appeared in magazine photos.

The format outlived the series. Brand trips filmed for the web, with a van, a crew and a route, follow the Road Fools blueprint closely. See the web edit era for how that transition happened.

Related

• Props Video Magazine: the series Road Fools grew out of
• BACO: an earlier, rawer take on riding-plus-comedy from the Midwest
• BMX in the 1990s
• Trails, street and park: the terrain the trips covered
• Spot and session