Digging deep, you can't stream this gem. Joe Kid on a Sting Ray is interesting and entertaining, from the early beginnings of BMX - that's BICYCLE MOTO-CROSS, all the way to the X-Games and the introduction of BMX to the OLYMPICS. They interview a zillion incredibly famous BMX people I've never heard of, but maybe if you're into that stuff, you've heard of them?! Anyways, what matters is that a few incredibly inspired people did some crazy stuff in California back in the 1970s to race bikes in the mud and that evolved into riding in swimming pools like skateboarders did, and tricks, jumps, and whatnot all started to happen. Money and magazines came in, as well as the bike bike companies like Shimano. The technology changed, and that aspect could be a movie in its own right. This movie is not quite as slick and concise as Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) but that movie took on a much smaller time period and scene. This movie tries to be comprehensive across time. There were early cross-country tours of kids in vans just driving from city to city doing crazy shit on bikes and racing. It's amazing. I hope trick riding comes back. One of the highlights for me is the flatland style of riding - just riding a flat area and doing tricks all over the bike. It's quite acrobatic. Over the course of the decades popularity comes and goes, but it's clear BMX is forever. If I could gripe for a moment, the soundtrack of generic grungy rock is incessant. It gets in the way of the stories and actual riding. Many of the people in this film could fill a movie on their own. Still, basically zero women in this joint, which is not cool. Surely there were women riders or in the industry somehow?! I hope this documentary is preserved since it gets at the oral tradition with first person accounts of how all this came to be. Hope you can stream this someday - otherwise looks like the DVD is around $15. Have a BMX party at your place!
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