treemandan
Tree Freak
Memories for a lifetime
I was watching The Smoking Gun's Dumbest Competitions volume 1 and saw they had filmed the downhill bicycle race on The Wall in Manyunk Pa.
First of all, if you don't know, The Wall is the name of the the big hill that is part of the Tour D France. They ride up the hill for that but the night before all the drunk Philadelphians ride down. I have watched both races many time, I used work as a bike mechanic at the shop at the bottom of The Wall called The Wall. Being more of fat tire freaks we didn't really hang with the leg shavers. In fact I don't remember fixing very many bicycles except my own and mostly just stayed down in the basement drinking and making things from the Anarchist Cookbook. We weren't Anarchist and Justin pretty much blew his face off packing Idaho Blue Tip matches into a pipe. We were out on the street and heard this dull boom then smoke started coming out of the basement. We knew he was in there but we didn't know what he was doing exactly and we were like " uh Justin, it says ' strike anywhere' right on the box bro." He had gotten a few boxes jammed in the pipe before it blew, he was packing them with a dowel rod. Justin was pretty messed up and claims to still be color blind but he still is quite a pyro. You can always count on him for the good stuff in July... actually anytime of year that guy has somekind of bomb but he is dangerous as hell. We would tell him he couldn't set off 3 inch mortars right out in the street like that, it was the city. Just counting the unintentional things he's taken out: a porch, a Dodge Omni ( it was Mike's Dad's car) and an old boat. If you ever stood next to a 3 inch mortar ( that's real stuff you see at proper firework displays) as it ignites and takes off you feel the air displace and you ears pop like when in a plane. You might have seen one of his 4th of July displays: River Road by the Flatrock dam just outside Manyunk, should be able to see it from the Surekill Expressway close to the Gladwynne onramp.
Justin was the #### when it came to bikes and he also built all the wheels for the motorcycle shop around the corner. He ended up marrying Brian's X who Brian had a kid with and she was a complete ##### wack job. She was not nice no sir and not even pretty and we all were like WTF.
The downhill race usually ended up with fights breaking out cause people were crashing into parked cars and pissing all over the place. They might have stopped the race and I haven't been to see the real race in years. Nodoby ever really saw the real race anyway. They were all to busy getting hammered in the sun and stumbling around the baked concrete and asphalt til they found a spot to sleep it off. Booze , heat, and trying to walk up steep hills is not a good combo.
I was watching The Smoking Gun's Dumbest Competitions volume 1 and saw they had filmed the downhill bicycle race on The Wall in Manyunk Pa.
First of all, if you don't know, The Wall is the name of the the big hill that is part of the Tour D France. They ride up the hill for that but the night before all the drunk Philadelphians ride down. I have watched both races many time, I used work as a bike mechanic at the shop at the bottom of The Wall called The Wall. Being more of fat tire freaks we didn't really hang with the leg shavers. In fact I don't remember fixing very many bicycles except my own and mostly just stayed down in the basement drinking and making things from the Anarchist Cookbook. We weren't Anarchist and Justin pretty much blew his face off packing Idaho Blue Tip matches into a pipe. We were out on the street and heard this dull boom then smoke started coming out of the basement. We knew he was in there but we didn't know what he was doing exactly and we were like " uh Justin, it says ' strike anywhere' right on the box bro." He had gotten a few boxes jammed in the pipe before it blew, he was packing them with a dowel rod. Justin was pretty messed up and claims to still be color blind but he still is quite a pyro. You can always count on him for the good stuff in July... actually anytime of year that guy has somekind of bomb but he is dangerous as hell. We would tell him he couldn't set off 3 inch mortars right out in the street like that, it was the city. Just counting the unintentional things he's taken out: a porch, a Dodge Omni ( it was Mike's Dad's car) and an old boat. If you ever stood next to a 3 inch mortar ( that's real stuff you see at proper firework displays) as it ignites and takes off you feel the air displace and you ears pop like when in a plane. You might have seen one of his 4th of July displays: River Road by the Flatrock dam just outside Manyunk, should be able to see it from the Surekill Expressway close to the Gladwynne onramp.
Justin was the #### when it came to bikes and he also built all the wheels for the motorcycle shop around the corner. He ended up marrying Brian's X who Brian had a kid with and she was a complete ##### wack job. She was not nice no sir and not even pretty and we all were like WTF.
The downhill race usually ended up with fights breaking out cause people were crashing into parked cars and pissing all over the place. They might have stopped the race and I haven't been to see the real race in years. Nodoby ever really saw the real race anyway. They were all to busy getting hammered in the sun and stumbling around the baked concrete and asphalt til they found a spot to sleep it off. Booze , heat, and trying to walk up steep hills is not a good combo.
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