I've noticed that alot of flatlanders these days are riding without brakes and pedals. BITD when my mates and I did a bit of flatland, The idea of pulling tricks with no brakes or pedals hadn't even crossed our minds. Is this changing face of flatland here to stay or will it revert back to riding with brakes and pedals? Your thoughts and comments please.

Actually, there aren't a whole lot of people going crankless... they're more like a small niche than anything else. Even over at Pedal (where a lot of trend-followers hang around... not necessarily a bad thing) a good portion of people consider a crankless bike a scooter.

That said, it's impressive to watch Adam Pintek ride without brakes or cranks (he has pegs at his bottom bracket). He just spins and rolls and pumps for speed, and it's fairly endless. Or maybe I should say "seamless".

A lot of people try experimenting just to see how different setups affect their riding. the big thing right now is to run a front brake, but not a back brake, because you still get the "clean" look of not running a gyro or all those cables, but you also have the use of a front brake for stopping purposes and control on the front wheel... and you might notice a lot of people pretty much only do tricks on the front wheel. So it's kinda got a functio-economical philosophy behind it.

It's not really so much the changing face of flatland. It's more like washing off the previous day's makeup.

Crankless and brakeless would be amazing to watch. I did mention "Without brakes or pedals" but yeah, Crankless takes it even further.

Adam Pintek is amazing, there was a thread up a few weeks back w/ some video links ...looks kinda wierd to me (not having a drivetrain on a bike) because I'm an old skooler, but whatever works, theres no questioning this guys skills...

Somewhere, somebody as we speak is making a bottom bracket-less flatland frame.

I think the pegs instead of cranks in the BB shell is a cool idea.... It certainly LOOKS cool!

breakless riding opens up alot of doors and alot of people choose that path and of course there are the followers. I can ride breakless but i prefer to have brakes. It's all about control, with or without brakes.

[ July 25, 2006, 09:53 AM: Message edited by: outriding ]

I'm waiting for somebody to have the balls to go pegless.

oh brother whats next?frameless, just 2 wheels and 4 pegs.......

anybody remember josh white ridin a afa flatland comp pegless? i think he got top 5! wow

I was watching a video of that contest a few weeks back. cool stuff

it would be a shame if you actually had to ride your crankless bike home, you could just do scuff tricks all the way there...even uphill.
It is crazy to whatch though i love it.

The way Pintek rides, cranks and such would just be in the way. He's incredible.

Pintek's crankless thing was old news in 2001. He's actually gotten a lot of heat over the years for riding that way. A lot of people think that not having cranks on your bike eliminates a major obstacle, giving him an advantage. I don't like it because I think a bike should be a bike. Could I enter the next flatland contest on a fork/stem/front wheel combo? What about a unicycle? A scooter? A bike by definition has two wheels and a drivetrain. The rest is up to preference but I think we should keep those things.

As far as brakeless goes, I know there are a lot of guys who are great at it and I think that is definitely has its place in flatland, but since some tricks just go better with brakes I think it will be a long time before flatland completely evolves away from brakes at all. There is still a lot you can do with brakes, fronts especially.


Joe Shiavi tears it up on flatland pegless, btw.