Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Challenger

S&M has always been one of my favorite companies. You damn kids today don't even understand that Chris Moeller and crew paved the way for the kick ass bikes that we all ride today. One fine example of S&M's craftsmanship is the reissue of their Challenger stem. This is a photo of Sean Newton's, taken with his new Canon TXR7-2000. He got this beautiful stem for Christmas. I don't get bike parts for Christmas any more. It's a complicated story, but I had one of the old Challenger stems back in the day of 1998. I can't even tell you how much I hate the term "back in the day". Back in the day for me, in terms of a BMX stem, would be an Ashtabula single clamp gooseneck.

1 comment:

jason said...

I like all the S&M Challenger stuff. I'm glad S&M helped move BMX bike design in the direction it needed to go back in the late eighties to early nineties. Things might have swung too far with the overbuiltness(?) of some bikes in the mid to late 90's, but it was all part of the process of figuring out what works best for most people.