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Kurt Hohberger Can you present you, where you from, years riding, why BMX... ? I’m from a city in southern Minnesota called Rochester. I’ve been riding for around… 15 years now? Woof. Time flies when you’re having fun. I started riding because my older brother and his friends did it, then a lot of my friends got into it. There’s not many people I originally started riding with, but it’s still just as fun as it was then now.
for ways to sustain The Union for as long as possible because we’re working with less than half of what we were last year. It sucks, but all we can do is keep working our asses off to keep things fresh and exciting so riders keep riding and supporting brands that are producing the products. Only time will tell where things will go, but I do know we will need to see some changes made or it won’t get better.
Can you tell us about The Union, why this website, how it’s going ? The Union is my own little project I’ve been running for about 7 years now. It originally started as just a side thing I liked doing for fun. I’ve always been into website design, shooting photos and making videos so this was kind of my excuse. It lead to me having a lot of opportunities and it has been the reason I’ve had the chance to travel a fair amount and meet a lot of interesting people from all over the world. The site has been my way of giving back to BMX and producing an outlet for promoting good people and good things going on in BMX. Everyone has a story and there’s always something new and exciting to see, so we just try our best to keep up with everything. The site is going well. Between The Union and our partner sites; Bikeguide.org, The Merged and Flat Matters, we’re able to represent a few different areas of BMX and people are stoked on it. I am fortunate enough to have a crew of good people all working towards showing how rad BMX is.
Your best memories in BMX ? Your best trip, best travel ? My best memories from BMX come from a different places. Watching old scene edits I produced always bring up good memories from all the friends that used to ride who I don’t get to see as much as I would like to now days. It would be hard to narrow down a favorite trip, but I’d say any trip I’ve gone on with Jon Wells and the Milwaukee / Sun Ringle team would have the top spots for best trips. We’ve been kicked out of Canada and crushed a lot of miles along the way. I’d kill for another trip like that.
About the BMX business, you know how is the market now? The BMX business is in a pretty tight spot right now. I’ve produced a few write ups about my perspective on the economics of the industry and it has had a lot of positive feedback and it has pissed off a lot of people. In my opinion, there are just too many brands and too many products being produced. BMX has more products than there are riders needing them and that is the problem. Shops and distributors can’t keep up with the brands and now we have a surplus and ultimately everybody in the industry is feeling it. The media side, from my perspective once again, is really catching the heat now. Brands are cutting their budgets to make sure they can keep their employees and team riders paid, their products being produced and more. That means your favorite websites and magazines don’t have the support they used to and it is making it tricky for everyone to keep doing what they’re doing. I won’t lie, I’ve been looking
Do you have a new project ? What’s the future of The Union ? I always have something going on as far as projects go. We try to drop an original feature on the site every single day of the year and that gets hard. But it keeps things fresh and exciting. The future of The Union is a hard one to say. I never planned for it to be where it is today when I started it, and I couldn’t tell you where we’ll go in the future. Hopefully the BMX industry can turn around so we can keep promoting all of the good things going on in this “sport” of ours because we love doing what we do. Oldschool, newschool ? Only BMX rider ? As much as I want to say I’m into everything, I do play favorites. I always get so stoked on videos from the past or riders doing tricks we just don’t see now days. I will ALWAYS be stoked to watch somebody doing something unique and creative over somebody who sticks to what the current trend is. Is there anything else you would like to add? Shout-outs? Thanks ? I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who has checked out The Union and supported what we have been able to do over the years. Without people checking out the site or brands supporting us, we wouldn’t be here today. Thank you.