2022 Oldskool BMX gathering Heesch, NED

Apr 08, 2022

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 2714 times

The day after the Mini FATJAM, or better, the Mini FATJAM afterparty at OJA, the day starts too early no matter what time you wake up first. Basically the day is a waste trying to recover from the long day and night that ends with a few drinks (too many). Now that events are back on the calendar it will also lead to multiple events happening at the same time. On the weekend of 2/3 April the Ultimate X took place in South Africa, Swamfest got wild in Florida, UEC racing was going on in Verona, Italy and also the Mini FATJAM took place. Next to that the annual Oldskool gathering put on by Marcel van de Hurk also draws BMX-ers from all corners and so harm van Brussel showed up straight from a BMX race in Nuland (making it BMX event number 6 on the same weekend). Two years of no events because of the pandemic with QR codes, mouth masks, social distancing, vaccinations, and now 6 on one weekend and actually, we like it like that.

Marcel sure is a good lad. Inviting BMX-ers from all over the place to hang out at his man cave for a weekend providing drinks, food and a good time is something that not everyone does, or would do. Roaming freely around his place with tons of BMX and MTB products felt good. It's actually amazing how much he has hoarded over the years which makes you wonder where he got things or better, how will he ever get rid of it? 40 white steel BMX forks of an unknown brand we counted. A fork that nobody needs, but Marcel has them. Tons of bars, seatposts, padsets, washers, bolts, stems, chains, chainwheels, you name it and Marcel has it, in all colors and all sizes. Some of the products might not be the real deal, but because they're 40 years old, they will fit on oldskool bikes anyway and are time correct. For sure it's worth checking with Marcel to see if he has that one crank bolt that you're after or the bearings that you need for your weird sized one-piece crank.

At the end of the meeting where several collectors showed some of their bikes, two machines got picked by Marcel and his buddy. The survivor trophy went to an old MCS Magnum that was spotted doing laps on the pump track at a campsite one day and is now in the hands of a BMX collector. The other trophy was for the pink Hutch for no particular reason other than that Marcel and his buddy liked that bike a lot. Fair enough, it's their event so they can do whatever they like. More power to them.