Interview: BMX LIFE - POLAND

Lukasz Maternowski - BMX LIFE, POLAND

Can you explain how the idea for your store came to be?

It all started very naturally, I simply started riding BMX with my friends. At the time it was really tough to get any BMX parts (early 2000s), so me and my homies decided to start our own BMX store. That was back in 2005.

After many years of co-managing the initial store, I wanted to start my own thing, so 2013 was the year I established BMX LIFE, and it’s been like that ever since!

Can you tell us a bit about your personal history within BMX?

I started riding back in 1999. I was pumped to get into it by watching BMX on Eurosport. I bought my first BMX with the money I got for my 18th birthday. Basically, BMX appeared in Poland around 2-3 years earlier, so it was almost impossible to get your hands on any solid product at that time. Nevertheless, I remember my first bike being a Gary Fisher Air Bob. And yes, I still ride every now and then.

Who’s on your team for Vans ‘The Circle’?

The current BMXLIFE team is made up of four riders in total.

Michał Basta - Michał is 27 years old, lives in Krakow, and has been on the team ever since its inception in 2013. He’s the proud owner of BMX SCHOOL, a business that grew into something quite big over the last couple of years.

Apart from teaching hundreds of Polish kids how to ride BMX, he organizes BMX camps all across Poland. He’s got crazy steeze, kangaroo-like hops, and isn’t afraid of big rails either. Michał also reps Stranger, Vans Europe, and Koka Clothing.

Jasiek Pokrop - The 26-year-old from central Poland, Jasiek Pokrop, has also been on the team since 2013. Normally working as a happy marketer for NapoleonCat, Jasiek has been voluntarily managing most of BMXLIFE’s social media content over the past years, trying to get more people to ride in Poland via social channels.

As a BMX rider, Jasiek mainly plays with manual combos, proving that anything can be done into a manual, with his last part scoring at least a few manual-related NBD points.

Jasiek also represents Cult (part in the works), Vans Europe, and SKNY.

Piotr Leszczyński - Pilot “Leszczu” Leszczyński is a 28-year-old skatepark machine who has been steadily killing it ever since like 2009 or so. He started riding for BMXLIFE back in 2017, and he’s also a miner.

Leszczu is known for his colorful bikes, robot-like consistency, and blowing minds with tricks like whip to manny to frontflip down a drop. He also rides for Etnies and Techramps.

Wiktor Skibiński - the youngest yet the most vicious and hungry out of the whole crew, Wiktor, the 20-year-old street machine. Wiktor is truly the full package; he can do anything he wants on his bike, he’s a BMX nerd, he knows how to get stuff done, and he’s just a nice guy. Wiktor has been on BMXLIFE for over 2 years now, he’s a college student, and also teaches kids to ride bikes at Michał’s BMX school.

His last solo video part for WTP proves that his level of riding is simply ridiculous, and he’s inspiring the whole Polish BMX scene. The kid really has it all, and all we can do is laugh out loud seeing him pull all these tricks with relative ease. His popularity is growing fast, and we’re more than stoked to see him get the recognition he deserves.

Wiktor also reps WTP, Vans Europe, and SKNY.

Who have you chosen to film the edit?

We chose Stanisław Mikołajczak and Bart Kopiec to help us from behind the lens on this project. They’re our homies, we’ve worked with them before, and they also ride very well. Both of them are nerds for BMX, which is always helpful - they’re stoked to film or shoot, plus the love for BMX arms them with patience :)

Has filming went well so far?

The whole project went pretty smoothly, we’re just about to wrap it up on the last clips the boys wanna put in.

We had some adventures during the filming for this project - some minor injuries, bed bugs in hotel rooms, and fake Booking.com offers, but it’s all good.

The final video should showcase the variety of the team’s riding style accompanied by some old-school hip hop tunes, which has been our aesthetic ever since we started. Not to give too much away, there’s this one NBD from Wiktor that will have you scratching your head for sure.

It’s also a great chance to finally put out a team edit that we’ve wanted to make for many years now. We just never found the time, and riders have been focusing on their solo projects as well. So, we’re very grateful to be able to take part in this project and finally put out a team edit and have it shared on DIG - it’s very rewarding.

Community Insight:

How’s your local BMX scene looking these days?

It seems like less and less people ride BMX in Poland, unfortunately it’s not what it used to be. However, we try not to dwell on that too much and just keep doing our thing.

There’s still a bunch of talented BMXers in Poland, with different styles and tricks. What I often see though is that they either want to be Garrett or Begin, haha.

How does it compare to when you first opened your store?

BMX parts are more widely available that’s for sure. Other than that, it’s hard to answer this question, everything is changing, you know. Less video parts, an abundance of IG clips, and a lot of scooters at skateparks - I guess these would be the main differences. To us, it doesn’t matter, as long as you're having fun. The level of riding is still going up regardless of online media channels.

It was also easier to find cool songs back then for your videos and not get muted by YouTube, haha.

Have you seen an increase in female riders and more diversity in general over recent years?

Globally, yes. It’s easy to notice more women killing it, or more riders coming out, and I think that’s great. We have a pretty small community, even taking BMX globally into consideration, so we need to be supportive. BMX for me has always been that one escape from every type of everyday problem, and it’s always been about positive energy. It’s best to keep it that way.

How important is a good BMX shop in supporting a local scene?

I think it’s super important. I also think that the team riders really make the whole brand work, so you need to treat them right. I always try to do my best in supporting my team, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job so far.

We try to support as many BMX jams as we can. Michał Basta runs his own BMX SCHOOL (with over 150 “students”) that is somewhat connected to our store, and we try to do our part via social channels to keep the kids stoked to ride, e.g., we repost their clips or organize online video contests. The latter hasn’t met much interest this year, though.

We know they look up to us, to our team, and we just wanna do our best to keep them motivated and keep BMX fun.

Do you think BMX has been more popular lately?

It’s a trick question when you think of the Olympics. Maybe because of that event more people have been exposed to BMX, but I don’t see it translating to anything yet, at least not in Poland. It’s actually a pretty sad story with our Polish BMX Olympics team as they were told by an official Polish cycling institution that BMX is not a sport and they won’t grant them anything for the trip to Tokyo, so they never went...

But coming back to the question - I don’t know. It’s hard to keep up with all the sub-disciplines of BMX. I can say this:

There may be more kids on BMX bikes who only watch vlogs and don’t know what a video part is. There are less and less riders who wanna learn about the history of BMX and legendary riders, who are stoked to film video parts, and who are interested in the whole BMX culture, not just YouTube.Nevertheless, BMX is still very much alive, it’s just changing a bit, and that’s okay, it happens with everything in life.

What’s the strangest request you’ve ever had from a customer?

A few years back there was this phase when kids would ask me for a free product if they get X number of likes or comments under their own posts, lol.