#yumingrow

Yumingrow is Asian BMX Jesus

I hate the word peg chink. I get it that it has it’s own separate origin and is not a racial epithet unless you make it but still it irks me. I think any Asian in the US would feel somewhat similar, it’s such an ugly word used to describe the widescreen vision my asian brothers and sisters are born with. A similar parallel would be to use word ‘niggardly’, it means not generous but the origins of the word have nothing to do with the actual n-word. Try using that word in an everyday conversation and explaining that they are no way related. See how well that goes. But chink being Asian irks me. Some understanding people use bonk, clink, or some other variation that everyone inherently understands but the chink persists. But oh well what am I gonna do. Yumingrow is Asian Jesus cause he took the peg chink, as a chink and became the best at it, by a far margin and to me there is strange sense of satisfaction in that. 

Not to mention he has one of the most original style since someone like Hamilton. Off beat, technical and innovative, there is a gimmick but it’s awesome in every single way. It’s not another bar or whip but something so simple but readaptable in so many different ways. There isn’t quite a rider like Yumi and it’s resonated a beat with a largely stale industry ran BMX media right. A breath of fresh air in a largely smith nose bar world where someone is probably figuring out how to double to hard 720 or add another bar somewhere.

 Even pros are recognizing and starting to push what Yumi started. Kind of like Hamilton, you can exactly pin point where this type of riding began. It’s unmistakeable. They way Yumi does the peg chink is something unique to himself because you can’t separate the rider and the trick. It’s a novelty that is kind of lost when it becomes just another arsenal in some very skilled pros trick list. It’s the founding of it and readaption of it that is interesting, not the fact that it’s done. When Hamilton did the brakeless nose manuel probably over a decade ago it wasn’t that it was never been done or that it was such a skilled trick but the idea that no one even dared this type of simple solution in a growingly more complex and technical world, that’s what made it fresh. That’s why anyone who knows the history of BMX can say that the nosemanuel is tied to Hamilton. So many people know better variations and when every other pro was trying to out do one another on length, it still was Hamilton’s trick. That’s how I see Yumi and peg chink. 

He made a trick that was widely accepted as a park trick and made it street.  Prior I would say Wiz was the king of the chink during the park era. He used it as almost an ‘and one’ of sorts in his technical riding days and even though Wiz is definitely an accomplished street rider, his riding wasn’t entirely dependent on the chink so it had less of an impact than I’d say someone like Yumi. I’m not saying without it that Yumi is any less of a rider but the way he presented his whole riding package with was perfect. To me Yumi is Asian BMX Jesus. He saved us for enternity from shame of the chink with his divine peg chinking powers. Blessed.

Yumi Tsukuda

Dancer by Tatsuro Yamashita 

Yumi Tsukuda - Welcome to Merritt (2017)