How stupid is this? Question for BMX riders

Question

Does anyone else think it stupid to call vert and street riding BMX? Isnt real BMX racing on a track? I think so.

Answer 1

not its not you just say I ride BMX vert or street.

Answer 2

This is long, but read me.   :o)

Think of the history.  Freestyle and trials riding developed from bmx BIKES (the particular type of frame, as compared with road bikes and cruisers that were available at the time).  Actually, trials sorta developed from motorcycle trials, but the whole thing is and has been intertwined since it started.  (If you look at mountainbikes of today, especially the downhill rigs, they're trickle-down technology from motorcycles for the most part.)

So you have this motocross rider with kids, or who has too many sore joints and arthritis from broken bones suffered from crashing at high speed.  Bike racing on a dirt track is born from motocross so that kids can play like their parents and have something exciting to do.  They call it "bicycle motocross", or BMX.  

Sooner or later, kids try to do the same tricks that their adult examples are doing (trials riding and ramps, doubles, etc), and a whole new specialized sport comes out of that, along with a very specialized type of bicycle.   This was all done on bmx type frames which were developed to excel at this stuff.  

Then, people naturally take tricks like wheelies, jumping and ramping, and start improving their skills and challenging each other.  They start building fun stuff and looking for new exciting things to do with bikes.  Swimming pools are a great idea, and then skateparks are born.  The racing frames for BMX start breaking and bending, so they build tougher bikes and wheels to handle it.  Before you know it, the bikes are pretty different, as is the type of riding, and it needs a whole new name....like "freestyle" or "park".   But instead of a new name, it just becomes a category of the same name it started out with.

So it's all in the Roots.  People don't embrace change very readily, so you still have everyone grouping it into "bmx".   They do the same thing in mountain biking....they're all "mountain bikes" even if they're made for cross country, freeride hucking, downhill, dirt jumps, trials, or whatever.  Heck, we do the same thing with cars, too.

Sorry so long, but I wanted to explain why just maybe it isn't so stupid after all.....there's more to the story than it appears.    :o)

Answer 3

it is pretty dumb

but im to lazy to say freestyle or whatever

so i say bmx cuz its 3 letters