The Levis BMX program was a brief, but interesting period in the history of corporate BMX sponsors. Levis invested heavily early on with a large team of highly paid athletes, a huge online campaign in collaboration with Vital and print ads in every magazine at the time. But then, just as quickly as Levis appeared, they were gone, probably never to return. After the program crumbled and all the rider’s moved on, all we were left with was a DVD that featured a stunning section from 3 of the all time great street riders. Let’s take a look.

I know this is recent memory to many of you, but for some of our newer readers, or readers who just don’t remember things like this, let’s review. Levis entered BMX by sponsoring four pro riders, each of whom was allowed to choose 2 flow team riders. The pro team was Jamie Bestwick, Corey Martinez, Morgan Wade and Anthony Napolitan. Jamie chose Zack Warden and Ron Thomas for his flow team. Corey chose Nathan Williams and Dakota Roche (who, believe it or not, were not the gigantic names they have become today just yet). Morgan Wade chose Brett Walker and Johnny Stevens. Anthony chose Jeremiah Smith and his brother Ronnie.

Almost immediately plans began to form for a full length DVD. Will Stroud and Chad Shack, who at the time had formed a production company called Nine To Five Productions, were picked to produce it. The BMX world (who at the time, had yet to flock to Twitter and were still communicating through these archaic things called “blogs” and “websites”) began to buzz about the possibilities. It was to be an event! The best DVD of all time! How could it fail??? Everyone seemed convinced.

Not me. I always knew it was going to stink. I don’t think I ever verbalized this on the site because I was trying to be polite and diplomatic and everything, but the writing was on the wall. Here’s why it was bound to be bad: 3/4s of the team were not what I would call “video part riders”. Corey, Nathan and Dakota? All day. If I got to pick some riders to put together DVD sections for me, they would be high up on the list. But the rest of the team left a lot to be desired. Here’s a section by section breakdown of the video:

It starts off with a really spectacular intro. The stage is set at this point for the DVD to be great. None of the video’s failings can fall on Will Stroud’s shoulders (Chad was given the boot before the DVD was released), and he did a brilliant job on the intro.

Then Anthony’s section starts. Anthony is a great rider. He’s invented a lot of tricks, won a lot of contests and is just talented as a motherfucker. But you know what he’s never had? A good video part. He’s just not that kind of rider. Could he be? Probably. I’m sure if he put all his effort into one for a year or two he could put out a stellar section. But everyone should have known he wasn’t going to be able to do so in between training for contests. In fact, that’s pretty much what this section looks like; Anthony practicing his jumping variations for an upcoming Dew Tour.

His flow team back-up weren’t of much help either. Ronnie is barely present. Jeremiah, who I assumed would steal the show, does, but the two song section includes a ton of b roll that should have been left on the cutting room floor. One of the first clips is a line where Jeremiah icepicks a not-very-long flat ledge and then feeble 180s another flat ledge. And then the banger (all of the pro team riders were given the banger’s in their respective sections even in instances where they probably shouldn’t have) is contest footage of Anthony doing a 360 triple whip over a box, a trick which Mike Spinner had invented earlier that year. So yeah, not a great start.

The next section features Zack Warden and Ron Thomas, Jamie’s flow team picks (Jamie has his own section later in the DVD so these guys were on their own). Mercifully, it’s a short part. Zack, to his credit, does a lot of impressive moves, but they are almost all at Woodward, although he does a couple of good rail set up’s. I have literally never even heard of Ron Thomas and 2 minutes after re-watching this section, I can’t remember any of his clips. Moving on.

Jamie’s section is great in the sense that hey, it’s a Jamie Bestwick section. Jamie is so much better than everyone else on earth at airing a vert ramp, that of course his section was going to be a good watch. But was it the epic, classic Jamie Bestwick section that we’d all been waiting for him to deliver? The section that would summarize his entire career? Nope. It was filmed at Woodward over the course of a couple days and he admitted later in interviews that he wasn’t happy with the amount of time he had to film or the tricks that he got done. I’m still waiting on that one video part that completely summarizes Jamie’s career and what he’s capable of on a vert ramp, but this definitely wasn’t it.

Morgan Wade’s section is good, but not great. Everyone knows how Morgan rides. He’s the guy who goes to a skatepark and does the craziest transfer in the place. He’s the guy who does the crazy gap to rail that nobody else wants to do. He’s the guy who looped Baldy and got the last section in Drop The Hammer There are glimpses of that Morgan Wade here, but for the most part it’s Morgan doing another long-ish nose wheelie, Morgan doing another big flair, Morgan doing a long-ish nose wheelie to barspin. Morgan’s been pro for a long time and has mangled his body over the years. Understandably, the fire that made him a household name didn’t seem there.

Johnny Stevens (who’s name, let’s be honest, probably doesn’t ring a bell) actually does a lot of good shit but it’s mostly tech skatepark jibs that you’re unlikely to remember. Brett Walker, who has always had more potential than almost anyone although he’s never been able to turn that potential into a great video part, has a couple of the most memorable tricks in the video (outside of the Corey/Nathan/Dak section) but his clip count was far lower than Johnny or Morgan.

In what was probably the easiest editing decision of all time, Corey and friends have the ender section and man, it is glorious. Even back in 2008, the fact that Corey was still killing it on the level that he does here was startling (the fact that he’s now riding better than ever is downright scary). And in a sign of true confidence, while most of the team chose their close friends to put on flow, Corey chose the two youngest, hungriest, insanely talented dudes he knew (who were also his close friends). The riding contained within was so scary-good that it made you forget about all the lackluster parts you just watched and the outrageous Tomorrow We Work song jack that would piss off salty English blog commenters for years to come.

There’s all kinds of progressive stuff in here but if one trick got pushed, it’s the icepick. There are so many crazy ones. There’s the ridiculously long one that Dakota loses his mind trying (for most of you, this was probably the first time you realized that Dakota had a strict no swearing code of conduct). Then Nathan does a similarly long one but he hops a near-bar height rail to get into it. Corey seems like he was mostly focused on doing crazy backwards grinds down rails, including the ender, which still to this day remains the only gap to backwards rail I can think of.

In the end, the Levis video went on to be a success by almost any measurable metric; it was nominated for best video of the year in the 2009 NORA Cup (it was beaten by the Nike video), each section surely amassed an obscene number of online views, all the reviews both online and in print were favorable and it provided an overwhelming amount of publicity for Levis. I can pinpoint quite a few reasons why this was the case:

-It was in HD. It was one of the first BMX videos filmed in HD. HD is fancy. HD impresses people, even if they don’t actually posses the ability to differentiate between good riding and bad riding (a very large percentage of the BMX industry falls into this category). Now, HD seems normal, but at the time it was something to talk about.

-It was well put together. Again, Will is one of the best BMX videographers and he really did a great job here, both behind the camera and in front of his computer.

-It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. People were looking forward to the video so intently (as a result of the dozens of web videos hyping it up) that by the time it was released, people had already decided that it was going to be great, so then by the time they saw it, they didn’t feel the need to actually pick it apart and realize it wasn’t that great. They already knew it was great! They had decided that months before they saw it.

-It had one really good section. And that section was the ender. What was your reaction after you first saw the video? Lamenting how good the first few sections could have been? Or just freaking out over how good the last section was. I know when I first saw it, I lost it over the last section. I knew I had just witnessed greatness. It wasn’t until a few watches later that I realized the rest of the video was pretty weak. A lot of BMX videos over the years have avoided being panned thanks to a great ender section.

Almost all of you would have made it through 2012 without the Levis DVD even crossing your mind if I hadn’t sat down and wrote this review, but there it is. I waited 3 years to write this, so hopefully the statute of limitations of anyone getting all butt-hurt has elapsed and we can all discuss this intelligently after all this time.

Anyone care to argue that the opposing view? If so I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.

Previously: New Dan’s Comp Catalog Online| Red Bull Ride and Seek – Episode 2| Etnies Eastern European Vacation