The Gym, DIY BMX spot, East London

A bunch of us bmxers have been working on a DIY spot we call The Gym for the last five or so years. I figured some people might be interested to see it here. I'm not going to put the location publicly but it's not hard to find! We self-funded it from the outset and now have tonnes of people contributing money and time. Our latest driveway is running up a bill of thousands of £££.

It started as the tiniest wall ride that was pretty tight and steep, very difficult to ride. And now it's a full blown skatepark. Skaters, breakdancers, bladers and moped riders have begun to start using it, sometimes to our annoyance as you can imagine. But don't get me wrong, everyone is welcome if they respect the place and don't put it at risk.

Would be keen to hear if anyone on here is using it! And if anyone felt like contributing you'll find info on our @metalpegs instagram. You can watch some of the street jams we've put on over the last few years there too.

Here’s the first wallride and back when there was no graffiti:

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is this the spot next to M********? good work if so

Yeah that's the one! Next up we put some rails in and built this double lumpy thing that you can grind the back of. There’s angle iron on there now.

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Once that stuff had been there a while and we grew confidence in the spot, the next thing was a bit of a step up in size. We called it the sports bar. It’s quite steep and hard to ride again but that’s kinda how we like it. We started attracting various wooden ramps by this stage.

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Then we made this bank to sub box thing that was even steeper and harder than anything else before. Later we extended it with a quarter off the end. I was not particularly active at this point as I’d temporarily moved away so I’m stealing photos off others.

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I’d say this was a bit of a tipping point. Sometime around mid-late 2019 stuff just started coming. Lots of people brought and built wooden ramps. Rubbish started piling up and the graffiti was coming in hot. It was great the place was getting more use and attention but we didn’t necessarily foresee the effort required for upkeep. We don’t want the place to be a shit hole and risk losing it. The latest concrete creation is this monster driveway with a big ledge along the back and down the sides (wall under construction)

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So again, this is all funded by us so if anyone who uses it (or even if you don't :P) feels like contributing that would be amazing. You’ll find the info on our @metalpegs Instagram

looks good man!
wish i had my bike here (not that i was ever any good at ramps)

Dropped by this spot for the first time in ages a couple of weeks back. Great progress on the build. Full film crew descended on a Saturday morning and ruined our skate a bit though