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id still give her one
Burner will win obviously cos they were common as muck but a true great.
who gives a flying shite what non bmxers know?they don't, that's for sure.ripper is the one though!can't believe this forum has voted the raleigh burner as the most iconic bike of the 80's.fooking hell.the burner was popular for like 1 year. 1 YEAR. the 80's were 10 YEARS LONG. where the fook were yer?
you cannot compare the burner's 1 year of popularity to a porsche or a ferrarimost iconic bike of 1983 . . . maybe. at a push. to some.but the 80's? come on
lol i seei don't hate burners. they were were only really around for a year or so. the people who were into bmx got on something better. the people that weren't just left them in the shed.got to wonder if more people would have stuck with bmx if they had got something better to start with. not more expensive either. just a better designed bike. did more harm than good in my eyes. raleigh had the chance to make bmx huge in this country. and they blew it. big time. they were the household name, the name that the bike buying parents trusted, they had the years of bike building experience. they had the market cornered. the shops loaded with their stock. they didn't just drop the ball. they rammed a rusty spike through it then shoved it in a bucket of acid.
i never got a new burner, but spent 5 years swapping, upgrading, and restoring my way up the burner heirachy, red mk1, gold tuff burner, chrome burner etc....
burners may have only been about for a year round your end gra! and maybe in the shops for a year......But i tell you man, up here they were around for a lot longer that that....my thigh muscles still bear the scars..... they were the main bike on the estate that i lived on, i never saw a kuwahara, ripper, ta, even a goose.they were groundbreaking in terms of the bikes that the local kids had, looked way better, and performed way better than all the choppers, grifters, cowhorn bikes that were there contemporaries.i never got a new burner, but spent 5 years swapping, upgrading, and restoring my way up the burner heirachy, red mk1, gold tuff burner, chrome burner etc....I suppose it would be ok if your parents presented you with a nice new ripper on christmas morning, but mine would say "whats wrong with the one you got?"the argument of "well the geometery is all over the place" would have got me a slap!burners were icons for some of us.i restored a mk1 recently, and took it to the skatepark, and there was no way on gods earth i would even consider riding over the lip of the ramp....it felt like it would snap as as soon as the wheel went over the coping. but as a memory, of what got me into bmx, and got me into it again years later, unfortunately, has raleigh stamped all over it.
jesus.where i lived, 100's of kids got burners in 83by xmas 84 99% had stopped ridingthose that continued all upgraded to better bikesby "better" i am talking superfox, dp, rickman - that kind of betternot TA's though. there was the odd GT about. and maybe a haro or 2. oh and few gooses.i ended up with most of them in the gang i rode with in 85-87 it was dp's and fox's (there was a shop not too far away that had the MT range.)oh i did ride with a kid who had a mk2 burner, but he never had a mk1 burner. started off on the mk2.and another mate had an old DB silver streak. another riding buddy of mine had a zapper, then a rickmanafter 87 it was just me on my own really. i rode my fox until it bent/cracked, then a gen one haro. i rode with a skateboard gang on ghetto ramps.we were kinda influenced by what we saw in action bike.hence the alloy wheels. as that was what was in action bike, after 85.i always wanted a burner before i had a bmx, as they were in the shopsbut after riding a year, and reading the mags, no one wanted them. fook knows what happened to them all. there must be loads of them kicking around somewhere in stafford. in the late 80's they were literally worthless. the tuff's on them were fooked after a year's hard riding, and the bikes were too hoopty to use a base for anything worthwhilethe mk2 burner showed promise when they "went for it with chromo aero tubes" - we expected a raleigh TA. however they must have gone for it in the lead factory as the mk2's seemed even heavier than the mk1's.
on the other hand, to the masses, "streetdance" is probably an "iconic" hiphop track from the 80's. i guess i just can't see it from a layman's point of view.
