DIG ISSUE 01

DIG ISSUE 01

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Limited quantity of premium quality back issues of DIG.

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DIG issue 1 - October 1993
Cover: Ian Morris 360 Canadian nosepick at Radlands, Northampton, UK - Photo by Percy Dean 
Inside: Taj Mihelich has his first ever interview. S&M and Redline tests & more.

"The first cover shot was of Ian Morris doing a Canadian nosepick on the 'outside' ramp of the now defunct Radlands in Northampton. It's brilliant, abstract nature looked like a purposeful statement of intent for Dig to always give a different view of BMX. In actual fact, it was just pure fluke. The photo was taken by Percy Dean who's a skateboarder. He is also now the editor of Document. He didn't really have much knowledge of bike tricks, he was just standing too close to the coping, so when Ian's backwheel swung round it hit Percy's camera sending it flying to the floor and accidently firing the shutter.

Taj Mihelich had his first interview in this issue. You could tell even back then that he had a powerful style that was going to stand the test of time.

Video grabs were cutting edge technology and issue #1 was full of them. At the time, they served a purpose, but looking back, some of them are pretty poor.
The inside cover featured Joe Sandland doing a front flip. Joe and the front flip soon disappeared. It's taken another 49 issues for the front flip to rear it's head back into the world of BMX. And I'm not sure where Joe is.

I remember driving in a van and a crammed full estate car to a printers and loading so many boxes of the mag into any possible space. I was amazed at the weight. For weeks, my house was used to store some of these boxes. The smell of the fresh print lingered for some time. My Mum thretened to burn them on a daily basis and I used boxes of mags as a speaker stand in my bedroom, just to keep some of them out of the hallway.
Believe it or not there were bike tests in this issue. They were kinda started for BMX Now Mag (what? I hear you say). One of the bikes was a Redline which was completely smashed. We knew the distributor was pissed about this, so we never ran photos of the bike in bits.

Dig issue #1 featured the Hoffman BS Comp in Oklahoma. This was with Mat's 20 foot high ramp. At the time, the photos of him doing a 25 foot air had just been released. It just seemed so stupid, kinda like one of his jokes. I was pretty scared watching Steve Swope an a motorbike dragging Mat on a tow rope at considerable speed towards the ramp. But he really did go 25 foot into the air...

Chris Moeller wrote a story about his trip to England for a Backyard Jam. It was way bigger than any of his infamous dog bites articles from Go: The Rider's Manual."

– Nick Coombes (R.I.P.), DIG #50. January, 2006