Looking back now, it’s incredibly nostalgic, the sound of a metal peg as it locks in a toothpick on ramp that looks both wet and dry, the distant in-audible sounds of an answer machine playing over a track because this was – back then – the best way to get a message to someone. What I really want to say (in 2024) though is, what happened to documenting just anything, why did a trick need to be pulled, who cares if flatland followed trails, fuck it – squeeze a rail in. No order, no format, just life being filmed.
It’s hard for me to explain what Baco is or was, I was only about 14 when I first managed to get hold of a copy, I don’t even know which Baco it was, I just knew I liked it. I would always fast forward flatland sections in the past because I found them boring (sorry flatlanders, but let’s be honest I wasn’t the only one). With Baco though, it was like a constant flow of things, it felt like a mix of music that blended from thing to another, I use the word “thing”, because I couldn’t say part or section, that wouldn’t be appropriate. It felt like a blur of - things. Maybe Baco was just ahead of its time or maybe there was just no fucks given to how a video should be, format was a not word that Baco cared for.
Sometime around my 16th birthday my parents bought a hi 8 camcorder, and all I wanted to do was film my friends being idiots because I was completely and utterly inspired by Baco. I look back now and not one part of me wanted to make a serious BMX video, not one part of me thought that my parents’ camcorder was a tool to create greatness. It was in fact a tool to film other tools with.
Baco is though, a product of its time. People in a certain era of their lives, just riding BMX and being idiots. I don't think, that at 14 years of age I could have asked for anything better.
Get the Props Bako Designs Box Set here.
-By Paul Robinson