Kevin Kiraly laying down some serious moves during Simpel Session 2010 practice in Tallinn, Estonia.

I was browsing the news over on Vital and noticed that our good friend Ben Paul has a photo of himself featured on the main page today. Psyched! Ben Paul rules.

We wanted to hold off on letting this out until Rich made it official, but here’s what Jesse had to say about his decision to leave:

“I wanted to say thank you for all you have done for me over the past year.  I have loved riding for Verde.  I have been offered the opportunity to ride for Rich’s new company Stranger and since I have been close friends with Rich for a long time I would like to be able to be a part of what he is starting. Thank you so much for including me as part of the Verde team, I have appreciated your support.”

We wish Jesse and Stranger the best of luck.

I just got off the phone with Joe West over at The Hub in Springfield, MO. Joe let me know about this video tour of the shop that John Andrus put together last month. Pretty cool. We love coffee too!

Justin Kosman sent over this BNQT edit of Kiraly filmed at his local park in Livermore. Kosman calls out the lines, Kevin gets them done. The grind to nose to bar lines were on point, but personally I was more amazed by the 450 double-bar over the hip. Kevin seriously kills it.

Roman’s got a bike check on his Verde Cartel in the newest issue of Session BMX Mag. Kiraly’s got a few awesome photos in it as well. Check it out if you get a chance.

Issue #6 of Holeshot BMX Zine showed up in the mailbox at the office today. Yeagle’s got the center spread airing out of a tree. The photo was shot while Brian was out in Cali filming for Anthem II. It also showed up as ESPN’s “Photo of the Day” a few weeks back. Anthem II will be sick. Is anyone else as excited about it as we are???

A month of so ago we sent out a new Cartel Series kit for Lee Reynolds to build up. Lee was previously running a 2008 Verde Spectrum from our inaugural line of completes. He sent over this photo today just to say “thanks” for the hook-up. If you didn’t see it when it was first posted last month, be sure to check out Lee’s interview over on Defgrip. And… If you don’t know who Lee is, do your BMX history homework and watch this. Legend.

Update from Kiraly: “I have had really bad wrists for the past couple months so I had taken some time off from riding, but they finally started to feel really good again so over the past weekend my good friend Justin Kosman came up to shoot some photos of some tricks I was telling him that I wanted to film for my DEADLINE part. We went to some famous stair and rail spots in Sacramento and San Jose that I’ve been wanting to try some tricks on for a while, and ended up getting way more done then I ever expected. My friends Justin Burns and Nick Ince came along most of the days and both ended up with some really good clips and a few amazing photos. I was most psyched on getting two tricks done that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. I can’t give them away but they’ll definitely be in my Deadline part.”

Brian Yeagle. Turndown at Hazelwood. Found on Vinyl BMX. Photo by Jason Willis.