Rone’s Wild Ride
BMX AS HIS CAREER: Tyrone Now
A fun day at Millennium Skate Park is one thing. Making a living riding BMX is a whole other story. Tyrone Williams has been trying, despite the odds, to support himself doing what he loves.
Tyrone gets paid to ride for teams, although he doesn’t make enough to support himself financially. And they’re not “teams” in the traditional sense; their members don’t compete as a group. As part of the Animal team, for instance, Tyrone gets a load of free clothes and bike parts and earns about $200 a month. “It’s a blessing to have money to ride,” Rone says. The sponsorships are his main source of income.
Animal Bikes is an underground parts company based in New Jersey that has been supporting Tyrone since it first came on the scene eight years ago and he was just a rider trying to get some discounted equipment. He would hang around the Animal warehouse in Clifton with his friends who were already sponsored, and eventually he won them over.
“Tyrone is a very natural rider,” said Ralph Sinisi, owner of Animal Bikes. “He has unbelievable control of his bike and is on the cutting edge with tricks.” Sinisi signed Tyrone because he’s charismatic and a team player—he represents the company, its products, and its image in a positive way.
“Tyrone brings something different to the table,” said Michael Osso, general manager at Animal. “His style is a little different than other people’s. He’s always grinding stuff, doing backwards tricks.”
Animal Bikes came up from being a small bike-parts company that just made pegs, a sprocket, and stickers to become a million-dollar-a-year firm that produces almost every part needed to build a bike besides a fork and frame. Tyrone’s signature set of $70 “Piff” handlebars, which he helps design, are a top seller on Animal’s line.
Rone is featured in many riding segments on Animal’s team videos. “Can I Eat” includes segments featuring Tyrone riding his pink-and-black bike through the streets of Manhattan, in Union Square, and all over the country—Chicago, Florida, California. That’s how BMX has expanded Tyrone’s horizons; he’s traveled to parts of the world he would never have gone to without riding a bike, including Mexico, Canada and England. “There are people in my neighborhood still to this day that have never left Brooklyn,” he reflects. “They’re 23 or 24 and they’ve never left the block. There’s so much more shit out there. You can be anywhere, and you can do anything.”
The sponsorships have paid off. Rone used all the money he saved to put down a rent deposit for the Division Street, and then spent late hours after work rebuilding the inside of the old storefront, replacing its decrepit walls with bricks that Rone himself shellacked and beams he and his partner cut and installed. Rone boasts that Dah Shop willx be the place where all BMX riders will come to get their bikes customized and talk, watch videos, and just chill. Says Rone, “If I can help kids coming into the scene, I’ll provide a spot for them.”
