Mike Schmitt

BIO:

Mike Schmitt is a New York based professional FGFS rider, company owner, and content creator. Mike is collectively considered a pioneer of 26″ Freestyle riding, being first to produce a commercially available 26″ specific Fixed Gear frame through his company Grime Bikes.

Mike’s early beginnings started in Richmond, Virginia, where he was part of the RVA Fixed crew. Web edits in 2009 from the crew, including Julio Betancourt and Brandon Lannie, gained popularity among the community. Mike got sponsored by Leader through this footage and Tricktrack.org connections. The crew’s popularity also led to an RVA crew section in the critically acclaimed Bootleg Sessions V.4 DVD.

After this, Mike joined the GOrilla team alongside friend and soon to be business partner Edward Laforte. Mike was becoming well known throughout the community not just for his riding, which included sketchy pegless grinds and a lack of fear, but also his on camera personality. When he would fall, he would scream loud and obnoxiously, which would become a staple in a Mike Schmitt video. When a camera was pointed in his face, he’d think of something catchy and witty to say off the top of his head. At contests, although Mike wasn’t typically considered a contest rider, he would always be the loudest at the contests, often popping off for Ed Wonka and others during runs. He wasn’t just a popular rider, he was becoming an icon.

2010 marked the creation of Grime Bikes, as well as the opening of the Grime storefront in New York. Alongside Ed Wonka and Joey Krillz, Grime would go on to shape and pioneer the rising popularity of Fixed Gear Freestyle. Their first commercially available frame, the Yo-Mang!, was the first 26″ freestyle frame available to the public.

At this point, Mike had already been responsible for creating multiple instant FGFS classic videos, such as Soul-Glo, Welcome to Grime Street, Shredwell, and more. All of these instant classics without a solo video, but in late 2010, Mike released his first solo web edit as a welcome to the legendary WRAHW team. While this video was popular throughout the community, his MTS Fall Off 2011 video a year later went down as many people’s favorite web edits of all time.

As California started to become the epicenter for all things FGFS, Ed and Mike recognized this and moved operations to San Jose, CA in 2011. Here they would frequently team up with iMiNUSD and Wheel Talk members to create content, even recruiting multiple riders from the area onto the Grime Bikes team including Devon Lawson, Anthony Combs, Christian Hamrick, and Gabe Alcantara.

With a new team and location, filming for the legendary Shredwell 2 video was underway. While unaware at the time, this would be Grime’s last hurrah.

With the death of Grime in 2013, Turf rose from the ashes. This would be a solo project ran by only Mike this time around (Wonka would still ride for the company). The equally as famous Word is Bond video would launch the company and become a staple in the community with media and soft goods. The Turf team would include most of the same Grime riders, but this time around including Matt Reyes.

In 2014, Mike released his famous Who Is Mike Schmitt web edit. At this time, the Fixed Gear freestyle hype train had died out and content was beginning to slim down. Mike took this opportunity to go all in though, and through the Turf vimeo channel, continued to make and release videos. All of the videos released during this era (2014-2019) became staples to the dying scene.

In 2017, Mike was added to the Capone team and given a signature frame, the Cardinal. At this time, Schmitt made the move to Arizona and had a small group of killer riders to ride with consistently, including Matt Spencer, Congo, Elliott Milner, Ian Walker, more. During this time he would release his currently latest solo video to date: his Capone Cardinal Promo.

Signature Parts:

• Capone Cardinal frame

• Sadio MTS Rocky stem

• Burro MTS Mudflaps

Riding Status: Active

Born: September 5th

Region: New York, NY, United States

Nickname(s): MTS

Owner: Grime Bikes, Turf

Crew(s): Turf, Wheel Talk, WRAHW, RVA Fixed

Discipline(s): FGFS

Current Sponsor(s): n/a

Previous Sponsor(s): Capone, GOrilla, Sadio, Burro, Chrome Industries, Balhogs, Chari & Co, Bern