Bike components company based in the New Jersey area started by
Ralph Sinisi and Dennis Stancavish. Ralph Sinisi, www.bmx-test.com, august 2003: I never wanted to start a company. I was on a road trip with Tag, Crandall, Scerbo, and Dossantos. We all got arrested in Georgia for riding at some college. Tag and I grinded down some new marble ledge at a campus and a professor got pissed and pressed charges on all of it. We were all flea bathed and put in orange suits and thrown in county jail. It was a real dehumanizing experience. We almost got stuck in there for a month. When we finally got someone to bail us out we decided to get the hell out of Georgia. We got to South Carolina and went camping. I bugged out all night about doing something new and different. Crandall fell asleep early as usual and Bob, George, Tag, and I walked around these crazy woods all night under a full moon. It was some battleground from the Civil War and was real crazy. We reached some old fort thing and I was so psyched, I decided to start a company. I realized that I could help out others, but nothing would be the way I saw bike riding unless I did it myself. I just wanted to do something all about the riding with no bullshit or image to sell stuff. Just good riding and good parts. The next day C called Sean "white head" Curran and told him to draw up these great pegs. We had been talking about it since Frank Lamb worked at this crazy high tech machine shop and we new we could make the fastest strongest pegs possible. We put a phone line in our best local shop, Intense Energy, and began shipping the pegs from there. I brought a whole bunch to a contest at Section 8 and just gave them out to all my friends. The rest is history. | ||
2001 | Animal video | |
2002 | Ralph Sinisi, bmx.transworld.net, january 2009: Animal was a word that was used by some of the crew we rode with to describe anything crazy. Grimaldo Durran and Rich Andreu would call any crazy steep rail an animal rail or some sick guy who would do the wildest stuff an animal. It is a real basic word that has a lot of meaning. I had never thought of even starting a company, then one day I realized there needed to be a company called Animal to represent what was going on over here. To me, Animal is taking things back to the basics of riding, and parts without any bullshit. I told Whiteboy the idea and he drew up the Griffin Logo. There was never a doubt from day one that we would use that logo and name to represent us. | |
2003 | Interviews de Ralph Sinisi dans le Soul #23 janvier 03 et dans le Dig #27. Edwin Delarosa signature shirt. | |
ANIMAL TEAM | ||
Mike Brennan 2008 Edwin Delarosa George DosSantos 2008 Lino Gonzalez 2008 Steve Hamilton march 2003 - .... Joe Kowalski Corey Martinez march 2003 - .... Mike Osso 2008 Dan Price december 2001 - .... Vinnie Sammon 2008 Bob Scerbo 2008 Ruel Smith 2008 Nigel Sylvester 2008 Jared Washington 2008 Tom White 2008 Tyrone Williams 2008 |