photo: Tunney’s Flickr

Brian Tunney has been an integral part of BMX media since i can remember. From his loyal work at Dig Magazine to contributing to every outlet possible, including my favorite internet site growing up eWire. Tunney is now the TM of Eclat BMX and now a heavy contributor to ESPN’s new action sports site, as well as contributing to Dig still. I caught-up with Brian to ask him a couple questions about his new position and what the real meaning of the word beef is.

Q: So I know you are now working for www.expn.com doing their BMX stuff, how is everything working out?

A: It’s actually ESPN Action Sports since the beginning of the year. Things are good. I’m talking to Brad Simms over AIM and hoping the rain holds out for the night. I think I first contributed to EXPN in like 1999, during the first Internet boom. So there’s somewhat of a history there, and they want us to cover everything, from technology to riders to the industry and beyond. It’s a good place to be. We’re not doing the same news that every other BMX site is doing each day… A lot of BMX, including myself in the past, really ragged on ESPN coming in and not getting things right. But they’ve gotten a lot better. I don’t know if you’ve watched the street comps, but they’re awesome. They bring people like Van Homan and Corey Martinez into the X-Games spotlight, and they’re actually exciting to watch. Sean Sexton has an X-Games gold medal. How amazing is that! And there’s people like Jimmy Levan judging the thing too, with Steve Swope and Dennis McCoy commentating. It’s full-on BMX from start to finish. Yeah, ESPN made some organizational mistakes in 1995, but we’re way past that, and BMX is in pretty good hands now.

And if you look across the board at action sports, ESPN has some awesome coverage of everything.

Q: What happened with Dig? Are you still going to be contributing at all?

A: Nothing happened with Dig. It amazes me that everyone in the BMX world’s first thoughts upon hearing me going to work for ESPN is that I had some kind of falling out with Dig. That’s not how it was. I got an offer. I told Will about it. He said it sounded good and I’m still contributing to the magazine when I can. We’re all too close as friends for there to ever some kinda falling out.

Q: When is 990 magazine issue 2 going to come out, haha?

A: Probably never. Since the Dia-Compe 990 has been killed off by other brakes in the BMX market, we’d have to call it The Hombre now.

Q: I like how you are writing articles (i.e: The Animal Warehouse) that I would find in the Dig This! section of Dig. Do you have free reign of what’s going on over there?

A: Thanks for that! Well, not free reign exactly. I work alongside Cody York and a talented editorial staff that trusts our BMX judgement. We keep our ears to the ground and try to create in-depth content that hasn’t already been regurgitated all over the BMX Web already. We’re also bringing on new bloggers in the near future. So far, Mark Noble is doing product blogging, and we’ll have some more names to add pretty soon as well.

Q: And finally, are you and Russ from www.sprfls.blogspot.com really beefing?

A: For me, the term ‘beef’ is always going to be a noun, so I don’t really know what that means. I made one sarcastic joke back at the guy that pokes fun at BMX companies all day long and that’s all there is to it. To quote Demetri Martin, “Only people in glass houses should throw stones, provided they are trapped in the house with a stone.”