No ramps, no shops and few riders. Some will find any excuse they can to give up on their BMX scene, but starting in 2005 a group of riders chose to do something. Importing BMX parts into the region, hosting jams for 8 years running, filming across Europe no matter the work it took to plan the trips, and premiering two full length DVD's. This is the story of the Shajba crew and the growth of the BMX scene Slovenia as told by Benno Siftar...
Shajba is the name of a group of BMX riders and friends. We all come from Slovenia or southern part of Austria. At the beginning we were 4 teenagers from Slovenian city called Murska Sobota. We started off by selling parts to riders in Slovenia, which we bought in Budapest, Hungary in 2005/2006. Back then there were no BMX shops in Slovenia or in other close regions. With that small amount of money that we'd earned, we wanted to buy wood or whatnot to build our own ramps. We wanted to ride transitions and "normal" stuff like spines and box jump like the dudes we'd seen in BMX videos.
We organized BMX jams to bring other riders to our region and in that way try to help our little BMX scene to grow. Our first BMX jam was back in 2008 and we'll be celebrating its 8th anniversary this year. We also got a bunch of cool dudes together who share the love of riding, traveling and filming to help us share and spread this dope and contagious thing called BMX.
2014 we put out our second DVD called 'Conquered Joy' and had premieres around Slovenia, Austria and in Belgrade, Serbia, which was awesome.
The Conquered Joy Mix is full of those clips with some other in the mix. We were filming in different cities/countries e.g. Malaga, Barca, Vienna, Ljubljana, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Croatia. It took us approximately 2 to 3 years to put it out just because we all have work/school obligations and we live in different cities/countries. It usually takes quite a lot of time and planning to meet and film.
Nowadays we have our own blog
shajbaco.com where we try to post a lot of stuff related to our scene and other random shit. We are working on new t-shirts, starting to prepare for our "urban festival" that we`re organizing. It`s called Reflektor and it includes Shajba BMX jam, art shows, concerts and pop-up brunch. All in all trying to establish ourselves as a small lifestyle/BMX brand.
