For many of us, extreme motorcycling is a uniquely American sport. Well MCN is out to prove the many of us wrong. The magazine Motor Cycle News was started over 50 years ago “from a one-room office on London’s Fleet Street.” The rag has grown to delight more than 1.5 billion readers during its half-century run. MCN is the modern, online arm of that weekly publication.
MCN is all about showcasing riders like Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini, Barry Sheene, Mick Doohan, and Carl Fogarty, people well-known all over the world, but perhaps not so well known in the good ol’ U.S of A. Is my chauvinism showing? It shouldn’t be. I’m waving my ignorance flag high, high, high, and MCN is here to educate me.
It’s a fully interactive site with sections for News, Sports, bike selling and trading, Videos and Community. I dig the videos most of all, but I’ve found I have to be careful. MCN streams two ways- Windows Media and Brightcove media player. Image resolution is much better in Windows Media, but I find I can’t move my screen around or I’ll literally lose the picture. The Brightcove player streams in Flash and is more stable than the Windows Media, but the resolution is not great at all.
All in all, if you like looking at motorcycles and hearing motorcycle reviews, MCN is a decent place to surf for rad vids of raucous motorbikes. In fact I wish the site had more videos to share. On the .com Dish! site surfin’ scale, I’d rate it a “T” for teens and above. Some of the tricks displayed (especially by the U.K’s 444 Club extreme bike team) you do NOT want your teen attempting on the blacktop. Come to think of it, you probably don’t want to let your spouse know you’re trying these tricks either. But man! Are they fun to watch!
