As soon as sixth grade is out, Alex Santacroce drops his black Air Jordan backpack in the house, grabs a banana (good for hand cramps) from the kitchen, and mounts his custom-built SE Savage Flyer bike. He can appear almost solemn as he coasts down the driveway, front wheel aloft, gently shifting his body to keep the handlebars straight. Riding is absolutely mind-clearing for him. He says sometimes he’ll try a trick 1,000 times before it’s perfect.
To some residents and the Haverford, Pennsylvania, police, Santacroce, 11, is the neighborhood’s primary menace. It is not only that he and his siblings zoom around Marilyn Park on bicycles and electric bikes, practicing daredevil tricks in public places and annoying the grown-ups who live nearby.
It is also that under the professional moniker Oneway Lilman, Santacroce has successfully monetized being a kid doing crazy feats on your bike and annoying your neighbors. He has 1.4 million followers on YouTube and earned roughly $100,000 last year through sponsorships and advertising, according to his parents. Often he rides around in a Louis Vuitton half-shell helmet emblazoned with his name; packages of free gear from sneaker and apparel companies pile up at home.
Lilman’s internet-fueled fame has added a modern twist to the classic suburban struggle over common space and how kids ought to behave. In private Facebook groups, some neighbors have referred to the family as “classless” and wondered whether the children riding bikes in the street are “feral.” The family has repeatedly ended up in court; Alexander Santacroce, Lilman’s father, pleaded guilty in 2021 to “allowing a child to illegally operate a bicycle.”
Haverford Township Police Chief John Viola declined to comment for this article, saying, “We would prefer not to give this family any more press coverage.”
The situation has recently been escalating. In response to the latest round of police involvement, Santacroce planted a sign in his front yard that said “My Neighbor is a Karen,” which Philadelphia Magazine first reported.
On a recent afternoon, Lilman and his siblings practiced riding electric bikes up a small ramp at the foot of the driveway. All four bike, and all, except the 5-year-old, post content online, though Lilman’s career has taken off most prominently. “Cause Dad pays the most attention to him,” 14-year-old Alexa muttered in explanation. (Her mother disagreed.)
The grass was patchy in places because of the nonstop tires.
“I tried to explain this is what my kids do. You know, this is his job,” said Michelle Santacroce, Lilman’s mother. “I’m never going to stop my kids from doing something they love.”
‘A sponsor’s dream’
Four-foot-nine with a smattering of freckles, Alex “Lilman” Santacroce is a true disciple of “bike life” — the practice of popping wheelies and performing stunts on bicycles, sometimes while weaving through traffic on crowded city streets.
“It takes pain away,” he explained. “You’re not thinking about anything except you on the bike.”
Like any aspiring kid-biker-influencer, Lilman studied bike life icons on YouTube and Instagram to learn their tricks, and with his dad’s help, he started posting his own footage online. For his 8th birthday, his parents organized a “rideout,” where local kids gathered to do stunts on their bikes at Havertown Middle School. Some older kids joined and began swerving in traffic, Michelle said, but overall it was an idyllic day. After the ride, the Santacroces served cake to friends and strangers in their backyard.
Looking back now, that was a turning point.
“I think once we did that, we were kind of labeled as a problem. As if we had bad intent doing that,” Michelle said.
At the same time, Lilman’s devotion was starting to pay off. When he was 9, the BMX company SE invited him to join an elite nationwide crew of 15 riders as an officially sponsored biker. Like the older influencers he idolized, he would now have a monthly salary, a steady stream of free, expensive SE bikes, and the opportunity to travel the world on all-expenses-paid bike trips.
In a video SE posted on their website, 9-year-old Lilman, with a buzz cut and euphoric grin, accepted the invitation to join the team, tears sliding down his cheeks.
“He’s just a really popular, nice kid and he’s good on the bike. He’s a sponsor’s dream,” Todd Lyons, director of SE Bikes, said in a phone conversation.
So Lilman was a third grader with a job: to create content on a bike.
It was a new world for his parents. Though they both grew up biking in West Philly, Alexander works as a plumber, and Michelle works as a paralegal.
They also manage their child’s booming online brand, while navigating the sometimes challenging underbelly of online fame. This year Lilman has been consistently taunted by older kids in school, Michelle said.
In Havertown, some residents became increasingly frustrated and worried about kids doing stunts in the street. The family lives in an upscale neighborhood of large houses and cul-de-sacs that abuts the Merion Golf Club.
“I was just on Garlor [Drive] and witnessed something disturbing,” one resident wrote in a neighborhood Facebook group in March 2021. “A bunch of kids (preteens/teens) doing wheelies… on their bikes AS CARS ARE SHARING THAT EXACT STRETCH OF ROAD… Someone WILL lose control of those bikes on one back wheel at some point and some poor driver is going to have that guilt upon them when one of those kids hits their car and is injured or worse.”
The Santacroces said the post was not referring to their children. Police got involved the next month, when Alexander Santacroce received a citation for “allowing a child to illegally operate a bicycle.” He said it stemmed from then-12-year-old Alexa standing up on the seat of her bike, a trick called surfing. Pennsylvania bike law states that “a person operating a bicycle shall not ride other than astride a permanent and regular seat attached thereto.”
Bike life has its roots in low-income communities of color that have few recreation facilities, according to scholars, and in Philly and across the country, it has long bedeviled police and some residents who see it as a dangerous nuisance. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has made cracking down on illegal ATV and dirt bike riders a key priority, seeing it as a quality-of-life issue.
In the suburbs, Santacroce pleaded guilty, the kids kept biking, and Lilman continued to grow online.
‘This is why you wear a helmet’
For the most part, Lilman’s YouTube videos are not slickly produced or edited, instead offering meandering documentation of his life. In one of his most popular videos, he’s seat-belted in the back of the family car, next to his two younger siblings.
“What is up, YouTube?” he says. “So I’m about to ask my mom, can I go to the bank, get some money out, some YouTube money out, and buy a 150 today?”
The video then pans to his younger sister, who chatters briefly and unrelatedly about swimming in the family pool. After Michelle says yes to Lilman’s request to buy a dirt bike, “only cause it’s your birthday,” the family visits Citizens Bank and Lilman withdraws $3,800 in cash while his dad films. To fans, his life is an example of potential unlocked.
“Any thing is possible who cares if someone disagrees with your vision, keep grinding,” a commenter wrote.
The annoyance of the neighbors has only fueled Lilman’s content creation. In a recent reel posted to his Instagram account, which his dad manages, Lilman pops a wheelie on a pedal bike down a carless street during golden hour. The front wheel rolls away mid-ride, and a woman walking in the street says, “That’s dangerous when people are walking.” The post, captioned “We Found KAREN
,” generated tens of thousands of likes and dozens of gleeful anti-Karen comments.
The appearance of danger and breaking the rules is sometimes good for the brand, Santacroce said. But of course, there is real danger as well. Alexa got in a serious accident in the fall, hitting a raised drainage sewer while zipping downhill. She flipped over her handlebars and face-planted before her bike crashed on top of her. She broke her leg and two bones in her foot, and ultimately required a bone graft and reconstructive surgery this spring to repair it.
The kids have braved smaller injuries, too. In a YouTube video titled “Bike Life Rideout Gone Wrong. Lil Bro Gets Staples!!,” Santacroce documents the aftermath of a crash involving Lilman’s brother, Dante, who is 9. At the end of a rideout, another biker crashed into him, and the handlebars of the bike collided with his head.
“This is why you wear a helmet, guys,” Santacroce said, zooming in on a small bloody gash on his son’s head. The family proceeded to an urgent care clinic.
“You probably don’t get many people YouTubing while you’re in here, right?” Santacroce asked from behind the camera, as a health-care worker stapled Dante’s cut closed.
To both Alexa and Lilman, such injuries are simply part of bike life, which has brought them pure joy often enough that the injuries feel worth it.
“When you’re riding a bike, the first thing you’re worried about when you fall is your bike,” Lilman said.
“Yeah, like when I crashed, it was like, ‘But what about my bike? Is my bike alright?’” Alexa said. “When can I ride my bike?”
Another citation
In April, police mailed another citation to the Santacroce home, this one for “driving an unregistered vehicle.” The police citation noted a red electric-powered bike called a Razor Dirt Rocket. The Santacroces say the vehicle in question, which they said the police examined carefully in a visit to their home, does not require registration. Afterward, Santacroce planted the “My Neighbor is a Karen” flag, and Michelle began getting calls from friends and coworkers: I heard there was a police raid on your street.
She was upset by what seemed to her an outsize, un-neighborly reaction.
“My husband does all their plumbing up there,” she said, gesturing to the part of the neighborhood where she guessed the police calls came from.
Haverford police told Philly Mag they have responded to at least six incidents involving Oneway Lilman specifically, and that while they did not mind kids riding bikes in the neighborhood, they were troubled by the safety aspect.
“What I’m actually concerned about is having to show up at somebody’s house to tell them that their kid got killed while doing stupid things on a bike,” Joe Hagan, Haverford deputy chief of police, told Philly Mag. “We take it seriously because of that. And because the people who move here do so because they want to live in a quiet neighborhood.”
For now, the Santacroce kids are largely limited to the yard and driveway — unless they are filming YouTube content, for which they go to the neighborhood roads with a parent. Alexa has half a mind to go to the police station and try to hash out the problem herself.
“We won’t ride reckless. We will listen to whatever you guys tell us”, she said. “We just want to be able to feel the freedom and enjoyment again.”
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