The Birth of the BMX Nollie

The skateboard sidewalk crack nollie.  This is where the BMX nollie began.  And why the hell do they call them "Chinese Nollies" now?  I learned this trick when it was brand new, on a skateboard, BEFORE snapped nollies were invented.  It was just the "nollie."  Damn skateboard revisionist history.  The Chinese people had nothing to do with this.  They're taking over the world, do we have to give them nollie street cred, too? 

Watching the X-Games BMX street last night, I was amazed at the technical grinds and combos all the riders were doing.  Garrett Byrnes was the favorite, as usual, and tore it up.  But he got edged out for the gold medal.  But really caught my attention were guys doing "nollies."  Nollies to grinds, nollies to barspins.  A nollie tailwhip is amazing on a bike, but watching them last night, I kept saying, "That's not a nollie."  I have a reason for saying this.  Here's a little BMX/skate tale from 1988, two years before Garrett Byrnes was born.

If you've read this blog before, you probably know that my BMX freestyle zine in NorCal landed me a job at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  That put me into the mix as an industry guy in the Southern California BMX and freestyle industries in August of 1986.  But I was an uptight dork, and while I got along with c-workers and roommates, Gork and Lew, and boss and Andy generally, I just wasn't the guy they really needed for that job.  I just didn't really click with them.  And I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  So I got laid off at the end of December 1986, and they soon hired Spike Jonze.  He did click.

I found a much better fit, work wise and life wise, at the American Freestyle Association.  For $5 an hour, I was hired to be the newsletter editor and photographer for the AFA.  Bob Morales, the owner of the AFA, was the consummate entrepreneur.  He designed magazine ads for several BMX companies, he ran the AFA, he was part owner of Mor Distributing, a BMX distribution business with Todd Huffman, and they put out the first Auburn bikes, while I worked there.  Bob's the guy who started Dyno bikes two or three years earlier, then sold it to GT.  Bob's the guy who made BMX freestyle a sport by promoting the first skatepark, and then flatland and quarterpipe contests.  He always had a million things going on, and on any given day, I had no idea what I'd be doing at work that day.  The pay sucked, but it was always an adventure working with Bob, and his sister Riki, the second funniest woman I've ever met. 

That job took me to Huntington Beach, a dirty, oil well infested, surf town on the north side of Orange County, California.  In 1987, the four block section of downtown H.B. was run down, sketchy, and fairly scary at night.  H.B. was the rowdy, crazy surf town where the huge "surf riot" happened at the OP Pro surf contest the year before.  To quote a well known surf shop owner (from Dogtown), "It was dirty, it was filthy... it was paradise."

I spent my weekends, when not helping Bob put on a local AFA contest, at the Huntington Beach Pier, where I hung out with freestyler skaters Pierre Andre, Don Brown, BMX freestyler Mike Sarrail, and whoever else showed up to ride and skate.  IN those days, ANYBODY might show up, ranging from Woody Itson or Martin Aparijo, to Natas Kapas.  While H.B. was only about 15 miles from Wizard Publications, it was a whole different world.  It was a true surf town with a whole slew of great young skaters as locals, Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton and 40 more rippers schralping the streets every night.  At a time when most skaters hated BMXers as a matter of principle, I was a BMX freestyler who hung out and rode with skaters more than bikers.  That influenced my riding a lot.

I soon found that doing a backside boneless on a launch ramp on my bike, or a sketchy wall ride, could break down the biker/skater barrier, and open up "skate only" spots to ride.  It was inevitable that I would start trying to do skate tricks on my bike.  And that's where the nollie came from.

Sometime in 1988, the local street skater posse rolled up to our spot at the pier, this place, the asphalt area below the pier, along the walk/bike path.  On that particular Saturday, all of them were learning a new trick called the nollie.  The idea was to do a nosewheelie on the board into a normal sidewalk crack, and right when you hit the crack, you unweight your front foot and the board pops up half an inch or so, giving you a half a second of levitation.  I can't remember if I had my board (one of Pierre's old freestyle boards he gave me), or if I borrowed a board, but I learned how to do nollies with the skaters that day.  The trick was called the nollie, because no one was doing nollies where you actually snap the nose of the board then.  The ollie, most of you know, is where you snap the tail of the board, and pop the skateboard off the ground.  The original nollie, the sidewalk crack variation, was a way of doing an ollie on the nose, or Nose OLLIE, hence the name.

 While we were hanging out and sessioning, it was pretty typical of me to try any new skate trick to see if it was possible on my bike.  So I started looking for things to do a nosewheelie into a bump.  After going over the bars a few times, I realized a standard curb was to high.  There were a couple smaller curbs 2" to 3" high, and much to my own, and the skaters, amazement, I could do nollies on them on my bike.  I would nosewheelie into into the curb, unweight the front end a little as my front tire bashed into the small curb, and pop up into the air,.  The bike would level out, and I landed on my back wheel most of the time.  That was the first, and only, trick I learned on a skateboard and then took it to my bike.

Here's how anal I got trying to figure out exactly what the best nollie bump was.  I actually measured sidewalk cracks and skateboard wheels, to figure out the ratio of crack height to wheel height, and then I figured out that ratio to a 20 inch bike tire.  It came out to 3 1/4" or something.  as I developed the nollie, I soon figured out that a burly speed bump was the ideal nollie bump, though small, rounded curbs and big, tree root sidewalk cracks or similar bumps would work as well.  I started doing nollies faster and faster, and it became a favorite street move of mine.

Here's the thing.  No one else did it.  I was a mediocre flatland rider in those days when street riding was just forming into an actual genre.  I was an industry guy, I knew all the top riders then, and rode with them at contest jam circles and stuff, like all of us did.  While I invented a handful of little tricks, I was not known as a great rider by any means.  And the weird little tricks I was learning, weren't even considered "tricks," largely because I was the guy doing them, and the top riders were doing completely different things.  Flatland turned into a Kevin Jones look-alike contest around that time, focused on variations and combos rolling on one wheel.  Meanwhile, I was riding with skaters and doing a bunch of bunnyhop type tricks.  By late 1988, I was doing half Cab's, clearing 8 feet or more, (freewheels give you pop), roll back bunnyhops for 6 to 8 feet, lookback half Cab's, footplant tailwhips, and trying bunnyhop tailwhips.  But I never could land a bunnyhop tailwhip clean, and Bill Nitschke made that one happen and named it the Whopper a couple of years later.  But all of these weird little things I was coming up with were so far outside what most riders were doing, that they were just little "moves," not even considered "tricks" back then.  That's why I didn't put any of those tricks into my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend.  If I was doing them, then they couldn't be that hard, because I was the guy doing them, and everybody knew I sucked.  That was my mentality back then.  Did I mention I had some self-esteem issues?  

Now, 30 years later, half Cab's (rollback to 180 bunnyhop), bunnyhop tailwhips, and nollies are foundational tricks for today's street riders, including the top contest riders in the X-Games last night.  But for a good 20 years, they were done only by a few people, but weren't even "tricks" at all.

The reason I decided to write this post, is because I'm the guy who invented the bike nollie, on that day in 1988.  And to me, a nollie is a nosewheelie into some kind of bump.  Otherwise, it's just a nosewheelie.  What I saw last night in the X-Games street event were nosewheelies off banks and nosewheelie tailwhips off a bank.  Not nollie tailwhips, in my way of thinking.  They're still insanely hard and amazing.  Just not nollies in the that I classify a nollie.

A nollie tailwhip was my big dream for the nollie back in the late 80's and early 90's.  I started trying nollie tailwhips, doing a nosewheelie into a speed bump and then doing a tailwhip out of the bonk, in late 1988 or 1989... before Bill Nitschke landed the Whopper.  I always ended up slamming my shins into the bike as it swung in front of me, and faceplanting.  I could never get nollie tailwhips either.  I did get nollie 180's down in about 2003, though.  That's a fun little trick.

Now I know, as a crusty, salty, old, HAS BEEN industry guy and NEVER WAS rider, I'm not going to get today's street rippers to stop calling nosewheelie tricks nollies.  It's their sport now.  The names change over time, just like the original skateboard nollie, the sidewalk crack version in the clip above, is now a "Chinese nollie" for some damn reason.  I also realize that BMX riders were doing nosewheelies, and nose bonks before I did my first bike nollie.  But the BMX street nollie is one trick I'm confident in calling my own.  I was doing them years before I saw anyone else do one.

In the 1980's, nearly every rider was inventing new tricks and variations.  Sometimes foundational tricks came from obscure riders.  Skyway pro and NorCal mad BMX scientist Oleg Konings invented the first scuff trick, which even most 1980's riders don't remember.  Me, I added nollies into the BMX street riding lexicon.  I think Keith Treanor will back me up on that one, even though I was doing them two full years before I met Keith.  I also invented the nollie hardflip on a skateboard, much to Hans Lingren's dismay, but that's another story for another day.

Before I go, I saw that stomped 900 that Dennis McCoy pulled at the X-Games yesterday.  Damn Dennis!  Aren't you a little bit old to be riding a little kid's bike?  I mean, are you just that desperate to avoid getting a real job?  You'll be 52 in a couple of months.  Did you go out and get a senior coffee at McDonald's afterwards to celebrate?  Are you going to make me write another Woody Vs. Dennis zine, 32 years after the first one, where where I said you should have beat Woody at the AFA finals?  WTF Dennis?  You've achieved BMX freestyle superhero legend status, you can stop making all of us old, fat, HAS BEEN's feel even worse about life now.  Dang.