I met Chad from Powers Bikes right after landing in Richmond last August, and both he, and old friend/FBM founder Steve Crandall, have really helped me out in my time here, as I begin a new life, yet again. All memories and comments below are mine, and are no way endorsed by Chad Powers or Powers Bikes. Don't blame him for my weird stories. I thought his look at S&M Bikes through history was a good excuse to share some of my memories from the early years of S&M that I was around for.
Chad did this cool video following the history of S&M Bikes frames, so I thought I'd add a few thoughts and put it out in my channels. I first heard of Chris Moeller when working at BMX Action magazine in 1986. Gork came back from a magazine shoot one afternoon raving about some crazy local jumper kid in Huntington Beach. That kid was Chris, of course. Not long after, I rode with Gork to a race in Lake Elsinore, and we picked up Chris in H.B., and gave him a ride to the race. Chris basically didn't say a word the whole ride, as Gork and I talked the whole hour plus ride. I've never heard Chris be silent for that long since. I actually thought he was kind of shy at first. I was wrong.
The S&M Shield logo, and S&M riders Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, and John Paul Rogers, all first appeared in a video in my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend (at 33:50), in the P.O.W. House section. The Pros Of Westminster house ultimately was home to 22 BMXers, and was the first really well known rider house. It got to the point that people from the magazines would show up with three or four article ideas, and just take whoever was awake and least hungover out for photo shoots. With a stop at our house (I lived there later, in 92-93), they could really good find riders, and get a bunch of stuff done in one day.
In 1991, Chris called me up, wanting to do a video for S&M Bikes. He had this idea to take a porno video, show the bad acting scenes, and every time the porno video cut to sex, we'd cut to bike riding. That turned out to be too boring, there was just way too much bad acting in porno videos back then, so we did a variation on that idea. There is a John Holmes fight scene in the original version of the video, if you can find a copy. Chris and I worked together on that idea, which became Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer (Chris Moeller, Jimmy Levan, Alex Leech, Mission Trails) He bought an S-VHS VCR, and I hooked my camera to it, and edited it while sitting on the floor of the tiny living room in his "Winnebago" apartment on Alabama Street. I had my camera, his VCR, and a 40 of Mickey's. As I got drunker, the editing got worse. I passed out, fell over, and slept on the floor, and finished editing the next day.
The total budget for the video was about $250, including beer. I wound up living there afterwards, because logging the John Holmes footage in the original version of the video got me fired from my video duplication job. That story turned into a BMX industry urban legend, which had many variations, all much more interesting than the real story. It was best told by McGoo at his 30th birthday party.
I wound up Moeller's roommate, sidekick, and Designated Bag Victim (DBV), on and off, for about 4 1/2 years, across five houses, apartments, and a condo. In that time S&M Bikes went from living in the garage of the one bedroom, 8 foot wide, "Winnebago" apartment, to an actual, 1,200 square foot, industrial unit in Santa Ana, California.
The company name, S&M, came from the two founders' last names, Greg Scott and Chris Moeller.
They were both racers and serious jumpers in th emid 1980's, and got tired of their back dropouts bending all the time on bad landings. So they went to B&E, a machine and welding shop in Orange, CA, that built frames and handlebars for several small BMX companies. As 16 and 17-year-old kids, they asked if it was possible to weld two rear dropouts together, side by side, to make it double thick, and stronger. The guy said it was possible, so the two had bikes made for themselves.
Soon other riders started asking if they could buy frames with the thick dropouts, and S&M Bicycles was born. Chris and Greg had totally different ideas on how to run a company, and Chris wound up borrowing a bit of money from his grandpa, a hardcore, self-made businessman, a couple year later. Chris bought Greg out, about 1989, I think, changed the name to S&M Bikes, and got to work building the company you all know today.
Chris Moeller actually got the nickname "Mad Dog" from high school wrestling. He had a weird tooth that stuck out a bit, and when wrestling, it sometimes got hit, punctured his lip, and suddenly he'd be wrestling furiously while bleeding from the mouth. Another wrestler said he looked like a mad dog one day, and the nickname stuck, and followed him into BMX racing. So that's where the name "Mad Dog" comes from, which he named his first, custom frame after. I think it had a Holmes back end and a Dirt Bike front end. Maybe the other way around. Or maybe that hybrid was what Chris rode later on, after the Mad Dog was no longer being built.
Early on, as Chris and Greg started making small batches of bikes for other racer/jumpers, riders started asking for a longer bike. The guys came up with the Holmes, the extra long model, named after the hugely hung porn star John Holmes. Chris and Greg were teenagers, so pretty much everything had sexual overtones back in those early days. At one point, the head tube sticker was a rooster logo (figure it out). Chris used to joke for a while about making top tube stickers for the Holmes that were pinkish/purple-ish/tan, with veins sticking out. It's probably good that never happened.
I bought a 1991 Dirt Bike from Chris, and since I never washed (and barely ever worked on) my bike, I custom cut the stickers so it read S&M Dirty Bike. I rode it for about a month, and it always seemed to flex a little in the back end. I did a lot of 180 bunnyhops at speed, I was big on half Cabs and tricks like that, which were considered dumb in 1991 (mostly because I was the only guy who did them). Anyhow, Chris looked at the bike one night, and realized one of the chain stays hadn't been completely welded to the dropout. It was tack welded, and I broke the tack on a 180. I rode it like that for a month and never noticed. I'm bad at bike maintenance. Like HORRIBLE. My Dirty Bike got stolen when I parked it behind where I worked (near Oceanview High School) in 1994. So, if you ever see a chrome, S&M Dirty Bike, knockout the person riding it, and ship the bike back to me. I'll send you a Club White Bear sticker in return.
On one occasion, top racer Pistol Pete Loncarevich came by the Winnebago apartment to pick up a Holmes frame with no stickers. I stood there listening as Chris and Pete listed off the top two gates of AA pro racers at the time, 16 guys. Out of those 16, 12 or 14 were riding either an S&M Holmes or a Free Agent Limo, but with their sponsor's stickers on them. Basically none of the top pro racers were actually riding a frame made by the company that sponsored them. Even funnier, half of those guys were running a Holmes, a frame made by a company that was, literally, being run out of a garage at the time.
As S&M Bikes grew exponentially due to Chris Moeller's amazing sales skills, and his crazy jumping, and hilarious, often obscene, idiotic antics, the company got bigger. Initially, S&M was all about being the super strong jumpers bikes. But people started asking for a lighter, race only frame. Chris dodged the idea for quite a while, since that was the antithesis of what S&M was all about then. But he finally decided to do it. He named the bike line Challenger. Why? The S&M Challengers were meant to NOT be jumped, and were named after the ill fated Space Shuttle Challenger that exploded after takeoff in 1986. The joke was, "These are race bikes, if you take them off the ground they'll explode." A sick sense of humor was part of the S&M aura back then.
Every 4th of July in Huntington Beach in the1980's and 1990's, the police (which everyone hated) would pull over every bike they could, check for a bike license, check the serial number to see if it matched (or was stolen), and confiscate your bike if you didn't have a license. In 1994, Chris and I planned to ride downtown and check out the scene most of the day. I bought a sticker that said, "Jesus loves you... but I think you're an asshole." I put it on the bottom of my down tube, so when I flipped my bike to have them check the serial number, it would be visible. But Chris totally out did me. He put a new bike together the day before. Since he was a crazy jumper, AND he owned the company, Chris putting together a new bike was a regular thing, I didn't think much of it.
As we headed out to ride on the 4th, WITH our HB bike license stickers, Chris told me he'd made a special bike just for the 4th of July. He tipped it up so I could read the serial number. His serial number, actually stamped in the frame, said, "FUCK YOU." We couldn't wait to get pulled over (and likely beaten for our crazy sense of humor) that day. That was the only 4th of July EVER in HB where I rode my bike around and didn't get pulled over. We were bummed by that evening, but it's probably a good thing we didn't piss of the 5-0.
In 1993, S&M Bikes was getting wider known, but BMX was still struggling through the ramen days, the lagging effects of the early 90's economic recession, and the collapse of the BMX industry due to the rise of mountain bikes. So it was a surprise when Chris got contacted by Dee Snider, leader of 80's hair/glam band, Twisted Sister. That band was over, and Dee had a son who was totally into BMX racing. As I recall Chris hooked the kid up with a bike and a bunch of stuff. I never met Dee, but I was Chris' roommate then, so I'd hear what happened at night while all of us were eating dinner or watching TV(Jason "Timmy" Ball, and I think Neal Wood were roommates, too). I can't remember if Dee wanted to race, or if he just wanted a larger BMX bike to ride around at the races while his kid raced. But Chris and Dee came up with the idea of a cruiser named after Dee's band at the time, Widowmaker. So the fairly new S&M Bikes cruiser became the Widowmaker, and Dee ad-libbed a little on camera (I think Paul Green shot the footage), and wound up in the second S&M Bikes video I edited, 44 Something (at 8: 45 and 24:43).
Dee Snider also told Chris he wanted to work on his "street cred," to sort of re-define himself for the 1990's. That was the first time I heard anyone use the term "street cred," and it seemed a lame concept to us back then. Now I have more street cred than any of us, since that's where I live. (Insert White Bear jokes and put downs here).
So that's a few of my memories concerning the early days of S&M Bikes, I was around it from early 1991 to late 1995. In the video embedded, Chad's knowledge of frames goes way beyond that. I hope that helps you all get a little clue about the early days of one of the best known BMX companies out there. The S&M Bikes book is nearly done, I just saw that on Facebook earlier today. The release date is coming soon, they said.
I'll leave with a question New York rich socialite chick, magazine editor, and one time TV show host, Jane Pratt, asked Chris. It's at the end of his section in 44 Something (at 29:56).
Jane Pratt: "Chris, I want to know from you before we go. Do you have any aspirations of having a real job anytime soon? Or do you think you're just going to keep doing this for the rest of your life?
Chris Moeller: "Well... I think what I do is a job."
That was 1993...
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