The Curious Case of Waldo Klinghoffer

Mike "Coverage" Loveridge, a few short months before the single appearance of Waldo Klinghoffer.

I worked for the American Freestyle Association, for nearly all of 1987.  That was the job I found after I got laid off at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  I went from having my own little office in a good sized warehouse, with walls covered with Windy Osborn shot and printed 8" X 10" photos, to sharing a small industrial unit office with AFA founder Bob Morales, and his sister Riki.  Riki, by the way, is the second funniest woman I've ever met, she was great to work with.   Dot Jones, who many of you may know as Coach Bieste on Glee, is the funniest.  I met her working on the lame TV show Knights and Warriors, where she played Lady Battleaxe.  You want an epic night out, get Dot and Riki in the same place at a bar or club, with some drinks flowing, that would be epic hilarity.  Anyhow... I digress.

Officially, I was the newsletter editor and photographer at the AFA.  In reality, we all did everything, whatever needed done.  One day Bob showed me a new membership application that came in.  "Hey, check it out, we got some guy signing up named Waldo Klinghoffer.  Who'd name their kid that?"  I didn't believe him, and Bob showed me the application.  Later we had a woman named Amanda come to work at the AFA, and a woman a bit older than us kids, Carmella.  When it came time to send out the newsletters, it was Riki, me, Amanda, and Carmella at a table folding the newsletters in half, stapling them, and putting on the mailing label.  Waldo Klinghoffer was the weirdest name on our membership list list, and whoever got his mailing label to put on the newsletter to send out would say, "Hey, I got Waldo."  We waited for the kid with the really unfortunate name to actually show up at a contest. 

Finally, at the 1987 AFA Freestyle Masters at the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome, Waldo signed up for the comp.  We'd been waiting to see who this kid was.

Meanwhile, in 1986-87, blond haired rider and self-promoter Mike "Coverage" Loveridge was making a splash. He was a , good, solid flatland rider, and hooked up a sponsorship with Kuwahara the company largely known for making the E.T. movie BMX bike.  Mike rocked their green and yellow uniform at contests, but even more so at photo shoots.  Only Fred Blood eclipsed Mike at talking to the magazine workers, schmoozing up for photo shoots, and volunteering for anything that would get him a write-up or photo in one of the BMX magazines.  The rest of us, who didn't work near as hard at self-promotion, gave Mike a lot of crap, mostly behind his back.

When we actually wound up in a jam circle, or at the beach, riding with Mike, he was cool to hang with and a legit rider.  But we got sick of seeing him 12 times in every magazine.  Mike was also a Mormon, so besides, "Coverage," his alternative nickname was "The Stormin' Mormon."  Most of us who wanted to get magazine coverage, but didn't want to spend a ton of time shamelessly promoting ourselves, were kind of jealous, to be honest.  BMX freestyle in the 80's was a sponsorship game, and the way to promote your sponsor's goods were to get photos or write-ups in the magazines, or to tour. 

Mike Loveridge excelled at both.  He got all kinds of magazine coverage, an amount way beyond his freestyle skill level.  But that's how coverage works.  Magazines call people they can count on to show up, work with the photographer, and make good photos. Mike did that.  Mike also managed to put together a Kuwahara summer tour, with little or no funding from the company.  He even asked me, "Hey, you want to go on tour?  Do you have a car?"  It literally was a D.I.Y. tour, with a pick-up pulling a ramp trailer, I think, and four or five guys driving their own cars filled with other riders and bikes.  Kids across the country said they were some of the most fun shows, because there were about 15 or 20 riders in each show, not all sponsored by Kuwie.  They were low key, spontaneous, crazy, and fun shows.

What none of us realized until much later was the Mike Loveridge, the Mormon, was getting ready to go on his two year Mormon mission.  He was jamming in as much freestyle as he could in, and getting all the photos and write-ups he could, before he simply walked away from freestyle for two years to do his mission.  The Mission is a standard thing most (maybe all) serious Mormon young men do.  You've probably seen the guys in white shirts and ties on mountain bikes, those are the Mormon missionaries.  They spend two years riding mountain bikes in a city somewhere in the world, talking to strangers, and promoting their religion.  They actually have to pay their own expenses, too. I'm not a fan of the religion, but the majority of Mormons I've known, and Idaho was filled with them, were good people.  In any case, their mission is a big commitment for a young person.

It turned out, and none of us knew this until the last minute, that Mike was leaving for his mission right after the 1987 AFA finals.  As one last fun freestyle blast, Mike created the alternative ego, Waldo Klinghoffer, months earlier.  Waldo laid low, until the finals.  Nobody knew he "existed," except Mike Loveridge, and us AFA staffers who kept wondering about the kid with the weird name.
 At the finals, Mike dressed up kind of weird, I think, and enlisted about 40 of us to help him with his crazy, funny, contest routine.  Somebody ran up to me a few minutes before his run, as word was getting around about this weird thing happening.  "Mike needs us all to run out and lay down for his Waldo Klinghoffer run, he's going to bunnyhop us."  Somebody told me frantically.  I think it was one of his Kuwahara teammates, maybe Nathan Shimizu or Ron Camero, I can't remember.

Even though I was working at the contest for the AFA, I joined in the fun.  At the cue a bunch of us ran out and laid down in the contest area, so Mike could bunnyhop us.  I thought it was going to be like the classic photo of Mike Buff bunnyhopping 15 people.  But like 35 of us ran out and laid down in front of him.  It was hilarious, we were all laughing our asses off.  What Mike sized up the line of us, like 50 feet long, and pedaled like crazy, like he planned to try and hop this huge people gap.  It all happened really fast.  What no one told me was that we were supposed to jump up, out of the way, as he rode towards us.  I just laid there, and he damn near ran over me as I jumped up at the last second, with other guys running every direction.  He did a bunch of weird tricks, I can't even remember what.  But we were all hootin', hollerin' an laughing through it all.

For a couple of years, as Mike Coverage went crazy in the BMX freestyle world, we gave him a hard time about trying to get into every photo shoot, get written up, and we talked some smack.  But when it came down to it, Mike was a good guy, he got a lot of new kids stoked to ride at his shows (many called the AFA to tell us and sign up), and a bunch of us were down to help him do this last, crazy, Waldo Klinghoffer wild ride, before he walked away and off to his mission.

That run is long forgotten by most.  But it was funny, it was goofy, we were all laughing through the whole thing, and it was just plain freestyle fun.  So that's the curious case of Waldo Klinghoffer.

The run of Mike embedded above shows a few of his solid tricks, but is definitely not his best run ever, he sketches out a bit.  But it's the only full run I could find on You Tube.  If you have some old magazines from 1986-87, you'll find a ton of picks of Mike Loveridge in them.  Anybody who reads this and gets motivated to find and post a few, that would be cool.