(BMX Freestyle White) Boys in the Hood

Car pulls up, who can it be, a Euro white Beemer rollin' kilo G...  Here's Bob Morales in 1985, in the red AFA T-shirt.  Yeah, it has "Alpine" A's.

After a my few months at Wizard Publications in 1986, I got hired by Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association to become editor of the AFA newsletter in January of 1987.  Anyone who knew Bob Morales in those days, knows he always had about 17 irons in the fire, he was full of ideas, willing to work long hours, and with a serious tendency to over-extend himself, and anyone around him.  In other words, Bob Morales was a true entrepreneur.  So I wound up doing a little bit of everything at the AFA, as well as writing, shooting photos, editing, and laying out the newsletter.

On one sunny Southern California weekday, I rode with Bob over to the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome, originally built for the1984 Olympics, and the site of so many classic freestyle contests in the 1980's.  It was the summer or fall of 1987, I think.  Things kinds of blend together after all these years.  We were checking on some things for the Guiness world records event there, that we were hired to help put on.  Or maybe it was in preparation for the AFA Masters Finals that fall.  One of those.  We met with a person from the velodrome, and I think another promoter.  Bob had bought a 30 foot long box trailer, the old dragster trailer owned by Gary Turner at GT, and we wanted to make sure it would fit down the access ramp, because that's how we carried all our equipment around.  After the meeting, taking some measurements with a tape measure, and figuring things out, we headed back to Huntington Beach.

At the time, Bob Morales was a 23-year-old entrepreneur, graphic designer, and contest promoter.  I was a 20-year-old freestyler/newsletter editor.  Bob liked to look the part of the successful entrepreneur, in a SoCal way, and he owned what appeared to be a red, 1984, Porsche 911, and a late model, white, BMW 630.  The Porsche, if I recall correctly, was a 1969 912 chassis, with a 1970-something 914 engine, and the 1984, red 911 body.  It looked really cool, but it didn't have the power or handling of a true 1984 911.

The BMW was actually a 633csi, a European only model, as I recall, that somehow made its way to America, and Bob had it painted "Euro style," white with black trim.  When they were going to paint it, Bob asked if the paint shop could make the paint "any more whiter."  I know, that kind of sounds like a line out of the Spinal Tap movie, but he wanted it to stand out.  As it turned out, the painters said they normally added a bit of blue to white paint jobs, to give it a deeper hue or whatever.  Bob told them to leave all the blue out.  So Bob ended up with an ultra white Beemer, that made any other white car look dirty when he pulled up next to it.  In addition, there was no chrome, everything on the trim was painted black.  It was a really sharp looking BMW, no doubt about it.

Bob, with his wheeling/dealing skills, claimed to only have about $6,000 into each car, yet they both looked like they were $30,000 cars in 1987, maybe $60,000 cars today.  So Bob was driving the BMW that day as we headed back to the office from the Velodrome.

Most of you reading this have been to one or more of the Velodrome contests back then, and you probably remember that the Cal State Dominguez campus, where the Velodrome is located, is kinda in the hood.  It's in Carson.  Instead of heading west, and catching the 110 freeway nearby, Bob headed east to catch the 710, through Compton.  Yeah, everyone knows about Compton, thanks to Ice Cube, Dr, Dre and NWA.

It was a beautiful day, we were cruising along at normal speed on a big surface street.  Like usual, Bob and I were throwing cool ideas back and forth about something or other.  We were both full of lots of ideas, and always talking about a cool contest or bike idea, a cool scene for a movie, or something else creative.  Just two young white boys, in a bitchin' 6-series BMW, rolling through Compton, completely engrossed in our conversation.  No big deal, right?

Suddenly Bob noticed flashing red lights behind us, and tried to figure out what he was doing wrong.  He wasn't speeding, and he hadn't blown through a light or anything.  We kept talking, and hoping he wouldn't get a ticket.  Bob turned off into a large, paved lot, which was overgrown with grass around the edges.  We were still rambling about some cool idea when the cop walked up, after taking a long time.  Bob looked into the rearview mirror and went, "Oh shit."  I looked around.  In addition to the cop who pulled us over, there were four or five other police cars in a half circle around us.  Every one of them had the driver's door open, and there was a police officer squatting behind each door, guns drawn and pointed at us.

Shit.

Bob talked to the officer that approached, and he had come to the conclusion that two young white guys, in a sweet 6-series Beemer, in Compton, must either be buying drugs, we just stole the car, or we were transporting a whole bunch of drugs.  Bob told him the story of why we were there, and, in typical police fashion, the cop didn't believe a word of it.  OK, I really can't blame him.  There were no cell phones then, but Bob had a car phone in the Beemer, and those were like $1,500 then, which didn't look good.  But he couldn't call one of the people we just met at the Velodrome, like you would today.  It took a good ten minutes, and either a newsletter or a magazine laying on the floor by me, to actually make the officer believe we really were BMX bike contest promoters, and we just had a meeting at the Velodrome, and Bob was a young entrepreneur and the car wasn't really as expensive as it looked.

The officer looked all around the car, checked the trunk, and I think he had someone at their station call the Velodrome and confirm that there was a BMX bike contest happening there in a week or two.  As the tension died, the other cops put their guns down, and a couple drove off.  Eventually, the officer let us go, and gave Bob a strong warning not to drive that car through Compton, because it would be a huge target for a carjacking by local thugs.

We continued on the same way, since we were already close to the 710 freeway.  I'm pretty sure we took the longer route, up the 110 from then on.