How I became interested in Creative Scenes

Courtesy of Shannon Gillette, a Boise BMX local who now works for USABMX (BMX sanctioning body), this video is racing at the Fort Boise BMX track, in 1983, I think.  I know it says 1984, but I won a contest to help redesign the track in late 1983, and we rebuilt it for 1984.  This is the old jump set-up, before the re-build.  In any case, this is the spot where the idea of a "scene" that catapults one group ahead of another, first hit me.

On a sunny, brisk, October day in 1982, all the BMX riders from Blue Valley, the unofficial name of our trailer park outside of Boise, packed into my dad's silver Ford van.  With about 8-10 kids and bikes packed in, I drove us all to the Fort Boise BMX track, on the north end of downtown Boise, nestled into the edge of the foothills.  It was the very first BMX bike race, ever, for most of us.  The weekend before, after someone discovered there was a BMX track in Boise, four of us guys and three BMX bikes packed into Scott's mom's Ford Pinto, which was not a hatchback, and went to the race.  Scott, James, and Rocky (I think) raced, while I coached and checked out the scene.  They all came home with trophies, and we told the rest of our trailer park posse about the BMX scene at a real track.  Sure, the track was built inside of an abandoned sewage pond, but we didn't know or care then.  It was REAL BMX. 

Here's the thing, most of our bikes were pieces of crap.  I had a "Kmart special" bike frame, a Sentinal Exploder GX, with some decent parts on it.  James, the fastest among us, had a Huffy frame, the "official" cheap, piece of crap bike of the 1980''s.  But over the summer of 1982, BMX had become our thing in our isolated trailer park, in the desert (technically sagebrush steppe) a few miles outside of town.  Every evening after dinner, as the blazing hot summer temperatures cooled, all of us high school and junior high kids came out and some kind of sport took place.  When I moved there in early June, 1982, it was usually a football, basketball, or whiffle ball game.  Sometimes we just argued and threw rocks at each other (it was a trailer park.)  But often we wound up at these little jumps on the edge of the park, that some motorcycle rider had built a couple of years earlier.

We were White Trash kids, so we were from somewhat dysfunctional families, some more than others, and we joked, argued, talked smack, and continually tried to be better at something than the other guys.  As June turned into July, we began to spend less time playing football, basketball or whiffle ball, and more time out at the BMX jumps.  One kid bought a BMX magazine at the grocery store with hard-earned lawn mowing baby sitting money ($1 an hour and all the government cheese you could eat), and we all read it and got motivated.  We pushed each other, we built our jumps bigger and better, though they were tiny by today's standards, and BMX became our thing. When we broke a stem, or our fork dropout, or our cranks, we bought higher quality ones at Bob's Bikes (and lawn mower repair).  We all ended up with several gold anodized parts on our bikes, because other BMXers didn't like the gold color, and Bob would sell them to us a little cheaper.  We all had stolen bike parts on our bikes as well, some of the time.  We did what we could to keep riding, so we could jump higher than Scott, or do a cross-up better than Brian, or whatever.

By the time we made it to that first race, we were pretty good riders.  We were poor kids, by and large.  OK, my dad was an engineer, we were solid middle class, but my mom habitually over spent, and my parents moved to the trailer park to save money for a year or two so they could buy a house in town.  That plan actually did work.  But day to day, we were broke ass teenagers with no place close to get an after school job.  So we scraped by and built up our bikes... and our riding skills, by riding every day, and continually pushing each other to improve.

A funny thing happened on that race day.  Our Blue Valley trailer park posse, in jeans and T-shirts, with paper plates for number plates, kicked some racing ass.  Sure we were all novices.  But with the small number of riders, we all raced some intermediate racers, most of whom had $400 to $600, dialed in, name brand bikes, fancy leathers (uniforms), and lots of racing experience.  Every one of us, in our first or second races, got first, second, or third.  There were seven official local teams racing that day, and I figured out that, had we been an official BMX team, we would have placed second out of eight.

The Fort Boise locals were no slouches.  Sure, we were in Idaho, but there was a solid BMX racing scene there, and some riders (with well off parents) raced four to six races a week in the area.  They were serious.  They were chasing points standings we knew nothing about.  Yet our trailer park posse smoked many of them on the track... in our first race.

After the post-race jumping session, the best part of racing then, I drove our elated crew back out into the desert, my brainiac side wondering why we managed to place so well.  That was my first inkling in the power of a "scene" of people could have.  As I got into the emerging, brand new offshoot of BMX racing, BMX freestyle, or trick riding, I saw that it was small groups of kids, 3-4-5 or so, in random parts of the U.S., that started and promoted our sport, in different areas.  Scenes.  A couple kids would see a trick show, or buy a magazine, and go out and start learning tricks on their bikes.  As years turned into decades, I realized that these small "creative scenes" were how art scenes, music scenes, high tech scenes, and other creative environments, started.

When I heard about the "Creative Class" concept in a local entertainment weekly in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2009, the concept of scenes was well known to me.  Richard Florida's research into high tech scenes, and why they clustered in certain regions, put a larger framework around what I'd seen happen over 20-some years in BMX freestyle, skateboarding, snowboarding, art, and music.  I learned in his work how these small groups of people, sometimes, turn into major economic engines for their regions.  While they don't have the absurd money making potential of high tech, the action sports I was involved in not only became obscure sports that have gone global, they became worldwide industries.

This morning, I read this article about "Brain Drain," put out by City Lab, who build on Rich Florida's ideas and research.   I know some regions are going to extreme measures to get highly intelligent people into their areas.  I found that out the hard way.  But on my three day bus ride from Virginia to California this week, I saw signs of creative scenes springing up all over.  I came to a city outside L.A. to join a BMX/bike business, but I saw signs of several really cool art scenes in several cities along the way.  I wandered into El Paso's arts district while on a layover, looking for a mini mart to escape the ridiculous bus station food prices.  Charlottesville, Virginia had signs of a cool art scene.  So did a few other cities, which are kind of lost in the haze of the crazy, 72 hour bus experience.

I've come to believe these small "creative scenes,"  not just art and music, but action sports, gaming, crafts, street art/graffiti, food trucks/restaurants, custom cars and motorcycles, and, of course, high tech, are key to our economic future as a nation.  So while I help my old BMX friend, Rich Bartlett, get his online BMX shop off ground and jamming, I'll be writing more on this idea of creative scenes, and how they are important in our weird, chaotic, rapidly changing world.  Much, much more on this area of thinking to come...  Now go create something cool, then make your own scene better.