One of the first pro freestylers I met, Martin Aparijo, in the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, on the way to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, AFA Masters contest, in 1986. This clip is the from the Ohio AFA Masters contest in 1986, a few months later. Flatland freestyle was still in "ride a bit, do a trick, ride a bit" phase, before rolling tricks started linking everything together. This is definitely one of the first times a bar ride was done in a contest as well.
Looking back from 33 years later, it almost seems like it was the plot of a B movie. It wasn't just that I flew to a plains state, went to a contest, talked ot a few people, the wrote an article about the contest. I got a baptism by fire into the world of the BMX freestyle industry in the spring of 1986.
A BMX freestyler from B.F. Idaho (there actually is a B.F. Idaho, by the way, a tiny town called Bonner's Ferry), moves to the Bay Area because his dad gets a new job. Suddenly I was riding with the Curb Dogs/Skyway team, and part of the whole, legendary, Golden Gate Park scene. I started a zine because I didn't think I was cool enough to actually just hang out and ride with those guys. I sent zines to the individual guys at the big BMX magazines. A few months into my zine, I introduced myself to Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine, at a velodrome contest, and he says, "Hey, we love your zine." I definitely didn't expect that from a few pieces of Xeroxed paper every month. Completely out of the blue, a few weeks later, Andy calls me up to see if I want to cover the coming Tulsa AFA Masters contest for FREESTYLIN'. At that point alone, I was already past most of my freestyle dreams. Mind freakin' blown.
I flew solo to Tulsa. In the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, I ran into Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some unknown kid, new to the GT team, named Josh White. They were on the same flight into Tulsa. I flew into Tulsa, completely clueless, I had no idea where the contest was, was too young to rent a car, and had no motel room booked. A seasoned traveler I was not. I met a mild mannered, unknown, East Coast rider in the airport. He told me he rode for Haro. "Yeah RIGHT!" I thought. Until the Haro tour van pulled up, and Ron Wilkerson jumped out. Sure enough, Joe Johnson really did ride for Haro, but he was unknown to the larger freestyle world at that point. I hopped in, and started talking to veteran skatepark rider, and Haro assistant team manager, Jon Peterson. He helped me find a room to crash in, one of the Haro team rooms.
I got to the motel, and next thing I know I was hanging out in the "borrowed" motel room where Mike Dominguez and Brian Blyther were staying. When the newlyweds who actually rented the room showed up at one door, I helped Mike and Brian bail out the other door. Later that night, I beat Woody Itson in pool, ending his hour long run on the motel pool table (OK, he scratched on the 8 ball, but it's still a win). I also rode out with Rick Moliterno and Billy Hop to help waterproof Rick's pick up truck cap, with duct tape and trash bags, in a hardcore Oklahoma thunderstorm, so I talked to them a bit as well.
The next morning, I was standing alone in the arena, scoping out the scene, and Eddie Fiola came up and just starting talking to me. I just met him the before, and he was still the best known name in the sport then. As we were talking, and I was trying not to act like an idiot, two young punks interrupted us. A couple years later, while retelling the story, I realized those kids were none other than Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope. A bit later, Jon Peterson walked me around, and I met most of the other pros and industry people. I met FREESTYLIN' photographer Windy Osborn for the first time, and had a quick, cool chat with her. I got on top of the ramp, and shot some photos of all the vert riders, including the big talk of the weekend, new guys Josh White and Joe Johnson. I also got some pics of the kid we called "The Stormtrooper" that weekend, because he was wearing a full face helmet, shoulder pads, knee pads, and elbow pads, which nobody did then. The unknown kid was doing no footed can-can's the hardest trick on vert at the time, as well as his unique switch handed airs. That was Mat Hoffman. But I had the ASA set wrong on my camera, so the photos were grainy. Man do I wish I had those grainy pics today.
All of that happening randomly on my first trip as a magazine freelancer, is kind of like being a good high school basketball player, going to Venice Beach, California, and walking up to a public ball court, and seeing Lebron, Steph Curry, Shaq, Pau Gasol, and Charles Barkley playing 3 on 3. When you walk up, Lebron says, "Hey, you guys get Barkley, we'll take this new kid on our team." Seriously, it was like that crazy of a weekend. OK, BMXers aren't as famous as pro B-ballers, but you get the idea. I seriously couldn't believe that weekend was actually happening.
I took notes, I talked to pros and top amateurs. But I forget damn near everything that happened in the arena that weekend. I do remember I signed 9 autographs, including one local girl's arm that everybody was signing. She told us, "Hey, it's Oklahoma, you guys are the most famous people we've ever seen in real life." I've signed two autographs in the 33 years since. One of those was signing the first page of the article I wrote in Chad Powers' copy of that issue of FREESTYLIN'. Oh, and I competed in that contest. How'd I do? Lame, I imagine. I don't remember a thing about my run. It doesn't matter. I became a part of the BMX freestyle industry that weekend, which still amazes me, to be honest.
I wrote my article, and it came out in the epic August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', with that eye catching, tiny photo of Josh White on the cover. You can check out that issue at oldschoolmags.com. The zine article is on scan page 11, and my zine, San Jose Stylin', is listed first. Josh White's article, that made him an instant freestyle star, is on scan page 19. My article for the Tulsa contest starts on scan page 24. In my article for the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters, where nobody expected much to really happen, little Matthew Hoffman (as we spelled his name back then), got his first ever editorial photo, doing a no footed can-can. Haro rider Joe Johnson got his first editorial mention in that article, and went on to become one of the best vert riders of the 80's. Todd Anderson, always underrated, got a photo. Oleg-fucking-Koning got a photo (put your helmet on Oleg!). NorCal up-and-comers Chris and Karl Rothe got a mugshot. In addition, there were photos of the heavies of the time, Martin Aparijo, Eddie Fiola, R.L. Osborn, and Dennis McCoy, as well as Steve Broderson, Rick Moliterno, and Rich Sigur, and little Scotty Freeman, showing off the quickspin.
The last thing I remember from that weekend is sitting in someone's motel room, and hearing a car squealing tires out in the parking lot. The noise just kept going on and on, and we looked out the window, as several other riders in other rooms did, and we saw a big cloud of white smoke in the middle of the parking lot. The noise stopped, and the Hutch rental Lincoln Continental, driven by Woody Itson, pulled forward out of the cloud of smoke. Mike Dominguez was in the passenger's seat laughing his ass off. The car peeled out, and headed off to the Tulsa airport.
As Joe Johnson, me, and the whole Haro posse were getting ready to pile into the Haro van, for our trip to the airport, Jon Peterson, my tour guide for the weekend, told me he had something for me. He handed me a Tech 2-style brake lever, with a key ring on it. He said something like, "We had a ton of these that didn't sell, so we made keychains out of them." At the time, It seemed weird. But Jon totally helped me out that weekend, took me around, and introduced me to pretty much everyone, riders and industry people. That was really cool of him, so thank you Jon, for that. Ron Wilkerson dropped Joe and me off at the airport, and they went back to the business of summer tour.
I got off the airplane in San Jose with 76 cents in my pocket. I went back to work at Pizza Hut on Winchester boulevard (right down the road from the Winchester Mystery House), and told Erin, the 6' 2" young woman I worked with nearly every night, about my crazy weekend. When it came time to write the article, I couldn't think of a clever way to start it. So I started it with me at Pizza Hut telling Erin about my crazy weekend in Tulsa.
Twenty two years later, in late 2008 after taxi driving took a dive, I wound up living on the streets of Orange County, California for a year. Unable to get any job or make any small business ideas to happen, I finally took my parents' offer of a plane ride to North Carolina to live with them. It was November 2008, and the economy was collapsing. I had everything I owned in a 5 foot by 5 foot storage unit. I had a chrome Dyno bike I hadn't ridden much because I got fat driving a taxi. I had a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' magazine, and tear sheets, the pre-production prints, of 3 or 4 issues. I had probably 100 other BMX, skateboard, snowboard, and rock climbing magazines, ranging from 1982 to 2008. I had all my raw video footage from 1990 to 2008, over 40 or 50 hours worth. I had all my master video tapes from The Ultimate Weekend, some Vision video promos I'd produced, and a few others. I had my own collection VHS tapes and DVD's, including the copy of Headfirst Eddie Roman himself gave me. I also had a Mac Powerbook in one pawn shop, and my Sony Digital 8 video camera in another pawn shop. I had my whole zine collection in there, maybe 50 zines from 1986 to 1994, along with copies of my own poetry zines with about 150 of my original poems in them, including "Journey of The White Bear," the poem Chris Moeller made fun of which led to my nickname/pen name. I also had 10 years worth of poems I'd written, 165 of my best poems, in their original, hand written form.
When I got ready to fly to North Carolina, I told my mom I needed to borrow about $150 to pay the back payments on my storage unit, to pay the pawn shops, and to have some friends ship the important stuff to me. My mom said that would be fine. So one day I took several buses and a train, and made my way to LAX airport, and I flew to North Carolina, a place I'd never lived. My family was form Ohio, but my parents and my sister and brother-in-law wound up living in the Greensboro, North Carolina area.
After decompressing for a couple of weeks, and kind of getting my bearings, I asked my mom to borrow the money to get my stuff shipped to me. Through all the the crazy times being homeless, a taxi driver, and a homeless taxi driver, the thought of one day making a really cool freestyle documentary from all my personal footage is what kept me going. When I asked my mom to borrow the $150 to get my stuff, she said, "Oh we don't have money for that." She's kind of weird like that. I couldn't find a job in NC, the economy was mid-collapse at that point. So I lost every single thing I had, everything that had to do with BMX and freestyle, as well as all of my creative work, except for some of my early Sharpie drawings. Everything from my BMX life, 20 years worth of riding and writing, and creating, and collecting. It was all gone. Poof.
Except for one thing. I still had the Haro brake lever keychain, that Jon Peterson gave me, on my first freelance trip to Tulsa, in the spring of 1986. It's in my pocket right now, as I sit in a library in Costa Mesa, California, writing this blog post, 33 years after that trip to Tulsa. When I lost everything in 2008, I lost all hope of making the documentary from 18 years worth of BMX and skate footage. About a month later, in December of 2008, living with my parents in North Carolina, and in a near suicidal depression, I started blogging, telling weird little stories about my life in the BMX freestyle world. Weird little stories like the one you're reading right now. And that's the story of my keychain.
Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now
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