Mitchie Brusco adds a 360 to the skate 900

In the spring of 1989, I traveled to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, with a woman from Vision promotions.  I forget her name.  I hadn't booked a room, I thought she was handling it.  I wound up getting the room right next to the room where Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, and Dennis McCoy were staying.  I was the cameraman for Unreel Productions, the Vision Street Wear video company, my job was to shoot footage of the contest, and I had the only broadcast quality video camera at the event, a rental Ikegami Betacam. 

I ran into Rob Dodds, who I met in Whistler three years before, and he was looking for a place to crash, in typical low budget rider style for those days.  Since I had a spare couch in my room, and Vision was paying for it, so he crashed there, and we wound up having dinner that night with Mat, Swope, and Dennis.  Rob also shared this trick he'd been working on with Mat, a no handed 540.  Guess what trick Mat landed at the next 2-Hip? 

The big talk of the weekend was some Canadian guy nicknamed the Terminator, who was supposed to try a backflip abubaca, or backflip fakie.  No one did any backflip tricks then.  But it fizzled into a lackluster crash.  The contest turned into just another rad 2-Hip King of Vert.  And then this happened.  At 14:43 is this clip, you see Mat Hoffman pull his first 900, and the first 9 ever pulled in a BMX freestyle contest.  This whole clip is my footage, used in the Eddie Roman produced/2-Hip video Ride Like a Man.



Just over a decade later, I took a break from my job as a Hollywood lighting technician, for the summer, to get a hernia fixed.  My insurance company gave me the runaround all summer, and that never happened, so I wound up working as a taxi driver.  That job didn't require heavy lifting, like the lighting job did. 

But while I was taking that summer off, I drove up to the 1999 X-Games, after scamming a press pass as a writer from Dig BMX Magazine.  My purpose was to wander around, shoot some cool footage to put into a little BMX video, and use that to get some of the newer riders stoked on letting me shoot them for a hardcore, self-produced BMX freestyle video later on.

After shooting some footage of BMX vert practice, I ran into old friend, Maurice "Drob" Meyer, and we started talking about "the old days" of 80's freestyle in San Francisco.  While we were talking, a red helicopter drifted in close, and someone threw stickers out the window.  That was pretty funny, a sticker toss taken to a whole new level.  Then the chopper drifted near the ramps again, except someone was tossing wadded up dollar bills out of it.  That turned out to be World Industries owner Steve Rocco, and you can see the inside-the-chopper footage in the documentary, The Man Who Souled The World.  I picked up four of the dollars, each with a World Industries figure stamped on it.  Mike Dominguez, Jr. wired from drinking Mountain Dew all day, ran around an got about 50 of them.  The funny thing was, almost all of the money fell on the BMX halfpipe, missing the skate halfpipe next to it, the intended target.  If you know anything about Steve Rocco's hatred for BMX, that's petty dang funny.

Anyhow, Drob and I kept talking, and since we both had cool guy passes, we walked over to watch the skate best trick contest, which was getting started.  Unlike everything else in the X-Games up until then, it was like an actual, real,  skate session.  A bunch of the very best vert skaters trying their hardest tricks.  I think Bob Burnquist was trying a one footed Smith grind to revert.  PLG was trying a Caballerial heelflip, or maybe a frontside Cab heelflip.  It was off the chain.  Tony Hawk landed his trademark varial 720 halfway through the half hour jam.  Maurice and I kept talking about how huge these sports had become, and how crazy the whole scene was, compared to when I rode at Golden Gate Park with him and the other guys in 1985-86.

Then Tony Hawk got this crazy idea, and decided to try the elusive 900 he'd been trying to land for ten years, since about the time Mat pulled the bike 900 in Kitchener.  Tony hucked a couple of wild spins and unraveled at the end of each.  But on about the third or fourth try, he started to get it back towards the landing.  Suddenly, it went from a crazy huck to looking possible.  Maybe.

There were about 30 folding chairs, in 3 or 4 rows, in the skater's area next to the halfpipe.  Those were filled with the skaters, girlfriends, a couple of wives, and a few bros.  Drob and I were standing about ten feet behind those.  From our vantage point, we could see that after that 3rd or 4th try, Tony Hawk suddenly had the thousand yard stare.  We could see it in his eyes.  He wanted the 900... BAD.  I looked at Drob, "Holy shit, he's serious now, he's either going to land it or wreck himself."  Drob agreed.  We both knew that intense stare.  We'd seen it before, and we'd had it before.  Pure focus.

Tony kept trying, everyone else stopped skating, and it became a scene I'll never forget.  There was nothing about competition.  It was real skateboarding.  One guy, focused on landing one trick, and everyone of the other skaters wanted to see it happen.  Everyone in the seats, and us just behind, wanted to see it happen.  The 5,000 spectators in the crowded bleachers on the other side of the ramp, wanted to see it happen.  It took tony 11 attempts, I think.  But he landed the first skateboard 900 ever, and it was amazing to see.

The funny thing for me was, I'd been shooting video all day with my little Sony Digital 8 camera.  My batteries were dead.  I watched this whole scene with a dead camera in my hand... and I didn't care.  I didn't want to be a cameraman right then, focusing on framing the shot each try.  I just wanted to see the whole thing play out.  I wanted to just experience it happening.  And that's what I did.

When Tony landed the 900, a bunch of people, including Maurice, ran up to congratulate him.  You can see Drob if you freeze it at 6:04, when Tony has is mouth open.  That's Maurice in the sunglasses and light colored hoodie, to Tony's right.

Those were two huge jumps in the progression of vert riding and skating.  The impossible became possible.  Somehow, for reasons unknown to me, the Universe saw fit to put me there to see those two events happen, in person.  Both were moments I'll remember my whole life, you know, unless Alzheimer's kicks in, of course.

Last night at the X-Games, 30 years after Mat's 900, 20 years after Tony's 900, Mitchie Brusco stepped the progression of vert skateboarding up another huge notch, adding a 360, and landing the first 1260 on a vert mega ramp.  Freakin' amazing.  Congratulations Mitchie.