At 29:08 in this video, you see a couple of guys in front of a garage playing "Dueling Banjos" on a banjo and a guitar. The guy on the banjo is early skatepark rider, Steve "Bio Air" Bennett, who I'd never met before. This was around the corner from Martin Aparijo's quarterpipe, which Keith Treanor, John Povah, and I went to for a session, in the late summer of 1990. This blog post is about that session on Martin's quarterpipe, starting with the "Dueling banjos."
This section, our session at Martin Aparijo's quaterpipe, happened in the late summer or early fall of 1990. Keith Treanor, John Povah, and me headed to Martin's house, to join an afternoon session on his quarterpipe. The riders there that day were Jess Dyrenforth (turquoise shorts, black knee pads), John Povah (no shirt, white cap), Keith Treanor (white T-shirt, black shin guards), Steve "Bio Air" Bennett (yellow tank top- old ASPA shirt- and neon green bike), Martin Aparijo (white helmet), and Todd Anderson (light blue tank top, black cap). So there was some serious talent there that afternoon. This whole session happened because I think a ran into Martin somewhere, told him I'd been shooting footage to make my own video, which was a really weird thing to do then. Eddie Roman had put out Aggroman a year earlier, and Mark Eaton was making the first Dorkin' in York videos with two VHS machines. No one took those very serious then. Just riders goofing around with vieo cameras. Only big companies like GT, Haro, or BMX Plus, and Vision Street Wear put out "real" BMX videos back then. That was the mindset.
The context for this video was that it was shot and put out in 1990, during a big transition time for BMX freestyle. At the big bike industry trade show in early 1989, industry people were walking around, all weekend, saying "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." So every major company was getting rid of their BMX and freestyle programs, and putting their effort into the rising trend of mountain bikes, which was really just getting going in the mainstream then. GT and Haro kept their factory teams, though they paired them down and let some riders go. So over the course of 1989, most of the sponsorship money in BMX freestyle just disappeared. So did a huge number of BMX freestyle riders. From a logical way of thinking, it was time to quit.
It was like, OK we got into this weird little sport in 1984-86, most of us, we saw it grow through the AFA flatland and ramp days. We had a good time, it was cool, and by 1990 we were in our 20's. It made sense to give up "that BMX thing," go to college, go get a real job, and move on to the life all the people around us wanted us to live. But for a few hundred of us, BMX freestyle had become our life. It was a huge part of who we were. It was how we coped with all the stupidity in the rest of the world, and the rest of life. Giving up the thing that made life worth living for us wasn't even a question. We kept riding, without the money, the sponsorships, the industry jobs. We kept riding, because that what we did. That's who we were.
At the same time, Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear, which had done something like $60 million in sales in 1988, was collapsing. That story is a big can of worms, and I was in the middle of it, since I worked at Unreel Productions, Vision's video company. In January 1990, we had a meeting, and we were told "Vision is shutting down Unreel." Don Hoffman, who started it, would keep working on a freelance basis, and me and the other lower level employee, were kept, and moved into an office in the main Vision building. The other 5 or 6 people, they were looking for jobs.
After a month or so, that woman that was kept, got a job in Hollywood, and I was sitting in a big office, with a bunch of video equipment, alone. I was getting a decent check, but was bored out of my skull every day. While I was there, other people in Vision were getting laid off nearly every Friday. Morale was horrible, and the biggest group of really talented people I'd ever seen was falling apart. Vision just got too big too quick, and the reckoning time was at hand. At the same time, the whole country was sliding into a recession, which wound up lagging on for about six years. So pretty much everything was looking pretty bad, on many levels. All the more reason to go ride a couple of hours every night, just to blow off some steam.
As all that was happening, and I decided I was sick of the goofy Vision videos (in my opinion), with old footage, very little riding progression, guys riding in leathers and helmets on flatland, and all of that. I wanted to make a video that showed "real riding." So I took my S-VHS camera every weekend, and usually went somewhere with Mike Sarrail, my flatland riding buddy from the Huntington Beach Pier. Along the way, I met New Jersey transplant Keith Treanor, a young, hungry, and really good, yet still mostly unknown, rider. Keith was riding with John Povah most of the time, and they became the core of my video, weekend after weekend.
The whole idea for The Ultimate Weekend was that a group of riders got off work on Friday afternoon, and spent the whole weekend riding all kinds of cool places with all kinds of great riders. That idea got lost a little, but it's how the video is organized, rather than in sections for each rider, which was just one way to make a video back then. Like all revolutions, I was just making this shit up as I went. I was trying to make the video I wanted to watch to get stoked to go ride. A couple hours away, Eddie Roman was doing the same thing. Across the country, Mark Eaton and Jeremy Alder were also doing the same thing. It was time for a change. A handful of us started making that change.
In that weird, crazy, broke-ass context, riding wasn't about making sponsors happy anymore. It wasn't about placing well in the next contest. We just went out day after day to have fun, and to push our limits. Sure, these days, everyone knows that. But all during the 1980's, most of us had to tell people around us that we were trying to get sponsored, or working to go pro, or practicing for a contest, to justify why we spent all of our time and money on "little kids' bikes." By the time 1990 crashed down on us, we were down to the truth, "Fuck it, let's go ride and have fun." We were getting over the need justify riding to other people. "Fuck'em, we have more fun than they do, anyhow, let them think what they want." I doubt the top pros had to deal with people like that, but a lot of the rest of us did.
In that context I ran into Martin Aparijo, or maybe I got a phone call, because he heard I was working on a video. He said something like, "Hey, I have a quarterpipe, bring the guys over for a session." So we went to Martin's house one afternoon, and we ran late, I remember that. But the guys had a great little session right before dusk. It wasn't that long. There was no hype. It was just a bunch of good riders on one of the few ramps that existed then, trying their newest moves.
Here's the crazy part. I'd never seen anyone do a solid nosepick to fakie on a ramp. Both Jess and Todd pulled it that day. I'd never seen anyone do a Smith disaster (front peg, back wheel), Jess did it. I'd never seen a one footed tailtap, Todd did that. I'd never seen a barspin abubaca, Todd did that. I'd never seen an abubaca to nosepick to fakie. Keith did that. I'd never seen Keith (or anyone) pull an icepick, and Keith did that. While freestyle was "dead," it was progressing at light speed. This little session, a half an hour or so at Martin Aparijo's quarterpipe, turned into one of the most innovative segments in a video full of new tricks and progression.
Then there's Martin Aparijo himself, the flatlander. By the time of this session, I'd pretty much forgot that I first saw Martin in BMX Plus as a test rider, jumping. So when he rode up to his ramp and just stomped that front wheel 540 on the bottom of the ramp, I wasn't too surprised. Then he whipped the back wheel 900 (or so) megaspin, and it got away from him. That's to be expected, this is Martin the flatland legend. Todd Anderson, quarterpipe legend, rolls up and does a back wheel 540, to show his ground chops. But then, out of nowhere, Martin hit the ramp at speed and flew out onto the roof. I did not expect that. Then it kicked in, "Oh yeah, Martin was a really good jumper back in the day." I actually missed the shot the first time he did it, he flew right out of frame, I was expecting him to do a small air. The second time he did it, he flew out of sight, but I got the shot.
At the time this video came out, a whole bunch of riders were pausing and rewinding this little section of the video, because it broke a lot of new ground. So thanks Martin, for giving me that phone call back then, I'm really glad this short but awesome session made it into that video.
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