We were all weird in bikes and skates in the 1980s

I almost scrolled by this clip, shared by Eddie Roman on Facebook, but it reminded me of a session I had in 1989, and I decided to watch it.  Then I decided to blog about that session.  Props to Felipe Nunes for landing the loop on his board, major huevos needed to make it happen.

One of my favorite times to be a BMX freestyler was 1989.  I lived on the north end of Huntington Beach, California, on Sims Street.  That was funny because I worked for Vision Skateboards' video company, which owned Sims skateboards and snowboards.  Three or four days a week, I'd ride my bike to work.  To go to work, I would ride a mile down Warner to the beach, the very end of the 8.3 mile long, wide beach, that sets Huntington Beach apart from every other SoCal beach city.  It was the only city that didn't have houses built right up to the sand, except on condo complex.  There was a big bike and walking path the whole length, and I'd ride that on my freestyle bike, then into Newport Shores, and up Superior, into Costa Mesa, down 17th, and over to Unreel Productions on Brioso.  It was about a 10 or 11 mile ride, each way.

After work, I'd leave at 5:30 or 6 pm or so, I usually worked over a while.  Then I'd head a couple blocks inland on Whittier, and head down 19th Street hill, and wind up above the sketchy oil lands where Sheep Hills jumps were built several months later.  But it was just some trails through the brush and small trees then, where locals would walk their dogs, or maybe ride a mountain bike over to the Santa Ana River trail.  There is a skate ditch there, and sometimes I'd ride that a little, and then ride up to Hamilton, over the river, and across Brookhurst.  Most nights, I would wander around, hitting 4 or 5 spots as I wandered home through Huntington, over the course of 3 or 4 hours.  It was just a fun, wandering solo ride each night, and I would wind up sessioning with different people at different spots, or sometimes I would just session alone.  Ed Templeton was out on his solo skate missions at the same time in those days, and we knew each other by sight, and would run into each other now and then, and I'd see other skaters once in a while.

Although I was hitting a lot of the same spots, night after night, I wound up riding with a lot of skaters, and a few BMXers, and it was a little different every night.  Then on the weekends, I'd ride to the H.B. Pier, and ride with Mike Sarrail, maybe Randy Lawrence, and the freestyle skaters, Pierre Andre', Don Brown, Hans Lingren, Jeremy Ramey, and the other locals.  On the weekends, we did mostly flatland, which for me meant squeakers, flatland tailwhip variations, and my versions of mega-spins.  I didn't do true mega-spins, I would pump my back wheel (I rode Peregrine Super Pro 48's), and only do a 540 or 720 spin on the back wheel.  I did a bunch of variations of the mega-spin, though, one handers, barspins, no handers, barspins to one handed catch, and stuff like that.  the BMXers and the skaters alternated, getting crowds of 100 or more people, then having the police roll by and tell us to stop, then the other group would gather a crowd.  Each day on the weekends, we'd ride for 10 or more crowds, ususally 100 to 200 people each, sometimes up to 500 people would stop to watch us.  Freestyle was anew thing then, and lots of people would watch us and the skaters do our thing.

During that year, as the mainstream money pulled out of BMX and freestyle, and as the factory teams, and many sponsored riders were let go, I was just living the BMX freestyle life.  I had a decent job, I bought Mike Sarrail's old pick-up, a blue, lowered (but not slammed), Datsun pick-up, with a cap.  I had also become the cameraman for Unreel, and I got to fly to all the 2-Hip King of Vert contests.  So my life was more stable than the lives of many pro riders.

One of the coolest things that happened in 1989 is that the chain blocking the Huntington Beach Pier bank was taken down.  There was a mellow bank, about three feet high, made of asphalt, on the north side of the pier.  The big steps (of the old pier, it's all new now) came down, with concrete heading out to the bike path, and spread left, under the pier.  The north side parking lot had two levels then,  and the bank was next to the edge of the lower parking lot, where the amphitheater its now.  There were big, telephone sized poles coming out of the bank, each about three feet high, which held this massive chain, with links about three inches across, hanging, keeping the bank unridable and unskatable.

One night, I wandered down to the pier bank, and the chain was gone.  Some skaters had cut it down, and dragged the 300 pound (or so) chain out into the sand, and buried it.  That was the story, anyhow.  It was down, and the bank could be sessioned, for about three weeks.  Then the authorities found the chain and put it back up.  It lasted about a month, I think.  Then, suddenly, it was gone again.  And it was down for about 9 months, most of 1989.  Word had it that the chain "will never be found."  I think it was dragged quite aways out into the water, and pretty much buried, allowing the tide and drifting sand to keep covering it more.  In any case, the bank was open to session every night.

So I started hitting the pier bank and sessioning it, usually with Ramones Mania playing on my Walkman, in my Vision hip sack, night after night.  I learned a lot of stuff on that bank.  I sessioned alone most of the time, and it was usually pretty quiet under the pier, in the evenings, then, with a handful of people wandering up and down the bike path.  When others showed up, they were mostly skaters.  Sometimes a bike rider would come by, but there weren't many locals then.

One night, well after dark, I heard a skateboard coming up the bike path.  The noise got closer, and a skater came around the corner from the bike path, which was a hump of sandy ground, where grass fought to keep growing.  As first I thought it was a little kid, because the skater was kneeling on the board, hands on the front of the board, pushing with one foot, like really little kids do.  I quickly realized it was a young guy, larger than a little kid, maybe in his late teens.  But he didn't stand up.  It wasn't unusual to see complete strangers show up there, the bank had been there for a decade or more already, and word got around that the chain was down.  So skaters from older days (like the 70's or early 80's) would make the trip there to session, as would locals like Ed Templton, Mark Gonzales, Bob Schmelzer (who supposedly made the chain disappear), and others.

The kid said something like, "Cool if I skate?"  I said, "Sure."  Despite all the skater hate against BMXers, almost everywhere I went that skaters skated, we were always cool.  I never really had a problem riding with skaters.  So this kid pushed toward the bank, still kneeling, and guiding the board with his hands on the front.  He did a carve, or maybe a kick turn type thing, then came back towards me.  And that's when I got a better look at him.  He was kneeling on the board, because he had apparently been born with both feet pointing backwards.  He was pushing, but his legs kind of looked like a grasshopper or something.  He couldn't physically stand up.  So he kneeled and pushed, the way a little kid would.  As we started taking turns hitting the bank, He started planting his hands on the bank, and he'd do a hand varial with the board, or lift up the nose, like a kickturn or tailblock.  This guy was a fucking skater.  He had obviously spent a lot of time skating and learning tricks.

Yes, he was a physical freak, in the most literal sense.  He had been born severely disfigured, his feet literally pointed backwards.  I'm not calling him a freak to be mean, he was a literal freak of nature, simply born that way, far from the normal body.  But skating and BMX freestyle in 1989 were weird "sports," and we were all freaks, according to mainstream society.  No respectable young guy would spend hours a day riding a "useless wooden toy," or a "little kid's bike."

This kid, and I never asked his name, had found a skateboard as a way to express himself, like the other skaters I knew, and and like I had on my freestyle bike.  And the dude fucking ripped.  He had at least two or three dozen tricks he had come up with, adapted to the weird body nature had given him.  Me and the kid with the backwards feet just had a great ol' session for and hour or so.  He commented on my tricks, and I commented on his.  We gave each other props when we made a trick we'd been missing.  It was just like riding with any other skater in most every way, except his body was "handicapped."  Myself, I was struggling with my massive shyness and personal issues then (and for many years to come), my "freak" was all on the inside.  His was in the physical sense.  But there, in the cool evening, at the Huntington Beach Pier bank, none of that mattered.  We were just a BMxer and a skater sessioning together.

After a while, he said he was tired, and said, "Later," and pushed off back up the bike trail into the dark.  I'd never heard of the kid.  I never saw or heard of him again.  I never heard another BMXer of skater mention a guy like him.  But I never forgot him either.  Because, like Tony Hawk says in the clip above, "it's just as hard for him as anyone else."  I remember it just seemed cool to me that a guy with such a serious physical issue could truly become a skater, and on the bank or at a skatepark, he could be "just another skater."  In a world where his physical condition set him apart from everyone else, both obviously and continuously, it was probably pretty cool to be "just a skater," while on his board.

As the years passed, I later saw a few other people with serious physical issues, that became good skaters.  And now, with YouTube,I know there's a one legged BMXer out there somewhere who rips, and one armed one, as well.  I've met another skater years ago, with no legs, who ripped it up at the Van's park.  And you can't have that in football (OK, one exception I think), basketball, soccer, or hockey.  Well maybe hockey, they're all fucking mutants to start with.  But that's another issue.

But in a creative sport like skating, BMX, surfing, or rock climbing, where "adapting" to terrain and conditions is something everyone has to do, people with "handicaps," can grab a board or bike, and just figure out their own style and tricks.  And that's pretty fucking cool.  When it comes down to it, we all have our handicaps, big or small.  Most people's are just in their head, or heart, when it's hard to see them.  a big part of life is working to get beyond whatever handicaps you have, visible or not.

So, mad props to Felipe Nunes above for being one of the very few skateboarders to master the loop.  And props to Felipe and everyone out there who doesn't fit the norm, in whatever way, and uses a bike, board, or whatever, to adapt and to create, play, have fun, and progress, in your own weird way.  Weirdos make the world go round, and drive most progress.  Keep the world weird... and creative, and fun.