The crazy series of events that led me to wind up staying within walking distance of this year's One Love Jam in Newport Beach kind of blows my mind. But the Universe is weird like that some times. From 1982, to 2003, I spent a couple hours or more, every day, on a BMX bike, learning tricks or street riding. The exception in that period was late 1999 and early 2000, the beginning of my taxi driving career. I stopped riding in 2003, when driving a taxi driving became a 7 days a week thing, and left no time for anything else. For me, BMX began in Boise, Idaho, in a trailer park, in 1982, sitting almost exactly at 43 degrees of latitude. Really. Before the whole 43 thing happened.
We had BMX magazines for inspiration. A lot of the early riders from outside Southern California were inspired by seeing the BMX Action Trick Team, or the Haro ot GT factory teams do a show. We didn't have Pipeline Skatepark or Del Mar. But we had parking lots. We all had a parking lot somewhere. So those early magazine trick how-to's from Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn, Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, and a few others, gave us a starting point. The AFA Masters constests gave us a justification, a reason. We needed that, because in 1984, or there-abouts, you couldn't tell your friends and parents, "I'm spending three hours a day learning tricks on a BMX bike, just because it's really fun." But we could say, "I'm practicing for a national contest," people could understand that.
At the early AFA contests at the Velodrome, in Carson, California, this weird morning ritual would take place. A few of us would get there long before the contest, and we'd walk into the Velodrome, and sit on the first few bleachers. There would end up being 15 or 20 people, from all over, just looking forward to the days events. And we'd see someone we hadn't seen in a few months, and ask, "You still riding?" Because it kind of surprised all of us that we were still doing tricks on "little kids' bikes" then. There was always a couple guys who said, "I got a car, and stopped riding a month ago," or "I got a new girlfriend, and haven't ridden in a couple months," but I wanted to come see the new tricks." The rest of us would say, "Yeah, I'm still riding." It kind of surprised us. None of us really believed then that we'd be riding for more than a year or two. There was this feeling of, "OK, let's do this freestyle thing for a year or so," then we'll all go back to college, get some job we don't like, and do "adult life."
But BMX freestyle started growing. The Californian guys were super entrepreneurial, and little businesses began to pop up to make frames or components, or something else needed. Bob Haro came out with a freestyle bike. Bob Morales started putting on contests. R.L. and Mike Buff toured doing trick shows, as did the Haro and GT guys. Nearly all of us had local trick teams in our town. Some of us produced zines. Some started shooting photos. A couple years later, some people started producing our own videos. For a few of us, actual jobs in the industry came along. For the rest, freestyle never stopped being fun. It just kept going. And going.
Being a dork among the dorks, I spent more time thinking about the future than most of us early riders. But I never imagined a day when BMX freestyle would be in the Olympics (like it or not), or a day when 100 or more riders, ages 40 to about 55, would show up next to the ocean and session all day. There were a handful of the SoCal riders who got us other guys across the country stoked on freestyle in the early 80's. We all, collectively, rode the first big wave of popularity in the late 80's, and a new crew came up in the 90's. We didn't know what the fuck we were doing, we just knew it needed to be done. We had ideas, tricks needed to be invented, and that meant time in the parking lot day after day.
As things progressed, we needed better bike parts. We needed better frames. We needed better places to ride. We absorbed the punk rock/D.I.Y ethos (thanks Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs), and just began to start doing the things that needed to be done to keep progressing. When the bicycle industry at large said, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing," in early 1989, we saw the money drain from the BMX world and leave us in the lurch. That sucked at first. We had to get real jobs and learn to cook ramen. But it also freed us, nobody gave shit about BMX freestyle except the most hardcore riders at that point. So we just took it over. The progression on the bikes progressed at hyper speed, and riders took over the industry. It was a lifestyle to so many of us at that point, and we forged ahead, each in our own directions, and built an industry.
BMX splintered into flatland, ramps, dirt, street, and park riding. By that time we all had some models for doing our own thing, and making things happen. We had other people to look up to. Collectively, we built a group of sports, and culture and industries to support those sports. That's pretty fucking cool when you stop and think about it. It wasn't a 35 year plan. Bob Haro didn't sit down in 1981 and say, "OK, here's the 40 year plan to take BMX freestyle worldwide." It happened organically, bit by bit, day by day, session by session.
Ultimately, we set the stage for guys in tight jeans, who hate brake,s to make $50,000 for winning a single contest, by doing a quad tailwhip double backflip to fakie over jumps the size of a small mountain range. Yeah, not what we had in mind, but the riding has progressed far beyond most of us now. But all of us who rode back in the day, played a roll in making that happen, some to big degrees, most of us to much smaller degrees.
Now, 35 years after those first AFA flatland and ramps contests, we are still leading in a way. We're showing the younger generations how long it can go on. OK, not me, I got sidetracked for years. But the group of the riders at the One Love Jam yesterday is still pushing boundaries. They're showing younger people, a few in person, and many more in videos and various posts, like this one, that BMX freestyle is a lifestyle. None of us knows how long you can keep doing it, because we're the group that is figuring that out. The oldest of us is about 55, and we're not there yet. A bunch of guys are still riding hard in their 50's. Many in their 40's. Where does freestyle end? 65? 70? 103? We don't know, but we'll let you know when we get there.
The One Love Jam was an epic day. I had no bike, but Kid Fruhmann let me borrow one of the Fiola Former Pro bikes (like the ProFormer, but dsylexic), which rode great, I must say. I managed a lame infinity roll right off the bat, and three other tricks over the course of a couple hours. Lame as it was, I got my nearly 300 pounds and a bike to bunnyhop. Barely. It's been a LONG time since that happened. I scraped my calf, got a little blood to the surface, and called it a session.
I also spent time talking to Martin Aparijo, Ron Camero, Gardo and their crew (thanks for the spaghetti and egg rolls), Bill Nitschke, Rick Coronado, Dave Nourie, Ruben Castillo, Todd Lyons, Dave Voelker, Brian Blyther, Edgar Plascencia, Ivan from New York, James who I just met, and several more guys. It was an epic day all around. Thanks to the promoters, I don't even know your names, but it's was a great jam. The weather was perfect. Much stoke was manufactured and consumed. I can't wait until next year's jam.
Here's Sean Ewing's drone footage of the event, and links to a couple other early edits. Check Facebook and Insta for more.
I told you Pete Brandt is an animal. Jeez...
Edit by The Drain Dude
More drone footage and some good stills by James Allender
If you were a freestyler in the 1980's, I can only think of one thing missing from the One Love Jam yesterday, this.
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