Before the word "huck," there was Hugo Gonzalez

Blog post: Before the word "huck," there was Hugo Gonzalez

I wrote a whole big post offline, but when I went to cut and paste it, the code got wacky, and wouldn't format.  So I'll write a new post.  13 years of blogging, I'm still a technical numbskull.

Like most of you who read my Old School BMX freestyle posts, I got into BMX, and then freestyle, in a place far away from Southern California, where both were born.  As a kid in the 1970's in Ohio, I rode a Schwinn Scrambler knockoff, made from my dad's collection of spare bike parts.  He was a packrat, and had tons of junk, so a purple, spray painted, 20 inch rat bike was my first ride.  Then came the red, white, and blue banana seat three speed, T-shift on the down tube, for my 8th birthday.  $50, straight from Grant's (like K-mart).  

 

That's the bike I first hit tiny jumps on.  Later came a 26 inch brown ten speed, I jumped that thing, too, on little, 6 or 8 inch tall, vacant lot jumps.  I didn't even know BMX existed until 1979, when I saw Schwinn Phantom Scrambler in a bike shop window.  I bought my first BMX bike the day before I moved away from New Mexico, in 1981.  I paid $5for the complete bike, with 3 pound aluminum mags, heavier than Moto-Mags.  I bought it from my friend Mike.  But I didn't actually get into BMX riding until June of 1982, in Blue Valley trailer park, outside of Boise, Idaho.  Those heavy mags had a jacked up coaster brake, and I hardly rode the thing for a year.  When I started riding it, and got into BMX, I didn't stop.

Like most of you reading this, I was soon reading every single word of every BMX magazine that I could scrape up money to buy, back in 1983.  I learned the names of those skatepark riders, Eddie Fiola, the first King of the Skateparks, Brian Blyther, Mr. Smooth, and Mike Dominguez, the up-and-coming super kid back then.  Also in the mix were Rich Sigur, Tony Murray, Donovan Ritter, Steve McCloud, Brian Deam, Jeff Carroll, and a few more.  But there was one who always stood out.  Hugo Gonzalez.  I soon learned from the magazines that he was the guy who would think up the craziest stunt to try every contest.  Landing seemed completely optional for Hugo's last trick, and often some of the other tricks in his run.  The high airs and new tricks of the other skatepark riders were amazing, but I soon began to wonder, "What did Hugo do at that contest?"

In Del Mar he raced across the long, concrete halfpipe, and launched a tabletop over the fence, crash landing in the next bowl.  The next year he 360'd over the fence, and almost landed it.  Hugo did the fence bounce at Pipeline, flying out of the banked section, landing sideways on the chainlink fence, then flying back into the bowl.  That was the first recorded "wall ride" in BMX.  He did the endo drop-in to knockout in the Pipe Bowl.  A downside footplant attempt, out of the Pipe Bowl, on another rider's crossbar.  Huge canyon airs at quarterpipe comps.  540 attempts over canyons.  The big 720 launch off the pier an into the ocean, somewhere (photo sequence is in a Hugo tribute video on YouTube).  Before we used the word "huck" much, there was Hugo.  Is it a coincidence that those two words both start with "Hu?"  Like, "Huh?  Did he think he could land that?"  I doubt it.

My personal favorite Hugo stunt was one that I think happened in Vancouver, in 1984.  There was a contest at a horse track, much like the track at any fairgrounds anywhere.  There was a paved area on the infield, where the contest was held, with a single quarterpipe at one end, and a wedge ramp at the other.  There was nothing to gap to.  No landings, no other ramps, no roof to flyout on.  My teammate from Idaho, Jay Bickel, and his family went to the comp, and Jay's mom caught Hugo's run on video.  I saw it when they got back.  For his last trick, Hugo went hauling ass at the lone quarterpipe, and just launched off the side of it, to the left.  He got 9-10 feet off the ground, in a big, tweaked out, semi-tabletopped arc.  He flew over about fifteen feet of asphalt, over the rope fence, and went another 6-8 feet.  He didn't even try to land it.  He was leaned over in a table, and just landed in the grass, 20-25 feet from the ramp, in a tabletop.  He just fucking launched into nothing.  It was so ridiculous, and epic at the same time.

So for my 6th Old School BMX Freestyle pro drawing, I drew this pic below of Hugo.  It's not his craziest trick. It's my Sharpie art take on a cool close-up photo (a BMX Plus cover shot), and it's at Pipeline Skatepark, where he did several epic stunts.  He's also riding a Skyway, the sponsor he's best known for.

I first met Hugo at the Beach Park Ramp Jams in 1985, held at the shop in Foster City, at the bike shop where Robert Peterson worked.  Hugo wouldn't do insane stunts at the ramps jams where it was just locals riding, but he pushed his quarterpipe airs to the limit.  When you talked to him, he was cool and down to Earth, then he'd got on his bike and just go nuts.  

 

At my first Old School Freestyle event in 2019, for Dom Phipps' book, The Birth of the Freestyle Movement.  I wound up talking to Hugo for quite a while.  He's a truck driver now, and had us laughing at cool stories for an hour or more.  He's still a totally chill guy to hang out with, and he has a ton of great stories to tell.  But he's the guy that really put the whole "just huck it and see what happens" idea out first, and had us all holding our breath at the end of every run when we saw him in a contest back in the day.  He pushed the limits beyond what anyone thought was possible in the early and mid-80's, pioneering the way for other crazy riders to follow.

I have a few new blogs I'm doing.  Check them out:

The Big Freakin' Transition

Crazy California 43

Full Circle

Stench: Homeless Superhero

Value: The case for owning silver (or gold) right now

This is my dad, Tom Emig, in 1964, leaning against his powder blue, 1957, Ford Thunderbird. 

My dad was a total car guy, back in the days when you could buy and sell cool cars pretty easily.  He owned three T-birds, this was his third.  For those of you not familiar, the Ford T-birds, the 1955-57 models, were some of the coolest cars ever created.  My dad met my mom when he was driving this one, and they got married right around the time this photo was taken.

At the time of this photo, my dad could drive this T-bird down to the gas station, and with a quarter, he could get a gallon of gas.  Hey, it was 1964, gas was cheap, right?  I'm writing this on March 18, 2020, and we're in the early stages of a widespread economic meltdown, as well as a pandemic from a crazy virus from China.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index has dropped over 9,000 points in about a month, down from 29,551 to 19,898 today.  The world is crazy.  People are freaking out on many levels.  Nobody knows what to invest in, those that still have money.

Here's the thing, I could take that same quarter from 1964,the quarter that my dad could have bought a gallon of gas with, and I could sell that dinged up 1964 quarter at a coin shop for $3-$3.50 right now.  That 1964 quarter WILL STILL buy a gallon of gas in most of the United States, 56 years after that quarter was minted, 56 years after that photo of my dad and his T-bird above.  Here in California, we have a special blend of glass to help keep the air cleaner (supposedly), and gas is over $4 a gallon.  But that 1964 quarter will still buy most of a gallon of gas.

Why is that?  The reason is that U.S. quarters (and dimes) minted in 1964 or before, were made form 90% silver.  Silver, like gold, is a precious metal.  It's still used in making coins some places, as it has been throughout human history.  In addition, some people hold silver as an investment, like they do with gold.  Silver is used in jewelry, and A LOT of silver is used in industry, particularly for soldering and electrical connections in cell phones, and all kinds of other electronic devices.  So silver, unlike stocks, bonds, and other paper assets, is always worth something.  Silver has intrinsic value.  "Paper assets," like stock shares, can go to zero, and become completely worthless.  But precious metals are always worth something.  The same is true of gold, though gold is widely considered far more valuable, because gold never tarnishes, and is believed to be far more rare.

The value of paper money, when it's not backed by gold, can fluctuate wildly.  This is called "fiat money," and eventually, all fiat money winds up worthless.  Every type of fiat money in human history eventually became completely worthless.  But precious metals, like gold and silver, are always worth something, even though the prices goes up and down.  The small amount of silver in a U.S. quarter would buy a gallon of gas in 1964, and will still buy a gallon of gas in most places in the U.S. today.  You can check it out on this silver coin price page.

The silver price per ounce (troy ounce, more than our regular ounce) has dropped to about $12 an ounce, over the last few days.  It was hovering around $16-$18 a troy ounce for about six years, before that.  In the 1960's, silver was about $1.30 an ounce, and a gallon of milk was about 95 cents.  So a troy ounce of silver would buy you about 1 1/2 gallons of milk.  In the late 60's, silver rose to about $2.50 an ounce, or 2 1/2 gallons of milk.  Now, 55 years later, after all kinds of changes in the world, a gallon of milk costs about $3.50, and an a troy ounce of silver will buy you 3 1/2 gallons of milk.  Milk is subsidized, so the price would be higher in a free market. The ounce of silver will buy roughly the same amount of a standard item over along period of time.  As the value of dollars (or any fiat money) goes down, silver and gold, by and large, hold heir value. This is particularly why you hear of people buying gold, or silver, in times of crisis.  The really smart investors actually load up on silver and gold before a crisis, when the prices are usually cheaper.

My point here is that we are in REALLY crazy economic times, and one of the best things to own during a crisis, for average people (and smart investors) is silver and gold.  Gold has gone up quite a bit over the last couple of years, and is $1492 a troy ounce right now.  Most people would have trouble setting aside $1500 to buy one ounce of gold right now.  But a one troy ounce Silver Eagle coin, a standard coin for saving silver, is $12 an ounce, and you'll pay a premium of about $2 to buy one.  Just about anybody, like you, can afford to buy an ounce (or several) of silver to set aside.  Over time, silver holds its value well, whether the value of dollars (or euros, kronor, yen, pounds, etc) goes up or down.

I'm not a financial advisor, I can't tell you what to invest in, or what not to invest in.  My point in this post is to point out that silver and gold hold their value over time, and there's a really good reason a lot of people buy silver and gold in times of crisis, like right now.  So now you know why, and this may be an option you want to think about while things are so crazy in our world, economically, and otherwise, right now.

You can buy silver bullion in bars, 1 ounce, 5 ounces, or 10 ounces, or in 1 ounce coins. But these days, the U.S. 1 ounce Silver Eagle is one of the most common.  You can buy them in a coin shop, or online, if you're interested.  The Silver Eagles are well known, and easy to sell down the line, if you want or need to sell them.  



When the financial world calms down, then you can think about buying one of these puppies...

Quarantunes Playlist: You may be stuck inside... but you haven't died (yet). Let's ROCK!

Let's rock this apocalyptic series of crazy ass events.  Here's No Doubt bringing in the 21st Century covering REM's "End of the world as we know it."  New Year's Eve 1999/2000 in the MTV studios. 

Apocalyptic Rock

REM "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)

Billy Joel "We Didn't Start the Fire" 

Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"

Harvey Danger "Flagpole Sitta"

The Who "Baba O'Riley"

Johnny Cash "The Man Comes Around"

Wagner "Ride of the Valkyries"/Apocalypse Now scene

Robyn Adele Anderson "Paint it Black"

The Band "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down"

Genesis  "Land of Confusion"
 
Social Distancing and Social Distortion 
The Police  "Don't Stand So Close to Me"

Social Distortion "Sick Boy"

Social Distortion "Sick Girls"

Social Distortion "Bad Luck"

Social Distortion "Ball and Chain"

We're stuck inside... now what?
 No Doubt "Trapped in a Box"
  
Guns  n' Roses "Patience"

Rhianna "Stay"

Oingo Boingo "Stay"

No Doubt " A Little Something Refreshing" 

George Thorogood "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer"

This sucks... I'm depressed
K.D. Lang "Crying" 

Kerry Getz "This Thorny Rose" 

Tori Amos "Silent All These Years"

Social Distortion "Ball and Chain"

Gordon Lightfoot "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

I'm tired of being depressed... let's dance

Brian Setzer Orchestra "Jump Jive and Wail"

Cherry Poppin' Daddies "Zoot Suit Riot"

Save Ferris "Come on Eileen"

No Doubt "Just a Girl"

Now what?
Tank Girl "Let's Do It"

Divinyls " I Touch Myself" 

Bruce Springsteen "Rosalita"

Berlin "Sex" 

The Buzzcocks  "Orgasm Addict"

Meatloaf "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights"

Jimmy Buffet "Why don't we get drunk and screw?" 

You're driving me crazy 
 The Buzzcocks  "Every Fallen in Love (with someone you shouldn't have)

The Descendents  "Clean Sheets"  

All  "She's My Ex" 

Ugly Kid Joe "Everything About You"

Social Distortion "99 to Life"

Guns N' Roses "Used to Love Her"

 I don't know if I can stand this any longer... 
 Social Distortion "Don't Drag Me Down"

Chumba Wamba "Tub Thumper"

It's over... we can go out again!
The Who "I'm Free"

K.D. Lang  "Hallelujah"

Covid 19 : Corona Virus update site

The CDC's website is WAY behind... But a 17-year-old from Seattle has built the leading website to stay up to date on the Corona Virus stats worldwide.  Thanks kid!

ncov2019.live

Quarantine Binge time? Here's the Steve Emig: The White Bear "Film Festival"

This is my footage from the 2-Hip King of Dirt contest as Mission Trails in the spring of 1991.  This clip is from Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer, the first S&M Bikes video (the whole video cost about $250).  There had never been a King of Dirt jam/contest on a jump like Mission Trails' infamous Death Jump at that point, and this contest took riding to a whole different level.  This was some of the craziest riding any of us had ever seen.  Mat Hoffman made the first backflip attempts on dirt, and Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson hucked himself like a rag doll off Death Jump.  Epic day in BMX riding.

For what it's worth, After getting started in video work in 1987, I produced the first six AFA videos, the first 2-Hip Video, and the first two S&M Bikes videos, among others.  If you got some time to kill while the C-virus is wandering the U.S. (or your country)and causing hysteria and mayhem, here's most of the videos I produced, edited, or somehow worked on, back in the 1980's and 1990's.  Enjoy.

1987-  My video career started in the Spring of 1987, when American Freestyle Association founder, Bob Morales, walked into the back office at the AFA, and asked, "Hey, you wanna make a TV commercial for the Austin contest?  I can get local cable TV spots on MTV for $25 each."  Since I had never made a TV commercial, had no fucking idea how to make one, got paid $5 and hour, and worked at the AFA, I said, "Sure!"  He sent me to Unreel Productions (They sent a cameraman to each event, since Vision Street Wear sponsored the AFA that year.  Both the AFA and Vision could use the footage).  I called Unreel, and when I went over there, they handed me about ten VHS tapes, copies of the raw footage, and told me how to pick the shots I liked, and write down the time code numbers.  I went home, did that, went and they walked me through the whole process of making a 30 second TV commercial.  I was a 20-year-old BMX freestyler, a year or two younger than most film students are when they leave college to start a film or TV career. 

After the Austin comp (which was epic!), Bob Morales said, "You know... I kind of advertised some contest videos a while back, and never really got around to making them.  You wanna make 'em?"  I said, "Sure."  So I "produced" the first six AFA contest videos, for 1987 events.  They were from the Oregon, Texas, and Ohio AFA Masters contests, one video each for pro ramps, one video each for pro flatland.  Again, Unreel, mostly Dave Alvarez, the wizard video editor, shepherded me through the process of making the videos.  Of those six, only this one below, is on You Tube.  So here's the start of my video career, and my "film fest."
AFA Oregon Pro Flatland- My job- producer/director, camera was by Gary Langenheim from Unreel Productions. 

AFA Oregon Pro Ramps- Check out Dave Voelker (still amateur then) and Mike Dominguez, in particular, in this one.  My job- producer/director, cameraman was Gary Langenheim.

AFA Texas Pro Flatland- My job- producer/director, the cameraman was Don Hoffman, head of Unreel.

Texas Pro Ramps, Ohio Pro Flatland, and Ohio Pro Ramps, the other three videos I produced in 1987, are not on YouTube.  I lost my personal copies of these videos in the 1980's.  These six videos sold around 25 to maybe 50 copies each, which doesn't sound like much, but the AFA sold these for $30 each then, the standard rate for BMX videos, and they cost the AFA about $3 each to make copies, and I got paid $250 for producing each video.  Unreel Productions sent a cameraman to each contest, because Vision Street Wear (Vision owned Unreel Productions) sponsored the AFA Freestyle Masters series in 1987.  The deal was that both the AFA and Unreel/Vision could use the footage.  In addition, Unreel would let us, at the AFA, edit, using their editor and their $500,000 edit bay.  So the only costs to make these videos were what Bob paid me to produce them, $250 each.  So each of these videos, even with small sales, made a little profit for the AFA, which was always strapped for cash.  So making these videos were a good thing for both me, to learn how videos got made, and to the AFA.

1988- 1989- I got hired at Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear's video company, in December of 1987, and left the AFA.  Nothing against Bob Morales, he was cool, though often frustrating, to work for.  He just had so many things going at once back then, that there never seemed enough time to get everything done.  Unreel was just a good opportunity, and better money.  I was nicknamed The Dub Guy there, because I mostly made copies of different videos for people in Vision Skateboards, Vision Street Wear, and Sims Snowboards all day long.  I was basically a production assistant, and didn't have a key role in their videos, but helped in some way on them.  Here are the main Vision videos from that time:
Freestylin' Fanatics 
Sims Snow Shredders
 Vision Psycho Skate
Mondo Vision (has BMX and GPV's)  Mondo Part 2, Mondo Part 3 (Vander, 2-hip Finals, Santee Meet the Street)
Vision Skate Escape-Final part- Hawk vs. Hosoi  (Unreel worked with the NSA to produce this contest, so I did a lot of work helping with this actual event)
Red Hot Skate Rock- The Red Hot Chili Peppers performing at the Skate Escape event. I was in the slam pit during the show.  A great way to blow off steam after a couple really long weeks of work before the event.
Vision Street Wear commercial  
We shot this commercial in the same Hollywood studio where Motley Crue shot part of the "Girls, Girls, Girls" music video two weeks earlier.  We filled the whole building, even their offices, with the fog we used for a couple shots, which smelled like Strawberry Quick.  The studio's office staff wasn't too happy about that.
Vision BMX compilation- This was not an official Vision video, but it's a re-edit of a whole bunch of BMX stuff Vision put out.  It may be one of the videos we made for a trade show.  It's a bunch of Unreel produced, Vision Street Wear BMX stuff, all edited together in chunks.  But it contains segments not in the videos above.  We made videos like these, looped to play for two hours straight, for every trade show.
Vision Barge at Will- (1989) This was Don Hoffman's best attempt (and a good one) to make a Vision skate video as cool as the Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade videos, which ruled skateboarding at the time.  Barge at Will had real good skating, and much better music, than the Bones videos.  I was a cameraman for Mark Cernicky, Kele Rosecrans, and some other parts, and you can see my sitting on the rail in the background in  Ken Park's section, a few times.  I also edited one segment of this video, my first official editing at Unreel.
Tom Petty "Free Fallin'" music video- Easiest day of video work ever.  We (Unreel Productions) didn't produce this video, and had nothing to do with it.  But I got sent up to this film shoot to shoot behind-the-scenes video footage, since our skaters, Eric Nash, Kele Rosecrans, and Joe Johnson, were in it, along with the Vision mini-ramp.  I just wandered around, watched, shot some video now and then, and ate free food from the craft service table all day.  Tom Petty was as cool as could be.

2-hip BHIP- Part 1- Originally called 2-hip: The '88 Adventure, Ron Wilkerson called me up in early 1989, and asked if I could edit the 1988 2-hip season video for them.  I said sure.  I made $500 for editing this video, took the money, got a money order, and sent it all to my sister, who was in college, and needed money then.  So I'm either a helpful, or stupid, brother.  She's been a school teacher for a lot of years, after graduating, and this video helped her get through her freshman year.  This section pulls up the other sections of the video on YouTube.
2-hip BHIP Part-2 - This is my edit of the Santee Meet the Street, the first BMX street contest most of us knew about.  Dave Vanderspek actually had a small street contest about a year earlier, but it didn't get any media coverage.  So this was "the first ever BMX street contest" for most of us.  This day changed BMX bike riding forever.  I just realized that I'm sitting behind on my bike (blue shirt) as Craig Grasso paints at :23.   I also put the shot of me ghost riding into the wall in the clip.  The cameraman was Pat Wallace, Unreel's main camera guy then, who gave me a ride to the contest.

1990-In January of 1990, as the Vision empire was basically collapsing from the inside (it grew too big too fast),  and Unreel was dissolved.  So I was kept, and moved to the Vision main office in Santa Ana.  I basically sat in a room, bored out of my skull, did one little project every week or two, and got a check, for 6 months.  Then I quit, and started trying to do freelance video work. 

All through 1990, I was shooting bike footage on the weekends, on my own S-VHS camera, hoping make my own bike video sometime later in the year.  At that time, individuals didn't make their own videos.  Eddie Roman made the BMX movie-on-video, Aggroman, the year before.  And I heard Mark Eaton in Pennsylvania was making low budget flatland videos, but I hadn't seen one yet.  The "rider-made" video idea wasn't really there yet.  I just thought all the Vision videos were kind of goofy, and had old footage, not the newest tricks, for the most part.  I wanted to make a video that showed riding, as I knew it.
Tuff Skts promo- Few people remember that Christian Hosoi teamed up with Vision Skateboards, for a new company called Tuff Skts, in 1990.  The idea only lasted a few months, but I got to go hang with Christian and his crew for three full days, shooting footage, which was an adventure.  Venice Beach, his halfpipe, a backyard pool, and a larger pool way up on a mountain in the Antelope Valley.  This was the only Vision video I made completely alone, as cameraman, director, and editor, on betacam.  This is a chopped down version of the original promo, which was 7 minutes long, and had Bad Brains and Muddy Water music.  But my copy of that tape is lost.

In late 1990, I worked freelance for Gerard at NSI video, a surfing and skateboard video distributor.  I edited two episodes of Skater's Quarterly, and one of Snowboarder's Quarterly.  I don't have copies, and the only part Skater's Quarterly online is this clip, from the year before.  Gerard was a crazy character, he's the guy talking in the little circle in this clip.  He's also the guy who sold 500 copies of my BMX video later that year.  

The Ultimate Weekend- In 1986, working at FREESTYLIN' magazine, Andy Jenkins decided he was going to try and talk Oz (the publisher, and our boss) into making another BMX video.  Andy told Gork, Lew, and me to think up some ideas for a video.  We had a little meeting in the parking lot one night, and I pitched the idea of us getting off work on a Friday afternoon, and just going and riding with all the best riders over a whole weekend, then coming back in exhausted Monday morning.  The guys thought my idea sucked.  And no idea was ever pitched to Oz.  But four years later, I took my idea, and I shot, self-produced, edited, and financed ($5,000 out of my pocket, with some last minute help from Mike Sarrail), my own video.  If Old School riders remember me for anything, it's usually this video. 

BMX freestyle had officially "died" in 1989, mountain bikes were the new hot thing.  But progression was going crazy.  The Ultimate Weekend had a lot of firsts in it.  The first time most people saw Keith Treanor ride.  The first handrail slide down stairs.  the first mini-ramps in a BMX video.  The first spine ramp in a BMX video.  The first 360 over a spine in a video.  The first ice pick grind on a rail.  The first footage of the Nude Bowl in a BMX video.  The first video of the P.O.W. BMX House and riders.  The first S&M Bikes shield logo and S&M riders in a video.

About six months later, Eddie Roman came out with Headfirst, the single most influential BMX video of all time.  No question.  Headfirst blew The Ultimate Weekend out of the water.  But those six months in between, everybody saw, and watched, this video, and I'm glad I made it.

1991- Chris Moeller, who had this tiny little bike company then called S&M Bikes, called me up and said, he wanted to make an S&M Bikes video.  His idea was to take a porno video, show the bad acting scenes, and when they cut to sex, we'd cut to bike riding.  That was the initial idea.  Here's part of what this super low budget video ended up looking like.  The title ended up being, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer.  That was a Dave Clymer pick up line that he used to pick up his girlfriend at the time.
Leg Muscles- Jimmy Levan
Leg Muscles- Alex Leech
Leg Muscles- Dave Clymer
Leg Muscles- Chris Moeller
Leg Muscles- Mission Trails (The clip at the top of this blog post)

1992- I got a job working on the the crew of the 1991 Supercross and Monster Trucks TV series, for GRB Motorsports.  Here's one of the shows from that season, Anaheim Supercross.  I'm actually in the credits.  I've never seen one of these shows on YouTube.

 In the GRB main office worked motorcycle stuntman Johnny Airtime.  So I sent him some of the raw footage from the Mission Trails King of Dirt contest, through interoffice memo one day.  Much to my surprise, and everyone else's he called over t our office.  No one couldfigure out why Johnny was calling me, the least important person in the office.  They didn't know I had sent him BMX footage.  I picked up the phone, and Johnny said, "You BMX guys are crazy!"  That's really something, considering it was the guy who did this stunt, and this stunt, and many others, saying that.   GRB's main TV shows were World's Greatest Stunts and Stuntmasters.  Johnny was a stunt coordinator, and well as the best known motorcycle jumper of that era, between Evel Knievel, and Seth Enslow.  I'd never met him, so it was a trip having him freak out on the phone about the BMX footage from the Mission Trails King of Dirt.  He asked what kinds of stunts a BMX rider could do.  So I tried to hook up my friends, thinking mostly of Chris Moeller's and Dave Clymer's skills.  I said they could jump and do a 360 over 2 or 3 cars.  We talked about several ideas, and he liked the car jump, but said it had to be more exciting.  I said, "What if you light the cars on fire?"  Johnny liked that idea, and I pitched Chris Moeller as the guy to do it.  Then Johnny said, "I've seen video of that Mat Hoffman kid, could he do it?"  I said, "Yeah, Mat could do it."

In the TV industry, though I was new, I was learning there is a lot of talking about cool ideas in the office, and most of those ideas never, ever happen.  I wound up meeting Johnny at the Las Vegas Supercross that year, and we talked about the idea some more.  But I left the production for another job, a couple months later, and didn't think any thing else about the flaming car jump. 

Two or three years later, someone told me they saw Mat Hoffman on a TV show, doing a 360 over three flaming cars.  That blew my mind.  Somehow the original trick idea actually wound up happening, with Mat nailing it, of course.  Here's the video of that stunt.  Another cool fact, I read years later in Mat's book, is that Johnny Airtime, on this stunt shoot, was the guy who gave Mat the idea to build the first mega quarterpipe, so Mat could get past the 14-15 foot air threshold, where he had plateaued, on a regular halfpipe. 

1992-1995
American Gladiators- "Turbo punches Kyler"- in the summer of 1992, I got a job on the stage crew of American Gladiators, as a spotter.  I worked on this crew for our seasons, and led the crew of 8 in 1994 and 1995.  If you pause this clip at :24, I'm the guy black in the background, on Wesley Barry's tower.
Kyler's Storm's crazy move- I saw this one happen right in front of me.  Pretty freakin' cool.
Wesley "2-Scoops" Barry is the most talented athlete I've EVER met.  He has an incredible story, and was one of the coolest people I've ever met, as well. His first day of practice, we were sitting on the bungee towers, and he said, "I think I'm going to take this thing."  I asked, "The bungee event."  He said, "No... I'm going to win the whole thing."  He did.  It was bravado.  It was solid confidence.
Of all the American Gladiators I worked with, Elektra (Salina Bartunek)and Siren (Shelly Beattie, were the ones I got to know the best.  Both amazing women.
1993- Since I got to know a bunch of crew people on American Gladiators, I got a call to work on a similar show, staffed by several of the people I worked with at GRB Motorsports.  Again, I was a spotter on the only season of Knights and Warriors.  

1993- I wound up Chris Moeller's roommate after we made "Leg Muscles," and that story became a BMX urban legend for a while.  But we teamed up for one more video in 1993, the second S&M Bikes video.
S&M Bikes 44 Something 

 1994- Another year, another call to be a spotter on the crew of another Gladiators-style show.  This time it was the Inline Skating show Blade Warriors.  This set had about 25 ramps on the set, including a halfpipe.  But my bike was down in Orange County, while I stayed in the Santa Monica area during this whole shoot, since I didn't have a car.  I did have a skateboard, so I had some fun on that set.

2000- I tried to get back into making BMX videos again, while working as a taxi driver.  This video was basically an edit of a whole bunch of "lurktographer" video I shot, from several contests in SoCal, from the 1999 X-Games (scammed a press pass), and some local H.B. and Sheep Hills footage.  I bought a Hi-8 edit system from a wedding video guy, and made a "practice" video I called Animals.  I called it Animals because I mixed in a bunch of animal footage I shot at the San Diego Zoo, and a few wild shots (the coyote was on the Bolsa Chica mesa in Huntington Beach, right off Warner Ave.).   

Somehow, one of the 12 or so VHS copies of Animals survived, and made it into BMX Movie Database (Huge thanks BMX  M DB guys!).  I just found out this video still existed a year or so ago.  I lost the master and my copies in 2008.  Click this link above to check it out.  Not a half bad mid-school video for no budget.  The Cory Nastazio section is my personal favorite.  I made Animals as a "practice video," to show some riders of that 2000 era, so I could then get guys to go ride street and trails, to make a "real." video.  I wound up homeless at the end of 2000, a DMV clerical mistake got my driver's license suspended, totally by accident.  But I was a taxi driver, and that meant I lost my job a few days before Christmas 2000, right after I'd done my Christmas shopping.  Things were pretty sketchy, I wound up homeless in 2002-2003, then got my license, taxi permit, and was living in a taxi and working again, in late 2003.  Then I got fat driving a cab 7 days a week, working 70-80+ hours a week.  So I never made another video.  But there's still hope.  Maybe I'll make The Ultimate Weekend II... some day.

I have a new blog focused on side hustles, gig jobs, small businesses, and making a living in the coming recession.  Check it out:

Small Business Futurist

What's a Pandemic? This video explains it.

In this age of bad news, fake news, sketchy news, and straight out propaganda, this is a pretty straight forward, well produced video explaining what a pandemic is, why people are so freaked out, and why it's a big deal. 

Calling all Old School BMX Has Beens...

I want to make this T-shirt, this design on a black T-shirt.  

I'm looking for at least 18 people who want to buy one for $15 (+$5 Shipping in U.S.), to raise the money to make them.  I've had this basic idea in my head for years.  The goal is to sell 30 of these T-shirts total (and make 2-3 for myself).  Planning to make XL, XXL, and XXXL sizes.  I'm using a GoFundMe page to pre-sell them, or you can Paypal me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com .  If you do that, add your address.

I need to get at least 18 pre-orders to be able to make the shirts.  You all know I'm broke, so I'm doing this as a way to make it happen.  If I don't get 18 orders, everyone gets their money back, and the T-shirts don't get made.   

Here's the link to the GoFundMe page with the details, and how to pre-order one (or 10).

Who's down for a HAS BEEN T-shirt?

OK, I decided to hold off on making these.  Not enough initial interest, and I'm too strapped for cash to just make them myself.  One of these days...

Brian and Dave's little session in about 1988

Watch the segment at 16:27, that's what this post is about.  

Looking through photos on my laptop yesterday, I saw one I snapped of Dave Voelker and Brian Blyther at the One Love Jam (photo below), about a month ago.  Like the rest you riders out there, these vert riders blew my mind in magazines and contests back in the day, and were both inspirations in my own riding.  Since I got lucky and stumbled into the BMX freestyle industry, I got to know both of them back in the 1980's. 

In a moment of dorky thoughts about all the crazy shit I've seen them do back in the day, the segment at 16:27 in the Vision/Unreel Productions Freestylin' Fanatics video popped into my head.  While I was working at Unreel, a lot of riders thought I was busy producing and directing these Vision videos in my 2 1/2 years there. 

In reality, I was The Dub Guy, that was my nickname.  Most of my time was spent in a little, 6 by 8 foot room, filled with all kinds of pro VTR's (video tape recorders, because "VCR" wasn't a cool enough acronym for $7,000 machines) making copies of different videos, for all the the assorted people in the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear empire.  When I wasn't doing that, I was cleaning heads on the machines, running important errands, like picking up frozen yogurt and Chinese chicken salads for my co-workers, or hand labeling the 3,000 tapes in our tape library.  I was everybody's assistant and gofer, and I didn't direct or produce anything until late 1988, and that was a short video segment. 

But since I was the sole BMX kid, in a office full of old surfer/skateboarders, they told me one day to "write some copy" for the Freestylin' Fanatics video.  "Copy" is TV talk for a script, basically, words for a voice-over guy to say over the video.  I had no idea what the fuck they wanted, I'd never written any copy before, so I said, "Sure, I'll give it a try." I figured they'd hate what I wrote, and write something else.  So I made up this weird story about Ivan Drabinski's School of Parking Attendants for the clip of Brian and Dave riding over the junk cars.  Those cars, I believe, were somewhere on the Ohio State Fairgrounds, where an AFA Masters contest was held.  Don Hoffman ( I think) was the cameraman at that contest, and saw the cars, and told Brian and Dave to screw around on them, outside the contest, for a little funny footage. 

As was typical for all raw video footage at Unreel, I made a VHS window dub of the footage after the contest.  A window dub is a copy of the raw video footage from camera, usually on a VHS tape, that had a box with running numbers in it, showing the time code from the original tape.  The directors would watch the VHS window dub, write down the numbers of the shots they liked, and then take that list of shots in, when they went into the edit bay (the $250,000 room of editing equipment in those days), and edit the final video.  In typical Unreel Productions fashion, the footage sat, unwatched, for over a year. 

Then, management decided to make a BMX freestyle video, and Brian Gillogly, an old school surfer who once worked at Skateboarder Magazine, got picked to direct the video.  Even though I was the only BMX guy in the office, I wasn't a producer, so I had nothing to do with decision making for Freestylin' Fanatics.  At least until Brian asked me to write the voice-overs.  So I took a tape of the footage home, and wrote V.O.'s for this scene, the Dave Vanderspek scene, and the Martin and Woody flatland scene, that night.  Brian and I irked each other sometimes, so I figured he'd hate what I wrote.  But he actually liked it, and Dave Alvarez, our video editor, did the voice-overs, then edited them into the video. 

Where did I come up with Ivan Drabinski and his school for parking attendants?  Three years earlier, in Boise, Idaho, I managed a tiny little amusement park, called The Fun Spot, for the summer.  One of the kids working there was John Drabinski.  He was a cool guy, and Drabinski was a cool sounding name, so I started there.  Ivan just seemed to fit with Drabinski, they sounded good together, and I just made up this dumb ass little story.  And what do you know?  It wound up in the video.  To be honest, I told Brian that talking over the riding was a stupid idea, and he should just cut the scene together with some cool music.  But he was the director.  So that's the story of Ivan Drabinski's School of Parking attendants, which I think went bankrupt a few months later, after one of the valets rammed a $100,000 Lamborghini Countach into the side of a parked Rolls Royce at 85 mph.  There I go, making up stories again.  Something about the name Ivan Drabinski makes me want to keep making things up about him.  Maybe it'll be a novel someday.

I think I actually apologized to Dave Voelker after the video came out, for the lame voice-over, but he said he actually thought it was funny.  Maybe.  It was a long time ago.  Dave can comment if he remembers that. 

This was one of those little things I did at Unreel that I didn't think twice about, just some extra work to goof around with, and that would be thrown in the trash the next day, as far as I was concerned.  And here I am, writing a blog post about it, 32 years later.  Weird world.

Brian Blyther and Dave Voelker, hanging out at the One Love flatland Jam, in early 2020.  No cars were damaged in the making of this photo.  Which is good, because Brian's a cop now, and one of us would have got arrested. 

Van's Shimmer- Big & Burly New School street ridnig

This video is from last summer, but I've never seen it, until today.  Stumbled across it, and it's chock full of some big, burly modern street riding.  It's from Van's, and is well shot and produced, though it repeats shots a lot, which is typical these days.  It'd be really cool to seem some of these riders go freewheel or change up the set-up a bit, and invent some new tricks.  But burly street riding is always a good watch.