The Number 43 and BMX... what I know...

I don't know who Dick Cheeseburger is, but a 43 foot jump is a 43 foot jump.  So how did the number 43 wind up tied to BMX?  Here's what I know.  

For any of you new to my blog, when I write about the old days of BMX freestyle and skateboarding, I write my own personal memories and ideas.  I never intend my blog posts to be "the official word" on any subject.  So these thoughts on how the number 43 became the official lucky number of BMX freestyle are my thoughts, and the part of the story I know something about.  

43 in an address in Hollywood.  #steveemigphotos

For me, personally, I had an affinity for the number 43 before it became a thing in BMX.  I was a 5-year-old living in some low income duplexes in about 1971.  We lived in Jackson Township, just outside of Massillon, Ohio.  One day a neighbor lady told us the number 13 was an "unlucky number."  Being little kids, we asked her, "Why?"  Like most adults, when asked "why?" she didn't have an answer.  So us little kids spent some time talking about lucky and unlucky numbers.  Being a contrarian, even at ae 5, I decided that 13 would be my lucky number.  So we decided to pick some other lucky numbers.  43 was our first pick, because that was the sketchy UHF TV channel in our area that played scary monster movies, old time B movies.  "43 just sounds like a cool number," we thought.  We also picked 27, and 57.  So 13, 43, 27, and 57 seemed like the best "lucky numbers" to us 5-year-olds in Ohio back then.  For my childhood years, 43 was my back-up lucky number, behind 13.  We even noticed that odd numbers just seemed cooler than even numbers, for some reason, a pretty cool insight for kindergarten kids.  

My family moved nearly every year as I grew up, and we wound up in Boise, Idaho, when I started high school, several years later.  We lived in the Centennial subdivision of Boise for my sophomore year, then moved to a mobile home park outside of town the next year.  The plan was for my parents to save a bunch of money for a year or two, and then buy a house in Boise.  Unlike most of my parents' financial plans, that one actually worked.  After a year out in the boonies in the trailer park, they bought a really cool house in town.  

This one's for Drob, aka Maurice Meyer, who's kind of become the Godfather of 43.  He also likes building models.  #steveemigphotos

But that year living in the "desert," in Blue Valley trailer park, is where I got into BMX.  There were a bunch of us teenage guys, only about 4 teen girls, and not much to do, and we all had crappy BMX bikes.  Since we were isolated outside of town, we just started pushing each other to get better riding our bikes on our little jumps.  By late 1982, we got into BMX racing, and I was a serious 17 novice racer when we moved back into town in the summer of 1983.  I never made it out of the novice class, because I was usually racing intermediates, and even experts, at times.  Boise may seem like an unlikely place for a serious racing scene in the early 80's,   But Shannon Gillette, now working at USA BMX, was one of the guys a couple years younger than me, in the local Boise racing scene, at the time.  Clint Davies and Darwin Hansen, also Boise locals, did well in national races back then.   

So what does Boise have to do with the number 43?  By some weird coincidence, Boise sits just above 43 degrees of northern latitude.  Without realizing it until a couple of years ago, I got into BMX while living at 43 degrees of latitude.  That's also why there is now a Hotel 43 in Boise.  That's just another weird little 43 thing in my personal life.  Us Boise locals, and a bunch of riders across the top of the U.S., from New Hampshire to Oregon, started riding at, or around, 43 degrees of northern latitude.  Some of you reading this may be in that group.

Is an angel approving of my sausage biscuit and Diet Coke breakfast?  Probably not.  #steveemigphotos

By late 1983, I got more into freestyle, though I raced a lot of indoor races over the winter of 1983-84.  I joined the local trick team with Jay Bickel, in the Spring of 1984, and was all freestyle after that.  A year later, my dad got laid off, and found a new job in San Jose, California.  By late August in 1985, I was living in San Jose with my family.  I started a BMX freestyle zine, and found the local riders around the San Francisco Bay Area.  I rode mostly by myself during the week, and met up with other riders at Golden Gate Park in The City, and Beach Park Ramp Jams, on the weekends, when I could. 

At that time, The Curb Dogs, led by Dave Vanderspek, was a San Francisco bike/skate team that was as famous in the BMX world as the Haro, GT, and Skyway factory teams.  Skyway was the main NorCal based freestyle team.  Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzalez, and Oleg Konings were on Skyway in 1986, and Maurice Meyer was both a Curb Dog, and a Skyway team member.  The number 43 became an inside joke among the Curb Dogs in 1986, and it began growing from there.  

In the summer of 1986, Maurice Meyer was profiled for a local TV show, called Pacific Currents.  The segment focused on the always underrated Maurice, which is way cool.  In the Golden Gate Park footage, Karl Rothe, Chris Rothe, Mark McKee, Darcy Langlois, Tim Treacy, and myself (chasing bike at 5:07), are in there as well.  This piece was shot in June or July of 1986, and the 43 thing had not happened yet.  Shortly after this piece was shot, in late July 1986, I moved to Southern California, to work at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  

I asked Maurice Meyer to check out this post, and he retold me the origin story.  A San Francisco skater named Rob's dad came home from the corner store and said, with a thick Persian accent, "How come every thing I buy there ends up in 43 cents?"  It was funny the way he said it, and stuck in Rob's head.  He started noticing the number 43 around, as well, and share the story with skater friends, and the Curb Dogs and other locals.  So it began as a weird inside joke in 1986, in the S.F. skate/BMX freestyle scene.  Maurice turned shared an article in a Scandinavian mag, here and here, that recounts the original story.  

One weird little inside joke turned into a worldwide thing in the BMX freestyle and skate subcultures.  #steveemigphotos

A couple of months later, in September or October '86, the NorCal crew came to SoCal, and stopped by Wizard Publications, where I worked.  Out in the parking lot, after work, the Wizard crew talked with the NorCal posse, about 15 or so riders.  Karl Rothe asked me how my new job, as a magazine guy, was going.  I told him that I had just transcribed a super long interview with Skyway pro, and NorCal local, Robert Peterson, "It was like 43 pages when I typed it all up."  Karl, said, "Whoa, 43!"  I had no idea what he was talking about.  The interview was 41 1/2 or 42 1/2 pages when transcribed, but I rounded up to 43 when Karl asked, for some reason.  

The 43 origin story, from a Scandinavian magazine

Karl dragged me over to the rest of the guys, and had me tell them that Bert's interview was about 43 pages long when transcribed.  I asked what the big deal about 43 was, and they said that the number had been popping up all over for them, so it was like this inside joke among 20 or 30 NorCal BMXers and skaters at that point.  In the course of riding and hanging out, the word of the 43 thing slowly spread, like it did to me and the Wizard staff, that night in the parking lot.

As time passed in the late 80's, the affinity for the number 43 spread from the Curb Dogs to the Skyway team (including Eddie Roman and Mat Hoffman), and to other freestylers.  In 1990, I put a big 43 on the back of my video box for The Ultimate Weekend.  It said, "43 reasons to buy or rent this video." and listed the names of the riders in it, and the big tricks in the video.  While my video wasn't a BMX blockbuster by any means, pretty much all the serious riders of the day saw it at some point.  There were very few videos out then.  By then seeing the number 43 randomly was seen as a bit of good luck by a lot of freestylers.  

Tom Green skates, and he's knows what's up.

I think what really got the number 43 in more people's heads was Eddie Roman's 1991 video Headfirst, starring Mat Hoffman.  At 20:38 in the video, Eddie asks Mat how much money he makes a week,  Mat says, "A million, billion, quadrillion dollars, and 43.  Aaaagh 43!"  That little clip, in the most influential BMX video of all time, probably did more to promote the number 43 in BMX freestyle than anything else.  Suddenly 43 was pretty much every rider's lucky number.  And the 43 thing just kept on growing.  

The 43 story in BMX is a lot like the 420 story in marijuana/cannabis/weed culture.  Something that started as a weird, little inside joke among a few friends, slowly grew into this worldwide thing in the subculture.  I love the idea of that, how a little inside joke can organically grow, spread widely, and become a part of the subculture.  So that's my take, with thanks to Maurice Meyer, on how the number 43 became the official lucky number of BMX freestylers worldwide.

A few people, including Drob, reminded me that John Malkovich lives in apartment number 43, in the movie, Being John Malkovich.  That movie, of course, was directed by Spike Jonze, who took my old job at Wizard Publications, and knew the 43 thing well from his years as a rider and BMX photographer.  I couldn't find a shot of the actual door, though.  Just watch the movie again.

Mat Hoffman lands his first 900 at 14:43 in this video.  This is my footage, shot at the 2-Hip King of Vert in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in the Spring of 1989.  I shot the raw footage, and Eddie Roman edited it, and did the funny commentary, with some friends for the 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man.

Brian Tunney- 43 Tricks for my 43rd  birthday

Area 43 BMX Park

Area 43 snowboarding

OFG (Old Fat Guys) BMX podcast #43 - Scotty Zabielski and friend.  

Flatopia 43

The Big Bang Theory- "The 43 Peculiarity"

Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion (April 2022)

Movie 43- This looks horrible, but has a bunch of big stars, including Johnny Knoxville, who's part of the Jackass posse, which includes Spike Jonze.  

Angel Number 43 - According to this video, 43 is a number sent to you by angels.  So angels must love BMX freestyle and skating.  Cool.

Learn the number 43

43 card- Manipulator of Souls in Yu-Gi-Oh!

43 decimal stuff- If you like the number 43, are a math geek, and speak Hindi, this might make sense to you.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (movie) says the meaning of life is 42.  But it began as a comedy radio broadcast in 1978.  BMX freestyle had not officially become a thing then.  It was in its embryonic stage.  So the guy who wrote it couldn't possibly have known that the real meaning of life is 43, unless he had been hanging out with Bob Haro, which he wasn't.

Hip Hop Mix 43

Is 43 always a luck number?  No.  George W. Bush was the 43rd President of the United States.

The Hollywood American Legion sign.  I'm still trying to figure out how to steal this thing and put it in Drob's backyard.  Heh, heh, heh.  43.  Now go ride.

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