Eddie Fiola at Pipeline- 1985 King of the Skateparks

The original King of the Skateparks, Eddie Fiola, tearing up the legendary Pipe Bowl at Pipeline skatepark, in Upland California.  

This blog is coming up on 1,000 posts, I've got 10 to 15 to go.  So I decided to write some long posts about some of my favorite moments in BMX freestyle back in the 1980's.  I'm going to mix those with some of my favorite video clips from the early years of freestyle, as I work up to the 1,000 post milestone.

In those early years of 1983-1985-1985, BMX trick riding in Southern California turned into BMX freestyle, and then into an actual sport with competitions, thanks to Bob Morales. Freestyle began to spread across the U.S. and the world, through the BMX magazines, and Eddie Fiola riding Pipeline Skatepark was the standard for vert riding in that era.  The Pipe Bowl was the place where those early skatepark riders blasted the highest airs in those early years.  

A few facts, Stan Hoffman, owner of Pipeline, didn't put coping in any of the original bowls, because he was worried about injuries and insurance claims.  So that's why there was no coping in the Pipe Bowl.  Pro skaters, and Pipeline locals, Steve and Micke Alba, talked Stan into putting coping in the Combi Pool, which was built 2 or 3 years later.  The Pipe Bowl had a 20 foot diameter full pipe, paying homage to the already well known spot, Baldy Pipe, which was 16 feet in diameter, up in the mountains above the San Gabriel Valley.  The Pipe Bowl was 12 feet deep, and the face wall, where they did the big airs, had four feet of vert.  This made it much bigger and gnarlier than the standard quarterpipes, which were usually about 8 feet high at the time.  The fence around the Pipe Bowl was five feet high, and the locals measured airs above the fence.  So "three feet" to locals meant three feet above the five foot high fence, or an 8 foot air.  

In this clip we see Eddie blasting 3-4 feet above the fence, airing in the 8 to 9 foot range, again above the 12 foot high face wall.  Eddie flat out tore this bowl up, he had lines all over the place, and had more style than anyone riding the Pipe Bowl.  Also in this video clip we see Eddie do a 540 on the hip.  To the best of my knowledge, this is the first BMX 540 on vert ever in a video.  Word has it that Woody Itson invented the 540 air, about halfway up a quarterpipe, a few months before this.  Eddie pulled it for the first time on video at this contest, a local public access TV show, which was also released on video.  This show produced by Unreel Productions founder Don Hoffman, the son of Pipeline owners Stan and Jean Hoffman.    

This video is a key clip in the history of BMX vert riding, and set the stage for vert progression, as it moved to quarterpipes, and later onto halfpipes during the rest of the 1980's, and beyond.