This is probably the craziest day of shooting video, for its time period, of any BMX footage I ever shot. In early 1991, pro rider and promoter, Ron Wilkerson, held a 2-Hip King of Dirt contest at Mission Trails, outside of San Diego. The next day there was a King of Vert comp at a halfpipe, somewhere in San Diego. I shot footage there, too, but it never got used in anything. I lost all of my raw footage and video masters when I moved to North Carolina in 2008, this clip is what's left of my footage from that weekend. Here's what I remember...
First I need to set the stage. BMX "died" in early 1989. At the big bike industry trade show in Long Beach, California, that January, the entire bike industry decided, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." So money was sucked out of the BMX world, and the manufacturers focused on the growing mountain bike industry. In 1988, I think there were 12 or 13 "factory" or major BMX freestyle teams touring the U.S.. By the summer of 1989, it was down to Haro and GT teams, going on tour.
With the hype, promotion, and nearly all money drained out of the BMX and freestyle worlds, just the hardcore riders were left by late 1989. To be clear, by "hardcore," I don't just mean the best pros, but all the people who just really loved actually riding bikes, and weren't riding because just to turn pro, try to make money, impress other people, or because their friends thought it was cool. There were a lot of riders, myself included, all over the world, who weren't necessarily the greatest riders, but really loved riding, and kept riding going into the ramen days of the early 1990's. So from 1989 to 1995, when the ESPN's Extreme Games began (renamed "X-Games" in 1996), BMX and BMX freestyle was mostly people working real jobs, and riding as much as possible in their spare time. Ron Wilkerson became the main contest promoter, with the 2-Hip King of Vert halfpipe series, and the Meet the Street comps, going into this era. Mat Hoffman, who turned pro in 1989, just in time for the "death" of BMX, poured his soul into BMX, and started his B.S. contests a couple of years later.
Also in this era, the rider-owned BMX bike companies started, and took hold. Some were partially inspired by skateboarder Steve Rocco who started World Industries skateboards in 1987, which grew rapidly as Street skating took off. BMXers began to start their own businesses. S&M Bikes started in 1987, and Chris Moeller bought out his partner, and began running the business solo, in 1989, I believe. In the following years, FBM Bikes, Standard Byke Company, Eastern Bikes, Hoffman Bikes, Ronnie Bonner's UGP, Brad McDonald's Ride magazine, and others all came out, and got off the ground, among others. So all the punk rock inspired, DIY vibe was really turning into real products and businesses during this same era of the late 1980's and early 1990's.
Another big change during this period was the rise in consumer and prosumer video equipment. When BMX Plus! magazine and the BMX Action Trick Team made their first BMX videos, in 1985 or so, they had to hire a video production company, people that made local TV commercials, industrial training videos, and things like that. Those people knew nothing about BMX or action sports. The "broadcast quality" video cameras and editing equipment (tape to tape editing, not digital), were really expensive. Those early BMX videos, 30 or 40 minutes long, cost $35,000 to $40,000 or more to produce, at a time when no one was really sure if they'd even sell. Then they had to get VHS copies made, which cost about $3 each, make boxes, and then market them. It was really easy to lose money making niche videos, on any subject, in the early and mid 1980's.
By 1989-1990, S-VHS and Hi8 cameras were out, and improving quickly, as those years passed. Those new video cameras, and lower cost editing VCR's, let guys like Eddie Roman make Aggroman (1989), Mark Eaton start the Dorkin' in York series (1988?), and I made The Ultimate Weekend (1990). All of the sudden, regular people, like us, could make the kinds of videos we wanted to watch, for a few hundred, or maybe a few thousand dollars. Once one of us owned a decent prosumer camera, S-VHS or Hi-8, we could go shoot video of our friends for the price of a blank video tape, gas money, and lunch. That meant we could try all kinds of ideas, and shoot footage of anything we felt like shooting. A handful of us, started trying to make our own videos in the late 1980's and early 1990's, then many others jumped in, and started making their own videos, until their were dozens of BMX (and skateboard, and snowboard) videos coming out every year.
Not only did the BMX industry dramatically slow down coming out of the late 1980's, but the different types of BMX riding began to slowly morph into their own genre's. In the early 1980's, pretty much every BMX freestyler not only rode flatland and ramps, but often raced sometimes, did some dirt jumping, and did a little street riding. As the freestyle aspect of BMX evolved rapidly, some people began to focus on different aspects of riding, and flatland, dirt jumping, pool and quarter pipe riding, and street riding all began to evolve, and more and riders began to focus on one or two of these genre's, as tricks and moves and bike set-ups changed for each type of riding.
That period also had a real world recession happening, starting in 1990, which dragged on for years in particularly in Southern California real estate. All of these weird things were happening at once coming out of the 1980's and into the early 1990's: BMX "died" in 1989, a long economic recession began, the prosumer video revolution was going on, and guys were starting their own grassroots BMX businesses. There was a lot of change happening in and out of action sports. It was in this context that Ron Wilkerson decided to have one of the first dirt jumping contests, at Mission Trails, home of the already legendary DEATH JUMP.
Dirt jumping itself goes back to way before BMX bikes, and it had been a main part of BMX since the earliest days of the 1970's. But dirt jumping contests were a pretty new thing. There was a big King of Dirt Jam in 1987, bringing racers and freestylers together to jump for fun. Some of the bigger BMX tracks started building one big style jump off the main track, and having jumping comps at national races. The jumps were big sets of doubles, and guys like Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, Todd Lyons, Tim "Fuzzy" Hall, and a few others were the top jumpers going into the 1990's.
But Death Jump at Mission Trails was different. Today, I think of this as the first step in the mega ramp era. Yes, Mat Hoffman built the first, 21 foot high mega quarterpipe a year later, in 1992. But death jump had the downhill roll-in, to a jump, across a big gap, to a huge downhill landing, like today's mega ramps. It was totally different than the normal 3 or 4 foot high, 10 to 18 foot long, sets of doubles that most jumpers rode then. The roll-in was maybe seven or 8 feet high, dropping down to a four foot high lip, which shot riders over a 25 foot plus gap, to a huge downhill landing. Sure, it was much smaller than today's mega ramps. But bikes also snapped sometimes when riding off loading docks in those days. Death Jump was HUGE by 1991 standards, a major step up in riding evolution. So there was real trepidation in the minds of riders heading to Mission Trails on that sunny, Saturday afternoon in 1991.
I rode down there in John Povah's old car, with Keith Treanor and Alan Valek, who you get a glimpse of in the beginning of this clip. There were maybe 150 people total at this contest, featuring several of the best BMX bike riders in the world at the time. The pro purse for first place was maybe $300, if that. Personally, I had been there once, several months before, and saw Gary Laurent jump Death Jump, a shot that's in The Ultimate Weekend. Gary was a seasoned rider, and he just jumped it, even he didn't try a trick over it. In 1991, Death Jump at Mission Trails was the biggest BMX jump anywhere, and even the best jumpers had to push it to just clear the jump, let alone try any trick over it.
This contest happened four or five months after I finished editing The Ultimate Weekend, in the fall of 1990, and I was shooting footage for my "next video," which I was hoping to make in late 1991 or 1992. I just knew it was going to be a cool contest, and wanted to get video of it. That next video didn't end up happening until 2001. Instead, a few months later, Chris Moeller at S&M called me up, wanting to make the first official S&M Bikes video, Paul Green had done a VHS video already. So, I edited this clip for the first official S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer. So I used mostly the S&M riders where possible, along with the best tricks by other riders. Tim "Fuzzy" Hall was there, and I didn't use any footage of him, and he was stylish as ever. Mike Krnaich landed tailwhip jumps over the tabletop, and was trying double tailwhips, which no one had done on dirt then, and I didn't use any shots of him.
I edited S&M's "Leg Muscles" video, sitting on the floor or the tiny living room of Chris Moeller's "Winnebago" apartment, with my S-VHS video camera, an S-VHS prosumer VCR that Moeller bought, and a 40 of beer. No edit controller, I did it Play-Record-Pause, by hand. So it sucked, but we were going super low budget at the time. There's some shots of Keith and Chris over the doubles, then Crazy Red with a tailwhip attempt and a decade jump landed over the tabletop jump, in the contest. Then the contest moved to the double jump, which was tall and steep for those days. This was the jump where the most riders did some cool tricks. But I just included a couple shots of S&M flow rider Crazy Red, and Mat Hoffman, who tried the first backflip attempt over a dirt double jump that anybody had ever seen. Mat blew everyone's minds with those two flip attempts, the first on video.
Then the contest went to Death Jump. We have S&M Bikes owner, Chris Moeller clearing the jump several times (yellow bike), and he does a tabletop and a no hander. Nuts. Earlier, freestyler Bill Nitschke comes up short and hangs front wheel, leading to one of the worst slams of the day. Dave Clymer, a double A pro racer then, makes it, then has to eject on his second try, doing his crucifix slide down the gnarly landing, saved by his trusty mailman shorts. Keith Treanor hucks it, doesn't have the distance, and does a unique one hand two foot slide down the landing. The guy with no shirt was a local, who could comfortably clear Death Jump, and he did it several times that day. But he wasn't going to try a trick over it. Dennis McCoy, in jeans, shoulder pads, and full face helmet, the top overall freestyler of the era, hucked a partial backflip attempt and a 720 attempt, and both ended with BASE jumping level bails. Mat Hoffman, known as a vert pro then, not a dirt jumper or pro racer, clears the insane distance several times, and blew everybody's mind with a no footer to no footed can-can to no footer. That, and Moeller's no hander were the tricks of the day over Death Jump. BMX riding jumped up another level with that day's riding at Mission Trails. Everyone knew bigger things than any of us had seen before, were possible. This was one of those contests that changed bike riding forever, in one day.
But the talk of the day was Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson, who I had only seen once before, when I shot some him landing a toe-dragger tailwhip over the big doubles at Edison High trails, in Huntington Beach, a year earlier. That was the first tailwhip over doubles on video, I think. And I didn't even know Mike when I shot the footage, he just showed up. At the Mission Trails King of Dirt, Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson was just trying every insane idea he could think of, over the biggest jump anywhere, and lived through the bails. He hucked it as hard as the biggest names in the sport, and crashed harder, and more, than all of them. His just ridiculous crashes make this video the craziest shit any of us had seen at that point. If there was a Hugo Gonzales Huck It award that day, Mike would have taken it. It was an epic day of BMX, at a time when only the most hardcore people were still riding, and Eddie Roman and I caught parts of it on video.
I was working at my first "real" TV production job at the time, just over the hill from the Hollywood sign, in the San Fernando Valley above Studio City. A former co-worker got me on that year's production crew making the monster truck and supercross TV show series for 1991. I was just a production assistant. As fate or luck would have it, motorcycle stuntman Johnny Airtime worked in a nearby office of the same company. Though I had only met him once, I made a 3/4" copy (sort of pro caliber) of some of this footage, and sent it through an interoffice memo to Johnny Airtime. Much to my surprise, he called me up a couple of days later, and this BMX footage Mission Trails blew his mind. For those who don't know, Johnny Airtime did stunts like this, and others, back then. He was a stunt coordinator, and motorcycle distance jumper, for The World's Greatest Stunts and Stuntmasters TV shows. He asked what BMXers could do in the way of a big stunt. We brainstormed for 15 or 20 minutes on the phone, and came up with the idea of a rider doing a 360 over three flaming cars. I left that job a month or so later. I never talked to Johnny Airtime again. Much to my surprise, a couple years later, I learned that this had happened. It's a crazy world.
This post was inspired by a podcast I just watched, from a few years ago. Somebody mentioned The Ultimate Weekend, and made fun of it, which is fine. Then they all talked about this contest at Mission Trails for a minute, and that gave me the idea to write this post.
I've been doing most of my writing lately on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
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