Boozer Mike Memorial Jam 2019- #9

 This jump, now the main big style jump at Sheep Hills, is called Titties.  So don't get mad at me parents when you read "Titties" or "Tits" in the rest of these posts.  Not sure who this rider is, and I missed the peak of the trick, like I usually do shooting with a phone.  But here's a no footed seat grab over Titties.  Make up your own joke there you dirty minded fool.  Boozer banner on the landing in fill effect.

 BMX dirt jumping is a fringe activity born out of Generation X.  That makes the Booze Mike Memorial Jam an Old School Gen X counter culture event.  And that means big, old guys, on a smokin' hot day, in black T-shirts. 

 Not just a locals only event, there were real, live serious photographers there all day.  So, unlike my blog posts here, there will be really good photos of the event somewhere soon.

 Lifelong dirt jumper, S&M Bikes warehouse manager, and my onetime roommate, Jason "Timmy" Ball.  When he first showed up in Huntington Beach, as an 18-year-old young buck from Colorado, Jason was introduced to BMX industry legend, McGoo.  The story I heard later that night was that McGoo said, "Jason, there's too many fucking Jasons around here, from now on you're code name Timmy."  That was about 1993.  Twenty five plus years later, he's still called Timmy.  But then, I'm still The White Bear.  Timmy got a lot of riding in Saturday, as always.

 I just liked this helmet sticker assemblage.

 Listen up fuckers...

Young, old, little wheels, big wheels... whatever.  Just ride.

Boozer Mike Memorial Jam 2019- #10

 I'm an old Has Been industry guy, I'm fat, I don't have and I don't have bike right now.  But I'm a guy who has been wandering by Sheep since before it was even there.  I used to jump the jumps up where the condos are now, before Sheep.  I didn't know Mike near as well as the hardcore jumpers from Sheep.  But I knew him.  My reason for heading down there was to make a small contribution to the cause, in my own way.  My Sharpie are has gotten pretty decent, so I drew this Mike Brown Bow Legged X-up Ale bottle, and I mounted it on a skate deck, the new direction my work is taking.  This is Mike mom Cathy with the deck. 

 While I'm not riding now, I'll get there again, and I spent 20 years of my life riding BMX bikes nearly every day.  People were stoked on the drawing, and I was stoked to help the cause a little in the way I could.  And also, it was just a damn fun day to hang and watch a few old riders, and a whole bunch of the younger ones, bust out and shred.  It was an epic BMX day.  I'm sure Mike was stoked, looking down from his perch, wherever that is. 

I think this one of the bikes that got raffled off later on.  The three raffles for $1 a ticket, $5 a ticket, and $20 a ticket (for Mike's rebuilt bike, and much to my surprise, my art deck).  A lot of people won amazing prizes for a small price of a raffle ticket. 

Boozer Mike Memorial Jam 2019- #11

 Sheep Hills, located in the sketchy oil lands between Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach California.  Personally, I first walked over wobbly rocks across the creek, and back a little rabbit trail that headed into the brushy lands in 1988, looking for a mini-ramp some of the skaters of Vision Skateboards told me existed.  I never did find that ramp.  But I walked through the 10 to 15 foot high, small, brushy trees, down a skinny trail, hoping I wouldn't step on a rattlesnake.  About 100 yards back on that trail, the trees suddenly opened up into an open area.  My first thought was, "Man, this would be an awesome spot to build jumps." 

Back then, in the 80's, the main problem with building jumps was that whoever owned the land would usually plow them within months, or maybe a couple of years.  There weren't that many BMXers, and we tried to find little chunks of land that nobody wanted to build jumps on.  Back then, most jumps were small, a foot high, two feet high, or a ditch jump where we'd roll in and flyout the other side to flat.  We'd find a little piece of land, build a few jumps, and ride them while we could.  Most places (in Idaho and then California, for me), we'd show up one day, and the jumps would be gone.  So when I saw this big open meadow, in this piece of bottom land nobody cared about, it seemed perfect to build jumps. 

I actually went to the HB swap meet the next weekend and bought a shovel.  While I worked in Costa Mesa, up on the mesa above where Sheep Hills is, I lived off of Warner Avenue, on the opposite side of Huntington Beach, so I built up a flyout jump in the Bolsa Chica wetlands, close to my apartment. 

In 1989, I rode my bike down 19th street hill after work, past the little skate ditch at the bottom of the hill, and through the wide area that leads to Sheep Hills.  I rode right by, and would hit a whole series street spots on the ride home.  There was a little tabletop jump by the creek, I'd hit that sometimes.  But I never got a shovel to that area. 

Two years later, hanging out with the P.O.W. House guys, they told me there were some new jumps in Costa Mesa.  I rode down there with them, and this new spot, Sheep Hills, was exactly the spot I had walked into a couple years earlier.  The jumps had been around a year or so then.  That was when the three berms were the set up, before most of today's trails had been built.  On any given night back then, a dozen or so riders might have been there.  It was a great place to build jumps.  But it still blows me away that Sheep Hills still exists 29 or 30 years later.  These photos are a look around at the scene as I walked into Sheep for the first annual Boozer Mike Memorial Jam last Saturday, October 26th, 2019. 

 Mike was one of the earliest riders and builders at Sheep, and an integral part of the scene.  I didn't know him near as well as the riders hanging and riding every day.  I'm a Has Been freestyler, who would roll by now and then and hang and hit whatever little jumps existed, if any.  Sheep Hills played a huge roll in BMX dirt jumping becoming an actual sport.  The P.O.W's, the SHL crew, the guys like Cory Nastazio and Chris Duncan, many of the most influential dirt jumpers of the 90's and early 2000's rode at Sheep or were locals.  During all that time, Boozer Mike was one of the guys there all the time.  So it was cool to hear about this jam happening, to honor Mike after his death in August, and to help his mom with the bills and everything involved. 

Florideah Swapfest 2019 collection of videos...

What would Burning Man look like without hippies and panzies?  Probably something like this.  This thing looked like a blast.  There's a bunch of videos up, I'm going with the Powers BMX edit up top here, since Chad Powers has really helped me out this last several months in my crazy time here in Richmond.  I hear FBM commander Steve Crandall in the background announcing, another guy who's helped me a lot these past few months.  I'll link the other videos below, they all seem to be about 15 to 30+ minutes, so grab a cold drink and some snacks if you're gonna watch them all.

Dig BMX video  - 19:05

Scotty Cranmer Channel Video - 14:55- Open Loop flip challenge

Scotty Cranmer Channel Video - 10: 03 - Obstacle course

Scotty Cramner Channel Video - 10:03 - The other stuff

Shamari Hinds BMX video - 7:55

Anthony Panza video - 26:14

Bill Perry video - 39:01

Spencer Foresman video - 12:28

Kareem's World/S&M Bikes - 4:36

Our BMX video - 7:16

It's 2019, society as we know it is imploding... TIME TO ROCK!

I had tickets to a Rush concert in 1983, I got in trouble for something stupid that was probably not much of anything, and didn't get to see this epic band live then.  That sucked.

What you say about his company is what you say about society...

No, his mind is not for rent

To any God or government

Always hopeful, but discontent

He knows changes aren't permanent

But change is... 

-Rush