Meeting Chris Moeller 32 years ago

For some reason, there aren't many videos of Chris Moeller riding on YouTube.  Home video cameras were still expensive in those days, which is part of the reason.  But this crazy jump from 1990 is classic Chris Moeller.  According to a recent podcast, Moeller and S&M Bikes are finishing up a book commemorating 30 years in business.  Actually, that was last year, but books take time to make happen.  Since I was around S&M Bikes for a few years, I figured now would be a good time tell some of those BMX tales.

For the old school BMXers who read my blog, you know that I published a zine that somehow landed me a job at Wizard Publications in 1986, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  That's what launched me into the BMX freestyle industry.  Many of you also know that I didn't last there very long, five months is all it was.  But a lot of amazing stuff happened during that five months.  I first heard of, and first met, racer and insane jumper Chris Moeller during that time, among other things. 

Gork was the editor of BMX Action magazine, while I worked there, and he was also my roommate during that time, as was Lew, Assistant editor of FREESTYLIN'.  So we were talking about BMX and riders at work, out riding at night, at lunch, hanging out at home, but not on the ride to work in the morning.  The reason we didn't talk on the way to work is because Gork was (and still is, I'm sure) a total metalhead, and he always had Metallica, Saxon, or some other metal blasting in his van during our commute.  Lew and I didn't have cars, so we rode with Gork or rode our bikes to work.  Like any group of BMXers, when one of us saw or heard of something cool, we were talking about it at all times.

That's how it was when Gork came in after a photo shoot in Huntington Beach one day, and said he met this local kid who was a crazy good jumper, better than the pro Gork and Windy took to the photo shoot.  That kid was Chris Moeller, about 15 or 16 at the time.  It wasn't that Gork said "Hey, we ran into some local down in Huntington Beach who's a good jumper."  Gork was freaking out about how insane of a jumper this Moeller kid was.  He mentioned it in the morning, told us more about the kid at lunch, and kept bringing it up.  According to Gork, Chris would just try anything off a jump. So that was the first time I ever heard of Chris Moeller.

Not long after that, Gork set up a photo shoot specifically with Chris, I think it was another bike testshoot.  On that shoot, they wound up at a place called Hidden Valley, which is a weird little valley, hidden behind a shopping center at Beach and Adams in Huntington Beach.  There have been jumps in that general area since the early 80's, and maybe longer.

In the little valley part itself, there's this sketchy old tree swing on the side of a big hill with a set of cruiser handlebars on the end of the rope.  In fact, it's the tree swing you see Ed Templeton on at 1:34 in this video.  In the mid-80's there was a little dirt lip at the top of this hill, and you could jump off it and down the the hill, haul ass, and try to ride into a little trail through the brush at the bottom.  Hardly anyone ever jumped this, it was just too sketchy.

But on that first official photo shoot, young Chris Moeller jumped it.  And he didn't just jump 12 feet and bomb down the hill after he landed.  Chris did a head-high no footer down it, on a test bike, I think.  No one, NO ONE, got more than two or three off the ground on that sketchy bonzai jump.  and NO ONE did a trick down it.  ANY trick.  To be honest, the jump down the hill next to the tire swing was pretty much just a dare jump.  If you had a really stupid friend with a BMX bike, you'd dare them to jump it... and then watch him eat shit.

But Moeller jumped down it, soaring head high at a time when that was insane.  He did a no-footer at a time when only a handful of people could actually do a no-footer off a jump.  He blew Gork's mind.  So much so that Gork took Windy's photo sequence, and pieced them together on the Xerox machine to make a multi-image sequence out of actual paper.  No Photo Shop in 1986, Gork spent the time to do it by hand.  AND he talked about this kid Chris Moeller for about two weeks straight.  That turned Chris into a prime BMX Action test rider, which is some great coverage for a young rider.

Later that fall, I rode with Gork down to a national race in Lake Elsinore, an hour or so South, and inland, from the Wizard warehouse in Torrance.  On the way, Gork told me he was going to give a young rider a ride, the kid didn't have a ride to get to the race.  At an upscale condo complex in Huntington Beach, we picked up Chris Moeller.  He said "hi" to Gork, put his bike in the back of the Wizard Astro van, and didn't say a single word all the way to the race.  He just sat in the back, silent as could be, while Gork and I sat up front and talked.  I figured that Chris Moeller kid must be really shy or something.  It turns out I was wrong there.

That's how I met Chris Moeller, Orange County racer, soon to be a huge pioneer in dirt jumping, and also soon to start his own bike company (with Greg Scott).   Now 30 years later, S&M Bikes has book coming out soon.  So I figured it would be as good a time as any to share some of my own tales from the S&M Bikes posse that I knew in those days. 

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...

3162 Kashiwa Street in Torrance, California

Sometimes a location becomes famous itself, as a focal point of human activity that affects a large number of people.  Over the last couple of days, an old school BMX freestyle rider made a Facebook post about a non-descript industrial building at 3162 Kashiwa Street in Torrance, California.  A whole bunch of us added comments.  Why?  Because that building was the longtime home Wizard Publications, which published BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  That address became legendary to us BMX freestylers of the 1980's.

After reading the comments on the FB post, I knew it was time to write a post about that place, because I worked there for a short time, from August 1st to December 31st, 1986, and it changed the entire course of my life.  Since the photos shared were on FB were of the outside of the building, I've decided to write this post about a few things I saw happen in that parking lot.  Yeah, just the parking lot, the one you see R.L. Osborn and Ron Wilton sessioning in the the early part of the video above.

This BMX Action Trick Team video was written (they did that back then) and produced by a professional video production company.  This video cost about $40,000 to produce, and lost a ton of money.  No disrespect to R.L., Ron, Windy, Dian Harlan (the world's greatest receptionist at the time) or anyone else in this video, but, let's face it, it sucked.  The reason it sucked is because nobody knew how to make a really exciting BMX freestyle video at the time, and only professionals could afford high quality equipment.  So those people were hired to make a standard, documentary-type, video about the BMXA Trick Team, and the new and emerging little sport of BMX freestyle.

In that parking lot, on my first full day working for Wizard, I helped set up for a party commemorating the 10 year anniversary of BMX Action magazine.  Gork, the editor of BMXA at the time, spent Saturday, the next day, at the party.  Andy Jenkins, Lew, and myself, made a short appearance, but then went off to other plans for the day.  But during that short appearance, I saw Bob Haro, the guy who invented BMX freestyle, for the first time.  Fan boy moment on my second day living in Southern California.

In that parking lot, I had some after work freestyle sessions on the T.O.L. (Tower Of Love) halfpipe, with R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, Gork, Lew, and a few other riders. I never got up to coping, but it was fun anyway.

In that parking lot, I rode a mono-shock bike for the first time.  Some old schoolers brought a few really old BMX bikes to the warehouse for a photo shoot, so we had a couple of impromptu freestyle sessions on them, and even rode them all to lunch one day.

In that parking lot, I first rode on Gork's BMX sidehack.  We tried a few freestyle tricks on it.  We actually managed to do a few backwards wheelies on it, Gork on the bike and me on the hack.  They weren't easy, I'm pretty proud of that trick.  But no one thought to snap photos back in those days.  Bummer.

In that parking lot, I saw an unknown rider named Mitch Collins, wearing one of Woody Itson's old uniforms, blasting higher airs on the T.O.L. than anyone I had seen ride it.  He didn't air quite as high as Josh White did, but I started working there a few months too late for Josh's epic photo shoot there.

In that parking lot, I saw Eddie Fiola session the T.O.L. halfpipe many times.  He ruled that ramp in 1986.  A couple of guys got a bit higher, but Eddie had the lines and the flow since he was a skatepark rider, and rode the ramp more than anyone during my stint working there.

In that parking lot I had flatland sessions with R.L. Osborn, Gork, Lew, Craig Grasso, Chris Day, Zack, Melody, and the local kids, Dizz Hicks, Ceppie Maes, McGoo, Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and the entire NorCal/Golden Gate park posse, along with other random freestyle travelers.

In that parking lot, one pro rider showed us the nude photos his girlfriend had professionally taken so he could check them out while on tour.

In that parking lot, I first tried a trick Gork dubbed the Spud Stall.  He named it that since I was form Idaho.  I pulled up my front wheel while rolling straight at the warehouse wall, then I tried to touch both tires to the wall with the bike straight up.  Fakie wall rides hadn't been invented yet, but that's what I was trying.  I'd get my front wheel on the wall, and my back wheel within six inches of it or so, hit the brakes, then hop back and ride out.  Craig Grasso, who saw me try these for months, and get really close on a skater launch ramp in Hermosa, ended up being the guy to actually make fakie wall rides happen and get the first photo.  I'm stoked on that.  I had to clean the white Wizard wall because my tires left black marks on it.

Just outside that parking lot, in the street, I was sent out one day to help some ramp rider kid set up Brian Scura's ramp to do a photo shoot with Windy.  It turned out, Brian had engineered the ramp to be set up by a single person, so this kid with the stringy blond hair didn't need help.  I hung out and watched him warm-up anyhow.  At one point it looked like he was bailing, but he ended up doing this insane, upside down footplant.  I'd never seen anything like it.  That was the day I met Dave Voelker.

One day, Andy led us out into the parking lot for a "meeting."  Gork, Lew, Andy, and I sat on the curb of the little island, and he brought up our topic.  He was thinking about hitting up Oz to make another video, and he wanted our ideas.  Since Oz spent $40K on the BMX Action video (above), there was a "don't ever mention making another video," unwritten rule in place at Wizard then.  Andy thought that if we could come up with a really, REALLY good idea, we might be able to talk into making another video, using the new, amazing (and cheap) Video 8 camcorders.  We all threw out ideas.  My idea was to show us getting off work on a Friday afternoon, and then going riding with all the best riders in SoCal all weekend.  Nobody liked that idea.  So I self-produced the concept as The Ultimate Weekend in 1990, 3 1/2 years later.

One morning, while standing outside the little warehouse door on our break, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson rode up on his motorcycle.  He shut it off and coasted up to us.  There was a small person, which appeared to be a blond kid, about 13-years-old, on the back of the motorcycle.  We looked at each other in confusion, wondering if Ron was going around picking up young boys or something.  They took their helmets off.  Ron said, "Hey guys, this is Spike, Spike Jonze.  He jumped in the Haro van back East and went on tour with us as our roadie."  We had no idea what that (17 -year-old) BMXer/skater kid had in store for his life.  I don't think he had any idea either at that point.  He's still surprising us all.

So those are some of my best memories from the average looking parking lot, located at 3162 Kashiwa Street, in Torrance, California.