The Story of my Keychain- Part 5: I meet unknowns Josh White, Joe Johnson, and Mat Hoffman in one weekend

One of the first pro freestylers I met, Martin Aparijo, in the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, on the way to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, AFA Masters contest, in 1986.  This clip is the from the Ohio AFA Masters contest in 1986, a few months later.  Flatland freestyle was still in "ride a bit, do a trick, ride a bit" phase, before rolling tricks started linking everything together.  This is definitely one of the first times a bar ride was done in a contest as well.

Looking back from 33 years later, it almost seems like it was the plot of a B movie.  It wasn't just that I flew to a plains state, went to a contest, talked ot a few people, the wrote an article about the contest.  I got a baptism by fire into the world of the BMX freestyle industry in the spring of 1986.

A BMX freestyler from B.F. Idaho (there actually is a B.F. Idaho, by the way, a tiny town called Bonner's Ferry), moves to the Bay Area because his dad gets a new job.  Suddenly I was riding with the Curb Dogs/Skyway team, and part of the whole, legendary, Golden Gate Park scene.  I started a zine because I didn't think I was cool enough to actually just hang out and ride with those guys.  I sent zines to the individual guys at the big BMX magazines.  A few months into my zine, I introduced myself to Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine, at a velodrome contest, and he says, "Hey, we love your zine."  I definitely didn't expect that from a few pieces of Xeroxed paper every month.  Completely out of the blue, a few weeks later, Andy calls me up to see if I want to cover the coming Tulsa AFA Masters contest for FREESTYLIN'.  At that point alone, I was already past most of my freestyle dreams.  Mind freakin' blown.

I flew solo to Tulsa.  In the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, I ran into Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some unknown kid, new to the GT team, named Josh White.  They were on the same flight into Tulsa.  I flew into Tulsa, completely clueless, I had no idea where the contest was, was too young to rent a car, and had no motel room booked.  A seasoned traveler I was not.  I met a mild mannered, unknown, East Coast rider in the airport.  He told me he rode for Haro.  "Yeah RIGHT!" I thought.  Until the Haro tour van pulled up, and Ron Wilkerson jumped out.  Sure enough, Joe Johnson really did ride for Haro, but he was unknown to the larger freestyle world at that point.  I hopped in, and started talking to veteran skatepark rider, and Haro assistant team manager, Jon Peterson.  He helped me find a room to crash in, one of the Haro team rooms.

I got to the motel, and next thing I know I was hanging out in the "borrowed" motel room where Mike  Dominguez and Brian Blyther were staying.  When the newlyweds who actually rented the room showed up at one door, I helped Mike and Brian bail out the other door.  Later that night, I beat Woody Itson in pool, ending his hour long run on the motel  pool table (OK, he scratched on the 8 ball, but it's still a win).  I also rode out with Rick Moliterno and Billy Hop to help waterproof Rick's pick up truck cap, with duct tape and trash bags, in a hardcore Oklahoma thunderstorm, so I talked to them a bit as well.

The next morning, I was standing alone in the arena, scoping out the scene, and Eddie Fiola came up and just starting talking to me.  I just met him the before, and he was still the best known name in the sport then.  As we were talking, and I was trying not to act like an idiot, two young punks interrupted us.  A couple years later, while retelling the story, I realized those kids were none other than Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope.  A bit later, Jon Peterson walked me around, and I met most of the other pros and industry people.  I met FREESTYLIN' photographer Windy Osborn for the first time, and had a quick, cool chat with her.  I got on top of the ramp, and shot some photos of all the vert riders, including the big talk of the weekend, new guys Josh White and Joe Johnson.  I also got some pics of the kid we called "The Stormtrooper" that weekend, because he was wearing a full face helmet, shoulder pads, knee pads, and elbow pads, which nobody did then.  The unknown kid was doing no footed can-can's the hardest trick on vert at the time, as well as his unique switch handed airs.  That was Mat Hoffman.  But I had the ASA set wrong on my camera, so the photos were grainy.  Man do I wish I had those grainy pics today.

All of that happening randomly on my first trip as a magazine freelancer, is kind of like being a good high school basketball player, going to Venice Beach, California, and walking up to a public ball court, and seeing Lebron, Steph Curry, Shaq, Pau Gasol, and Charles Barkley playing 3 on 3.  When you walk up, Lebron says, "Hey, you guys get Barkley, we'll take this new kid on our team."  Seriously, it was like that crazy of a weekend.  OK, BMXers aren't as famous as pro B-ballers, but you get the idea.  I seriously couldn't believe that weekend was actually happening.

I took notes, I talked to pros and top amateurs.  But I forget damn near everything that happened in the arena that weekend.  I do remember I signed 9 autographs, including one local girl's arm that everybody was signing.  She told us, "Hey, it's Oklahoma, you guys are the most famous people we've ever seen in real life."  I've signed two autographs in the 33 years since.  One of those was signing the first page of the article I wrote in Chad Powers' copy of that issue of FREESTYLIN'.  Oh, and I competed in that contest.  How'd I do?  Lame, I imagine.  I don't remember a thing about my run.  It doesn't matter.  I became a part of the BMX freestyle industry that weekend, which still amazes me, to be honest.

I wrote my article, and it came out in the epic August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', with that eye catching, tiny photo of Josh White on the cover.  You can check out that issue at oldschoolmags.com.  The zine article is on scan page 11, and my zine, San Jose Stylin', is listed first.  Josh White's article, that made him an instant freestyle star, is on scan page 19.  My article for the Tulsa contest starts on scan page 24.  In my article for the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters, where nobody expected much to really happen, little Matthew Hoffman (as we spelled his name back then), got his first ever editorial photo, doing a no footed can-can.  Haro rider Joe Johnson got his first editorial mention in that article, and went on to become one of the best vert riders of the 80's.  Todd Anderson, always underrated, got a photo.  Oleg-fucking-Koning got a photo (put your helmet on Oleg!).  NorCal up-and-comers Chris and Karl Rothe got a mugshot.  In addition, there were photos of the heavies of the time, Martin Aparijo, Eddie Fiola, R.L. Osborn,  and Dennis McCoy, as well as Steve Broderson, Rick Moliterno, and Rich Sigur, and little Scotty Freeman, showing off the quickspin. 

The last thing I remember from that weekend is sitting in someone's motel room, and hearing a car squealing tires out in the parking lot.  The noise just kept going on and on, and we looked out the window, as several other riders in other rooms did, and we saw a big cloud of white smoke in the middle of the parking lot.  The noise stopped, and the Hutch rental Lincoln Continental, driven by Woody Itson, pulled forward out of the cloud of smoke.  Mike Dominguez was in the passenger's seat laughing his ass off.  The car peeled out, and headed off to the Tulsa airport.

As Joe Johnson, me, and the whole Haro posse were getting ready to pile into the Haro van, for our trip to the airport, Jon Peterson, my tour guide for the weekend, told me he had something for me.  He handed me a Tech 2-style brake lever, with a key ring on it.  He said something like, "We had a ton of these that didn't sell, so we made keychains out of them."  At the time, It seemed weird.  But Jon totally helped me out that weekend, took me around, and introduced me to pretty much everyone, riders and industry people.  That was really cool of him, so thank you Jon, for that.  Ron Wilkerson dropped Joe and me off at the airport, and they went back to the business of summer tour.

I got off the airplane in San Jose with 76 cents in my pocket.  I went back to work at Pizza Hut on Winchester boulevard (right down the road from the Winchester Mystery House), and told Erin, the 6' 2" young woman I worked with nearly every night, about my crazy weekend.  When it came time to write the article, I couldn't think of a clever way to start it.   So I started it with me at Pizza Hut telling Erin about my crazy weekend in Tulsa.

Twenty two years later, in late 2008 after taxi driving took a dive, I wound up living on the streets of Orange County, California for a year.  Unable to get any job or make any small business ideas to happen, I finally took my parents' offer of a plane ride to North Carolina to live with them.  It was November 2008, and the economy was collapsing.  I had everything I owned in a 5 foot by 5 foot storage unit.  I had a chrome Dyno bike I hadn't ridden much because I got fat driving a taxi.  I had a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' magazine, and tear sheets, the pre-production prints, of 3 or 4 issues.  I had probably 100 other BMX, skateboard, snowboard, and rock climbing magazines, ranging from 1982 to 2008.  I had all my raw video footage from 1990 to 2008, over 40 or 50 hours worth.  I had all my master video tapes from The Ultimate Weekend, some Vision video promos I'd produced, and a few others.  I had my own collection VHS tapes and DVD's, including the copy of Headfirst Eddie Roman himself gave me.  I also had a Mac Powerbook in one pawn shop, and my Sony Digital 8 video camera in another pawn shop.  I had my whole zine collection in there, maybe 50 zines from 1986 to 1994, along with copies of my own poetry zines with about 150 of my original poems in them, including "Journey of The White Bear," the poem Chris Moeller made fun of which led to my nickname/pen name.  I also had 10 years worth of poems I'd written, 165 of my best poems, in their original, hand written form.

When I got ready to fly to North Carolina, I told my mom I needed to borrow about $150 to pay the back payments on my storage unit, to pay the pawn shops, and to have some friends ship the important stuff to me.  My mom said that would be fine.  So one day I took several buses and a train, and made my way to LAX airport, and I flew to North Carolina, a place I'd never lived.  My family was form Ohio, but my parents and my sister and brother-in-law wound up living in the Greensboro, North Carolina area.

 After decompressing for a couple of weeks, and kind of getting my bearings, I asked my mom to borrow the money to get my stuff shipped to me.  Through all the the crazy times being homeless, a taxi driver, and a homeless taxi driver, the thought of one day making a really cool freestyle documentary from all my personal footage is what kept me going.  When I asked my mom to borrow the $150 to get my stuff, she said, "Oh we don't have money for that."  She's kind of weird like that.  I couldn't find a job in NC, the economy was mid-collapse at that point.  So I lost every single thing I had, everything that had to do with BMX and freestyle, as well as all of my creative work, except for some of my early Sharpie drawings.  Everything from my BMX life, 20 years worth of riding and writing, and creating, and collecting.  It was all gone.  Poof.

Except for one thing.  I still had the Haro brake lever keychain, that Jon Peterson gave me, on my first freelance trip to Tulsa, in the spring of 1986.  It's in my pocket right now, as I sit in a library in Costa Mesa, California, writing this blog post, 33 years after that trip to Tulsa.  When I lost everything in 2008, I lost all hope of making the documentary from 18 years worth of BMX and skate footage.  About a month later, in December of 2008, living with my parents in North Carolina, and in a near suicidal depression, I started blogging, telling weird little stories about my life in the BMX freestyle world.  Weird little stories like the one you're reading right now.  And that's the story of my keychain.

Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now

I have another new blog, check it out:

Crazy California

The Story of My Keychain- Part 4: Eddie Fiola and I meet Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope without realizing it

 Blog post: The Story of my keychain: Part 4- Eddie Fiola and me meet some local kids

In the last post about the story of my keychain, I talked about hanging out with the Haro riders and the Hutch riders, at the Holiday Inn, the night before the contest.  That contest, again, was the AFA Freestyle Masters contest held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April of 1986.  On the strength of my zine, that I'd been sending to the guys at Wizard Publications, FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins had tapped me to write a freelance article about the contest for the magazine.  It was my first job in the "real" BMX freestyle industry.
 
I caught a ride to the arena, Saturday morning, with the Haro team, who I stayed with all weekend.  I wandered off by myself, as practice was going on.  I stood alone near the table of trophies that Saturday morning.  I was trying to figure out what I actually had to do, who I had to talk to, and how to do a good job covering the contest for FREESTYLIN'.  As I stood alone, Eddie Fiola walked up and started talking to me.  At the time, Eddie was the biggest name in the sport.  He was the original King of the Skateparks, the first big freestyle pro I ever heard of, and the best known name in our weird little sport.  Most people didn't really know BMX freestyle existed then.  But if people knew one name in the sport, that name was Eddie Fiola.

So I was freakin' out inside when Eddie just walked up and started chatting.  He was just talking about normal stuff, but I was thinking, "Holy Shit!  Eddie Fiola is talking to me!" It was a fanboy moment.  So I probably stammered like an idiot.  But I tried my best to act as cool as possible.  We'd been talking for a minute or two, when two young kids, maybe 14 or 15 years old, rode up to us.  One had a mop of curly brown hair, and the other a bit more normal of a haircut.  The kid with the curly hair totally interrupted us, and I kinda wanted to strangle him at the moment.  On the inside, I was shouting in my head, "Dudes!  I'm talking to Eddie-freakin'-Fiola, fuckin' go away!"  On the outside, I just kept quiet for a minute.

The kid with the curly hair asked, "Eddie, you ever seen somebody to an air like this?"  The kid took one hand, put it on the opposite side of the handle bars, then took his second hand off.  At the time, 540s, high one hand on footers, and Mike Doninguez' no footed can-can, were the craziest vert tricks.  No one did the air the kid was talking about.  Eddie smiled, "Nope, I've never seen that one before."  It seemed like a ridiculous variation then.  The two kids both got huge, ear to ear grins, and rode off stoked.  I was glad, and Eddie hung out and talked to me for a few more minutes, and then walked off, to go get ready for pro ramp practice.  My crazy weekend, of actually talking to and hanging out with the top pros, kept going.

Not long after that, Jon Peterson, the Haro assistant team manager that I met the day before, came up and took me around and introduced me to several of the pros, to Windy Osborn, the FREESTYLIN' photographer, and other industry people.  Later, during ramp practice, I got on top of the Haro quarterpipe, and shot three or four rolls of film on my Pentax ME Super, which I was just learning how to operate.  As luck would have it, I set the ASA setting wrong for the indoor lighting, and all my photos came out grainy.  That sucked, but I wish I had those photos now, even as grainy as they were.

Among other things, I saw this kid actually doing those switch handed airs that he told Eddie and me about.  All weekend we all called that kid "The Stormtrooper," because he wore a Bell Moto full face motorcycle helmet, a chest protector, elbow pads, and knee pads to ride vert.  In those days, most vert riders wore a T-shirt, Levi's, an open face helmet, and no pads to ride.  So the kid totally stuck out.  But none of us knew his name.  He was doing variations four or five feet out on the Haro quarterpipe, and straight airs a couple of feet higher.  The kid was definitely really good.  But Josh White was the new, standout rider at that contest.  He was the new kid most people were talking about.  Joe Johnson was turning heads as well.  The top vert pros of the time, were the early skatepark riders, Eddie Fiola, Mike Dominguez, and Brian Blyther.  It was obvious the transition from the skatepark contests to quarterpipe contests were producing a new wave of up-and coming vert maniacs, Todd Anderson, and Dennis McCoy, and a few others, were already well known, and new guys Josh White and Joe Johnson were rising up right behind them.  Vert riding was evolving, and 8 foot plus airs were becoming more and more common.

Here's the funny thing about this story.  Every now and then, through 1986-87, and into 1988, I'd talk to other riders and tell them about the time Eddie Fiola came up and started talking to me in Tulsa, when I was just some unknown guy who happened to be writing the magazine article for that contest.  It was just a cool little story to me, the first time a top pro walked up and talked to me.  Then one day, a couple of years later, I was telling someone the story, and it suddenly hit me what trick the curly headed kid had showed us.  I went, "Holy crap, that was the switch-handed air!  Those kids were Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope."  Then it became an even cooler little story.  The biggest name in freestyle at the time, Eddie Fiola, came up randomly, and just started talking to me.  Then two random kids interrupt us, and of all the kids in freestyle, they were then unknown Oklahoma kids, Mat and Swope Dog.  So that was was when I met Mat and Steve for the first time, without realizing it.

But the story keeps going.  Two weeks ago, late June of 2019, I finally made it down to H.B. Tuesdays, where Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo show up to ride and hang with other old school freestylers.  Everybody was cool, and they knew I was down and out right now, so Eddie invited me to pizza with them, and they hooked me up.  As we ate, and we all traded stories for a couple of hours.  It was then that this story popped in my head, and I told the story of how Eddie came up to me at Tulsa, to Eddie Fiola himself, and a few other old school riders.  Somehow, I happened to be talking to Eddie Fiola when the kid who would become the most influential vert rider... EVER... rode up to meet Eddie Fiola.  It was the first time Eddie met Mat and Swope as well.  And neither Eddie or I had any idea it happened.  It was two random kids, like the thousands of other random kids Eddie met at contests and shows over the years.  By some random bit of serendipity, I happened to be there and witness that moment.

Eddie didn't remember the incident, he's had so many interactions with people over so many years, that the moment didn't stand out above the others.  I remembered it, because it was the first time Eddie Fiola had come up to talk to me.  Somehow, 33 years later, with Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope now middle aged guys as well, I got to tell Eddie of the first time he met Mat Hoffman.

Like I've said many times, and one of the biggest things I've learned from all these BMX freestyle blog posts, is that it's the weird little moments, mostly, that we remember best when looking back at our early riding days.  Those weird little moments are the things I blog about.  Just another of the epic moments from the weekend that I became part of the BMX freestyle industry, the weekend that changed the entire course of my life.

The Story of My Keychain: part 3

Blog post: The story of my keychain: part 3- Fart lighting and Oklahoma honeymoons

At the end of the last post about the 1986 Tulsa AFA Masters contest, I was riding from the airport to the hotel in the back of the Haro freestyle team van.  That happened because I met some East Coast kid named Joe Johnson in the airport.  Yeah, Joe turned out to be one hell of a rider, but I didn't know that in the van.  He was some quiet kid I met in the airport, who happened to be a new Haro rider.  Jon Peterson, the Haro assistant team manager started talking to me in the van, and I told him FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins had tapped me to cover the contest for the magazine.

At that point, I had been into BMX riding for nearly 4 years, and serious about the emerging sport of BMX freestyle for two years.  That whole time, most of it spent in Boise, Idaho, I had been dreaming of becoming a big time pro rider, going on tour, having fun, and, mostly, meeting girls.  I did local shows in Boise with Jay Bickel for about a year.  Then my family moved to San Jose, and I started my first zine, and became a part of the NorCal/Golden Gate Park scene.  I had met a couple of girls because of my riding.  But the whole, "go on tour and get crazy" thing that a lot of teen and 20-something guys had as a goal, was still a pipe dream.

Then, somehow, I was suddenly riding in the back of the smelly Haro tour van with crazy driver and vert pro, Ron Wilkerson, at the wheel.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I felt like I had won some sort of BMX freestyle lottery.  We got to the hotel, I followed the guys in, and dropped my stuff in one of the Haro rooms.  It was a Holiday Inn Holidome hotel, a big "U" shape, with the middle of the "U" under roof, and a two story wall of windows in the open end of the "U".  Inside that big open area was a large swimming pool, a few miniature golf holes, and two levels of open space by the big windows, with couches and pool table.  Everywhere there were the riders I'd seen in magazines for the past four years:  Ron Wilkerson, Woody Itson, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, Tony Murray, and several others.  Jon Peterson introduced me to some of the guys, and gave me some ideas on covering the contest.

He went off to take care of some things, and I followed someone into another rider's room.  Right as I walked in, a factory rider walked over to a chair in the corner, sat down, lifted a leg, and ripped a huge fart.  "I'm marking my territory," he said, "that's my chair, nobody steal it."  Then he walked out to get a Coke from the machine or something.  After that, I witnessed my first fart lighting exhibition, something I'd never tried or seen performed before.  I'm not even sure I knew lighting farts was even possible then.  But two or three riders laid down on the bed and someone else, another rider, I can't remember who, but an experienced fart lighter, took the Bic lighter and the dangerous duty of making ass flames happen.  Another guy explained in detail about the time he had a friend light his fart while naked, and the serious burns that ensued.  Lesson learned, never light farts in the nude.  I didn't want to ask why he was hanging out with another dude nude.  I was overwhelmed.  Suddenly I was hanging out with a bunch of the craziest guys I'd ever seen, in a hotel, far from home, with no supervision.  It was like I stepped into my freestyle dreams, minus the hot and horny women.

I followed another guy out of that room, and we wound up going into Brian Blyther and Mike Dominguez' room.  Mike and Brian both had rooms paid for by their sponsors, but decided to get their own room to hang in, since they were good friends.  The hotel was only about half full, so there were plenty of empty rooms.  They didn't pay for the room, someone distracted the guy at the front desk while one of them, Mike I think, reached over the counter and grabbed a random room key. Hotels had actual brass keys then, usually hung on numbered pegs behind the front counter.  But I didn't know that had "borrowed" and unused room at the time.  

 

I think there were three of us chillin' in their room, talking to Mike Dominguez, as he put his bike together.  That alone was pretty amazing to me, I was hanging with Mike-freakin' Dominguez!  I kept thinking, "that mellow dude does ten foot airs."  As if that wasn't crazy enough, Brian walked out of the shower with a towel around him, and looked for some clothes in his suitcase.  Suddenly we heard the door latch click, and Mike and Brian shouted, "Grab everything and get out!"

The rooms at Holiday Inn holidomes had one main door that came from the hallway, and another door, on the opposite side of the room, that opened into the big holidome area. I didn't know what was going on, but I grabbed a suitcase and dragged a bike box out the door facing the holidome.  We all ran down the narrow walkway, Byther still in his towel, and someone shut the door to the room.  We quickly dragged all the stuff into some random rider's room to hide.  I wasn't sure what we were hiding from.  It was only then that I learned they had "borrowed" the room key.  There was a quick informal meeting, and somehow it was decided that, since I was the most normal looking guy, with no bike company T-shirt or anything, I should be the one to go down to the front desk, and see if the guy who actually rented that room saw any of us, and if someone was going to get kicked out of the hotel.

Nervous as hell, but not wanting to let down vert pros Dominguez and Blyther, I walked down to the front desk, and waited behind a young couple.  My story was that I just needed another pillow for my room.  As I stood there waiting, I heard the story of this young couple, on their honeymoon, who had just driven from their wedding reception.  The guy yelling at the front desk guy had walked up to the room they rented, and the door had the chain on, and he heard people in the room, it sounded like a few guys.  He left his brand new bride in the hallway, and walked all the way around to the Holidome entrance for the room.  The couple's hotel room was a mess, someone had taken a shower, the bed sheets were pulled open, there were towels on the floor, and it smelled like someone had been smoking weed.

I stood there trying to keep a straight face, as the young groom, who was starting his married life by taking his new bride to a Holiday Inn (OK, it was Oklahoma) for their wedding night romp, found the room they rented was a mess.  The guy yelled at the poor front desk clerk, who had absolutely no idea what was going on.  The clerk gave them a discount or something, and gave them a new room key, apologizing the whole time.  The young couple calmed down, and finally went off to their new room. 

I did everything I could to keep from laughing as I asked the hotel clerk for an extra pillow, and showed him my room key (for the Haro room).  I then went back to the room where Brian and Mike were camped out, and reported the whole story, which had everyone laughing like crazy.  What were the odds that the room Mike and Brian "borrowed" would be given to a couple on their honeymoon?  I guess that's Murphy's Law, Oklahoma style.

By that time, an Oklahoma thunderstorm was rolling in, and we got a big light show through the wall of windows in the holidome.  Haro rider Rick Moliterno said he needed to run to the store, to get some trash bags and duct tape, because the cap on his pick-up leaked.  He asked if anyone wanted to go help him, and me and Billy Hop, the Haro team manager, rode along.  We stopped at the first mini mart he saw, as the thunderstorm pelted the truck with rain.  Under the roof over the gas pumps, Billy and me helped Rick duct tape trash bags over the gap between his pick-up cab and the cap on the bed of his truck, to waterproof it as much as possible.  I rode back to the hotel with them, and spent much of the night hanging with the riders and industry guys, who played pool and goofed around, as the storm raged outside.

Woody Itson was flat out ruling the pool table, and played for over an, hour without losing.  He beat nearly everyone there, proving skills on the table comparable to his flatland prowess.  Finally my turn came.  I was "the new guy" by that point, that no one really knew.  Being incredibly shy by nature, and totally out of my element, I had been sitting there, pretty quietly, listening to everyone else talk and joke around.  While I'm in no way a pool playing ace, I did play a lot of pool in high school with my friends, ranging from regular 8 ball to finese bumper pool, to a three man game we called Cutthroat.  So I gave Woody a pretty good game.  I had one ball left to hit in, and Woody was lining up on the 8 ball.  I was about to be another victim to Woody's pool skills.  But Woody Itson scratched on the 8 ball.  It was a technicality, but I won, and took Woody off the pool table, and a whole bunch of the guys hooted and hollered as Woody sat down, mostly the guys he beat in the previous 10 games or so.

I managed to win one or two games, and then Woody came back for a rematch, beat me soundly, and took over the pool table again.  I wound up back in the a Haro room, where I took my pillow and a blanket, and fell asleep on the floor, amazed by the events of my first day in the BMX freestyle industry. I didn't dream that night, because the whole afternoon and evening already seemed like a dream to me.   .

The Story of My Keychain: part 2

Blog post: The story of my key chain: part 2- "My friends have a van"

Joe Johnson, while riding for GT, Candybar air at height, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, 1989.  Still from video I shot.

 
I got a call one day, about a month after the spring 1986 AFA Masters contest at the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome.  I was upstairs in my room, I still lived with my parents in San Jose then, but we had moved to a two story house, about a half mile from the first apartment.  I was 19, and still working nights at Pizza Hut.  I usually got off work between 11:00 pm to midnight, and often I'd ride my bike home.   When I got home, I'd work on my zine at night, or practice balance tricks in my bedroom, until about 3:00 am.  I usually woke up about 10:30 am ate some breakfast, ran some errands with my mom, and then went out riding solo in the afternoons.

On the day in March 1986, my mom called me from downstairs, and I picked up the upstairs phone, because that's how we did it back then, before cell phones.  Much to my surprise, it was Andy Jenkins, the editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine.  He said, "Hi," and asked me if I was planning on going to the upcoming AFA Masters contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I'd saved up my Pizza Hut money, and was planning to go to compete in flatland, and cover it for my zine.  Andy asked, "Do you want to write the article about the contest for FREESTYLIN?"  I was floored.

When I started doing my zine, there was an actual printed zine, a newsprint mini-magazine, published by this kid named Bill Batchelor in SoCal.  He was 13 or 14, and put out this really professional looking zine called Shreddin'.  That was about 20 large size pages.  I thought that maybe... someday, that kid with amazing publishing skills, might ask me to write a little piece for him.  That was as big as my ambitions would allow me to dream as a zine publisher.  Honestly, it never occurred to me that writing for a magazine was a possibility.  So when Andy Jenkins of FREESTYLIN' asked me to write an article for the magazine, a magazine I literally read every word of each month, including the ad copy, I had no context for it.  Writing for FREESTYLIN' magazine wasn't a dream, because I never thought it was even possible.  All I really remember was that I hung up the phone, and ran downstairs, I jumped down the stairs to the landing, halfway down, and the jumped down the rest.  I couldn't believe it.  But the freelance job was mine, and I was determined to do a good job.  I think I hopped on my bike and just rode around for an hour, trying to believe it.

So I flew solo for the first time about three weeks later.  I had a big box for my bike, but it was only about half the size of a typical bike box.  Tall and skinny, like a standard bike box, but only half as long.  If you looked at it, there didn't seem to be any way a bike could fit in it.  Before traveling, I asked Skyway pros Robert Peterson and Maurice Meyer, for tips on traveling cheap, and traveling with a bike.  I'd never flown with a bike, and I was operating on a Pizza Hut income, which I think was about $3.50 an hour then. So I needed to cut some corners.

Bert told me that I would get charged $30 or something, if I said I had a bike in the box.  So his tip was to tell the airlines my box had "camping  equipment" in it.  There was no fee for that.  When I went looking for a bike box, I got this half-sized one, with no writing on the outside.  Everyone thought of bikes as "ten speeds," the common name for road bikes then, since 20 inch bikes were "kid's bikes."  So my box didn't look like anything an adult-sized bike would fit in.

I took my handlebars off the of stem, took my wheels off, and pulled the seat and seat post out, and packed everything but my wheels in the box, packed my tools in it, and stuffed paper in it so it wouldn't rattle very much.  Then I used a big old suitcase, the old school style made of thick plastic, with a single handle, and no wheels.  I put my wheels in the suitcase, and packed clothes and stuff around them.  That suitcase and odd sized box saved me from paying the airlines bike fee for the trip, and several trips after that.  I used that same box for well over a year, it worked so well.

Obviously, I wasn't a seasoned traveler.  I was focused on trying to write a decent article that would actually be printed in a real magazine.  I thought a lot about who to talk to at the contest, what questions to ask, and all of that.  I didn't think much about the trip itself.  So I flew by myself from San Jose to a layover in Dallas/Fort Worth.  My dad flew occasionally for business, and warned me about how big DFW airport was, and to not waste time finding the next terminal.  He said that if you landed on one end, and flew out of the other, it could take half an hour figure out where your gate was, and to walk the distance.

I landed in DFW, no carry on, because I didn't think of one, everything was in the box and the suitcase, packed in the cargo.  I had my ticket, and found the gate I needed to get to, and hurried to it, a 15 minute walk or so.  I was nervous about everything back then, being the uptight, anal retentive dork that was, except about the things I should have been nervous about.  I didn't know the name of the venue where the contest was being held.  I wasn't old enough to rent a car, and couldn't afford one, anyhow.  I didn't know how far it was from the airport to the venue.  I didn't have hotel reservations.  I just figured there would be all kinds of guys with bike boxes at the airport, and I'd hitch a ride with one of those guys or groups, and find a hotel floor in someone's room to crash on. In other words, I was a typical low budget freestyler.  From the previous couple of contests, I knew anyone with a room usually let a few other guys crash on their floor to save money.

As I sat during my layover, about ten minutes before the flight was supposed to board, I saw a couple of familiar faces walk up and stand across the big airport walkway.  I recognized GT pro freestylers Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo.  Eddie was best known as the original King of the Skateparks, the biggest name in the sport at the time, judging by magazine coverage.  Martin was one of the two best flatland pros then, along with Woody Itson.  There was a blond guy, about my age, that I didn't recognize, with them.  I took a deep breath, and got my courage up.  I was deathly shy in those days, and introducing myself to anyone was hard for me.  Introducing myself to two of the top pros I'd been reading about in the magazines for a couple of years, was super scary.  But I walked over and did it.

Eddie and Martin were totally cool, and I told them I was hired by FREESTYLIN' to write an article for the contest.  They said, "Cool," or something like that, and introduced me to the blond guy with them.  "This is Josh White, " they said, "he's amazing on ramps.  He just did a big photo shoot for FREESTYLIN'."  That photo shoot not only change Josh's life, it changed vert riding.  Josh took high air variations, and extension to a new level.  But only Eddie and Martin and a couple others knew just how good Josh was then.  We talked for the next ten minutes, up until the final final boarding call.  I was totally nervous about missing the plane, but they were casual, so I hung out until we all walked over, and were the last ones to board the plane.

We sat quite a ways apart, and I didn't see them again until the Tulsa airport, claiming my luggage.  I asked if they could give me a ride to the venue, but Eddie and Martin said they had a mid-sized rental car, and with them and the three bike boxes, the car was filled up.  I said, "Cool, see you guys tomorrow."  I got one of those airport luggage carts, and waited for the next group of guys with bike boxes to show up, so I could asked them for a ride.  I waited... and waited, for about an hour, and I was getting really nervous by that time.  I realized that there were not hundreds of guys flying in for the contest, and that's when it finally occurred to me that I didn't even know where the contest was. 

Finally I saw a quite normal looking guy with dark hair, maybe a year or two younger than me, get a bike box from the conveyor belt.  I went over and introduced myself, and he said his name was Joe.  I asked if he was going to the contest.  He said he was, and I asked if I could catch a ride to the venue.  Joe said, "My friends are picking me up, they have a van, and they can probably give you a ride."  So Joe got a luggage cart, and we wheeled our stuff out through the airport, out the door, to the pick up area.

He said we had about an hour until they were supposed to show up.  Joe seemed pretty quiet, too, so the conversation was a bit slow at first.  Then we started goofing around, and doing tricks on our luggage cars, like infinity rolls.  The conversation flowed a bit smoother then, and Joe said he was from Massachusetts, and rode for Haro.  I figured he meant he had a co-sponsorship from Haro, and got a free bike and some stickers, and maybe a uniform to wear at local contests.  I'd never heard of Joe in the magazines, or from the zine publishers I traded with, so how good could he actually be? 

After over an hour of hanging out, the Haro factory team tour van pulled up.  My jaw dropped.  Legendary Haro pro Ron Wilkerson hopped out of the driver's seat, and shouted across the front of the van, "Hey Joe, what's up!"  I soon learned that the mild mannered Joe Johnson from the East Coast was a brand new, full factory Haro rider.  Like Josh White, he'd just been picked up, and no magazine photos of him had come out yet.  Joe asked if they could give me a ride, when the side door  of the van opened, and told them I was writing the contest article for FREESTYLIN'.  I saw about 7 or 8 people already in the van.

Ron said, "Sure, jam the bike boxes wherever you can.  There were 6 or 7 bikes in the very back, we jammed the bike boxes down one side above them, and I wound up sitting on top of the bike frames, my legs hanging over the mass of handlebars, crammed into the Haro tour van, with Ron Wilkerson, team manager Billy Hop (sitting shotgun), Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, assistant team manager Jon Peterson, Joe, and about three other guys.  The van smelled like a locker room, and nobody cared.  Ron jumped back in the driver's seat, and took off towards the hotel at speed.

At that point, I was 8 months out from being a dorky freestyle kid in Idaho, who only saw pro freestylers in the magazines.  Yeah, I had become friends with the Curb Dogs and Skyway team riders in the months since Boise, but the Haro and GT freestyle teams were the top pros of the sport then, and I'd never met any of them.  Somehow, on my first solo trip, I'd met most of those guys, before even getting to the hotel or the contest site.  On the rough ride to the hotel, Jon Peterson started talking to me, asking where I came from, and said he'd take me around to meet everyone I needed to, and help me however he could.  It didn't feel like I was a young guy with a cool side gig.  It suddenly felt like I had won a BMX freestyle lottery trip or something.  I had no idea how much fun that trip was going to wind up being, as I rode in the Haro team van to the Holiday Inn where most of the riders were staying.

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Crazy California

Happy (43 + 3) Birthday Mat Hoffman

I was almost 20 years old in 1986, when Eddie Fiola walked up to me and started talking at the AFA Masters contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  My little San Jose' Stylin' zine somehow got me the job of writing about that contest for FREESTYLIN' magazine.  It was the biggest weekend of my life up to that point, and I couldn't believe it when Eddie just came up and started talking.  It was a fanboy moment, talking to the best know pro in freestyle like it was no big deal.  Then a curly headed kid and his buddy rode up and interrupted us.  Damn little grommets.  That kid was asking Eddie if he'd ever seen a trick, he did the motions of a switch-handed air.  Eddie had never seen that trick.  Neither had I.  The kid smiled and him and the buddy rode off. 

In the 1980's, a really weird, mostly screwed up, group of kids were attracted by the obscure, new, little sport of BMX freestyle.  Most of us were hardcore riders, if never really great riders.  Some guys excelled at riding.  I found my niche as one of the guys recording parts of our weird little world, first with a 110 camera and a typewriter, then at magazines, then a newsletter, then with video.  I wasn't one of the pro riders.  But I wound up part of the scene, sessioning with the best in the nightime jam circles and street rides, and then documenting them at the contest the next day. Because of that, I just happened to be standing there when I lot of really cool stuff went down.  On good days, I had a camera of some kind with me.  On the bad days, I waited for Windy or John Ker's magazine photos to come out.

The spring of 1986 in Tulsa was one of those good days.  Without realizing it at the time, vert legend  Eddie Fiola and I happened to meet an unsponsored Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope, before the national scene had heard of them.  Three years later, in a school gym in Ontario, Canada, was another good day.  I was the Unreel Productions (Vision) cameraman that day, the only person in the gym with a broadcast quality video camera on my shoulder.  The talk of the weekend was about some Canadian kid called the Terminator doing an abubaca backflip, or maybe a fakie backflip, no one was sure.  Both of those tricks seemed completely insane then.  He tried it earlier that day, but didn't commit, and it was underwhelming.  After that, there were no big expectations.  As usual, several riders hucked 900 attempts.  Then something amazing happened.  Go to 14:43 to see it.  Mat wound up having a good day that day, as well.  Happy Birthday Mat Hoffman.  Hope today's another good day, as well.

Remember everyone... you never know who that goofy looking kid who rides up to you at the skatepark may turn out to be.  Eddie and I had no idea what that curly headed kid would unleash into the bike world.  So don't be too quick to discount those crazy kids you run into out riding.