The big thing I learned from Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs

Blog post:  The big thing I learned from Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs

Dave Vanderspek head shot, as they call them in the entertainment industry.  Courtesy of Maurice Meyer.  Pro BMX racer, pro freestyler, super promoter, contest promoter, and BMX pioneer.

 

Dave Vanderspek was the visionary leader of the whole Bay Area scene, and he started the Curb Dogs bike and skate team.  At that time, there were a few factory teams that toured every summer, The BMX Action Trick Team, Haro, GT, and CW teams were the best known.  But when the magazines took a poll of the most popular teams, the Curb Dogs were always ranked right up among the factory teams.  At the time, every little group of BMX freestylers around the country had a trick team in their area.  We had one when I live in Idaho.  Ron Wilkerson started the 2-Hip Trick Team when he lived in San Francisco.  Chris Lashua and Dennis Langlais had the GT/Mountain Dew team on the East Coast.  The Curb Dogs were the only completely independent team that ranked with the top teams in popularity time after time.  The main reason was the Dave Vanderspek was an incredible promoter.

But Dave also came across as a kind of goofball.  At a time when Bob Haro and R.L. Osborn were working to look respectable and be clean cut businessmen, Vander was more like Jeff Spicoli in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  Check out this clip of Dave doing damage control after skaters got a bit rowdy at a show and the police were called.  This was the Dave we saw and hung out with.  He was the opposite of the clean cut business guys like R.L., Bob Haro, Bob Morales and others at the time.  I think that's why the magazines loved him so much, you never knew what Dave was going to do or say.  He was fun to hang around, and he could RIDE.  And he could skate well, too.  But it was hard for me to take him seriously when I first got to know him.  And I was jealous, as were some other riders, of all the coverage Dave got in the magazines.

At the same time, the Bay Area BMX freestyle scene was the best scene in the country.  Vander, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Oleg Konings, Rick Allison, and Hugo Gonzales were the pros we all got to hang out and ride with.  The Ground Control team, the top amateurs at the time, included Chris and Karl Rothe, Mike Perkins, Mark McKee, Darcy Langlois, and John Ficarra.  Down in San Jose, where Hugo lived, was his brother Oscar, John Vasquez (an INSANELY good rider), Vince Torres, Mike Golden and others.  The posse came together every Sunday afternoon in Golden Gate Park to session.  Once a month or so, most of us gathered in Foster City (halfway between S.F. and San Jose), where Robert Peterson worked, and the Skyway guys set up their ramps, and we all sessioned.  During all the time in between, we rode by our selves or in small groups in our area.

Over 20 years, I was a part of many BMX and freestyle scenes; the Bois, Idaho local scene, The Spot in Redondo Beach, CA, Huntington Beach Pier scene, the P.O.W. House/S&M Bikes crew, and Sheep Hills.  I met and hung out with nearly all the riders around the country in those days.  There were many really good scenes that had influence over BMX and freestyle as it evolved.  But none of those scenes compared to the Golden Gate Park/Curb Dogs scene.  And the main reason was Dave Vanderspek.  He set the tone.  Somehow, when the rest of us were mostly trying to promote ourselves and get coverage and sponsors, Dave recognized the importance of building the actual scene.  That attitude was shared by the other pros and the rest of us.  They wanted all of us to improve.  They wanted all of us to get sponsors and coverage when possible.  The better riders were always helping out younger and newer riders learn new tricks, or better style.

In those days, in every scene I was a part of, we would hide the new tricks we were working on from the other riders.  Even Jay Bickel and I in Idaho, when there was only two of us, we would work on a new trick in secret, and be able to pull it off, before we'd show it to each other.  But the Golden Gate Park/Curb Dogs crew was different.  I could show up at Golden Gate Park, and tell everyone about some idea for a trick, but could not come close to pulling off yet.  Unlike every other riding scene, the other riders would give me (or any of us) ideas and tips, and they wouldn't even try to steal my idea until I could do it.  That was true of every rider from pro to the newest kid who showed up.  We could share ideas for new tricks, and it was our trick, and the rest of the posse would be stoked to see us finally land it, and then get it wired.  Only then would the other riders try to learn our trick.  That little bit of difference in how the scene operated made a huge difference.  Because of it, we all improved as riders, but also as people.

Dave Vanderspek didn't always show up at Golden Gate Park on the weekends.  At the time I thought that was lame.  We all made the trip from around the huge Bay Area, and Dave wouldn't be there sometimes.  I didn't realize that it was because he was out promoting and doing things that would ultimately help all of us, and riding in general.  The Golden Gate Park scene, and the Curb Dogs and Skyway teams, had a big influence on the freestyle world.

Vander put on the first BMX halfpipe contest and the first bike street contest.  EVER.  He brought punk rock and D.I.Y. attitude into BMX and freestyle.  The NorCal guys were pioneers of street riding.  Ron Wilkerson got the cover of the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine at Golden Gate Park.  Ron became a top Haro pro, moved to SoCal, went on to promote the 2-Hip King of Vert, Meet the Street, and King of Dirt contests.  Those were the first halfpipe and street contest series. Later came Wilkerson Air Lines and 2-Hip Bikes.

My zine got me a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines in August of 1986, and I moved to SoCal.  I later worked at the AFA, Unreel Productions (Vision's video company) and produced several early, low budget videos, including vids for the AFA, 2-Hip, and S&M Bikes.  Chris Rothe was the first rider I ever saw do a bar ride, though not the very first guy to do it.  Karl Rothe went on to become the longtime editor of BMX Plus! magazine.  Mark McKee went on to become a graphic designer at World Industries skateboards, and created the most influential skateboard graphics of all time.  Oleg Konings did the first scuff trick I ever saw, a couple years before scuff tricks changed flatland forever.  The time and attention that Vander and the others put in to creating a great scene, not just a few egomaniacs trying to out ride each other, made all the difference in the world.  But I still didn't really get it.

Then, one day in late 1987 or early 1988, some promoter guy held a street and jump box jam in Huntington Beach.  H.B. Pier local, and my good friend, Mike Sarrail gave the guy the idea.  We got word out, and riders from all over showed up for the jam.  During that jam, Dave Vanderspek rolled up on his bike and pulled me aside.  Dave told me he noticed how much I had improved as a rider since he first met me, and that he was really stoked that I had worked at FREESTYLIN', and then edited the AFA newsletter.  As he was talking to me, he had his back to the whole jam.  Over his shoulder I saw Brian Blyther, Dave Voelker and many others blasting off the Stonehenge jump box.  It blew me away that Dave Vanderspek, this guy I'd talked some smack about, and was secretly jealous of, literally turned his back on an insane session to tell me he was proud of how I had improved both on and off my bike since he first met me.

And then I got it.  Dave actually gave a shit about me.  And not just me, but every single kid that rolled up to him at Golden Gate Park or a ramp jam or at a show.  He wanted ALL OF US to improve, both on and off our bikes.  He was stoked when one of us got a job in the industry or came up with a new trick or had any kind of success.  At 24 years old, Dave Vanderspek intuitively understood that by building a great scene, all of us would have a better chance to reach our personal potential.  We helped each other.  We fed off each other.  And we helped invent, improve, and change the bike world forever.  That was what he had been doing all along, and I just didn't see it.  Finally, at the ramp jam in H.B., I got it.  I finally saw why pretty much everyone in the sport was a fan of Vander.  That was the last time I ever saw Dave Vanderspek.  He died in a crazy and tragic way in the months after.

Now, as a 50-something guy starting over, yet again, I'm trying to take what I learned from Vander and put it into practice in the art scene I'm now a part of here in Winston-Salem.  It's my turn to be a kind of Vander, and help this local art scene progress and grow.  All of you out there riding or doing some other kind of creative thing, it's your turn to be Vander, too.

Help the beginners and  young kids in your scene.  Share the D.I.Y. spirit.  Become better people on AND off your bikes or skateboards.  Do the same in your art, music, film, or other creative scenes.  If anyone in your scene does well, you win.  You all win.  Dave Vanderspek understood this way back when.  He lived it.  Now it's our turn to live it.

Curb Dogs video, part 1

Curb Dogs video, part 2

1986 "Pacific Currents" featuring Maurice Meyer, ( I'm the guy chasing my bike at 5:07)

Beach Park Ramp Jam local TV segment from 1986

The high temperature here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is supposed to be 43 degrees today.  Really.  Hi 5 Vander. 

Mind baffling TED Talk by Skateboarder Rodney Mullen

It just occurred to me that I might be the only homeless person who's had a published interview with a person who's done a TED Talk years later.  My life is filled with obscure things like that.  Actually, Rodney has done several TED Talks.  Groups of super intelligent, high achieving techies, scientists, business people and others show up in rooms like this and willingly spend 18 minutes of their precious time to listen to a skateboarder.  Why?  Because Rodney is well known as one of the most innovative people in action sports, not to mention the whole world.

Yes, I know Rodney kind of jumps around in this talk, and comes across like a somewhat scatter-brained genius.  That's because he is a somewhat scatter-brained genius.  It's a little hard to follow.  But he brakes down skateboard tricks into little groups of movements.  Once you learn a basic group of movements, a trick, then you can either add variations to that trick, or take that trick to an entirely new type of terrain.  In doing this, skaters (and other action sports people) continually innovate, and add to the collective base of tricks.  The community respects these contributions (mostly), and those contributions then live on long past the time you came up with them, and continue to evolve.

I first met Rodney in August of 1986, at a place we called The Spot, just north of the Redondo Beach Pier in California.  I had just started a new job at Wizard Publications, a BMX magazine publisher, and my new co-worker and roommate Lew said, "You gotta meet this skateboarder Rodney, he's amazing."  Lew and I went to The Spot to practice our flatland BMX freestyle tricks on a good sized brick area.  After we'd been there for a couple hours, Rodney rode up on this rickety, old, black beach cruiser bike he called Agnes.  Where we would just start practicing our tricks, Rodney prepared to skate.  He taped his fingers, checked over his board, and stretched.  It was the first time I met a skateboarder who actually trained.  Then he did some basic, but still hard, tricks to warm up.  Then he skated, alone, for two or three hours.

At one point, he stopped to take a break, and Lew and I rode over to say "hi."  Rodney was staying with then washed up skater Steve Rocco for a few weeks.  Lew introduced me, and we talked for a few minutes.  Rodney was kind of quiet, really down to Earth, and obviously really smart.  After meeting him that first night, I started hanging out after I was done sessioning, and watch Rodney skate.  We started talking, and hit it off.  So I got to know him over those three weeks or so, and then later that fall when stayed at Rocco's for another month.

FREESTYLIN' magazine, where Lew and I worked, was covering skateboarding at the time, as well as BMX freestyle.  So I got the chance to do a short interview with Rodney, and he even got a photo on the cover of that issue (below).  BMX freestyle and skateboarding drew a weird crowd of people who generally felt like outsiders to "normal" life.  Some of those guys were the total crazy daredevil types.  But hanging out with Rodney, I found it was possible to read big books, be smart, and still be part of the BMX/skate world.  The more introverted, intellectual skaters and bikes often invented technically hard tricks.  Those tricks were often taken to bigger and crazier version by other riders and skaters.  That's where the community aspect of action sports, which Rodney speaks of at the end of this talk, comes into play.  No one person in these "sports" is "The Best," and everyone can contribute to the scene.  You can read my 1986 interview with Rodney Mullen.  I couldn't get that to load today.  If you can, it's in the skate section of the magazine near the middle.

The Difference a Good Scene Can Make

The Boise BMX track around the time I started racing.  We called it Fort Boise then, because it was in a drained sewer pond behind the old Fort Boise site.  This little place changed the course of my life. 

I got into BMX in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho in 1982.  There were about 12 junior high and high school guys there, not many girls, and not much to do.  We watched bad TV re-runs all afternoon in the summer, then came out as it cooled off in the early evening.  When I first moved there, we'd get games of wiffle ball, football, or basketball going against each other every evening.  And we'd ride our BMX bikes on some little jumps and berms a forgotten motorcycle rider had made a couple years before.  It was just something for us bored teenagers to do. That's how it started.

As the summer of 1982 progressed, we rode our bikes more, and played traditional games less.  We were just a bunch of punk kids trying to learn a new trick on our bikes and out-do each other.  Our little rivalries grew and faded, and we all started breaking parts on our cheap bikes.  And we started getting better.  BMX became our thing.  I didn't realize it then, but we organically formed a little scene, pushing each other to improve.

We started buying magazines with money made babysitting or mowing lawns.  When one kid bought a magazine, he'd hide it and read the whole thing in one night, sometimes twice.  Then,  he'd bring it out the next day and we'd all flip through it, learning the names of top riders and looking at the tricks in the photos.  As our cheap bikes broke, we bought (some kids stole) better parts.  We all tried to learn a new trick without the others seeing it, we were hyper-competitive with each other, always trying to be the first to pull off a trick or move we saw in a magazine.  Because of that, we progressed fairly quickly.

In those pre-internet days, news traveled at a snails pace, and it took us several months to learn that there was a BMX race track in Boise.  For those of you not familiar, "BMX" is a short version of "bicycle motocross."  One Saturday in October, four of us and three bikes piled into Scott's mom's Ford Pinto.  It wasn't a hatchback, so it was a tight fit.  I left my bike at home, because I was the worst rider in the trailer park at that point.

We went to the track, tried it out, and coached each other on the best lines to take and where to pass other riders.  The three guys who rode, Scott, Brian, and James, all won trophies.  We were hooked.  We headed back to the trailer park like we'd just conquered a foreign land or something.  When the other kids saw our trophies and heard our stories, the plan immediately began for the next race.  Unfortunately, that was the last race of the year.

Early that next Saturday, we piled in my dad's Ford Van, about nine of us, all with bikes, and unleashed our low-budget, but high energy crew on the local BMX scene.  Most of us had "K-Mart Special" bikes with a few upgraded components.  Most of the local kids had bikes that ranged in price from $350 to $600 each.  They had full motocross style leathers as uniforms, we had shabby Levi's and T-shirts.  They had custom number plates, we had paper plates with numbers hand written by the officials taped to our handlebars.  That day, I first saw the difference a tight scene can make.

All day long we heard one phrase over and over from kids and parents; "Where did all these fast kids on piece-of-shit bikes come from?"  It was the first race for most of us, the second race for  those three.  We were not only competitive, but we all went home with trophies, mostly first and second place.  We had everything going against us... except the thing that mattered most that day.  Hunger.  We lived BMX.  That's all we had to cram our teenage anger, frustration, and energy into.  Even before that first race, BMX was our life.  We had something to prove to the world.  We came from a bunch of families that were more dysfunctional than most, and we all had issues.  BMX gave us something to focus on, to be good at, and to begin to progress as a human being, not just a bike rider.

That desire for personal progression shaped the whole course of my life.  I went on to take chances, on my bike and off, that I never dreamed of early on, and that many wouldn't want to try.  I learned, first on a physical level, then on a life level, to get back up every time I fell down.  Or was pushed down.  Or punched in the head (that's for you Scott).   I'm still trying new things and progressing today.  And even now, at 51 years old and really overweight, I still have the urge to ride a bike and keep progressing.

Financially, my life's a mess.  Like many, I got stuck in an industry that  changed drastically due to new technology.  But I'm still going, still at it, and my artwork is starting to open some doors.  Now, 35 years after that summer in Blue Valley Trailer Park, I look at scene of people pushing each other in a totally different way.  Over those three and a half decades, I've learned that much of the progress in the world comes from small groups of people pushing each other to get better.  Scenes.  Art scenes. Music Scenes.  BMX, skateboard, and other action sports scenes.  Entrepreneurial scenes.  High Tech scenes.  These are all loosely connected.  My work I'm doing these days is trying to share the importance of these small scenes, especially creative scenes, how they grow, and to help build better ones.