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...