Powers to the (BMX) People

This is the kind of thing I imagine when I think BMX comp.  Yeah, I'll watch the X-Games on TV sometimes, and it shows a lot of young kids the competitive side of riding, and gets them interested in BMX, but back lot contests on homemade and sketchy ass obstacles are always more fun. 

When I walked into a Greyhound bus station to leave North Carolina a month ago, having been stiffed on a $120 payment for a drawing that day, I asked the 16-year-old looking clerk, "How close to Chicago can I get for about $60."  It took her 20 minutes of typing to tell me I could get to Richmond, Virginia... if I slept in the bus station and left the next morning.  For some reason, no buses headed northwest, towards Scotty Z.'s house near Chicago, where I had an invitation to chill for a week or so, before heading West to Cali.  So I slept fairly well on a hardwood bus station bench, and made it to Richmond the next afternoon.  I had never been to Richmond, and didn't know a damn thing about it.

I had seen photos of the contest above, you can't forget the eyeball and tongue ramp, but since it was FBM, I thought it was up in Ithaca, NY.  I didn't know a thing about Richmond when I landed here, all I knew is that I spent 10 horrible years trapped in North Carolina, I never could find any "real" job there, and the year of taxi driving I did left me broke.  There was no BMX scene near me, and definitely no old school BMXers or skaters to talk to.  Winston-Salem had a really cool art scene for a mid-sized city, but not big enough for me to make a living drawing my Sharpie art. 

Within a couple days of being landing in Richmond with about $3 in my pocket, I started noticing murals, lots of really cool murals, all over this city.  That's freakin' cool.  Then I started talking to people in the Art District.  Then old BMX friend Steve Crandall randomly sends me a message to meet him at a shop here.  Much to my surprise, Powers Bike Shop, hidden away in the back of an old industrial complex, was the place I'd seen in photos, where the tongue ramp contest happened. But Chad, the owners of Powers Bike Shop wasn't there the day I met up with Crandall. 

We connected on Facebook, and I went by the day before yesterday to meet him at the shop.  Even though I looked, and smelled, like the homeless bum I am at the moment, he was totally cool.  We started talking BMX, and I told him a bunch of stories from random events back in the day.  Then he mentioned that he not only has a huge vintage bike collection, but BMX magazine collection as well.  He dug out the August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', which had the zine article, where my zine, San Jose Stylin', was ranked number one in the country at the time.  That issue also had the first freelance article I wrote for FREESTYLIN', covering the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters contest that spring. 

Much to my surprise, Chad asked me to autograph the page with that article.  So I signed my first autograph while being homeless, not counting the autographs on my arrest paperwork when I got arrested for buying donuts in NC last year. Even funnier, that's the 10th autograph I've signed in the 35 years since I got into BMX.  The other 9 autographs?  I signed them at the Tulsa, Oklahoma contest in 1986.  We all even signed some girl's arm at that contest.  When we asked why those kids wanted our autographs there, the arm girl replied,"You guys are the closest thing we ever see to famous people."  What really funny is that 14-year-old Mathew Hoffman was at that contest, his first AFA Masters, and flew under the radar.  By the  next contest, everyone in the industry knew who the Oklahoma kid throwing no-footed can-can's was, and he got sponsored.  He was not only on the BMX scene radar after that, he probably showed up on air traffic control radar at times.

Anyhow, while it's been rough living since I got here to Richmond (or RVA as locals refer to it), it's also been really cool.  I'm hanging with BMXers a bit again, I've lost ten pounds (homelessness or hospital stay, not sure), and I'm selling art now.  I'm even working on the first BMX drawing I've done in over a year and a half, and can't wait to see how it turns out. 

So thanks to Chad at Powers Bikes here for his hospitality, and for stoking out a Has Been BMX industry guy-turned art bum.  Not sure how long I'll be here, but it's a pretty cool city.  Who knows?