The Story of my Keychain- part 1: The Zine

It started with the idea to make a zine.  At some point, in 1985, in Idaho, I read an article in FREESTYLIN' magazine about zines.  It was written by BMXer/art student turned FREESTYLIN' magazine editor, and zine lover, Andy Jenkins.  For some reason, the idea of making a zine appealed to me.

I'd always been a daydreamer as a kid, I'd get these really cool creative ideas, often I'd draw and plan them out, and then never follow through. Great ideas that never happened was a big theme of my childhood.  I guess, in a sense, I thought that was sort of the point of ideas.  I watched my parents think of big ideas, like the time my mom wanted to start a home cooking restaurant, called Kathy's Kountry Kitchen, in the farmhouse we lived in, or the time my dad and a friend, both engineers, spent a whole night planning ways to get revenge on the guy's crazy next door neighbor.  But they never took action on these ideas.  Where I grew up in the Midwest, coming up with big ideas, crazy brainstorming, often by adults after a few beers, followed by never taking action, was a normal thing.

So as a new BMX freestyler in Boise, Idaho, with a year and a half of BMX racing and freestyle under my belt, I read Andy's article about these little self-published booklets called zines, and I dreamed about making one called Idaho Stylin'.  But I never actually made it.  I sketched out the logo, designed layout ideas, and thought it out.  Then dropped the idea, and dreamed up something else.

As 1985 came in, my dad got a new job in San Jose, California, and my family moved there in the Spring.  I worked my summer job in Boise, then packed up my 1971 Pontiac Bonneville with the Oldsmobile 455 engine, and drove to San Jose to join them.  I sold my car shortly after getting to San Jose.  At that time, the most cohesive scene in BMX freestyle centered around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  Dave Vanderspek, of the Curb Dogs bike and skate team, was kind of the visionary leader of the group.  They'd get together on the weekends in a certain area of the park and have a big jam circle for the crowd all day.  The pros usually there, or at the Beach Park Ramp Jams, included Vander, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Rick Allison, Oleg Konings, and ramp crazy man Hugo Gonzales.  There was a whole second layer of great riders, amateurs as well.

When I moved to San Jose, I wanted to find those guys, and become part of that scene.  I remembered the zine idea from Boise, and decided that if I started a zine, then I'd have an excuse to meet and hang out with those guys.  While I knew they rode at Golden Gate Park sometimes, I didn't know exactly when or where, and I didn't have a car to get from San Jose up to The City (as locals called San Francisco).  The thought of driving into a big city and trying to park, and maybe getting mugged or something, scared the crap out of me.

But I really wanted to meet those riders, so I actually followed through and published my first zine. Actually following through on ideas was something I'd been starting to do since I got into freestyle.  My self-esteem was low enough, that I thought I needed a reason to approach the guys, and to ride with them.  After, they were "famous guys from the magazines," and I was a goofball from Idaho.

So I bought a manual Royal typewriter (about 1940's era) from the San Jose Swap Meet, bought some Scotch tape from my Pizza Hut paychecks to tape the photos and copy to a sheet of paper, and dug out the photos I had from riding in Boise.  I changed the name of the zine to San Jose Stylin', and typed up three pages, both sides, of text and photos.  I didn't even know a zine was supposed to be 8 1/2" X 11" sheets folded in half, like a little book.  I figured that out on issue 3 or 4, I think.  My first two or three issues were two or three sheets, with black & white words and photos on both sides, with the pages just stapled in the top left hand corner, like a test at school.

I borrowed my mom's car, drove around to several bike shops, and dropped off copies for bike shop workers, and any freestylers who came by the shops.  Within a week, a San Jose local rider and underground legend, John Vaquez, called me up, and asked me to come ride with his friends, Vince Torres, and a couple others.  They told me about the Beach Park Ramp Jams (held by Robert Peterson at the shop he worked at), and that Sundays were the big day to session Golden Gate Park.  I made it up to a Beach Park Jam two or three weeks later, and handed out some zines there.  I met John Ficarra, who decided to be my assistant editor of the zine, and started riding up to Golden Gate Park with him and the Ground Control guys, which included Chris and Karl Rothe, Mike Perkins, Marc McKee, Tim Treacy, Darcy Langlois, and Mike Golden. I soon became the "zine guy" of the Bay Area BMX freestyle scene.


Here's a local TV segment from the summer of 1986, with a Golden Gate Park Jam circle, featuring Maurice Meyer.  Also in the segment are Mike Perkins at 3:48, Karl Rothe at 4:05, Darcy Langlois with the gut lever at 4:06, Tim Treacy's legs doing the backyard (which he invented, nearly a year before that trick went viral in the freestyle world), Chris Rothe at 4:34, Marc McKee in the yellow shirt at 4:43, and me, chasing my bike (an Idaho parade trick) at 5:07.

One of the better ideas, which to me just seemed like just the smart thing to do, was that I sent copies of San Jose Stylin' to each of the editors at FREESTYLIN' magazine, BMX Action, and BMX Plus!  Instead of sending one for the whole staff to share, I sent them each one, so they could check it out individually, and hopefully talk about it.  That turned out to be a smart move.

In the Spring of 1986, after about 5 monthly (almost) issues of my zine, a bunch of us NorCal guys piled into a van, and headed down to the AFA Masters contest, at the Velodrome, near L.A..  While I was down there, I saw Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN'.  I went over and introduced myself, thinking he'd just shake my hand and say "Hi."  When I told him I'd been sending zines to him, Lew, and Gork, he said something like, "Oh man, we love your zines."  That blew my mind.  And that's how I first met Andy Jenkins, which is the start of the story of my keychain.

I've got a new blog going, it's about building a creative business, and building small businesses in general.  You can check it out here:
WPOS Kreative Ideas 
And check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now