The original "M" in S&M Bikes, the guy who's been running the company solo since like 1989 or something, the Mad Dog, the Angry Canine, the Pissed Puppy himself, Chris Moeller, at the jam at Sheep hills yesterday. Yeah, he's still doing 360's over doubles, by the way.
In 1987, teenage BMX racers and jumpers, Chris Moeller and Greg Scott, were tired of their bikes breaking all the time. So they went to a machine shop called B&E, that actually built the bike frames and forks, for several small BMX companies. The young duo asked the guys there if they could make a frame with double thick back drop outs. That was the start of S&M Bikes, which stood for Scott & Moeller. Well, and the sex thing, too.
As the 30 year anniversary of the company rolled around in 2017, somebody decided that doing a book on the history of the company would be a good idea. So they got started, and now it's finally done and coming out. As I write this, the official book launch party is tonight at the S&M Bikes warehouse in Santa Ana. To get the idea out, and just to have some fun, they had a book launch jam at Sheep Hills yesterday afternoon and evening.
Since I've been back in Orange County for about three weeks, returning from my ten year banishment to the Eastern Seaboard, I decided to go check it out. These nine blog posts are a bunch of (mostly horrible) photos I shot of the fun yesterday. I'm not good a shooting action shots with my phone, and I missed the peak on nearly every jump. But it'll give you all an idea of what went down yesterday.
On my end of things, I first heard of Chris Moeller when BMX Action editor (and my roommate at the time) Gork, saw Chris while on a photo shoot in Huntington Beach with another rider. Chris quickly became a BMXA test rider, and went on to contribute to the magazine (and Go) later on. I met Chris when Gork and I gave him a ride to a national in Lake Elsinore in 1986. I went my own way, worked at the AFA and at Unreel Productions, Vision Street Wear's video company. I ran into Chris now and then at events.
While working at Unreel, which was on the edge of the bluff in Costa Mesa, I used to ride some jumps that were on the hillside, where the condos above Sheep hills are now. I would also roll down 19th Street hill in Costa Mesa, and ride this ditch below, which the Vision skaters told me about, on my way home from work. One night I rode along the little creek, headed down to Hamilton. I saw this little rabbit trail through the tall grass, and laid my bike down and followed it. About 100 yards back, into the 15 foot tall trees, there was a sort of open meadow. You could see it from the houses up on the hill, but not from ground level. I thought, "This would be an awesome place to build some jumps." That was the first time I walked into the area where Sheep Hills is now. I went to the swap meet that weekend, motivated to build some jumps, and I bought a shovel. Then I ended up building small jumps in the Bolsa Chica wetlands, close to where I actually lived.
The skate ditch you can see at 1:13 in Vision Psycho Skate, and which I used to session solo in 1988-89, a couple of years before Sheep Hills started being built by Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean. This ditch is maybe 150 yards from Sheep Hills.
In 1990, I started shooting video on the weekends with my own camera, determined to put out a self-produced BMX video that wasn't goofy like the Vision videos we made at Unreel Productions. As the economy tanked, and the BMX and skate industries tanked even harder, Unreel was shut down, and I was moved to the Vision main offices in Santa Ana. That building just happened to be about a block from the current home of S&M Bikes, where the book party is tonight. It's weird how those things work out.
I left Vision in July of 1990, after going on a three week skateboard tour as manager, and then produced my own video, one of the first four BMX riders to do that. That video was The Ultimate Weekend, and came out in October of 1990. Because so much was happening in riding at that time, the video had a lot of firsts in it, like introducing the world to a hungry young rider from New Jersey named Keith Treanor. That video was also the first video that Chris Moller, Dave Clymer, and a few others from the already legendary P.O.W. House appeared in. You can see that part here...
The first time I ever saw the S&M Bikes shield logo was on the VW bus, when I shot that clip. This was the first video the S&M Bikes shield ever appeared in. That shield survived 29 years since, and it's been through a lot. Tonight you can learn the story, say it with me now, "Behind the Shield."
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