The Number 43 and BMX... what I know...

I don't know who Dick Cheeseburger is, but a 43 foot jump is a 43 foot jump.  So how did the number 43 wind up tied to BMX?  Here's what I know.  

For any of you new to my blog, when I write about the old days of BMX freestyle and skateboarding, I write my own personal memories and ideas.  I never intend my blog posts to be "the official word" on any subject.  So these thoughts on how the number 43 became the official lucky number of BMX freestyle are my thoughts, and the part of the story I know something about.  

43 in an address in Hollywood.  #steveemigphotos

The whole 43 thing began with NorCal skaters and BMXers in the late summer of 1986.  At that time, The Curb Dogs, led by Dave Vanderspek, was a San Francisco bike/skate team that was as famous in the BMX world as the Haro, GT, and Skyway factory teams.  Skyway was the main NorCal based freestyle team.  Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzalez, and Oleg Konings were on Skyway in 1986, along with San Diego rider Eddie Roman.  Maurice Meyer was both a Curb Dog, and a Skyway factory team member at the time  The number 43 became an inside joke among the Curb Dogs in 1986, and it began growing from there.  

In the summer of 1986, Maurice Meyer was profiled for a local TV show, called Pacific Currents.  The segment focused on Maurice, a solid pro rider who never got enough coverage back then.  In the Golden Gate Park footage in that clip, Karl Rothe, Chris Rothe, Mark McKee, Darcy Langlois, Tim Treacy, and myself (chasing bike at 5:07), are in there as well.  This piece was shot in June or July of 1986, and the 43 thing had not happened yet.  Shortly after this piece was shot, at the end of July in 1986, I moved to Southern California, when I landed a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  

I asked Maurice Meyer to check out this post, and he retold me the origin story.  There was a San Francisco skater named Rob, and his dad came home from the corner store and said, with a thick Persian accent, "How come every thing I buy there ends up in 43 cents?"  It was funny the way he said it, and it stuck in Rob's head.  He started noticing the number 43 around, as well, and shared the story with skater friends, the Curb Dogs, and other locals.  So the whole 43 thing began as a weird inside joke in 1986, in the S.F. skate/BMX freestyle scene.  Maurice shared an article in a Scandinavian magazine, that recounts the original story.  

One weird little inside joke turned into a worldwide thing in the BMX freestyle and skateboard subcultures.  #steveemigphotos

A couple of months later, in September or October '86, the NorCal crew came to SoCal, and stopped by Wizard Publications, where I worked.  Out in the parking lot, after work, the Wizard crew talked with the NorCal posse, about 15 or so riders.  Karl Rothe asked me how my new job as a magazine guy, was going.  I told him that I had just transcribed a super long interview with Skyway pro, and NorCal local, Robert Peterson, "It was like 43 pages when I typed it all up."  Karl, said, "Whoa, 43!"  I had no idea what he was talking about.   

The 43 origin story, from a Scandinavian magazine

Karl dragged me over to the rest of the guys, and had me tell them that Bert's interview was about 43 pages long when transcribed.  I asked what the big deal about 43 was, and they said that the number had been popping up all over for them, so it was like this inside joke among 20 or 30 NorCal BMXers and skaters at that point.  That's how I know the 43 thing happened sometime between late July and September 1986.  It wasn't a thing when I last rode with them at Golden Gate Park in July, and it had become an inside joke by early fall.  In the course of riding and hanging out, the word of the 43 thing slowly spread, like it did to me and the Wizard staff, that night in the magazine's parking lot.

As time passed in the late 80's, the affinity for the number 43 spread from the Curb Dogs to the Skyway team (including Eddie Roman and Mat Hoffman), and to other freestylers.  In 1990, I put a big 43 on the back of my video box for The Ultimate Weekend.  It said, "43 reasons to buy or rent this video," and listed 43 names of the riders in it, and big tricks in the video.  While my video wasn't a BMX blockbuster by any means, pretty much all the serious riders of the day saw it at some point.  There were very few videos out then.  By then, seeing the number 43 randomly was seen as a bit of good luck by a lot of freestylers.  

Tom Green skates, and he's knows what's up.

I think what really put the number 43 in more people's heads was Eddie Roman's 1991 video Headfirst, starring Mat Hoffman.  At 20:38 in the video, Eddie asks Mat how much money he makes a week,  Mat says, "A million, billion, quadrillion dollars... and 43.  Aaaagh 43!"  That little clip, in the single most influential BMX video of all time, probably did more to promote the number 43 in BMX freestyle than anything else.  Suddenly 43 was pretty much every rider's lucky number.  And the 43 thing just kept on growing.  

The 43 story in BMX is a lot like the 420 story in marijuana/cannabis/weed culture.  Something that started as a weird, little inside joke among a few friends, slowly grew into this worldwide thing in the subculture.  I love the idea of that, how a little inside joke can organically grow, spread widely, and become a part of the subculture.  So that's my take, with thanks to Maurice Meyer, on how the number 43 became the official lucky number of BMX freestylers worldwide.

A few people, including Drob, reminded me that John Malkovich lives in apartment number 43, in the movie, Being John Malkovich.  That movie, of course, was directed by Spike Jonze, who got hired at Wizard Publications after I got laid off for not being cool enough.  Spike knew the 43 thing well from his years as a rider and BMX photographer.  I couldn't find a shot of the actual door in that movie, though.  Just watch the movie again.

My "43" Pinterest board- 97 different visual references to 43

 

Mat Hoffman lands his first 900 at 14:43 in this video.  This is footage I shot at the 2-Hip King of Vert in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in the Spring of 1989.  I shot the raw footage, and Eddie Roman edited it, and did the funny commentary, with some friends, for the 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man.

Brian Tunney- 43 Tricks for my 43rd  birthday

Area 43 BMX Park

Area 43 snowboarding

OFG (Old Fat Guys) BMX podcast #43 - Scotty Zabielski and friend.  

Flatopia 43

The Big Bang Theory- "The 43 Peculiarity"

Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion (April 2022)

Movie 43- This looks horrible, but has a bunch of big stars, including Johnny Knoxville, who's part of the Jackass posse, which includes Spike Jonze.  

Angel Number 43 - According to this video, 43 is a number sent to you by angels.  So angels must love BMX freestyle and skating.  Cool.

Learn the number 43

43 card- Manipulator of Souls in Yu-Gi-Oh!

43 decimal stuff- If you like the number 43, are a math geek, and speak Hindi, this might make sense to you.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (movie) says the meaning of life is 42.  But it began as a comedy radio broadcast in 1978.  BMX freestyle had not officially become a thing then.  It was in its embryonic stage.  So the guy who wrote it couldn't possibly have known that the real meaning of life is 43, unless he had been hanging out with Bob Haro, which he wasn't.

For me, personally, I had an affinity for the number 43 long before it became a thing in BMX.  I was a 5-year-old living in some low income duplexes in about 1971.  We lived in Jackson Township, just outside of Massillon, Ohio.  One day a neighbor lady told us the number 13 was an "unlucky number."  Being little kids, we asked her, "Why?"  Like most adults, when asked "why?" she didn't have a good answer.  So us little kids spent some time talking about lucky and unlucky numbers.  Being a contrarian, even at age 5, I decided that 13 would be my lucky number.  

Our little crew of 5 and 6-year-olds decided to pick some other lucky numbers.  43 was our first pick, mostly because that was the sketchy UHF TV channel in our area that played scary monster movies, old time B movies.  "43 just sounds like a cool number," we thought.  We also picked 27, and 57.  So 13, 43, 27, and 57 seemed like the best "lucky numbers" to us kindergartners in Ohio back then.  For my childhood years, 43 was my back-up lucky number, behind 13.  That day we even noticed that odd numbers just seemed cooler than even numbers, for some reason, a pretty cool insight for kids that young. 

My family moved a lot when my sister and I were growing up.  We bounced around several houses in Ohio until I was 14, then lived in New Mexico for a year, and then moved to Boise, Idaho in 1981.  I got into BMX while living in a trailer park, outside of Boise, in 1982.  There was a 43 thing happening there that I didn't realize until a few years ago.  

What does Boise, Idaho have to do with the number 43?  By some weird coincidence, Boise sits just above 43 degrees of northern latitude.  Without realizing it until a couple of years ago, I got into BMX while living at 43 degrees of latitude.  That's also why there is now a Hotel 43 in Boise.  That's just another weird little 43 thing in my personal life.  Us Boise locals, and a bunch of riders across the top of the U.S., from New Hampshire to Oregon, started riding at, or around, 43 degrees of northern latitude.  Some of you reading this may be in that group.  

Then, decades later, while living with my mom back in 2017, I was talking on the phone with someone about the 43 thing.  My mom overheard me, and asked what the deal was with the number 43.  So I explained it to her.  "That's funny," she said, "when I worked at the phone company (early 1960's), my operator number was 43."  What can I say, it's everywhere...  

So that's what I know about the number 43, and how it became associated with BMX freestyle.   

The Hollywood American Legion sign, post #43.  #steveemigphotos

1/43 scale model at a hobby shop in Studio City, California, that has since closed down.  #steveemigphotos

This post had some serious issues originally, and I rewrote it on March 5, 2026.  

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