This song features Johnny Contardo of the 50's retro group Sha Na Na. Believe it or not, Johnny is a part of the story today. There was a huge 1950's revival movement in the 1970's. The 50's were the post World War II boom years of easy living, all American values of guys with crew cuts, girls in poodle skirts, the rise of rock n' roll music, and where the bad boys were the 50's greasers. The classic greaser had his hair slicked back, usually black hair, he wore Levi's jeans, and a white T-shirt with a pack of Marlboro cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. The musical play Grease debuted in Chicago in 1971, and made it to Broadway in 1972. Grease echoed back to the movie West Side Story from 1962. In 1973 the movie American Graffiti came out, directed by the then unknown director George Lucas. The success of American Graffiti quickly spawned the long running TV show Happy Days, also about 1950's teens, hot rods, drive-in restaurants, and Fonzie the cool greaser on his motorcycle. In 1978, the movie Grease was a huge hit. The 1950's revival continued into the early 1980's, with the movie The Outsiders in 1983. Even as punk rock and New Wave were rising in popularity, the 50's revival kept going in the mainstream. After the crazy hippies of the 1960's, the older generations of mainstream American culture were starved for the "good ol' days" of the 1950's. The 1950's was seen as as a simpler time, before things got crazy with sex, drugs, and the hippies' acid rock. So for us Gen X kids of the 70's growing up, 1950's culture was everywhere in the little bit of media that existed back then. Out of that love for all things 1950's came Sha Na Na, a 1950's revival and doo wop musical group, who got their own prime time TV show in the late 1970's, and into the early 1980's. Sha Na Na was the band playing at the high school dance in the 1981 movie Grease.
Here I am, the complete opposite of 50's greaser cool, with a casual balance trick on my Skyway T/A. This was my first real BMX bike, which I bought with my high school graduation money. I'm rockin' the 1985 Boise Fun Spot polo shirt, Vaurnets I found in a field, ridiculously short Op cord shorts, and Nike Pegasus running shoes, because I had run cross country the year before, and just liked the Nike's. The Fun Spot was this tiny amusement park in Julia Davis Park, in downtown Boise, right across the river from Boise State University. The Fun Spot was located between the Boise Zoo and the duck pond with the pedal boats. There's a playground in that spot now. I spent the winter of 1984-85 doing Robert Peterson-style balance tricks in our garage, or my bedroom. Photo by Vaughn K.
Before 1985, obviously, came 1984. That year started off kind of crazy, with me being grounded for months, as a high school senior, for throwing a part at my dad's boss' house, while I was house sitting for him. The first night I went out after that, I got a drinking ticket at a party where we all got busted before anyone even got a beer out of the keg. I wasn't as serious of a partier as that makes me sound, and often wound up designated driver for my friends. I graduated high school in 1984, and didn't have any money for college, so I decided to "take a year off."
I was still racing BMX when I graduated from Boise High, I even won a BMX track designing contest, using my drafting skills, and helped re-design and rebuild the Fort Boise BMX track, and designed and helped the track operators build a second track between Boise, and Meridian. Over the winter of 1983-83, I went to indoor races in Caldwell, outside of Boise. We raced over some wooden jumps at first, and then a guy would literally build a track in a livestock arena on the fairgrounds there, two hours before each race. That was pretty amazing. The jumps were small, but the racing was good. I never made it out of the 17 novice class, because I raced intermediates most of the time, and even experts sometimes, depending who showed up. In those days, when I was getting ready to race, guys like Darwin Hansen was a fast 13X I think, and did really well at a lot of nationals later on. Shannon Gillette was two or three gates ahead of me, and he now works for USA BMX. Right behind my gate was Clint Davies, the guy to try and catch in 17 Expert. He was the fastest guy in Boise, and I raced him once in a while in 17 Open class. He's still racing hard these days.
While racing was fun, and there was a really solid regional BMX racing scene in the Boise area, the brand new sport of BMX freestyle, trick riding, was much more interesting to me. I never used up all the free races I got from winning the track designing contest. I met, and soon joined, the only trick team in Idaho, made up of Justin Bickel and Wayne Moore. Wayne, at the ripe old age of 17, soon retired, and Justin (Jay) and I renamed it the Critical Condition Stunt Team. Jay's mom was our promoter, and we did a handful of shows, rode in every local parade, and had the first two BMX freestyle contests in Idaho that summer. My first BMX freestyle trophy was an old, hand me down BMX racing trophy, with a mono-shock bike on it, and brown vinyl on the sides. Seriously. It was so ugly it was great. Wish I still had it.
That was in 1984, the year that BMX freestyle blew up beginning its first big wave of popularity. FREESTYLIN' magazine debuted in 1984, and the AFA held the first flatland and quarterpipe contests in Southern California. In addition, this Mountain Dew commercial featuring Eddie Fiola, R.L. Osborn, Ron Wilkerson, and stuntman Pat Romano, aired on TV all summer long. I'd never seen freestyle on TV before, and most people in Idaho had no idea it even existed as a sport.
That summer I was a ride operator at this tiny amusement park, called The Fun Spot. Even in Boise, The Fun Spot was a joke. My friends made fun of me for working there. But it was a job, and it paid me $2.10 an hour all through the summer of 1984. I got the job because of a guy named Doug in high school, who I met after we all got tickets at that party earlier in the year. I worked 5 or 6 days a week, practiced freestyle tricks for a couple hours every night, and then hung out with my high school friends, none of which were into BMX. I put $1,000 in the bank that summer, with a general plan of going off to college in 1985. My family moved to Virginia, and left me with the three bedroom house and my mom's Ford Pinto that summer. How big of a dork was I? I literally had my own house, for all practical purposes, for about three months, at age 18, and the police never had a reason to show up. I had maybe 8 friends over at a time, but no real parties. I didn't even manage to get laid with my own house. That's how big of a dork, and how shy I was at 18. My dad got a high paying two year job back east, after getting laid off in Boise. But the job ended suddenly in the fall of 1984, and my mom had to borrow my $1,000 to help them move back, and catch up the mortgage payment in Boise. My big lesson that summer was to not save money that my mom knew existed. Somehow a crisis would always happen that needed that money, if she knew anyone around her had money. That was always an issue in my family. Instead of paying me back, my mom decided I had to start paying them $100 a month in rent, but the first ten months would be free. That's kind of how things worked in our house.
After The Fun Spot closed in August, I wound up working nights as a line cook at a Mexican restaurant called Chi-Chi's, kind of like an El Torito type place, a mainstream chain with Mexican food. My family moved back to Boise, and life continued. I rode my bike as much as possible when the weather was good, and partied with my high school, non-BMX friends, on the weekends. But freestyle had become my main focus in life by late 1984.
That's me on the right, running the Ferris wheel, at The Fun Spot, in the summer of 1985. On the ride are co-workers Kim, Michelle, and Pam. On really busy days, like holiday weekends, I'd run into the food stand, call a local pizza place, and have them deliver me a pizza, right to the Ferris wheel. I'm not kidding. When the pizza arrived, people on the Ferris wheel got an extra long ride, while I wolfed down the first slice or two. Photo by co-worker Vaughn K.
I ended 1984 by joining the Marine Reserves, because they had a program to earn money for college. One of my friends had gone into the Marines right after graduation. He came back for Christmas break, and talked all of us into talking to the local recruiters. I was the only one who signed up, partly because my family was out of town for a few days after Christmas.
I stopped smoking weed, which I did maybe every week or two, and spent a couple of months in the delayed entry program. Right before shipping out to boot camp, they told me they might have to talk to my friends, since I might need a security clearance in the Corps. So I told them I had sold "speed," in high school for a couple of months. It was crosstops and black beauties that I sold, actually ephedrine you could buy from an ad in Hustler magazine, but not in Idaho. I didn't know that's where the pills came from at the time. I did it when I lived out in the trailer park, and couldn't make any money. A bottle of 5 Hour Energy is probably 20 times more powerful than what I sold.
The Marines deliberated for a week, and dropped me from the delayed entry program. So with that episode behind me, I kept working as a line cook and riding my bike when I could. Life went back to work, BMX freestyle, hanging with my high school friends, and trying to get laid. In May of 1985, I got tapped to be the manager of The Fun Spot for the summer. Still 18-years-old, I was running the day to day operations of a little amusement park, with 12-13 employees under me.
A photo of two girls riding the Tilt-a-Whirl at The Fun Spot in 1965. Photo nabbed from 107.9 Lite FM website.
The Fun Spot was housed in two or three acres of Julia Davis Park. We had six rides, kiddie cars, kiddie airplanes, a merry-go-round, a kiddie roller coaster, a Tilt-a-Whirl, and a Ferris wheel. There was a little ticket booth in the middle of the park. Behind the ticket booth, there was an 18 hole miniature golf course. Across the gravel covered midway area from the ticket booth was a food stand with popcorn, sodas, cotton candy, and soft serve Italian ice. Near that was a little garage-type building with about six second tier video games. That was in the height of the quarter arcade video game days, but we didn't have Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Galaga, Joust, or any of the best games. We had games like Red Baron aerial dual, and Food Fight.
The owner of The Fun Spot was owned by a guy named Tim, who was in his mid 30's then. His main business was a construction company, and he was the first real entrepreneurial guy I spent any time working around, a couple of years before stumbling into the BMX and then skateboard industries. Back then, especially in a place like Boise, people all worked jobs. Hardly anyone started their own business. Tim started working at The Fun Spot at age 16 or 17, and bought the amusement park at age 20, with $100 loaned to him by the previous owner's wife. The previous owner was 75 years old or so, and his wife wanted him to actually retire. In the 15 or so year since, Tim had put young guys, from 17 to 21-years-old, in charge, as managers, every summer. He took pride in giving us all some real world experience, actually managing a small business and several employees, when most businesses would debate hiring us in the first place.
He believed in learning by experience, and he gave all of us managers basic instructions, but let us try things when it came to managing 10-13 employees, who we were only a year or two older than usually. Once the park was set-up for the season, Tim would show up in the morning with the cash register drawer with money for the day, and he'd take off. From then until 8 pm or so in the evening, I was in charge. It was an incredible trial by fire in managing a business and employees. If you can get 16-year-old high school kids to pull weeds and mow the "back 40" section of the lawn in 85 to 92 degree weather, and keep the place operating, and deal with mad parents and issues, you could probably manage most other businesses later in life. Tim had a pager, so I could call him in emergencies. But The Fun Spot, the goofy little amusement park my friends made fun of, was my kingdom to run every summer day in 1985. It was a really challenging and great experience for me as an 18-19 year old, that summer. I once had to fire a girl I wanted to go out with. Man that's a great way to kill a relationship before it starts.
One day I got a call in the food stand, a guy said the National Governor's Convention was coming to Boise, and he was looking for places to take the kids of all of the governors during those days. The Fun Spot became one of their activities. Although I was still incredibly shy in general, I saw an opportunity. "Have you every heard of BMX freestyle?" I asked the guy. He hadn't. I told him about our trick team, and wound up doing a freestyle demo for all the governors' kids, in the parking lot in front of The Fun Spot. As expected, all the kids over about ten were not impressed with the tiny amusement park. Most came from cities much bigger than Boise, cities that had real amusement parks. But the kids were really stoked to see a BMX freestyle show, something none of them had seen before. The main thing I remember is that we set up Jay's wedge ramp about two feet beside the quarterpipe, instead of at the other end of the riding area. We were doing alley-oops and bunnyhops to fakie across the little gap, onto the wedge ramp, something we'd been doing for fun at Jay's house. So the kids from all 50 states left pretty stoked. That was really cool.
At one point in mid-summer, Tim came by one evening to do some repairs. He and I headed out to a section of fence behind the Ferris wheel. I think someone had damaged it during the night. As we were making repairs, he asked me what my plans were, for life in general. At that point, I'd been into BMX for three years, which was really uncool for a 19-year-old kid anywhere, but particularly in a pretty conservative city like Boise. Every adult made fun of me, and my love for doing tricks on "a little kid's bike." So I was reluctant to answer.
But Tim was pretty cool, so I told him I really wanted to pursue BMX freestyle, and try to become a pro rider some day. I got that statement out, and held my breath, waiting for the inevitable response "You need to grow up, go to college, and get a real job." Instead, Tim kept working on the fence, turned his head, and said, "Hey, you never know, you wouldn't be the first guy from The Fun Spot to get famous." I was blown away. Tim was the first adult, other than Jay's mom and dad, to take the idea of me making something out of freestyle seriously. I didn't know what to say. He continued, "You know that 50's band, Sha Na Na?" "Yeah," I said. Well Johnny from Sha Na Na used to work here years ago. He went off to college. He came back during the summer, and told me he met some musicians at school, and they were starting a new band, a 50's revival band. That band was Sha Na Na. So you never know, maybe you will go out there and make it big." That fucking blew my mind. We kept talking as we worked, and he told me Johnny even wore his old Fun Spot T-shirt when the band played in Boise.
The kiddie cars ride at The Fun Spot. Photo nabbed from 107.9 Lite FM's website.
We all have some kind of dreams when we're young kids, and then as teenagers and young adults. But there's also a lot of pressure to do the "responsible thing" and "grow up," to become the kind of person that family, friends, and those around us want us to become. Most people don't feel a strong enough drive to follow their dreams, and wind up working reasonably normal jobs, and take a fairly traditional path through life. It's "the sensible thing to do."
The world needs all kinds of people, and it needs lots of people to work traditional jobs. But the world also needs the the rebels who buck the trend, follow their dreams, and do the various types of creative work, where a steady paycheck is often not a sure thing. These people create the art, the music, the movies, the video games, the new technology, and the new businesses and industries. I wasn't particularly creative in school, even in high school. But I was drawn to something, doing tricks on BMX bikes, that was new, and really stupid, in most people's eyes. But I knew it was the right path for me, it was a gut feeling. That day at The Fun Spot, in Boise, where Tim agreed I should go ahead and give it a shot, really meant a lot to me.
I did give it a shot. About 15 months later, after living most of a year in San Jose, California, and publishing a zine, I wound up working for BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines in Southern California. I never became a pro rider. But I did get sponsored for a bit, and I wrote magazine and newsletter articles, shot some photos, and made videos of BMX freestyle. I became one of a relatively small number of BMX industry guys in the 1980's. I saw a lot of really cool moments in BMX and skateboarding happen over the next several years. I didn't wind up performing in a hit TV show like Johnny from Sha Na Na, but I did get to wrestle the American Gladiators as a crew guy for four seasons later on, which was pretty cool. I never met Johnny, but I did see Sha Na Na live at the Orange County Fair a few years after Tim told me Johnny had worked at The Fun Spot.
You can call me a failure at my current point in life. As a long term homeless guy who draws pictures with Sharpies and scrapes by for food money, that's how most people see me. But following my heart to ride BMX bikes, when it seemed like there was no future in it, and almost everyone told me I was screwing up my life, it was definitely the right path for me. BMX led to a whole bunch of other things I never would have done otherwise. Who knows, maybe all the years of writing, blogging, and Sharpie art will make more sense somewhere down the line as well. Time will tell. I'm a BMXer at heart, until I die, even when I'm out of shape and don't have a bike. I still see banks and ledges and curb jumps everywhere I go. I'm also one of those few guys who got to manage a weird little amusement park in Boise in the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, and into the 1990's. I learned a lot at The Fun Spot, hidden away in a big park in Boise, at $2.10 to $3.15 an hour, over two summers. I'm really glad I had that experience as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment