From Our BMX, this a short documentary of the Florideah Swampfest, put on by Trey Jones and his crew, every year, for 7 years now. This video is just a really fun watch, narrated by clips of Trey, explaining the process of building and putting Swampfest on.
BMX freestyle was an activity long before it became a sport. A few kids were riding bikes in empty pools and skateparks in the mid 1970's. Bob Haro started learning flatland tricks and kickturns in the late 1970's. He put on the first BMX "trick riding" demos at races around 1979. Around 1982 or 1983, Bob Morales put on some of the first contests at skateparks, and they were relatively small events, by sports competition standards. It was mostly a bunch of riders. What crowd there was could hang out and mix with the pros, shoot photos up close in many cases, and be real close to the action.
As BMX freestyle grew into a worldwide and legitimate sport, and eventually into huge contest events like the X-Games, Dew Tour, and others, things got more rigid, more formal, more expensive, and ultimately less fun. At the bleachers, paid admission, and wristband events, you can still see amazing riding. But that crazy, anything could happen feel of the backyard jam went out the window.
But through all the 43 or so years of the history of BMX freestyle, there have been smaller, hardcore, lower budget, almost anything goes events. Those are the jams and comps where even spectators have a small chance of being hit by flying bikes or riders. Let's face it, Those are the fun events. Even of there is no pro purse, a bunch of top riders will always show up to the small, hardcore, semi-underground events. For seven years, Trey Jones and his crew have been putting on Florideah Swampfest, and from the videos, it obviously looks like a crazy and fun time for all. So check out the video above, about what it takes to make a Swampfest happen.
Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic in the title. Chase Hawk got some property, moved himself, the wife, and the kid out to it, and then built his dream ramp. Way to go. No matter how far our lives may have diverged from the BMX world, if you spent some serious time riding back in the day, something like this was the dream. Props to Chase for pulling it off.
After the intro part about the dream, and building this crazy bikepark in his yard, Chase proceeds to completely tear the place up. Transfers and variations every which way possible, and then some. Just watch the video. then watch it again.
What this really reminds me of was a time when I worked at Unreel Productions (Vision). As cameraman in either 1988 or 1989, I got the great job of driving a van load of skaters out to the Blockhead Ramp, somewhere out in the SoCal boonies, south of Orange County. That was the first really cool, privately owned ramp set up I ever saw, with bowl corners and all. I think every one of us there was thinking, "I want this in my backyard some day." That day sticks out in my mind, and this video of Chase really reminds me of that. I didn't have a bike to ride, mostly because it was a skaters only spot. But I got to hang out and shoot video, and get paid for it, which was a great day in my book, back then.
The other thing that stands out in my mind about that day is that this guy. He was 14 or 15 then, I think, and he was one of the skaters I drove out there. That's the first time I met him. You never know who those young BMXer and skater kids will turn out to be. when you first meet them. To bring this post full circle, I only met Chase once, when I gave him a ride in my taxi one night, with a couple of the Sheep Hills locals.
Another BMXer built his dream ramp. Who's next?
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Christmas is over and "Ho, ho, holy shit there's some crazy lines in this video." Just watch it. It's not like you're working at work this week, anyhow.
Simple Session 2020 happened this past weekend in Tallinn, Estonia.Watched this last night. This course looks so fun, wish we had something like this to ride BITD. But on the other hand, it's nice being old sometimes, the level of comp riding today is insane. Levi Weidmann lands a smooth 1080 over the ginormous box jump... and comes in 12th? Crazy. There's some amazing shit in this clip. Check it out. If you've got time on your hands, here's the full men's BMX park comp from Simple Session 2020.
A big nothing, no footed can-cans, a huge backflip gone wrong, big airs, big carves, and more toboggans than a big snowy hill in Ohio in January. This clip popped up on my YouTube yesterday, and I checked it out, partly to see just how good today's women BMXers were, and partly because I'm drawing a picture of Krys Dauchy (aka China Krys Darrington today), the first factory sponsored female BMX freestyler back in the 1980's.
Krys popped on the scene with her crazy contortionist stomach stand, which drove us boys crazy (OK, crazier). We could have chalked that up to gymnastic female flexibility. But Krys could RIDE, she was pulling backwards grip rides at a time R.L. Osborn and Joe Gruttola were doing that. The only other woman riding well then was Alma Jo Barrera in Texas, pulling many of the popular tricks of the day. BMX freestyle was, and still largely is, a Boy's Club.
Now we're 33 years from when Krys Dauchy popped onto the scene, and these women just plain fuckin' rip in a skatepark. Growing up as a Generation X kid, it was always an insult to say, "You throw like a girl," or "You ride like a girl," as we grew up. The story is that Girl Skateboards got its name, making fun of this old saying. Spoofing it. There weren't a lot of women in sports, outside the Olympics then. But in the weird world of action sports, there were a handful of female pioneers, and I met several of them in my own journey. I saw Cara Beth Burnside skate Pipeline skatepark in about 1988, and there were only a couple guys there that night out skating her. One of them was Micke Alba, the other 50 skaters couldn't hang with her. She was that good of a skater back then, and went on to blow minds in women's snowboarding. I knew Miki Keller at Vision in the 80's, when she worked as the Sims Snowboards team manager. She went on to build women's motocross into a serious sport. I sawLori Rigsby skate at Houston Skatepark in 1990, another female pioneer. Years later, I even gave street skating legend Elissa Steamer a ride in my taxi one night. She said I was, "The first grownup" who recognized who she was. I became good friends with hardcore rock climber, and American Gladiator, Salina Bartunek, while working on that show. I started bouldering myself, inspired by her enthusiasm for climbing.
These women all took a lot of crap, and became good at weird action sports, in a guy's world, at a time when their families and friends gave them crap for riding or boarding, and us guys in these sports, often gave them crap as well. But they persevered, and inspired more and more girls and young women in the many years since, and now there are women ripping in pretty much every sport, Oh, AND the final Jedi knight in the final of the nine originally planned Star Wars movies, Rey, is a woman as well. So as the testosterone pumps thick today, leading up to the Anaheim Supercross event in Anaheim, here in SoCal tonight, I figured I'd give some props to the women, still pioneering and breaking new ground, in the action sports, and mainstream sports, worlds. Keep rippin' women!
Here's Krys Dauchy, women's BMX freestyle pioneer, busting out a flatland routine in 1987. My Krys Dauchy Sharpie scribble style drawing will be available in a few days. #sharpiescribblestyle
And here's a photo I shot of new school female ripper, who's competing in the park contest in the clip up top, S&M Bikes rider Jessie Gregory (@lilbmxwolf), busting I one footed Hannah at Sheep Hills. This was at the Boozer Memorial Jam, a couple months ago.
And here's a drawing I did for Alma Jo Barrera, from a photo of her competing in an AFA Masters comp at the Velodrome in 1987.
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Dennis McCoy shralping in pro flatland in New York in 1986. At one of the velodrome contests that year, I thought Dennis, who had the freshest, new style in pro flatland at the time, should have beat Woody Itson, the veteran icon of the day. I wrote that in my zine. It was my honest opinion at the time. Dennis, of course, was stoked when he saw the zine, and Woody was a bit bummed. Both of them rode great at that contest, and, like always, it came down to a subjective call by the five judges. Were Woody's well known tricks, executed flawlessly, better than McCoy's new style and flair and energy? No matter what the call, someone always gets pissed off.
When I got into BMX racing in 1982, it was usually easy to see who won. It was a race, after all, first guy (or girl) across the line was the winner. But even at the local BMX track there were issues. It had become a custom to stop pedaling about 30 feet before the finish line, and coast over the last little set of doubles and the finish line just beyond. No one even tried to actually race the last 30 feet. It was kind of like a gentleman's agreement, your place coming out of the third turn at the Fort Boise track was your place in the race, forget racing the last straight. I think it was much the same at other tracks, and at the national level, as well.
Us kids from Blue Valley trailer park, brand new to BMX racing, hungry to win a trophy in anything, decided to pedal to the finish, and pass the points chasers who were coasting. Then people got mad when we said, "Hey, I beat those two guys who were coasting." So even in the black and white world of a race with a distinct finish line, there were sometimes issues. For a couple of races, we made the lazy kids pedal those last 30 feet. Other riders gave us crap, then we eventually stopped pedaling at the end, and we too, and joined the program.
But when BMX freestyle came along, and it was a brand new sport in 1984, we all soon learned the problems of subjective judging. Subjective judging is simply anytime that a group of judges judge an event, score the contestants based on their person opinion of the performance, and the winner is the person with the highest total score. There's no absolute winner by objective facts, like being the first over the finish line. With subjective judging, you have a few personal opinions that find the winner. And personal opinions can be affected in a whole bunch of ways, as we all soon learned.
This was one of the reasons that pro freestyler R.L. Osborn, and a few others, at first, didn't like the idea of even having BMX freestyle competitions. It's hard to believe now, but for maybe a year, that was actually an issue. Up until then, flatland and quarterpipe riding had been a demonstration sport. Riders performed in shows, and people clapped and cheered, or they didn't. But eventually competitions were accepted as a necessary, if kind of annoying, part of freestyle.
Since a flatland or ramp routine was a performance, like music or dance or figure skating in that respect, that meant a group of people had to judge the performance, and score each contestant against the others, and the high overall score would win. This opened up several cans of worms, and suddenly half of the riders, or more, were mad at the judges at the end of the day at every contest. Ultimately, over the course of those first 3 or 4 big years of AFA contests, we all learned the basic truth of subjective judging.
Subjective judging sucks. Sometimes it works in your favor. Sometimes it works against you. Deal with it!
One of the first issues was, who do we get to judge? Since BMX freestyle was a new sport, there were no old pros, who had ridden for years, to judge. So industry guys, usually former BMX racers, originally judged freestyle pros, and the current freestyle pros were tapped to judge the amateurs. This didn't work too well, though it seemed to make sense at the time.
It turned out that veteran racers, while great BMX riders, didn't know the nuances of the ever evolving world of freestyle tricks. Having never done most of the tricks, they just didn't know which tricks looked hard, and which tricks were hard. At the same time, when the sport was so new, there might be 40 different riders, at every contest, doing tricks that were completely new. Those were tricks that no one had seen before, outside of that rider's group of friends. So no one knew if the tricks were actually hard. Some easy tricks look great, like Dennis McCoy's fancy footwork back then. It looked amazing, but wasn't really hard at all. I'm not dissing Dennis, he did plenty of really hard moves, but the footwork that blew people's minds at first, was flashy, but technically not that difficult.
Another issue was that pro freestylers made lousy judges, by and large. Judging a freestyle contest (or any event with lots of participants), takes concentration, among other things. We soon found that the last thing pro riders wanted to do at a big competition was to watch dozens of younger, mediocre riders, and try to place their routines in the precise order of who was better than who. Pros wanted to hang out, talk to old friends, meet girls, and have fun. They didn't want to watch goofy kids from Idaho balance on their bike and juggle tennis balls. That was what I did my first contest, by the away. Nothing blows your concentration like starting your first routine at a major contest and having the announcer say, "And here's Steve Emig, from Boise, Idaho, with his balls in his hands."
In time, and especially as competitions grew, and the AFA had to deal with huge groups of 50 or more riders in a single class, we learned that parents of riders made the best judges. The parents were less distracted, they were older, more mature (usually) and they were much better at concentrating and trying to fairly judge a large group of riders, many of whom were very close in talent level. From a purely functional level, the parents that volunteered at contests made good judges.
Having parents judge the large amateur classes, of course, led to the most obvious problem with judging, bias towards, or against, certain riders. If a parent was judging their own kid in a contest, everyone expected them to judge their kid above the other riders. That did happen on occasion, and the AFA tried to get other judges to fill in for the classes when a judge's kid was riding. With a limited number of parents to judge, and lots of riders, that wasn't always possible.
There were other issues with parent's judging. As hard as it is to believe, sometimes a rider's parent would judge their own kid harder, just to make sure that everyone thought they were being fair. Then the kid actually placed lower. It didn't happen often, but it actually did happen. Another issue with parents judging contests is that they don't know all the tricks, especially the new ones, which leads to new tricks getting judged at lower scores than older, better known tricks. Another issue with parents judging was that the tricks they were most familiar with were the tricks their kids did, or were working on. So if Timmy was good at boomerangs and decades, but never did tailwhips, then boomerangs and decades got judged higher, usually without the parent doing it intentionally. Another weird aspect of parents judging their kids is that sometimes they would judge their own kid on how good they usually did the trick, not how they actually performed it in the contest. At times, and again this was largely unintentional, a parent would watch their kid ride and think, "Bill dabbed his foot on that decade, but usually he can pull it every time," so they wouldn't count it against them.
All of those things were issues we had with parents judging at those AFA local and AFA Masters contests in the mid to late 1980's. While their were issues, mostly the parents did a better job judging than anyone else would have. I know. I worked for the AFA in 1987, and I got stuck judging a few classes at the big Masters comps. Seriously, watching 50 kids, especially like 14-15 novice or intermediate flatland, just plain sucked. I tried to be fair, like all the judges, but most of the kids were boring as fuck to watch, and it was easy to get distracted for a few seconds, and miss that one good trick they did. Then, trying to get the 30 middle riders in a reasonably correct order, though they all were pretty much the same, was pretty much impossible. To make it even worse, we judged knowing at least 5 or 10 kids would be bitching at us the rest of the weekend because they got 27th in 14-15 intermediate, and they thought they were better than the kid who got 14th. We just wanted to scream sometimes, "Go practice more so you'll stand out, kid!"
Another issue was just the dynamics of actually judging. What score do you give the first kid? If he's awesome, do you give him a 98? What if three more guys are better later on? We soon took to giving the very first rider a 75, which gave us room to judge both up and down from there. If the first kid was really good, then most of the riders would score below 75. If the kid sucked, most of the other riders would score above 75. Then kids in one class would say to their friends, "Hey, I got an 82 and you got a 72 in your class, so I'm better than you. But the scores didn't transfer from class to class. Also, the riders that rode last pretty much always scored better. It just always worked out that way, even though we tried to score fairly. But it was impossible to explain that to kids. So those were some of the issues we dealt with for the masses of riders in the amateur classes. No matter what, some kids were always mad, that's just the nature of subjective judging. The top few riders always stood out, but even getting them in the correct order was still hard.
Judging the pro classes was a different story, for several reasons. First of all, there was money on the line. OK, it was the AFA in the late 80's, the first wave of BMX freestyle popularity, and there wasn't much money. But a little change in judging could mean a couple of places, and several hundred dollars more or less in prize money. Another thing was that the pros, mostly, were all pretty close in riding skills (Fred Blood excepted, of course ; ) ), and so the judging was always tighter. Then there were titles on the line, winning the contest looked a lot better to the rider's sponsors than getting third. The pros also did harder tricks, and had different styles, so the judges were often judging one rider's style against another. That was the issue at the Velodrome contest where Woody Itson beat newcomer Dennis McCoy, but I thought Dennis should have won. Was Dennis' style and showmanship really better than Woody's classic, known to be hard, tricks. Flip a coin, on any given day it could go either way. Because the class had far fewer people, we often had either pro flatlanders judge the ramp riders, and vice versa, or top amateurs judge the pros. That worked pretty well. It's much easier to pay close attention to 8 pro riders than to 50 novices.
Then we finally get to the issue most people think about with subjective judging, personal bias. Did that amateur rider from Hutch score Mike Dominguez higher than Eddie Fiola because Mike rode for Hutch? Did someone pay a certain judge to throw the contest? Did someone score a pro higher because they were a fan of that pro years earlier, when they were just getting into riding? Did a rider get scored higher because their style was just the trendy style at the time, and there were, and still are always trendy styles. Did the technical rider doing harder tricks score higher than the rider doing less hard tricks, but with more style? That was the classic issue in skateboarding at the time, with Tony Hawk's tech tricks versus Christian Hosoi's high air and style. Did a certain rider have an off day, but still score high just because of their name recognition? All of these things happened at some level. Overall, most of the judges, most of the time, tried to do the best job they could. But there were problems.
And that's my whole point with subjective judging. IT'S NEVER FAIR. Period. Sometimes you get screwed as a competitor. Sometimes things worked in your favor. Over the long run, the best riders score well on a consistent basis. But it's never fair, whether it's a local contest with five kids, or it's figure skating in the Olympics. And the more that is at stake, the harder it is to judge accurately, the more likely it is to be contested, and the more pissed off someone will be.
This is my big problem with BMX freestyle and skateboarding being in the Olympics. Those huge, once every 4 years, contests are about "crowning champions." Those champions are then used in all kinds of money making and sponsorship ventures and commercials. The drive to rig the system is incredibly high, because there can literally be millions of dollars at stake. And as freestylers, and I was a hardcore, if not great freestyler, for 20 years, we know that one placing at one contest really doesn't mean all that much. It's nice. But it doesn't make you the "best rider ever." It doesn't make you the most progressive rider, or the most influential rider. Winning one contest, ANY CONTEST, doesn't make you THE CHAMPION. That's kind of the whole point of action sports. Lots of different styles, lots of different riders, and no one's really the best ever, until you get to a long term innovator like a Mat Hoffman or Kevin Jones.
Winning at any major contest means that a certain group of judges, who may or may not have tried to do a legit job, who all had their personal biases, judged you to be the best, on that day, in that location, at that time. You won the day. Maybe you deserved it, maybe you didn't. And that's just the way it goes with subjective judging. Again, it's never completely fair. So should you make $3 million for getting on the Wheaties box and in the TV commercials, and the rider who came in second on that day be completely forgotten? Most of us who've put time into learning an action sport at some point say, "No." But that's how it goes with the Olympics, or even the X-Games.
One more thought. Subjective judging seriously stifles creativity and innovation. Ever see a figure skater do a SWITCH triple Lutz? No. Never. You haven't. Do you know why? Because there is no pre-figured out score for doing anything switch, or opposite direction, in figure skating. Yes, it would be much harder, but they don't do it, because they wouldn't get scored for it if they did.
Figure skating has been a competitive, subjectively judged sport for at least 160 years. The origins of the sport go back to at least 1772. But no one does the high level tricks in the opposite direction in the Olympics. In skateboarding and BMX freestyle, people started doing switch tricks in the late 1980's, only a few years into BMX freestyle or street skating competitions. In a few years those sports evolved more than figure skating did in 160 years. Why? Because riders and skaters progress naturally, organically, and without certain number scores being given to particular tricks. The creativity in figure skating (or gymnastics, or any older judged sport), has been dramatically reduced to turn it into a sport. The same is true of BMX vert, park, and street today. Imagine a top rider in a comp today doing a major contest routine WITHOUT a single flip, barspin, or tailwhip. Boom, they're not even in contention for a top placing, no matter what they do. Does that mean the riders who don't do those tricks are worse riders? Think of a run by Brian Foster, Chris Doyle, or Gary Young. Oh, those guys are/were as good as the top contest riders, and they can blow your mind in a contest setting, without the "standard" tricks. But they're not going to win a contest in nearly any case, because they don't do the current trendy tricks like 25 barspins, tailwhips, and flip tricks.
I'm not against contests in actions sports, they provide a good reason to push harder, to progress in some areas of riding (but not necessarily creativity except for best trick comps), and to travel different places, which gives riders and excuse to ride with new people. But it would be really cool to simply acknowledge BMX freestyle (or flatland, park, street, vert, whatever) contests, with subjective judging, for what they do. They tell you that on this day, in this place, this group of judges thought this person was the best. That doesn't make that person the best ever, it makes them a really good rider who won that day.
I know that's a lot to ask. But a few of us got into a big Facebook discussion on this the other day, starting with the question of whether BMX freestyle (park, street, and maybe vert) should be in the Olympics. I say they should not be in the Olympics. Anyhow, that online discussion gave me the idea to write down some of my ideas about subjective judging, and it's role in action sports, and other sports, in today's world. If you have comments, let them fly in the Facebook groups, or wherever. I'll read them, and reply when needed.
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Old School NorCal represent. Maurice Meyer selfie with Chris Rothe, Chris' son Max, Marc McKee, and me (Steve Emig). These guys let me hang, despite being financially challenged at the moment. Thanks guys. The weekend was epic. I've been stuck Back East for a decade, as the Old School BMX events got going, so this was my first one.
It all kind of came together at the last minute, thanks to my NorCal roots. In 80's BMX freestyle, I moved around a lot, which had the effect of letting me be a local in several different scenes over the years. First Boise, Idaho, then the Golden Gate Park/NorCal scene, The Spot in Redondo, the Huntington Beach Pier scene, The P.O.W. House/Sheep Hills/S&M Bikes scene, and The Van's Skatepark locals when we could still ride the Combi Pool, along with some smaller scenes.
So it was Maurice Meyer, the pro I talked to the most back when I lived in San Jose, the Curb Dogs/Golden Gate Park scene BITD, that asked if I was going to the San Diego event over Memorial Day Weekend. The main Old School event was the second edition signing party for The Birth of the Freestyle Movement book by Dominic Phipps. There was also a Mat Hoffman held vert contest, a sort of last chance qualifier for the X-Games, as well, and an BMX and art event.
Rich Bartlett from Block Bikes, where I'm now working, gave me at ride down the 14 freeway form Lancaster to a Denny's right off the 5, making picking me up a quick stop for the guys. Thanks Rich, it was a farther drive than I thought, and I asked him at the last minute.
Chris Rothe did the driving in his 4 door pick-up. In a weird coincidence, there was a great paved bank right at the at Denny's. But we wanted to get South, no session there. We headed South through the Valley down the 405, and picked up Marc in Venice. Last time I was in Venice, many years ago, it was still the hood. Not like Compton level hood, but "I'm not walking here at night" hood. Now it all looks like Santa Monica, really nice and forever out of my price range.
Another 45 minutes, then with all five of us in the truck, Chris said, "I think that guy's sleeping." I didn't know what he was talking about. He pointed it out. There was the Tesla above, doing 68 mph in the carpool/E-car lane, with the driver asleep. Like fully, completely fucking ASLEEP. Chris pulled up next to him, Drob took this photo, and I kept waiting for the guy to look up. He wasn't resting his eyes, he was out. None of us had seen that before. This was in Irvine, my old taxi driver neck of the woods. I don't care how freakin' brilliant Elon Musk and the Tesla engineers are, I would not, EVER, sleep in the carpool lane of the 405. But it was working for this lazy, rich fucker. Technology is crazy these days.
We stayed at a motel in Chula Vista, I camped out on the floor, you know, to give the weekend that true, old school BMX days feel. And because I'm a broke guy who's three weeks out from sleeping homeless under a bridge. Somebody tell the river otters under the Manchester side of the I-95 bridge in Richmond that I moved for work reasons, it was nothing personal. The otter couple acutally made pretty good neighbors, unlike a lot of humans. Steve Crandall, can you pass that word on for me? Anyhow, I digress.
Saturday morning we headed to Mat Hoffman's vert contest, in the chilly, overcast, May Gray weather. After a decade on the Eastern Seaboard, most of that in a place that hates BMX and action sports, it was good to see old friends and just hang and watch some good riding. My old roommate, Big Island Mike Castillo (photo above) was the first I ran into and got a pic with. We were roommates in Chris Moeller's condo in H.B. in 1995, when we both we skinnier and had no visible tattoos. Mike has since covered a lot of himself in tats, and I covered myself in blubber while sitting my my taxi for years. Tattoos would have been a better choice. You know Mike's going to be in an upcoming episode of South Park, right? True deal. He took a photo of me sitting on his new S&M, and texted it to Moeller. The response took about 30 seconds, "WTF?"
After watching riders practice on the vert ramp for a bit, alternating with saying "Hi" to other old BMX friends as they walked up, we started getting groups of guys lined up for photos. I was about to take the photo above, and one of the guys asked me to get in the photo. Some guy walking by said he'd snap a pic, so I handed him the phone. While we were trying to get a couple other people nearby into the line-up, I looked again at the guy I gave the phone to. It was Mike Dominguez. I didn't recognize Mike-freakin' Dominguez! I know I've been gone a decade, but that was pretty bad. So I got in one photo, then took this one. L to R: Big Island Mike, Hugo Gonzales, Rick Coronado, Xavier Mendez, Mike Dominguez, and Pete Augustin.
The contest had some pretty good amateurs on the huge, 13 1/2 foot tall ramp, as us old guys wondered if we could roll into it these days, or even way back in our younger days. I could have managed a foot drop, probably, back then. But I wouldn't even think of that these days.
The pro vert contest had that old feel of a 2-Hip King of Vert, or one of Mat's early comps. None of the big time, X-Games stuff. Just a small crowd of 100 or so watching some of the best riders anywhere blast. In the photo above, one of the pros, whose name I don't remember, airs out a huge downside whip. Despite the continuous winds, the top few guys were blasting. That includes Dennis McCoy, who, at 52, looked the smoothest on vert I'd ever seen him. He pulled a flawless barspin 540 at about 6-7 feet, and a glassy smooth flair, in his second run. Then DMC went for a 900 with not a lot of speed. And knocked himself out cold. He lay there twitching a bit, and a fire truck, then an ambulance showed up. The EMT's pulled the stretcher out, and headed behind the ramp, when Dennis had moved after coming to. Old school announcer turned fireman, Kevin Martin, was on the scene as soon as he heard Dennis was K. O.'d.
After about 15 minutes, the EMT's rolled an empty stretcher back, and put it into the ambulance, then stopped to watch the contest, which had resumed. I went over to talk to them, "Let me guess Dennis said he's going to walk it off?" "Pretty much," the EMT replied. "It seems he's been down this road a few times." I chuckled, "You have no idea..." Dennis was back to normal, well, there's nothing normal about Dennis, but he was at the book signing party that night.
The guy in the red striped shirt, watching the contest in the photo above, is Koji Kraft. Remember in the early 2000's when double backflips were a "Merry Christmas" trick, even for Dave Mirra? Koji used to double flips in demos back then. He was the first guy to really dial them in. He's one of the most underrated riders ever. Cool guy. He was in the vert contest last Saturday. He didn't go the highest, but was still throwing some solid variations at height.
The park we were at, I think, was called the Mission Valley YMCA park, but there's some family name in it as well. Anyhow, it had a really cool park section, and a "boardercross" track that Andy Macdonald had made a few years earlier, as well as a big park section. Chris, Maurice, and Chris' son Max all put the helmets on and got a session in.
It was during that period when R.L. Osborn, unseen for nearly 30 years by most of us, wandered into the park, with his son Dylan. It was really cool to seen him. He was the guy I most wanted to model when I really got into freestyle. Initially, I wanted to be the clean cut, pro rider/entrepreneur guy. That didn't happen, but I did stumble into the industry, and got to work with and ride with R.L.. He'd been gone so long, that everyone was re-introducing themselves. I told him my name as I shook his hand, and said I worked at Wizard a little while. Much to my surprise, his eyes lit up in recognition. "I remember you," R.L. said, "You're a really good writer." My stoke meter broke at that point. My writing skill depends on who you ask, but I'll take it.
After the chat with R.L., I watched the guys session some more. Max, Chris Rothe's son, got his sights set on doing a 180 off the hubba. That's him in the photo above, stepping up his game and landing a solid 180. He also landed a couple of 360's off the hubba right after that. Progression.
Another old friend, long time riding buddy, and one time roommate I ran into was John Povah, in my selfie above. I'm not disappointed to see him, I just can't operate a phone well. Despite a decade of blogging, I'm still catching up on standard technology, like working a smart phone. I'll figure it out, eventually.
The contest was full of old school faces, most of whom I didn't get photos of. Among them were...
I've got a new blog going, it's about building an art of creative business, and small businesses in general. You can check it out here: WPOS Kreative Ideas
