I stumbled across this segment on YouTube a couple days ago. I'd never seen it before. It's now one of my favorite BMX street/dirt sections ever. That's mostly because it doesn't look like every other street video section. Brian Yeagle from Anthem II, 12 years ago? Something like that.
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Here's a great shot of 1970's era skateboarding at the Huntington Beach Pier bank, some variation of a Bertleman or layback slide. The bank is long gone now, but this was a major session spot for skateboarders, and a few BMXers, in the 1970's, early 1980's, and for most of the summer of 1989. I pulled this photo from the web, skater and photographer unknown. It's the only good photo I could find of the bank.
Huntington Beach in 1987
Getting laid off, after only five months working at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN', is what ultimately led me to Huntington Beach. I got the magazine job thanks to my zine, San Jose Stylin', where I wrote about the San Francisco Bay area riders for a year. My last day at Wizard Publications was December 31, 1986. I was still a roommate with Gork and Lew, who had been my co-workers. I was a really uptight dork in those days, and just wasn't the right fit for that business. I had saved up some money during my short stint at Wizard, so I paid a month's rent, and spent my days in January 1987 calling around the BMX industry, looking for another job, so I could stay in Southern California. After calling around a bit each morning, I'd go riding with Craig Grasso all day, who lived nearby. Those were some epic riding days, hitting local ramps, doing some street riding, and flatland sessions at The Spot in Redondo Beach every night. After about three weeks, I heard from Bob Morales who ran the American Freestyle Association (AFA), and he hired me to be the newsletter editor and photographer for the AFA. A couple months later, Wizard hired 17-year-old BMXer/skater kid from the East coast, a kid named Spike Jonze. He worked out much better at Wizard. He moved into my old bedroom in Gork and Lew's apartment in Hermosa Beach.
Bob Morales showed up with the AFA van one day in late January, we packed up all my junk, and headed down into Orange County, to Huntington Beach. I stayed on Bob's couch for two or three weeks, and started work at the AFA, then found a room to rent. I got settled in the new apartment, near Springdale and Warner, my new roommate was an older guy who worked at a car dealership.
I soon found my way down to the Huntington Beach Pier one weekend. There was a small group of locals, who, ironically, were mostly from other places. A tall, skinny BMX freestyler, Mike Sarrail, drove down from the San Gabriel Valley every weekend to ride. Two of the world's top freestyle skateboarders, Pierre Andre', from France, and Don Brown, from England, were down there nearly every weekend, unless there was a contest or demo somewhere else. Hans Lingren, from Sweden, and H.B. local freestyle skater, Jeremy Ramey, rounded out the main pier crew in that era.
Pierre skated for Sims, and Don for Vision, both part of the Vision Skateboards empire, in nearby Costa Mesa. I had met Don on a photo shoot for FREESTYLIN' a few months before, and I reintroduced myself, and hung out and started doing some of my flatland tricks for the crowds. I soon became a local of the Huntington Beach pier, in the spring of 1987.
The north side of the Huntington Beach Pier, the amphitheater area now, in a photo I took in 2019, shot from out on the pier. On the far right, you can see steps coming down from the pier level to the beach level. The old steps were a steeper set, and hit bottom farther back. The Huntington Beach Pier bank was where the little wall is now, on the left side of the steps, at the bottom. There was a long, two level parking lot where the amphitheater and parking area are now. The pier bank rose up about 3 1/2 feet from the concrete under the pier, to the lower level of the parking lot. The bank had been sessioned by skateboarders through the 1970's and into the early 1980's. Then huge posts were put into the bank, and a gigantic chain ran through the posts near the bottom, to keep skateboarders and bike riders from riding the bank.
Downtown Huntington Beach was a much different place in 1987. Many of the buildings on Main Street are still there, from that era, the ones made of bricks. Jack's Surf Shop was on the north corner of PCH and Main, as it is today, though it was a smaller shop. Huntington Surf & Sport was also on the same side of the street, half a block inland, not on the opposite corner, as it is now. That south corner of PCH and Mani was an empty lot in the late 1980's. Jan's smoothie shop was in the back of Huntington Surf & Sport. Perq's bar was there then, and so was the Longboard, on the second block. There was a liquor store on the corner of Main and Walnut. About where the fountain is now, on the south side of the second block of Main Street, was a indie record shop called The Electric Chair. It was a small shop, with folding tables topped with milk crates full of record albums, "vinyl" as most people call them today. That whole second block of Main street, on the south side, where the fountain is, looked like the other side of the street, old, one or two story brick buildings, probably going back to the oil boom days of the 1920's.
Downtown Huntington Beach was much quieter then, none of the current hotels were in that area in the 1980's, just one small motel, south of the pier, on the inland side of PCH. There were far fewer shops, and more oil pumps, continuously rocking up and down, on lots all over downtown. Most of them have since been capped off, and covered by houses or condos. Skateboarders regularly skated the P.O. curb, a freestanding painted curb, which was where the small wall is now, behind the Post office, next to the Rockin' Fig surf shop.
There were only about 5 bars, including Perq's and the Longboard. In the 1980's, Newport Beach was the cool city then, and people would often take a taxi to the bars around the Newport Pier to go party on the weekends. Huntington Beach was a dirty little surf town with empty lots and oil pumps, running up most of Pacific Coast Highway, on lots full of condos and tall skinny houses today. One of those empty lots is now for sale for almost $4 million, I just looked it up on Zillow.
Oil was discovered in downtown Huntington Beach in 1920, near Huntington High School, and the oil wells, and oil workers in the early days, made H.B. less desirable by wealthy people looking for a beach house. So the oil wells and pumps made Huntington Beach the "dirty beach city," which kept much of it from being developed, up into the 1990's and early 2000's. Since H.B. was less popular to rich folk for several decades, because of all the oil pumps, rent was cheaper.
The Huntington Beach I moved into, in 1987, was a working class beach town, full of surfers, construction workers, bartenders, servers, and a lot of action sports people. As we moved into the 1990's, a lot of strippers and later porn stars moved to H.B.. I think we can thank Damian Sanders, Jon Huntington, and the snowboard/motocross crew that started the Pimp n' Ho Ball as a house party, for that. But that's a story for a different day.
If Newport Beach was the Beverly Hills of Orange County, Huntington Beach was where the working class people, and many of the creative and entrepreneurial people of surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX, and motocross lived. It had a completely different vibe than Newport Beach until the early 2000's, when Huntington Beach was deemed cool by hipsters, and the Yuppie hoards moved in. I was driving a taxi in Huntington Beach much of that time, and if you're reading this, I probably drove your drunk ass home from Main Street once or twice. By the turn of the millennium, Huntington Beach was the SoCal beach city with the most undeveloped land, thanks to all those oil wells from the 1920's. In the real estate boom of the late 90's and early 2000's, the H.B. oils wells got capped and McMansions and condos sprang up like mushrooms. And rent and home prices SOARED. The hotels and a lot more trendy shops soon followed. Welcome to Irvine by the Sea. A whole different group of people moved into Huntington Beach.
In addition to Pierre, Don, Hans, and Jeremy practicing at the Huntington Beach Pier, other freestyle skaters like Per Welinder and Bob Schmelzer, as well as street skaters like Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton, and a pack of locals, came by to skate on a regular basis. Here's Bob Schmelzer on a street board in 1986, with a layback on the H.B. Pier bank, under the big chain. This is from the August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine (page 8), a Windy Osborn photo, I believe. This is what the pier bank looked like in 1987 and 1988, in my early years riding there.
One weekend in the spring of 1989, I rolled down to the Huntington Beach Pier on a Saturday morning, and a few skaters were skating the pier bank. The huge chain blocking it off had disappeared. As a BMX freestyler who was always up for a good bank session, I joined in, probably throwing a backside boneless (can-can footplant) first. Then I started trying some kickturns and other stuff. Game on! The Huntington Beach Pier Bank, long blocked by the monster chain, was back in play.
At that time, I lived way up on the north side of Huntington Beach, near Bolsa Chica and Warner. I didn't have a car then, so I would either take buses up PCH, and into Costa Mesa, to work at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company. Or I'd make a 10 mile ride on my BMX bike, riding the entire 8.3 mile length of the H.B. bike path, with a headwind, as part of my route.
I rode right by the pier going to and from work, when I rode my bike. Once the chain was down, the nightly sessions were on, in the spring of 1989, and they were some awesome sessions. Some times I'd ride the bike path home, and other days I'd ride down the 19th street hill in Costa Mesa, through the what later became the Sheep Hills BMX jumps area, and I'd hit a bunch of little streets spots, and then the pier bank, on the way home. Those nights it was a three or four hour ride home, with a bunch of little sessions along the way.
Every single night that I rode up to the pier bank, there would usually be one or two, maybe three or four street skaters, sessioning the bank. Some of them were guys I knew from Vision, both sponsored skaters or workers that skated. Sometimes they were people I didn't know. Every once in a while, it would be just me, and I'd listen to Ramones Mania on my Walkman, which I carried in my Vision hip pack, and I'd session alone for an hour or more.
It was a really mellow bank for bike riding, but it was fun to session. As weird as it sounds today, almost no one wandered by the lower part of the pier in those days during the week. A few bike riders rode up and down the bike path, and maybe a runner or two. The H.B. police, oddly, left us alone down there. I think once or twice a motorcycle cop rolled up the bike path and checked us out. I sort of remember them asking if we knew what happened to the chain. If they told us to leave, we'd take off, and just come back the next night. We weren't really bothering anyone down on the bank, so the sessions continued. Then one night, I rolled up, ready for another session... and the chain was back up. Game off.
We were all bummed. The rumor at the time was that a couple of local skaters had cut down the 300 pound chain, and dragged it out onto the beach, 100 feet away, and buried it. But beaches attract all kinds of people, including metal detector guys, looking for coins and gold rings. Somebody found the chain, told the cops, and the session stopping monster chain was back. The Pier Bank sessions stopped.
Life went on, I still went down to ride at the pier nearly every weekend, unless there was a contest somewhere. I still went street riding on the way home from work, just hitting other spots, along the way. Then, about a month or so after the chain went up, I rolled up to the pier, and someone was skating the pier bank again, they chain had once again disappeared. The nightly and weekend sessions began again.
This is me, doing one of the tricks I learned at the H.B. Pier Bank, a 270 bunnyhop to 90 hop to rollback and 180 out. It wasn't that hard, just a fun little bank trick. This is on a bank in San Diego, while on a video shoot with Eddie Roman, for my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend (36:22). In 1986, while at a contest in Canada, I saw Eddie Fiola do a trick he called the Expo. He'd flyout on the quarterpipe, and land sideways on the deck, on both wheels. He'd hop on both wheels, once or twice, and then hop back into the ramp, turning 90 degrees, and landing fakie, going in backwards. It looked pretty gnarly, a cooltrick at that time. This trick was inspired by the Expo. Doing a 90 on a bank, then 90 back in fakie, was pretty easy. So I turned it into a 270, and it became a fun little bank trick.
None of us were sure if the chain was going to reappear, and shut down the pier bank again, so the two or three dozen skaters that sessioned the bank from time to time, made the most of it. Other BMXers showed up once in a while, but most of the time it was me and a couple of skaters, during the weeknight sessions. Sometimes on the weekends, there would be ten or more skaters hitting the bank.
In time, after a month or two, rumor got around that the city probably wouldn't find the chain again. The story was that the guys who took the chain down dragged that 300 pound beast way out under the pier, during a low tide, into about chest deep water, and then dove down and worked it into the sand, burying it under water, the best they could. To the best of my knowledge, that's where the chain has been ever since, 100 yards or more out from the bike path, 20 or 30 yards past the low tide water line, under the center of the pier. If that rumor was true, it has probably worked deep into the sand and mud, in the 35 years since. While the metal detector guys looking for money and treasure scour the whole beach area every week, they didn't go chest or neck deep into the waves looking for rings and coins. So the chain is probably slowly rusting away in the silt.
I'm sure the city thought it was B.S. when the chain disappeared again. They had no idea how determined a couple of skateboarders can be to open up a great session spot. I forget the actual dates, but from about late May or early June, the pier bank was open to ride and skate, until well into the fall. I think the city finally bought a new chain, and installed it, in late September or October. The skating and bike riding on the bank went on all summer of 1989.
That was a time when all BMX tricks were brake tricks, but I got sick of working on my bike at some point, since I've always been a lousy mechanic. So I rode brakeless for much of that spring and part of the summer. During those sessions on the H.B. Pier Bank, I learned a bunch of weird little bank variations. I learned foot jam nosepicks, tailtap 540s, and no footed bunnyhops to fakie. None of those are very hard, but they were fun tricks, and the no footed bunnyhops wrecked my shins, because I slipped my pedals a lot learning that trick. I also started jumping out of the bank, doing 180's a lot. They were tiny, only a few inches off the ground, but fun.
After a while, I started doing a little bunnyhop when I did the 180 out of the rollbacks. That turned them into BMX half Cabs, which the skaters often thought were cool. In that era, I was actually riding with skateboarders more than I was riding with BMXers, so I did some skateboard tricks on my bike. I was already doing backside bonelesses, a can-can footplant on a bank, but in a more sweeping movement than the vert version of that trick. I learned a no-comply on a bike, where a skater did a footplant to 180. So half Cabs (half a Caballerial- a fakie 360 air on vert, then later on flat ground) were another skate trick on a bike.
After a while, I tried to twist a lookback while doing the 180 jumps. They were far from fully clicked, but were partially twisted. Then I started trying lookbacks in the half Cabs. I could do really small 180 bunnyhops, hopping off of both tires, and spinning really quickly, so I could keep a lot of speed going backwards. I rode a freewheel, so I had to back pedal faster than the cranks would spin backwards on their own.
Unlike today's freecoaster riders, the natural back pedaling of the cranks gave me and edge doing half Cabs. I could catch the pedal, and really get leverage to get some pop in a half Cab. So those started on the pier bank in the summer of 1989. Eventually, I could do my tiny 180 bunnyhops at nearly a full sprint, and then land rolling backwards at real speed. Then I could hop the half Cabs farther and farther. I was doing 6 to 8 foot half Cabs by late 1989 or so, and fairly clicked lookback half Cabs. But those weren't even considered a trick then. Eddie Roman and maybe a couple of the San Diego guys did BMX half Cabs off ledges, but they were rarely seen by anyone. The real video era of street riding was just beginning. So no one else did them, and I didn't even bother to shoot video of them when I made The Ultimate Weekend video in 1990, because I didn't think they were a big deal. Lookback half Cabs were just some goofy trick I did, and nobody else. But that was the best trick of mine that was spawned from all of those sessions at the Huntington Beach Pier bank.
One more weird story from those sessions. I was riding alone at the pier bank one night, well into the summer of 1989, and it was fully dark out, so it was probably after 9 pm or so. I heard a skateboard coming up the bike path from the north. Around the bush on the corner of the bike path came this kid, knee riding on a skateboard, pushing with one leg, hands on the front of the board.
At first glance, I thought it was a little kid, and wondered who was with him. But it turned out to be a young guy of maybe 18 to 20 years old, I think. I think he asked if I minded if he skated the bank, and I said something like, "Sure go for it." And that's when I noticed. His lower legs were deformed, his feet pointed backwards, his legs were almost like a cricket, bending in a weird way. His lower body was totally built wrong, a birth defect, obviously. But he pushed up to the bank, pushing with one back leg, hands on the nose of the board. Then he put a hand down on the bank, sort of a beanplant/or boneless type thing, and picked up the board and spun it around, like a varial.
The kid had obviously been skating for quite a while, and he had a whole series of handplant and board flipping tricks, that worked for his unusual, mutated body. And the kid was good. This kid I'd never seen before, never heard of before, with a body shaped liked none I'd ever seen... he was a skater. So we sessioned together, taking turns hitting the bank, for maybe 45 minutes or so. When he did something cool, I'd say, "Yeah!," and he did the same to me. He was just another skater, who was built in a really weird way, and he had developed a whole series of tricks that worked for his body. They were all things that would be nearly impossible for a normal bodied person to pull off.
That night, at the pier bank, I learned why there are no paralympics in skateboarding (or BMX). There are only people, skaters, or even BMXers, with a different body shape, people you'd never want to play a game of SKATE or BIKE against. The kid amazed me, reminding me that we're all fucked up in one way or another, and we started skating or BMX freestyle to help deal with it. His issues seemed mostly physical, while most of us were kinda fucked up in the head from our crazy families, childhood trauma, or whatever. "Normal" people didn't skate or ride BMX back then.
After a while, he was done skating, and he just said, "Later," or something like that, and pushed back around the corner, into the darkness, heading north on the bike path. The crazy part is that the only things that way were the one condo complex by the beach, a couple hundred yards away, or the parking lot. I couldn't figure out where that kid came from, in the dark that night, or where he headed back to. He was alone, he wouldn't be able to drive a car. He just came out of nowhere, we sessioned the bank together, and then he disappeared into the darkness. I didn't get his name, and I've never heard of a skater like that from anyone else. No one else seemed to have seen or heard of the guy. That became one of my great memories of that summer, riding the Huntington Beach Pier Bank.
These are my best memories of one of my favorite eras in 20 years of BMX freestyle riding, all the cool sessions at the Huntington Beach Pier Bank in the spring and summer of 1989.
This skateboard documentary, Downhill Motion, is dated at 1975 on YouTube, and has some great mid-1970's California skateboard film in it. There's even a couple of BMX riders riding a pool with skaters, at one point. But right in the beginning, at 1:43, you can see several kids sessioning the Huntington Beach Pier bank, probably in 1974 or 1975. Jay Adams, one of the Z-Boys from Venice Beach, is in there, in his blond hair and dark blue Zephyr T-shirt, along with another Zephyr skater. There was probably a contest in H.B. that day, bringing skaters from around SoCal together. The really young kid you see skating in this film is Kele Rosecrans.
This blog is rolling up to the 1,000 blog post milestone, since I started it in 2017. This is post #997
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This day in the spring of 1988 completely changed BMX riding forever. The first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest. Ron Wilkerson and posse put on this comp in a spot behind a shopping center in Santee, California, a spot where Dave Voelker had built some giant wall rides.
At 4:00 in this clip of Mondo Vision, you get the official Vision Street Wear edit of the Santee Meet the Street contest. The edit above is my edit for the 1988 2-Hip contest video, it's edited from the same footage, but is my rider-made edit, and much lower budget. The Mondo Vision edit was directed by one of the Unreel Producers, I can't remember which one.
None of us knew what to expect. Wall rides on BMX bikes were just invented the year before, and the biggest wallride ot appear in a magazine photo before the contest was about two feet high. BMX freestyle then was closely following skateboarding, and street skating was just beginning to become its own thing, led by skaters Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, and Nata Kaupas. What exactly did "street" riding mean, anyway? None of us who showed up at Santee really knew. We all had been doing it as long as we'd been riding, just like all the BMX racers a decade before us. We'd been hitting driveway curb jumps, doing kick turms on banks, doing footplants on benches, carving and doing bunnyhop "airs" in ditches, jumping down steps, and launching off loading docks on occasion. But there had never been a contest of street riding before, as far as we knew. Actually, later I heard Dave Vanderspek had held a small DIY comp in NorCal a year or so earlier. But I didn't know that on this sunny day in Santee.
A group of maybe 200 people total, mostly riders, showed up in a weird little area, behind a pretty average shopping center, in the Spring of 1988. Ron Wilkerson, Haro pro rider, vert and lip trick legend, and the guy who started putting on a halfpipe contest series the year before, put the event together. I rode down to the contest with the Unreel Productions cameraman, Pat Wallace. He was a lifelong California surfer guy, VW van and all, and Unreel's official camerman then. Vision Street Wear sponsored all AFA and 2-Hip contests that year, and Unreel, where I worked, was Vision's video company. So Pat got sent to every event to shoot footage, and both Vision and 2-Hip could use that footage however they wanted later on. And just for the record, as the Unreel tap libraian, MOST of the AFA and 2-Hip video shot from 1987-1990 has NEVER BEEN SEEN by anybody, except me. Really. There are dozens of hours of high quality, early, BMX freestyle footage form the 1980's that never got used in ANY video. It's all sitting in a warehouse now... somewhere.
All that aside, I was there as a rider, not a video guy. As we neared the contest sight, I joked, "It's going to be crazy, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody does a can-can wall ride or something today." That seemed like an completely crazy trick at that point. We rolled back behind the shopping center, and the first thing I saw, out the window of the VW van, was SoCal local rider George Smoot doing a can-can wall ride, on this HUGE dirt bank to wall. We hadn't even parked, and my mind was alreayd blown.
Soon after, I was on my bike, as Pat got the camera, and started shooting. Another guy, I think a friend of Pat's came along as well. The riding area was completely unseen from the road in front of the shopping center, and while one police car rolled up to see what was happening (and somehow got a 12 inch square Vision Street Wear sticker added to the trunk), the world had no idea out little contest was happening. It was just a bunch of BMXers, and a few obstacles. But there was a car. Most of us dreamed of riding on a car at some point, in our day to day riding, but never got the opportunity. and Ron Wilkerson had a huge, old, land yacht towed in to thrash. Right after we got there, cans of spray paint were pulled out, orange and green. A whole bunch of guys laid down bikes and started spray painting the car, and duct taping the windshield.
The guys best known for street riding at the time were the NorCal pioneer of everything, Dave Vanderspek, and San Diego thrashers Eddie Roman and Pete Agustin. So those were the guys most expected to blow minds going in. But we'd never all got together before to thrash urban obstacles, so everyone else was an unknown commodity.
Vander, Eddie, and Pete were there, of course. Santee area local, Dave Voelker was the guy who rode that spot on his own, and built the dirt jumps to giant wall rides. He was an immediate standout. Straight outta Torrance, The Spot locals, R.L. Osborn and Craig Grasso stood out immediately as well. R.L., one of the pioneers of BMX freestyle, going back nearly a decade then, was thought to be pretty much "retired" from riding at the time. Yet, he was there blasting huge wall rides in both directions and back peg fakie wall rides, among other moves. Grasso, the artsy looking omnivorous rider who could ride anything well, was doing big fakie wall rides, wall ride variations, and throwing his unique style at obstacles.
But the contest also drew hardcore BMX racers, most notably pros Rich Barlett and Chris Moeller. The launch ramp up to the five foot box, then to a four foot high box, was up their alley. Moeller, well known magazine test jumper, as well as pro racer, made fun of freestylers by putting a trick list on the back of his number plate, with tricks like "bunnyhop" and "long skid" listed on it. Vert legend Todd Anderson, running his coaster brake General, was there as well, and tossed out amazing fakie wall footplants into the growing trick lexicon of the day. Scott Towne, magazine photographer, was throwing out tons of style as well on his bike. NorCal young buck vert rider, Mike Golden, jumped the car sideways, to flat, off a tiny launch ramp. Dave Vanderspek launched off the tiny ramp to footplant on the roof over the car. Vander still had it.
The whole day was a "Fuck yeah! This is cool!" vibe among all of us. You can't put it into a context for modern riders, who have grown up with ramps, skateparks, and decades of videos to watch. It was like you took 100 hardcore BMX riders, and dropped them at the first skatepark ever built. It was all new. Yeah, we'd jumped off skater's launch ramps, and homemade plywood ramps before. But the obstacles were largely new. Many of the tricks were pretty knew, wall rides and fakie wall rides had been invented less than a year before. And then we had the boxes, and a car to figure out what we could do on it. Something like Steve Crandall's DIY comps, or Trey Jones Swampfest would be the closest comparison to the Santee vibe, in today's world. It was just a fun, crazy, experimental day of riding new stuff, real, hardcore, BMXin'.
The only crowd really was a few dozen friends, girlfriends, and some family members. It was mostly just a bunch of riders. And we all just went nuts. There were only two classes, Good (amateur), and Great (pro). There were no pro street riders then, this was the contest that turned street riding into a "sport," so riders just decided if they felt "pro" or not. In addition to the big car, launch ramps, and big boxes, and ramp/dirt wall rides, the obstacles included two parking blocks and a shopping cart. The one complaint some of us had was there wasn't much in the way of actual "street" obstacles. No one had done peg grinds on rails or ledges yet, that hadn't been invented. But there were no bench sized ledges, concrete or asphalt banks, or other types of often ridden obstacles. It didn't really matter. It turned into a jumping and wall ride contest mostly. But that's the stuff that looks the best in person and on camera.
Like I said, coming into the contest, Dave Vanderspek, Eddie Roman, and Pete Augustin had the biggest reputations as street riders. That day in Santee moved Dave Voelker, Craig Grasso, R.L. Osborn up into the mix. One more rider, the one from farthest away, dropped jaws with the trick of the day. English rider Craig Campbell, best known for vert, threw out solid tricks all day, and then blew what few brain cells we had left at the end with a huge wall ride to 360. I don't think anyone else had even imagined that, let alone thought of trying it.
I'll give the hardcore street riding roots medal to NorCal, early originators of street style riding since 1982-1983, like Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, and the whole Golden Gate Park crew. Being from the San Francisco area, with so much crazy terrain everywhere, street riding was in their DNA. That's the place Ron Wilkerson came from originally. But the street riding torch got passed to the San Diego crew that day in Santee. Yeah, Eddie Roman and Pete Augustin could bust some cool tricks on street, we knew that before. Look at the results, Vic Murphy won the Good class, and Dave Voelker won Great, with Eddie Roman, Pete Augustin, and contest promoter, Ron Wilkerson, who lived in Encinitas then, also among the top 8 in the Great class.
The first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest not only put the San Diego riders front and center in the new street riding genere', it opened everyone's mind to the potential riding available in the urban jungle around all of us. We all rode away looking at the city streets around us completely differently after a few hours at that contest. A few months after, the contest photos came out in the September issue of BMX Plus!, and probably the September issue of FREESTYLIN'. I don't have my magazine collection anymore, and oldschoolmags.com is missing that issue, so I couldn't check. The BMX Plus issue is on their site.
Much like the first King of Dirt jam at Rich Bartlett's dad's haouse, a year earlier, the Santee 2-Hip Meet the Street changed the way everyone there looked at the world around us, and what was possible on a BMX bike. The magazine photos, and later the videos above, spread that vibe to thousands more riders. And BMX street riding spawned into a sport, as well as just something fun to do between racing and freestyle sessions. Bike riding was never the same after that day in Santee, and street riding continues to evolve now, 35 years later. Even crazier, many of the riders there that day are still riding. None of us expected that.
Nearly a year later, I got a call from Ron Wilkerson, asking me if I wanted to edit the 2-Hip contest season video. I jumped at the chance. I was able to borrow Unreel's S-VHS "offline" edit system, and chopped it all together in the spring of 1989, 5 vert comps and this street comp. Why did Ron ask me? The year before I produced six videos for the AFA, and I was the guy who seemed to have the basic skills to edit a low budget video at the time. Eddie Roman's "BMX movie," Aggroman, came out later in 1989, which really sparked the rider-made video movement in BMX freestyle. For the next year or two it was Eddie, Mark Eaton of the Plywood Hoods, me, and Jeremy Alder Back east, producinga few rider-made, low budget videos. By about 1991, a whole lot more people start putting out low budget BMX videos, which sparked a video revolution during the recession of the early 1990's, after BMX "died," and only the hardcore people were left. This video embedded above, became part of the 2-Hip BHIP video, check it out.
So that's my story of the first media covered BMX street contest, one sunny spring day, in Santee, California in 1988.
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.
The Chain Bank was a lesser known, but serious skate spot in the 1990's. In this video, pro skater Rob Dyrdek narrates as Tom Penny flat out shreds the place.
When I left this blog, again, back in May of 2022, I started Steve Emig's Street Life, because that's been the theme of my life for quite some time. Years after taxi driving died, I'm middle aged, fat, and homeless, but still pretty motivated to write and create. I've managed to spend a long time homeless without alcohol and drugs, just not being able to find good paying work for years.
Going back to my late teens, I'm an old, fat BMX freestyle and skateboard Has Been rider/industry guy, and want to start getting back in shape, and riding and skating again. A couple of weeks ago, I had the idea for a new blog, which I call The Spot Finder. In this new blog, I'm telling the stories of well known BMX freestyle and skateboard spots, and eventually exploring and showing some new ones, as time goes on. As freestyle and skateboarding evolved in the 1980's and 1990's, particularly street riding and street skating, obscure little places that we rode or skated started to become known. Much to everyone's surprise, some of these spots gained worldwide fame. From Baldy Pipe, and Pipeline Skatepark in the late 1970's, to Sheep Hills BMX jumps, and sets of stairs like El Toro or Hollywood High these days, locations now have fame and stories.
Action sports are always evolving, and as an old, out of shape blogger, trying to get my life back on track, this seemed like a good times to start blogging about spots in the BMX and skateboarding world, along with a few art and other sports spots. So that's my new project, it's something I'm really stoked on, and like all my crazy ideas in the past, like publishing a freestyle zine in 1985 (landed me a magazine job), talking Scot Breithaupt into making the first BMX street riding TV show in 1989, producing my own BMX video in 1990, helping stuntman Johnny Airtime brainstorm a BMX stunt for TV in 1991, and then doing BMX memoir blogs starting in 2008, this may or may not turn into something bigger down the line. Who knows? It's fun now, and the idea is already evolving beyond the initial concept. We'll see where it goes.
So if you're a BMXer or skater, or even an artist, this blog may be worth checking out. But that's what I'm up to now, in October 2022.
This one just came out, and if you're ever been into BMX, you've probably seen it. It's worth watching again. This is true BMX stunt work on street. Taking one basic trick, wallrides, and just pushing it in multiple directions past the current limits. Insane progression by Sebastian Keep. Another epic Red Bull backed video. Nobody does content creation like Red Bull.
I just realized this is a year old, I thought it was more recent. This is my favorite Dakota Roche edit, when I want to watch some new school street. Back in about 2002, Cory Nastazio had a jam, up in Gorman, and most of the people had dinner at a good burger spot afterwards. The woman who helped put on the event was there, with her son. The kid was pretty skinny, and talking to all the pro riders saying, "I'm gonna go pro like you guys some day." The riders were all cool and encouraging. That kid was Dakota Roche. I ran into him two or three times after that, riding better each time. I remember him an a couple guys showing up at the Westminster Skatepark once, while I was riding there. He's freakin' a beast on street now. Love seeing his parts, but this one is my favorite.
This video is from last summer, but I've never seen it, until today. Stumbled across it, and it's chock full of some big, burly modern street riding. It's from Van's, and is well shot and produced, though it repeats shots a lot, which is typical these days. It'd be really cool to seem some of these riders go freewheel or change up the set-up a bit, and invent some new tricks. But burly street riding is always a good watch.
Here's Brian Tunney at the Jinx Bank, last year (2019), talking about the impression two photos from the Jinx Bank, 30-some years ago, left on him.
As usual in my BMX posts, I'm going back 34 years into the foggy memory banks, but here's how I remember it happening. If you have read very many of my BMX posts in my assorted blogs, you know my 1985-86 zine, San Jose Stylin', landed me a job at Wizard Publications in August of 1986. Officially, I was the sole editorial assistant, so I was an assistant to Craig "Gork" Barrette, editor of BMX Action, and Andy Jenkins and Mark "Lew" Lewman, the guys writing FREESTYLIN' magazine. Unofficially, I took over for Don Toshach, who actually had an English degree, and was the proofreader for both magazines. I was also the official driver of photographer Windy Osborn, driving her to many of the photo shoots, and being her assistant on those,. I went from a NorCal freesytler, making 57 pizzas in 4 hours at Pizza Hut, to working at THE MAGAZINES (!!!!) in one day. Huge life change, and I flew to L.A. with my bike (Skyway T/A), a suitcase, and $80. That move change the entire course of my life.
I wound up roommates with Gork and Lew, in Redondo Beach, 3-4 miles from the Wizard offices. We worked more-or-less 9 to 5ish, and put in extra hours near the magazine deadlines. On Saturdays and Sundays, if there wasn't a local contest somewhere, we all did our own thing, mostly. My weekends started with waking up, making a HUGE plate of about 12-15 small pancakes, and chowing those down while watching Lew's VHS copy of Bones Brigade II: Future Primitive. In the intro of that video is this great sentence by C.R. Stecyk:
"200 years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground, and it took the minds of 12-year-olds to realize its potential."
Every Saturday and every Sunday, I'd carbo load on pancakes, watch Bones II, then grab my bike, and head out on an all day "scouting mission," as I called them. I'd just go exploring my new world on my bike, Redondo Beach, and the South Bay area of Southern California. Street riding was something we all did then, but it was in its infancy as a "thing" that actually had a name. Street skating, pioneered by then Vision skater Mark Gonzales, Curb Dog/Bones Brigade skater Tommy Guerrero, and Natas Kaupas, was just a year and a half old. Those guys were just beginning to explore the urban world as one big skatepark, waiting to be sessioned. Us BMX freestylers, and particularly Andy J. and Lew at FREESTYLIN', were heavily influenced by those early street skaters.
My favorite part of Bones II was (and still is) Tommy Guerrero's section, right at the beginning. I'd seen Tommy jump launch ramps in Golden Gate Park, and even shot photos of him for my zine, and he blew my mind with how high he launched off jump ramps, and his style, along with the other NorCal street skaters. I never really got to know him, but his use of the insane San Francisco terrain for skating made me want to go find cool shit around Redondo, and then session it on my bike. So that's what I did, weekend after weekend. I'd head off in one direction, usually to a known street spot to start, and then I'd wander in some area I'd never been to, and ride down alleys, behind shopping centers, and into weird little nooks and crannies, looking for cool stuff to ride.
One day, driving Windy and Ron Wilkerson to a photo shoot, at a quarterpipe behind a bike shop, on PCH in Redondo, we went 2 or 3 blocks too far, and so we rolled back two or three blocks down this alley, up the hill from Pacific Coast Highway. It was the photo shoot for some weird new Wilkerson trick, called the abubaca. we didn't know what that was, Ron had invented it on tour. Windy and Ron were talking as I drove the Wizard Astro van down the alley. Off to one side, I saw this weird, but awesome, bank next to a wall, in a little parking lot. My rider mind made a mental note, and I then drove on and found the quarterpipe we were looking for.
Two or three weeks later, as I headed out after my pancakes and Bones II, that bank popped into my head. So I headed up to PCH, and headed south. It wound up being a few blocks past where I thought it was. I was kind of lost, and came from a totally different direction, when I first saw it in the van. It took an hour or so, but I found the bank.
I'd never seen one like it, and I'd never heard Gork or Lew mention it, and they rode that area all the time. I went up a hill from PCH, behind this building, to the back parking lot. From that side street, the parking lot went down fairly steeply. The asphalt bank started as flat, and gradually got taller as the parking lot dropped down. At the high end, it was 5 to 6 feet high. I did a couple carves and kickturns on it, and scoped out the transition. It wasn't too kinked, and rode pretty well. This probably happened in September 1986, somewhere around there.
To put things in perspective, wall rides on bikes didn't exist yet... officially. On a photo shoot with Windy in Huntington Beach, I saw English bloke Dave Curry do a tiny wall ride. More of a wall bounce/slide. It blew my mind. But he was popping off a tiny, one foot high bank, and slapping both tires against the wall about a foot up. At the time it was amazing, but Windy didn't think it was worth a photo that day, and it was getting late, anyway. So Dave Curry didn't get the first wall ride photo in a magazine, which ultimately, is probably a good thing. Nothing against Dave, but I'll get to that in a bit.
At that time, in 1986, I was big on doing footplants when street riding. I would bunnyhop and footplant on ledges, benches, and wherever. I got that idea from both Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs, and from Eddie Roman, another Skyway rider. So I started doing footplants, riding up the big end of this new bank, bunnyhopping, and planting my right foot on the wall. There was a business in that building, like paint store, or electric supply store, something like that. But they never came out and yelled at me as I bounced on their wall. So I kept riding.
Within half an hour, I was hitting the tallest part of the bank, around fivefeet high, and doing a footplant on the wall two or three feet above that. That bank was made for those. I was having a blast. That is, until I landed hard, and snapped my cheap ass, one piece cranks. I think that was the only time I ever snapped a pair of cranks.
So that ended my session, and I had to "scooter" my bike back to the apartment, more than a mile, dropcrank, pushing with the other foot. When I got back to the pad, Lew asked what happened. I told him I found this amazing bank to ride, was doing huge wall footplants, and snapped my crank. Lew went through all the banks he knew in the area, but this new bank was one he had never seen. So I told him I'd have to take him there sometime.
The next Monday, I found a pair of used cranks in a box in the rafters at Wizard, and I was back in action. The next weekend, I was back at the new bank, doing big footplants, kickturns, little bunnyhop bank "airs," and having more fun, another solo session. I came down hard from a footplant, and I cracked my fork dropout. It started to clink and wobble, and I didn't want my front wheel to fall off. I had that happen once, and it's not a good thing. So I headed back to the homestead. The next Monday, I found an old pair of Randy Tischman's forks up in the rafters, purple Kuwahara ones, I think, with weird little stands on the top of the curves. I put them on, and was ready to ride again.
It took a couple of weeks, but I finally got Lew to follow me to this new bank one Saturday. He did a few kickturns or something, to get the feel of the bank. I started doing my footplants, and Lew said they looked way gnarlier than what he had imagined when I described them. Lew started trying footplants, or something, and got sketchy on one landing, crashed, and rolled his ankle. It was a mild, but painful, sprain. That ended our session. As we started heading slowly home, Lew was pedaling gingerly on his sore ankle. He said something like, "First you snapped your cranks, then your forks, now I sprained my ankle, this bank is jinxed." And that's how the Jinx Bank got its name.
The next Monday at work, Lew actually told everyone how gnarly my footplants were, and said Windy should shoot photos of me there. I was stoked, because I was absolutely desperate to get a photo of me riding in the FREESTYLIN'. But Lew was known for exaggeration, which Andy called "The Lew Factor." Andy J. said, "Lew says these footplants are really gnarly, but when we add in The Lew Factor, that makes them kind of gnarly." One of these days we'll get Windy to check them out, but no photo shoot right now. We never made it back out there for Windy to see them. And Lew never went back to ride the Jinx Bank, it did its number on his psyche. Myself, I went back every couple of weeks, and took Craig Grasso there often. Grasso and I had many more great sessions at the Jinx Bank, and neither of us broke bike parts or body parts. No more Jinxes from the Jinx Bank, after it had been named. We told R.L. Osborn about it once, and he had actually been there years earlier, after hearing about it from some skaters. But he never went back.
I got laid off from Wizard at the end of December 1986, and never got a photo of me riding the Jinx Bank. I did make it back up there for 3 or 4 more sessions, over the next few years. The last time I went, the building owners had made the small asphalt curb at the bottom, making it hard to ride and skate, without some plywood to lay over the curb. You can see that in Brian's video above.
Later they added the weird wood thing on the wall, which you can also see in Brian's video above. That made it largely session proof, for either bikes or skates. But the coolest thing about the Jinx Bank for me was that when I left, Gork and Lew knew it was there. Because of that, about nine months later, this photo of Eddie Roman, doing the first wall ride ever in a magazine(since Dave Curry missed his shot) was taken, by Windy, at the Jinx Bank. It's one of those epic Windy Osborn photos. This photo changed bike riding instantly, and forever. With that one photo, suddenly wall rides were possible, and walls, especially banks to walls, were in play.
Eddie Roman, first BMX wall ride photo, at the Jinx Bank, 1987, I believe.
While I never got a photo there, and was never a great rider, my Tommy Guerrero and pancake fueled solo scouting missions found the Jinx Bank, a spot that later changed BMX freestyle history. Not much, but I was stoked the first wall ride photo happened there. A while after that, Craig Campbell also got an epic wall ride photo there, as Brian shows in the video above.
Street riding progressed rapidly over the next several years, and turned into its own genre eventually, as we all know. Craig Grasso added his flavor to street, many times over the years. Here he is on another local bank, a favorite photo of mine.
Craig Grasso, bank backside boneless.
I may not have had a riding photo in FREESTYLIN', but in BMX DIY fashion, I gave myself a quick, but decent, wall ride clip in my 1990 self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend. And a stylized version of this sketchy video still below is on the T-shirt I'm wearing right now, 34 years after rediscovering the Jinx Bank. Wall ride over my sister Cheri's head, Blues Brothers Wall, Huntington Beach, 1990. May the "minds of 12-year-olds" in all of us never stop discovering cool shit to ride in our urban environment.
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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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Homeless person passed out on Hollywood Boulevard,on the world famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 2019. I shot this photo while I was homeless last year. This is the kind of guy we'd do bummyhops over in San Francisco back in 1985-86.
Often after a few hours of riding at Golden Gate Park, a bunch of us would head to the Embarcadero to ride. That was a spot in downtown S.F., with big concrete ledges and other cool stuff to ride. At that point, in 1985-86, street riding was about bunnyhopping up, or jumping off things, doing footplants, launching off curb jumps, and things like that. Wall rides and ped grinds on street hadn't been invented yet. At some point, while riding the Embarcadero with Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and others from the Golden Gate Park crew, someone mentioned the term vollie. When I asked what that was, they explained that it was an ollie over any homeless person, usually one laying down, or maybe over their legs while sitting. A "vollie" was the San Francisco skateboarder term for a "vagrant ollie," ollying over a homeless person.
As an inquisitive dork, and the zine guy of the scene, I asked what a BMX bunnyhop over a homeless person was called. I got about five different answers. I realized that there was no actual, "official" term for bunnyhopping over a bum. WE did actually do that once in a while, usually when Vander and Drob would head off through the streets, and we'd follow them, hopping over or footplanting any obstacle we found.
Being the zine guy of NorCal, I decided this issue needed a resolution, so I took a poll among all the Golden Gate Park riders, to get their ideas. Out of the 5 or 6 initial ideas, two terms led the pack, vunnyhop, for vagrant bunnyhop, or bummyhop, a bunnyhop over a bum. There was some serious discussion (well, sort of serious), and a bit of arguing. The poll was close. But in the end, the term "bummyhop" was officially sanctioned as the term for bunnyhopping over a homeless person in an urban setting. I put the results in my zine, and we all got a laugh out of it.
Now, as a person who has been homeless for extended periods, one just ending a month ago, I'd like to say that it's really lame to harass homeless people, they have more than enough to worry about, and get shit from all kinds of people all the time. Homelessness is also an industry, and several groups and many people make a living off the homelessness industry. And that sucks. That's why I avoided nearly all non-profits and programs for homeless people.
But as a longtime BMX rider, if there's a bum crashed out on the sidewalk, and you're in a hurry, and can do it safely, bunnyhop the fucker. I've done a few bummyhops in my time. Looking for a good, old school video of someone bunnyhopping a bunch of people just now, like maybe Mike Buff's 15 person bunnyhops back in the day, I ran into a video of a news clip of some kids in L.A. getting in trouble for bummyhopping homeless guys and putting the videos on YouTube.
I'm an old BMXer, I've done this in San Francisco, 30-some years ago, but not for video or photos. I think the people in the video that I found, acting all uptight, are pretty hypocritical. I doubt they think twice about the homeless normally, until a camera was thrust in their face, and someone showed them a bummyhop video and asked their opinion. They said it was terrible.
Here's my thoughts, if you're out shooting video, and you want to bunnyhop a homeless person and shoot video of it, talk to them first. Stage it, let them know what you want to do, and show them you have the skills to do it without injuring the person. Then, after you shoot your footage, hook the person or people up for helping you get some cool footage. Give them $5 or $10, buy them a pizza, a beer, or some cigarettes. If you're really cool, give them money to get a cheap motel room for the night. Whatever. Make it worth the homeless person's while. Then shoot some bonus footage showing that you set it up, and the people were cool with it. You'll probably get some cool interview footage, as well, homeless people make for great interviews.
But do not go around looking for passed out homeless people, and bunnyhopping them just for your video. Obviously, you could seriously injure someone, if they sit up suddenly. Ideally, just leave homeless people alone, they have enough problems. But I can't say "Never bunnyhop a bum," because we did it, once in a while, back in the 80's. So I'd be a hypocrite to tell riders to never do it if you're hauling ass down a street and there's a person passed out on the sidewalk. But now you know there's an official name for it, the bummyhop.
One more thought about homelessness in general, as someone who understands it far more than I ever wanted to.
There are more empty buildings and spare bedrooms in this country than there are homeless people.
We could house everyone indoors , and then address the issues that got them there. We, as a society, simply choose not to. Hopefully we'll get better at dealing with this issue in the coming years, as more and more people have to struggle to pay rent in our current, crazy, economic times.
The Brooklyn Banks were already legendary in the skateboard world when Ron Wilkerson decided to hold a contest there in 1989. To get a go idea of what this place actually looked like, here's a video of Scotty Cranmer (pre-accident) and Ruben Alcantara, 15 to 18 years after the Meet the Street contest there, tearing the place up. This is farther back under the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge, maybe 30-40 yards from where the 1989 contest was held.
The Brooklyn Banks were the de facto skatepark for all of New York City at a time when there were no skateparks in NYC. The banks were made long ago, laid by brick layers of incredible skill. They're all brick, but SMOOTH. They start small and mellow near where the road on the bridge meets the ground level. As you go back farther under the bridge, the banks got higher and higher. There were support columns rising vertically out of the banks, which made for places to do small wall rides or skate wallies. It's one of the most epic environments to ride skateboards or bikes, anywhere, that wasn't designed for skateboards or bikes.
I was one of the few lucky guys who actually got paid to go to Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street contest there in the fall of 1989. I'm going to tell that story over a series of posts on the new Block Bikes Blog. Follow this link to check out part 1.
I have a new blog going, it's about building an art or creative business, or any small business. You can check it out here: WPOS Kreative Ideas
If you were a BMX freestyler in the 80's, and someone mentioned the name Pete Augustin, riding like what's in this clip is probably what comes to mind. In the Webster's Dictionary of Freestyle in the 1980's, if you looked up "aggro," there was a picture of Pete riding street. Remember that pic of him doing a lookback off a curb with the back tire tagging a the top of trash can? Yeah. Hard. Tough. Brash. San Diego street riding. That was Pete Augustin.
So it may surprise some people that, for some reason I can't really remember, Pete Augustin came up to The Spot in Redondo Beach once in a while and had some flatland sessions with us in 1986. Pete was Chris Day's favorite rider, and the guy Chris wanted to emulate back then, and I think Pete hooked Chris up with Bad Boy Club clothes, so maybe that's why he came up to The Spot. In any case, Pete was one of the first SoCal pros I rode with. I think R.L. was out on a tour when I first started at Wizard, and Pete was at The Spot a few times before R.L. got back. He wasn't a huge flatland rider, but you pretty much had to ride flatland then, street wasn't its own genre yet, and Pete had some cool stuff. The rolling backwards handstands were crazy. Here's Pete on flat.
Sliders and backwards wheelies were big in late 1986, and two of my favorite tricks. Pete (and Lew) ripped both at those. I could do a halfway decent backwards wheelie (on the peg), but Pete was doing one handed ones. I thought, "Damn, I need to step my shit up," and started learning those. Lew already did solid one handed backwards wheelies. But Pete also did one handed backwards wheelies, then would grab the front tire, and then let go and just hold the tire for a few seconds. It took me months to get that variation dialed, it was just a weird balance point to keep. That's the big thing I remember from riding with Pete Augustin at The Spot in late 1986.
Even then, Pete had the reputation of being a guy people were afraid to talk to. Everyone who didn't know him seemed to think that if you looked at him wrong, he'd punch you in the face. Maybe he went off on some annoying kid at some point, and it got blown up, out of proportion. But when I was riding with him at The Spot in those days, he was totally cool. OK, he's not like Mr. Congeniality, the smooth-talking salesman type. He would ride, we would ride, and we'd all be doing our own thing for a while. Focused more than anything. But when we started talking, he was cool.
So for the next three or four years, when riders from different parts of the country brought up this idea that Pete Augustin was totally unapproachable, I'd tell them he had always been cool to me, and while he was aggro as hell in his riding, he was cool to talk to.
A couple years later, at one of the local AFA comps in Anaheim, which were held at the R.G. Canning car shows, we had this brick patio area at the Anaheim convention center to practice in. Wall rides were the new thing then, and a few of us were trying them on the brick wall of the patio. Really, we were doing wall slides. We'd bunnyhop next to the wall, and get both tires to touch the wall, sort of sliding against it. Nobody was getting any real traction on the wall. It was just flat horizontal ground to flat vertical wall, no bank to help us out. We were all running 90 or more psi for flatland, which didn't help.
As we were doing that, Pete Augustin rolled out onto the patio. We all did a couple of more lame wall slides. Then Pete went to do one. He did this gargantuan bunnyhop, hitting the wall nearly vertical, slamming the bottoms of his tires into the wall. From flat ground, he bunnhopped into the wall, actually rode up it a bit, and pretty much did a kickturn on the wall, pulled out, and landed. It was fucking amazing. I'd never seen anyone stick to a wall like that coming off of flat ground. Neither had the rest of the guys there. Pete kind of smiled and rode away. I don't think he even said anything. The riding said it all. "Like this, guys. San Diego motherfuckers!"
When writing the stories for my two 48 page zines about The Spot in Redondo, I wrote a few pages about the guys who weren't really locals when I was there, but rode with us now and then. As I cut the sections down to actually fit in the zines, that part got cut. The part about Pete Augustin isn't in the zines, so I decided to write a blog post about riding with him.
Four years later, shooting video for my first, completely self-produced video, Jess Dyrenforth invited me to a session at Mouse's ramp near San Diego, and Pete and Chris Day were there tearing it up, along with underground SoCal legend Mike Tokemoto. You can see that section here at 38:05. Pete's in the white T-shirt. This section is the first serious spine ramp session EVER in a BMX freestyle video, so they were breaking new ground then. So that's what I remember of Pete Augustin from the 1980's.
My zine about the The Spotin Redondo turned into two, solid, 48 page zines of stories and thoughts and photos. The two big, fat zines, come with some original, homemade stickers and mini flyers. We all know that zines immediately turn into collector's items, by their very nature. They're so collectible, nobody ever sells their zines. So I'm charging $15 for these 2-zine packs. Each one is signed and numbered, you know, so you can sell it on Ebay if I ever hit the big time as a writer, like J.K. Rowling or something. Or even Ed Templeton, his "Teens Smoking" books have sold for $500 on Ebay, believe that or not.
Anyhow, if you'd like to add these to your own collection, paypal me $15 to stevenemig13@gmail.com . ("steven" not "steve") Shipping is included in the continental U.S.. If you're in Canada, Alaska, or Hawaii, it's $20. In Australia, New Zealand or the U.K., $25 U.S. You've read the blog, now get my stories into your hot little hands. Or big hands. The first packs are shipping out today.
I've got a new blog going, it's about building an art or creative business, or any small business. You can check it out here: WPOS Kreative Ideas
