Has anybody done a podcast with Don Hoffman (Pipeline Skatepark/Unreel Productions/Vision)? Somebody should. Same with Frank Scura and Bob Morales (who started the AFA). On camera we have Frank Scura in the intro, and Don Hoffman behind the camera. Bob Morales put on the contest, and I was a roadie at it, and rode in the comp as well. This is the third video I produced and directed in 1987. Nearly an hour of 1980's flatland. Officially, this video is titled Texas Pro Flatland. Enjoy.
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On occasion, I make it down to H.B. Tuesday, where Martin Aparijo, Sean Ewing, and the crew of old schoolers ride flatland in a beach parking, every Tuesday afternoon. Last week I made it down to H.B., and hung out for the afternoon. Honestly, going down there is the highlight of my month. While Fate has pushed me away from the BMX world for a really long time, I'm still a huge fan of doing tricks on "little kid's bikes" (as people called them back in the 1980's). Yes, I got fat and haven't ridden in many years, but I still love BMX freestyle, and I'll always be a fan of riding, and action sports in general.
Last week I met a guy there named Fish, from up in the Seattle area. He was ripping it up with a bunch of rolling tricks... backyards, frontyards, and sideyards, high speed hang 5's and a bunch more. Watching Fish, I realized that I was an "apartment flatlander" back in the 80's. I had no front, back, or side yards in my trick bag. I had no yards at all. My scuffing repertoire was limited to Shingle shuffles and funky chickens on occasion. My main tricks were sliders, Switzerland squeakers, a bunch of tailwhip variations, back wheel peg spin variations (megaspins that weren't "mega"), high speed 180 bunnyhops to half Cabs, and a few other obscure tricks.
Fish was familiar with my blogging, and we got talking, while Martin and a few others were riding. It was great to just talk about Old School flatland riding for a while, with someone I'd heard of, but never actually met. I brought up David Morris, a Seattle area guy, a really solid rider, who never got much coverage, but was the real Raleigh Factory Freestyle team, which I joined for a year in 1987. Fish had a cool story about meeting and riding David's team BITD. We also talked about the BMX business, and flatland over the many years since.
I told Fish how the whole rolling trick transition was when I clocked out of flatland, I just wasn't up for learning all those tricks, and street was getting more interesting to me. Fish said that's when it really got fun for him. His style and skill set rocked in the forward rolling era, and he's still riding hard today. Anyhow, great to meet and talk a while, Fish. Glad we got to hang out a while and share some stories.
Blogger's note- 10/18/2024- I rewrote this post quickly today, because the original post sucked. This started out as a couple of lines about meeting a cool Old School rider from Seattle, and then I rambled off topic, like usual. Sometimes that works, but in this post it didn't. So I cleaned it up today.
I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, check it out.
This was the first video that BMX Plus! magazine produced, in 1985. In those days, professional quality video equipment was really expensive, and to make a video to sell copies of, you had to hire a professional video production company to shoot, produce, and edit the video. That meant spending tens of thousands of dollars for the project. Because of this high financial barrier to entry, not many BMX freestyle videos got made in the mid and late 1980's.
"You can't get good by sitting around thinking about it. It's something you have to physically get out and do."
-Brian Scura, Freestyle's Raddest Tricks
What we called BMX freestyle in the 1980's began in the late 1970's, when Bob Haro and a friend started doing tricks on their BMX racing bikes. This video came out in 1985. In the intro, Bob says he had been freestyling for 8 years, putting the birth of BMX freestyle around 1977.
Yes, people have been doing tricks on bicycles since bikes were invented, which around 1875. The first time a cute girl walked by a guy on an early bike is probably when the first bike trick was invented. That's my thinking, anyhow. But the thing we call freestyle, the hobby, sport, and lifestyle of doing tricks on 20 inch BMX bikes, began with Bob Haro and his friend John.
Within a year or so, he began doing demos at BMX races, and then doing shows at other events. He rode with R.L. Osborn not long after, living with the Osborn family, while drawing cartoons and working at BMX Action. He started making custom number plates for racers. Bob Haro did his first freestyle tour with Bob Morales about 1980. R.L., the son of BMX Action magazine founder, Bob "Oz" Osborn, started the BMX Action Trick Team in 1980 or 1981. Bob Morales started MF, Morales/Fiola, with top skatepark rider, Eddie Fiola, making stickers and leathers, I think, and went on to start Dyno, an accessories company. Soon after he was putting on the first BMX freestyle contest series, in the skateparks in 1983, turning freestyle into a competitive sport.
My point here is that from about 1977 to 1982, BMX freestyle was a handful of really entrepreneurial guys doing shows, and a larger group of guys who rode BMX bikes in skateparks. Mike Buff, Jeff Watson, Fred Becker, Tinker Juarez, Steve "Bio Air Bennett, Martin Aparijo, and Woody Itson were some of the main riders in those early years, all in Southern California.
Then freestyle started getting photos in magazines, which got a good response, and it began to grow larger. Bob Haro's number plate business took off. Dyno, Bob Morales' accessory company, got bought by GT Bikes. R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff toured the U.S. and parts of Europe. Everywhere these guys did shows, a few kids got hooked on this new thing called BMX freestyle, growing the sport organically. Bob Haro redesigned a Torker, and put out the first bike specifically designed for freestyle, in 1983, the Haro Freestyler, later called the Haro Master.
By the time BMX Plus! magazine put out this video in 1985, Haro, GT, Redline, Hutch, CW, and other companies had freestyle bikes on the market. BMX Action started FREESTYLIN' magazine in the fall of 1984. They also put out a video, made documentary style, of the BMX Action Trick Team, in 1985. That was the first wave of popularity of BMX freestyle, and that's when this video came out.
In the 1980's, the BMX media was all about the magazines, beginning with BMX Action, BMX Plus!, and Super BMX. FREESTYLIN'magazine, the "Thrasher" of BMX, came out in the fall of 1984. BMX Plus! put out some one shot freestyle magazines, Freestyle Spectacular, in 1986, and then came out with American Freestyler. Super BMX put out Freestyle magazine soon after. If you wanted to get sponsored, you had to get coverage in magazines, and there were six magazines, in 1987-1988. It was all about magazine photos. Many pros, and some amateurs, got a "photo contingency," a cash bonus, if they got photo in a magazine, bigger money for bigger photos. Some riders got coverage for their skill, and a few became coverage whores, always hanging out at the magazines or calling up photographers to see if they needed riders that week.
Videos in the 1980's cost a lot of money to produce, easily $20,000 to $40,000, to hire a video production company and make a half hour video, like Freestyle's Raddest Tricks, above. Consumer video cameras existed, VHS, and 8mm, (before Hi8), but the quality degraded really fast when you edited and made copies of them. Because of this, there weren't many BMX freestyle videos in that first wave of freestyle's popularity. BMX Plus! and GT Bikes ruled the 1980's BMX freestyle video market. Because there were so few videos put out, no standard form existed then. That's why many early videos didn't have sections for each rider. That concept was one of many at the time. Most videos had a bunch of riders, riding together at a shoot, to save money. Then they were edited in a montage.
Another thing, riders had their tricks dialed back then, because doing shows, riding in contests, and photo shoots for sponsored riders, were the main forms of showing your tricks to other riders and everyday people. It wasn't about doing something super gnarly and getting it on video one time. You had to be able to land that trick 9 times out of 10, or better, 10 out of 10. Because of this, when it came to the few video shoots, riders were doing the tricks they practiced every day. Each separate shoot in this video probably took place over one to three hours. So riders weren't trying something to get it once. They did the tricks they could do almost every time, and then the shoot was over. There was no going back to get the shot a week over. Either you pulled your best tricks at the shoot, or you didn't.
Since BMX freestyle was spawned from BMX racing only a few years earlier, riders wore racing leathers to promote their sponsors, and even helmets, goggles, and sometimes jofas (mouth guards).on flatland. They did this because the BMX companies, the magazines, and the video producers didn't want to get sued if some kid got injured trying this stuff at home. Yes, it looks goofy and hokey, but that was the nature of this brand new sport back then.
BMX freestyle was this weird hybrid of BMX racing and jumping, and skateboarding in pools, which is where the airs came from. Its influences ranged from motocross, to BMX racing, to surfing (skaters first rode pools to imitate surfing waves), and skateboarding. All of these influences were coming together, and nobody really knew what the fuck they were doing then, in the sense that everything was new. Riders, the magazines, and video producers were all trying different ideas with this new and emerging little sport, trying to find out what worked in riding, for photos and video, and on the business side. Much like skateboarding in the 1970's, BMX freestyle was considered a fad then, by most people. It was some weird little fad that would go away in a couple of years, but it was new and fun to watch. Obviously, over the 39 years since Freestyle's Raddest Tricks came out, BMX freestyle, or whatever you may call it now in its various forms, has evolved in many different directions. None of us expected it to get as big and widespread as it has back in 1985.
I bought this video for $29.95, by mail order, in the fall of 1985. I had just moved to San Jose, California, and was 19 years old. I wasn't going to college, I was working nights at a Pizza Hut, and I had no friends yet in San Jose. Freestyle was it, that was my whole focus, at that point in time. I was riding 2 to 4 hours everyday, often wandering around San Jose, exploring my new region. I was just starting my first zine, as a way to meet some other freestylers in the Bay Area.
I watched this video seven times the day I got it in the mail. Two of those times I sat on my handlebars of my bike, balancing on it, feet on the front wheel, through the whole video, without putting my foot down. That just seemed like the hardcore thing to do that day. I watched this video dozens of times over the next year. I watched it so many times, that I remembered the goofy, electronic "canned music," which video producers used in many different types of videos in those days, to avoid getting sued for copyright infringement. I heard some of this exact same music in at least two porno videos in the years after I bought this video. Yeah, they used the same canned music other video producers did then, which is pretty funny.
Freestyle's Raddest Tricks, the two sequels, and the GT Bikes videos GT-V and Demo Tape, were the most widely watched, and most influential BMX freestyle videos of the late 1980's. As my blog works towards its 1,000th blog post, and I look back on major influences in those early days of 1980's BMX freestyle, this video was a huge influence on me, and almost all of us.
I bought this video mail order, not long after moving to San Jose, California, in August of 1985. I think it cost $30 plus shipping, for a 28 minute video.
I watched this video 7 times the day it came in the mail, two of those times I balanced on my Skyway T/A, in the living room, through the whole video. It just seemed more hardcore to do watch it that way. The second time I put a small couch pillow on my handlebar to sit on, since it hurt my ass the first time I sat on the end of my bar for half an hour. Flatland in full uniforms? Hell yeah! Bob Haro, McGoo, and John Ker actually talking? Hell yeah! Actual video footage of Pipeline Skatepark, which I'd only seen in photos? Freakin' amazing. Mike Buff's Blue Whale backyard ramp? You can do that in your backyard? Whoa!
That was 38 years ago. Watching this video happened right around the time that I started an ugly little zine called San Jose Stylin'. That zine ending up changing the entire course of my life for the better. This video was hardcore inspiration in 1985, and it was the first produced video I ever saw of the top freestylers of the day. The primary riders in the video are Martin Aparijo, Brian Scura, Robert Peterson, Scott Freeman, Mike Buff, Ron Wilkerson, Brian Blyther, Rich Sigur, Tony Murray, Mark McGlynn, and Steve McCloud. A whole bunch of other riders are featured in the contest footage from San Diego and Del Mar Skatepark.
"You can't get good by sitting around thinking about it, it's something you have to physically get out and do."
Here's a Bob Haro demo in the U.K. from 1983, The Master, official inventor of freestyle, wowing the kids in the U.K. in the early days. This was the year that the Haro Master, the first BMX bike built for "trick riding" came out. I couldn't find a video of Bob actually doing the bar hop, but this clip is from 1983, the year I saw Bob's how-to in BMX Plus!.
As I've said many times in my blogs, I got into BMX in the summer of 1982, in Blue Valley trailer park, outside of Boise, Idaho. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school, and there were about ten junior high and high school guys in the park. Isolated from all the kids in town, we'd gather after dinner each night by the basketball court, at the end of the pond, to do something. There were only four teenage girls in the park, and only one of those who didn't have a steady boyfriend. With no girls to chase, us guys wound up playing basketball, football, whiffle ball, threw rocks at each other, or rode our BMX bikes, for a couple of hours after supper. In early summer, we'd switch off on the evening activities, one day football, one day whiffle ball. But as the summer of 1982 progressed, we spent more and more time out at our little jumps, pushing each other on our sketchy BMX bikes.
By late summer, we started buying BMX magazines once in a while, which spurred us to ride harder. At the end of October, we found the BMX track, and three guys raced one race, then we all piled into my dad's van the next weekend, and the whole crew raced the last BMX race of the season. We were hooked on BMX big time... just as winter began to roll in. Come spring time, we were amped to get riding again. It was sometime that spring that I bought a copy of BMX Plus! that had a trick how-to from Bob Haro himself. It was called the Haro bar hop. The trick was amazingly simple, ride along, standing on the pedals, jump up, kick your feet through your hands, and land sitting on the crossbar, still rolling forward. At the time, I was still the worst rider in the trailer park, and jonesing to learn a trick the other guys didn't know, hoping to move up to second of third worst rider. "BMX freestyle" didn't have a name yet, it was still "trick riding."
I checked down the hill, no one was out at the basketball court. The coast was clear. I took my bike, a red Sentinal Exploder GX (K-Mart special type bike from a store cheaper than K-Mart) and my copy of BMX Plus, determined to learn the trick before I showed the magazine to anyone else. It took about 20 or 30 minutes, but I got the Haro bar hop down. By the time another kid showed up, I was hopping over the bars, landing on the crossbar, and riding 10-20 feet like that. Boom! I was the kid with the new trick, upping my BMX game in the trailer park, which was my whole plan. My perceived level of BMX suckage dramtically decreased. Within 15 minutes, three other guys were learning the trick, rolling around the old, rough asphalt of the basketball court.
It was that drive to out-do the other guys that pushed us all. We were pretty broke, none of us were much good at anything, and we lived in a trailer park, where there was lots of negative reinforcement that we would always suck at pretty much everything. We were HUNGRY, we wanted to prove people wrong, just in general. We all wanted to be good at something. BMX skills became our way to do that. So we kept pushing each other. That spring day was the first time I was the kid with the new trick, and I won't lie, it felt fucking good.
As the months passed, I did Haro bar hops now and then. I wound up learning one of my biggest BMX lessons from that simple trick. One day I tried one, and my toe caught the handlebars, and I got squirrely and ate shit, getting jabbed in the side by the end of the bars in the fall. It hurt like hell for a minute. and I cussed and stumbled around. Since my side hurt, I didn't try the trick again that day. A day or two later, I tried it again. I was scared. I couldn't jump my feet over the bars. I either didn't jump right, or I caught my toe, and fell. My mind created a mental block, and I never learned to do that trick again. Ever. I never landed another Haro bar hop, easy as that trick was.
That bummed me out, but the lesson was clear, when I crashed on a trick from then on, if I could move at all, which I usually could, I got up immediately, and tried to land the trick again. There were tricks I never landed, and a few, like boomerangs, that I learned, but gave up on, in that case because everyone did them, and the killed my wimpy abs. But I didn't lose another trick after that while I was riding consistently. If I fell, I got back up and tried, usually until I landed it at least one more time. Later I also learned that visualization can help overcome phobias and mental blocks to many tricks.
But it was from the simple Haro bar hop, the one trick I actually learned from a how-to by Bob Haro himself, taught me my first life lesson from BMX. Get back up, keep trying, no matter what.
Crazy as it sounds, that lesson is something I do every day, in my current sketchy life situation. Things are rough right now, just in day to day life, but I get back up each morning, litterally of the ground, and work to do something creative every day. Standing up each morning, is another example of that lesson, keep going, no matter what life throws at you. Forty years after learning that simple lesson, I'm still applying it daily in completely different circumstances. Whatever your level, whatever your era in BMX, we all learned more than just tricks by riding day after day for years. That's a great part of the lifelong legacy of spending time in BMX freestyle, or in other action sports.
Before BMX, I was a kid who daydreamed amazing ideas. Man, I invented great shit in my head, or sketched out on paper. I had wonderful answers to the world's problems, and dreamed up all kinds of stuff. And then did nothing. I was a dreamer who didn't act on my great ideas, for the most part. When I did try something, if it didn't work, I'd be like, "Well I tried, it didn't work," and I'd give up. We all know what Yoda said about trying. BMX taught me persistence and perseverance. Life keeps testing me, and all of us, on these, and many other, basic life lessons.
These days my writing/blogging focus in more on what's happening now, in 2023. But most of you reading this blog check my blog out because of my Old School freestyle BMX tales. So I'm going to write a series of posts on the life lessons learned from BMX, to add to all the other BMX posts I've written. Enjoy.
One of the original flatland innovators of the 1980's, long time GT pro, Martin Aparijo, is still riding a lot, and he just keeps getting smoother. Here are a three of his recent videos, all short sequences, of him in the last month or so, from Martin's YouTube channel. Above he does a silky smooth backwards wheelie variation.
If you read have read my blogs on any kind of regular basis, you know my BMX posts are usually my personal stories, sometimes my own little adventures riding, but often something I witnessed, usually involving a top rider or event. Basically, I write BMX memoir tales, mostly. It makes sense to add a little story here.
Thanks to my zine, and meeting FREESTYLIN' magazine editor, Andy Jenkins, at a contest, I got my first chance to do a freelance article for FREESTYLIN' in the spring of 1986. Andy asked me to write the article for the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters contest, which I was going to anyway to compete in. In the magazine world then, freelance writers would pay our way to an event, write the article afterwards, and then get a check for the work when the magazine issue was published, which was usually about three months later. I was working at Pizza Hut when I got the gig, making about $450 a month. I flew solo to Tulsa on a wing and a prayer, with barely enough money to scrape through the weekend. I didn't didn't have hotel reservations, I didn't even know where the contest was being held. It was the first time I had ever flown to a contest, and the first time I had ever flown solo anywhere. In other words, I was an idiot at traveling.
I headed out of San Jose airport, and like every flight west of the Mississippi seems to do, my my plane flew over the rand Canyon, and then had a layover at Dallas/Fort Worth. My dad had flown through DFW, and told me to find my next gate while on the first flight, since it could be a long walk, even a run, if I had to go from end to end of the airport. I got my bearings with the airport map in the online magazine, and made it to the gate of my second flight, and waited there. I didn't see any other BMX riders, but it was a huge airport, so I didn't really expect to.
Then, about fifteen minutes before the plane was ready to load, I saw Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some blond guy walk up, across the aisle. I knew Eddie and Martin from all the magazine photos I'd seen of them. At the time, I was still incredibly shy, and hated to go up and introduce myself to people. I was like a Rainman level of shy then, or pretty close. But it was also my first major trip to an AFA contest, and I needed to meet as many top pros and amateurs as I could, to get info for my article. I got past the shyness, and walked over and introduced myself.
Martin and Eddie were totally cool, and they introduced me to the other guy, a kid named Josh White. Josh White had just done the photo shoot and interview for FREESTYLIN' that would blow him up as one of the top new vert riders, but the magazine wouldn't be out for a couple of months. So he was still unknown to most freestylers. I hung out and talked to them until the last boarding call, when I was getting really nervous. But we all walked to the ramp, and made the plane. That was the day I met Martin Aparijo, late March or early April of 1986.
I wound up meeting two other up-and-coming vert riders at that contest. I met an East coast kid named Joe Johnson at the Tulsa airport. There was another kid, a younger one, who was doing some crazy variations, as well, but I didn't get is name at the contest. As fate would have it, that kid got his first editorial photo in my first freelance article. That article, a review of my zine, and most amazing, the Josh White interview, all appeared in the July 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN'. The kid who got his first photo was none other than Oklahoma local, Mat Hoffman.
Starting with meeting Martin, Eddie, and Josh, that was the coolest weekend of my life up until that point. Joe Johnson introduced me to the Haro guys, and I crashed in one of their rooms for the weekend. I seriously felt like I had won some contest. The GT guys were at a different motel, but many of the top riders were at the trusty old Holiday Inn, where I stayed. It was a crazy weekend.
Right about the time that Tulsa article came out, I got flown down to Wizard Publications, to interview for a job there, and getting hired changed the course of my life. Part of my new job was driving Windy Osborn, the photographer, to photo shoots. One of the first bike tests we did was for a GT freestyle bike. We did a photo shoot with Martin Aparijo on a sidewalk in Redondo Beach, doing Miami hop hops. That was the first time I really talked to Martin at any length.
Here's Martin praying those mags would hold up, in that FREESTYLIN' photo from 1986. Windy Osborn photos, borrowed from the web.
Martin's an all around cool guy. Besides being a pioneering freestyler and a better dirt jumper than most people realized, he's always down to tell you a story or two. If you're struggling, he's likely to give you a pep talk to get back on track. When I make it down to H.B. Tuesdays in Huntington Beach, Martin's always there, gliding some new variation of the classic tricks, and telling stories.
I wanted to do a quick post tonight, and the thought of showing everyone who reads my blog Martin's YouTube channel seemed like a good idea. If you haven't already, go check out his channel, as he keeps adding more videos, and keeps getting smoother and smoother it seems.
A kid. A BMX freestyle bike. And a parking lot. That's how freestyle started for so many of us across the U.S., U.K., and other parts of the world, in the 1980's.
The crazy series of events that led me to wind up staying within walking distance of this year's One Love Jam in Newport Beach kind of blows my mind. But the Universe is weird like that some times. From 1982, to 2003, I spent a couple hours or more, every day, on a BMX bike, learning tricks or street riding. The exception in that period was late 1999 and early 2000, the beginning of my taxi driving career. I stopped riding in 2003, when driving a taxi driving became a 7 days a week thing, and left no time for anything else. For me, BMX began in Boise, Idaho, in a trailer park, in 1982, sitting almost exactly at 43 degrees of latitude. Really. Before the whole 43 thing happened.
We had BMX magazines for inspiration. A lot of the early riders from outside Southern California were inspired by seeing the BMX Action Trick Team, or the Haro ot GT factory teams do a show. We didn't have Pipeline Skatepark or Del Mar. But we had parking lots. We all had a parking lot somewhere. So those early magazine trick how-to's from Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn, Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, and a few others, gave us a starting point. The AFA Masters constests gave us a justification, a reason. We needed that, because in 1984, or there-abouts, you couldn't tell your friends and parents, "I'm spending three hours a day learning tricks on a BMX bike, just because it's really fun." But we could say, "I'm practicing for a national contest," people could understand that.
At the early AFA contests at the Velodrome, in Carson, California, this weird morning ritual would take place. A few of us would get there long before the contest, and we'd walk into the Velodrome, and sit on the first few bleachers. There would end up being 15 or 20 people, from all over, just looking forward to the days events. And we'd see someone we hadn't seen in a few months, and ask, "You still riding?" Because it kind of surprised all of us that we were still doing tricks on "little kids' bikes" then. There was always a couple guys who said, "I got a car, and stopped riding a month ago," or "I got a new girlfriend, and haven't ridden in a couple months," but I wanted to come see the new tricks." The rest of us would say, "Yeah, I'm still riding." It kind of surprised us. None of us really believed then that we'd be riding for more than a year or two. There was this feeling of, "OK, let's do this freestyle thing for a year or so," then we'll all go back to college, get some job we don't like, and do "adult life."
But BMX freestyle started growing. The Californian guys were super entrepreneurial, and little businesses began to pop up to make frames or components, or something else needed. Bob Haro came out with a freestyle bike. Bob Morales started putting on contests. R.L. and Mike Buff toured doing trick shows, as did the Haro and GT guys. Nearly all of us had local trick teams in our town. Some of us produced zines. Some started shooting photos. A couple years later, some people started producing our own videos. For a few of us, actual jobs in the industry came along. For the rest, freestyle never stopped being fun. It just kept going. And going.
Being a dork among the dorks, I spent more time thinking about the future than most of us early riders. But I never imagined a day when BMX freestyle would be in the Olympics (like it or not), or a day when 100 or more riders, ages 40 to about 55, would show up next to the ocean and session all day. There were a handful of the SoCal riders who got us other guys across the country stoked on freestyle in the early 80's. We all, collectively, rode the first big wave of popularity in the late 80's, and a new crew came up in the 90's. We didn't know what the fuck we were doing, we just knew it needed to be done. We had ideas, tricks needed to be invented, and that meant time in the parking lot day after day.
As things progressed, we needed better bike parts. We needed better frames. We needed better places to ride. We absorbed the punk rock/D.I.Y ethos (thanks Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs), and just began to start doing the things that needed to be done to keep progressing. When the bicycle industry at large said, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing," in early 1989, we saw the money drain from the BMX world and leave us in the lurch. That sucked at first. We had to get real jobs and learn to cook ramen. But it also freed us, nobody gave shit about BMX freestyle except the most hardcore riders at that point. So we just took it over. The progression on the bikes progressed at hyper speed, and riders took over the industry. It was a lifestyle to so many of us at that point, and we forged ahead, each in our own directions, and built an industry.
BMX splintered into flatland, ramps, dirt, street, and park riding. By that time we all had some models for doing our own thing, and making things happen. We had other people to look up to. Collectively, we built a group of sports, and culture and industries to support those sports. That's pretty fucking cool when you stop and think about it. It wasn't a 35 year plan. Bob Haro didn't sit down in 1981 and say, "OK, here's the 40 year plan to take BMX freestyle worldwide." It happened organically, bit by bit, day by day, session by session.
Ultimately, we set the stage for guys in tight jeans, who hate brake,s to make $50,000 for winning a single contest, by doing a quad tailwhip double backflip to fakie over jumps the size of a small mountain range. Yeah, not what we had in mind, but the riding has progressed far beyond most of us now. But all of us who rode back in the day, played a roll in making that happen, some to big degrees, most of us to much smaller degrees.
Now, 35 years after those first AFA flatland and ramps contests, we are still leading in a way. We're showing the younger generations how long it can go on. OK, not me, I got sidetracked for years. But the group of the riders at the One Love Jam yesterday is still pushing boundaries. They're showing younger people, a few in person, and many more in videos and various posts, like this one, that BMX freestyle is a lifestyle. None of us knows how long you can keep doing it, because we're the group that is figuring that out. The oldest of us is about 55, and we're not there yet. A bunch of guys are still riding hard in their 50's. Many in their 40's. Where does freestyle end? 65? 70? 103? We don't know, but we'll let you know when we get there.
The One Love Jam was an epic day. I had no bike, but Kid Fruhmann let me borrow one of the Fiola Former Pro bikes (like the ProFormer, but dsylexic), which rode great, I must say. I managed a lame infinity roll right off the bat, and three other tricks over the course of a couple hours. Lame as it was, I got my nearly 300 pounds and a bike to bunnyhop. Barely. It's been a LONG time since that happened. I scraped my calf, got a little blood to the surface, and called it a session.
I also spent time talking to Martin Aparijo, Ron Camero, Gardo and their crew (thanks for the spaghetti and egg rolls), Bill Nitschke, Rick Coronado, Dave Nourie, Ruben Castillo, Todd Lyons, Dave Voelker, Brian Blyther, Edgar Plascencia, Ivan from New York, James who I just met, and several more guys. It was an epic day all around. Thanks to the promoters, I don't even know your names, but it's was a great jam. The weather was perfect. Much stoke was manufactured and consumed. I can't wait until next year's jam.
Here's Sean Ewing's drone footage of the event, and links to a couple other early edits. Check Facebook and Insta for more.
The Chairman at a board meeting. Martin Aparijo, drinking a coffee to make his Pepsi jealous. Don't tell anyone, but Martin's actually a really cool guy, helping all kinds of people step up their game in and out of riding. He also has a million great stories of the days before most of us started riding. If you ever get the chance, ask him some old school question and just sit back and listen.
San Diego flatland legend, big influence to most of us guys, longtime touring pro at Haro, Dave Nourie. He's still ripping it up and laving fun with it all.
Nourie, doing his thing.
Close-up, mid trick. Dave Nourie again.
Cru Jones was in the house. Some of the guys at One Love Jam were riding hard when the movie Rad was released in 1986. But many of the young bucks, you know, those guys in their 40's now, got into BMX because of the movie Rad. Here's a little clip of Bill from 2014, talking about how he ended up starring in Rad, and his life since.
One of my most popular blog posts ever was "Why I hated the movie Rad when it came out." I had nothing against Bill, Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and the riders, I just hated that the plot was so goofy, for the vert first American movie to have BMX freestyle in it. I was so invested in freestyle in 1986, and such an uptight dork in general, that when I saw Rad in the theater, I was just completely bummed. Except for the credits, that was "real riding" in my book. I actually liked Quicksilver, the bicycle messenger movie, a lot better. The jam session in Quicksilver was actually a lot closer to an actual BMX session, just on different bikes. And it had Martin and Woody in it. In the early 90's, when I heard the Sheep Hills guys talking about how much they liked Rad, like Sean Butler, I began to realize how many people wound up getting interested in BMX because of Rad's popularity on home video.
I liked BMX Bandits a lot, too, which was on HBO all the time in 1987. That movie had that cute redhead, Nicole something... Whatever happened to her?
Someone washed Regis in hot water, then threw him in the dryer and shrunk him. Wait, that's a 24 inch Haro with a bashguard he's on, that's why he looks so small. When Rome, do as the Romans do, when in Newport, surf at the beach. Regis G. blending in the locals.
We're old now. Remember back in the 70's when "Look ma, no hands" was a thing? Just riding without hands was probably the first actual bike trick many of us learned. Or maybe a skid. As the early BMX freestylers, we collectively took no hands to many new levels. Another example of that progression here.
The other way to do a double decade, two guys, sychro single decades.
Ruben Castillo, no smoke, but I think there was a fire hydrant somewhere in this combo.
Austin R-Dog, Texas For Life, Ruben Castillo. I haven't seen Ruben in many years, wasn't sure he'd remember me. He totally did, "I see your art online," he said, right off the bat. Bash it if you want, but I'm stoked we have Facebook and the internet these days, to keep in touch with all our old friends at a distance. Internet connecting is good, but it was awesome to hang out, ride (a little), and just talk with so many people from the old school flatland world, in person. One Love Jam is a great thing. I also met Ivan, standing right behind Ruben, at HB Tuesdays this week, cool guy from New York.
Backpacker. Not the kind on the Pacific Crest Trail or the kind that's college age and travels Europe. The BMX flatland kind. I'm glad I was old when these tricks came along, this shit's way too hard.
Far away, but I'm pretty sure this is Martin Aparijo, coming out of a megaspin.
Backwards infinity roll variation, in a straight line. Back in the day, I used to do standard infinity rolls in a straight line, and call them definitive rolls. So is this a backwards definitive roll? I'll let you decide.
Spinning.
He was hauling ass into these things. After my flatland era, fast gliding something or other.
Bikes looks so different today. Some in classic 80's styles, with vintage graphics, but most unique to the riders. This was one of the coolest looking bikes, and the rider, name unknown to me, was ripping all day.
Top: Scurfer. Bar ride... BUT.. one foot on a grip and one foot on the crossbar. WTF? He stepped into it from a surfer, after doing a Scurfer. Skills.
That moment when you know its lost, but you try to save it anyhow.
Back in the day, we often broke into bad breakdancing after we bailed. This guy decided to dance a jig instead.
I didn't know there were this many old flatlanders left in the world, let alone so many who still rip. Half of the crowd around the school playground, on the sand in Newport Beach.
Seriously, though it wasn't an actual parking lot, this is one of the coolest spots for flatland I've ever seen. Bars and seat gut lever.
