BMX Plus! Freestyle's Raddest Tricks- the first freestyle video I bought

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.  

 

Freestyle Pioneers: Bob Haro

Bob Haro invented BMX freestyle.  If you ride flatland, ramps, pools, park, street or anything similar, you do that, because Bob Haro started doing tricks on his bike in the 1970's, and then started doing trick shows. Bob Haro invented BMX freestyle, that's what us old riders all learned, when getting into "trick riding," the emerging sport of BMX freestyle, in the early 1980's.  Yes, other people rode BMX bikes in pools, and most BMX racers jumped and did some tricks.  But Bob started doing trick shows at BMX races, and those early demos led to the growth of "trick riding," which became BMX freestyle, all the non-racing aspects of BMX, except dirt jumping.  This short video above gives a quick overview of Bob Haro talking about riding skateparks in the mid 1970's, then starting the business that became Haro Designs, and eventually Haro Bikes.  This video is from 1985 or 1986, I believe.

Bob Haro (left) and Bob Morales- around 1979 or 1980.  This is the first touring BMX freestyle team, and two incredibly entrepreneurial young guys.  Bob Haro invented the first BMX freestyle bike in 1983, redesigning the twin top tube Torker to work better for trick riding.  He sold Haro, and has been doing other design work in the decades since.  Bob Morales designed the first Dyno bike, and helped design the GT performer freestyle bike, and later put out Auburn race bikes, and Morales flatland bikes.  He started the ASPA, put on BMX skatepark contests, and then the AFA, the flatland and ramps comps of the 1980's.  He went on to create mountain bike and motorcycle components.  Early BMX freestyle was about shows, and was completely intertwined with entrepreneurship.  If this photo is from 1980, then Haro is about 22 and Morales is about 17.  

Bob Haro riding quarterpipe and wedge ramp- somewhere between 1981-1983

Bob Haro- one man freestyle show in the U.K. in 1983- This 5 1/2 minute video shows Bob doing a demo, and then has a short interview.  While these tricks look pretty simple now, Bob was inventing the foundational tricks that everything since has been built on.  Do you ride now?  Go out and try to do a back wheel 540 on a wedge ramp or bank, like Bob does in this video.  Forty one years later and that's still a solid trick, and not as simple as it looks, is it?   

Bob Haro describing the original Haro Freestyler bike in 1984, It came out in 1983, and was later known as the Haro Master.  This is the first BMX bike designed specifically for trick riding.

23Mag page on Bob Haro- This page includes a BMX drawing from 1976, rock walk how-to from 1979, and several more really early photos and some written description of Bob's work in BMX freestyle.

Bob Haro and the original BMX freestyle bike, the Haro Freestyler, 1983.  Photo nabbed from internet.

The BMX chase scene from the movie E.T. (1982)-  Bob Haro was one of the riders in this scene- In the recent Unclicked podcast with Bob Haro (linked below), Ryan Fudger and Dennis Enarson talk with Haro about the two early movies featuring BMX, E.T.- The Extraterrestrial from 1982, and RAD from 1986.  To people coming up after the 1980's in BMX, those two movies seem comparable.  But there was a huge difference between them.  E.T. was a mainstream hit movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, and it grossed over $359 million in North America, $619 million worldwide, and sold over 120 million movie tickets, in theaters.  Riding a BMX bike in E.T. in 1982 would be like riding in a BMX chase scene in a movie like one of the Harry Potter movies, or a Star Wars or Avengers movie in recent years.  E.T. was that big in its day, at a time when most people had never really seen BMX racing before.  

RAD, on the other hand, cost $3 million to make, and completely bombed in theaters, grossing only $2 million.  Theaters were the game in the 1980's movies, the whole home video market was just getting going in the 1980's.  As I wrote in one of my most popular blog posts, I hated RAD when it came out.  I actually liked the Kevin Bacon bicycle messenger movie, Quicksilver, which came out about the same time, much better.  That bombed in theaters, too, grossing $7 million, after costing $10 million to make.  

RAD, however, turned into a cult classic, in the early 1990's when the home video market grew.  In the home video era, RAD was watched over and over by kids coming up then, and drew a lot of people into BMX.  RAD, as you older riders know, featured Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo stunts for the main characters, plus several other top BMXers of that era.  Quicksilver featured Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, along with bike stuntman Pat Romano, in the jam session scene, which was more like an actual BMX freestyle session in those days.  

So E.T. showed a really cool scene of BMX jumping and riding to well over 100 million people in 1982, just as BMX freestyle was beginning to emerge as a separate thing to BMX racing.  RAD was a whole movie about BMX, that despite a pretty goofy story line, it showed BMX riding to hundreds of thousands of kids in the early 1990's, and drew a lot of new riders into the sport, earning is a cult status to riders coming up in that era.    

Bob Haro BMX Masters- This is a short video talking about his art and cartoons.  Bob's artwork is what first got him drawn into working at BMX Action magazine in the mid 1970's.  

Talk Tales- This is a 7 minute video, from 2023, of Bob talking about life as a kid, freestyle, his music, and other stuff.  

Born from BMX/Bell Helmets- This is a short clip of Bob looking back at drawing, and how he developed his cartoon style of BMX drawings.  

Bob Haro- Master Class in France in 2012 (put on by Frank Beliot & crew)-  59 minutes-This is a one hour video, with Bob talking about his whole life in BMX freestyle, and work since.  He shares a lot of his own photos in this presentation.  This predates all of the more recent podcasts, and is Bob himself giving a talk about his life and work.  

Unclicked podcast with Bob Haro- 2:32:00- Ryan Fudger of Our BMX and current Haro pro rider Dennis Enarson, sit down with Bob Haro and talk about his whole life, in and out of BMX, for 2 1/2 hours, in early 2024.  

Bob Haro with an edged, coaster brake kickturn, on an early quarterpipe, about 1982 or 1983.  Photo nabbed from internet. 

This new blog post idea, looking at pioneers in BMX freestyle, was inspired by the recent Unclicked podcast with Bob Haro.   While I really liked the podcast, I realized while listening to it that today's BMX media people weren't around in the 1980's.  So there are certain questions they may not even think to ask, or aspects of that first decade of BMX freestyle that they just aren't aware of.  I'm a rider and industry guy from that era, who is now a blogger operating outside today's real world of BMX.  I decided I could do a series of blog posts where, instead of my personal stories of some event, I gather the best videos and material about a pioneering rider, and bring the best info about that rider into one place.  This isn't everything there is about Bob Haro on the web.  But if you want to learn about Bob's influence on BMX freestyle, going through the videos and info in this post will give you a solid understanding of who he was, what he's done, and his input in the early years of BMX freestyle.  In future "Freestyle Pioneers" posts, I'll do the same with other riders and industry people.  

Dave Vanderspek has been inducted into the US BMXA BMX Hall of Fame

Here's Dave Vanderspek on a local news segment about him and the Curb Dogs from 1985.  

It's really cool to see Dave Vanderspek, leader of the Curb Dogs, inventor of the Vander Roll, and amazing BMX freestyle rider, inducted into the BMX Hall of Fame.  As I've written about several times before, I lived in San Jose in 1985-86, and published my first zine there.  That zine, San Jose Stylin', is what landed me the job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines in August of 1986.  Most of what I covered in 11 issues of that zine was the Bay Area scene, was made up of Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and the Curb Dogs, and Robert Peterson, and the Skyway riders.  

So I knew Vander, and the other guys in that scene, and rode with them on the weekends, whenever I could get up to the monthly Beach Park Ramp Jams, or San Francisco.  The Golden Gate Park/Bay Area freestyle scene was the most cohesive scene of that era.  Most of the guys were at Golden Gate Park, on Sunday afternoons, every week.  All of the pros, Dave, Maurice, Robert Peterson, Rick Allison, Oleg Konings, and Hugo Gonzales, were always cool with helping newer and younger riders learn and improve.  That happened, to some degree, in most scenes then.  But it was a much bigger thing in the Bay Area.  

Dave, Maurice, Bert, and all those pros would help all of us learn new tricks.  Just the little things, "Hey, if you put your foot here, it would help you come out of it," or "I think if you lean this way, it'll help."  That kind of thing.  Some pros back then were just more into their own riding.  They wanted to learn new tricks and push the boundaries.  Teaching new riders wasn't a priority for many pros of the day.  The NorCal guys wanted everybody in the scene to improve, and have fun riding, not just themselves.  

The Golden Gate Park scene had a different vibe than every other freestyle scene I saw at the time.  Even if some brand new kid rolled up, who could only do one or two tricks, they'd help the kid learn something new that session.  That "make the whole scene better" vibe seemed to emanate from Dave, and through everyone else.  The more time went on, the more that had an effect on me, and still does, decades later.  

The reality is, I talked some smack about Vander back then, and was definitely jealous of how much magazine coverage he got, early on.  I'd seen photos of him in the magazines, before moving to San Jose.  Then I met him, and he seemed like a total goofball, he totally reminded my of Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  I didn't take him seriously at first.  

The best BMX photo I ever shot, this photo was complete luck.  I was just holding the camera.  Dave Vanderspek, at speed, at the Palm Springs Tramway Road GPV event, 1987.  

Then I got the job at the magazines, and learned that Andy and Lew at FREESTYLIN' were some of Vander's biggest fans.  It was actually in the handful of times I saw Dave after moving to Southern California, that I gained a lot more respect for him.  After meeting and riding with several other top pros, and seeing Dave ride some more times, I realized just how good of a rider he was.  

At one of the Velodrome contests, I rolled up to this little patch of pavement in the infield, near the contest area.  Dave was sitting there on his bike.  He started pedaling slow, and said, "Check this out."  Then he did a huge bunnyhop, and landed in a pedal stall, on the hubba part of this small set of stairs.  This was 1987, a year before the Santee Meet-the-Street contest.  Street riding was barely even a thing then.  Dave's pedal stall was like four feet off the ground.  Street grinds hadn't been invented yet. Wall rides hadn't been invented yet.  And Vander was doing this trick that would be impressive now, 36 years later.  Then he hopped down, and said, "Hey your frame is cracked."  Sure enough, there was a hairline crack in the Raleigh I was riding, right at this weird gusset it had.  I hadn't even noticed.  He explained why the weird design of the gusset would always be prone to cracks at that spot, just the way it was designed.  I later told Raleigh, and they changed the design, making the gusset much better.  

A couple of other times, Dave would roll up at an event, and talk about all the new tricks I'd learned since moving to SoCal.  For a few minutes we'd just talk about tricks or new stuff we were working on.  I had only ridden with Dave, at the Beach Park Jams, or Golden Gate Park, maybe a dozen times, while living in San Jose.  But he remembered what tricks I had been doing then, and commented on new stuff I was doing, a year or two later.  It wasn't just me, he did that for all the riders he knew, at any level.  So he'd  blow my mind with some crazy trick or move, then just sit there and talk a bit, like we'd been hanging out, riding together for years.  He truly wanted to see everyone he knew keep improving, and get as good at freestyle, or skating, as possible.  For a guy who was a solid, pro caliber rider, and who was always busy self-promoting shows, and all kinds of other stuff all the time, that was amazing.  

So it's great to see him honored in the BMX Hall of Fame now.  Here are a few other videos of Dave and the Curb Dogs, Skyway, and other NorCal riders and skaters of that era.  

"Nobody got hurt, nobody got arrested."  Dave has the white cap on backwards.  

Dave Vanderspek Tribute video 

Vision Street Wear's Freestylin' Fanatics (1988)- Dave's segment is at 11:20

Curb Dogs video #1 (One of the first few BMX freestyle videos ever- 1987)

2023 BMX Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony (Maurice Meyer accepts on Dave's behalf at 2:49:50)

And just for good measure, here's a local news segment about Maurice Meyer, which also shows the Golden Gate Park scene, and several of the amateur riders, as well.

Dave Vanderspek tribute drawing I did a couple years ago.  #sharpiescribblestyle

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BMX Plus! video- Freestyle's Raddest Tricks- My first BMX freestyle video

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."  

-Brian Scura