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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Op cord short shorts for guys. Izod ankle socks, yeah, they actually had the little fucking alligators on them. Nike Pegasus running shoes because I sucked at running cross country before I sucked at BMX. The Vuarnets are cool, I found them in a field. This is me as manager of the tiny Boise Fun Spot amusement park, balancing on my Skyway T/A, in the summer of 1985. Yep, a lame freestyler (one of three in Boise then), running racing frame pads while doing balance tricks. Let's face it, it was all downhill after this photo was taken. Photo by Vaughn K., my co-worker at the Fun Spot.
Top Ten Reasons The White Bear Sucks
(One) He looks gay as fuck in that photo from Boise in 1985 (above), he must be a fag. (Actually I'm just a lame straight guy who's been fat, ugly, broke, and had bad teeth for the last 20-25 years, so it's not like women have been beating down my door or anything).
(Two) He had terrible, shaky camera work in this video, although the ending is cool. "Somebody fire that cameraman right now." Heh, heh, heh...
(Three) He spent way too much time writing about trying to do bunnyhop tailwhips in his blog, and never, EVER, pulled one. Bill Nitschke invented that trick, let him enjoy the props for being the first guy to land it.
(Four) He's a loser... anybody who can manage to be homeless for 17 or 18 years must be smoking crack or meth or something. How could anyone not get a job for 17 years? (Actually no alcohol, no drugs, I even kicked my Diet Coke habit a couple of years ago. I do have a serious 7-11 pepperoni pizza habit though, after my years driving a taxi, and then being unable to find any job in NC for ten years, I actually have no work history to even put on a resume' at this point). Either I manage to get a little, one man publishing/content creating business going, or I'll do the work for free. Time will tell which way it ultimately works out.
(Five) He hasn't been able to jump anything at Sheep Hills since about 1992, when The Bowl was still a thing. And he had the audacity to write a "History of Sheep Hills" post on his Substack. What the fuck is a Substack, anyhow?
(Six) He writes like he's still a BMX guy, but he hasn't ridden a bike since like 1995 or something. (Actually I rode nearly every day from June of 1982 until August of 2003. The last trick I learned was nollie 180's on a speed bump, in a parking lot in Garden Grove, across the freeway from the Van's Skatepark and The Block of Orange. I started gaining weight working as a taxi driver in late 2003, got really fat, and haven't ridden hardly at all since, that's true).
(Seven) He's fat, ugly, and he smells bad. I know you're homeless, but damn dude, jump in the ocean once in a while or something.
(Eight) He wroteFREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog and totally pissed off everyone at Wizard Publications. (Yep, I wrote that blog in 2008-2009 (over 100 posts). Then I wrote the original Freestyle BMX Tales blog from 2009-2012 (over 500 posts). I deleted both of those blogs completely from the internet in the fall of 2012).
(Nine) He actually admits that he used to work in a porn store. He must be a perv. I bet he has sex with goats, aardvarks, and transgender pygmies or something. (Sorry to disappoint everyone, but a little free lesbian porn when I get a motel room keeps me away from the goats, pygmies, and such. I do find aardvarks cute, though, but in a purely platonic way).
(Ten) The guy made like three low-budget BMX videos, waaaaay back when, and they all sucked. And he acts like he's some big Hollywood producer or something. What an arrogant prick! Here's the Steve Emig: The White Bear's Film Festival. You can decide how much they all suck. Feel free to go off on Facebook to make it official.
(Bonus) The guy is 58-years-old, and he still calls himself "The White Bear," a nickname from 1992. Who the fuck does that? He writes blog posts making fun of himself, in the third person. Who does that? Besides, the guy is so damn sarcastic that I can never tell if he's kidding or he's serious. What a fucking kook! He's a fucking NEVER WAS sell out. And he draws pictures of other people's photos and calls it "art." What a loser.
Blogger's note- June 9- 2025- Everything on the list above is a reference to things that have been said to my face, said about me in social media comments, or said behind my back that I heard about later. My life has been really weird for about 25 years now, and I've been plugging through a whole lot of bullshit, sometimes my own, but also a lot that came at me from outside sources. It's a crazy world, shit happens. I'm still plugging away at trying to create pretty cool stuff, to the extent I'm able, every single day. I will continue to do that, as long as I can. In this post, I just decided to address a bit of the mud that's been slung at me, in my usual, sarcastic way.
When not writing self-deprecating posts while Old School BMX events are happening elsewhere, I do most of my writing on Substack these days. It's an online platform designed specifically for writers. To find more reasons to hate me, click the link below:
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.
The Canadian Beast, Jay Miron, just got inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame this past weekend. He ripped on flatland, he ripped on ramps, he ripped on street, and he did the first double backflip on a BMX bike in 1997 for Canadian TV. Congratulations Jay on induction into to the USA BMX Hall of Fame. I'd never seen this segment above before, and it would be amazing if it came out today, and it's absolutely mind blowing for 20 years ago, in 2004. See kids, this is what's possible if you have brakes on your bike (and practice for over 20 years and have balls the size of Manitoba).
This past weekend, BMX freestylers the late Jeff Watson and Hugo Gonzales got inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame in the "Early Freestyle" category, and Jay Miron in the "Modern Freestyle" category. Congratulations to all of you! You can watch their acceptance speeches on the link below. Jeff Watson at 1:34:30, Hugo Gonzales at 2:04:47, and Jay Miron at 2:39:06.
Here's the crazy thing, when you look up FREESTYLIN' magazine on YouTube, almost nothing comes up. How is there no documentary about FREESTYLIN'? Mark Eaton, what are you up to these days? This video above is former EXPN website editor Brian Tunney shooting a video at 3162 Kashiwa Street in Torrance, California, in 2019, I believe. That building was the longtime home of Wizard Publications, which put out BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, as well as two or three issues of Homeboy magazine. The words, and especially the photos, that came out of this building in the 1980's, changed the lives of thousands of us BMXers and early freestylers in that era. This is the best video I could find paying homage to FREESTYLIN'.
Bob "Oz" Osborn, founder and owner of Wizard Publications, begins the introduction for the FREESTYLIN' magazine staff introduction at 30:30 in that link above.
Last weekend, September 21st, 2024, the legendary staff of FREESTYLIN' magazine was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the BMX freestyle "Industry" category. The staff of FREESTYLIN' inducted includes the editor Andy Jenkins, assistant editor Mark "Lew" Lewman, managing editor/proofreader Don Tosach, art director Janice Jenkins, associate editor/photographer Spike Jonze, advertising salesperson Valerie Adlam, and receptionist/mild-mannered superhuman Dian Harlan. They are all completely deserving of this honor, and it's great to see them all included in the official BMX Hall of Fame. This group of people inspired thousands of us kids doing tricks on bikes around the U.S. and around the world, including me. Wizard Publications owner Bob Osborn, and his daughter and photographer, Windy Osborn are already members of the BMX Hall of Fame.
FREESTYLIN' magazine was the bible of 1980's BMX freestyle. It was, by far, the hippest, coolest, most stylish BMX magazine ever. I was a dorky BMX freestyler in Boise Idaho, way up at 43 degrees of latitude, when the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine came out in the summer of 1984. I didn't even see the first two issues of it until long after they came out. The first issue of the mag that I got my hands on was issue #3. It had SE Racing freestyler Todd Anderson one the cover, blasting a one footed tabletop over a convertible Volkswagen bug full of SE's BMX racing legends, including Scot Breithaupt, Perry Kramer, Toby Henderson, and several others. From that issue on, I spent hours reading every single issue of FREESTYLIN' for the next several years.
Like so many other riders out there at the time, when it was definitely not cool to do tricks on a "little kid's bike," FREESTYLIN' was the main thread showing us kids around the world what was happening in Southern California in BMX freestyle, and later all over the U.S. and the world. In 1984-1985-1986 and beyond, we didn't have the internet, YouTube, or even very many BMX freestyle videos in those early years. FREESTYLIN' was where we got the news, new tricks, style, attitude, and DIY ethic that was the rapidly changing and progressing sport of BMX freestyle. As my blog readers know, BMX freestyle changed the entire course of my life, and FREESTYLIN' magazine was a huge inspiration in those years. I had a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' issues, until I lost them in a move back east in 2008.
Here are a few clips of some of the FREESTYLIN' magazine staff members since the 1980's.
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
I've been doing a lot of writing on a platform designed for writers, called Substack. 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.
This is footage I shot in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in the spring of 1989. It was only when an edited version of this came on Facebook this past Sunday, that I realized that day, March 31. 2024, was the 35th anniversary of two legendary vert tricks.
At 11:29 in this clip you see Joe Johnson, riding for GT Bikes, land the first double taiwhip on vert. I'm pretty sure it was his first double tailwhip ever, but definitely the first in a contest and on video.
Then, at the end of this video, at 14:43, you see Mat Hoffman, in his first full contest as a pro rider, land the first 900, in a contest and on video. Not to take anything away from Mat's awesome accomplishment, but Mike Doninguez said he landed the 900 months before, on his own ramp, a couple of times. There's a shot of him at the 2-Hip contest at Ron Wilkerson's Enchanted Ramp coming really close to landing one. But, no photos or video exist of Mike Dominguez doing a 900. So this 900 by Mat is the first time Mat landed the 9, the first BMX 900 in a contest, the first BMX 900 in a video, and the first aerial 900 in any action sport. Even snowboarders hadn't landed the 9 in 1989. Mat and Joe changed BMX history with these two tricks, 35 years ago, this past Sunday.
This video segment was edited by Eddie Roman, for the 1990 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man. He and some friends did the funny commentary to this clip, "Fire that cameraman!" Heh, heh, heh. For all of you youngsters out there, double tailwhips and 900's are older than most of you are. For all of the old schoolers, like me, thinking, "Holy shit that was 35 YEARS AGO?" Yep, we're fucking old. But that's life.
For those of you wondering about the history of spinning tricks in BMX, check out this crazy blog post I did back in 2021:
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- 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?
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 Voelker, blasting ten feet out of the rickety, 8 foot high, AFA Socko quarterpipe in 1987. This photo ran in BMX Action, not sure what issue, in 1987. Dave was always one of the most fun riders to watch ride, in contests or just screwing around outside. His riding blew my mind many times. #steveemigphotos
This wasn't a traditional contest, it was a Guinness Book of World Records contest. Brian Blyther won the high air part, with a 10' 2" air, setting the first official world record high air. Everyone new it was close with Voelker's high air, but the judges gave Brian the win. But with my Pentax ME Super, which was pretty much idiot proof, I snapped this shot from across the way showing that Dave Voelker at what looks to be about 10' 2". Dave rode his whole career for GT, touring the U.S. and the world promoting GT and Dyno bikes, and freestyle itself, for 25 years or so. He was always one of the guys going the biggest, and one of the most exciting riders to watch.
There are two ways to great photos. You can shoot photos of something great. Or you can shoot great technical photos of something. Ideally, a good photographer continually improves their the technical skills, so they can, when the opportunity presents itself, shoot a technically great photo of something great. Then, in more controlled circumstances, they can shoot incredibly good technical photos of something that may not be great in of itself, but the quality of the photo makes it an amazing shot. Some of the most historic photos are those taken by average photographers that happened to be at the right place at the right time to capture a historic moment.
Technology always scared me, I never did learn how to use a light meter, for example. So I've always tried to take pretty good shots of things that are interesting by their nature. I got interested in shooting photos during a couple of weeks when we studied photography in 9th grade physics class. I was living in New Mexico at the time, and had a little, old, 126 box camera. I started trying taking cool photos with that. I remember shooting photos of a tortoise that wandered through our yard, next to a model car. I hand made a little road sign that said, "Nuclear Test Site 2 miles." The tortoise, in the photos was bigger than a car, a nuclear mutant. Those weren't very good, but it got me started trying to take interesting photos. At some point I upgraded to a Kodak 110 Instamatic, the vacation snapshot camera almost everyone owned in the 1970's and early 1980's. That's when I started looking through big photo books at the mall, and trying to take better photos, when I was about 14, as a kid in New Mexico, with the simplest of cameras.
Also snapped with my Pentax ME Super, this is Dave Vanderspek bombing down the Palm Springs Tramway road on his GPV in 1987. This photo ran in BMX Action, FREESTYLIN', and Homeboy magazines. Andy, Lew, and Gork were big fans of Vander.
This was the first really big Gravity Powered Vehicle, or GPV race, in the summer of 1987. Unreel Productions shot video of the event, at 5:08 in this clip. GPVing was the little side sport to BMX and freestyle. It was first started by BMX guys, bombing down local hills on bikes with no pedals or chains, built from the spare bike parts in the garage. A few different groups got into GPV's. By this race, fairings had entered the picture, giving a huge advantage on this long, steep, relatively straight road outside of Palm Springs. But NorCal BMX legend, and Curb Dogs head guy, Dave Vanderspek went with the helmet, leathers, and his supertuck body technique.
I'll be honest, this photo was pure luck. It was only the second roll of film where I tried to shoot panning shots. With my Pentax, and its stock 50 mm lens, I could set the frame speed I wanted (1/15th or 1/30th of a second here, I forget), and it would automatically set the F-stop for the lighting conditions. At this event, BMX racer Tommy Brackens actually passed the video camera motorcycle, in a turn, and the motorcycle was doing 85 mph. Pat Wallace, the cameraman facing backwards on that motorcycle, told me this himself. These guys were hauling ass.
But I shot this photo within 100 yards of the starting line, and Vander was maybe doing 20 mph at this point. But the helmet came out sharp, and the panning worked well, and gave the impression of the real speeds the GPV racers were hitting that day. This photo ran in BMX Action, FREESTYLIN', and Wizard Publications two shot magazine, Homeboy. I had three or four photos, on the roll of 36, that came out about as good as this shot. Those guys loved this shot, since it was Dave Vanderspek, and used it in all three magazines, months after I'd been laid off there. Even BMX Plus! photographer John Ker complimented me on this photo, and John is a seriously technical photographer who has shot thousands of photos. If he says, "Great photo," that's a serious compliment in the BMX world.
Eddie Fiola (front), and Chris Lashua, practicing synchro wedge ramp stalls, while taking a break from doing shows at the World's Expo in Vancouver, over the summer of 1986. #steveemigphotos
I shot this photo in the little town square area of Whistler, British Columbia. At the time, they were just starting to promote the idea of mountain bikers riding trails at ski resorts during the summer. Honestly, that seemed like a stupid idea to me, at the time. There were hardly any mountain bikers, even up in the mountains, in 1986. The sport hadn't really taken off then. Obviously, I was wrong, and now things like this happen right there in the center of Whistler, where this and the next photo were snapped.
I flew up to Boise, Idaho, then rode up to this contest in the summer of 1986 with former freestyle teammate Justin Bickel, and his parents. They were my "freestyle family" for the first year and a half that I got seriously into BMX freestyle. This was a great week of riding fun, where I met a bunch of Canadian freestylers, Rob Dodds and Rob Thring, among them. The BMX Worlds were being held in Whistler that weekend, and they held an amateur freestyle contest as well. The BMX Worlds were kind of a joke then, and most racers stayed in the States to race ABA points races that weekend. The only pros in Whistler were Stu Thompsen and Greg Hill, as I remember.
Us freestylers just sessioned all day, and half of the night that whole week. The Canadians taught Justin and me to play "Touchdown," which is bascially hockey-like slams on a BMX bike. We'd all ride around and run into reach other, trying to get the other guys to touch a foot, or their whole body, on the ground. The last guy still on the pedals was the winner. There were some pretty solid slams happening during that. It's a whole different kind of bike riding, Canadian-style, eh..
Out of nowhere, the GT/Brittania motorhome rolled into Whistler one day. Out popped Eddie Fiola and East coast pro, Chris Lashua. They hung out for two or three days, before heading back to Vancouver, where they were doing shows. I snapped the photo above, and the one below, while Eddie and Chris were riding, practicing and just goofing around. Both of these photos ran in the summer tour article in the December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine, while I was working there. They had no photos of Chris Lashua, so I showed them mine from earlier that summer, and these two made the cut.
Eddie Fiola rose to prominence at the very beginning of BMX freestyle as the first King of the Skateparks. He toured with GT for years, and then got into doing stunts in the TV and film industries. For years now he's worked as a stunt coordinator. But he still rides freestyle regularly.
Chris Lashua with a small ramp flipper, a front wheel 180 while hanging the back wheel over the top of the ramp. Whistler, BC, summer of 1986. #steveemigphotos
Chris ran the GT/Mountain Dew trick team on the East Coast for years in the 1980's. He went on to perform for both Ringling Bros. Circus, and then was a performer for Cirque du Soleil for many years, performing in the German Wheel. After that, he started a business building equipment for circuses. Several years ago, he and some friends founded Cirque Mechanics, which he runs and performs in still.
I had a couple of more photos published in the magazines, I think. After working for BMX Action and FREESTYLIN', I wound up contributing a photo or two, or an article or two, to all six BMX magazines of the 1980's, including BMX Plus! and Super BMX, and both of their freestyle magazines, as well as one issue of Homeboy. For most of 1987, I shot all the photos for the AFA newsletter, as well, but few copies of those have survived, so those photos are gone, except for one of Eddie Fiola I've seen on the web and social media.
I never became a great technical photographer, I still struggle with pretty basic technology, of all kinds, in the days when everyone shoots photos nearly every day. But I still love shooting photos, I have a pretty good eye, and get some cool shots now and then. I'm stoked I got a handful of photos published back in the 1980's, especially because I became a video guy, and shot a lot more video than still photos. I still see myself as some kid from Idaho who somehow stumbled into the BMX industry, and wound up seeing a lot of amazing stuff happen in the early days of BMX freestyle. I caught a little bit of that on film and video, along the way.
I've been doing a lot of writing on a platform called Substack, designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
This is Josh, from Daily MTB Rider channel, giving the lowdown on the crazy state of the massively overstocked bike industry right now. Long story short, pretty much everybody's got a ton of inventory they're trying to get rid of right now, and sales have dropped off dramatically from last year. And we're heading into a serious recession.
To begin, I've had nothing to do with the bike industry since the mid 1990's. In the 1980's, I worked at two magazines (BMX Action and FREESTYLIN') for few months. Then came the AFA for most of 1987. Then I worked at Unreel Productions, Vision Street Wear's video company, for 2 1/2 years, when VSW was the biggest clothing sponsor in BMX. In the early 1990's. I spent four years as a roommate to a guy who owned a little, upstart BMX company, which is now one of the BIG BMX companies, actually two BMX companies. So for about a decade, I was in or around the BMX industry, if not actively involved in a bike or component company. But that was a LONG time ago. I kept riding daily until 2003, but was out of touch with the industry.
I was there in January of 1989, at the big bike trade show in Long Beach. Walking around the show, I literally heard, over and over, in booth after booth, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." The big money pulled out of the BMX bike market, and BMX "died." It didn't die to us hardcore riders, but most of the industry and money walked away. At the Brooklyn Banks 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in the late summer of 1989, I had a room as a Vision/Unreel cameraman, with a pro rider. Dennis McCoy, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, Rick Thorne, and a couple other Kansas City riders wound up sleeping on the floor of our room, because they didn't have sponsors. That's how much money had been pulled out of the BMX world. The top vert rider and top overall rider, Mat and Dennis, didn't even have sponsors for a while.
Riding went underground, and first Ron Wilkerson with 2-Hip, and later, Mat and Swope with the B.S. contests, kept BMX freestyle comps alive. During those years, S&M Bikes, Hoffman Bikes, Standard Byke Company, FBM Bikes, Eastern Bikes, and several other BMX related companies, either started in business, or grew into the roots of BMX and freestyle. From 1990-1995, the riders took over the BMX industry.
Now in the early 2020's, I think we're going to see another huge breaking down and rebuilding of the BMX and overall bike industry. How can I say this, as a fat, ugly, Old School BMX industry Has Been who's outside the industry? Because I'm predicting this for EVERY industry. My geek side has been an amateur futurist, a guy looking at economics, future trends, and shit like that, for over 30 years now. I think we are in The Big Transition, as I call it. We are not totally out of the fading Industrial Age society, but we're not fully into a functional Information Age society yet. We're about 3/4 of the way through the transition period between the two. Click this link to learn more about The Big Transition.
In the spring of 2019, I did some online work for a kickass bike shop that wanted to open an online business. That ultimately didn't work out. But I was telling the owner the same thing back then. "There's a HUGE recession coming, and it's going to force a complete change to the bike shop and bike industry business model. At the time, April and May of 2019, that didn't make sense to him. I get that. My weird world view was based on reading all kinds of obscure books about trends (like Alvin Toffler's Revolutionary Wealth- 2006), 30 years of observing financial markets and trends, and what I had learned about internet marketing and internet businesses, as a long time blogger.
But there's no denying that there's some major change ahead for the BMX and over bike industry now. AND nearly every other industry. This didn't happen just because of Covid-19. It was going to happen anyhow. The pandemic just made this change happen much faster, by screwing up the supply lines, and the economy overall. A ten year transition got fast-forwarded into a 3 years of chaos, and now the afternath of figuring out new business models for the future.
Here's the takeaway from my perspective. Now, 23 years into the 21st century, we have a world where everyone has smartphones, and money can zoom around the world in seconds. A potential customer can test ride a $3,000 mountain bike, or a $1,200 BMX bike, in a bike shop. Then they can walk out to their car, in the parking lot of that bike shop, and order the exact bike for $100 cheaper online.In this changing world, what is the role of a bike shop? What is the role of a bike manufacturer? If kids don't all get $200 BMX bikes as 9-year-olds, will very many want to ride high end BMX bikes in their teens and 20's? Or will they do wheelies on big wheeled BMX cruisers or ride mountain bikes? I think bike shops will have to completely change their business model to survive. They won't make their money off of selling bikes in the future, as crazy as that sounds. So what will the main revenue source be? The same for manufacturers, I don't think they will make their money selling bikes in the future, I think some other aspect of the business (maybe media?) will turn into the primary revenue source.
I don't think this because I have some special insight into the bike world. I'm totally out of touch, and I admit that. I think this because it's happening in every other industry as well. So that's my basic thoughts, heading into Thanksgiving Weekend, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then a God-awful recession in the months afterwards. I think the bike industry, and many other industries, are heading "back into the early 1990's," or a time much like it. A time of TRANSITION.
What will the bike and BMX industries become? Hopefully a better version of the best that they have been. Time will tell. Feel free to dive into the comments about this post on my Facebook.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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