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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Texas Pro Flatland was the official American Freestyle Association video for the flatland part of the Austin, Texas AFA Masters contest in 1987. This is the third BMX video, of six, that I produced and directed for the AFA in that year, with Unreel Productions video editor Dave Alvarez editing, and him and Don Hoffman guiding me through the process.
Austin, Texas. It was a hot bed for great music going back into the 1960's. The bars on 6th Street were a scene for a long time before people from other parts of the country ever heard of it. Then came Michael Dell, selling computers from his dorm room, and creating Dell Computers. Then came more tech companies. Keep Austin Weird as a motto. The South by Southwest music festival. That morphed into SXSW music/tech festival. Now it costs about $6,000 or so to rent a treehouse for a week on Air BnB. Well, now the real estate market is tanking in Austin, after soaring to astronomical levels in recent years. That's what Austin has become known for over the last few decades.
But way back in 1987, when BMX freestyle was just starting its first peak of popularity, Austin was already a hot city for freestyle. Robert and Ruben Castillo lived there. I think the Ninth Street trails were there already. That's what I knew about Austin when we flew down there for the AFA Freestyle Masters contest, the third of six comps in 1987. As the editor of the AFA newsletter (and all around AFA roadie), I flew there with Bob Morales, his girlfriend at the time, Suzy-Q, and his sister Riki, who also worked in the AFA office. It was storming when we all got to the hotel the Thursday night before the contest, as I recall. Bob parked the rental minivan under the little roof, and went in to check into our rooms. As Suzy, Riki, and I were sitting in the minivan, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson opened the driver's side front door, hopped in the driver's seat and kidnapped us.
The next day, we got up early, got some breakfast, and headed to the arena to get everything ready for practice, and the contest on Saturday and Sunday. A couple of guys who were not freestylers, and didn't have kids that freestyled, ran the local contests in Texas. The Patterson brothers kicked butt at supporting the local freestyle scene and putting on contests. One was a competitive water skier, and both were really cool, down to Earth, hard working guys. They also built the first really solid, steel framed quarterpipe, which became the official AFA ramp at this contest. With the Patterson brothers running the local AFA scene, and doing a lot of legwork for the Masters contest, we knew it would rock.
My main personal memory of this contest was going riding one of the nights with some locals and some of the riders I knew, downtown on 6th Street. After getting a jam circle going there, one of the locals suggested we go into one of the bars for a couple of beers. We all piled our bikes around a street sign, or some post, and locked parts of the bikes together, then headed into the bar. We had two or three beers, and sat there as some really good blues band jammed in the small bar.
After an hour or so, we headed back outside. I told the local guys, "Man, that bluesy guy on the guitar, with the big hat, that guy was pretty good." They laughed, "Pretty good? Dude, that was fucking Stevie Ray Vaughn." I had no idea who Stevie Ray Vaughn was, but I learned I liked the blues that night. About a year later, one of his videos went into heavy rotation on MTV, and the rest of the world who didn't know about him got to hear his music. Then he died tragically in a helicopter crash in 1990. There's now a statue of him in Austin down by the river.
On to the AFA Masters contest. Nearly all of the top riders were there, and it was a solid contest, one that changed BMX freestyle forever. I produced and directed this video, which sounds much cooler than it was, but hadn't watched it for about 35 years, until the other day. The video cameraman was Don Hoffman, who founded Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company.
In the intro, we see Frank Scura, BMX industry guy, brother to rider/inventor Brian Scura. I remember Frank most from the Odyssey "Cowboy" ad, and just being a funny guy at events. Frank is doing his Joe Isuzu impression (popular car commercials at the time), trying to get Don into the contest. Obviously they were just goofing around, since no one knew at the time if this footage was ever going to be made into a video. When editor Dave Alvarez and I went in to edit the video, he pieced their skit together, with some cool clips of various riders. In those short clips we see several riders. FREESTYLIN' magazine assistant editor (and my former roommate the year before we made this video) Mark "Lew" Lewman, does the rollback to stylish slide around. We also see Dave Voelker doing his super fast 360 bunnyhops, which I always thought were really cool. We see Mongoose pro Rick Allison with some crazy Miami hopper balance moves, and Dennis McCoy with some classic combos, along with several other riders.
My only real instructions for this video were to show all the pros whole runs. We had enough time so I could show a little bit of amateur highlights. We see three of the really young kids, doing hard tricks, then a few others. Then we see Plywood Hood, and York Pennsylvania rider, Kevin Jones, who was still fairly unknown to most riders around the country at that time. The time ends on Kevin's run with an elephant glide combo.
Then he sets his bike up, after time runs out, and pulls up into a locomotive, a no handed version of the backyard, the first popular scuffing trick, which got really popular at the previous AFA masters contest in Oregon. That's the first time the locomotive was ever done in a national contest. He not only scuffed the locomotive a long ways, but he began to glide it, something no one outside of York, PA had ever seen before. That blew our minds as riders. It was so far ahead of the current progression of tricks. That trick changed the direction of BMX freestyle flatland forever.
BMX freestyle became a "follow Kevin Jones sport" for the next three or four years. When Don points the camera to all of us riders up in the stands screaming (yeah, I was in that group watching), that was real screaming, we were really that psyched. The judges had no idea how hard, crazy, and innovative that trick was, but all of us other riders did. We'd seen bits of the locomotive in the jam circles, but when Kevin did the locomotive in this contest, the entire direction of BMX flatland changed in that moment. The one wheel forward rolling tricks took over as the prime direction of the sport, and Kevin Jones and the Plywood Hoods led flatland for years to come. Yes, it really was that big of a deal in BMX freestyle.
Then I added in some footage of Rick Moliterno, still an amateur then, because he was another guy who ripped, but never got enough magazine coverage, mostly because he was a Midwest guy, and the magazines were all in California. So I gave him a little footage in this video. That's followed by a little fun with Industry guy McGoo getting Craig Grasso to breakdance for the camera. Grasso was always down to get weird and have some fun. Lew chimes in, doing the beatbox for Grasso's breakdancing set. Then Don Hoffman does a quick interview with John "Dizz" Hicks, CW rider and master of the wedge ramp.
Then we move on to the pros. Chris Lashua, East Coast pro, then riding for Mongoose, starts things off. This is not his best run ever, but he does a solid backwards wheelie into a decade, and some really cool flail boomerangs, among other tricks. Following Chris is the favorite of the day in pro flatland, Haro pro Dennis McCoy. Dennis throws down a really solid run, rapping to his mixtape the whole way through. Some of my favorites in his run are the I-hops into a Miami hopper, a fire hydrant into a cherry picker, and his super fast footwork and front end combos.
Another Mongoose pro, NorCal rider Rick Allison is up next. He puts in a solid run as well, with his step-up, step-down, step back up surfer being a favorite, and his unique Miami hopper variations. R.L. Osborn, one of the original innovators of BMX freestyle, riding for General, is up next. My favorites in his run are the unusual walkaround variation, the backwards rubber (grip) ride, which he invented, and his upside down backwards wheelie in a circle.
Robert Peterson, another pro from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park scene, follows R.L., riding for Mongoose at this point. Bert goes through his standards, including a one hand version of The Peterson balance trick, and several other balance tricks, including a stomach stand. He's followed up by Fred Blood, riding for General. OK, Fred was a pro roller skater who got into freestyle, and he got a lot of crap, and this is not his best run ever. But he lands a rollback into decade and a solid double tailwhip, among other things.
The next rider in pro flatland totally surprised me, watching this video again after 35+ years. Rich Sigur is known mostly as one of the top early skatepark riders. Here he's riding for Vision Street Wear, and throws down a solid flatland run, with plenty of style. He pulls off a solid backwards infinity roll, which very few people did well, and a cool front wheel spin to tailwhip combo, among his other tricks.
Following Rich we have flatland legend Woody Itson, riding for Diamond Back at the time. Woody always showed up with a solid run. Highlights in this run include the super power move of a rolling L-sit straight into a press handstand, his pedal picker to upside down back to pedal picker, the super long glide boomerang, and then the pedal picker to side picker to backwards pedal picker.
From Woody we head back to NorCal with Skyway pro Maurice Meyer. And the sound cuts out, I have no reason why. My favorites of his run were the one footed G-turn, the backwards framestand, and a no footed front wheel spin. From NorCal roots we head down to San Diego's only representative in this pro flatland class, Dave Nourie. Longtime Haro pro, Nourie impresses us with a cherry picker into a pedal picker (on a freewheel, which is nuts), a bunch of combos, his unique balance combos, and a stomach stand.
Those are the highlights of this first AFA Masters video from Austin, Texas, the capitol of Texas and of weird. That was one fun weekend for everyone involved. Dennis McCoy won pro flatland. You can see the top five at the end.
Austin stayed weird, and built upon the already solid BMX freestyle scene there. In later years Terrible One, aka T-1 entered the picture, there is Empire BMX distribution company there, and Jimmy Levan bunnyhopped the church gap in the 90's. BMX freestyle was already strong in Austin before it became the tech geek mecca and everything that's happened since. What about the old guys? Ruben Castillo is still riding, and Robert Castillo has a posse, just sayin'.
A couple of last Austin references. This movie, and others you're more familiar with, like this one and this one, were made by a director who got his start in Austin. One night at a bar in Austin, a casting director met this guy, talked over drinks for a couple of hours, and hired him to say about three lines for that director's movie. That little gig launched his movie career. Fucking Austin man. It's always been kinda batshit crazy, which is why so many people love the place. Well, except people from the rest of Texas, but that's another story.
BTW, the shot of Kevin Jones doing the locomotive made it into Joe Kid on a Stingray, at 2:19. I'm pretty stoked on that since, only 50 or 100 of these videos sold.
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Held in an arena in Portland, Oregon, in 1987, this video of AFA Freestyle Masters was the first video I ever directed. Getting the job of producing this video is another thing that pretty much changed the course of my life in the BMX world, though I didn't realize it until months later. Unreel Productions editor Dave Alvarez and founder Don Hoffman shepherded me through the video production process, because I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I haven't seen this video since about 1988, I just stumbled on it on YouTube.
The riders in the intro are: Ron Wilkerson, unknown, Darren Pelio (?), Mike Loveridge, Mike Perkins, Kenneth Evans, Jason Parkes, Rick Allison, Dave Vanderspek (with skateboard), Dave Nourie, Martin Aparijo, and R.L. Osborn (not counting the mugshots of riders watching).
This video has all of the pro flatland runs, start to finish, with no cuts. Basically, it was cheaper to do it that way, to not edit the runs. Plus , we didn't pay for the edit time at Unreel, ($150 to $200 an hour or so then), we couldn't take forever editing this. I think we edited this video in two eight hour edit sessions. The pro riders, in order, are: Robert Peterson, Josh White, Dave Nourie, Rick Allison, Ron Wilkerson, Martin Aparijo, Fred Blood, Dave Vanderspek, Chris Lashua, Pete Agustin, and R.L. Osborn.
I was at the Oregon contest, mostly as an AFA roadie, but also as a rider. What I remember most from this contest was that Oregon 1987 was the contest when scuffing took off, thanks to the backyard, the backwards on the back wheel scuffing trick, which came from out of the San Francisco Golden Gate Park scene. I think Tim Treacy invented the trick, but I can't remember for sure.
But that was the trick of the contest, everyone was trying to learn it in the jam circles around the contest site, and at the hotel at night. The first scuffing trick I know of was one Oleg Konings did, as far back as 1984, standing on one peg, on the side of the bike. Of the pros at this contest, only Robert Peterson did a single scuffing trick. But that one trick, the backyard, caught fire at this contest, and began to change freestyle forever. It started with a whole range of one wheel, forward rolling tricks, while scuffing. Soon after, came the popularity of the hang 5, the whiplash, Kevin Jones and the locomotive, and the trend towards one wheel scuffing, and later gliding tricks. So while there's not a single backyard in this video, that was the big bit of progression that happened at this contest.
Another phase of riding changes was the trend toward linking tricks together that was gaining popularity in early 1987. R.L. Osborn was one of the first pros to begin linking tricks. He also did the backwards grip ride at the end, a mind blowing trick for that time period. As far as the linking went, several other pros were still in the: do a trick, ride a bit, do a trick, ride a bit, format. That had been the standard until then. In the intro, you can see an amateur rider, who I think is Darren Pelio (SE uniform) linking several tricks, and also Kenneth Evans (white uniform) also linking several tricks. That was another rising trend at the time. Soon they merged, with the scuffing and gliding, one wheel rolling tricks being linked together. As far as riding goes, those were two big trends at this contest.
Another thing at this contest was the ever revolutionary Dave Vanderspek, always ahead of his time, using a skateboard in his run. You can hear the crowd cheering, we all loved it. The judges, unfortunately for Dave, didn't like it, and Dave placed at the back of the pro pack, getting 7th or 8th I think. After we got back to California, Dave called the AFA, trying to figure out why he didn't place higher. Since I had ridden up in the Bay area for a bit, I wound up on the phone with Dave for maybe 20 minutes, trying to explain that I didn't know why the judges didn't like the skateboard addition to his routine. He got more people cheering than anyone, but judging was based mostly on doing the most popular tricks well, not touching down a foot, and a little bit of originality. For what it's worth, Dave's crazy bike/skate run later got featured in the Vision Street Wear video Mondo Vision, which sold about 40,000 copies, and no other BMX flatlander got featured. In the long run, Dave Vanderspek got far more coverage from this contest than anyone else.
The one other thing I remember from this contest was that the parking lot had a couple of levels. There was a big, wide ramp up to the higher level, kind of like a flyout jump, but for cars. As the main AFA roadie guy, I got sent out in the rental minivan to run errands, several times, on the day or two before the contest. The parking plot was completely empty then. Every time I hit that ramp a bit faster, and finally hit it at 50 or 55 mph. I'm pretty sure I got the minivan completely off the ground. So that was memorable for me. I may have just topped out the shocks, but I think I got a couple inches of air. If so, that's the only time I ever jumped a motorized vehicle.
It would be hard for today's riders to even imagine the BMX freestyle world of the 1980's. No cell phones, no Instagram, no social media at all, no internet, and only a handful of people owned their own video cameras, mostly big VHS ones, personal computers were just becoming a thing, the revolutionary Apple Macinstosh had only been out for 3 years. One of them might have 6 KILObytes of memory, if you had an external hard drive. A kilobyte is 1/1,000th of a megabyte. None of those desktops could edit video, they were for word processing and simple games, the "desktop publishing" revolution was just getting going. Back in those days, when we went riding, we just went riding. Nobody was shooting video or photos, unless you were doing a magazine photo shoot. We didn't document our sessions, we just rode.
In 1987, when I produced this video for the American Freestyle Association (AFA), only BMX companies made videos, riders didn't make their own videos. The only rider-made freestyle videos I'd seen before this were some 5 minute clips edited by New York rider Carl Marquardt, Eddie Roman's school project, the 15 or so minute version of Aggro Riding and Kung Fu Fighting, and the Gork Video, which BMX Action editor Gork made, all from 1986.
In the mid 1980's, professional video cameras cost $20,000 to $50,000, and the equipment. To make a video of anything back then, from an industrial training or promotion video, to a local TV commercial, to a BMX freestyle video, you had to hire a professional video production company. One early BMX video cost $40,000 to shoot, edit, and produce. Then you had to get the VHS tapes made, about $3 each, and design and get boxes printed, and then ship out the orders. The BMX Action Trick Team/magazine video, Rippin', came out in 1985, and was produced in a full documentary style. That's what the video crew knew how to do, make short documentaries. The BMX Plus! video, Freestyle's Raddest Tricks, also came out in 1985, in more of a live TV show style. That was the first video I bought, and I watched it 7 times the day it came in the mail, twice while balancing on my bike in the living room through the whole video. Seriously. GT Bikes made GT-V in 1986, and only a handful more videos came out before 1990.
At that point, the first skateboard videos, , and Powell-Peralta's The Bones Brigade Video Show (1984), and Vision's SkateVisions (1985), had only come out a couple years earlier. The whole concept of making skateboard and BMX videos was just being invented. The natural idea was to make a "little movie on video," with some bad acting, and often some goofy comedy bits. There was no standard way to make a BMX or skateboard video yet. So different people were trying different ideas for several years.
The cheaper way to make videos was Wayne's World style, by producing TV shows for a local PBS channel, where you got to borrow cameras and editing equipment. You had to produce a TV show to air, but you could also work on your own ideas while you had the borrowed equipment, or make a home video out of your public access show. That's what Don Hoffman, who later formed Unreel Productions with Vision Skateboards did. If you're an Old School BMX freestyler and don't known who Don Hoffman is, you should. Don made videos like this, which also aired as local TV shows on PBS, before making videos for Vision Skateboards, Sims Snowboards, and Vision Street Wear. He started BMX and skateboard videos in about 1984, before the other companies got into the game. In this short clip, you can see Don Hoffman on the left, Bob Morales, who started the AFA, in the middle, and, of course, Eddie Fiola on the right. Don was actually the biggest pioneer of BMX videos, having made 7 or 8 PBS shows/videos by 1987, of most of the ASPA/AFA skatepark contests.
Bob Morales hired me to be the editor of the AFA newsletter, American Freestyle, in late January of 1987, about a month after I got laid off from FREESTYLIN' magazine because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. For the ballin' amount of $5 an hour (CA minimum wages was $3.35/hour then), I became the editor/photographer of the monthly newsletter that went out to about 3,000 AFA members. But the AFA was a tiny business, consisting of just Bob, his sister Riki, and me, when I started. So I also answered phones, put heat transfers on T-shirts, helped fold and address all 3,000 newsletters, was a roadie at AFA contests, and did anything else that came up. I went from a few months of sitting in an office without much to do most of the time, to doing all kinds of different stuff every day.
About three months into working there, Bob walked into the back office where I worked and asked if I wanted to make a TV commercial for the Austin, Texas contest. He learned he could buy local spots on MTV for $25 each. Since I had absolutely no idea how to make a TV commercial, and since I worked for Bob and new he expected me to do it anyway, I said, "Sure." There was a huge, "We'll figure it out as we go" attitude at the AFA, DIY all the way when it came to anything new. "How do I make a TV commercial," I asked. "Call Don Hoffman at Unreel, he'll tell you," Bob replied. I had no idea that 30 second conversation in 1987 would lead to me producing 15 BMX, skateboard, and snowboard videos, working on about 10 Vision videos, and working on over 300 TV episodes of about a dozen different shows. But that's how life works, sometimes little conversations or incidents lead to a whole new direction in life.
For the 1987 AFA Freestyle Masters national series, Vision Street Wear clothes were a sponsor. Part of the deal was that they would send a cameraman to each of the six contests around the country. For the Oregon contest, that was an Unreel producer/cameraman named Gary Langenheim. He had worked mostly on surf TV shows before Unreel. The deal with the video footage was that both AFA and Vision/Unreel could use any of the footage for commercials, home videos, or whatever. So I called up Don Hoffman at Unreel, and he said to come over the next day, and they'd give me VHS copies of all the raw footage, window dubs, as they were called. There was a box in the picture when the videos played, a "window" with rolling numbers. That told me the time code. I would watch the videos at home, and write down the time code of each shot I wanted, then make a list of all those shots. When I did that, they told me to come back, and they'd set up a session to come in an edit the video.
Luckily I rented a room from a guy who was an ex-video editor himself, so we had a cool TV and VCR set-up, which made it easier. So I spent a few nights and part of a weekend watching all the footage, maybe three hours of total footage. But when you pause the video to write down the numbers, it takes much longer to "log" the footage. I went through all the video, and wrote down everything interesting, the best riding, and also face shots and crowd shots (cutaway shots), and the start and end times of each pro rider's run. After about a week, I had that done, and called up Unreel again.
They scheduled an edit session with their video editor, a techno wizard in the form of a 25-year-old guy named Dave Alvarez, with long, straight brown hair, Vision board shorts, and a different tie dyed shirt every day. They led me back up to Unreel's $500,000 Betacam edit bay (similar to this), which was capable of editing broadcast TV shows. The room was in the back, on the second floor, of the Unreel offices. It had about a dozen monitors (TV screens), and two banks of VTR's (pro caliber VCR's), which cost $5,000 to $20,000 each. There were two really nice office chairs on a linoleum floor, then a bar type thing behind them. You could step up, and there was a big, black leather chair and couch, so other people could watch an editing session. That room blew my mind, and intimidated me. I felt like I was on the bridge in Star Trek in there, except the lighting was always low.
For the intro, Dave picked some music, which I think he and another guy named Dave had created and recorded themselves. It was either that or canned music, which in the 1980's was usually kind of bland, electronic music, that video producers could buy, and use in videos as much as they wanted. You could get seriously sued for using popular, copyrighted music in those pre-internet, pre sharing economy days. Canned music was used in a wide variety of home videos in those days. I remember hearing some of the same music used in a BMX Plus! video also used in multiple porno videos.
Anyhow, Dave introduced me to what he called "fancy news editing." By laying down the music track first, he could then play me a short piece of the music, and say, "I need a shot that looks like this sounds." I'd go through my log sheets, to a shot that was about the right length, that I thought would fit the music, and tell him the time code. Dave would pull up that shot, and fit it over the music, so that the beginning of the shot, any movements, and the end of the shot, would all fall right on beats of the music. This takes much longer to do well, than just chopping shots together, but it flows and watches much better. That was one of the first video editing tricks Dave Alvarez taught me.
It was really fun sitting there and directing a video, shot by shot, in that crazy edit bay room. Dave and I got along well, and only argued about the length of the shots. As a video editor, he wanted to "keep the video tight," and get out of a shot as quick as possible. That makes the video flow better, and not seem to lag. But as a BMX freestyler myself, I wanted to extend shots, to show that the rider actually landed the trick and rode away. We argued quite a bit at first about this, and wound up splitting the difference much of the time. He'd make shots a tad longer than he normally would have, but they would show the landing of the tricks, not just a really quick shot mid trick. Actions sports videos actually did change how videos and TV shows got made later on, bringing our views as riders and skaters into account. Things like shooting with a fisheye lens close-up, to get the full body in a shot, and riding skateboards or rollerblades with a camera, next to someone to get shot, and many other things became more popular from all their use in 1990's BMX, skateboard, snowboard, and other action sports videos.
In the edit bay, Dave and I spent most of the first day just editing the intro of the video, and the second day we edited the rest of the video, because they were much simpler, cuts edits, and because the pros flatland runs were 4 minutes long, with no editing during the runs. This made this a pretty simple video to edit, from Dave's standpoint. There were minimal effects, and long segments, so the editing went quick. "Effects are an excuse for bad editing most of the time" Dave taught me.
When we got to the credits, I was actually surprised when Dave told me I was the "director." In my head, a director was someone like Steven Spielberg or George Lucas, spending months or years making big, complicated movies. But Dave explained how it worked in home videos. The executive producer was one or more people who paid for the thing, or ran the company that paid for it. They often had nothing to do with actually making the video. The producer was the person in charge of actually making sure the whole project got done. The director was the person who actually picked what shots went in the video, and in what order. The editor was the person actually at the controls, editing the video clips together. So, for the whopping sum of $250 that I got paid to be the producer and director of this AFA video, I was both producer and director. It sounded way more prestigious than it was, but I was cool with that.
After we finished editing the show, Unreel made a duplication master, that's a high quality copy of the original master tape, so they didn't wear out the master tape every time they made copies from it. Everything was edited on actual videotape then, digital video editing was still a few years away for the high end TV shows, and about a decade away for prosumer video. Since the AFA only sold a few dozen of this video, and the ones that followed, Unreel made us a few copies when we needed them. I went over Costa Mesa and picked them up, then we'd ship them out at the AFA ourselves.
Home videos generally cost about $30 each then, so even after paying me and paying Unreel for the video copies, there was a good profit in it for the AFA. Selling 40 to 60 of each of these contest videos, made the AFA maybe $500 to $1,000 bucks on each video. That's not huge by video standards. But money was always tight at the AFA. Bob Morales didn't take much of a salary from the AFA, if any at all. He actually made his living then mostly from creating ads for several BMX companies, and his other business ventures, like Mor Distributing, and Auburn Bikes.
So that's how I wound up being one of the first actual riders to produce and direct a few of the early, if not that popular, BMX freestyle videos. I ended up doing six videos for the AFA in 1987, one each for flatland and ramps, from the Oregon, Texas, and Ohio contests. A couple of the clips from those videos made it into Mark Eaton's Joe Kid on a Stingray BMX documentary, many years later, in 2005. The shot at 2:18 of Matt Hoffman in that trailer, and the following shot of Kevin Jones doing a locomotive, were from the AFA videos I did. I had nothing to do with Joe Kid on a Stingray, but it was cool to see a couple of those AFA videos survived for over15 years, and that Mark used a couple shots from them.
I mentioned at the top of this post that Dave Alvarez was a techno wizard of an editor. I'm not just saying that because he made this video, and the next 5 I did for the AFA, look really professional. Local TV new personality, Chuck Henry, ended up stealing Dave from Unreel Productions in late 1989, I think. Dave went to work at KABC, editing Chuck's news magazine show, Eye on L.A.*. In his first year of editing in Hollywood, Dave Alvarez won an emmy for his work, so he really was, and is, a top notch video editor.
So that's the story of the first video I produced and directed. The Oregon Pro Flatland video led to those five other videos for the AFA, and then to getting hired to work at Unreel Productions in December of 1987. Beginning as a guy dubbing videos for different people at Vision and Unreel, I wound up becoming an decent cameraman, and working on a whole lot more home videos and TV shows, over the next 8 years. That 30 second conversation with Bob Morales, agreeing to make a low budget TV commercial, changed the direction of my working life.
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This video came out in late summer 1987, I think. After getting laid off from my life changing job at FREESTYLIN' magazine at the end of 1986, I got hired by Bob Morales to be the editor/photographer of the AFA newsletter. But I did all kinds of things there. One day Bob walked in and asked, "Do you want to direct a TV commercial for the Austin contest? I can get really cheap commercial spots on MTV there." That question started my video career.
The year was 1987, it was the era when the younger quarterpipe schooled BMX vert riders were begining to rival the older skatepark schooled riders in skill level. Mike Dominguez was the king of quarterpipe riding, with Eddie Fiola and Brian Blyther right up there (neither was at this contest), the old skatepark rivals. But guys like Dave Voelker, Josh White, and Todd Anderson were closing in on them. Dino Deluca, Mat Hoffman, and Joe Johnson were still amateurs then. But all of these guys were clocking in airs above 8 feet out, sometimes in the 10 to 12 foot range. This same year, Ron Wilkerson, already a major touring pro for Haro, started the 2-Hip King of Vert Halfpipe series, which led vert BMX away from quarterpipes over the next few years, and into halfpipe riding. This AFA Freestyle Masters contest took place in Portland, Oregon, in the Spring of 1987.
Back then, the new little offshoot sport of BMX freestyle was about four years old, and BMX racing was 17, barely old enough to drive. BMX freestyle started as trick riding shows in the late 1970's. Then it started as a sport in 1983, with Bob Morales promoting the first BMX skatepark contests. The first American Freestyle Association flatland and quarterpipe contest was in Venice Beach, in June of 1984. Things were growing fast, and by 1987, all three BMX magazines had spawned a freestyle magazine as well.
There were three of us in the little AFA office when I started, and a couple more, a few months later. I did a little bit of everything there. I answered phone calls, put heat transfers on T-shirts, drove the van and big trailer (Gary Turner's old 30 foot dragster trailer), and was a roadie and fill-in judge at local and national contests. I wrote, shot the photos, did the layout, and helped fold and staple all 3,000 newsletters each month. Bob always had about 17 things going at once, and he'd just say, go do this, and show me the basics, and then let me finish it, figuring anything new out as I went.
Then came the video work. Bob found out he could buy local commercial spots, on MTV in Austin, Texas, to promote that contest, for $25 each, I think. But we needed a broadcast quality, 30 second TV commercial, in about a week. He asked me to do it, and I said, "Uh... sure. How do I do that?" Typical punk rock/BMX/action sports D.I.Y. attitude of the times. He said, "Call up Unreel, they'll tell you what to do."
Unreel Productions was the video company part of Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear, and VSW sponsored the AFA Masters contest series. So they sent a cameraman to shoot video of each contest. The deal was that both Vision and the AFA could use that footage. So I called Unreel, and they told me to come over the next day. They handed me ten VHS tapes, explained what a window dub was (numbers for the time code in the picture), and told me to go home, and write down the numbers of all the shots I wanted to use, then call them back.
The next couple of nights, I did that, picking all the best shots, and marking where the pro contest runs started. The next day I was in Unreel's $500,000 Betacam edit bay with their editor, Dave Alvarez, who was a couple of years older than me. Dave had long, straight hair, a tie dye T-shirt, and Vision shorts. He didn't fit the picutre in my head of what a video editor should look like. But he was an incredible editing wizard, and great to work with, since I had no clue what I was doing. He walked me through editing, step by step. Sometimes, while doing the intro, he'd play a few seconds of music, and say, I need a shot that matches this sound. So I'd think of a shot, look it up in my handwritten log notes, and he'd edit it in. Within a couple of days of editing, we had a half hour show. These videos were in color, but this copy above looks like a copy of a copy, and color gets lost as they went down tape generations back then. They don't have to worry about stuff like that now, in the digital era.
I "produced and directed" six AFA videos that year, with Dave doing all the editing. Basically, that means I picked the shots used, after logging the footage, and just made sure the videos got finished, that's what a producer does. All that time I spent at Unreel led to them calling me when they needed a new guy to do basic work, later that year. I left the AFA, and started working at Unreel, in December of 1987.
One question by Bob Morales one day, asking me to do that first commercial, turned my life in a different direction, which later led to things like this, in 1990, and working as a crew guy here. starting in 1992. It's weird how tiny opportunities can change your whole life.
While the quality is sketchy from this old VHS tape, the riding is amazing for the time period, and would be solid riding in today's world. This was BMX vert at the beginning of the quarterpipe era over 35 years ago.
Here's a regular at the AFA local California contests in 1987, Jeff Cotter, with a smokin' hot flatland routine in 1988. Jeff and his younger brother Tim were at pretty much every American Freestyle Association contest in Southern California, local or Masters Series. He was part of what we called the Lakewood crew, which included Ron McCoy, Nathan Shimizu, Ron Camero, and a few others. By 1988, he was sponsored by Ozone and Vision Street Wear.
Since I'm (more or less) living up in the San Fernando Valley again, one local AFA contest from 1987 popped into my had recently. During my stint as the newsletter editor/photographer for the American Freestyle Association newsletter in 1987, I did a whole bunch of other stuff as well, because that's what happens in a small business with only 3 or 4 employees. Two or three months into my work at the AFA, owner Bob Morales bought a 30 foot long box trailer from Gary Turner, the "G. T." behind GT Bikes. Gary owned a dragster at that point, and Bob bought his old dragster trailer when Gary upgraded to a better one. It was about twice as big of a trailer as we needed to haul the basic AFA gear to a contest, but the price was right.
I had never pulled a trailer behind a car or truck before, and I was the main driver of the AFA Ford van, and I had to quickly learn how to drive with a huge ass trailer following me. That was one time being uptight and completely anal retentive was a good trait. I was super careful, and managed to never scratch that monster trailer, and got pretty dang good at driving with a trailer over the next several months.
Another aspect of having a trailer, is how to load it. To go to an AFA local contest, we had our 8 foot high, wooden Socko quarterpipe, a couple of four foot high, really heavy speakers, two or three boxes of T-shirts, little posts and rope rope off the contest area, and some folding tables and chairs. The quarterpipe, with kickers off, we could roll into the trailer, and it fit right over the wheel wells inside. It locked right in place, which was really cool. Then we would just put all the other stuff in the back of the trailer, behind the quaterpipe, that made it all easy to unload.
The AFA Ford van with the big, 30 foot box trailer, became a 49 foot long rig. That's not as long as a standard tractor trailer rig, but it's bigger than most things on the freeway. My first, trip of any length, was a night drive up the 405 freeway to Northridge. For those of you not in or from Southern California, Northridge is best known as the site of the big, 6.7 magnitude earthquake, in 1994. That's the most destructive earthquake that has happened in the 34 years since I first moved to SoCal. But this story happened in 1987, seven years before the big earthquake.
We had an AFA local contest scheduled for the next morning, in a corner of a big parking lot, at a fairgrounds-type place, where the Devonshire downs BMX track was located. We decided to drive up the night before, rather than battle 50 miles of traffic, potentially 4 hours in traffic, on Saturday morning. Bob drove his BMW, following me and our two "roadies," a couple of Huntington Beach local skinheads. Yeah, skinheads. While we didn't agree with their ideology, they worked cheap, and were pretty cool for the most part. In those days, a lot of young guys had friends who became skinheads, so they became skinheads, but weren't walking being racist assholes all the time. That's kind of how these two were. They looked the part, but were more just punkers than crazy racists. The cool thing about young skinheads was that they would gladly do $5 worth of work for $2 worth of beer. Saving money was a priority at the AFA, and Bob was a master a getting things done cheap.
We took off, and not long after I got going on the freeway, I realized that our new trailer was kind of squirrelly over about 45 miles an hour. As I got going at about 55 mph, the big trailer started swaying side to side a little bit, maybe a foot each way. I did my best to keep the rig riding well, but it was nervewracking, and I just cruised along at about 50, as other cars swerved around us, and honked on a regular basis.
Somewhere around LAX airport, the thing I was hoping to avoid happened, I saw flashing lights in the rear view mirror. I pulled over, and Bob and his then girlfriend Suzy Q, pulled over behind the CHP car. The highway patrol officer walked up, and asked the basic questions to see if I was drunk or something. I told him the trailer was just kind of squirrelly, and I was doing my best to keep it in my lane. That, of course, wasn't good enough. A second CHP car pulled up, and Bob talked to the two officers, told him he owned the van and trailer, and tried to work things out. Just to make things even more fun, I really had to take a leak, and was hoping they'd decide to just give me a warning... quickly. Then I could pull over and take a leak at a restaurant or something.
Nope, that wasn't in the cards. As I joked with the skinheads about just taking a leak on the side of the road, and taking the second ticket, we waited. The officers took a full 45 minutes or so to actually flip through a copy of the California Vehicle Code (pre-internet days), and find a code they could ticket me for. As my dad would say, I had to whiz so bad that my back teeth were floating and my eye teeth were singing "Anchors Away," by the time they handed me a ticket to sign. I accepted the citation for the obscure offense of "trailer not tracking properly," and we got back underway. We stopped to hit the restroom shortly afterwards, and then made it up to the Devonshire Downs site without incident.
The parking lot reserved for our flatland a ramp contest was rough asphalt, and really old asphalt. And there were potholes. I'm not talking little six inch diameter potholes an inch or two deep, there were six or eight inch deep holes in the parking lot, big enough to ride a BMX bike into and then jump out the other side. It was ridiculous. Bob found our contact, and tried to negotiate a better chunk of parking lot, but it was a no go. So, in the dark, we set up the quarterpipe, with as straight as possible run up to it. We set up our stanchions, roped off the contest area, and set up the speakers and sound system. There was a fair, or carnival type thing, going on, and their security was supposed to keep an eye on our stuff until the fair shut down for the night.
I think Bob and Suzy had a hotel room for the night, and the skinheads and I were going to crash in the van, on site, to keep an eye on our ramp and equipment after the fair closed for the night. With everything set up, Bob and Suzy headed off to the hotel, and the skinheads and me were hungry. There was no cheap fast food in sight. One of the guys flagged down a car, and a couple of upscale guys said there were a couple fast food places a mile or so away. Somehow, one of the skinheads talked these yuppie guys into giving our grungy asses a ride. The guys talked non-stop, and we realized they were pretty much coked out. They dropped us off as Carl's Jr. or Del Taco, or whatever it was, and claimed they were going to run a couple errands, and then come back by, and give us a ride back to the event site.
The three of us had a cheap dinner, and the skinheads took their money Bob paid them, and bought a couple of 40's of beer. Surprisingly, the two yuppie guys came back, but they got really paranoid about us, and didn't want to give us a ride back. The skinheads said they must have chalked up another line and drifted off into coke paranoia. Since it was dark when they gave a ride to the restaurant, we hadn't paid attention, and didn't even know how to get back to the event site. The paranoid yuppies pointed us in the right direction, and took off. So the skinheads and I walked a mile and a half or so, back to our contest site. Luckily no police rolled by, since the skinheads started working on their beers as we walked.
Back at the AFA van, they chilled out to drink the rest of their 40's, and I was able to get a wristband from our contact, and I wandered around the fair for a while. I wound up watching a really good cover band, playing a stage near the back gate, close to our contest area. I remember the banded ended their set with a kick ass cover of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride," and I headed out the back gate as fair closed down.
Back in our van, the skinheads were happily buzzed, and telling stories and were pretty mellow. I grabbed my bike, and rode a little, jumping out of the crazy potholes and joking with the skinheads. It was a pretty warm night, and as we started thinking about crashing out for the night, I joked, "I should sleep on top of the quarterpipe tonight." It quickly went from a joke, to what seemed like a cool idea. So I grabbed my sleeping bag, climbed up on the 4' by 8' deck of the quarterpipe, laid out my sleeping bag, and went to sleep. The skinheads crashed out in the van, not far away.
The next thing I remember was feeling the wood below me rock, hear the buzz of tires on the ramp, and heard someone yell, "Whoa!" I opened my eyes, half asleep, trying to figure out where the hell I was. I looked out of my sleeping bag, and all I saw was sky all around me. From somewhere below, I heard a voice say, "There's someone sleeping on top of the ramp." The voices below wondered if some bum had climbed up on the ramp overnight, and I woke up enough to remember I was sleeping on top of the AFA quarterpipe. I sat up, and the guys below said, "Hey, it's Steve!" and started laughing. I forget which riders it was, but it was one of the small groups of riders that was at every local AFA contest. It may have been the Lakewood guys, because I remember when I sat up, I saw Jeff Cotter roll into one of the potholes, and jump out, doing a small no footer. Jeff was a hardcore flatlander, and I knew he had a quaterpipe at home, but I'd never seen him jump anything. Still waking up, I remember thinking, "Whoa, Cotter can jump?"
By that time, several of the riders rolled over and started asking me if I actually slept on the quarterpipe all night, which they thought was pretty funny. I started talking to those guys standing there, as other riders started hitting the quarterpipe, while I was sitting on top. Someone asked why I slept on the ramp, and I told them the skinheads were crashed out in the van. So immediately, a couple guys started knocking on the sides of the van to wake up the skinheads, who were not very happy with the wake-up call, since they were kind of hung over.
I climbed down from the deck of the ramp, and everyone started practicing on the ramp, and joking about the horrible potholes in the parking lot. That turned quickly into little trains hitting the bigger potholes and jumping out, trying can-cans, no footers, X-ups, and lookbacks. After that it turned into a normal, local AFA contest. But it's the only AFA contest that year where riders were actually jumping out of potholes and doing variations during their flatland runs. That was the joke of the day.
We held the contest, and as usual, I worked during it, then jumped on my bike and competed in flatland, and then helped tear everything down, along with our skinhead roadies and Bob, Suzy, and probably Riki, Bob's sister, who worked at the AFA. We made the long trip back to Huntington Beach that night. The big trailer and van were squirrelly, again, but we made it back without incident. Then we took the skinheads bowling.
Mike "Coverage" Loveridge, a few short months before the single appearance of Waldo Klinghoffer.
I worked for the American Freestyle Association, for nearly all of 1987. That was the job I found after I got laid off at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. I went from having my own little office in a good sized warehouse, with walls covered with Windy Osborn shot and printed 8" X 10" photos, to sharing a small industrial unit office with AFA founder Bob Morales, and his sister Riki. Riki, by the way, is the second funniest woman I've ever met, she was great to work with. Dot Jones, who many of you may know as Coach Bieste on Glee, is the funniest. I met her working on the lame TV showKnights and Warriors, where she played Lady Battleaxe. You want an epic night out, get Dot and Riki in the same place at a bar or club, with some drinks flowing, that would be epic hilarity. Anyhow... I digress.
Officially, I was the newsletter editor and photographer at the AFA. In reality, we all did everything, whatever needed done. One day Bob showed me a new membership application that came in. "Hey, check it out, we got some guy signing up named Waldo Klinghoffer. Who'd name their kid that?" I didn't believe him, and Bob showed me the application. Later we had a woman named Amanda come to work at the AFA, and a woman a bit older than us kids, Carmella. When it came time to send out the newsletters, it was Riki, me, Amanda, and Carmella at a table folding the newsletters in half, stapling them, and putting on the mailing label. Waldo Klinghoffer was the weirdest name on our membership list list, and whoever got his mailing label to put on the newsletter to send out would say, "Hey, I got Waldo." We waited for the kid with the really unfortunate name to actually show up at a contest.
Finally, at the 1987 AFA Freestyle Masters at the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome, Waldo signed up for the comp. We'd been waiting to see who this kid was.
Meanwhile, in 1986-87, blond haired rider and self-promoter Mike "Coverage" Loveridge was making a splash. He was a , good, solid flatland rider, and hooked up a sponsorship with Kuwahara the company largely known for making the E.T. movie BMX bike. Mike rocked their green and yellow uniform at contests, but even more so at photo shoots. Only Fred Blood eclipsed Mike at talking to the magazine workers, schmoozing up for photo shoots, and volunteering for anything that would get him a write-up or photo in one of the BMX magazines. The rest of us, who didn't work near as hard at self-promotion, gave Mike a lot of crap, mostly behind his back.
When we actually wound up in a jam circle, or at the beach, riding with Mike, he was cool to hang with and a legit rider. But we got sick of seeing him 12 times in every magazine. Mike was also a Mormon, so besides, "Coverage," his alternative nickname was "The Stormin' Mormon." Most of us who wanted to get magazine coverage, but didn't want to spend a ton of time shamelessly promoting ourselves, were kind of jealous, to be honest. BMX freestyle in the 80's was a sponsorship game, and the way to promote your sponsor's goods were to get photos or write-ups in the magazines, or to tour.
Mike Loveridge excelled at both. He got all kinds of magazine coverage, an amount way beyond his freestyle skill level. But that's how coverage works. Magazines call people they can count on to show up, work with the photographer, and make good photos. Mike did that. Mike also managed to put together a Kuwahara summer tour, with little or no funding from the company. He even asked me, "Hey, you want to go on tour? Do you have a car?" It literally was a D.I.Y. tour, with a pick-up pulling a ramp trailer, I think, and four or five guys driving their own cars filled with other riders and bikes. Kids across the country said they were some of the most fun shows, because there were about 15 or 20 riders in each show, not all sponsored by Kuwie. They were low key, spontaneous, crazy, and fun shows.
What none of us realized until much later was the Mike Loveridge, the Mormon, was getting ready to go on his two year Mormon mission. He was jamming in as much freestyle as he could in, and getting all the photos and write-ups he could, before he simply walked away from freestyle for two years to do his mission. The Mission is a standard thing most (maybe all) serious Mormon young men do. You've probably seen the guys in white shirts and ties on mountain bikes, those are the Mormon missionaries. They spend two years riding mountain bikes in a city somewhere in the world, talking to strangers, and promoting their religion. They actually have to pay their own expenses, too. I'm not a fan of the religion, but the majority of Mormons I've known, and Idaho was filled with them, were good people. In any case, their mission is a big commitment for a young person.
It turned out, and none of us knew this until the last minute, that Mike was leaving for his mission right after the 1987 AFA finals. As one last fun freestyle blast, Mike created the alternative ego, Waldo Klinghoffer, months earlier. Waldo laid low, until the finals. Nobody knew he "existed," except Mike Loveridge, and us AFA staffers who kept wondering about the kid with the weird name.
At the finals, Mike dressed up kind of weird, I think, and enlisted about 40 of us to help him with his crazy, funny, contest routine. Somebody ran up to me a few minutes before his run, as word was getting around about this weird thing happening. "Mike needs us all to run out and lay down for his Waldo Klinghoffer run, he's going to bunnyhop us." Somebody told me frantically. I think it was one of his Kuwahara teammates, maybe Nathan Shimizu or Ron Camero, I can't remember.
Even though I was working at the contest for the AFA, I joined in the fun. At the cue a bunch of us ran out and laid down in the contest area, so Mike could bunnyhop us. I thought it was going to be like the classic photo of Mike Buff bunnyhopping 15 people. But like 35 of us ran out and laid down in front of him. It was hilarious, we were all laughing our asses off. What Mike sized up the line of us, like 50 feet long, and pedaled like crazy, like he planned to try and hop this huge people gap. It all happened really fast. What no one told me was that we were supposed to jump up, out of the way, as he rode towards us. I just laid there, and he damn near ran over me as I jumped up at the last second, with other guys running every direction. He did a bunch of weird tricks, I can't even remember what. But we were all hootin', hollerin' an laughing through it all.
For a couple of years, as Mike Coverage went crazy in the BMX freestyle world, we gave him a hard time about trying to get into every photo shoot, get written up, and we talked some smack. But when it came down to it, Mike was a good guy, he got a lot of new kids stoked to ride at his shows (many called the AFA to tell us and sign up), and a bunch of us were down to help him do this last, crazy, Waldo Klinghoffer wild ride, before he walked away and off to his mission.
That run is long forgotten by most. But it was funny, it was goofy, we were all laughing through the whole thing, and it was just plain freestyle fun. So that's the curious case of Waldo Klinghoffer.
The run of Mike embedded above shows a few of his solid tricks, but is definitely not his best run ever, he sketches out a bit. But it's the only full run I could find on You Tube. If you have some old magazines from 1986-87, you'll find a ton of picks of Mike Loveridge in them. Anybody who reads this and gets motivated to find and post a few, that would be cool.
