Devonshire Downs: AFA local contest in 1987

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.

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43 is FRESH!

When I was writing that last post about the non-existent Socko Rocket Car and the old AFA trailer, I looked up to see if there were any old Socko drink commercials from 1987, or there abouts.  I knew there were a couple online, but I couldn't remember if they made any BMX freestyle Socko commercials.  In that search, I ran across this funny ass shit.  It's funny enough, but for some reason this guy is rockin' the big "43," the official lucky number of NorCal BMX and now all BMX freestyle.  This shit is hilarious. 

Oh, and here's the Super Socco/Socko commercials I did find.  Man, do these suck.  Funny, though.

Super Socco commercial (1986 or before)

"Gin & Socco" (featuring Dr. Dre.  Really.  I'm not kidding, Dr. Dre)  Straight Outta Socco?

Socko commercial (after 1987)

Socko promo- Weightlifter

Socko promo- Old Woman

The Legend of the Socko Rocket Car...

At the time we made the trip to Reno in 1987, this Budweiser rocket car, the first land vehicle to go supersonic, was the kind of thing people imagined, when you said "rocket car." 

After a few months starting at the American Freestyle Association in 1987, under AFA owner Bob Morales, I got the job of driving the AFA van, pulling our new, 30 foot box trailer, up to Reno, Nevada.  There was a bike industry trade show up there for a few days, and Bob bought a booth to promote the AFA, and one of his side businesses with Todd Huffman, Mor Distributing, also had a booth.  The best, and most importantly, the cheapest, way of getting the booths to Reno, was to have me drive them up in the new box trailer. 

Bob had just bought the old 30 foot trailer from Gary Turner, the founder, and the "G.T." in GT Bikes.  Gary got into dragsters a few years earlier, when money started rolling in from GT.  He had started in his garage in the late 1970's, welding a BMX racing bike for his son.  Other people wanted bikes welded too, and GT Bikes was born.  The company grew, with business guy Rich Long handling that business side of things, while Gary led the shop and crew. 

When the company took off, Gary put money into drag racing, buying a top fuel dragster, I believe, like the ones you see at 15:40 in this clip.  Gary hired a driver, and bought a really stock looking, 30 foot long box trailer, to haul his car to the races.  After about three years, it was time to upgrade to a better trailer.  Gary asked around the BMX world, and Bob Morales was looking for a trailer to haul the AFA ramps and sound system to local contests at the time.  So we got Gary's old trailer for a good price.

That same year, 1987, Bob went looking for a larger sponsor for the AFA Masters series of national BMX freestyle contests.  Freestyle was growing in leaps and bounds, though there was little in the way of TV coverage then, there were six BMX racing and BMX freestyle magazines on newsstands nationwide.  That was 8 years before ESPN jumped on the action sports bandwagon with the X-Games. 

Somewhere, Bob ran into a couple of marketing guys looking to upgrade the name and image of a Gatorade-like sports drink called Super Socco.  It was marketed to little kids in soccer and traditional sports, and wasn't selling all that well.  They wanted find people to make Super Socco hip and cool, and popular.  But somehow they found the AFA and us freestylers instead.  Over a steak dinner at the exclusive Maxwell's restaurant at the Huntington Beach Pier, the two marketing guys, Bob, and me, threw potential new names for the drink around.  Somehow the name Socko got picked, and the drink was rebranded, and reformulated a bit.  I think it was all supposed to be incredibly cool, like this commercial for alcohol. 

Instead we got cases and cases of quart bottles of Socko, in three flavors, and my cute roommate (and manager of Bob and his mom's tanning salon) Jill, and her hotter friend Christine, became the Socko Girls, and handed out cups to anyone and everyone at AFA events all year.  Jill wound up in a phone sex ad in the back of Hustler magazine, buck naked and spread eagle, a few years later.  But that's another story. 

Anyhow, Bob had these huge Socko logo stickers made somewhere, 3 foot high by 4 feet wide, and we expertly applied them to the sides of the non-descript box trailer.  I had never towed a trailer for any distance before, but I learned quick, manning the classic, white AFA Ford van with the big trailer behind. I pulled that long trailer around Orange, L.A., and San Deigo counties, picking up ramps, taking them to get the Socko paint job, and driving to a couple local contests. 

For the trip up to Reno, Bob said he'd pay for a motel room, and a small food per diem, for me and whoever I wanted to go along to help drive.  The cool part was, we didn't really have anything to do all week, just wait, ride our bikes around Reno, and then drive the rig and trade show booths back. 

I got my riding buddy, and H.B. pier local, Mike Sarrail, and fellow freestyler Scott Robinson, to go on the trip.  They showed up one afternoon, and we got ready to load the trailer, and head out.   But in typical AFA fashion, Bob was busy doing something at the last minute, and we left Huntington Beach at about 4 pm.  We drove out, heading through L.A., right into rush hour traffic.  We drove into evening, got through the grapevine, and finally got moving at a decent pace.  The big trailer made the back end of the van sway back and forth.  I was really nervous driving it, but then I was really nervous doing just about everything back then.

We headed up the 395, through Sacramento, and up the 80 into the Sierra Nevada mountains.  It was just about dusk when I pulled off in the city of Auburn to get gas.  By that time, I was pretty used to pulling the big trailer.  But the gas station was packed with cars.  So I was trying to get the van close to the pump, without hitting anyone or anything with the trailer.  Some redneck in a big black pick-up cut in front of us, and I was pissed off.  I told Mike to jump in the driver's seat, and pull up the last ten feet- carefully- and I'd go pay for the gas inside.  The redneck gave me a dirty look as I walked in, because I had yelled something when he cut us off. 

I paid for the gas when I saw Mike pull the rig up to the pump, and I grabbed some drinks and snacks.  When I walked out a couple of minutes later, Mike was pumping gas, and the red neck had moved out of the way, around to the other side of the pump.  The same guy who mad-dogged me just minutes before, walked up and put his hand out.  "Hey man," he said, "I'm sorry about cutting you off,  I didn't know what you guys were hauling in there.  Good luck, man, I hope you guys break the record."  He jumped in his truck and took off.  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.  I looked over at Mike, and he just smiled.  I set the drinks in the van, took over from Mike, and finished pumping the gas.  Scott came out with some more snacks, and hopped in, and I pulled the rig carefully out of the cramped gas station.

"What was that redneck guy talking about," I asked Mike, "he was like a whole different person when I walked out."  Mike smiled, "I told him that inside the trailer was the brand new Socko rocket car, and we were heading up to the Bonneville Salt Flats to try to break the world land speed record.  I also told him we had 750 gallons of jet fuel in drums, and if I hit his truck while trying to pull up, it might create a spark inside, ignite the jet fuel, and blow this whole gas station, and his pick-up, off the face of the Earth.  Suddenly he was cool as could be, and he pulled his truck around to the other pump."  Scott and I just started laughing. 

Good thinking on Mike's part.  For the next several months, every time I stopped for gas, someone always asked, "What you got in that big ol' trailer?"  The answer was the same, "I've got the Socko rocket car, and I'm heading up to Bonneville, where they're going to try and get that thing to 800 miles an hour."  I got into to some funny conversations, and I'm sure a few people checked the news later that week to see if we got the record.  The legend kept growing, and we added that the first car blew up, and this was the second (hand over my heart, "Rest in Peace Jim Bob for giving your life on that first attempt") and we kept adding to that story when hanging out and riding.  Old gas station owners would tell me they were going to say a prayer for Jim Bob, and stuff like, that as I walked out.  We had a whole long mythology of the history of the Socko rocket car by that fall. 

So that's the legend of the AFA box trailer and the Socko rocket car.  Now, as for Jill the Socko girl... she started hanging out with Tommy, the Huntington Beach coke dealer who lived near Beach and Ellis, and drove a black Corvette.  She started doing blow, partying too hard, "borrowing" a little money from the tanning salon, and...

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That time Ron Wilkerson kidnapped us

It was a dark and stormy night...  I'm not getting film noir on you, it really was a dark and stormy night, in Austin, Texas in 1987.  I was working for the American Freestyle Association with Bob Morales.  We had just flown in, the AFA crew for the AFA Masters BMX freestyle contest starting the next day. Bob got the the rental mini-van for the weekend, the sun had set, there was a Texas-sized thunderstorm all coming down all around us.  Bob Morales, founder of the AFA and all around BMX freestyle entrepreneur, was driving the minivan, his girlfriend at the time, Suzy Q, was sitting shotgun, and his sister Riki and me, both AFA staffers, were in the second row of seats.

Bob pulled up under the porte cochere, the little roof by the hotel entrance.  He told us to stay put, and he walked inside to check-in and get our room keys.  Then, out of nowhere, the driver's door opened again.  Ron Wilkerson appeared out of the storm, completely dry, and in jeans and a T-shirt, and slipped into the driver's seat.  "Hey guys," he said, as he put his seat belt on.  The three of us said, "Hi."  We all knew Ron, veteran Haro pro freestyler, and master of both high airs, vert lip tricks, and flatland.  Since we all worked the sign-in table at contests, and saw him at least every month or so, we knew Ron well.

Bob had left the van running, and Ron Wilkerson put it in gear and drove out into the storm.
"Ron, what are you doing?" Suzy Q asked, anxious to get into the room after a day at her real job, and then the flight to Austin, and also knowing how big of a practical joker Ron was.  As the hard Texas rain pelted the windows, and lightning flashed now and then, Ron gunned it down the two lane road.  The hotel was right next to a freeway, and on a little road by the off ramp.  Like many of those roads, it didn't go all that far, and there were several large businesses, closed by that hour, off to the right.  Ron hit about 60 in the rain, and Suzy Q got more agitated, telling Ron to take us back. Riki and me, in the the back, started laughing, it was just weird how Ron popped out of nowhere and hopped in and started driving.

Suzy started yelling at Ron to slow down, and he suddenly stomped on the brakes, nearly sliding to a stop, then turned right into the driveway of a large business.  There was a guard shack, with the light on inside, on the left, by the big warehouse building.  Ron drove in a circle, as if he was going to go back, but kept turning, and then headed straight towards the guard shack.  Suzy Q started yelling, she wanted no part of Ron's shenanigans.  Riki and I were both laughing out loud at this point, partly at the fact the Suzy was freaking out, and partly because Ron was so non-chalant about the whole thing.  Ron Wilkerson said nothing.

As Suzy told him not to, Ron pulled slowly up to the guard shack, next to his window.  There was no arm that blocked it, and the driveway continued a bit more, then seemed to go into a big parking area, which had another big building on the other side of it.  We could all see an old security guard inside that didn't look too happy.  Ron pulled right up to the open guard shack door, as the guard walk into sight.  Then Ron stomped on the accelerator and sped past the guard, gaining speed as we headed along side of the first building, and into the big, empty parking lot.  He got the van up to about 50 mph in the rain soaked parking lot.

Suzy Q completely lost it, and started screaming at Ron to take us back to the hotel.  That, of course, just made the whole surreal experience even funnier to Riki and me, and we were laughing our asses off.  That made Suzy Q even more mad.

Ron stomped on the brakes, skidded the minivan to a near stop, and then managed to get the back tires to break loose a little bit, and did a couple of donuts.  As we spun around, we could see the silhouette of the guard, leaning out the window of the guard shack, shaking his fist at us.  After two or three pretty good donuts, considering he was driving a minivan, Ron turned back towards the exit, and the very upset guard.  Riki and I were crying we were laughing so hard, as Suzy Q screamed at Ron.  He gunned the van, hitting 40 or 50 mph again, in the storming rain, towards the guard shack.  About 50 yards early, he stomped on the brakes, throwing us forward and slowing to an agonizing crawl.  The tension rose exponentially as he drove super slow towards the guard shack, where the pissed off old guard was now leaning out the doorway, and which was now on Suzy Q's side.

"No, no Ron, noooooo, DON'T!" Suzy Q screamed as Ron pulled up to the angry guard, stopped, then rolled down Suzy's window with the master switch.  The guard looked in right in front of Suzy Q, and started to say something like, "What the Hell are you..."  Ron cut him off with a smiling face asking some completely random question, something like "Do you know where there's a good steak place around here?"  The guard had that befuddled look, like the bad guy who just got unmasked at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode.  He looked at us crazy kids blankly for a moment, as Suzy Q went silent, nearly face to face with him.  Riki, one of the funniest women I've ever met, was on the verge of peeing herself, she was laughing so hard.  My stomach already hurt from laughing.

Unexpectedly, Ron gunned it, and we sped off from the confused guard, and Suzy Q rolled up her window, as the pelting rain pounded into the minivan.  Ron, again, hit about 60 mph on the little road, as the storm raged on, then hit the brakes hard, and pulled slowly under the porte cochere, right where the van had been parked.  Suzy Q was so livid, she just glared at him, her face all red.  Riki and I were laughing so hard we just made weird little breathing noises, we could barely breathe at all.

Ron Wilkerson put the minivan in park, unbuckled his seat belt, opened the driver's side door, got out, turned to look in and said, "See you guys tomorrow," and shut the door.  Then he disappeared into the the thunderstorm just the way he had suddenly appeared.

Not 30 seconds later, Bob Morales opened the door, room keys in hand.  Suzy was still glaring, and Riki and I were holding our stomachs, barely able to breathe.  Bob got this really puzzled look on his face.  He hadn't seen Ron, he'd only been inside a few minutes, and now, suddenly, Suzy Q looked like she was ready to kill somebody.  It just got silent.  Nobody had any idea how to explain it.  Bob put the minivan in gear, and drove across the parking lot, to where our rooms were.  I don't think any of us ever told him what happened.

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(BMX Freestyle White) Boys in the Hood

Car pulls up, who can it be, a Euro white Beemer rollin' kilo G...  Here's Bob Morales in 1985, in the red AFA T-shirt.  Yeah, it has "Alpine" A's.

After a my few months at Wizard Publications in 1986, I got hired by Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association to become editor of the AFA newsletter in January of 1987.  Anyone who knew Bob Morales in those days, knows he always had about 17 irons in the fire, he was full of ideas, willing to work long hours, and with a serious tendency to over-extend himself, and anyone around him.  In other words, Bob Morales was a true entrepreneur.  So I wound up doing a little bit of everything at the AFA, as well as writing, shooting photos, editing, and laying out the newsletter.

On one sunny Southern California weekday, I rode with Bob over to the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome, originally built for the1984 Olympics, and the site of so many classic freestyle contests in the 1980's.  It was the summer or fall of 1987, I think.  Things kinds of blend together after all these years.  We were checking on some things for the Guiness world records event there, that we were hired to help put on.  Or maybe it was in preparation for the AFA Masters Finals that fall.  One of those.  We met with a person from the velodrome, and I think another promoter.  Bob had bought a 30 foot long box trailer, the old dragster trailer owned by Gary Turner at GT, and we wanted to make sure it would fit down the access ramp, because that's how we carried all our equipment around.  After the meeting, taking some measurements with a tape measure, and figuring things out, we headed back to Huntington Beach.

At the time, Bob Morales was a 23-year-old entrepreneur, graphic designer, and contest promoter.  I was a 20-year-old freestyler/newsletter editor.  Bob liked to look the part of the successful entrepreneur, in a SoCal way, and he owned what appeared to be a red, 1984, Porsche 911, and a late model, white, BMW 630.  The Porsche, if I recall correctly, was a 1969 912 chassis, with a 1970-something 914 engine, and the 1984, red 911 body.  It looked really cool, but it didn't have the power or handling of a true 1984 911.

The BMW was actually a 633csi, a European only model, as I recall, that somehow made its way to America, and Bob had it painted "Euro style," white with black trim.  When they were going to paint it, Bob asked if the paint shop could make the paint "any more whiter."  I know, that kind of sounds like a line out of the Spinal Tap movie, but he wanted it to stand out.  As it turned out, the painters said they normally added a bit of blue to white paint jobs, to give it a deeper hue or whatever.  Bob told them to leave all the blue out.  So Bob ended up with an ultra white Beemer, that made any other white car look dirty when he pulled up next to it.  In addition, there was no chrome, everything on the trim was painted black.  It was a really sharp looking BMW, no doubt about it.

Bob, with his wheeling/dealing skills, claimed to only have about $6,000 into each car, yet they both looked like they were $30,000 cars in 1987, maybe $60,000 cars today.  So Bob was driving the BMW that day as we headed back to the office from the Velodrome.

Most of you reading this have been to one or more of the Velodrome contests back then, and you probably remember that the Cal State Dominguez campus, where the Velodrome is located, is kinda in the hood.  It's in Carson.  Instead of heading west, and catching the 110 freeway nearby, Bob headed east to catch the 710, through Compton.  Yeah, everyone knows about Compton, thanks to Ice Cube, Dr, Dre and NWA.

It was a beautiful day, we were cruising along at normal speed on a big surface street.  Like usual, Bob and I were throwing cool ideas back and forth about something or other.  We were both full of lots of ideas, and always talking about a cool contest or bike idea, a cool scene for a movie, or something else creative.  Just two young white boys, in a bitchin' 6-series BMW, rolling through Compton, completely engrossed in our conversation.  No big deal, right?

Suddenly Bob noticed flashing red lights behind us, and tried to figure out what he was doing wrong.  He wasn't speeding, and he hadn't blown through a light or anything.  We kept talking, and hoping he wouldn't get a ticket.  Bob turned off into a large, paved lot, which was overgrown with grass around the edges.  We were still rambling about some cool idea when the cop walked up, after taking a long time.  Bob looked into the rearview mirror and went, "Oh shit."  I looked around.  In addition to the cop who pulled us over, there were four or five other police cars in a half circle around us.  Every one of them had the driver's door open, and there was a police officer squatting behind each door, guns drawn and pointed at us.

Shit.

Bob talked to the officer that approached, and he had come to the conclusion that two young white guys, in a sweet 6-series Beemer, in Compton, must either be buying drugs, we just stole the car, or we were transporting a whole bunch of drugs.  Bob told him the story of why we were there, and, in typical police fashion, the cop didn't believe a word of it.  OK, I really can't blame him.  There were no cell phones then, but Bob had a car phone in the Beemer, and those were like $1,500 then, which didn't look good.  But he couldn't call one of the people we just met at the Velodrome, like you would today.  It took a good ten minutes, and either a newsletter or a magazine laying on the floor by me, to actually make the officer believe we really were BMX bike contest promoters, and we just had a meeting at the Velodrome, and Bob was a young entrepreneur and the car wasn't really as expensive as it looked.

The officer looked all around the car, checked the trunk, and I think he had someone at their station call the Velodrome and confirm that there was a BMX bike contest happening there in a week or two.  As the tension died, the other cops put their guns down, and a couple drove off.  Eventually, the officer let us go, and gave Bob a strong warning not to drive that car through Compton, because it would be a huge target for a carjacking by local thugs.

We continued on the same way, since we were already close to the 710 freeway.  I'm pretty sure we took the longer route, up the 110 from then on. 

The Curious Case of Waldo Klinghoffer

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 show Knights 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.  

AFA Oregon Pro Ramps Video from 1987

I'd like to give a HUGE thanks to Rosey Junior, who linked this in the comments of my blog post about rider-made videos, in the Club Homeboy FB group.  This is actually the second video I ever produced, for Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association, way back in 1987.  I haven't seen this since probably 1987, maybe '88.  The cameraman was Pat Wallace, the Unreel Productions staff cameraman then.  It was edited on pro quality betacam (NOT betamax), by Unreel editor Dave Alvarez, who's a fucking wizard with video stuff.  He's also the guy who taught me most of what I know about video while later working at Unreel.

Should you bother watching this?  I'll just list the amateur riders, and you decide.  Mathew Hoffman.  Joe Johnson.  Dino Deluca.  Dave Voelker. 

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...

Happy Birthday Bob Morales!

Happy birthday to Bob Morales.  Not only did he turn BMX freestyle into a sport by founding the ASPA and then the AFA, but he added the word "gription" to the English language.