The image of a surprised Buckwheat from the Little Rascals, neon green, crack and peel sticker, with the words "Club Homeboy." The little "loft it" was added on later versions. This is the classic, iconic image from Club Homeboy.
Loft it, bitch. If you were a BMX freestyler in the mid-1980's, you remember Club Homeboy. You remember this image above, and it probably calls up memories of busting cherrypickers and sliders and side glides and boomerangs and tailwhips in a parking lot at night, maybe with the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill cassette blasting from a ghetto blaster that didn't have near enough battery life. Am I close? Something like that.
Recently, Jeff Venekamp, better known back in the day as Lew's good friend Shinglehead, has been sharing pics on Facebook of his old Club Homeboy stickers. This is cool, because as Lew's good friend back in Michigan, Jeff got copies of the very first stickers and is about the only guy with good copies of them left. One of the stickers he posted recently was made about 3/4" wide, 5 or 6 inches inches long, and there was a tiny photo of some 70's looking guy, with shaggy brown hair and a big mustache. Next to that little photo were the blown up, typewritten words, "Feelin' Nifty." Only a handful of people know, but that was actually the very first Club Homeboy sticker. I know this, because I was there in the room when Lew came up with Club Homeboy, and I was one of the original members. I watched Lew make those first "Feelin' Nifty" stickers a couple nights later, on the Wizard Publications copy machine. I wrote about CHB a few years ago in my old blog, but I figured it was time to tell the tale again. Here's how I remember the birth of Club Homeboy.
Mark "Lew" Lewman, the man who in invented it all, at about age 20, flatlanding at The Spot, in one of the first full color Club Homeboy ads, when the whole idea blew up and got huge.
It was the Fall of 1986, and every night there was a flatland BMX freestyle session at The Spot in Redondo Beach, California. Pretty much every night the session included Mark "Lew" Lewman, Chris Day, Craig Grasso, and myself. Craig "Gork" Barrette came down 3 or 4 nights a week. R.L. Osborn rode by himself most of the time, but came down to The Spot a couple of times a week. Andy Jenkins skated by once or twice a week. Janice Jenkins, Andy's sister and the FREESTYLIN' art director then, was into cycling, and she rode by a couple of times a week to say, "Hi." Once in a while, BMX comedian and then CW team manager, M,cGoo came down, sometimes with John "Dizz" Hicks and Ceppies Maes. Later on, East Coast rider Pete Kearney was out West a while and sessioned with us. If that's not enough, freestyle skateboarder Rodney Mullen would come down and practice on the smooth concrete next to The Spot when he was staying with Steve Rocco, usually 3 or 4 weeks at a stretch. That was our crew.
Lew, Gork and me were roommates, we'd just moved to a three bedroom apartment on the edge of Hermosa Beach, and Andy Jenkins and his wife Kelly lived right down the alley from us. We all worked at Wizard Publications, as you know well, if you read this blog regularly. Andy was the editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine, which was about 2 years old then, and Lew was assistant editor. Gork was the editor BMX Action, and I was the editorial assistant for both magazines.
Craig Grasso was this weird, artsy, funny, crazy guy, about our age (19-20), who rode for SE Racing as a freestyler, and was fun as hell to ride with. Chris Day was this young local kid, 14 or 15 years old, who was coming on strong with his amazing flail boomerangs and other flatland tricks. R.L. Osborn, was a top pro freestyler, a pioneer of the sport, rode for Redline, and made the change to General Bikes right around that time. He was son of Bob Osborn, aka OZ, owner/publisher of Wizard Publications, and our boss. R.L.'s sister Windy was the photographer for both magazines, and was dating Eddie Fiola at the time.
One one hand, our scene was a handful of guys who were totally hardcore BMX freestylers, like a a couple dozen scenes around the U.S. and in Europe at the time. On the other hand, we were all part of the industry, and the coolest magazine in freestyle. So despite being 5 pretty good to really good riders, and one pioneering pro, our scene at The Spot had a ridiculous amount of influence on the BMX freestyle world, and that's how Club Homeboy happened.
Craig Grasso was this weird, artsy, funny, crazy guy, about our age (19-20), who rode for SE Racing as a freestyler, and was fun as hell to ride with. Chris Day was this young local kid, 14 or 15 years old, who was coming on strong with his amazing flail boomerangs and other flatland tricks. R.L. Osborn, was a top pro freestyler, a pioneer of the sport, rode for Redline, and made the change to General Bikes right around that time. He was son of Bob Osborn, aka OZ, owner/publisher of Wizard Publications, and our boss. R.L.'s sister Windy was the photographer for both magazines, and was dating Eddie Fiola at the time.
One one hand, our scene was a handful of guys who were totally hardcore BMX freestylers, like a a couple dozen scenes around the U.S. and in Europe at the time. On the other hand, we were all part of the industry, and the coolest magazine in freestyle. So despite being 5 pretty good to really good riders, and one pioneering pro, our scene at The Spot had a ridiculous amount of influence on the BMX freestyle world, and that's how Club Homeboy happened.
One night after our normal session, Lew, Grasso, and me, and maybe Chris Day, rode over to Andy and Kelly's apartment to hang a bit. Kelly was cleaning up the small place, Andy was working on some artwork or something on the kitchen table, as I recall. Lew paced around, ideas flowing freely from his head, as usual. The rest of us dropped our sweaty selves on the couch and a chair (sorry Kelly). Lew's idea of the night was that us locals were a kind of posse, a word used by all the rappers at the time. Remember, this was 1986, and it was cool to hate rap, but fact was, a lot of middle class white kids were starting to dig RUN DMC, The Big Boys, and them weird white rappers, the Beastie Boys. Their album, Licensed to Ill, dropped right about the time this happened, and Lew played that album non-stop, at work and at home.
None of our crew, sitting in Andy's apartment that night, thought much of what Lew was saying, because he was spouting new and weird ideas constantly. Most of the time then, the ideas faded, and new Lew Ideas popped up the next day. So as Lew walked around the tiny apartment, he said we needed a name for The Spot locals. The term "posse" was over-used at the time, but Lew wanted something with a hip hop/ghetto feel, you know, because we were all middle class white dudes. He wanted something that sounded cool. The word "homeboy" was one he was really diggin' from the start, but homeboy what? Homeboy Posse? No. The Spot Homeboys? No. We all tossed out our ideas, and actually "Club Homeboy" was one of the first, but it was quickly discarded.
This went on casually for maybe 15 minutes, as Lew wandered around, Andy worked on whatever he was working on, Kelly cleaned the kitchen, and the Craig, Chris, and me hung out. Finally Lew came back to the name "Club Homeboy," and Andy agreed it sounded cool. So Lew pronounced that the official name for us local riders at The Spot was Club Homeboy. And that was that. So when Club Homeboy was created, it was Lew, Andy Jenkins, Craig Grasso, Chris Day, Me (Steve Emig), Gork, R.L. Osborn, and McGoo, since we hung out with him all the time. We threw the name around a bit as we rode around the next couple of nights. But seriously, we all thought it was just one more of the multitude of Lew Ideas, and it would fade away in a few days.
Two days later, we were all working late at Wizard, and I walked out to take a break, probably from proofreading magazine articles. Lew was in the open area of the warehouse, where there was a sink, counter, microwave, a picnic table, and the copy machine. Lew had bought some sticker paper, which I didn't even realize existed then. I did a year of making zines before that, but my zines had no"Xerox art" to speak of, and I'd never made stickers. I asked Lew what he was doing, and he smiled big and handed me a couple of the skinny "Feelin' Nifty" stickers, just made and cut by hand, a couple minutes earlier. "I'm making some stickers for Club Homeboy" Lew said, really stoked on it all. Never mind that the stickers didn't say Club Homeboy. Lew was thinking up weird and clever little sayings, and making stickers for our little crew of riders.
At the time, I had the same helmet that I first got, when I started racing BMX in Boise three years earlier. It was some old, heavy, 1970's motorcycle helmet that I bought at a garage sale. My dad got into the mix, and painted it white with spray paint. I bought a red Haro visor, and was ready to race, and later to use for flatland contests. I took one of those first two "Feelin' Nifty" stickers, and stuck it on the underside of my helmet visor. That sticker was still there in the late 1990's, when I lost that helmet, by not paying my storage unit rent, I think.
A couple of days later, working late again, with more sticker paper, Lew found this picture of Buckwheat in, of all places, a Japanese magazine called Popeye. It was a weird, pop culture magazine that Oz subscribed to, to give us ideas for stuff, since it was a odd mix of images and stuff. Lew copied Buckwheat, typed the words "Club Homeboy" on an actual typewriter, blew them up big to get the good distortion (the basis of all 80's and 90's Xerox art), then shrunk them down again, and put them at a 90 degree angle around Buckwheat's head, and the iconic Club Homeboy image was born. Lew made maybe 30 or 40 of those that night, on white sticker paper, and handed them out to all of us Spot locals. Club Homeboy, as a crew of local riders, was born, because we all put them on our bikes immediately.
That, of course, made other riders ask what Club Homeboy was. "It's our crew of locals from The Spot," was the answer. For about three or four weeks. Lew found out he was getting sent to the first 2-Hip King of Vert contest, being held, in a barn, in Minnesota. By that time, Lew found another office supply store that had neon green sticker paper. Lew ponied up his own money, and made around 300 stickers, I think, to take to Minnesota. After that weekend, every top vert rider had the stickers on their bike, and the barn probably had 50 of them slapped all over. Then everybody in the industry wanted a Club Homeboy sticker. So Club Homeboy was a locals only thing, for us 1986 era locals at The Spot... for about a month.
More stickers were made on the down low on the Wizard copy machine, and stickers were shared, slapped, and put on bikes for the next 3 or 4 months or so. During that time, I got laid off from the magazines, partly for being a dork, and mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. Midwest photographer Mark Snavely took a stab at working there, but he and Windy didn't meld well, and he was gone in a couple of weeks. A month or so later, Andy and Lew tapped this biker/skater kid from the East Coast to work at Wizard. That kid was Spike Jonze. He did mesh well, and worked at FREESTYLIN' til the end. I went on to work for Bob Morales, at the AFA, down in Huntington Beach.
Spike, of course, immediately became a new local at The Spot, and a member of Club Homeboy. As time went on, Oz started to ask what this Club Homeboy thing was, since everyone had stickers on their bikes. Andy, Lew and Spike, from what I heard, didn't want to tell him at first, since they'd been using Oz's copy machine and toner for months. But they fessed up, and Oz ended up liking the whole thing, and then he backed it. Now, when you write the coolest magazine in BMX freestyle, and you can advertise for free, it's hard for your ideas not to get popular. So Club Homeboy was stepped up into the thing all you 1980's freestylers remember. And that's my memories about the birth of Club Homeboy.
Thirty three years later, I'm over 50 and still Feelin' Nifty, more nifty than ever, as a matter of fact. The old body hurts more these days, so I don't loft much jive, but then, I never was a really big jive lofter. I am still dual and silk on a good day, though. To keep things on the right vibe, I've been listening to the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill the whole time I've been writing this post, and this post is sponsored by Brass Monkey.
This went on casually for maybe 15 minutes, as Lew wandered around, Andy worked on whatever he was working on, Kelly cleaned the kitchen, and the Craig, Chris, and me hung out. Finally Lew came back to the name "Club Homeboy," and Andy agreed it sounded cool. So Lew pronounced that the official name for us local riders at The Spot was Club Homeboy. And that was that. So when Club Homeboy was created, it was Lew, Andy Jenkins, Craig Grasso, Chris Day, Me (Steve Emig), Gork, R.L. Osborn, and McGoo, since we hung out with him all the time. We threw the name around a bit as we rode around the next couple of nights. But seriously, we all thought it was just one more of the multitude of Lew Ideas, and it would fade away in a few days.
Two days later, we were all working late at Wizard, and I walked out to take a break, probably from proofreading magazine articles. Lew was in the open area of the warehouse, where there was a sink, counter, microwave, a picnic table, and the copy machine. Lew had bought some sticker paper, which I didn't even realize existed then. I did a year of making zines before that, but my zines had no"Xerox art" to speak of, and I'd never made stickers. I asked Lew what he was doing, and he smiled big and handed me a couple of the skinny "Feelin' Nifty" stickers, just made and cut by hand, a couple minutes earlier. "I'm making some stickers for Club Homeboy" Lew said, really stoked on it all. Never mind that the stickers didn't say Club Homeboy. Lew was thinking up weird and clever little sayings, and making stickers for our little crew of riders.
At the time, I had the same helmet that I first got, when I started racing BMX in Boise three years earlier. It was some old, heavy, 1970's motorcycle helmet that I bought at a garage sale. My dad got into the mix, and painted it white with spray paint. I bought a red Haro visor, and was ready to race, and later to use for flatland contests. I took one of those first two "Feelin' Nifty" stickers, and stuck it on the underside of my helmet visor. That sticker was still there in the late 1990's, when I lost that helmet, by not paying my storage unit rent, I think.
A couple of days later, working late again, with more sticker paper, Lew found this picture of Buckwheat in, of all places, a Japanese magazine called Popeye. It was a weird, pop culture magazine that Oz subscribed to, to give us ideas for stuff, since it was a odd mix of images and stuff. Lew copied Buckwheat, typed the words "Club Homeboy" on an actual typewriter, blew them up big to get the good distortion (the basis of all 80's and 90's Xerox art), then shrunk them down again, and put them at a 90 degree angle around Buckwheat's head, and the iconic Club Homeboy image was born. Lew made maybe 30 or 40 of those that night, on white sticker paper, and handed them out to all of us Spot locals. Club Homeboy, as a crew of local riders, was born, because we all put them on our bikes immediately.
That, of course, made other riders ask what Club Homeboy was. "It's our crew of locals from The Spot," was the answer. For about three or four weeks. Lew found out he was getting sent to the first 2-Hip King of Vert contest, being held, in a barn, in Minnesota. By that time, Lew found another office supply store that had neon green sticker paper. Lew ponied up his own money, and made around 300 stickers, I think, to take to Minnesota. After that weekend, every top vert rider had the stickers on their bike, and the barn probably had 50 of them slapped all over. Then everybody in the industry wanted a Club Homeboy sticker. So Club Homeboy was a locals only thing, for us 1986 era locals at The Spot... for about a month.
More stickers were made on the down low on the Wizard copy machine, and stickers were shared, slapped, and put on bikes for the next 3 or 4 months or so. During that time, I got laid off from the magazines, partly for being a dork, and mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. Midwest photographer Mark Snavely took a stab at working there, but he and Windy didn't meld well, and he was gone in a couple of weeks. A month or so later, Andy and Lew tapped this biker/skater kid from the East Coast to work at Wizard. That kid was Spike Jonze. He did mesh well, and worked at FREESTYLIN' til the end. I went on to work for Bob Morales, at the AFA, down in Huntington Beach.
Spike, of course, immediately became a new local at The Spot, and a member of Club Homeboy. As time went on, Oz started to ask what this Club Homeboy thing was, since everyone had stickers on their bikes. Andy, Lew and Spike, from what I heard, didn't want to tell him at first, since they'd been using Oz's copy machine and toner for months. But they fessed up, and Oz ended up liking the whole thing, and then he backed it. Now, when you write the coolest magazine in BMX freestyle, and you can advertise for free, it's hard for your ideas not to get popular. So Club Homeboy was stepped up into the thing all you 1980's freestylers remember. And that's my memories about the birth of Club Homeboy.
Thirty three years later, I'm over 50 and still Feelin' Nifty, more nifty than ever, as a matter of fact. The old body hurts more these days, so I don't loft much jive, but then, I never was a really big jive lofter. I am still dual and silk on a good day, though. To keep things on the right vibe, I've been listening to the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill the whole time I've been writing this post, and this post is sponsored by Brass Monkey.
I have 4 blogs going right now, check them out when you're bored at work...
The Big Freakin' Transition- about the future and economics
Crazy California 43- weird and cool locations in California
Full Circle- about writing and the writer's life
and a fiction blog
Stench: Homeless Superhero
Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now
I just started a new blog for Marvin Davits, to promote Marvin's business, installing dinghy davits on boats and yachts. Check it out.
