Chris Moeller in "Leg Muscles": The Chain Wallet

The S&M Bikes 30 year book, Behind the Shield, is coming out soon.  So I figured it's a good time to tell a few of my stories from the days of being part of the S&M posses and longtime roommate to Chris Moeller.

In 1990, as Vision Skateboards was collapsing, and Unreel Productions, their video company, where I worked, was shut down.  Since I was the cheapest guy on staff and knew how to work most of the equipment, they kept me around and moved me to the Vision main headquarters building in Santa Ana, California.  Oddly, that's a block from where the S&M (and Fit) Bikes headquarters is now.

Anyhow, tired of being a peon on all the kinda goofy Vision videos, with no say in how they were made, I decided to self-produce my own BMX freestyle video.  I wanted to show the actual riding we did day after day, no uniforms, lots of street, and no riding on minature golf courses.  I shot footage all year long, put all my money into it, borrowed a grand late from Mike Sarrail to finish it (which I did pay back, just for the record), and The Ultimate Weekend came out in October of 1987.  As one of the first rider made videos, it was good for its day.  I spent $5,000 making it, of my own money, and made maybe $2,500 back over the next six or eight months.  I went into the project thinking I'd make like $20,000 or more back.  Yeah...sure...  I was still super shy, and a horrible salesman, and I let a surf video distributor do most of the selling.

I didn't pay off all my credit cards, and soon was working at a video duplicator in North Hollywood for $8 an hour and had $7,000 in or so in debt.  In the days before crippling student debt was a normal thing for people, that seemed like a lot to me.  I worked all the time, rode solo in the San Fenrnado Valley, and was depressed by the "insurmountable" amount of debt I had.

In 1991, while working that duplicating job, Chris Moeller found me somehow, and called up saying he wanted to make a video for S&M Bikes.  The entire company then was housed in the single car garage, of a one bedroom apartment, on Alabama street in Huntington Beach, California.  The BMX industry had "died" a year and a half earlier, and times were tight in the 20 inch world.  I was initially hoping Chris wanted to spend $2,000 or so to make the video.  I could have some fun, and pocket a good check.  When I asked him what budget he had in mind, he said, "like maybe $200."  After working at Unreel, where the budget wasn't ever a factor, $200 seemed like nothing.  But it sounded like fun, and I started going down on the weekends to H.B., and shooting video of Chris and the crew.

It's hard to imagine now, but dirt jumping wasn't even a sport then, it was something we all did to some extent, and Chris and a handful of lunatics, did to an insane level for the time period.  They'd have a jump contest at BMX nationals every once in a while, with one, single double jump, and that was it.  But Chris, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, the P.O.W. House guys, and a few others were pro racers who spent a ton of time jumping for fun, and were pushing the progression at the time.  Most of the top jumpers were then S&M riders.  Chris couldn't pay them, but the bikes were stronger, and no other companies had a budget, or even the idea, to steal riders from S&M then.  Basically, S&M Bikes WAS dirt jumping in the minds of most BMX racers and freestylers in 1991.

Chris Moeller, being the guy he was, wanted to fuck with everyone when we made the video.  First was the whole thing of using the bad acting from porn videos in it.  Then, he started the video with flatlander Perry Mervar's section.  He wanted hardcore jumpers everywhere to get the video, pop it into the VCR all excited, and go, "Flatland?  What the fuck is this shit?"  In addition, dorking around and practical jokes have always been a part of BMX, and the whole hardcore punk mentality we had back then.  Basically, we we being jackasses a few years before the Big Brother videos came out, which turned into the Jackass TV show, and ultimately, the Jackass movies.  That first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer,  is basically a prequel to the Jackass stuff years later.

I crashed out on the floor of Moeller's apartment one weekend night, and the next morning he said, that to start his section, he wanted to start with skating.  Again, he wanted to do that just to fuck with people.  He said he had this funny idea to make fun of old school skaters, who'd taken to wearing biker-type chain wallets then.

So he grabbed his board, I grabbed the camera, and we rode our bikes down to a little park, Manning Park, on the corner of Delaware and Detroit.  There Chris got the big car tow chain he came up with somewhere, stuffed one end into his front pocket, and the other end into his back pocket, and started skating round the basketball court with it dragging behind.  At first, I thought it was just dumb.  We did the little intro part, where he talks about wearing the beanie ("stocking cap" in my world), another skater trend then, and the old car thing, then leads into the chain wallet.  I didn't even know Chris could skate at all then.  I knew him from a few years back, and had seen him around from time to time, but didn't really know much about him, other than he was a pro racer, about the craziest jumper of the day, and had somehow started a bike company at 16-years-old.

This was one of the first video pieces we shot for the video.  I had my big, full size, S-VHS camera, and shot footage as Chris started skating around, doing little tricks, with the massive chain dragging behind.  The longer it went on, the funnier I thought it was.  That, goofy, dorkin' around, sarcastic sense of humor that morning set the tone for all the video shoots we did for Leg Muscles.  Things got weirder and crazier from there, the opposite of my video a year earlier, where I was trying to be professional.  Even more funny, the kid playing basketball just kept playing, pretty much ignoring us, which made the final video look funnier.  And that's why Chris Moeller started his first real video segment skateboarding.

More weird tales from the S&M Bikes world of the early 1990's coming soon...

I've got  a new blog going, it's about building an art or creative business, or any small business.  You can check it out here:
WPOS Kreative Ideas

A $4 Billion Dollar Reason Why Your City's Innovation District Needs a Skate (and Bike) Park

Does your city have an Innovation District, a place where high tech start-ups and a hip urban lifestyle come together?   Dozens of cities around the U.S. and the world have built them, including the city I'm now living in.  But I bet none of them look like the place above.  In this clip you see my long time friend Pierre, skating below the Huntington Beach Pier in Southern California in 1989.  This is what the area looked like on weekdays and during the winter then.  On summer weekends it was packed with people.  Surfers came every morning to surf by the pier.  Skateboarders and BMX freestylers, like myself, hung out and drew crowds every weekend in this spot.  The police didn't like us there, and told us to stop skating and riding every time our crowds blocked the walk/bike path.  It was a good place to practice, hang out, meet girls, and grab a slice of pizza at Papa Joe's or a burger at Wimpi's afterwards. 

So what does a skate and bike spot from the 1980's and 1990's have to do with the rise of  "Innovation Districts" around the world.  To most people, there appears to be no economic development happening at this spot in the video above.  But an article I just read in Transworld Skateboarding brought the two together, in my mind, at least. 

First, let me tell you that I got into the sport of BMX racing, and then the emerging sport of BMX freestyle in high school.  It was the early 1980's, and I lived in Boise, Idaho.  I graduated high school and couldn't afford college.  Much to EVERYONE's dismay, I kept learning tricks on my little bike, and my life took a far different path than anyone imagined.  I met a lot of weird young people, and wound up working  in the BMX, and then the skateboard industry. 

One day, in the fall of 1986, while working at the offices of FREESTYLIN' magazine,  four of us were standing outside on break when pro freestyle Ron Wilkerson rode up on his motorcycle.  On the back, he had a young blond kid.  It was the first time any of us met that kid.  When I got laid off a few months later (mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy), that kid was hired for my old job.  He wound up fitting in well there.

In January of 1987, I took a job in Huntington Beach, and I started hanging out at the H.B. Pier every weekend, and I met a bunch of local skaters and BMXers, as well as others who stopped by while in the area.  I was at the pier nearly every weekend for several years.  Pierre, the skater above, was one of the first people I met, along with a skater named Don and many others.  One of those kids, one I don't specifically remember, but know was part of the local scene, is mentioned in the Transworld article I just read.  He was just one of the kids that skated by the pier now and then, and sessioned Huntington High and other places I often rode my bike.

Years later, in about 1997 or so, local BMXer John Paul Rogers invited me to his "Loser Christmas" at his house in H.B.  There were a bunch of  BMX industry guys from other parts of the country who didn't have family in the area.  So we all got together, drank a few beers, played pool, rode the mini ramp, and watched really crazy videos.  I wound up spending much of the day on the backyard trampoline doing some tramp boarding.  That's where you have a skateboard deck (no trucks or wheels) and jump on it on the trampoline and try to do tricks.  There was another bike/skate industry guy there who I'd heard of, but never met before.  We took turns on the board on the trampoline much of the day.  He was trying to pull a solid method air, and I was working on a 720 shove-it.  We both landed our tricks that day, and got to know each other. 

Hang in there, I'm pulling it all together.  I met those guys because I did what everyone in my life thought was crazy, and focused on learning tricks on "a little kids bike."  If I had gone to college, it wouldn't have happened.  If I had spent my time learning computer coding, it wouldn't have happened.  If I had moved to a 1980's version of today's "innovation districts," it never would have happened. 

The guy I met on the back of the motorcycle in 1986 was a 17-year-old named Spike Jonze.  The kid I don't specifically remember from the H.B. street skating scene was Jason Lee.  The guy I hung out with on the trampoline at the Loser Christmas was Jeff Tremaine.  The article I just read in Transworld Skateboarding figured up the box office revenues of the movies those three guys have either directed or starred in.  The total comes to $3,692,000,000.  That's not a typo.  Yes, those three guys have gone on from skateboarding and helped bring in nearly 3.7 BILLION DOLLARS in worldwide box office revenues.  Really.

Wait, you want to call me out for round that number up to $4 billion, right?  I mean, rounding up $300 million dollars is a big jump.  That's not pocket change, unless you're Bill Gates, maybe.  Remember Pierre, the skater in the video above?  Pierre Andre Senizergues is now best know as the founder of Sole Technologies, the parent company of Etnies and E's shoes, 32 snowboard boots, and Altamont clothing.  Our mutal good friend from the pier, Don Brown, is the vice-president of marketing there.  While I don't know exactly how much Sole Tech has grossed over the years, I know it's way over the $300 million needed to bring the total up to a nice round $4 billion. 

If you build a skate and bike park in your city's Innovation District, it's unlikely that those skaters will create billions in sales over the years.  But, then again, it was really unlikely in 1986 that Spike, Jason, and Jeff would either. 

The Innovation District in the city I now live in outlawed skateboarding in that area.  I love irony.  Maybe they should read this article in Transworld.