Keith Treanor, born and raised in New Jersey, came out to Huntington Beach and rode and rode and rode and wound up riding for S&M Bikes for years. In this podcast, #43 for The Union Tapes podcast out of the U.K., Keith goes through his life in BMX, from early days on the East Coast, the days coming up as an unknown amateur in the Huntington Beach/Orange County, California scene, and all through his years as a pro riding for S&M Bikes.
I remember meeting Keith at the Oceanview Jump, a freestyler fly out jump at Oceanview High School in Huntington Beach. That jump was an amazing set-up, a long, concrete sidewalk runway to a 6 1/2 foot high jump up to flat. Keith flat out RULED on that jump, no one even came close to getting as high out of the Oceanview Jump as Keith did. In my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, Oceanview made for a cool jumping segment (for that time) at 23:22* in the video. In one shot, Keith is a good 10 feet out, in a full tuck, landing to flat. That was insane for that era, where you could easily snap a frame or forks coming down from that high up. I've personally seen Keith go a good 1 1/2 to 2 feet higher than that, 12 feet up to flat, but didn't get it on video.
Keith Treanor with a one handed 360 at the Oceanview fly out jump, which they mention in the interview. He's about 4 feet up, going from right to left, in this still shot.
I was already shooting video footage on the weekends, to make my own video, which became The Ultimate Weekend, when I remember meeting Keith and John Povah at Oceanview. I used to ride there, as well. When I started making that video, GT rider Jess Dyrenforth was supposed to be the star of the video. But every time I wanted to go shoot video, Jess was busy. He was riding for GT Bikes, and was deep into the inline skating world, as well. After I met Keith and John, I'd call them up, and Keith was always down to ride, and John was too, when not busy with his auto painting job. Keith was young, hungry, and would just go off anywhere we went, so he ended up being the star of the video.
Here's another still shot from The Ultimate Weekend, with Keith doing the first 360 over a spine ever to appear in a BMX video. Gary Laurent did a 360 over the spine a few minutes later. In 1990, peg grinds, mini-ramps, handrails, and a lot of things were just starting to happen at the time, so every video of that era had lots of "world firsts" or "firsts on video" in it.
This mini-ramp set up above was amazing for its day, this was the backyard of freestyle skaters Primo and Diane Desiderio, who were working in the City Streets show at Sea World at the time. Gary Laurent also rode in the show, I believe, and he got the OK to take us to this ramp, even though Primo and Diane weren't home. Gary had those ramps wired, but he had never tried a 360 over the spine. Keith, still really new to mini-ramps, because only a couple of them existed then, stepped it up to 3 over the spine. Then Gary had to do it. Because riding was evolving so fast then, every video that came out in that era had a bunch of world firsts, or firsts on video. So this was only the second or third mini-ramp ever in a BMX video, and Keith did the first 360 over a spine on video. These are just a few of my memories of those early days (1990-1994ish) hanging out and riding with Keith and John Povah.
There's a whole lot more in the podcast above, Keith talks us through his whole BMX career. If you're a rider from the 1990's era, check it out.
The Ultimate Weekend- 1990 - Beginning with 7 shots in the intro, Keith Treanor appears throughout the video.
* Right before the Oceanview segment, there's a shot of me doing a double peg grind on a little ledge in Huntington Beach in early August of 1990. That year, 1990, the year I was working on shooting and producing the video, The Ultimate Weekend, was the year that BMX freestylers took double peg grinds, the BMX version of a 50/50 grind on a skateboard, onto the streets. In this ridiculously self-serving Substack post, I dug into the various people who did the first double peg street grinds on video, and approximately when they did them. If you are interested in the very beginning of the double peg grinds that led to all of handrail, hubba, and ledge grinds in the last 35 years, check this post out.
At 29:08 in this video, you see a couple of guys in front of a garage playing "Dueling Banjos" on a banjo and a guitar. The guy on the banjo is early skatepark rider, Steve "Bio Air" Bennett, who I'd never met before. This was around the corner from Martin Aparijo's quarterpipe, which Keith Treanor, John Povah, and I went to for a session, in the late summer of 1990. This blog post is about that session on Martin's quarterpipe, starting with the "Dueling banjos."
This section, our session at Martin Aparijo's quaterpipe, happened in the late summer or early fall of 1990. Keith Treanor, John Povah, and me headed to Martin's house, to join an afternoon session on his quarterpipe. The riders there that day were Jess Dyrenforth (turquoise shorts, black knee pads), John Povah (no shirt, white cap), Keith Treanor (white T-shirt, black shin guards), Steve "Bio Air" Bennett (yellow tank top- old ASPA shirt- and neon green bike), Martin Aparijo (white helmet), and Todd Anderson (light blue tank top, black cap). So there was some serious talent there that afternoon. This whole session happened because I think a ran into Martin somewhere, told him I'd been shooting footage to make my own video, which was a really weird thing to do then. Eddie Roman had put out Aggroman a year earlier, and Mark Eaton was making the first Dorkin' in York videos with two VHS machines. No one took those very serious then. Just riders goofing around with vieo cameras. Only big companies like GT, Haro, or BMX Plus, and Vision Street Wear put out "real" BMX videos back then. That was the mindset.
The context for this video was that it was shot and put out in 1990, during a big transition time for BMX freestyle. At the big bike industry trade show in early 1989, industry people were walking around, all weekend, saying "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." So every major company was getting rid of their BMX and freestyle programs, and putting their effort into the rising trend of mountain bikes, which was really just getting going in the mainstream then. GT and Haro kept their factory teams, though they paired them down and let some riders go. So over the course of 1989, most of the sponsorship money in BMX freestyle just disappeared. So did a huge number of BMX freestyle riders. From a logical way of thinking, it was time to quit.
It was like, OK we got into this weird little sport in 1984-86, most of us, we saw it grow through the AFA flatland and ramp days. We had a good time, it was cool, and by 1990 we were in our 20's. It made sense to give up "that BMX thing," go to college, go get a real job, and move on to the life all the people around us wanted us to live. But for a few hundred of us, BMX freestyle had become our life. It was a huge part of who we were. It was how we coped with all the stupidity in the rest of the world, and the rest of life. Giving up the thing that made life worth living for us wasn't even a question. We kept riding, without the money, the sponsorships, the industry jobs. We kept riding, because that what we did. That's who we were.
At the same time, Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear, which had done something like $60 million in sales in 1988, was collapsing. That story is a big can of worms, and I was in the middle of it, since I worked at Unreel Productions, Vision's video company. In January 1990, we had a meeting, and we were told "Vision is shutting down Unreel." Don Hoffman, who started it, would keep working on a freelance basis, and me and the other lower level employee, were kept, and moved into an office in the main Vision building. The other 5 or 6 people, they were looking for jobs.
After a month or so, that woman that was kept, got a job in Hollywood, and I was sitting in a big office, with a bunch of video equipment, alone. I was getting a decent check, but was bored out of my skull every day. While I was there, other people in Vision were getting laid off nearly every Friday. Morale was horrible, and the biggest group of really talented people I'd ever seen was falling apart. Vision just got too big too quick, and the reckoning time was at hand. At the same time, the whole country was sliding into a recession, which wound up lagging on for about six years. So pretty much everything was looking pretty bad, on many levels. All the more reason to go ride a couple of hours every night, just to blow off some steam.
As all that was happening, and I decided I was sick of the goofy Vision videos (in my opinion), with old footage, very little riding progression, guys riding in leathers and helmets on flatland, and all of that. I wanted to make a video that showed "real riding." So I took my S-VHS camera every weekend, and usually went somewhere with Mike Sarrail, my flatland riding buddy from the Huntington Beach Pier. Along the way, I met New Jersey transplant Keith Treanor, a young, hungry, and really good, yet still mostly unknown, rider. Keith was riding with John Povah most of the time, and they became the core of my video, weekend after weekend.
The whole idea for The Ultimate Weekend was that a group of riders got off work on Friday afternoon, and spent the whole weekend riding all kinds of cool places with all kinds of great riders. That idea got lost a little, but it's how the video is organized, rather than in sections for each rider, which was just one way to make a video back then. Like all revolutions, I was just making this shit up as I went. I was trying to make the video I wanted to watch to get stoked to go ride. A couple hours away, Eddie Roman was doing the same thing. Across the country, Mark Eaton and Jeremy Alder were also doing the same thing. It was time for a change. A handful of us started making that change.
In that weird, crazy, broke-ass context, riding wasn't about making sponsors happy anymore. It wasn't about placing well in the next contest. We just went out day after day to have fun, and to push our limits. Sure, these days, everyone knows that. But all during the 1980's, most of us had to tell people around us that we were trying to get sponsored, or working to go pro, or practicing for a contest, to justify why we spent all of our time and money on "little kids' bikes." By the time 1990 crashed down on us, we were down to the truth, "Fuck it, let's go ride and have fun." We were getting over the need justify riding to other people. "Fuck'em, we have more fun than they do, anyhow, let them think what they want." I doubt the top pros had to deal with people like that, but a lot of the rest of us did.
In that context I ran into Martin Aparijo, or maybe I got a phone call, because he heard I was working on a video. He said something like, "Hey, I have a quarterpipe, bring the guys over for a session." So we went to Martin's house one afternoon, and we ran late, I remember that. But the guys had a great little session right before dusk. It wasn't that long. There was no hype. It was just a bunch of good riders on one of the few ramps that existed then, trying their newest moves.
Here's the crazy part. I'd never seen anyone do a solid nosepick to fakie on a ramp. Both Jess and Todd pulled it that day. I'd never seen anyone do a Smith disaster (front peg, back wheel), Jess did it. I'd never seen a one footed tailtap, Todd did that. I'd never seen a barspin abubaca, Todd did that. I'd never seen an abubaca to nosepick to fakie. Keith did that. I'd never seen Keith (or anyone) pull an icepick, and Keith did that. While freestyle was "dead," it was progressing at light speed. This little session, a half an hour or so at Martin Aparijo's quarterpipe, turned into one of the most innovative segments in a video full of new tricks and progression.
Then there's Martin Aparijo himself, the flatlander. By the time of this session, I'd pretty much forgot that I first saw Martin in BMX Plus as a test rider, jumping. So when he rode up to his ramp and just stomped that front wheel 540 on the bottom of the ramp, I wasn't too surprised. Then he whipped the back wheel 900 (or so) megaspin, and it got away from him. That's to be expected, this is Martin the flatland legend. Todd Anderson, quarterpipe legend, rolls up and does a back wheel 540, to show his ground chops. But then, out of nowhere, Martin hit the ramp at speed and flew out onto the roof. I did not expect that. Then it kicked in, "Oh yeah, Martin was a really good jumper back in the day." I actually missed the shot the first time he did it, he flew right out of frame, I was expecting him to do a small air. The second time he did it, he flew out of sight, but I got the shot.
At the time this video came out, a whole bunch of riders were pausing and rewinding this little section of the video, because it broke a lot of new ground. So thanks Martin, for giving me that phone call back then, I'm really glad this short but awesome session made it into that video.
My drawing of Martin Aparijo, in classic BITD GT pro rider form, still has copies available. About 20 copies of the run of 50 are still up for grabs. They're all signed and numbered by me, and Martin has agreed to sign them all as well. Huge thanks for that Martin. I'm taking the next batch to HB Tuesday tomorrow to get him to sign them. If you're interested in one, hit me up on Facebook, or email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com, and we'll work it out. They're 11" X 14", all drawn in my #sharpiescribblestyle.
Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
This post is about the section of The Ultimate Weekend from 10:41 to 12:17, the beginning of "Saturday Morning" in the video, me riding to the H.B. Pier, to me flipping off the walk your bike lights. I self-produced this video in 1990.
I spent my first six months in Southern California, in 1986, in the Redondo and Hermosa Beach area, known as the South Bay, in two apartments I shared with my magazine co-workers Gork and Lew. After five months working at Wizard Publications, and a month riding with Craig Grasso everyday after I got laid off, I got a job at the American Freestyle Association working for Bob Morales. Bob picked me up in the AFA van one day, and I moved south, past the "Orange Curtain," (from Democrat L.A. region into Republican stronghold (until two weeks ago) Orange County). My new home city, which I'd only been to 3 or 4 times, was the surfer filled city of Huntington Beach.
Huntington Beach began it's official life as Pacific City, in the early 1900's. Some developers with big ideas imagined the empty stretch of beach as the "Atlantic City of the West Coast." That idea fizzled out quick, and it was largely a little village of lima bean farmers. The original pier was built around 1902, around the time of the Pacific City idea. The name was later changed to Huntington Beach, to suck up to railroad magnate Henry Huntington, to bribe him into building a railroad extension from Long Beach, about ten miles north, to H.B., so more people could get to the rural beach town. It worked, and Huntington Beach was incorporated in 1909. Finally there was a way to get people easily from distant Los Angeles and Long Beach to H.B. But still, hardly anyone wanted to move to H.B.
In 1914, the 4th of July celebration at the pier included a "surf riding" demonstration by a Hawaiian, an Olympic swimming champion, a diver, and surfer named Duke Kahanamoku. When his slightly older surf buddy and leader of the Wakiki surf posse, George Freeth died in 1918, Duke went on to promote surfing around the world, bringing back the ancient sport of the Hawaiian kings. He became known as "The Father of Modern Surfing," But still, not too many people wanted to actually live in the little town by the sea. At one point, if you bought a set of encyclopedias, you got a free lot in downtown Huntington Beach.
Then, in 1920, wildcatters struck oil in H.B., and suddenly A LOT of people wanted to live there. And a few encyclopedia buyers became millionaires, as the legend goes. H.B. became something like an old west town, with hard working oil men, rowdy bars, ladies of the evening (the former Youth Hostel was then known as Hotel Evangeline), and a lot of money changing hands. If you walk out behind the Longboard bar on Main Street, across the alley is a little tiny brick structure, and there was a slightly larger one with three doors nearby. Those are the old "drunk tank" jail cells from the 1920's. The cops would just drag the drunks from the bars and lock them in for the night to sleep it off.
The oil boom in Huntington Beach had several long term effects on the city. First, it attracted a lot of people, and a lot of riff raff. Second, for decades, the north part of town was filled with oil wells and pumps, many right along the beach. You can see them in this 1949 home movie clip at 2:56. So, while people flocked to Southern California in the 1940's through the 1980's, many people avoided H.B. and built beachfront homes on nearly every other stretch of beach, from Malibu to Newport. But Huntington, the "dirty oil town beach" didn't get nearly as developed, except for one condo complex just north of the pier. Because the wealthy people favored Newport Beach, Sunset Beach, Long Beach and on up to Malibu, H.B. was a lot less expensive to live in. Even when I moved there in 1987, there were still a bunch of oil pumps downtown, and right along Pacific Coast Highway.
Because Huntington Beach was cheaper to live in, it became the working class beach city, and a home to lots of surfers. There's no great point break in H.B. to surf, but there's 8 miles of southwest facing beach breaks. The waves aren't great, but they're consistently pretty good, and it was the cheapest beach city from the late 1950's to the mid 1990's. So it became known as Surf City, the city Jan and Dean wrote their song "Surf City" about.
In typical small city fashion, the city leaders of the late 1950's and early 1960's wanted to get the "lazy surfers" out of their town. It didn't work. As the surf culture grew and expanded, H.B. went on to become a hot spot for skateboarding, BMX and freestyle, snowboarding (there's snow 1 1/2 hours away), motocross (Seth Eslow lived there) and the early UFC fighting and MMA. It's still a major action sports hub area. Surfer and BMX freestyle pioneer, Bob Morales, who grew up a bit inland, chose H.B. to set up the AFA, and that's how I landed there. My job, officially, was to be the editor of the AFA newsletter. I wound up doing everything, from putting AFA logos on T-shirts to driving the 30 foot trailer to contests. It was actually pretty cool, though I struggled on my $5 an hour pay rate.
On one of my first photo shoots at FREESTYLIN' magazine, I drove photographer Windy Osborn to, shortly after starting at Wizard Publications, I met English freestyle skater Don Brown, and I knew that he and a few skaters, as well as a few BMX freestylers, hung out and rode beneath the H.B. Pier every weekend. So after I rented a room and got settled in H.B., (after a couple week's crashing on Bob's couch), my weekend ritual was to get up, make a huge plate of pancakes, pig out, and ride down to the Huntington Beach pier and freestyle all day. Unless there was an AFA contest somewhere, I was at the pier. In those days, the fancy restaurant on the pier, looking out over the beach, was Maxwell's, and the area below it, by the video arcade, looked like this. The walk and bike path widened, and us BMXers took turns with the freestyle skaters, getting crowds and riding for them. Every 20 to 30 minutes, the beach police on their ATV's would roll up, tell us to stop riding or skating, and that the crowd was blocking the bike path. This, supposedly, caused a danger because all the Fred and Frita poser cyclists, in their brand new spandex and over-priced/under ridden road bikes, would ride down the crowded bike path at speed and run into people. Somehow that was our fault.
There were literally thousands of beach goers every weekend, and we continually drew crowds of 100 to 150 people, and sometimes up to 500. Then the police would stop us, the crowd would wander off, then the skaters would come out, draw another crowd, and do their thing, until they got shut down. This happened every Saturday and Sunday from early 1987 to about 1991 for me. Being the geek that I am, I once figured out that I did flatland in front of over 140,000 people, 100 or so at a time, during those H.B. Pier weekends. While I didn't do near as many shows as some freestylers, I performed before far more people, as a street performer, than most. As a skating and riding spot, the H.B. Pier goes back to the mid 1970's, when skaters came down to session the bank that used to be there.
So when I got around to shooting the Huntington Beach Pier/Saturday morning section for this video, I just shot my normal life. I wake up in my room on Sims street, near Warner and Bolsa Chica, on the north end of town. I can't remember what the huge scab on my knee was from, but it was a bail of some sort. My room is a mess, and I head down, and make breakfast. The furry bowling ball of a cat, Silus, was my roommates cat, and the most unfriendly feline I ever met. The fucker bit my palm once when I was trying to get it away from the sliding glass door as it hissed at another Tom cat outside. It wasn't unusual to see Silus on the counter eating out of a pot of something after my roommate Kevin cooked.
Making Oreo Double Stuff pancakes was not my normal weekend breakfast, although the slice of cold pepperoni and pineapple pizza with the pancakes was pretty normal. When I made this video, I wanted to show "the real BMX freestyle lifestyle I knew," and not the hoopty shit that you saw in a BMX Plus or Vision Street Wear video. No uniforms, no flatland on miniature golf courses, or that kind of stuff. But in addition to showing some new and progressive riding, I also wanted to show off some video making skills I learned working at Unreel. I'm actually pretty proud of this little montage. I chopped a bunch of my weekend life into short bits, it moves pretty well, and it gives a really good glimpse of my life as a freestyler for those early H.B. years. I did actually ride about 5 miles to the Huntington Beach Pier every weekend when there wasn't a contest. I skipped the ride down Warner to Bolsa Chica Beach, and the 3 miles of pedaling the bike path down Bolsa Chica beach and along the cliffs.
The part you see in this video is when I get to Goldenwest and the bike path, the north end of the downtown area. That quick shot with tons of people on the beach is pretty funny, it's a compression shot from Goldenwest and PCH. I was shooting far up the beach, and making it look way more crowded than it ever really was in 1990. That was a super crowded day, and I made it look even more crowded. Now, 30 years later, that's pretty much what it does look like on the weekends. But back then, it was usually fairly empty until up near the pier.
The bike path continues next to Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), but the part I show in this video, with the sandy dirt path, and the big, 11 foot high, mural covered, retaining walls, that's the old railroad bed that Henry Huntington built 100 years ago. The murals were old ones in 1990, and many later got covered with new, officially sanctioned murals in the 1990's, and later officially sanctioned graffiti art. Then they all got painted over again with beige paint, because the graffiti art attracted unofficial graffiti writers from all over. Typical. So while it wasn't my plan, I ended up documenting several of the old murals, which were probably done in the 1970's.
Our favorite wall, The Blues Brothers Wall, is just south of the 14th street steps. It was pretty flat, and usually had less sand in front of it than most other walls, and had a big lip to wall ride on the left end, and a small lip farther to the right. So my typical weekend ride turns into a quick wall session with Keith Treanor, then unknown and super hungry ripper from New Jersey, and Randy Lawrence, a kid form the desert who moved to the beach and worked as a bike shop mechanic at the time. I met both at the H.B pier on the weekends. Keith, of course, went on to be a pro mini ramp and street rider for S&M Bikes for many years after this video gave him a chance to show his stuff. They'll be a lot more about him as these blog posts go on.
Randy Lawrence is the most natural BMX rider I've ever seen IN MY LIFE. He would just naturally learn stuff in minutes. Back when we first met, '88 or so, he could learn ANY flatland trick we could think of in ten minutes with Mike Sarrail and I coaching him. Seriously. He made me sick, in a good way. When I say the most natural rider, I mean that he just learned anything like he was born to do it. No one, not Eddie Fiola, Mat Hoffman, Mike Dominguez, Dennis McCoy, ANYONE, seemed so born to ride a BMX bike as Randy. Randy's brother was pro motocrosser Phil Lawrence, who along with Jeff Emig (a second cousin to me, I think) was one of the pioneering motocross freeriders in the early 90's, who set the stage for the early Crusty Demons of Dirt videos, and the sport of Freestyle Motocross. Much to my surprise back then, Randy became a motorcycle mechanic, tuning bikes for Doug Dubach, and later Jeremy McGrath through most of Jeremy's championships. Now Randy trains young motocross riders, he's legendary in the motocross world, and his son Ryder Lawrence is one of the best up-and coming kids in the BMX world. When you do this at age seven, there are some big things in store in coming years. The way Ryder flows through that hilatious nose bonk, and rides it out, that's the same natural riding flow I saw in Randy back in the late 80's and 90's. If it ever gets to the point of trying to genetically engineer the perfect BMX or FSMX rider, start with the Lawrence family. There's just something in their blood that's perfect for two wheels. Unless you tell Randy to do a simple X-up, that is.
In this section of The Ultimate Weekend, Alan Valek (who uploaded my video to YouTube, thanks again for that Alan!) watches from the top of the wall as we do wall rides and fakies. This was the only place I could do fakie wall rides, because of the smooth lip. Keith and Randy step things up with no handers. If you pause the quick flash edit, it looks like this:
That's Randy and me doing the first over/under wall ride ever in BMX history. The idea just popped into my head right then, and we tried a couple. Randy's got the white tank top on, Keith has the black T-shirt, and I have the red T-shirt on. In this pic, and the video, Randy's up really high, going opposite. Dave Clymer, a year or so later, is the only other rider I've seen get that high on the 11 foot high Blues Brothers Wall, and Dave was going his natural direction. I didn't realize Randy was going opposite until I shared this still a few months ago, and Randy told me that's opposite for him. I just did a little wall bounce, not sure how high he was going to go. I just wanted to see if we could time it and both be on the wall at the same time. To be fair, the Blues Brothers Wall is slightly under vert, maybe 80 to 85 degrees, but it's definitely a wall, and not a steep bank.
The next highest I ever saw anyone get on that wall, after Randy and Clymer, is Keith's wall ride in this section, going his natural direction. That one scared the crap out of me, Keith's back tire broke loose, and it slid across the whole wall, but he rode it out. A hair under Keith's front wheel was how high Josh White went. Josh told me about the wall at the pier, and we found it together one Saturday. For over a year, I rode on the bike path up top to the pier, never going down the other path to find these walls. Josh, one of the more amazing vert riders ever, got about 8 feet up the wall, 2 feet lower than Randy Lawrence going opposite. Josh was also doing fakie wall rides to turndowns out that first day we rode it.
Years later, I lived about three blocks from this wall, and I sessioned it all the time, and went rock climbing on the wall down to the beach right there. I got into bouldering as something to do away from the BMX world, and I had a 300+ foot traverse on the lower wall just down from here. This is one of my favorite places to ride ever. I tried to learn framestand wall rides there, I could stand up in a low, long wall ride, but never get my hands off the grips. Too chicken.
We actually didn't ride this wall as a group really, but would hit it individually when in the area. Keith stepped it up that day, getting stretched no handed fakie wall rides. Then he decided to go for the rail grind into the sand on the spur of the moment. At the time, no one had done a handrail slide down steps, but people were talking about them. Skaters had been doing board slides on rails for 3 or 4 years, and I think 50/50's were starting to happen. Meanwhile, BMXers were trying to figure out a way to slide handrails on bikes. We talked about sprocket slides, like today's crank arm slides, but it just seemed too dangerous, with little chance of ever riding it out. As double peg grinds started becoming standard on vert ramps, and a few riders toyed with feeble grinds on street ledges, the idea of a double peg grind on a handrail down stairs was forming. But it hadn't been done yet. So Keith decided to try this rail into the sand with no notice, and luckily I had the camera rolling when he headed that way. I'm not sure what any of us expected, but Keith's front wheel washed out on the sand in front of the rail, and it turned into a funny bail.
Then Randy held Keith on the rail, trying to get the mechanics of sliding and pulling up and off it at the bottom. The sand made for a crash pad to soften the landing. Remember kids, there were no skatepark rails then. This was 1990. Hell, there were no skateparks in Southern California then. The whole technical problem of how to bunnyhop, angle the bike, and land on both pegs hadn't been figured out yet. So putting his bike on the rail to slide and land in the sand was a way to get part of the idea worked out.
Randy's 360 off the wall and into the sand, next to the woman laying out, was another spur of the moment decision. She was laying there when we shot Keith on the rail. As we were walking back up towards the wall, Randy said, "I could 360 over the wall and land by her." I didn't think he was serious at first, because there was a 2 or 3 inch lip on top of that wall, and doing a bunnyhop over it into doing a 360 drop five feet, seemed pretty crazy then. But it was Randy, so I walked a ways away, so the woman wouldn't wonder what I was doing, and Randy did a great 360 drop first try, and the poor, unsuspecting woman was totally startled. We, of course, thought that was hilarious back then.
After that, we see close-ups of another painted wall, and then the "walk your bike lights" that had recently been put up by the pier. Every bike rider hated those lights, which were on during the weekends. Those damn lights, again, were put up because of road bike posers riding fast down the bike path, on the weekends, when it was crowded, and then running into pedestrians. Those weekend riders never showed up to actually put miles in during the week, when the bike path was not crowded, and you could ride the whole eight miles of Huntington Beach's bike path at speed. They just showed up on the weekends to pose. Debbie Hendrickson, a serious cyclist and Sim snowboard team manager, told me the hardcore cyclists called the posers Fred or Frita.
So that's the story of this little section, and one of my all time favorite places to ride, The Blues Brothers Wall. There's only one thing left to do in this post, tell you how to make Oreo Double Stuff pancakes.
Oreo Double Stuff pancakes:
Ingredients:
"Just add water" pancake mix
water
Double Stuff Oreo Cookies
Take a bunch of Oreos, a couple for each big pancake you plan to make, and crumble them up into big chunks, say 1/4" to 3/8" round. It's best to leave the cookies and cream attached to each other.
Put the pancake griddle on the stove, and turn the heat to about 6 1/2 or 7, slightly above medium if it's gas, and let it warm up. The key to good pancakes is to have the griddle at the perfect temperature, and the batter at the right consistency.
Pour the dry pancake batter mix into a big measuring cup or small bowl. I don't measure the water, I make batter by feel and sight. I add a little bit of water, and stir it by hand with a fork. Then I add a bit more water, and stir it more. At first, the pancake mix turns into a dough-like consistency. Then it slowly works towards batter. I like to work to the point where the batter pours slowly, but steadily. It's a thick liquid.
Once the batter is near a good consistency, add the Oreo chunks and mix them in with a fork until they are pretty evenly spaced in the batter. I tried Oreo pancakes with regular thickness Oreos, and you couldn't really taste the Oreos at all, so go with the Double Stuffs.
By then, the griddle should be hot. In fact, it should be a bit too hot. I always pull the griddle off the stove, and wave it around to cool it a bit, then put in back on the stove, before pouring my first pancakes. If you do this, don't hit anyone. Once you start making pancakes, it stays a bit cooler from the batter. For most people, I'd advise putting a little cooking oil on the griddle, or melting some butter. Me, though, I cook my pancakes without oil on a Teflon griddle. They brown lightly on the bottom, and I wait until the batter is about ready to bubble, and I start edging the plastic spatula under them, until I can get under the whole pancake and flip it.
I normally use a square griddle, and make 4 pancakes, 4" to 5" in diameter, at once. I flip all four, and the watch them. A square griddle cooks hotter in the center, and I'll get the spatula under the flipped pancakes, and spin them so the outside edge is towards the middle of the pan, to cook them evenly, and let them finish cooking. Then I set them on a plate off to the side. I don't care if they cool off a bitas I make the rest. If you have company, put an oven safe plate in the oven, turn it up to about 225 to 250 degrees, and just set all the pancakes on it to keep them warm until you're ready to eat. Remember to use a pot holder or two to get that plate out of the oven, and set it on another pot holder on the table.
With the Oreo cookies and frosting in the pancakes, in big chunks, you don't really need maple syrup on these pancakes. But don't let that stop you, 'cause maple syrup is awesome. To really live large, make a big ol' plate of Oreo pancakes, scoop some vanilla ice cream on top, or maybe Oreo Cookies and Cream, and then hit it with some maple syrup. You can go back to the gym, or go ride, tomorrow. If you wind up trying these, show me some photos on Facebook.
I'm currently writing a series of big, fat zines called, Freestyle BMX Tales, after my former blog that had over 500 posts about BMX freestyle BITD. Each zine will be at least 48 pages, full of my old school BMX stories, and written around a theme. I'll be hand making all of them, in typical zine fashion, and signing and numbering each one. Zines, by their very nature, are collector's items.
The first Zine in the series is about The Spot in Redondo Beach, the place I rode with Lew, Gork, Andy Jenkins, R.L. Osborn, Chris Day, and Craig Grasso, among others. That was when I first moved to SoCal and started working at FREESTYLIN' magazine in 1986. It will be done and ready to ship about December4th, 2018. You can pre-order the first copy by sending $6 paypal to me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com . ( steven, not steve in the email address) Mark it "The Spot zine" or something. So far, the first 5 are spoken for.
I'll be sharing most of my BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...
Today's behind the scenes look at my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, is about the short section from 9:53 to 10:37. Then we'll look at The Stain, the Toledo punk rock band and studio musicians that provided the entire soundtrack for this video. You can see them in the video's credits, beginning at 46:07.
On the north end of Huntington Beach, California, there's a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant right on the beach. To the north are the three story high houses, shaped much like the old Mississippi River steamboats of Mark Twain's day, built right onto the sand of Sunset Beach. To the south is 8 miles of beach, the first four of which don't have a single house or condo on the sand. There are parking lots for beach goers and a big, wide bike and walking path. On the inland side of the first big stretch of beach south of Jack-in-the-Box is Bolsa Chica wetlands, which contains an amazing diversity of wildlife for an area surrounded by civilization. This section of my video was shot on the inland side of Bolsa Chica wetlands.
If you drive inland on Warner from that Jack-in-the-Box, through the S curve, past Bolsa Chica road, and take a right on Graham Street, you'll cross over a canal right before Slater. If you park your car or truck there, where only the cinder block walls and canal are in sight, you'll see a blocked, but paved service road heading back towards the ocean along the canal. If you ride your bike about 300 yards along that service road, you'll see a pump house on your right, across the canal, and a place next to it where a truck can drive down into the canal when it's dry. That little drive-in spot was known as the Slater Ditch to the guys who showed it to me in 1988 or so, and as Cancer Ditch by some of the younger guys. They called it Cancer Ditch because the water next to the pump house was so nasty that the joke was you'd get cancer immediately if you fell in it.
The weird way the truck roll-in was built formed concrete banks on both sides, which were loved by skateboarders for years. So the city built some concrete speed bumps to disrupt the skating. For the most part, it worked. Skaters found other spots. But it was still ridable on BMX bikes, and us locals had many late night sessions there. Occasionally, we'd hit it up on a Sunday, fairly certain no city workers would show up, because we had to jump a small fence to get there. I could never manage much more than footplants on the wall off the bank. But it was still a fun place to goof around.
In this short clip, local flatlander Sean Johnson asks to see a move, and Andy Mulcahy and another guy, whose name I never knew, watch as Randy Lawrence (white sleeveless shirt) and Keith Treanor, thrash the spot. Finally, after all the guitar music during the mini ramp and flatland segments, we get into a little punk rock and street riding to rev up the video a little. The song is, you guessed it, "My Grandma's Got a Mohawk," by The Stain.
When Randy crashes on the fakie at the end, you hear someone say, "That's the Boner." Guess I should explain that. In late 1988, I think it was, the Godfather of BMX himself, Scot Breithaupt, had become a TV producer, and sold a bike show series to ESPN. Scot's production company was called L.M. Productions, which stood for "Last Minute." His logo was a clock set at two minutes til midnight. Typical Scot. He was renting our edit bay at Unreel at night to edit his shows, and I got the job of staying there all night as representative from Unreel. Babysitter, basically. My main job was to make sure he didn't steal anything, either equipment or, more likely, video footage to use in one of his shows. Scot was an amazing guy in many ways, but could be shady as a maple tree as well.
As Scot and his editor were finishing a show one Sunday night, he said he didn't know what to do for the next week. He had to have the next finished show done and shipped to ESPN in two weeks. In the TV world, that's simply impossible. But Scot wasn't phased by that. I said, "How about street riding?" He didn't know what I was talking about. BMX racers had always ridden the streets and jumped curbs, but he didn't realize that BMX street riding was becoming its own thing. Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee earlier that year exploded the interest in street riding. It took me 20 minutes, but I talked Scot into having a street contest and shooting it for his next show.
We held the contest one week later in the Huntington Beach Surf Theater parking lot downtown, right behind Wimpi's, and he had the show edited (with much input from me) and it aired a week after that. That happened to be the best ranking show, by far, in his bike series. It also happened to be the first made-for-TV bike street contest EVER. That was about 6 1/2 years before the X-Games. Unfortunately, the Huntington Beach Street Scene, as he called it, it not on YouTube.
While I was on a late night run to In-N-Out, Scot and his editor completed a section of the show featuring then bike shop mechanic, and H.B. local freestyler, Randy Lawrence. For some fucking reason, Scot gave Randy the nickname, "The Boner." He even typed it up on the screen. Randy wasn't happy, but he shrugged it off, and the name mostly faded in a year or so. But on our night session to the Cancer Ditch in 1990, that guy brought it up.
So who is The Stain?
On The Ultimate Weekend video box, with the amazing (just kidding) black and white graphics I did myself, it says, "Killer soundtrack by The Stain." But virtually none of the punkers in Orange County had heard of The Stain. The story starts with this guy, skateboard legend Mark Gonzales, on a trip to Vinyl Solution record shop in about 1987. He found a punk album from a band he never heard of, and bought it because he liked the cover. That band was a Toledo, Ohio based punk band called The Stain. Mark skated for Vision then. Since we were always looking for music at Unreel Productions, Mark brought the album in one day and showed it to Don Hoffman, head of Unreel, to see if they could use a song in some video.
Music is a nightmare for video producers, because you're supposed to have the rights to use the music in your videos, on contract from the musician or group. Unreel got really stung by this by getting a verbal agreement to use music from guitarist Joe Satriani, from his "Surfing With the Alien" album, for $300 a song. They had a legit verbal agreement, and edited a show TV show with his music. While that was happening, the album was released, and became a huge hit. When Unreel went to pay, Satriani's people said, "$300 a song? Uh, no, now we want $3,000 a song." So we had to rush to find new audio for a whole, one hour show.
We had this bombshell of a woman, who seemed to pretty much be a professional groupie, who found us music to use from Hollywood, local Orange County, and up-and-coming bands. She had left by the time I started working full time there. But they had several bands they used. Don knew Agent Orange, and used them in Skatevisions in 1986. But local bands were sketchy by nature, and it was hard to find good music that could be used cheap on a regular basis. It was a continual battle.
So one day, Don Hoffman called up the guy from The Stain in Toledo, using info on the album that Gonz brought in. He finally tracked down Jon Stainbrook, the drummer, and main force behind The Stain. As it turned out, Jon was a legit dude, and had friends who were good studio musicians, including one, Mark Mickel, whose well-off dad had built him a good studio. Jon was cool, easy to work with, actually came through with good music when asked, and charged a reasonable $100 a song, because they had to actually rent Mark's studio to record. Jon Stainbrook and friends became Unreel's main go to guys for music.
So when I decided to make a video in 1990, bootlegging your favorite punk bands wasn't the thing to do yet. Having worked at Unreel, and being anal about getting sued, I bought my music from Jon. Most of it anyhow. I think I used 14 tracks, so I owed him $1400, which came out of my pocket. I paid him $1,000, as I recall, and shaded on the rest. I still owe Jon Stainbrook $400. The check's in the mail, Jon.
Anyhow, in late July, 1990, I flew myself to Indianapolis for a 2-Hip contest to shoot video, and then drove to Chicago to shoot the vert session with Bob Kohl, an injured Brian Dahl, and new kid John Peacy. Kevin Martin and Ron Wilkerson crashed at Bob's house that night, too. So Kevin's in the video in that segment, as well. Ron was off doing business somewhere.
After shooting that session, I made a made dash across the Midwest, hitting 107 mph, in the rain, on the Ohio turnpike in my rented Mazda 323, and spent a day at my Grandma's apartment in Wadsworth, just outside of Akron, Ohio. Then I headed back west, and met up with Jon Stainbrook, in Toledo. I'd never met Jon in person, and, being a motel for traveling punk bands for years, he said I could crash at his house for a couple of nights. As luck would have it, The Stain, among other things, was the stage band for comedian Howie Mandel when he was in that area, who was a top comic and still had hair then. They had a show to do in Ann Arbor that next day at the University of Michigan, and I tagged along as a roadie.
So in the credits at 46:01, you see Jon out in front of the theater, and I pan up to the marquis with Howie Mandel's name. I forget what was wrong with the audio there, a camera problem, I think. Then you see Mark, backstage, warming up on his bass. After that, is guitarist Jeff Kollman, smoking a hot series of riffs to warm up. All three of these guys had totally different taste in music, which is why there's a weird mix in my video. Mark was a huge fan of The Beatles, a consummate musician who played several instruments well, and made cool, pop-type songs. Jeff was (and still is) a serious guitarist, and all the long guitar solo tracks are his. And Jon had the punk band, and was the business guy who got them together to make music for Unreel and others.
So, I wound up watching Howie Mandel live from backstage that day, which was a cool bonus. About 20 minutes into the show, Jon, who was sitting at his drum set, center stage, behind Howie as he performed, started signaling to me. I finally figured out that John wanted me to take photos with a disposable camera he brought. But he wanted me to take flash photos of Howie, from behind, while Howie was doing his show. I was way too much of a chicken for that. So then Jon wanted me to slide him the camera across the stage, to the drum set, so he could take photos. So I did that. And Jon took photos from the drum kit. And Howie saw the flash and was like, "What the fuck?" He worked it into his routine, and was pretty cool with it.
After the show, I got to meet Howie backstage, and went to shake hands with him, but he wouldn't shake my hand. I didn't know what was up. Being a "germaphobe" was a pretty unknown thing back then. Jon explained it to me later. No Howie's famous for his fist bumps.
Jon Stainbrook is now one of the most prominent people in Toledo's Republican politics. I have no idea what Mark is up to these days, that day in Arbor was the only time I met him. And as for guitarist Jeff Kollman, here is he a couple of years ago in a pedal demo video. He's still shredding.
The part of the video I'm talking about today is the H-Ramp, the mini ramp segment from 2:06 to 4:28. The main rider is Keith Treanor, in the white T-shirt, and also Alan Valek in the black shorts. Local Huntington Beach flatlanders Sean Johnson (the black dude) and Andy Mucahy are in there, and I can't remember the name of the guy with the long hair.
Sit down my little childrens, it's time for a lesson in bikin' from way back in the dark ages. If you just watched the clip of the H-Ramp at the times above, you're probably thinkin,' "That's some really boring mini-ramp riding set to some guitar guy playing elevator music." OK, fair assessment by today's standards. But this was waaaaaay back in 1990. Money was tight, sponsors were largely gone, we burned all our uniforms in a huge bonfire at the last AFA flatland contest. OK, that last part didn't happen, but it should have.
In 1990, the widepread popularity of flatland was fading, street riding was still growing in leaps and bounds, there were no skateparks in Southern Caliornia (really... NONE), and halfpipes had taken over in place of the quarterpipes of the years before. Two and a half years earlier, on a back street in in Costa Mesa, CA, a legal battle took place that ultimately changed both skateboarding and BMX forever. But almost no BMXer knew about it. But me.
Led by skateboarder Paul Schmitt, a handful of skateboarders rented a house on Towne Street, lodged between Placentia and Monrovia, and 18th and 19th, in the Costa Mesa industrial area. Schmitt's skate company, Schmitt Stix, was part of the Vision world, and Vision's main building was a couple blocks one way, and the wood shop that built the boards was a couple blocks the other way. And Unreel Productions, the Vision video company where I worked, was housed in a new, upscale office complex a block from Vision. The skaters, Paul, John Lucero, and a few others, were close to work, close to their sponsor, and on a chill little street hoping they'd have fairly tolerant neighbors. So, being skaters, they built a 9 foot tall backyard halfpipe. Some of the neighbors complained, since there's always some douchebag who hates any noise in every neighborhood. The city was called, and code enforcement came to check out the ramp.
Now at the time, backyard skateboard ramps were completely unknown to normal people. Most people had never seen one, and didn't know they existed. But Paul Schmitt and crew, being smart and pretty industrious, had built a halfpipe that was solid, not dangerous by construction standards, and didn't even qualify as a fire hazard. Being the only halfpipe anywhere around, attracted skaters from quite a ways for evening sessions. But, code enforcement, being the nebulous world of obscure city ordinances that it is, found a law that the ramp broke. You couldn't build anything over six feet high in a Costa Mesa backyard without getting the plans approved by the city. Paul and the skaters argued their case, and all of us at Vision heard about legal fight day to day. The Man was keeping good skaters down.
After a lot of back and forth, the skaters simply chopped the top three feet off of their nine foot tall vert ramp. The six foot ramp was no longer an issue, and the guy who complained the about the noise was told he just had to deal with it. The skaters began stopping sessions at dusk, and a relative peaceful state was achieved on Towne Street.
But something else happened by accident. The ramp was suddenly quite a bit under vert, since it was chopped off, which made airs pretty much impossible, but it made a lot of lip and coping tricks more possible. Paul Schmitt and the skaters of the house, in their battle with the city of Costa Mesa, created the world's first skateboard mini ramp, as seen at 1:12 in this 1987 Schmitt Stix video. At the time, skaters like Schmitt, Lucero, Mark Gonzales, Gator, John Grigley, and a whole bunch more started skating the Towne Street ramp. They realized that there was quite a bit to be tried on an undervert ramp, and word got around the skate world. I heard about this, and saw some video from time to time, because I was the guy who made copies of any video that anyone in the Vision Skateboards world needed. Mostly a boring job, but I heard about the Towne Street ramp, new pools, new ditches, and other spots sessioned by Vision skaters. As a hardcore BMX guy, that was a great perk of my job.
But the rest of the BMX world heard none of this. BMXers built launch ramps, and the early 2-Hip Meet the Street contests, starting in 1988, had small ramps, often like bits of a cut up mini ramp. But the 4 to 6 foot tall, under vert halfpipe, was a skate only thing for a couple of years.
A few other people started building mini ramps, since they could fly under the radar of local authorities, and since they opened up transition riding to a lot of street skaters. One of these early mini ramps was the H-Ramp, several miles inland, in Santa Ana. A dad who was good at building things had a big backyard and a son who liked to skate. He built two mini ramp halfpipes, 4 or 5 feet tall, side by side. Then he added a middle section that connected them, with a 3 or 4 foot spine, an idea born in the Powell-Peralta, Bones #3, Animal Chin video. When asked later about the secret Animal Chin ramp, the Powell skaters said the back to back vert ramps with a spine was actually too gnarly to try most of the ideas they had. So when Unreel Productions got the job of putting on the biggest skate vert contest ever in 1989, we melded the two ideas, and made a ramp with a vert spine to a mini ramp at the Vision Skate Escape. It was the first time a lot of skaters ever rode a spine ramp, and set the stage (literally) for some new tricks that weekend. The Vert/mini spine combo was way more shredable than the huge spine of the Chin ramp, and got the idea of both mini ramps and spine ramps into the skate world.
Meanwhile, in the big backyard in Santa Ana, the two mini ramps with the middle mini-spine connector section made it look like a big letter "H," and it became known as the H-Ramp. Skaters from far and wide showed up to session there. The "H" shape lasted for a year or so, and then the ramp got re-configured and rebuilt in a few different ways as time passed. You can see the H-Ramp a year earlier, with skater Marty "Jinx" Jiminez sessioning it at 50:14 in Vision's Barge at Will (1989). If you watch Barge at Will, you'll see the mini ramp idea was all over the skate world by 1989, just two years after the Towne Street Ramp, with 10 or more different mini ramps showing up in the video.
Sometime in early 1990, BMXers John Povah and Keith Treanor got wind of the H-Ramp, and got the OK, to start sessioning it on a regular basis. So why am I going to so much detail about this mini ramp, in a video segment that's alright, but definitely doesn't blow your socks off? Because the H-Ramp segment in The Ultimate Weekend was the very first time a mini ramp showed up in a BMX video. Serioiusly, the first one. Much of the footage in this section was shot on the second time Keith rode there, which is the second time he ever rode an actual mini ramp. Keith went on to become a mini ramp ruler later on, but this is him just getting used to one. That's why he seems ot be doing a lot of tailtaps. This was one of the earliest segments I shot for the video, and I didn't go back to get better footage of Keith there because I knew there were a couple more mini-ramp segments later on.
Making The Ultimate Weekend, I didn't set out to have the first "this" and the first "that." I just wanted to make a good quality, "professional" video, that showed the actual riding all of us were doing in my Huntington Beach area scene and around Southern California in 1990. I wanted fresh riding, a lot of different riders and styles, and one rider that was going to session with all these people that the video would seem to follow around. That rider, who I actually had agree to the idea, was former GT rider Jess Dyrenforth. He was a good all around rider. I knew him fairly well, we was pretty well known, and my video was going look like I followed him around to all these sessions in one amazing weekend. But Jess was getting into Rollerblading really seriously then, and he just kept flaking out on me. He wasn't being a dick, he was just super busy. Then I met Keith Treanor and John Povah at the Oceanview jump, and Keith was this hot, new rider, who was hungry as hell, and always had time to ride. So he became the main guy in the video, and John was there a lot as well.
I have a couple of more memories from the H-Ramp, besides me sucking at riding it, that is. My boss at Unreel, Don Hoffman, went to shoot some video there for one of our Vision videos. Don is the guy on the left in this clip, interviewing AFA head, Bob Morales. It might be the Marty Jiminez footage I linked above when this happened, I'm not sure. But at the time, the deck on the H-Ramp was eight feet wide on one part, and four feet wide on another. So Don was shooting with one of Unreel's huge, $50,000, 35 pound Betacam cameras. He stepped back, thinking the deck was 8 feet wide, but was on the narrow section, and fell off the back of the ramp, which was 5 feet high. That sounds pretty funny, but he fell backwards, with his eye up to the viewfinder, and the massive 35 pound camera landed on his face. He did something like $5,000 damage to the camera, and $7,000 damage to his face. Plus he looked like the elephant man for about a week. Poor Don. But he eventually healed, and we all gave him shit about it for a year or so.
My other memory is one day, probably after I made the video, I was riding the H-Ramp with Keith, John, Jess, and Jess's girlfriend, a chick named Angie Walton. Angie was riding there on rollerblades, and was about the first woman riding ramps on blades. Jess was switching, riding his bike a bit, and then the blades. At one point, we were all tired, and sitting there on the parts of the ramp talking. Angie was trying to learn some kind of handstand drop-in thing. She needed someone to hold her legs up in the handstand, as she tried to figure out how to balance so she could actually drop-in from there. I was the closest person, so she asked me.
So Angie is upside down, in a handstand on the coping, wearing T-shirt and pretty short shorts, I'm holding her legs as she's doing a handstand, and her boyfriend Jess is 20 feet away. The weird part was that I could see right down her shorts, and she kept directing me to lean her legs a little one way of the other, I'd look down, and be looking down her shorts by accident. Sure, I'm a guy, and she's was really good looking, but I really was actually trying to be a gentleman about the whole thing, and not stand there staring at her down her shorts. And Jess was watching, trying to help her figure out these drop-in things while I'm trying to not to look down her shorts. I'm a dork to start with, and it was just this weird situation that stuck in my mind. Her underwear was pretty standard issue white women's panties, I couldn't avoid getting a glimpse. I guess it never occurred to Angie, she just wanted to learn that trick, oblivious to the weird view she had on display from my angle. So if you stumble across this post Angie, I really was trying not to be a perv that day.
Angie, by the way, went on to start Daily Bread, the top inline magazine for years, and to start this other little idea with roadie/promoter Kevin Lyman... called the Warped Tour. Really. I actually called her up looking for a job on it when I first heard about it. She didn't know who the fuck I was. Kevin, was the guy whose crew built the stage for the Vision Skate Escape contest, linked above. Looking for a clip of Angie skating, I found this interview, which I listened to the first 20 minutes of, it's pretty damn funny.
Here's old school BMXer Rick Thorne with even older school skate legend Steve Alba at one of my favorite places in the world, The Nude Bowl. Way out in the SoCal desert, on a hillside past Palm Springs and overlooking Desert Hot Springs, there lies the remains of a nudist colony. Sometime in the late 1970's or early 80's, the naked people abandoned it. Somehow, skaters found it.
I started working on an old school BMX project today, and looked up some riders from BITD on You Tube. Much to my surprise, I found Rick Thorne's Pool Hunters. The bald guy in this clip looks vaguely familiar. Anyhow, I watched four different clips tonight, and this one at the Nude Bowl with pool skating legend Steve Alba reminded me of my sessions there. A blog post was inevitable. I even learned a few things about the pool I didn't know in this clip.
I first heard of the Nude Bowl in 1988, in my little cubby hole of a room at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company. The biggest part of my job then was dubbing copies of videos for people throughout the Vision world. People of all different jobs needed videos, mostly VHS copies, of different things, and I made those copies. I was also the tape librarian, so I made window dubs of all the raw footage that got shot, labeled the tapes, and organized them in the tape vault. One of the best parts of that job was that I got to watch raw footage that the skaters shot, usually a day or two after it happened. In those tapes, I first saw footage of this crazy pool out in the desert called the Nude Bowl, and several other skate spots. This was at a time when Del Mar skatepark closed, and the sole surviving skatepark in Southern California was Pipeline in Upland.
While I always sucked at riding ramps, and never could air much above coping, but I loved riding pools. Figuring out lines and carving pools was a blast, just pumping around at speed seemed one of the best things to do on a bike. I finally bought Mike Sarrail's old truck in '88, and managed to ride Pipeline five or six times right before it closed. Since I happened to work for Don Hoffman, whose parents owned Pipeline, I was able to ride Pipeline a bunch more times after it closed. I loved riding pools from then on, even though I never rose above coping.
Sometime in late '88 or early '89, I got the job of taking a couple of the Vision skaters out to the Nude Bowl for a session and a low key video shoot. I can't remember which skaters, though Kele Rosecrans comes to mind. So we made the trip inland, and I bounced the little Unreel Toyota van off road and got about 100 yards from the pool. The road was too gnarly at the time to get the van to the top. We hiked the last little bit, and when I first saw the pool, it seemed like the best thing in the world. In those days, we had to worry about police or security guards nearly every spot we rode. But at the Nude Bowl, nobody gave a fuck. That was awesome.
I went out to the Nude Bowl two or three more times in '89, to shoot video of skaters, and I made sure to take my bike and carve some lines when I could. In those days, when there were no concrete skateparks at all, it was amazing to ride a pool, hour after hour, and not worry about anybody shutting the session down.
When I started working on my self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend, in 1990, a session at the Nude Bowl was one of the first places I thought of. It was sometime in the summer when I finally got it to happen. Somehow, I was able to talk skatepark legend Brian Blyther to make the trip out there, though he wasn't riding vert all the time then. He brought Xavier Mendez, another skatepark rider from the 80's. I got the then unknown ripper Keith Treanor, English vert rider John Povah, and flatlander/photographer Mike Sarrail, and we headed out. Despite it being 105 degrees out, we had a great little session. I got footage for my video, and it was a good day all around, despite the heat. You can watch it at 25:54 in this video.
As luck would have it, that session at the Nude Bowl wound up being the first time the pool showed up in a bike video. To make it even better, I used music from Toledo punk band, The Stain, and they had recorded a song called "Pool Party" for some skater friends. It was the perfect song, and I had these crazy dreams of making it a music video and getting it played on MTV. That never happened, but it was a cool video section anyway. In these two clips, you can see a 27 year span of one of the most legendary skate/bike pools ever. Props to Rick Thorne for doing a great series on real life pool riding and skating.
Rick's Nude Bowl clip had 2,605 views when I wrote this post. I'm just curious how many views this post may help it get.
I'm doing most of my new writing on Substack now, check it out:
