This is footage I shot in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in the spring of 1989. It was only when an edited version of this came on Facebook this past Sunday, that I realized that day, March 31. 2024, was the 35th anniversary of two legendary vert tricks.
At 11:29 in this clip you see Joe Johnson, riding for GT Bikes, land the first double taiwhip on vert. I'm pretty sure it was his first double tailwhip ever, but definitely the first in a contest and on video.
Then, at the end of this video, at 14:43, you see Mat Hoffman, in his first full contest as a pro rider, land the first 900, in a contest and on video. Not to take anything away from Mat's awesome accomplishment, but Mike Doninguez said he landed the 900 months before, on his own ramp, a couple of times. There's a shot of him at the 2-Hip contest at Ron Wilkerson's Enchanted Ramp coming really close to landing one. But, no photos or video exist of Mike Dominguez doing a 900. So this 900 by Mat is the first time Mat landed the 9, the first BMX 900 in a contest, the first BMX 900 in a video, and the first aerial 900 in any action sport. Even snowboarders hadn't landed the 9 in 1989. Mat and Joe changed BMX history with these two tricks, 35 years ago, this past Sunday.
This video segment was edited by Eddie Roman, for the 1990 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man. He and some friends did the funny commentary to this clip, "Fire that cameraman!" Heh, heh, heh. For all of you youngsters out there, double tailwhips and 900's are older than most of you are. For all of the old schoolers, like me, thinking, "Holy shit that was 35 YEARS AGO?" Yep, we're fucking old. But that's life.
For those of you wondering about the history of spinning tricks in BMX, check out this crazy blog post I did back in 2021:
Tony Hawk, during the best trick jam at the 1999 X-Games in San Francisco. I think it was on the 11th attempt he landed the first 900 on a skateboard ever. He'd been trying the trick for nearly ten years.
Ride a bike, it will take you places. SE Bikes brand manager Todd Lyons says that a lot these days, and he's right. There were about 5,000 stories of Tony Hawk landing this 900, the first ever on a skateboard, that night on a pier in San Francisco, a different story for each person in that crowd. This is my version. I was standing behind the pro skaters, less than 20 feet from the side of the ramp, talking to San Francisco BMX freestyle legend Maurice Meyer. My Sony Digital8 video camera was in my hand... with a dead battery. I'm glad actually, that was a moment I was happy to just stand there and witness, without trying to capture it on video, and keep him well framed during each try. More than a decade later, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Sean Penn's character sums up that feeling better than I've ever heard it described.
I had finagled a press pass to the X-Games that year, planning to write an article or two for Dig Magazine in the U.K. about the contest. Maurice had nabbed a VIP pass, too. I rode with him and the other Golden Gate Park locals, most weekends, during the one year I lived there, in 1985-86. We ran into each other near the end of the BMX vert practice, and started talking about "the old days" and how much BMX and action sports had changed over 12 or 13 years' time.
While we were talking at the bike halfpipe, a red helicopter with a World Industries logo on the side of it, hovered near the ramps, and started dropping stickers. The handful of kids around the area ran around picking them up. Then we realized that something else was getting thrown out of the chopper, little wadded up pieces of paper. Because of the breeze, most were falling on the empty BMX ramp area, where we were, not on the skateboard crowd. Someone grabbed one of the pieces of paper, and unraveled it. "It's money" they said. Suddenly all of us jaded Old School guys were picking them up, too. Mike Dominguez Jr., amped up after an afternoon of free Mountain Dew, sprinted around and grabbed 30 or 40 of the wadded up dollar bills, I think. I wound up with four of them, each with a World Industries skateboard character, like Flame Boy or Wet Willie, rubber stamped on them. We laughed at yet another example of Steve Rocco's crazy promotion methods. When in doubt, just throw money on the crowd. I literally had real helicopter money in my pocket when Maurice and I decided to walk over and watch the skate best trick jam, which had just started.
Dusk was descending on the huge pier that housed the 1999 X-Games, next to San Francisco Bay. With our passes, we just walked over and stood behind the rows of chairs there for pro skaters and their girlfriends, wives, and a few kids. In some of the wide shots in the clip above, you can see two really bright lights, that look lke stars on the video. We were right below, and maybe 20 feet in front of those lights, they were shining over our heads, lighting up the skate halfpipe for the TV cameras.
Maurice and I kept talking, as the world's best skaters tried their newest and best tricks. As I recall, Pierre Luc Gagnon was trying to land a heeflip Caballerial, as Steve Caballero himself sat 10 feet in front of me. Bob Burnquist was trying a one footed Smith Grind to revert, I believe. Other skaters were trying their "Merry Christmas" tricks, the things they could land once in a while. For Tony Hawk, that was the varial 720. About 12 or 15 minutes into the half hour jam, he landed one. Then he went back up, and just stood on deck a few minutes.
Skaters dropped in, sometimes snaking each other, to try to pull that one big trick. It was the closest thing I'd seen to "real," everyday skateboarding in a contest environment. The best trick jam was a concession to the vert skaters, who still weren't really happy with ESPN's take on skateboarding, in their 4th year of the putting on the X-Games. The big TV contest idea for action sports was evolving, as skaters got more involved and vocal about how they were portrayed to millions of viewers.
It was obvious the bigwigs at ESPN didn't give a shit about the best trick jam, but they had a big crowd, around 5,000 people in the stands on the other side of the ramp, so they kept the cameras rolling. It would make for soem good highlight clips, I think that's how they saw it. Old School skater and announcer, Dave Duncan, called the action out live from the deck. Maurice and I watched and talked.
Then Tony Hawk dropped in again, and no one paid that much attention. Until he opened up out of what looked like a over-rotated 540. We stopped talking, "Did he just try a 900?" one of us asked the other. I can't remember who said it. Tony walked back up to the top of the ramp, and did the same thing a couple of more times. The second rotation got tighter and tighter. After the 3rd or 4th try, he walked off the side of the ramp, facing us, He was 15 or 20 feet away, and we could totally see his eyes, he had the stare, the "thousand yard stare," as I've heard some call it. He was looking right towards us, but saw nothing. Pure focus. I asked Maurice, "Did you see his eyes? He's serious. He's either going to land it or go to the hospital trying." Maurice agreed.
The whole aura of the place shifted. Other skaters stopped dropping in. The skaters on the deck knew Tony really wanted the 900, and stepped back in respect. It wasn't planned. No color commentary guy had to spew stats and percentages to hype people up. The energy in the whole area changed. This was real skateboarding at it's best.
A top skater just got a taste that tonight was the night to land the unlandable trick, and Tony just laser focused on it. Everyone stopped skating after a couple more attempts. It wasn't about trophies or prize money anymore. We all wanted to see Tony Hawk progress vert skating to the next level. Tony kept trying, getting more and more determined, and closer to landing it. Dave Duncan kept talking into the mike like only a hardcore skateboarder could. This was a moment, one way or the other.
I think it was on the 7th attempt that Tony landed on the board, made it a few feet, then washed out on the flatbottom. I jumped up in the air screaming, I gave that one to him. But he didn't ride away, it wasn't clean, he wanted it 100%. He kept trying. On the 11th attempt, I believe, is when Tony Hawk landed the first skateboard 900 air, totally solid. Everyone went nuts.
If you freeze that video above at about 6;03, you'll see Maurice right behind Tony, in a white hoodie, with sunglasses. He ran up there with all the skaters to congratulate Tony. I, for some reason, stayed right where I was, 30 feet away, watching the pandemonium. The place went nuts. But I had seen that happen before, 10 years earlier, up in Canada.
Mat Hoffman's first 900, at 14:43 in this clip, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, in the spring of 1989. After the intro with Eddie Roman's girlfriend, this is the footage that I shot from that contest, with Eddie and friends doing their funny color commentary over it. This is from the 1990-2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man, edited by Eddie Roman.
Riding a bike did take me places. I was a dorky, unathletic kid who grew up in Ohio, spent 9th grade living in New Mexico, and then lived in Boise, Idaho through high school. The summer after my sophomore year, I got into BMX riding, then BMX racing, and then new sport of BMX freestyle, in 1983. A year after I graduated high school, my family moved to San Jose, California. I worked at Pizza Hut, started publishing a freestyle zine, and met the Bay areas freestylers, like Maurice, Dave Vanderspek, Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzalez, and a couple dozen more. My zine led me to a magazine job in Southern California. I wasn't punk rock enough for that place, and I got laid off. I got a job editing a newsletter, which led to working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, in late 1987. I was out riding three hours a night like everyone else, but didn't have the balls to make it to pro caliber as a BMX freestyler. By 1989, I was Unreel's camerman, traveling to all the 2-Hip vert and street contests to shoot video, because Vision Street Wear sponsored the contests.
While I was bouncing around the BMX and industries, the early skatepark riders inspired a bunch of great quarterpipe riders around the U.S. and Europe. In 1987, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson started putting on halfpipe contests. Riders like Todd Anderson, Josh White, Joe Johnson, and this kid from Oklahoma, named Mat Hoffman, moved up the amateur ranks and into pro. They pushed the older guys like Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, as vert riding progressed.
The first 2-Hip King of Vert of 1989 was in Kitchener, Ontario Canada. The less than epic 2-Hip halfpipe was set up in a college gymnasium for the weekend, and the riders, amateur and pro, gave it their best. The talk of the weekend was that this crazy, unknown guy from Canada, called The Terminator, was going to do a backflip abubaca or fakie or something. No one except lake jumper Jose Yanez had done flips on a BMX bike then. No one had even tried them on vert. The Terminator was an amateur, and when his final run came up, he did a high fakie, leaned back a little, and crashed hard. The weekend up hype fizzled.
The rest of the amateurs rode their runs, blasting high and pulling their best tricks. Joe Johnson landed the first double tailwhip air, which was amazing. I was on the deck, with a $50,000, 35 pound, rented Ikegami Betacam, shoulder checking photographer John Ker for a good angle to shoot from. I was doing my best to get good footage of the days events.
Then came Mat Hoffman, in what I believe was his second pro contest. He won his first pro contest. At the end of his final run, with about 300 people watching, mostly Canadians, he nearly landed a 900. Mat got up, and went for it again, landing the first BMX 900 in a contest, and the first recorded 900 in any action sport. Even snowboarders hadn't pulled a 900 air at that point. I caught it on video from the deck, and Eddie Roman and another guy caught it from two angles below. Mat Hoffman, new pro vert rider and wonderkid, broke the 900 barrier in action sports, with video and photos to prove it. Word was the Mike Dominguez had landed a 900 or two on his own ramp. But there were no photos or video. Mat made it official, the 900 was possible.
By some weird quirk of fate, me, the goofy kid from Ohio and Idaho, was there to get video. And by an even crazier quirk of fate, I was in San Francisco a decade later to watch Tony Hawk do it, live, on a skateboard. The only other two people that I know were in both places were Mat and his buddy Steve Swope. But they were running the bike contest in 1999, and I don't think they were watching the skate best trick jam. I'm not sure. There may have been a couple of people who saw both happen live.
We live in a weird Universe, and really crazy coincidences happen now and then. It still trips me out that I somehow saw both of these happen live, right in front of me. Riding a bike did take me places, for the first 20 years of my adult life. I met alot of cool people, traveled around the U.S., and into Canada a couple of times.
Then I got injured, became a taxi driver, and things went into a downhill spiral. I think life wanted to kick my ass for a couple of decades to teach me some other lessons. One of the things I've learned is that there are a lot of ways to spend your time in life, and goofing around on bikes is one of the best ways. You never know where it will lead you. Ride on!
This video came out in late summer 1987, I think. After getting laid off from my life changing job at FREESTYLIN' magazine at the end of 1986, I got hired by Bob Morales to be the editor/photographer of the AFA newsletter. But I did all kinds of things there. One day Bob walked in and asked, "Do you want to direct a TV commercial for the Austin contest? I can get really cheap commercial spots on MTV there." That question started my video career.
The year was 1987, it was the era when the younger quarterpipe schooled BMX vert riders were begining to rival the older skatepark schooled riders in skill level. Mike Dominguez was the king of quarterpipe riding, with Eddie Fiola and Brian Blyther right up there (neither was at this contest), the old skatepark rivals. But guys like Dave Voelker, Josh White, and Todd Anderson were closing in on them. Dino Deluca, Mat Hoffman, and Joe Johnson were still amateurs then. But all of these guys were clocking in airs above 8 feet out, sometimes in the 10 to 12 foot range. This same year, Ron Wilkerson, already a major touring pro for Haro, started the 2-Hip King of Vert Halfpipe series, which led vert BMX away from quarterpipes over the next few years, and into halfpipe riding. This AFA Freestyle Masters contest took place in Portland, Oregon, in the Spring of 1987.
Back then, the new little offshoot sport of BMX freestyle was about four years old, and BMX racing was 17, barely old enough to drive. BMX freestyle started as trick riding shows in the late 1970's. Then it started as a sport in 1983, with Bob Morales promoting the first BMX skatepark contests. The first American Freestyle Association flatland and quarterpipe contest was in Venice Beach, in June of 1984. Things were growing fast, and by 1987, all three BMX magazines had spawned a freestyle magazine as well.
There were three of us in the little AFA office when I started, and a couple more, a few months later. I did a little bit of everything there. I answered phone calls, put heat transfers on T-shirts, drove the van and big trailer (Gary Turner's old 30 foot dragster trailer), and was a roadie and fill-in judge at local and national contests. I wrote, shot the photos, did the layout, and helped fold and staple all 3,000 newsletters each month. Bob always had about 17 things going at once, and he'd just say, go do this, and show me the basics, and then let me finish it, figuring anything new out as I went.
Then came the video work. Bob found out he could buy local commercial spots, on MTV in Austin, Texas, to promote that contest, for $25 each, I think. But we needed a broadcast quality, 30 second TV commercial, in about a week. He asked me to do it, and I said, "Uh... sure. How do I do that?" Typical punk rock/BMX/action sports D.I.Y. attitude of the times. He said, "Call up Unreel, they'll tell you what to do."
Unreel Productions was the video company part of Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear, and VSW sponsored the AFA Masters contest series. So they sent a cameraman to shoot video of each contest. The deal was that both Vision and the AFA could use that footage. So I called Unreel, and they told me to come over the next day. They handed me ten VHS tapes, explained what a window dub was (numbers for the time code in the picture), and told me to go home, and write down the numbers of all the shots I wanted to use, then call them back.
The next couple of nights, I did that, picking all the best shots, and marking where the pro contest runs started. The next day I was in Unreel's $500,000 Betacam edit bay with their editor, Dave Alvarez, who was a couple of years older than me. Dave had long, straight hair, a tie dye T-shirt, and Vision shorts. He didn't fit the picutre in my head of what a video editor should look like. But he was an incredible editing wizard, and great to work with, since I had no clue what I was doing. He walked me through editing, step by step. Sometimes, while doing the intro, he'd play a few seconds of music, and say, I need a shot that matches this sound. So I'd think of a shot, look it up in my handwritten log notes, and he'd edit it in. Within a couple of days of editing, we had a half hour show. These videos were in color, but this copy above looks like a copy of a copy, and color gets lost as they went down tape generations back then. They don't have to worry about stuff like that now, in the digital era.
I "produced and directed" six AFA videos that year, with Dave doing all the editing. Basically, that means I picked the shots used, after logging the footage, and just made sure the videos got finished, that's what a producer does. All that time I spent at Unreel led to them calling me when they needed a new guy to do basic work, later that year. I left the AFA, and started working at Unreel, in December of 1987.
One question by Bob Morales one day, asking me to do that first commercial, turned my life in a different direction, which later led to things like this, in 1990, and working as a crew guy here. starting in 1992. It's weird how tiny opportunities can change your whole life.
While the quality is sketchy from this old VHS tape, the riding is amazing for the time period, and would be solid riding in today's world. This was BMX vert at the beginning of the quarterpipe era over 35 years ago.
A Facebook post by Mat Hoffman just reminded me where I was 33 years ago today. I was in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, shooting video of a 2-Hip King of Vert contest for Unreel Productions. Mat landed the first 900 in a contest that day (at 14:43), and Joe Johnson landed the first double tailwhip air on vert. Epic day of BMXness. This is about fifteen minutes of my footage of that day, narrated by Eddie Roman and friends for the 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man.
Without doubt, the single most influential BMX freestyle video of all time, the Eddie Roman produced Headfirst featuring Mat Hoffman. It came out in 1991. If you're an old school BMXer, this video almost certainly brings back good feelings, and a sense of awe at how far Mat (and Chase) pushed the progression of freestyle in this one video.
The reason I'm sharing this video, is to remind us all how long ago this video was made, it came out about 28 years ago. At about 34:00 in, you hear Eddie (I think) throwing things we'd all been hearing on the news, because the Gulf War, the first U.S. war in Iraq, was going on then. The SCUD that he mentions, was an Iraqi missile, for example. The war was live on CNN, back when CNN was actually a true and functional news organization. At 34:37, you can hear Eddie say, "That was for the Kurdish Rebels." The Kurds are a group of people from the area of Northern Iraq. They have long wanted their own nation, but got lumped into the country of Iraq, a nation cobbled together by the British decades ago.
The Kurds were helping the U.S. fight Saddam Hussein in Iraq way back when this video was made, and they've been an ally to the U.S. since. For the past several years, they've been the main force actually fighting Isis, with U.S. backing, in the collapsed country of Syria. Syria is adjacent to northern Iraq, and right below Turkey. Two days ago, after a call from Turkey's dictator, President Trump completely changed U.S. policy, for no apparent reason, and pulled our help away from the Kurds, which have been our allies since the early 90's, by and large.
The Kurdish Rebels Eddie refers to in the Headfirst video in 1991, are now being attacked by Turkey with help from Russia. In the volatile Middle East, for no logical reason, without consulting with the State Department, the military, or intelligence officials, President Trump just threw the Kurds under the bus. He singlehnadedly greenlighted a genocide against the people who have been fighting and dying for years in OUR battle against ISIS.
Here's a news report on the beginning of the attacks on the Kurds, from last night (10/9/2019). Many Kurds will die, few other groups will want to work with America in the future after this blatant betrayal, and we will all be less safe as Isis rises up again.
I put this in a BMX-oriented context, because us old guys (and gals) can relate to how long the Kurdish people have been working with us, by remembering just how long ago Headfirst came out. Elections (hacked or legit) have consequences. Whatever your political views, we need competent leaders and people in government, people who think things through, discuss plans with the smartest people on the subject, and try to act in the best interest of the country. That's not what's happening these days.
In the spring of 1989, I traveled to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, with a woman from Vision promotions. I forget her name. I hadn't booked a room, I thought she was handling it. I wound up getting the room right next to the room where Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, and Dennis McCoy were staying. I was the cameraman for Unreel Productions, the Vision Street Wear video company, my job was to shoot footage of the contest, and I had the only broadcast quality video camera at the event, a rental Ikegami Betacam.
I ran into Rob Dodds, who I met in Whistler three years before, and he was looking for a place to crash, in typical low budget rider style for those days. Since I had a spare couch in my room, and Vision was paying for it, so he crashed there, and we wound up having dinner that night with Mat, Swope, and Dennis. Rob also shared this trick he'd been working on with Mat, a no handed 540. Guess what trick Mat landed at the next 2-Hip?
The big talk of the weekend was some Canadian guy nicknamed the Terminator, who was supposed to try a backflip abubaca, or backflip fakie. No one did any backflip tricks then. But it fizzled into a lackluster crash. The contest turned into just another rad 2-Hip King of Vert. And then this happened. At 14:43 is this clip, you see Mat Hoffman pull his first 900, and the first 9 ever pulled in a BMX freestyle contest. This whole clip is my footage, used in the Eddie Roman produced/2-Hip video Ride Like a Man.
Just over a decade later, I took a break from my job as a Hollywood lighting technician, for the summer, to get a hernia fixed. My insurance company gave me the runaround all summer, and that never happened, so I wound up working as a taxi driver. That job didn't require heavy lifting, like the lighting job did.
But while I was taking that summer off, I drove up to the 1999 X-Games, after scamming a press pass as a writer from Dig BMX Magazine. My purpose was to wander around, shoot some cool footage to put into a little BMX video, and use that to get some of the newer riders stoked on letting me shoot them for a hardcore, self-produced BMX freestyle video later on.
After shooting some footage of BMX vert practice, I ran into old friend, Maurice "Drob" Meyer, and we started talking about "the old days" of 80's freestyle in San Francisco. While we were talking, a red helicopter drifted in close, and someone threw stickers out the window. That was pretty funny, a sticker toss taken to a whole new level. Then the chopper drifted near the ramps again, except someone was tossing wadded up dollar bills out of it. That turned out to be World Industries owner Steve Rocco, and you can see the inside-the-chopper footage in the documentary, The Man Who Souled The World. I picked up four of the dollars, each with a World Industries figure stamped on it. Mike Dominguez, Jr. wired from drinking Mountain Dew all day, ran around an got about 50 of them. The funny thing was, almost all of the money fell on the BMX halfpipe, missing the skate halfpipe next to it, the intended target. If you know anything about Steve Rocco's hatred for BMX, that's petty dang funny.
Anyhow, Drob and I kept talking, and since we both had cool guy passes, we walked over to watch the skate best trick contest, which was getting started. Unlike everything else in the X-Games up until then, it was like an actual, real, skate session. A bunch of the very best vert skaters trying their hardest tricks. I think Bob Burnquist was trying a one footed Smith grind to revert. PLG was trying a Caballerial heelflip, or maybe a frontside Cab heelflip. It was off the chain. Tony Hawk landed his trademark varial 720 halfway through the half hour jam. Maurice and I kept talking about how huge these sports had become, and how crazy the whole scene was, compared to when I rode at Golden Gate Park with him and the other guys in 1985-86.
Then Tony Hawk got this crazy idea, and decided to try the elusive 900 he'd been trying to land for ten years, since about the time Mat pulled the bike 900 in Kitchener. Tony hucked a couple of wild spins and unraveled at the end of each. But on about the third or fourth try, he started to get it back towards the landing. Suddenly, it went from a crazy huck to looking possible. Maybe.
There were about 30 folding chairs, in 3 or 4 rows, in the skater's area next to the halfpipe. Those were filled with the skaters, girlfriends, a couple of wives, and a few bros. Drob and I were standing about ten feet behind those. From our vantage point, we could see that after that 3rd or 4th try, Tony Hawk suddenly had the thousand yard stare. We could see it in his eyes. He wanted the 900... BAD. I looked at Drob, "Holy shit, he's serious now, he's either going to land it or wreck himself." Drob agreed. We both knew that intense stare. We'd seen it before, and we'd had it before. Pure focus.
Tony kept trying, everyone else stopped skating, and it became a scene I'll never forget. There was nothing about competition. It was real skateboarding. One guy, focused on landing one trick, and everyone of the other skaters wanted to see it happen. Everyone in the seats, and us just behind, wanted to see it happen. The 5,000 spectators in the crowded bleachers on the other side of the ramp, wanted to see it happen. It took tony 11 attempts, I think. But he landed the first skateboard 900 ever, and it was amazing to see.
The funny thing for me was, I'd been shooting video all day with my little Sony Digital 8 camera. My batteries were dead. I watched this whole scene with a dead camera in my hand... and I didn't care. I didn't want to be a cameraman right then, focusing on framing the shot each try. I just wanted to see the whole thing play out. I wanted to just experience it happening. And that's what I did.
When Tony landed the 900, a bunch of people, including Maurice, ran up to congratulate him. You can see Drob if you freeze it at 6:04, when Tony has is mouth open. That's Maurice in the sunglasses and light colored hoodie, to Tony's right.
Those were two huge jumps in the progression of vert riding and skating. The impossible became possible. Somehow, for reasons unknown to me, the Universe saw fit to put me there to see those two events happen, in person. Both were moments I'll remember my whole life, you know, unless Alzheimer's kicks in, of course.
Last night at the X-Games, 30 years after Mat's 900, 20 years after Tony's 900, Mitchie Brusco stepped the progression of vert skateboarding up another huge notch, adding a 360, and landing the first 1260 on a vert mega ramp. Freakin' amazing. Congratulations Mitchie.
Blog post: The Story of my keychain: Part 4- Eddie Fiola and me meet some local kids
In the last post about the story of my keychain, I talked about hanging out with the Haro riders and the Hutch riders, at the Holiday Inn, the night before the contest. That contest, again, was the AFA Freestyle Masters contest held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April of 1986. On the strength of my zine, that I'd been sending to the guys at Wizard Publications, FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins had tapped me to write a freelance article about the contest for the magazine. It was my first job in the "real" BMX freestyle industry.
I caught a ride to the arena, Saturday morning, with the Haro team, who I stayed with all weekend. I wandered off by myself, as practice was going on. I stood alone near the table of trophies that Saturday morning. I was trying to figure out what I actually had to do, who I had to talk to, and how to do a good job covering the contest for FREESTYLIN'. As I stood alone, Eddie Fiola walked up and started talking to me. At the time, Eddie was the biggest name in the sport. He was the original King of the Skateparks, the first big freestyle pro I ever heard of, and the best known name in our weird little sport. Most people didn't really know BMX freestyle existed then. But if people knew one name in the sport, that name was Eddie Fiola.
So I was freakin' out inside when Eddie just walked up and started chatting. He was just talking about normal stuff, but I was thinking, "Holy Shit! Eddie Fiola is talking to me!" It was a fanboy moment. So I probably stammered like an idiot. But I tried my best to act as cool as possible. We'd been talking for a minute or two, when two young kids, maybe 14 or 15 years old, rode up to us. One had a mop of curly brown hair, and the other a bit more normal of a haircut. The kid with the curly hair totally interrupted us, and I kinda wanted to strangle him at the moment. On the inside, I was shouting in my head, "Dudes! I'm talking to Eddie-freakin'-Fiola, fuckin' go away!" On the outside, I just kept quiet for a minute.
The kid with the curly hair asked, "Eddie, you ever seen somebody to an air like this?" The kid took one hand, put it on the opposite side of the handle bars, then took his second hand off. At the time, 540s, high one hand on footers, and Mike Doninguez' no footed can-can, were the craziest vert tricks. No one did the air the kid was talking about. Eddie smiled, "Nope, I've never seen that one before." It seemed like a ridiculous variation then. The two kids both got huge, ear to ear grins, and rode off stoked. I was glad, and Eddie hung out and talked to me for a few more minutes, and then walked off, to go get ready for pro ramp practice. My crazy weekend, of actually talking to and hanging out with the top pros, kept going.
Not long after that, Jon Peterson, the Haro assistant team manager that I met the day before, came up and took me around and introduced me to several of the pros, to Windy Osborn, the FREESTYLIN' photographer, and other industry people. Later, during ramp practice, I got on top of the Haro quarterpipe, and shot three or four rolls of film on my Pentax ME Super, which I was just learning how to operate. As luck would have it, I set the ASA setting wrong for the indoor lighting, and all my photos came out grainy. That sucked, but I wish I had those photos now, even as grainy as they were.
Among other things, I saw this kid actually doing those switch handed airs that he told Eddie and me about. All weekend we all called that kid "The Stormtrooper," because he wore a Bell Moto full face motorcycle helmet, a chest protector, elbow pads, and knee pads to ride vert. In those days, most vert riders wore a T-shirt, Levi's, an open face helmet, and no pads to ride. So the kid totally stuck out. But none of us knew his name. He was doing variations four or five feet out on the Haro quarterpipe, and straight airs a couple of feet higher. The kid was definitely really good. But Josh White was the new, standout rider at that contest. He was the new kid most people were talking about. Joe Johnson was turning heads as well. The top vert pros of the time, were the early skatepark riders, Eddie Fiola, Mike Dominguez, and Brian Blyther. It was obvious the transition from the skatepark contests to quarterpipe contests were producing a new wave of up-and coming vert maniacs, Todd Anderson, and Dennis McCoy, and a few others, were already well known, and new guys Josh White and Joe Johnson were rising up right behind them. Vert riding was evolving, and 8 foot plus airs were becoming more and more common.
Here's the funny thing about this story. Every now and then, through 1986-87, and into 1988, I'd talk to other riders and tell them about the time Eddie Fiola came up and started talking to me in Tulsa, when I was just some unknown guy who happened to be writing the magazine article for that contest. It was just a cool little story to me, the first time a top pro walked up and talked to me. Then one day, a couple of years later, I was telling someone the story, and it suddenly hit me what trick the curly headed kid had showed us. I went, "Holy crap, that was the switch-handed air! Those kids were Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope." Then it became an even cooler little story. The biggest name in freestyle at the time, Eddie Fiola, came up randomly, and just started talking to me. Then two random kids interrupt us, and of all the kids in freestyle, they were then unknown Oklahoma kids, Mat and Swope Dog. So that was was when I met Mat and Steve for the first time, without realizing it.
But the story keeps going. Two weeks ago, late June of 2019, I finally made it down to H.B. Tuesdays, where Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo show up to ride and hang with other old school freestylers. Everybody was cool, and they knew I was down and out right now, so Eddie invited me to pizza with them, and they hooked me up. As we ate, and we all traded stories for a couple of hours. It was then that this story popped in my head, and I told the story of how Eddie came up to me at Tulsa, to Eddie Fiola himself, and a few other old school riders. Somehow, I happened to be talking to Eddie Fiola when the kid who would become the most influential vert rider... EVER... rode up to meet Eddie Fiola. It was the first time Eddie met Mat and Swope as well. And neither Eddie or I had any idea it happened. It was two random kids, like the thousands of other random kids Eddie met at contests and shows over the years. By some random bit of serendipity, I happened to be there and witness that moment.
Eddie didn't remember the incident, he's had so many interactions with people over so many years, that the moment didn't stand out above the others. I remembered it, because it was the first time Eddie Fiola had come up to talk to me. Somehow, 33 years later, with Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope now middle aged guys as well, I got to tell Eddie of the first time he met Mat Hoffman.
Like I've said many times, and one of the biggest things I've learned from all these BMX freestyle blog posts, is that it's the weird little moments, mostly, that we remember best when looking back at our early riding days. Those weird little moments are the things I blog about. Just another of the epic moments from the weekend that I became part of the BMX freestyle industry, the weekend that changed the entire course of my life.
I'd like to thank Matt Picker for the head's up on this video. DIG BMX had this idea to document the progress of a single trick, starting with the ice pick. Until Matt told me about this video today, I forgot they'd contacted me about this idea a while ago.
Cool idea. Even cooler, from my perspective, is that I shot the video of the first ice pick grind. My shot from The Ultimate Weekend (1990) video of John Povah grinding the little handrail into the kiddie pool at the Regional Pool (Cypress, CA) is when John took Mat Hoffman's ice pick stall on vert, and turned it into a grind. In 1989-90, the corporate money pulled out of BMX freestyle, riding went underground and low budget, and rider-made videos, like me making The Ultimate Weekend, was in its infancy. But the riding was progressing at high speed.
Props to DIG (pun intended) for coming up with this idea, and it's cool to see how a little trick Keith Treanor and John Povah had been thinking about, and John pioneered, turned into something huge and gnarly as fuck since. The one I totally remember in this sequence was Josh Heino's ice pick at El Toro. That blew my mind when it came out. It was so huge and crazy for that time. I've never even managed an icepick stall on street, but this is a really cool watch to see one trick progress over a couple of decades.
Just realized this is blog post #430 for this blog. That's a lot of posts in 17 months. The number 43 is EVERYWHERE for me lately.
I'd like to thank Ken Paul for this photo he shot and apparently just found again. That's Old School Canadian rider Rob Dodds in the air. He says it probably a warm up air, maybe a 540. Considering this is from 1989 at Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, that's a big 540, if that's what it is. The reason I'm thanking them for finding this is because I'm the cameraman in the foreground. I joke a lot these days about "my life in the background" in the 80's, because my assorted BMX/skate industry jobs landed me in the background of a bunch of photos. Another funny thing is that when Windy Osborn shot the first few photos of me as a new editorial assistant at Wizard Publications, I was drinking a can of Coke, and she shot it with a fisheye lens, so the bottom of the can pretty much hid my face. Other photos, taken soon after, were shot so my face always ended up being covered or hid because I was turned away. It was a running joke at Wizard and then with other photographers for a while. If you took a photo of me, you couldn't show my face. So here's another photo like that. Too funny. Just for the record, only one camera has broken when someone took a photo of my face. Seriously, they were taking photos of the crew for our security passes when I worked on a Cirque du Soleil tour. After taking taking my photo, the camera broke, and they had to find another one.
On my end, I worked at Unreel Productions, the Vision video company, from December 1987 through 1988, and I was basically a a production assistant, what they call a PA in the TV industry. My main job was dubbing copies of tapes of one thing or another for people throughout the Vision empire of companies. But I did a little bit of everything, like running errands, picking up supplies, manning the phones at lunch, training the receptionists, and everything nobody else wanted to do. I knew I had job security,though, because I was the only one who knew how to change the toilet paper roll in the front bathroom at the office. So they couldn't fire me.
Sometime in late '88 or early '89, Pat Wallace, the staff cameraman, moved on to another job, and I became the new cameraman. It sounds really cool, but mostly I did my same job, and then went out on video shoots once in a while. The cool part was getting sent to every 2-Hip King of Vert and Meet the Street contest in 1989. Since I was the token BMX guy in a crew of older surfer guys, it was great to travel to those on the Vision dime. In those days, we used pro quality Sony Betacam video cameras that weighed 35 pounds and cost $50,000 each. That's not a typo. Broadcast quality cameras were crazy expensive in the late 80's.
The Kitchener contest was the first I traveled to as cameraman, and I had to rent an Ikegami Betacam, and then make sure I actually knew how to work it, once in Canada. I traveled with a very attractive woman from the Vision promotions office, whose name I can't remember now. That's probably good, because I was really a dork then, and probably made an ass out of myself around her. Like when we got to the hotel and I realized I hadn't booked a room. I thought she handled that stuff as the promotions person. I asked if I could crash on the floor of her room. She was a seasoned traveler, a real road warrior who had worked for the NFL, and said something like, "No fucking way, you're sleeping the rental car if they're out of rooms." I managed to luck out, there were empty rooms so I got one. I guess March isn't a big tourist month in Ontario.
In typical BMX fashion, I ran into Rob Dodds while shooting the practice session that evening. That's probably when the photo above was taken.
I met Rob and a whole host of other Canadianfreestylers when I went with my Idaho teammate Jay Bickel and family to a contest at Whistler, British Columbia 3 or 4 years earlier. Since we were all there for a week in Whistler, we rode all day, sessioning with Eddie Fiola and Chris Lashua, who were taking a break from the GT Brittania Tour. We all got to know each other pretty well during that week. When I talked to Rob at this contest, he was looking for a room to crash in, having traveled from Western Canada. I had a big couch in my room, and offered it up.
As luck would have it, the room beside us was the weekend home to Dennis McCoy, Steve Swope and Mat Hoffman. Like every contest, we were wandering around talking and hanging out that night in different rooms. The talk of the weekend was some Canadian guy named nicknamed the Terminator, and rumor was that he had learned some kind of backflip trick. This was before the flip fakie and flair were even considered possible, even by Mat. Some people said he was going to do an abubaca to backflip, some said a backflip fakie. Sure, those don't seem so crazy today, but this was 1989, before all those young backflip triple whipper guys of today's scene were even born. When it came to the am finals, the Terminator tried some kind of abubaca thing, leaned back, and just took a hard slam. There was a big let down to the 300 or so of us in that gymnasium. It was like the whole weekend of hype fizzled out like a dud bottle rocket.
Several of the big name riders were trying to huck a 900. Mike Dominguez had come agonizingly close at the final Enchanted Ramp contest in 1988, and he said held landed a couple on his own ramp, but never got video of them. So the world hadn't seen one yet. Several guys tried, and young Mat Hoffman hucked an attempt and, like Mike D., just barely missed landing it.
So he tried another one. I was on the opposite deck, banging elbows with John Ker and the other photographers. I had the only professional quality betacam in the room. Mat's Skyway teammate, Eddie Roman, had his S-VHS camera on the ground. Someone else had a camera on the deck where Mat was spinning. This was the olden days kids, cell phones didn't exist (to poor people), and there were actually more bike riders there than cameras. On the second attempt, Mat carved across the ramp and landed the first BMX 900 air in a contest. And the first 900 air in ANY action sport in a contest. We instantly forgot about the Terminator guy.
When we got back to the room, Rob and I cleaned up and were headed to the hotel diner to go eat, and ran into Dennis and Swope coming out their door. They were also heading to eat. We asked where Mat was. Steve Swope said, "Look through the peephole." Some how, the peephole in their hotel door got knocked out, so we could look in. Mat was sitting there two feet from the TV, with a camera plugged into it. He was watching the 900 over, and over, and over. I guess he was analyzing it or figuring out just how he got it to work that time. Dennis rolled is eyes, "He's been doing that for an hour, just watching it over and over." So we all went in, watched it a few times, and then dragged Mat from the TV and we all went to eat.
On the walk there, Rob was talking to Mat about this crazy trick he'd been trying, a no-handed 540. That was another impossible sounding trick at that time. Rob said they would come around, but the bars would always drift away and he couldn't land one. So Mat and Rob got into a serious vert rider discussion on how it might be possible to land a no-handed 540.
Guess what trick Mat debuted at the next contest at Woodward?
Thanks Ken for sharing the photo, and Rob for sharing it with me and adding to the legend that you can't show my face in a BMX photo. Heh, heh, heh.
Here's the clip of Mat's 900 from Eddie Roman and another camera guy. In the first shot, I'm on the opposite deck, just to the right of Mat during his warm-up air. I was wearing the never fashionable Vision Street Wear black and white "cow pants that day. Eddie Roman is the guy you hear doing commentary while shooting from the ground.
Below is what's available from my footage shot that day. There was a lot of great riding going down. This is from 2-Hip: Ride Like a Man, a video Eddie Roman edited. That's Eddie and friends talking in the back ground. Mat's 900 is at 14:43, at the end of this clip. Epic weekend.
Check out my art in person, or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.
I was almost 20 years old in 1986, when Eddie Fiola walked up to me and started talking at the AFA Masters contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My little San Jose' Stylin' zine somehow got me the job of writing about that contest for FREESTYLIN' magazine. It was the biggest weekend of my life up to that point, and I couldn't believe it when Eddie just came up and started talking. It was a fanboy moment, talking to the best know pro in freestyle like it was no big deal. Then a curly headed kid and his buddy rode up and interrupted us. Damn little grommets. That kid was asking Eddie if he'd ever seen a trick, he did the motions of a switch-handed air. Eddie had never seen that trick. Neither had I. The kid smiled and him and the buddy rode off.
In the 1980's, a really weird, mostly screwed up, group of kids were attracted by the obscure, new, little sport of BMX freestyle. Most of us were hardcore riders, if never really great riders. Some guys excelled at riding. I found my niche as one of the guys recording parts of our weird little world, first with a 110 camera and a typewriter, then at magazines, then a newsletter, then with video. I wasn't one of the pro riders. But I wound up part of the scene, sessioning with the best in the nightime jam circles and street rides, and then documenting them at the contest the next day. Because of that, I just happened to be standing there when I lot of really cool stuff went down. On good days, I had a camera of some kind with me. On the bad days, I waited for Windy or John Ker's magazine photos to come out.
The spring of 1986 in Tulsa was one of those good days. Without realizing it at the time, vert legend Eddie Fiola and I happened to meet an unsponsored Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope, before the national scene had heard of them. Three years later, in a school gym in Ontario, Canada, was another good day. I was the Unreel Productions (Vision) cameraman that day, the only person in the gym with a broadcast quality video camera on my shoulder. The talk of the weekend was about some Canadian kid called the Terminator doing an abubaca backflip, or maybe a fakie backflip, no one was sure. Both of those tricks seemed completely insane then. He tried it earlier that day, but didn't commit, and it was underwhelming. After that, there were no big expectations. As usual, several riders hucked 900 attempts. Then something amazing happened. Go to 14:43 to see it. Mat wound up having a good day that day, as well. Happy Birthday Mat Hoffman. Hope today's another good day, as well.
Remember everyone... you never know who that goofy looking kid who rides up to you at the skatepark may turn out to be. Eddie and I had no idea what that curly headed kid would unleash into the bike world. So don't be too quick to discount those crazy kids you run into out riding.
