The Number 43 and BMX... what I know...

I don't know who Dick Cheeseburger is, but a 43 foot jump is a 43 foot jump.  So how did the number 43 wind up tied to BMX?  Here's what I know.  

For any of you new to my blog, when I write about the old days of BMX freestyle and skateboarding, I write my own personal memories and ideas.  I never intend my blog posts to be "the official word" on any subject.  So these thoughts on how the number 43 became the official lucky number of BMX freestyle are my thoughts, and the part of the story I know something about.  

43 in an address in Hollywood.  #steveemigphotos

The whole 43 thing began with NorCal skaters and BMXers in the late summer of 1986.  At that time, The Curb Dogs, led by Dave Vanderspek, was a San Francisco bike/skate team that was as famous in the BMX world as the Haro, GT, and Skyway factory teams.  Skyway was the main NorCal based freestyle team.  Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzalez, and Oleg Konings were on Skyway in 1986, along with San Diego rider Eddie Roman.  Maurice Meyer was both a Curb Dog, and a Skyway factory team member at the time  The number 43 became an inside joke among the Curb Dogs in 1986, and it began growing from there.  

In the summer of 1986, Maurice Meyer was profiled for a local TV show, called Pacific Currents.  The segment focused on Maurice, a solid pro rider who never got enough coverage back then.  In the Golden Gate Park footage in that clip, Karl Rothe, Chris Rothe, Mark McKee, Darcy Langlois, Tim Treacy, and myself (chasing bike at 5:07), are in there as well.  This piece was shot in June or July of 1986, and the 43 thing had not happened yet.  Shortly after this piece was shot, at the end of July in 1986, I moved to Southern California, when I landed a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  

I asked Maurice Meyer to check out this post, and he retold me the origin story.  There was a San Francisco skater named Rob, and his dad came home from the corner store and said, with a thick Persian accent, "How come every thing I buy there ends up in 43 cents?"  It was funny the way he said it, and it stuck in Rob's head.  He started noticing the number 43 around, as well, and shared the story with skater friends, the Curb Dogs, and other locals.  So the whole 43 thing began as a weird inside joke in 1986, in the S.F. skate/BMX freestyle scene.  Maurice shared an article in a Scandinavian magazine, that recounts the original story.  

One weird little inside joke turned into a worldwide thing in the BMX freestyle and skateboard subcultures.  #steveemigphotos

A couple of months later, in September or October '86, the NorCal crew came to SoCal, and stopped by Wizard Publications, where I worked.  Out in the parking lot, after work, the Wizard crew talked with the NorCal posse, about 15 or so riders.  Karl Rothe asked me how my new job as a magazine guy, was going.  I told him that I had just transcribed a super long interview with Skyway pro, and NorCal local, Robert Peterson, "It was like 43 pages when I typed it all up."  Karl, said, "Whoa, 43!"  I had no idea what he was talking about.   

The 43 origin story, from a Scandinavian magazine

Karl dragged me over to the rest of the guys, and had me tell them that Bert's interview was about 43 pages long when transcribed.  I asked what the big deal about 43 was, and they said that the number had been popping up all over for them, so it was like this inside joke among 20 or 30 NorCal BMXers and skaters at that point.  That's how I know the 43 thing happened sometime between late July and September 1986.  It wasn't a thing when I last rode with them at Golden Gate Park in July, and it had become an inside joke by early fall.  In the course of riding and hanging out, the word of the 43 thing slowly spread, like it did to me and the Wizard staff, that night in the magazine's parking lot.

As time passed in the late 80's, the affinity for the number 43 spread from the Curb Dogs to the Skyway team (including Eddie Roman and Mat Hoffman), and to other freestylers.  In 1990, I put a big 43 on the back of my video box for The Ultimate Weekend.  It said, "43 reasons to buy or rent this video," and listed 43 names of the riders in it, and big tricks in the video.  While my video wasn't a BMX blockbuster by any means, pretty much all the serious riders of the day saw it at some point.  There were very few videos out then.  By then, seeing the number 43 randomly was seen as a bit of good luck by a lot of freestylers.  

Tom Green skates, and he's knows what's up.

I think what really put the number 43 in more people's heads was Eddie Roman's 1991 video Headfirst, starring Mat Hoffman.  At 20:38 in the video, Eddie asks Mat how much money he makes a week,  Mat says, "A million, billion, quadrillion dollars... and 43.  Aaaagh 43!"  That little clip, in the single most influential BMX video of all time, probably did more to promote the number 43 in BMX freestyle than anything else.  Suddenly 43 was pretty much every rider's lucky number.  And the 43 thing just kept on growing.  

The 43 story in BMX is a lot like the 420 story in marijuana/cannabis/weed culture.  Something that started as a weird, little inside joke among a few friends, slowly grew into this worldwide thing in the subculture.  I love the idea of that, how a little inside joke can organically grow, spread widely, and become a part of the subculture.  So that's my take, with thanks to Maurice Meyer, on how the number 43 became the official lucky number of BMX freestylers worldwide.

A few people, including Drob, reminded me that John Malkovich lives in apartment number 43, in the movie, Being John Malkovich.  That movie, of course, was directed by Spike Jonze, who got hired at Wizard Publications after I got laid off for not being cool enough.  Spike knew the 43 thing well from his years as a rider and BMX photographer.  I couldn't find a shot of the actual door in that movie, though.  Just watch the movie again.

My "43" Pinterest board- 97 different visual references to 43

 

Mat Hoffman lands his first 900 at 14:43 in this video.  This is footage I shot at the 2-Hip King of Vert in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in the Spring of 1989.  I shot the raw footage, and Eddie Roman edited it, and did the funny commentary, with some friends, for the 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man.

Brian Tunney- 43 Tricks for my 43rd  birthday

Area 43 BMX Park

Area 43 snowboarding

OFG (Old Fat Guys) BMX podcast #43 - Scotty Zabielski and friend.  

Flatopia 43

The Big Bang Theory- "The 43 Peculiarity"

Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion (April 2022)

Movie 43- This looks horrible, but has a bunch of big stars, including Johnny Knoxville, who's part of the Jackass posse, which includes Spike Jonze.  

Angel Number 43 - According to this video, 43 is a number sent to you by angels.  So angels must love BMX freestyle and skating.  Cool.

Learn the number 43

43 card- Manipulator of Souls in Yu-Gi-Oh!

43 decimal stuff- If you like the number 43, are a math geek, and speak Hindi, this might make sense to you.

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (movie) says the meaning of life is 42.  But it began as a comedy radio broadcast in 1978.  BMX freestyle had not officially become a thing then.  It was in its embryonic stage.  So the guy who wrote it couldn't possibly have known that the real meaning of life is 43, unless he had been hanging out with Bob Haro, which he wasn't.

For me, personally, I had an affinity for the number 43 long before it became a thing in BMX.  I was a 5-year-old living in some low income duplexes in about 1971.  We lived in Jackson Township, just outside of Massillon, Ohio.  One day a neighbor lady told us the number 13 was an "unlucky number."  Being little kids, we asked her, "Why?"  Like most adults, when asked "why?" she didn't have a good answer.  So us little kids spent some time talking about lucky and unlucky numbers.  Being a contrarian, even at age 5, I decided that 13 would be my lucky number.  

Our little crew of 5 and 6-year-olds decided to pick some other lucky numbers.  43 was our first pick, mostly because that was the sketchy UHF TV channel in our area that played scary monster movies, old time B movies.  "43 just sounds like a cool number," we thought.  We also picked 27, and 57.  So 13, 43, 27, and 57 seemed like the best "lucky numbers" to us kindergartners in Ohio back then.  For my childhood years, 43 was my back-up lucky number, behind 13.  That day we even noticed that odd numbers just seemed cooler than even numbers, for some reason, a pretty cool insight for kids that young. 

My family moved a lot when my sister and I were growing up.  We bounced around several houses in Ohio until I was 14, then lived in New Mexico for a year, and then moved to Boise, Idaho in 1981.  I got into BMX while living in a trailer park, outside of Boise, in 1982.  There was a 43 thing happening there that I didn't realize until a few years ago.  

What does Boise, Idaho have to do with the number 43?  By some weird coincidence, Boise sits just above 43 degrees of northern latitude.  Without realizing it until a couple of years ago, I got into BMX while living at 43 degrees of latitude.  That's also why there is now a Hotel 43 in Boise.  That's just another weird little 43 thing in my personal life.  Us Boise locals, and a bunch of riders across the top of the U.S., from New Hampshire to Oregon, started riding at, or around, 43 degrees of northern latitude.  Some of you reading this may be in that group.  

Then, decades later, while living with my mom back in 2017, I was talking on the phone with someone about the 43 thing.  My mom overheard me, and asked what the deal was with the number 43.  So I explained it to her.  "That's funny," she said, "when I worked at the phone company (early 1960's), my operator number was 43."  What can I say, it's everywhere...  

So that's what I know about the number 43, and how it became associated with BMX freestyle.   

The Hollywood American Legion sign, post #43.  #steveemigphotos

1/43 scale model at a hobby shop in Studio City, California, that has since closed down.  #steveemigphotos

This post had some serious issues originally, and I rewrote it on March 5, 2026.  

I do most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, designed specifically for writers.  Check it out.  

Steve Emig The White Bear Substack

The Beach Park Ramp Jam: How I met the Curb Dogs and Skyway team guys

Here's a local TV news segment on the Beach Park Bike shop ramp jams, at the same time period I lived in San Jose.  In the clip we see Robert Peterson, Maurice Meyer, Karl Rothe, Chris Rothe, and Darcy Langlois.

As I've mentioned many times in blogs before, I got into BMX while in high school in Boise, Idaho, in June of 1982.  I raced locally throughout 1983 and into 1984, then got more into freestyle, and focused on that.  I graduated from Boise High in 1984, and used my $300 in graduation gift money to buy a Skyway T/A frame and fork set, much to everyone's dismay.  That was my first good quality BMX/freestyle bike.  In the spring of 1985, my dad got laid off, and soon found a new job in San Jose, California.  My family moved there in May, I think.  I rented a room at my best friend's house for the summer and worked my summer job as manager of a tiny amusement park called the Boise Fun Spot.  Here's the sole surviving riding photo of me from that summer, along with one of me running the Ferris Wheel.  The three women on the Ferris wheel, Kim, Michelle, and Pam, all worked there.  The photos were taken by co-worker Vaughn Kidwell. 

 Long before I met Robert Peterson, I spent the Idaho winter learning Peterson inspired balance tricks in my bedroom and the living room.  Oh yeah, real Vuarnet cat eye glasses, baby.  Found those in a field, you can't beat free.  Insert joke about my Op cord shorts here ________________.

After we closed the Fun Spot, tore down the rides, and packed it up for the winter, I got ready to move to San Jose.  I packed up my shit brown 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, which had 455 engine, and was slightly smaller than the U.S.S. Nimitz, and got about the same gas mileage.  I drove solo from Boise to San Jose, which is a story for another day.  I got situated in my parents' three bedroom apartment, and soon found a job at Pizza Hut, right down the street from the Winchester Mystery House.  I began riding solo around our area in the afternoons, and working in the evenings.  The Apple Macintosh had just debuted the year before, Apple was still a pretty small company, and I didn't hear the term "Silicon Valley," for months after moving there.  Things have changed a bit in San Jose since 1985.

I knew there was a really cool scene of riders in NorCal, but in those pre-internet days, I had no idea where to find them, and the San Francisco Bay Area is HUGE.  At that point, I'd never seen the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine, that told about Golden Gate Park, and where the riders sessioned at on the weekends.  I had been thinking about starting a Xerox zine about freestyle in Boise, inspired by an article in FREESTYLIN'.  So I decided that doing a zine would be a way to find and meet other riders.  I also called my Idaho teammate, Jay Bickel.  He introduced me to Skyway riders Oleg Konings and  Robert Peterson at the 1985 Venice Beach AFA contest, but didn't know how to contact either of them.  His mom said she'd try to find their numbers.

I took my photos from Boise, including the one above, and made my first zine, called "San Jose Stylin'."  It sucked, it wasn't even folded like a book, I'd never actually seen a zine in real life before, just read about them.  My first couple of issues were three pages, copied on both sides, and stapled in the upper left corner, like a test in school. I bought a manual (non-electric) Royal typewriter, 1930's era, at the San Jose Swap Meet for $15, and had my trusty 110 Kodak to take photos with.  I used my Pizza Hut money to publish my zine.  I then drove around San Jose and dropped off copies at every bike shop that carried BMX bikes. 

After a week, I got a phone call from a guy named John Vasquez, an amazing rider, and he told me to come see his ramp and meet his riding buddies, which included Vince Torres.  They were in San Jose, and I went down to session with them, and shoot some photos.  They became the main story in my second zine issue.  They also told me about riders meeting up at Golden Gate Park on the weekends, and the monthly ramp jams at Beach Park Bikes, where Robert Peterson worked.  About the same time, Jay from Idaho got back to me, also telling me about Bert and Beach Park Bikes. 

I called up Bert at the shop, and he was really cool.  He told me the next ramp jam was a week later, and that I should come ride with them.  By then, I'd sold my car.  So I borrowed my dad's car, and braved the Bay Area traffic, which scared the crap out of me at first, since we didn't have traffic much in Boise.  But I put my Skyway in the trunk, and made the trip up to Foster City, home of Beach Park Bikes.  About halfway to downtown San Francisco from my home in San Jose, Beach Park sat practically in the shadow of the enormous San Mateo Bridge. 

I got up there, a Saturday afternoon, I think.  The Skyway factory ramp was there, not even set up yet, along with the wedge ramp.  I went into the shop, asked for Robert Peterson, and introduced myself, and gave him a few of my zines.  Bert was really cool, and immediately introduced me to Dave Vanderspek and Maurice Meyer, leaders of the legendary Curb Dogs, and pro riders who were standing there.  That's the first time I met Vander and Drob.  I later met Oleg Konings again, who, by the way, is the guy who invented scuffing... in 1984.  True. 

As they set up the ramps, I got talking to another rider there, a guy named John Ficarra, who lived a couple blocks away.  We hit it off, and he wound up introducing me to other riders who showed up, which included Chris and Karl Rothe, Darcy Langlois, Tim Treacy, and I think Rick Anderson and Mike Golden, hot ramp riders, were there that day.  As I recall, John, Vince, and a couple other guys from San Jose showed up that day as well. 

Honestly, I was overwhelmed.  I was some kid from Idaho, where there were two serious freestylers, in the whole state, and I thought I was hot shit.  I got fucking schooled at Beach Park, everyone there was really good.  Suddenly I wasn't reading about Bert, Maurice, Dave, and Oleg in the magazines, I was hanging out and riding with them.  I honestly never really thought that would happen while living in Idaho.  I mean, we all played basketball as kids, too, but never expected to hang on a court with Magic Johnson Larry Bird some day.  But in freestyle, even now, riding with the top pros is a pretty normal thing if you travel to contests or jams. 

I introduced myself as "the zine guy," because I honestly didn't feel cool enough to hang with those guys.  It wasn't them, they were all cool as hell.  That was my own issues.  I don't remember much about that day, except just having a blast riding and trying to land my best tricks, and seeing all these other tricks I'd never seen before.  I hit the ramps a bit, and got more psyched on riding than ever.  I had to leave right when the jam was over, my parents needed the car to go somewhere, I think. 

The last thing I remember was John Ficarra saying, "Hey we're going to get a pizza and watch Faces of Death, you wanna come over?  As tough as it was to say "no" to an offer like that, I did, and headed back to San Jose.  A whole news phase of my freestyle life had begun, and would take me places I couldn't even imagine at the time. 

I'm going to dive into a bunch of stories about my time in San Jose, and Dave Vanderspek, in particular, because I've just finished my latest Old School Pro rider drawing, one of Dave Vanderspek, below. 

High quality color copies of this drawing, 11" X 14," each signed and numbered, on thick card stock, are available for $20.  Message me on Facebook, or email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com, if you're interested.  The first 22 are gone, but there are plenty left... for now. 

"Put your helmet on, Oleg!"

Mitchie Brusco adds a 360 to the skate 900

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.

My first Old School BMX Freestyle Weekend

Old School NorCal represent.  Maurice Meyer selfie with Chris Rothe, Chris' son Max, Marc McKee, and me (Steve Emig).  These guys let me hang, despite being financially challenged at the moment.  Thanks guys.  The weekend was epic. I've been stuck Back East for a decade, as the Old School BMX events got going, so this was my first one.

It all kind of came together at the last minute, thanks to my NorCal roots.  In 80's BMX freestyle, I moved around a lot, which had the effect of letting me be a local in several different scenes over the years.  First Boise, Idaho, then the Golden Gate Park/NorCal scene, The Spot in Redondo, the Huntington Beach Pier scene, The P.O.W. House/Sheep Hills/S&M Bikes scene, and The Van's Skatepark locals when we could still ride the Combi Pool, along with some smaller scenes.

So it was Maurice Meyer, the pro I talked to the most back when I lived in San Jose, the Curb Dogs/Golden Gate Park scene BITD, that asked if I was going to the San Diego event over Memorial Day Weekend.  The main Old School event was the second edition signing party for The Birth of the Freestyle Movement book by Dominic Phipps.  There was also a Mat Hoffman held vert contest, a sort of last chance qualifier for the X-Games, as well, and an BMX and art event. 

 Rich Bartlett from Block Bikes, where I'm now working, gave me at ride down the 14 freeway form Lancaster to a Denny's right off the 5, making picking me up a quick stop for the guys.  Thanks Rich, it was a farther drive than I thought, and I asked him at the last minute.

Chris Rothe did the driving in his 4 door pick-up.  In a weird coincidence, there was a great paved bank right at the at Denny's.  But we wanted to get South, no session there.  We headed South through the Valley down the 405, and picked up Marc in Venice.  Last time I was in Venice, many years ago, it was still the hood.  Not like Compton level hood, but "I'm not walking here at night" hood.  Now it all looks like Santa Monica, really nice and forever out of my price range.

Another 45 minutes, then with all five of us in the truck, Chris said, "I think that guy's sleeping."  I didn't know what he was talking about.  He pointed it out.  There was the Tesla above, doing 68 mph in the carpool/E-car lane, with the driver asleep.  Like fully, completely fucking ASLEEP.  Chris pulled up next to him, Drob took this photo, and I kept waiting for the guy to look up.  He wasn't resting his eyes, he was out.  None of us had seen that before.  This was in Irvine, my old taxi driver neck of the woods.  I don't care how freakin' brilliant Elon Musk and the Tesla engineers are, I would not, EVER, sleep in the carpool lane of the 405.  But it was working for this lazy, rich fucker.  Technology is crazy these days.

 We stayed at a motel in Chula Vista, I camped out on the floor, you know, to give the weekend that true, old school BMX days feel.  And because I'm a broke guy who's three weeks out from sleeping homeless under a bridge.  Somebody tell the river otters under the Manchester side of the I-95 bridge in Richmond that I moved for work reasons, it was nothing personal.  The otter couple acutally made pretty good neighbors, unlike a lot of humans.  Steve Crandall, can you pass that word on for me?  Anyhow, I digress.

Saturday morning we headed to Mat Hoffman's vert contest, in the chilly, overcast, May Gray weather.  After a decade on the Eastern Seaboard, most of that in a place that hates BMX and action sports, it was good to see old friends and just hang and watch some good riding.  My old roommate, Big Island Mike Castillo (photo above) was the first I ran into and got a pic with.  We were roommates in Chris Moeller's condo in H.B. in 1995, when we both we skinnier and had no visible tattoos.  Mike has since covered a lot of himself in tats, and I covered myself in blubber while sitting my my taxi for years.  Tattoos would have been a better choice.  You know Mike's going to be in an upcoming episode of South Park, right?  True deal.  He took a photo of me sitting on his new S&M, and texted it to Moeller.  The response took about 30 seconds, "WTF?"

 After watching riders practice on the vert ramp for a bit, alternating with saying "Hi" to other old BMX friends as they walked up, we started getting groups of guys lined up for photos.  I was about to take the photo above, and one of the guys asked me to get in the photo.  Some guy walking by said he'd snap a pic, so I handed him the phone.  While we were trying to get a couple other people nearby into the line-up, I looked again at the guy I gave the phone to.  It was Mike Dominguez.  I didn't recognize Mike-freakin' Dominguez!  I know I've been gone a decade, but that was pretty bad.  So I got in one photo, then took this one.  L to R: Big Island Mike, Hugo Gonzales, Rick Coronado, Xavier Mendez, Mike Dominguez, and Pete Augustin.

 The contest had some pretty good amateurs on the huge, 13 1/2 foot tall ramp, as us old guys wondered if we could roll into it these days, or even way back in our younger days.  I could have managed a foot drop, probably, back then.  But I wouldn't even think of that these days.

The pro vert contest had that old feel of a 2-Hip King of Vert, or one of Mat's early comps.  None of the big time, X-Games stuff.  Just a small crowd of 100 or so watching some of the best riders anywhere blast.  In the photo above, one of the pros, whose name I don't remember, airs out a huge downside whip.  Despite the continuous winds, the top few guys were blasting.  That includes Dennis McCoy, who, at 52, looked the smoothest on vert I'd ever seen him.  He pulled a flawless barspin 540 at about 6-7 feet, and a glassy smooth flair, in his second run.  Then DMC went for a 900 with not a lot of speed.  And knocked himself out cold.  He lay there twitching a bit, and a fire truck, then an ambulance showed up.  The EMT's pulled the stretcher out, and headed behind the ramp, when Dennis had moved after coming to.  Old school announcer turned fireman, Kevin Martin, was on the scene as soon as he heard Dennis was K. O.'d.

After about 15 minutes,  the EMT's rolled an empty stretcher back, and put it into the ambulance, then stopped to watch the contest, which had resumed.  I went over to talk to them, "Let me guess Dennis said he's going to walk it off?"  "Pretty much," the EMT replied.  "It seems he's been down this road a few times."  I chuckled, "You have no idea..."  Dennis was back to normal, well, there's nothing normal about Dennis, but he was at the book signing party that night.

The guy in the red striped shirt, watching the contest in the photo above, is Koji Kraft.  Remember in the early 2000's when double backflips were a "Merry Christmas" trick, even for Dave Mirra?  Koji used to double flips in demos back then.  He was the first guy to really dial them in.  He's one of the most underrated riders ever.  Cool guy.  He was in the vert contest last Saturday.  He didn't go the highest, but was still throwing some solid variations at height. 

 The park we were at, I think, was called the Mission Valley YMCA park, but there's some family name in it as well.  Anyhow, it had a really cool park section, and a "boardercross" track that Andy Macdonald had made a few years earlier, as well as a big park section.  Chris, Maurice, and Chris' son Max all put the helmets on and got a session in.

It was during that period when R.L. Osborn, unseen for nearly 30 years by most of us, wandered into the park, with his son Dylan.  It was really cool to seen him.  He was the guy I most wanted to model when I really got into freestyle.  Initially, I wanted to be the clean cut, pro rider/entrepreneur guy.  That didn't happen, but I did stumble into the industry, and got to work with and ride with R.L..  He'd been gone so long, that everyone was re-introducing themselves.  I told him my name as I shook his hand, and said I worked at Wizard a little while.  Much to my surprise, his eyes lit up in recognition.  "I remember you," R.L. said, "You're a really good writer."  My stoke meter broke at that point.  My writing skill depends on who you ask, but I'll take it.

After the chat with R.L., I watched the guys session some more.  Max, Chris Rothe's son, got his sights set on doing a 180 off the hubba.  That's him in the photo above, stepping up his game and landing a solid 180.  He also landed a couple of 360's off the hubba right after that.  Progression.

Another old friend, long time riding buddy, and one time roommate I ran into was John Povah, in my selfie above.  I'm not disappointed to see him, I just can't operate a phone well.  Despite a decade of blogging, I'm still catching up on standard technology, like working a smart phone.  I'll figure it out, eventually.

The contest was full of old school faces, most of whom I didn't get photos of.  Among them were...

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

San Francisco street riding 1986 and 2017

I consider San Francisco the city where BMX street riding was born.  Dave Vanderspek and his Curb Dogs really pushed the skateboard idea that the whole urban world was a skatepark waiting to be sessioned.  Street skating pioneer Tommy Guerrero was one of the Curb Dogs, after all.  I know riders back to Bob Haro and the early BMX racers jumped curbs and did kick turns on banks.  But the Curb Dogs and the Golden Gate Park riders really pushed street riding to becoming its own genre.  The San Diego riders quickly joined the cause, pushing street knowledge even further.

In this clip above, about halfway through, you see Curb Dog Maurice Meyer doing what he did every day, riding the San Diego hills and jumping those curb cuts to big air down the hills.  Drob rode a coaster brake, too.  It amazed me seeing him, Vander and a few others blasting five foot high tabletops off curbs.

In this clip below, we see new school trials and street rider Danny MacCaskill doing the exact same thing on the crazy terrain of the city by the bay.  The progression continues.