Gallery 5043, the unused door of an abandoned storefront in North Hollywood, where I used to randomly put up my artwork for anyone passing by to check out (and steal), back in 2020-2022. The place finally got rented out, and it's a weed shop now.
The 43 thing in BMX started with the Curb Dogs in San Francisco in 1986. The number 43 just started popping up all kinds of places for them. I heard about it when the NorCal posse came down to Wizard Publications, and Karl Rothe asked me how my new job at the magazine was going. I said, "I just transcribed the Robert Peterson interview with Windy, it was like 43 pages long." He freaked, and they told me about the 43 thing. That's how I first heard about it. It kept growing in BMX, behind the scenes. Over many years, it became the "lucky number of BMX," or whatever you want to call it.
So today is April 3rd, and 4/3/2024. 43 Day. BMX day. Go ride.
Here's my 43 Pinterest board, in case you need to find the just right 43 to use today.
I've been doing a lot of deeper writing on a platform called Substack, check it out:
I went looking for some more footage of Dave Vanderspek, and realized I've never seen this whole video, somehow. Dave was all about having fun riding your bike and your skateboard. He was a seriously talented rider, founder of the most popular independent freestyle and skate team of the 1980's, the Curb Dogs, one of the first to really push street riding, was sponsored by Skyway, Boss, and Kuwahara,put on the first BMX street and the first BMX halfpipe contests, and just a ton of fun to hang and ride with. If you want to know why I drew the picture below as a tribute to him 31 years after his death, watch this video.
"No one got hurt, no one got arrested."
-Dave Vanderspek
(from the demo in the video above)
This drawing, in my Sharpie Scribble Style, is 11" X 14", and signed and numbered copies are available for $20 (includes shipping in continental U.S.) Email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com for details. It's a limited run of 75 drawings, about 26 are gone already. If you're a 1980's freestyler with a man cave or BMX collection, you need this in that mix.
Blog post: What Dave Vanderspek brought to the freestyle party
This is photo of Dave Vanderspek was taken by 13-year-old Bill Batchelor, for his really amazing Shreddin' zine, from July of 1985. This was a couple years before wall rides, three years before the first street peg grind photo in a magazine, and five years before the first handrail grinds on street. Doing a bar endo in a really gnarly urban place was one of Vander's early street moves, setting the stage for the future of street riding to come.
I started hearing about Dave Vanderspek in BMX Plus in 1983, when I was getting serious about BMX racing in Idaho, and only BMX Plus was available in 7-11's and grocery stores in Boise. I didn't run into BMX Action until I started buying parts at Bob's Bikes (and Lawnmower Repair), my local bike shop in Boise. The first photo I can remember of Dave was at a skatepark contest at Pipeline Skatepark, when he was blasting huge 7 and 8 foot high jumps out of the back corner of the square side of the Combi Pool. The pool was 13 feet deep with five feet of vert and huge coping, and Dave was BLASTING out of that pool. It seemed insane. Later, when I got to ride that pool a little, I couldn't even get my front tire up to the tile in that corner, though I could carve right up to the coping in the round bowl. Dave's massive flyouts 3 or 4 years earlier seemed even more amazing. And completely impossible.
While obviously an amazingly talented rider, Dave didn't spend his riding career on one factory team. He rode a Schwinn in the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine. He later rode for the Skyway factory team, and later for Kuwahara, and Boss. But he spent most of his time promoting the Curb Dogs, the local, San Francisco bike/skate team he helped found. With guys like Maurice Meyer, skater Tommy Guerrero, and several others, The Curb Dogs was the best known independent team in the world, and always landed in the top 5 teams when polls were taken, always beating some of the factory teams of the day. Since I just did the drawing below as a tribute to Vander, I'm going to be writing some posts about my memories of riding, hanging out, and talking with him. But in this post, I want to list five big things Dave Vanderspek brought to BMX freestyle in the 1980's.
Street riding- Dave was one of the earliest pioneers of BMX street riding. Yes, I know, every early rider rode on "the streets." Bob Haro and R.L. Osborn used to practice kickturns at the Larry's Donuts bank in Redondo Beach, and there's a classic photo of Bob Haro doing an edged kickturn on the 6th and Commonwealth banks, in downtown L.A.. Yes, everyone rode on the streets on their bikes, and hit little curb jumps. But not everyone had an urban terrain like San Francisco. Dave Vanderspek was one of the first riders to see the paved world as a big skatepark/bike park, ready to be explored and sessioned, just for the fun and thrill of riding it. Dave and the Curb Dogs were one of the big early forces in pushing the use of urban terrain in all news ways and figuring out how it could be used to have fun on a bike.
Punk Rock- As a BMXer, skater, and a punker, Dave brought the "fuck it" punk rock attitude into BMX in a way no one else did in the early 1980's. With the Curb Dogs bike/skate demo team, he also took the "Do It Yourself/DIY" attitude of punk, and brought it into BMX freestyle, where we were listening to all kinds of music, and wearing motorcycle-style leathers and helmets to compete in flatland. Vander's punk rock vibe, and attitude, led the way in BMX freestylers learning to be ourselves, wear more functional clothing, and working hard to build and promote our own teams, invent new tricks, and figuring out a way to make things we wanted to see happen in the world.
The Curb Dogs- In the early days of BMX freestyle spreading across the U.S. and the world, there was no team like the Curb Dogs. In the annual NORA cup awards, the Curb Dogs were always in the top 5 most popular freestyle teams, ranking among all the factory teams of the day. They always beat 3 or 4 factory teams in the magazine reader polls. That happened because Dave, while coming across as a Jeff Spiccoli-like goofball sometimes, worked his ass off to be weird, have fun, and promote the hell out of the Curb Dogs, and BMX freestyle itself.
The first BMX halfpipe contest- While Ron Wilkerson took vert to a new level by putting on the 2-Hip King of Vert contests from 1987 on, the very first BMX halfpipe contest was promoted by Dave Vanderspek at skater Joe Lopes' ramp, in San Francisco.
The first BMX street contest- If you ask an old school rider when the first BMX street contest was, they'll most likely say it was the 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California, in the spring of 1988. Heck for years, I thought that was the first street contest, because that was the first I heard of and went to. But once again, Dave Vanderspek led the way, holding a small, NorCal street contest months before Santee happened. It was a regional thing, none of the magazines showed up to cover it. From what I heard, that wasn't the point, Dave just decided someone needed to throw a BMX street contest, so he put one on, before anyone else.
Dave Vanderspek, airing out of the Pipe Bowl at Pipeline Skatepark, 1983 or 1984. Dave didn't have a skatepark to practice at in NorCal, and he rode a coaster brake in the pools. That pool is 12 feet deep with four feet of vert. Few, if any, skateparks today are as hard to air out of as the Pipe Bowl was.
How good of a rider was Dave Vanderspek? While Dave Vanderspek was known for doing easy tricks like track stands and and harder tricks like bar endos, he had a full bag of flatland tricks, many of them, like the bar endo, and the Vander Roll, were tricks he invented. Some were not super hard, and more for show, like the Vander Roll, but some tricks were really hard. I also saw Dave doing blunts on parking blocks on top of banks, a predecessor to the street abubaca, a year before the abubaca was invented.
One day at a contest at the velodrome, I was talking to Dave, and he looked over at a hubba, an angled concrete wall on the side of a small set of stairs. He asked, "You think I can pedal stall that?" Since I'd never seen a pedal stall, I said, "Huh?" Dave pedaled slowly towards it, did a huge bunnyhop, and landed on his pedal, on the angled wall, 4 1/2 feet off the ground. First try. He literally did a 3 1/2 foot high bunnyhop, turned 90 degrees, and landed on his pedal, at a time when street peg stalls didn't exist, and peg grinds on ledges were a year or two away from being invented. Then he hopped down and kinda of laughed. I'd never seen anything like that, and Vander blew my fucking mind. Again.
On one or more occasions, Dave put a freewheel on his freestyle bike, and raced B Pro, and was in the mix with the other pro racers of the day. He didn't have a skatepark to practice in, but competed in skatepark contests. He was so far ahead of the game in early street riding, that we usually didn't understand how hard and gnarly his tricks really were. Then there's that insanely high bunnyhop tabletop photo from 1983 (in a previous section). That photo is now 37 years old, and I've never seen anyone equal it in height and style, to this day. Dave Vanderspek wasn't just a funny and charismatic goofball, and a good promoter, he was seriously one of the best all around riders in BMX freestyle in the early and mid 1980's, and a pioneer in many different ways.
While he died tragically in 1988, Dave Vanderspek was a huge influence on the world of BMX freestyle, and many of the top riders of the era. That's why I chose to draw a picture of him with my Sharpies, the 4th drawing in my series of Old School BMX freestyle pros. Here's the picture I drew. It's 11" X 14", drawn in my signature Sharpie scribble style, and some signed (by me) and numbered copies are still available. Contact me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com for info.
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.
It started with the idea to make a zine. At some point, in 1985, in Idaho, I read an article in FREESTYLIN' magazine about zines. It was written by BMXer/art student turned FREESTYLIN' magazine editor, and zine lover, Andy Jenkins. For some reason, the idea of making a zine appealed to me.
I'd always been a daydreamer as a kid, I'd get these really cool creative ideas, often I'd draw and plan them out, and then never follow through. Great ideas that never happened was a big theme of my childhood. I guess, in a sense, I thought that was sort of the point of ideas. I watched my parents think of big ideas, like the time my mom wanted to start a home cooking restaurant, called Kathy's Kountry Kitchen, in the farmhouse we lived in, or the time my dad and a friend, both engineers, spent a whole night planning ways to get revenge on the guy's crazy next door neighbor. But they never took action on these ideas. Where I grew up in the Midwest, coming up with big ideas, crazy brainstorming, often by adults after a few beers, followed by never taking action, was a normal thing.
So as a new BMX freestyler in Boise,Idaho, with a year and a half of BMX racing and freestyle under my belt, I read Andy's article about these little self-published booklets called zines, and I dreamed about making one called Idaho Stylin'. But I never actually made it. I sketched out the logo, designed layout ideas, and thought it out. Then dropped the idea, and dreamed up something else.
As 1985 came in, my dad got a new job in San Jose,California, and my family moved there in the Spring. I worked my summer job in Boise, then packed up my 1971 Pontiac Bonneville with the Oldsmobile 455 engine, and drove to San Jose to join them. I sold my car shortly after getting to San Jose. At that time, the most cohesive scene in BMX freestyle centered around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Dave Vanderspek, of the Curb Dogs bike and skate team, was kind of the visionary leader of the group. They'd get together on the weekends in a certain area of the park and have a big jam circle for the crowd all day. The pros usually there, or at the Beach Park Ramp Jams, included Vander, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Rick Allison, Oleg Konings, and ramp crazy man Hugo Gonzales. There was a whole second layer of great riders, amateurs as well.
When I moved to San Jose, I wanted to find those guys, and become part of that scene. I remembered the zine idea from Boise, and decided that if I started a zine, then I'd have an excuse to meet and hang out with those guys. While I knew they rode at Golden Gate Park sometimes, I didn't know exactly when or where, and I didn't have a car to get from San Jose up to The City (as locals called San Francisco). The thought of driving into a big city and trying to park, and maybe getting mugged or something, scared the crap out of me.
But I really wanted to meet those riders, so I actually followed through and published my first zine. Actually following through on ideas was something I'd been starting to do since I got into freestyle. My self-esteem was low enough, that I thought I needed a reason to approach the guys, and to ride with them. After, they were "famous guys from the magazines," and I was a goofball from Idaho.
So I bought a manual Royal typewriter (about 1940's era) from the San Jose Swap Meet, bought some Scotch tape from my Pizza Hut paychecks to tape the photos and copy to a sheet of paper, and dug out the photos I had from riding in Boise. I changed the name of the zine to San Jose Stylin', and typed up three pages, both sides, of text and photos. I didn't even know a zine was supposed to be 8 1/2" X 11" sheets folded in half, like a little book. I figured that out on issue 3 or 4, I think. My first two or three issues were two or three sheets, with black & white words and photos on both sides, with the pages just stapled in the top left hand corner, like a test at school.
I borrowed my mom's car, drove around to several bike shops, and dropped off copies for bike shop workers, and any freestylers who came by the shops. Within a week, a San Jose local rider and underground legend, John Vaquez, called me up, and asked me to come ride with his friends, Vince Torres, and a couple others. They told me about the Beach Park Ramp Jams (held by Robert Peterson at the shop he worked at), and that Sundays were the big day to session Golden Gate Park. I made it up to a Beach Park Jam two or three weeks later, and handed out some zines there. I met John Ficarra, who decided to be my assistant editor of the zine, and started riding up to Golden Gate Park with him and the Ground Control guys, which included Chris and Karl Rothe, Mike Perkins, Marc McKee, Tim Treacy, Darcy Langlois, and Mike Golden. I soon became the "zine guy" of the Bay Area BMX freestyle scene.
Here's a local TV segment from the summer of 1986, with a Golden Gate Park Jam circle, featuring Maurice Meyer. Also in the segment are Mike Perkins at 3:48, Karl Rothe at 4:05, Darcy Langlois with the gut lever at 4:06, Tim Treacy's legs doing the backyard (which he invented, nearly a year before that trick went viral in the freestyle world), Chris Rothe at 4:34, Marc McKee in the yellow shirt at 4:43, and me, chasing my bike (an Idaho parade trick) at 5:07.
One of the better ideas, which to me just seemed like just the smart thing to do, was that I sent copies of San Jose Stylin' to each of the editors at FREESTYLIN' magazine, BMX Action, and BMX Plus! Instead of sending one for the whole staff to share, I sent them each one, so they could check it out individually, and hopefully talk about it. That turned out to be a smart move.
In the Spring of 1986, after about 5 monthly (almost) issues of my zine, a bunch of us NorCal guys piled into a van, and headed down to the AFA Masters contest, at the Velodrome, near L.A.. While I was down there, I saw Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN'. I went over and introduced myself, thinking he'd just shake my hand and say "Hi." When I told him I'd been sending zines to him, Lew, and Gork, he said something like, "Oh man, we love your zines." That blew my mind. And that's how I first met Andy Jenkins, which is the start of the story of my keychain.
I've got a new blog going, it's about building a creative business, and building small businesses in general. You can check it out here: WPOS Kreative Ideas
And check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future: Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now
