S&M Bikes "Behind the Shield" Book Launch Party- S&M Shop- July 20th, 2019

 Chris Moeller on the mike and Chris Stevenson holding a copy the book up, at the party last night.  Moeller was telling the story about how women at bars used to get the two Chrises that worked at S&M confused, and they'd hook up with women who thought they were the other Chris.

I first heard of 16-year-old racer/jumper Chris Moeller when BMX Action editor Gork "discovered" him, while on a photo shoot in Huntington Beach with another rider.  I soon met Chris, and we saw each other at events now and then over the next four years.  Then, in 1990, I shot some video at the P.O.W. House and at Edison, with Chris, Dave Clymer, and 3 or 4 others from the P.O.W. House.  (P.O.W. stands for Pros Of Westminster) and put them in my first self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend.  The S&M shield, spray painted on the door of the VW bus in this clip, was the first time a lot of people saw that now iconic image.

A year later, I was working nights at a video duplicator in North Hollywood, and Chris somehow tracked me down, called me up, and said he wanted to make a video for S&M Bikes.  I was about $7 grand in debt form making my video, and then living off my credit cards, like an idiot, for a few months.  I thought, "Cool, those guys are rad, and I can make maybe $2,000 for doing this project on the side.  I asked Chris what kind of budget he had in mind for the video.  He said, "I was thinkin' like $200."  So dreams of paying off debt went out the window, but I started going down to H.B. on the weekends and shooting footage for what turned out to be Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer.  I also got fired because I logged the John Holmes porn video, that Chris wanted to use bad acting footage from, at work, because I didn't have a VCR where I lived (a house crazier than the P.O.W. House).  So I wound up living in Chris' one bedroom apartment, and working (sort of) for S&M Bikes.  At the time, S&M was housed in the single car garage of the apartment called the Winnebago, because the whole apartment was 8 feet wide, long, and skinny. 

 Hey, it's not an S&M Bikes party without former S&M roommate/employee, Big Island Mike, giving $25 tattoos, right.  Back in the day when he was a scrawny little Hawaiian BMXer, with no visible tats, he got dubbed Big Island, often we just called him Big.  One day Chris asked what island Mike was actually from, and I think it's Oahu.  So we pondered changing his nickname to Medium Island, but that just doesn't have a good ring to it.  So Big Island it stayed.

Anyhow, I wound up sleeping on the living room floor of the Winnebago apartment, on Alabama Street in downtown H.B., and working for S&M when needed.  In those days the first phone call of the morning woke me, up, because the phone (old school cord phone) was on a little table by my head.  I'd crawl out of my sleeping bag, get up on my knees, find a pen somewhere, and take down an order from a shop somewhere.  Then I'd lay back down, and go back to sleep until I heard Chris put on either a Pegboy cassette or this SST/Cruz compilation tape called The Big One.  It had a Green Day song, a song by The Offspring, another by Big Drill Car, and "Bob says No" by Pop Defect, among others.  That music was the morning (10:30 am to noon, depending on the level of hangover) wake up call.

One of us would make some sales calls to shops and distributors.  Eat some breakfast.  Sticker some frames or bars in the garage.  Pack up some orders.  The UPS guy would roll up the alley and pick up the orders going out.  If we had international orders, we'd put the bikes boxes on a skateboard, and push them over to the mail box place a couple of blocks away, to ship them out.  With that done, we'd often head to Papa Joe's on PCH for a slice of  pizza (if we could afford a slice), and then go ride much of the afternoon.  Obviously, Chris had a lot more to do to keep the business running.  He'd often bum a ride with someone (he didn't have his truck yet), and go run errands.

We'd come back in the evening, it was Chris, a guy named Shaggy (who looked just like the cartoon one) and me at first, and then Bill Grad replaced Shaggy later on.  We'd fix ramen or pasta for dinner, and Chris would pick the DBV or Designated Bag Victim for the night.  That was the person Chris would make fun of, humiliate, and bag on all night.  There was a 50/50 shot of being DBV in those days.  So one of us felt like shit, and the other laughed his ass off all night.

Then we'd go get ride some more, get moderately drunk, either with a 40 or the H.B. cheesy bar tour (4 bars in downtown H.B. then), come home, pass out, and do it all again the next day.  That was S&M Bikes, in a nutshell, in 1991 and 1992.  I was Chris' roommate, off and on, through the P.O.W. House, the Sowell House with John Povah and Bitch Girl, then the other Alabama Street apartment, with Timmy Ball and Neal Wood, and finally in the condo, with Big Island, Operation Rick, and other roommates at times.

Because Chris ran S&M Bikes, every travelingBMXer, from pretty much anywhere, crashed on our floor.  I met Steve Crandall, Will Smyth, Ian Morris, in our living room, and a whole bunch more that way. It wasn't unusual to com downstairs, and have to step over complete strangers sleeping on the couch and floor.  I'd ask Chris or Timmy, and they'd be like, "Oh, those are guys from Germany that came in last night." 

Where do you drink when you're at an S&M Party?  The Slam Bar, of course.  Nice touch.  Paul Roberts was the beertender.

So, there was a party last night at S&M.  Old blokes there included Chris Moeller (duh), Dave Clymer, Big Island Mike, Troy McMurray, Chris Stevenson, Super G, Pete Augustin, Paul Roberts, Paul Green, Ned, Ruben Castillo, and some more I don't remember.  There was free food and beer, paid for by Chris Moeller, the guy who first taught me to steal food and beer at Ma-fuckin'-zotti's in H.B. 28 years ago, when we were all broke.  Can't beat that.  Kinda takes the fun away, though.

A lot of people bought books.  I didn't, cause of my current situation, the damn raccoons keep knocking over my bookcase.  I'll get one some day.  Somebody let me know if I got mentioned in it,  there's a lot of shit to cover in 30 years of craziness, I know.  But I was around the company for about 4 1/2 years, and produced and edited the first two videos, so maybe I got made fun of for a couple of lines.

Anyhow, it was fun last night.  I had to catch a bus, so I bailed out early, just as Chris brought Dave Clymer up on stage to tell stories.  I have plenty of my own stories to tell from those days, at least of half of which don't involve graphic nudity by Chris.  Well, not half... maybe 25%.  Some day I may get around to those tales.  If anyone has any things from the early S&M Days you want to hear about, let me know.  I'll share the stories I remember.

Anyhow, the party was cool, it was good to see a few more old friends form way back, like Dave Clymer.  Troy McMurray forgot who I was, but I never knew him that well.  I did jump in the Deegan/Metal Muliha fight in Irvine, and wound up with the 4 or 5 members of the Metal Mulisha stomping on my head, after I tripped over my own feet and went down.  I had crazy pain in my inner ears that night, and a weird gurgling of fluid inside my head, after I got home from my job at the porn store.  I lost about 70%-80% of my hearing for about 3 weeks, and thought I was going to be permanently deaf.  And both sides of my head were sore for about 5 weeks, so they probably cracked my skull a bit.  What can I say, I never was a fighter, and shit happens.  My hearing came back eventually.

All in all, the S&M Bikes "Behind the Shield" book launch party was a good stroll down memory lane, and I'll get a book when I can.  Check everyone's social media today and tomorrow for more pics and stuff from the Sheep Hills Jam Friday and the party last night.  Thanks for the hospitality Chris Moeller.  I'll be building up the bikes from the parts I threw over the fence last night, and selling them at the swap meet for a month.  (OK, I didn't really do that, but Chris will probably take an inventory anyhow, because he won't be completely sure if I'm joking or not).  There are a few more pics in the post below.  The only way to end this post is with the best photo of the night... Dave Clymer.  You can buy the book here.

S&M Bikes "Behind the Shield" Book Launch Party- S&M Bikes shop- #2

 The sequence of Chris Moeller, jumping the Cadillac at the Palm Springs Meet the Street, is BMX legend stuff.  In a riding career full of big, gnarly, sketchy ass jumps, this one stood out.  He jumped the car once, lengthwise, off a 2 1/2 foot high launch ramp, with plenty of room to spare.  Then some guys put a 4 foot high, 8 foot long 4 foot wide box jump box, sideways, in front of the car, and a bike, I think, then people just put random stuff, in front of that, like helmets, T-shirts, a Big Gulp cup.  Chris came charging down the road from half a block away, a second time, and jumped the whole freakin' mess.  Definitely a good choice for the cover of the book. 

 It would be hard to try to sum up the crazy, dysfunctional, innovative, gnarly as fuck philosophy of S&M Bikes' 32 1/2 year history in single photo.  But Matt Berringer walking his bike into Sheep Hills with a 12 pack of PBR in hand comes pretty fucking close. 

 The scene in the S&M Bikes shop parking lot last night (July 20th, 2019) at the Behind the Shield book launch party.  Old BMXer/punkers don't age all that well, but we look badass as hell.  Lots of black T-shirts and scars old scars, I think that's the key.  Glory is temporary, pain is forever, and chicks don't really dig scars.  Something like that.

 Straight outta Westminster (at least in the early 90's), Iroquois street legend turned car salesman and happily married man with a kickass grill, Ned and wife Kristy.  If they invite you over for a BBQ, don't miss it, that's the biggest thing I've learned from his Facebook posts. 

 I know black don't crack, but the indomitable Super G looks younger than he did 25 years ago.  People were tripping out about that as he walked in last night.  WTF G?  Good to see the man who took a bullet (literally, he did) and survived intensive care JUST so he could pay Moeller back the $1100 he owed for T-shirts he had made.

People I don't know listening to Chris tell stories on the mike as 44 Something plays in the background.  That's Keith Treanor doing a turndown at Moreno Valley on the screen. 

She never had a name that I know of, but the S&M T-shirt dominatrix chick (Sadistic Sadie is my nickname for her) made it to the book launch, on two classic green S&M "chick shirt" T-shirts, I saw guys wearing.  Whip it, whip it good.

Chris Moeller in "Leg Muscles": The Chain Wallet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Throwback Thursday to Chris Moeller

I haven't put much BMX on the blog for a bit because I'm publishing a small book as two 48 page zines, in a Club HOmeboy-esque goodie pack.  And I I'm homeless, in the winter, and sleep in a small doorway.  In other words, I'm busy trying to improve my situation.  No time to write a big ol' BMX blog post at the moment.  So here's a look back to what happened when Chris Moeller called me in 1991, when he was running S&M Bikes out of the garage of a one bedroom apartment, and asked me to produce his first video.  He bought an S-VHS VCR to edit with, which became the apartment VCR.  Other than that, the entire budget for Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer was about $250.  Most of that was spent on beer.  Enjoy.

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

Meeting Chris Moeller 32 years ago

For some reason, there aren't many videos of Chris Moeller riding on YouTube.  Home video cameras were still expensive in those days, which is part of the reason.  But this crazy jump from 1990 is classic Chris Moeller.  According to a recent podcast, Moeller and S&M Bikes are finishing up a book commemorating 30 years in business.  Actually, that was last year, but books take time to make happen.  Since I was around S&M Bikes for a few years, I figured now would be a good time tell some of those BMX tales.

For the old school BMXers who read my blog, you know that I published a zine that somehow landed me a job at Wizard Publications in 1986, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  That's what launched me into the BMX freestyle industry.  Many of you also know that I didn't last there very long, five months is all it was.  But a lot of amazing stuff happened during that five months.  I first heard of, and first met, racer and insane jumper Chris Moeller during that time, among other things. 

Gork was the editor of BMX Action magazine, while I worked there, and he was also my roommate during that time, as was Lew, Assistant editor of FREESTYLIN'.  So we were talking about BMX and riders at work, out riding at night, at lunch, hanging out at home, but not on the ride to work in the morning.  The reason we didn't talk on the way to work is because Gork was (and still is, I'm sure) a total metalhead, and he always had Metallica, Saxon, or some other metal blasting in his van during our commute.  Lew and I didn't have cars, so we rode with Gork or rode our bikes to work.  Like any group of BMXers, when one of us saw or heard of something cool, we were talking about it at all times.

That's how it was when Gork came in after a photo shoot in Huntington Beach one day, and said he met this local kid who was a crazy good jumper, better than the pro Gork and Windy took to the photo shoot.  That kid was Chris Moeller, about 15 or 16 at the time.  It wasn't that Gork said "Hey, we ran into some local down in Huntington Beach who's a good jumper."  Gork was freaking out about how insane of a jumper this Moeller kid was.  He mentioned it in the morning, told us more about the kid at lunch, and kept bringing it up.  According to Gork, Chris would just try anything off a jump. So that was the first time I ever heard of Chris Moeller.

Not long after that, Gork set up a photo shoot specifically with Chris, I think it was another bike testshoot.  On that shoot, they wound up at a place called Hidden Valley, which is a weird little valley, hidden behind a shopping center at Beach and Adams in Huntington Beach.  There have been jumps in that general area since the early 80's, and maybe longer.

In the little valley part itself, there's this sketchy old tree swing on the side of a big hill with a set of cruiser handlebars on the end of the rope.  In fact, it's the tree swing you see Ed Templeton on at 1:34 in this video.  In the mid-80's there was a little dirt lip at the top of this hill, and you could jump off it and down the the hill, haul ass, and try to ride into a little trail through the brush at the bottom.  Hardly anyone ever jumped this, it was just too sketchy.

But on that first official photo shoot, young Chris Moeller jumped it.  And he didn't just jump 12 feet and bomb down the hill after he landed.  Chris did a head-high no footer down it, on a test bike, I think.  No one, NO ONE, got more than two or three off the ground on that sketchy bonzai jump.  and NO ONE did a trick down it.  ANY trick.  To be honest, the jump down the hill next to the tire swing was pretty much just a dare jump.  If you had a really stupid friend with a BMX bike, you'd dare them to jump it... and then watch him eat shit.

But Moeller jumped down it, soaring head high at a time when that was insane.  He did a no-footer at a time when only a handful of people could actually do a no-footer off a jump.  He blew Gork's mind.  So much so that Gork took Windy's photo sequence, and pieced them together on the Xerox machine to make a multi-image sequence out of actual paper.  No Photo Shop in 1986, Gork spent the time to do it by hand.  AND he talked about this kid Chris Moeller for about two weeks straight.  That turned Chris into a prime BMX Action test rider, which is some great coverage for a young rider.

Later that fall, I rode with Gork down to a national race in Lake Elsinore, an hour or so South, and inland, from the Wizard warehouse in Torrance.  On the way, Gork told me he was going to give a young rider a ride, the kid didn't have a ride to get to the race.  At an upscale condo complex in Huntington Beach, we picked up Chris Moeller.  He said "hi" to Gork, put his bike in the back of the Wizard Astro van, and didn't say a single word all the way to the race.  He just sat in the back, silent as could be, while Gork and I sat up front and talked.  I figured that Chris Moeller kid must be really shy or something.  It turns out I was wrong there.

That's how I met Chris Moeller, Orange County racer, soon to be a huge pioneer in dirt jumping, and also soon to start his own bike company (with Greg Scott).   Now 30 years later, S&M Bikes has book coming out soon.  So I figured it would be as good a time as any to share some of my own tales from the S&M Bikes posse that I knew in those days. 

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...

Bernie Sanders rides Slam Bars

Remember yesterday when I told you there were some really cool murals here in Richmond, Virginia?  I saw this one on the bus today while headed for a library to work on my latest drawing.  Freakin' cool.  If you're an old school BMXer Has Been like me, this is cool mostly because it looks  so much like the slam pit punker on the S&M Bikes Slam Bars logo from way back.

In one of my former lives, as Chris Moeller's roommate and sporadic S&M Bikes worker, I put a lot of these stickers on bars back when the image was new.  So when I saw the Bernie mural during our last presidential/Russian hacked/non-election, I thought it was a great mural.  I had no idea it was here in Richmond until I rode by it half an hour ago.  Pretty cool that I randomly saw it today.  I was trying to think of a subject for an old school BMX post for today, I guess it's time for an S&M Bikes tale later today.
Here's the original Circle Jerks logo that inspired both the Slam Bar logo and the Bernie mural here in Richmond.