Here's the Dig BMX edit of the Rumble in Richmond BMX day O' fun, put on by Steve Crandall and posse. If you like BMX, and you ever get the chance to go to one of Steve Crandall's events, do it. It's as simple as that. Check outRAD Share, and help them out if you can. Bikes to kids who need them.
Just for the record, I was not at the Rumble in Richmond. But I lived there a while back in 2018-2019. I went to the DIY World Championships event in October of 2018, and it was epic, even as an old guy with no bike. That's why I recommend checking out any event Steve Crandall puts on.
Longtime hardcore BMXer, driving force behind FBM for over two decades, TV announcer, and all around cool human, Steve Crandall.
I think it was 1994 when I met Steve Crandall. At the time, I was roommates with Chris Moeller and Timmy Ball in Huntington Beach. Between Chris being one of the best known dirt jumpers, and owning S&M Bikes, pretty much everyone in BMX from other parts of the country and world called when traveling to California, asking to crash on our couches and floors. So it was normal for me to come downstairs for breakfast and have complete strangers sleeping in the living room. One morning I was pouring some cereal, and Chris was making tea, and he pointed to the couch, "Those are the FBM guys over in the corner."
I don't remember much else of that weekend, except we did a lot of riding, and little partying with those guys. From then on, I'd run into Crandall at events every once in a while. Then, many years later, when I wound up homeless in Richmond, Virginia in 2018, Crandall sent me a message out of the blue. "Meet me at Powers Bike Shop later, here's the address." He did what he could to help me out, along with Chad at Powers Bikes. I actually was trying to make some money and live there, but I couldn't get momentum. But there is a really cool BMX and art scene there. Got to know Steve better, and finally spent a day at the DIY World Championships event, one of the greatest days of BMX I've seen. Anyhow, watch/listen to this podcast.
It was a dark and stormy night... No, really, it was. OK, not really stormy, but was dark and rainy as I walked from the Pulse bus stop in the Scott's Addition area here in Richmond. I was looking for an industrial place called Cut and Bleed, the site of Steve Crandall's art show. Cut and Bleed isn't a nightclub playing The Cure and Morrissey 24/7 for depressed Suicide Girls. It's an oversized item printing business. Need to wrap Grandma's car with photos of your kids, or a 30 foot tall banner of The Ramones? Cut and Bleed can do it for you. In the shop there are a couple of rooms which are the perfect size for an indie art show. FBM Bikes founder Steve Crandall, throwing some peace above, held a solo art show displaying his signature style of cool coffee cups and cinder block ramps there last night, December 14, 2018.
The 3,000 pound concrete elephant in the room. If you were at the D.I.Y. World Championships Jam at Powers Bikes in October, or if you saw video it, you saw this HUGE cinder block with a curved ramp set up on it, a MEGA launch ramp. One of Steve's big themes is the idea, seen often last night, to "build your own fun." His simple icon of this is what so many of us BMX guys and girls started jumping as kids, a cinder block and a board. I remember jumping similar ramps as an 8-year-old on a tall handlebar banana seat bike, and doing the same thing on my BMX bike at 17. Nearly all kids who have ridden bikes much know this simple set-up and remember it. To Crandall, it's the epitome of using what's around to build something to ride and create your own fun. This simple, but awesome, idea is a main theme of Steve Crandall's outlook on out world. You don't need a ton of money, you don't need to be sponsored by a basketball shoe company to have fun on your bike. Look around. See what's sitting around, grab some stuff, build a little something, and go session.
Somehow, in a Stonehenge-like mystery, Crandall had the 3,000 pound monster cinder block from the D.I.Y. Jam transported to the art show. To me, walking in and seeing that humongous object there just made me laugh. It totally reminded me of the Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo, Texas. It just made people smile, whether you wanted to or not. The absurdity of this huge chunk of concrete in the middle of the show, with the launch ramp on it, was just hilarious.
If you are at all familiar with Steve Crandall's paintings, you know coffee is his main theme. Coffee cups, to be exact. I heard him tell someone last night that on a cross country trip a while back , he was guzzling coffee to stay awake, and the coffee cup idea took root in his brain. Coffee cups took on a mystic importance to him, or something along those lines. So there were about 10 big paintings on plywood, most of them huge coffee cups, and maybe 40 small paintings on paper in the show. Each one is was a bit different, and all were reasonably priced for the people at the show to take home. The blue painting above had a bicycle for eyes, while the brown one has a bike inside a heart. Love coffee, love bikes, ride, have fun.
If I had my act together financially right now, I would have taken this painting above home. That was my favorite of the show, except for the two big photos. Below, the real thing. Life imitates art imitating BMX.
Another look at the monster block, with local BMX racer and BMX Hooligan mom's funny jacket slogan behind it. She's definitely NOT ugly, by the way. This was also the most kid friendly art show I've seen. The mega-sized launch ramp and mini quarterpipe (with the yellow arrow in the background), made a little halfpipe. A few of the kids burned off energy running back and forth between them, like riding a halfpipe without a bike. Hey, they were real ramps, not art show props, go ahead kids. Have fun. You won't brake these.
This was my other favorite of the show. It's a very vintage ironing board with a happy coffee cup and "surf's up" on it. All in all, it was a really cool indie art show, and the old school BMX crowd of Richmond, a really good crew of people, showed up to check it out, and support Steve's work. Plenty of people went home with art. We all pigged out on the snacks, and wine and beer for most. One idea if you ever do a BMX world art show, put some art up next to the snacks (which were in a side room). A whole bunch of us stood there munching, for a long time, because we're mostly cheap ass BMXers at heart, and talking. I'd put a few pieces up (and plastic covered), by the food, beer, and wine.
It was a good time, with a cool, BMX scene crowd, and a chill and fun vibe all evening. Props to Steve Crandall for doing a ton of original work, putting the show on, and showing us all a good time.
I was inspired. My mind was racing on the way out for ideas to do my own art show somewhere down the line. Oh, if anyone needs a dining room table that will survive a nuclear holocaust and the zombie apocalypse, call Crandall. That monster cinder block may need a new home.
OK, last post on this, I swear. Here's all the good video on the Steve Crandall/FBM Bikes D.I.Y. World Championships held in the Powers Bike Shop parking lot here in Richmond, Virginia, on October 20, 2018. This is the DIG BMX Mag edit of the comp above. And here, below, is the Scotty Cranmer Vlog/YouTube channel edit of the comp.
No huge corporate sponsors. No real budget (OK, except for building the world's biggest, 3,000 pound cinder block), and no huge pro purse. But this comp was more fun than a barrel of monkeys lubed with Wesson oil while doing acid. Anything could, and pretty much did, happen. Here's the link to my series of posts with my words a photos of the day. And here are my three favorite photos I took.
Big air and big style on the RAMPLIFLIER. These riders go to eleven.
The Buck Wild Trophy being admired.
Deklan with a crank arm grind. He did the second one of these to a no footed can-can out.
I got busy last week, and didn't think to look this clip up til this morning, while writing another blog post. Here's the D.I.Y. World Championships from last weekend, through the eyes of Scotty Cranmer and posse. Great stuff. This contest was, seriously, the most fun I've had in over a decade. Steve Crandall puts together the coolest shit. Chad at Powers Bike Shop offered up the awesome location. Bikes and fun ensued. Just watch.
Here's the band Cruelsifix performing at the comp. Old guys: they cover Agent Orange. Hell yeah!
I was in the booth trying to sell art most of the time, but here's my best pics of the day...
This is the kind of thing I imagine when I think BMX comp. Yeah, I'll watch the X-Games on TV sometimes, and it shows a lot of young kids the competitive side of riding, and gets them interested in BMX, but back lot contests on homemade and sketchy ass obstacles are always more fun.
When I walked into a Greyhound bus station to leave North Carolina a month ago, having been stiffed on a $120 payment for a drawing that day, I asked the 16-year-old looking clerk, "How close to Chicago can I get for about $60." It took her 20 minutes of typing to tell me I could get to Richmond, Virginia... if I slept in the bus station and left the next morning. For some reason, no buses headed northwest, towards Scotty Z.'s house near Chicago, where I had an invitation to chill for a week or so, before heading West to Cali. So I slept fairly well on a hardwood bus station bench, and made it to Richmond the next afternoon. I had never been to Richmond, and didn't know a damn thing about it.
I had seen photos of the contest above, you can't forget the eyeball and tongue ramp, but since it was FBM, I thought it was up in Ithaca, NY. I didn't know a thing about Richmond when I landed here, all I knew is that I spent 10 horrible years trapped in North Carolina, I never could find any "real" job there, and the year of taxi driving I did left me broke. There was no BMX scene near me, and definitely no old school BMXers or skaters to talk to. Winston-Salem had a really cool art scene for a mid-sized city, but not big enough for me to make a living drawing my Sharpie art.
Within a couple days of being landing in Richmond with about $3 in my pocket, I started noticing murals, lots of really cool murals, all over this city. That's freakin' cool. Then I started talking to people in the Art District. Then old BMX friend Steve Crandall randomly sends me a message to meet him at a shop here. Much to my surprise, Powers Bike Shop, hidden away in the back of an old industrial complex, was the place I'd seen in photos, where the tongue ramp contest happened. But Chad, the owners of Powers Bike Shop wasn't there the day I met up with Crandall.
We connected on Facebook, and I went by the day before yesterday to meet him at the shop. Even though I looked, and smelled, like the homeless bum I am at the moment, he was totally cool. We started talking BMX, and I told him a bunch of stories from random events back in the day. Then he mentioned that he not only has a huge vintage bike collection, but BMX magazine collection as well. He dug out the August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', which had the zine article, where my zine, San Jose Stylin', was ranked number one in the country at the time. That issue also had the first freelance article I wrote for FREESTYLIN', covering the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters contest that spring.
Much to my surprise, Chad asked me to autograph the page with that article. So I signed my first autograph while being homeless, not counting the autographs on my arrest paperwork when I got arrested for buying donuts in NC last year. Even funnier, that's the 10th autograph I've signed in the 35 years since I got into BMX. The other 9 autographs? I signed them at the Tulsa, Oklahoma contest in 1986. We all even signed some girl's arm at that contest. When we asked why those kids wanted our autographs there, the arm girl replied,"You guys are the closest thing we ever see to famous people." What really funny is that 14-year-old Mathew Hoffman was at that contest, his first AFA Masters, and flew under the radar. By the next contest, everyone in the industry knew who the Oklahoma kid throwing no-footed can-can's was, and he got sponsored. He was not only on the BMX scene radar after that, he probably showed up on air traffic control radar at times.
Anyhow, while it's been rough living since I got here to Richmond (or RVA as locals refer to it), it's also been really cool. I'm hanging with BMXers a bit again, I've lost ten pounds (homelessness or hospital stay, not sure), and I'm selling art now. I'm even working on the first BMX drawing I've done in over a year and a half, and can't wait to see how it turns out.
So thanks to Chad at Powers Bikes here for his hospitality, and for stoking out a Has Been BMX industry guy-turned art bum. Not sure how long I'll be here, but it's a pretty cool city. Who knows?
When I landed accidentally in Richmond, VA about a month ago, I didn't know a thing about the city. I got a message the other day fromSteve Crandall of FBM, that he was going to be at Powers Bike Shop here. I had no idea Steve spends a good chunk of time around Richmond.
I met Steve and the early FBM posse on their first trip to California in 1994. They slept on the couches and floor of the apartment I shared with Chris Moeller and Timmy Ball then. When you were roommates with Moeller of S&M Bikes back then, the living room was a motel for wandering BMXers from around the world.
It was cool to see Steve, it's been 20 years or so, neither of us could remember exactly. We're both old BMX guys who do art now, and it was great to catch up a bit.
In the crazy bike collection at the Powers Shop, they had an old Skyway T/A with red Z-Rims and red check pads, nearly identical to my first "real" BMX bike, that I bought in Boise in 1984. Steve had Donovan pull it down so he could get a pic of me with it. Once you're a BMXer, it's always in your blood. I was jonesin' to ride after hanging out at Powers Bikes and checking out the ramps, for a while. Steve also hooked me up with an old phone of his, so now I FINALLY have the ability to take my own photos, and share them. Somehow I've been building an art business without this ability. He also gave me the hobo hook-up with some food, knowing I'm homeless for the moment. Thanks for the help Steve, and thanks for letting me annoy Donovan at Powers Bike Shop with a bunch of old school stories. I'm going to try to get back by this week and meet Chad, the owner of the shop.
This is Steve Crandall, mid school BMX rider going back to the early '90's, owner of FBM Bikes, guy who lives in an old school bus, and artist who paints coffee cups. And an old friend of mine going back to about 1994, I think. If you're choosing between reading this post and watching the video above, watch the video. I just did, and it's a great piece about stripping life down to the the things that mean the most to you. That's not for everyone, but there are great rewards in certain aspects of life for those who do it.
I first met Steve in 1994, I think. I walked downstairs to the kitchen of the apartment in Huntington Beach that I shared with Chris Moeller and Timmy Ball. As was often the case in those days, several people I didn't know were sleeping on our floor. They got in late the night before, when I was already asleep. When you have Chris Moeller, owner of the hardcore, fledgling, punk rock, BMX company, S&M Bikes, as a roommate, your apartment becomes a magnet for wayward BMXers from across the country and around the globe. So heading downstairs to breakfast and finding the couches and floor space taken by a bunch of sleeping strangers was a pretty normal thing. They were all BMXers, and usually pretty respectful of our place. We all slept on each others couches, and living room and motel floors when traveling in those days, to keep costs down.
I think Chris was making tea, and I asked who the guys were. He told me the first three or four guys, and then pointed to the corner below the "L" in the couches. "Those are the FBM guys, Steve Crandall and his guys." Before long, the whole group was up, and the day's riding commenced. I'd heard of the FBM guys, and may have seen them at a contest, but that weekend was when I got to really know them. Nothing in particular stands out in my mind, it was a typical weekend hanging out, having fun, and riding with some BMXers, in this case from New York.
From then on, Steve and the FBM guys were a group I'd see at contests, session with on occasion, and party with now and then. That was the early 90's. I kept riding, but largely faded from the SoCal scene after I moved out of Moeller's condo in 1995.
More than a decade later, as a fat, HAS BEEN BMX guy, I wound up in North Carolina, lost all my video footage, and started blogging about things I experienced in the 1980's and 1990's in the BMX/freestyle and skateboard worlds. I started reconnecting with old friends here on the interwebs. Steve was one of those I've been reading posts from, commenting on, and keeping up with since.
In his video above, I realized we've had some similarities over the last year or so, besides being named Steve (which means, "crown" or "crowned one" and the pinnacle of human achievement, or something like that). We've both stripped our lifestyles down. He lives in a bus, roaming the country. I left where I was living last year, and because of lack of money, lived in a tent as a homeless guy for 9 1/2 months to get my art career going. We've both taken to doing a lot of artwork in the last year or two. We both had our first art show over this past year. We both do blogs. We are both largely stoked, though sometimes frustrated, with our stripped down lifestyles, and the things that allows us to do. Like, more art.
The weird little bit for me was the coffee thing. I don't drink coffee. I like coffee flavored candy and coffee flavored ice cream, but I just don't like coffee flavored coffee. And I don't like crazy, expensive latte's and stuff. I wake up with a cold Diet Coke. Which is dumb, I know, but that's the way it is for right now. The coffee connection comes from the Winston-Salem Journal artist profile of me that promoted my first show, at an old school music shop called Earshot Music. I met Lisa, the journalist, and the photographer in the cafe area of the new W-S library. As it turned out, the photo that wound up in the paper had the morning barista here, best known locally as L.B. the Poet, in the background of the picture.
He's not just a guy that writes a poem now and then and reads it at an open mike event. L.B. LIVES poetry. He performs incredible spoken word pieces, he does workshops for all ages, and he promotes and hosts poetry-centric events all over central NC. He's a force of nature. There's a really cool poetry scene here in Winston-Salem right now, and that's the group I've most clicked with in the creative scenes here. In some weird synchronicity (I don't believe in coincidence), I met L.B. the day after my artist profile came out, when I bought a Diet Coke and told him he wound up in the background of my photo in the paper. I told Lisa, the journalist about him a few weeks ago, and he just landed an artist profile in the W-S Journal as well.
One day, while drawing next to the coffee bar, I heard L.B. tell a woman, "I don't just serve coffee, this is a cup of love." He wasn't flirting, he's a happily married husband and dad, he's just one of those people who goes way beyond at his day job, to make people get their day off right.
As synchronicity played out, I wound up hiding in a corner drawing, as the "live artist" at an event called Wine and Rhymes at the Designs, Vines, and Wines studio here. I didn't realize that L.B. was hosting the event, and he noticed I was hiding in a corner drawing right after performing one of his pieces. Inspiration took over, and I did a quick drawing of a coffee cup, and wrote "L.B.'s Cup of Love" on it, harking back to the lady at the coffee bar earlier that day. Then I got the idea for a poem, and literally drew the picture and wrote a short poem, while, L.B., my new roommate Reece (promoter of Wine & Rhymes/poet) were performing. When I finished the picture, my first thought was, "Man, I owe Steve Crandall a royalty for drawing a coffee cup." I've been seeing his coffee cup paintings on Facebook for a year or so. I gave the drawing to L.B., and he was way more stoked on it than I expected.
So as us two Steve's head into new aspects of our life and creativity, the lowly coffee cup created a weird little full circle. Funny how life works. And how art and BMX bring all kinds of people together.
A couple years ago, when I was just beginning to focus on my artwork as a way to start making a living again, I drew a pic of Steve Crandall and sent it to him. It looks pretty rough now, after drawing dozens more picture since. And when I made up all kinds of sayings for "FBM" in the background, I didn't realize he'd quite drinking, so I wrote a few beer related sayings. Sorry about the Steve. When you roam through central NC the next time, I'll buy you a cup of coffee... and me a Diet Coke.
