Amish Tuff Wheel?

 The old school BMXers remember the classic, 5 spoke, plastic-type stuff, Tuff Wheels that Skyway put out.  I found a great big "Amish" Tuff Wheel here in Richmond, this morning.  This is on 15th Street (I think), Shockhoe Bottom area.  Todd Lyons has this gigantic pair of Landing Gear forks in his garage, about the right size.  Who wants to build the rest of a Giganto-Bike up?  Heh, heh.  #RVAallday, #RVA

Chad Powers' look at S&M Bikes frames through the years... and my random comments

I met Chad from Powers Bikes right after landing in Richmond last August, and both he, and old friend/FBM founder Steve Crandall, have really helped me out in my time here, as I begin a new life, yet again.  All memories and comments below are mine, and are no way endorsed by Chad Powers or Powers Bikes.  Don't blame him for my weird stories.  I thought his look at S&M Bikes through history was a good excuse to share some of my memories from the early years of S&M that I was around for.

Chad did this cool video following the history of S&M Bikes frames, so I thought I'd add a few thoughts and put it out in my channels.  I first heard of Chris Moeller when working at BMX Action magazine in 1986.  Gork came back from a magazine shoot one afternoon raving about some crazy local jumper kid in Huntington Beach.  That kid was Chris, of course.  Not long after, I rode with Gork to a race in Lake Elsinore, and we picked up Chris in H.B., and gave him a ride to the race.  Chris basically didn't say a word the whole ride, as Gork and I talked the whole hour plus ride.  I've never heard Chris be silent for that long since.  I actually thought he was kind of shy at first.  I was wrong.

The S&M Shield logo, and S&M riders Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, and John Paul Rogers, all first appeared in a video in my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend (at 33:50), in the P.O.W. House section.  The Pros Of Westminster house ultimately was home to 22 BMXers, and was the first really well known rider house.  It got to the point that people from the magazines would show up with three or four article ideas, and just take whoever was awake and least hungover out for photo shoots.  With a stop at our house (I lived there later, in 92-93), they could really good find riders, and get a bunch of stuff done in one day.

In 1991, Chris called me up, wanting to do a video for S&M Bikes.  He had this idea to take a porno video, show the bad acting scenes, and every time the porno video cut to sex, we'd cut to bike riding.  That turned out to be too boring, there was just way too much bad acting in porno videos back then, so we did a variation on that idea.  There is a John Holmes fight scene in the original version of the video, if you can find a copy.  Chris and I worked together on that idea, which became Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer (Chris Moeller, Jimmy Levan, Alex Leech, Mission Trails)  He bought an S-VHS VCR, and I hooked my camera to it, and edited it while sitting on the floor of the tiny living room in his "Winnebago" apartment on Alabama Street.  I had my camera, his VCR, and a 40 of Mickey's.  As I got drunker, the editing got worse.  I passed out, fell over, and slept on the floor, and finished editing the next day.

The total budget for the video was about $250, including beer.  I wound up living there afterwards, because logging the John Holmes footage in the original version of the video got me fired from my video duplication job.  That story turned into a BMX industry urban legend, which had many variations, all much more interesting than the real story.  It was best told by McGoo at his 30th birthday party.

I wound up Moeller's roommate, sidekick, and Designated Bag Victim (DBV), on and off, for about 4 1/2 years, across five houses, apartments, and a condo.  In that time S&M Bikes went from living in the garage of the one bedroom, 8 foot wide, "Winnebago" apartment, to an actual, 1,200 square foot, industrial unit in Santa Ana, California.

The company name, S&M, came from the two founders' last names, Greg Scott and Chris Moeller.

They were both racers and serious jumpers in th emid 1980's, and got tired of their back dropouts bending all the time on bad landings.  So they went to B&E, a machine and welding shop in Orange, CA, that built frames and handlebars for several small BMX companies.  As 16 and 17-year-old kids, they asked if it was possible to weld two rear dropouts together, side by side, to make it double thick, and stronger.  The guy said it was possible, so the two had bikes made for themselves.

Soon other riders started asking if they could buy frames with the thick dropouts, and S&M Bicycles was born.  Chris and Greg had totally different ideas on how to run a company, and Chris wound up borrowing a bit of money from his grandpa, a hardcore, self-made businessman, a couple year later.  Chris bought Greg out, about 1989, I think, changed the name to S&M Bikes, and got to work building the company you all know today.

Chris Moeller actually got the nickname "Mad Dog" from high school wrestling.  He had a weird tooth that stuck out a bit, and when wrestling, it sometimes got hit, punctured his lip, and suddenly he'd be wrestling furiously while bleeding from the mouth.  Another wrestler said he looked like a mad dog one day, and the nickname stuck, and followed him into BMX racing.  So that's where the name "Mad Dog" comes from, which he named his first, custom frame after.  I think it had a Holmes back end and a Dirt Bike front end.  Maybe the other way around.  Or maybe that hybrid was what Chris rode later on, after the Mad Dog was no longer being built.

Early on, as Chris and Greg started making small batches of bikes for other racer/jumpers, riders started asking for a longer bike.  The guys came up with the Holmes, the extra long model, named after the hugely hung porn star John Holmes. Chris and Greg were teenagers, so pretty much everything had sexual overtones back in those early days. At one point, the head tube sticker was a rooster logo (figure it out).  Chris used to joke for a while about making top tube stickers for the Holmes that were pinkish/purple-ish/tan, with veins sticking out.  It's probably good that never happened.


I bought a 1991 Dirt Bike from Chris, and since I never washed (and barely ever worked on) my bike, I custom cut the stickers so it read S&M Dirty Bike.  I rode it for about a month, and it always seemed to flex a little in the back end.  I did a lot of 180 bunnyhops at speed, I was big on half Cabs and tricks like that, which were considered dumb in 1991 (mostly because I was the only guy who did them).  Anyhow, Chris looked at the bike one night, and realized one of the chain stays hadn't been completely welded to the dropout.  It was tack welded, and I broke the tack on a 180.  I rode it like that for a month and never noticed.  I'm bad at bike maintenance.  Like HORRIBLE.  My Dirty Bike got stolen when I parked it behind where I worked (near Oceanview High School) in 1994.  So, if you ever see a chrome, S&M Dirty Bike, knockout the person riding it, and ship the bike back to me.  I'll send you a Club White Bear sticker in return.

On one occasion, top racer Pistol Pete Loncarevich came by the Winnebago apartment to pick up a Holmes frame with no stickers. I stood there listening as Chris and Pete listed off the top two gates of AA pro racers at the time, 16 guys.  Out of those 16, 12 or 14 were riding either an S&M Holmes or a Free Agent Limo, but with their sponsor's stickers on them.  Basically none of the top pro racers were actually riding a frame made by the company that sponsored them.  Even funnier, half of those guys were running a Holmes, a frame made by a company that was, literally, being run out of a garage at the time. 

As S&M Bikes grew exponentially due to Chris Moeller's amazing sales skills, and his crazy jumping, and hilarious, often obscene, idiotic antics, the company got bigger.  Initially, S&M was all about being the super strong jumpers bikes.  But people started asking for a lighter, race only frame.  Chris dodged the idea for quite a while, since that was the antithesis of what S&M was all about then. But he finally decided to do it.  He named the bike line Challenger.  Why?  The S&M Challengers were meant to NOT be jumped, and were named after the ill fated Space Shuttle Challenger that exploded after takeoff in 1986.  The joke was,  "These are race bikes, if you take them off the ground they'll explode."  A sick sense of humor was part of the S&M aura back then.

Every 4th of July in Huntington Beach in the1980's and 1990's, the police (which everyone hated) would pull over every bike they could, check for a bike license, check the serial number to see if it matched (or was stolen), and confiscate your bike if you didn't have a license.  In 1994, Chris and I planned to ride downtown and check out the scene most of the day.  I bought a sticker that said, "Jesus loves you... but I think you're an asshole."  I put it on the bottom of my down tube, so when I flipped my bike to have them check the serial number, it would be visible.  But Chris totally out did me.  He put a new bike together the day before.  Since he was a crazy jumper, AND he owned the company, Chris putting together a new bike was a regular thing, I didn't think much of it.

As we headed out to ride on the 4th, WITH our HB bike license stickers, Chris told me he'd made a special bike just for the 4th of July.  He tipped it up so I could read the serial number.  His serial number, actually stamped in the frame, said, "FUCK YOU."  We couldn't wait to get pulled over (and likely beaten for our crazy sense of humor) that day.  That was the only 4th of July EVER in HB where I rode my bike around and didn't get pulled over.  We were bummed by that evening, but it's probably a good thing we didn't piss of the 5-0.

In 1993, S&M Bikes was getting wider known, but BMX was still struggling through the ramen days, the lagging effects of the early 90's economic recession, and the collapse of the BMX industry due to the rise of mountain bikes.  So it was a surprise when Chris got contacted by Dee Snider, leader of 80's hair/glam band, Twisted Sister.  That band was over, and Dee had a son who was totally into BMX racing.  As I recall Chris hooked the kid up with a bike and a bunch of stuff.  I never met Dee, but I was Chris' roommate then, so I'd hear what happened at night while all of us were eating dinner or watching TV(Jason "Timmy" Ball, and I think Neal Wood were roommates, too).  I can't remember if Dee wanted to race, or if he just wanted a larger BMX bike to ride around at the races while his kid raced.  But Chris and Dee came up with the idea of a cruiser named after Dee's band at the time, Widowmaker.  So the fairly new S&M Bikes cruiser became the Widowmaker, and Dee ad-libbed a little on camera (I think Paul Green shot the footage), and wound up in the second S&M Bikes video I edited, 44 Something (at 8: 45 and 24:43).

Dee Snider also told Chris he wanted to work on his "street cred," to sort of re-define himself for the 1990's.  That was the first time I heard anyone use the term "street cred," and it seemed a lame concept to us back then.  Now I have more street cred than any of us, since that's where I live.  (Insert White Bear jokes and put downs here).

 So that's a few of my memories concerning the early days of S&M Bikes, I was around it from early 1991 to late 1995.  In the video embedded, Chad's knowledge of frames goes way beyond that.  I hope that helps you all get a little clue about the early days of one of the best known BMX companies out there.  The S&M Bikes book is nearly done, I just saw that on Facebook earlier today.  The release date is coming soon, they said.

I'll leave with a question New York rich socialite chick, magazine editor, and one time TV show host, Jane Pratt, asked Chris. It's at the end of his section in 44 Something (at 29:56).

Jane Pratt: "Chris, I want to know from you before we go.  Do you have any aspirations of having a real job anytime soon?  Or do you think you're just going to keep doing this for the rest of your life?

Chris Moeller:  "Well...  I think what I do is a job."

That was 1993...

I started a new personal blog, check it out:

Steve Emig's Street Life  #SEstreetlife

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

Two artistic coffee cups, a barista/poet, and Steve Crandall

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.

The Hutch HPV: 20 inch hauling ass bike

On this cover of BMX Plus!, we have freestyle pro Rick Allison sitting on the Hutch HPV.  The rise of BMX racing in about 1970 led to a bunch of other 20 inch bikes over the years.  As most of you know, Bob Haro created the first bike made for freestyle in about 1983, which sparked dozens of other freestyle bikes since.  In the mid-1980's, riders started building GPV's, Gravity Powered  without chains, to bomb down big hills.  Most of these were originally built from spare parts.  A few GPV races were promoted, and fairings were added to increase speed.  The guy behind most of the fairings was an engineer name Dan Hannebrink.

When I worked for the American Freestyle Association in 1987, a couple other 20 inch bikes came into being.  One idea was F-1 (or Formula 1) racing.  Basically, it was BMX racing, but without jumps.  So it was racing weird little 20 inch bikes around a hay-bail-lined course in a parking lot.  Bob Morales, AFA founder and my boss, and I helped put set up one of these races in the parking lot of Irvine Meadows amphitheater.  Most of the BMX bike companies were represented there.  It was kind of fun to ride the bikes around the course for the first lap or two.  Then it just got dumb.  You can see the cover blurb and small photo of "Formula 1 Challenge" on the right side of the magazine cover above.  Despite a lot of hype by industry people, F-1 racing was lame, and died a quick death.

But out of that same time period, came the Hutch HPV (Human Powered Vehicle).  One of the cool things about working for Bob Morales was that he was always doing ads for other companies, and had a ton of side projects, like Auburn Bikes, that I helped out with from time to time.  As luck would have it, we got custody of the prototype Hannebrink HPV, built for Hutch.  Bob was getting photos shot to do ad ad for it, I think.  So I got to ride it.  At the time, the gearing was still be worked out, and the smaller front sprockets didn't work.  So Bob and I tried it out on the road near the AFA, starting off in the super high top gears.  It was tough to get rolling, but the thing flat hauled ass once we got going.  That night, as Bob was working on something in the shop, I rode the HPV down to the beach, where the big, wide, Bolsa Chica Beach bike path was.

I rode down that path every weekend on my freestyle bike, and I could usually keep pace with most mountain bikers.  I rode a lot of miles back then.  But the cyclists on the road bikes would blow past me.  Not on the HPV.  I had to pretty much stand on the pedal to start off in that high front gear.  But then I got going, and upshifted to the top rear gear.  I was blowing past the handful of mountain bike riders like they were standing still.  I even easily passed a couple of road bike cyclists.  I don't know how fast I was going, but I'm pretty damn sure I was pedaling 40-45 mph on flat ground.  People would literally jump as I road past them, then do a double take.  Some thought I was riding a motorcycle on the bike path.  It was a lot of fun.

But I was exhausted after riding a couple miles out and back on the HPV.  The idea never took off, and I don't know if any of them ever sold.  But as a BMX guy used to getting dirty looks by cyclists, it was great to blow past them on the HPV.  I was looking for a photo of the HPV recently, and I just found this cover on Pinterest today, so I decided it was a good blog post for today.

Artist Profile in the Winston-Salem Journal

I'm stoked to have an artist profile in today's Winston-Salem Journal.  In the profile, I give props to artistic influences ranging from my parents to Bob Haro, Andy Jenkins, and old BMXer/skater friends like Eddie Roman and Ed Templeton.  I haven't been able to shake the homeless thing, though I'm couch surfing at my mom's place after my recent trouble for trespassing.  Hopefully this show will lead to enough orders for drawings so I can rent a cheap motel room, and eventually become an actual human in society again.  Thanks to journalist Lisa O'Donnell at the Journal for a cool write-up.  I also want to thank my friends Rick and Ben, who've helped me a ton over this past summer.  Major thanks also to old school BMXers Alma Jo Barrera and Scotty Zabielski, who have bought several drawings each, and everyone else who's bought a drawing and helped me get here.

Eight of my Sharpie drawings, in my unique "scribble style," including the one of The Ramones above, will be up at Earshot Music, Winston-Salem's premier record shop.  Yeah, they carry vinyl records, CD's, DVD's, analog stereos, and hard to find music.  The opening of the show is this Saturday, November 4th, 2017, from 7-9 pm.  Earshot is next to Marhall's at 3254 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  If you're anywhere near here, I'd love to see you drop by.

BMX freestyle legends

 I come from the world of BMX freestyle in the 1980's and 1990's.  I stumbled into the industry thanks to a zine I published, so I got to know all these guys over the years.  Ron Wilkerson (above) was a top pro freestyler for Haro Bikes for years.  He invented a lot of lip tricks on vert, and can ride anything.  He also put on the 2-Hip King of Vert Series and the 2-Hip Meet the Street series of contests, as well as starting two bike companies, Wilkerson Airlines in the 90's, and 2-Hip Bikes which is still going today.  He's one of the most influential freestylers ever.

The middle drawing is an unfinished one of Eddie Roman.  Eddie rode for Skyway bikes, could ride flatland, ramps, and street, and made several of the most influential BMX videos ever.  He was one of the lead guys as street riding turned into its own genre in the late 80's.

The bottom drawing is another San Diego street legend, Vic Murphy.  This one-footed tabletop jump was off of a curb cut.  You know those little bumps at the edge of a driveway?  Vic hit one of those and blasted this super stylish jump, which is one of the great street riding photos of the early days.  I think it's a Spike Jonze photo, from his days at FREESTYLIN' magazine.  Normally I always draw the backgrounds in my drawings.  But this one of Vic just seemed better against the white paper.  I really dig this drawing, it's one of the favorites I've done.