Pe'ahi. Jaws. Whatever you call it, January 2021 had some of the biggest swells ever. Here's great edit of the tow-in surfing there from a couple weeks ago.
As most of the country, and much of the world, was focusing on the lunatics and utter insanity happening in Washington D.C., on the East Coast of the U.S. in January 2021, something else was happening on the West Coast. In many ways it's just as dramatic. It's a month that will be long remembered... for some of the best big wave surfing ever.
Moments happen. They aren't orchestrated or coerced. The best moments, the things that we remember decades later, just happen. Surfers (and all action sports people and good artists), know this.
So while people found reasons to hate each other on the East Coast, a series of historic swells were bringing people together on the West Coast of the U.S., Hawaii, and Mexico. I'm not a surfer, but I spent 21 years of my life living with and around surfers, immersed in surf culture. Watching surfing is super inspiring to me. Here are some of the best edits of the massive swells of January 2021. There are many more videos on YouTube to be found of surfing from January 2021.
Mostly Dan Hubbard in this short VSW commercial from about 1988, with Nathan Shimizu, Scott Robinson, and Rom Camero, too, I think. Vision Street Wear block logo, Don't Die Wondering, 110%, Cow (or Holstein) pants, shorts, hip packs, punk skulls, canvas shoes that kinda hurt but were often free, DV-8 shoes, VSW globe logo, ollie guards. If you rode a BMX freestyle bike in the 1980's, you remember Vision Street Wear clothes.
Woody Itson wore them for a while. Mike Dominguez wore them for a while. Craig Grasso wore them for a while. Dan Hubbard is the main guy in the commercial above. Jeff Cotter, Nathan Shimizu, Ron Camero, Ron McCoy, Scott Robinson, Mike Loveridge, Rich Bartlett, and even little up-and-comer (at the time) Dave Mirra wore them in an ad or commercial. Old School BMX racer Jeff Bottema was the BMX team manager for a while, and he's in that commrcial, too. Freakin' everybody, just about, had Vision Street Wear clothes at some point in the late 1980's. Two things that are core parts of the 80's BMX freestyle world are Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill raps and Vision Street Wear clothes. They were both pretty much everywhere freestylers were.
Why is that? Because Brad Dorfman, owner of Vision Skateboards, decided in the late 80's they needed to make skate shoes and clothes. Then Brad hired Van's shoes promoter Everett Rosecrans to promote them. Everett got the name out by giving almost every rider and skater in Southern California free clothes and shoes. Suddenly the logo T-shirt was everywhere, and skaters and riders worldwide started buying the clothes.
This blog post was sparked by reading Brian Tunney's page on Vision Street Wear in the second Larry's Donuts is Dead magazine. In those two mags, Brian went back to many of the riding spots made iconic by FREESTYLIN' magazine photos, and wrote about being inspired by those original photos back in the day. In the second mag, he also wrote about a few things and people who were keys parts of 80's freestyle, including Vision Street Wear.
Diving into the Larry's Donuts mags brought back a flood of memories to me. I was a kid living for each issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine in Idaho, in late 1984-85. Then I wound up working at the magazines for a little while, and rode at several of the spots Brian writes about during that era. But the whole Vision Street Wear era is something I haven't blogged much about, mostly because it was a skate and clothing company, not BMX specific.
In December 1987, I got hired at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video production company. The VSW clothes were surging in popularity at the time, and Unreel is who I worked with to produce six AFA videos earlier that year. Suddenly I was hanging out with Vision/Sims freestyle skaters Pierre Andre' Senizergues, and Don Brown on the weekends, and working as part of the Vision empire all week. For 2 1/2 years, Vision was pretty much my life. So here are a few Vision Street Wear stories.
Vision Street Wear clothes came out in late 1986 or 1987, I think, anchored by the now iconic, block shaped, Vision Street Wear logo. Those T-shirts were everywhere, within months, thanks to Everett Rosecrans' promotion. I got a couple pairs of the turquoise suede shoes and a couple T-shirts because I worked at the AFA, while many others got them as known riders. But I quickly ripped the inside part of the shoes, jamming my foot against my front brake bolt, doing flatland tailwhips. Tailwhips were one of my favorite tricks, and I had a few variations of them. But they jacked up the Vision shoes.
On one of my early trips to Unreel to work on an AFA video, I went downstairs after the edit session. Don Hoffman, the boss of Unreel was talking to a couple of the producers in the waiting room, and some long haired guy who had Vision pants and a new, button up Vision shirt on. Don said, "Hey Steve, meet Brad." So I said "Hi," and shook this Brad guy's hand. I didn't know who he was. Brad looked down at my shoes, and said, "What happened to your shoes, they're ripped?" I told him I was a BMX freestyler, and they got caught on a bolt, doing tricks. Brad said, "That sucks, go over to the main building and tell them I said to give you some new shoes." I was puzzled. I just nodded, and walked out.
That's when Dave Alvarez, the video editor I worked with, said, "That's Brad Dorfman, he owns the company, seriously, go get some new shoes." I couldn't believe it. So Dave Rode with me to the Vision main building, on Whittier street in Costa Mesa, a couple blocks away. He walked me through the big warehouse door, to a window. He told the woman in the window, "This is Steve From the AFA, Brad said to give him some new shoes." Vision shoes were like $40 a pair then, so I couldn't believe this was for real. I made $5 an hour at the AFA, and shoes were a lot of money in my world. The woman said, "What size and what color?" I answered, "turquoise, 8 1/2." Two minutes later she came back, handed me a shoe box and said, "there you go." Between Vision and Etnies (Pierre Andre's company later on), I didn't buy another pair of shoes for ten years. And that's how I met Brad Dorfman, the owner of Vision.
While BMXers and skaters remember Vision Street Wear as being huge in our world, many don't realize that this weird skateboard clothing company, out of southern California, actually made a dent in the real world of New York Fashion, believe that or not. If you're old enough, and think back to the late 1980's, one of the biggest things happening was the rise of rap music. From the street parties with break dancers and rappers in the New York City boroughs in the early 80's, the rap/hip-hop/breakdance, "urban" (meaning Black) street culture, was blowing up. For a few of years, the urban and street vibe had been influencing New York City's cutting edge fashion designers. Nobody quite new what to call this street culture, at a time when the Big Boys, Run DMC, and similar groups were starting to sell A LOT of records. The mainstream, inherently racist, white elite, were still hoping "that hip-hop stuff" would just be a fad. As we all know now, it wasn't.
From the other end of the country, the chill, surfer-dude land of southern California, comes these simple, in your face T-shirts saying Vision Street Wear. That gave the growing urban fashion idea a name, "street wear." Working at Vision, I'd hear of New York City designers and fashion people calling up the company asking about this street wear thing. Somehow, totally by accident, Vision Street Wear became cool in the New York City fashion world. These designers started seeing skaters, and maybe a BMXer or two, in New York with these street wear T-shirts, and that became a influence to the "real" fashion world about 1988.
The Vision Skateboard empire blew up exponentially in 1987-88, and into 1989. The money was gushing into the once small skateboard company. At its peak, the Vision empire included Vision, Sims, and Schmitt Stix skateboards, Sims snowboards, Vision Street Wear clothes, and Unreel Productions, a broadcast quality video production company that made action sports videos and trade show videos.
Unreel Productions was the coolest looking office in the Vision group, so when Brad Dorfman wanted to impress people, he brought them to Unreel. My job, for the most part, was to sit in a 6 x 8 foot room, filled with about ten different kinds of video decks, and makes copies of tapes for the whole Vision empire. All of the raw footage that our cameramen shot, I made VHS copies of, for the producers to check out later on. I dubbed tapes all day, and ran errands when needed. I made small quantities of video dubs for promotions people, for trades shows, for the art department, and anyone else who needed them. That kept me busy, and earned me the unofficial title of The Dub Guy.
In 1988-89, Vision Street Wear wanted to work with big name musicians, to further promote the clothes. When the bands came to check out the Vision company, they ended up at Unreel. Sitting in my tiny room, I saw Brad Drofman walk by with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, INXS, Gene Loves Jezebel, Sound Garden, and Anthrax. Brad would lead them into the edit bay, which had a couple of leather couches, behind where the producer and editor sa,t while working on videos. It was the coolest looking room in all of Vision, much like a music studio. The bands, or other big shots, would talk in there for a while, then adjourn to Brad's private office, which had an ocean view, from the Costa Mesa bluff (up above the future Sheep Hills location, by the way).
When Anthrax walked by one day, I knew John "Dizz" Hicks was a huge fan of them. I also knew which tapes of raw footage had shots of Dizz. So I quickly found 3 or 4 runs of Dizz riding, chopped the footage onto a VHS tape, labeled it, and waited for them to walk back past my office. Officially I wasn't supposed to talk to famous people and big shots, but I was willing to break that rule that day. When they walked back by, I handed one of the band members the tape and said, "Here's a BMX freestyle guy who's a big fan or yours, check it out." They were surprised, but cool, and the guy said, "Thanks" and kept going. So somewhere, the band Anthrax watched ten minutes of John "Dizz" Hicks shredding the wedge ramp, and a little quarterpipe and flatland. I was pretty stoked on that.
Guess who sponsored this 2-Hip contest. That's me on the ground, as Unreel cameraman, and Rob Dobbs from Canada, in the air during practice. 2-Hip King of Vert, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, spring of 1989. The rule at Vision was VSW logos EVERYWHERE.
One of those days, I finished up, got my bike from the back room, and rolled it outside to ride home. The Gene Loves Jezebel band members were sitting in a rental van out front. I think their manager was still talking to Brad Dorfman, or something. Basically they were stuck there for another 20 minutes or so. I asked what was up, and they told me they had to wait a while. Somebody asked about my bike, and I said, "I'm a freestyler, wanna see some tricks while you're hanging out?" They said, "Sure." So I did a little one man flatland show for the band until their manager came down. They were really cool, and stoked on the riding. Most people hadn't seen freestyle much at all at that point, so it was cool to show what I could do. I knew Craig Grasso was a big fan of theirs, and I can't remember if I ever told him about riding for them. So I'll send him this blog post, now, since we're back in touch on Facebook.
One day I showed up at work, and my Laura the production coordinator said, "Pack up the van, you're going to shoot some behind the scenes footage today of a music video shoot up by Hollywood." So I got our little S-VHS camera, and the big, expensive Betacam loaded up, with batteries and tapes, and headed off to the Hollywood area alone. I showed up at the address I was given, and found Mike Miranda, former pro racer, and the Vision BMX team manager, setting up the portable halfpipe. I spent the rest of the day walking around a big time music video shoot, eating free food, and shooting a little footage, while they shot this music video. This turned out to be the first music video that got into heavy rotation on MTV that had skateboarding in it. The skaters were Kele Rosecrans, Eric Nash, Joe Johnson, and Miki Keller. Oh yeah, the singer guy, he was really cool. That was one of my most fun days working at Unreel.
Another day at Unreel, Mike Miranda called over and told me to get a video camera ready. By 1989, I was the Dub Guy, and staff cameraman. I would shoot the small video shoots once or twice a week. When there was a big shoot, the producers and freelance camermen would also shoot video.
Mike showed up soon after at Unreel, with Vision rider, and racer/dirt jumper Rich Bartlett, along with a Vision photographer. We piled into the Unreel Toyota van, and he directed me to a spot on 19th street in Costa Mesa, only a few blocks from Unreel. Parked next to a big hill, Mike and Rich took off down a trail on their bikes, and the photographer and me walked in with our equipment. We caught up with Mike and Rich by a big hip jump on the trail. OK, it was four feet high, big by 1989 standards. They shot photos of a Vision Street Wear ad of Rich jumping, and Mike Miranda, always a big jumper, kept hitting the jump, too. I had no idea there were good jumps a few blocks away from work. Mike said, "Yeah, there's a ditch jump up that trail, too," pointing up the hill.
This little photo shoot sticks out in my mind because those jumps were located where the condos are now, right above the Sheep Hills area, by the 19th street hill in Costa Mesa. Sheep Hills didn't exist yet. But I started hitting those jumps at lunch once in a while, and then on my ride home from work. One day I ran into Josh White, and we both tried to learn tailwhip jumps on the flyout ditch jump. I'd been trying bunnyhop tailwhips for a while, and not making them. Josh, of course, was Josh White, a vert riding legend. While we could get the bikes most of the way around on tailwhip attempts, neither of us could land a tailwhip off the jump that day. I never did land a tailwhip jump or bunnyhop, but I know Josh landed them off jumps a year later. I know that because I was shooting video that day, and my battery died, literally while he was in the air, a second before he landed his first tailwhip jump. I missed the shot. Sorry Josh. I'm pretty sure Josh was the second person to land a tailwhip jump, after Mike Krnaich.
So what happened to Vision Street Wear? It was so HUGE, and then just kind of collapsed and faded. There's more to it, but the simple answer is that Vision just grew too quick. They did about $50 million in sales in 1988, and were growing exponentially. The business was spread out among 12 or 15 different buildings. Brad decided to by the huge, 100,000 square foot, old Oceam Pacific building in Santa Ana, ten miles inland. Everyone expected Vision to do $80 to $100 million in sales in 1989. Vision kept growing, but "only" did something like $60 million in sales in 1989.
The wave of popularity in skateboarding and BMX were cresting, and major corporations that sank some money in these new sports started pulling money out. Plus Brad is a micro-manager by nature, or was then, and the business just got way to big for one guy to keep up on everything going on. Again, it just got big too fast. In late 1989, and into 1990, things imploded. Vision stayed alive, but shrank dramatically, and a whole bunch of talented young people who worked there went off in different directions, myself included.
So those are a few quick memories of my time at Unreel and Vision. Most BMXers remember Vision for the clothes, and for their BMX and skate videos from that era. Here are the two main ones that include BMX freestyle.
I just wrote a 263 page ebook about my journey, going from a high school freestyler in Idaho, to getting started in the BMX freestyle industry. You can find the details and find out how to get a copy at this link below.
This is the Fort Boise BMX track in 1983, footage courtesy of Shannon Gillette, now a USA BMX marketing guy. He was a 12X or 13X racer when I first showed up at this track, as a dorky high school junior. Back in my day we didn't have video, somebody's dad had Super 8 movie cameras. We had to carve our bikes, by hand, out of birch logs. When us early freestylers did a lawnmower, we did it on an actual lawnmower... OK not really. But things have changed a lot since then. I guess that's why I wrote an ebook about the first few years of my BMX life.
In June of 1982, I got into BMX. I was the worst rider in a trailer park... outside Boise... in freakin' Idaho. The desert outside Boise isn't the Middle of Nowhere. It's where the people from the Middle of Nowhere go when they want to be alone. In July of 1986, I got offered a job at FREESTYLIN', the bible of BMX freestyle. I saw a lot of cool freestyle moments happen firsthand. I went street riding with Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and the Curb Dogs/Golden Gate crew in San Francisco. I know what the official word is for it when you bunnyhop a homeless person. I was at the photo shoot where Ron Wilkerson debuted the abubaca. I found the Jinx Bank, long forgotten, and took Lew from FREESTYLIN' there. Eddie Roman did the first wall ride photo shoot there later on. I was riding at the first King of Dirt Jam that Gork and Rich Bartlett put on. I rode in the first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, and also the MTS Brooklyn Banks contest in '89. I sessioned at The Spot in Redondo Beach with Lew, Gork, Chris Day, Craig Grasso, R.L. Osborn, skater Rodney Mullen, and others. I was shooting video when Joe Johnson landed the first double tailwhip on vert, and Mat Hoffman landed the first 900 in a contest. I was watching Tony Hawk's first 900 from the side of the ramp, too, ten years later at the X-Games. I kind of feel like a Jerry Maguire of BMX, that guy next to the guys making stuff happen.
Wall ride over my sister, Cheri's head in 1990. Blues Brothers Wall, Huntington Beach. Still from The Ultimate Weekend video.
Somehow, I managed to go from that trailer park dork, to a mediocre rider and BMX/freestyle/skateboard industry guy. I've got a lot of pretty cool stories from the 80's and 90's BMX freestyle world. Most of you have read some of my 1,200 or so blog posts about these tales, across 5 or 6 blogs in the last 12 years. A couple of months ago, I decided it was time to write book of these stories. I can't swing a "real," dead tree, paper book right now. But I was able to make an ebook happen.
Yesterday I put a post on Facebook that said, "I just wrote a 263 book about BMX freestyle, for people who don't like to read. I do stupid things like that sometimes." I was kind of joking. Most of the BMXers I know can read. But there are not a lot of hardcore book readers in the BMX world. We all read magazines back in the day, and many read posts about BMX online. But not a lot of BMX guys (or gals) read 3 or 4 Stephen King or Tom Clancy novels a month. Old School BMX guys would rather be out riding, posting about BMX on Facebook, or paying $43,000 on eBay for a set of 1984 Redline Flight cranks, rather than settling in to read Atlas Shrugged (which I read while living at the P.O.W. House in '92, BTW).
So after I got unemployment a couple months ago, and was able to get an expensive "cheap motel room" and upgrade my living condition, I decided to compile a bunch of my Old School BMX freestyle blog posts into an ebook. Like everyone, Covid put a damper on my main way of making money, selling my Sharpie artwork. So I wanted to get my online store up and running, and I needed a product to put in it. I bought some ebook compiling software, and put about 15 of my blog posts into an ebook. Then I read it... and it sucked.
A few things were repeated in several posts, and there were gaps between the blog posts that I thought should be filled in. Plus I've written somewhere around 1,200 to 1,500 BMX blog posts since 2008. So I had to go through the few hundred that are still online, and see which ones would be good to gather into a book. Then I rewrote every single post. I also wrote about 15 new posts, to fill in the gaps in my personal story. I decided to focus on writing about how I got into BMX in a trailer park in Idaho, raced a bit (at the track in the clip above), then got into freestyle, moved to NorCal, and managed to stumble into a magazine job thanks to my zine.
When I compiled all those posts into the ebook software, it was over 300 pages. But the software put my posts into a blender, and some things got repeated 10 times, paragraphs got mixed up, and I had to go through the whole book, again, cutting out pieces, re-organizing, and rewriting a few bits, and adding a few photos. The final ebook wound up being 263 pages. There are probably a few typos in it, but all in all, I felt pretty good about it.
But it's my story, and the insecure creative part of me kept wondering, "Does anyone really want to read my story?" But hundreds, sometimes over 1,000 people, have read my BMX blog posts. So that kept me going. Also, by telling my struggles in my early BMX and freestyle days, I was telling everybody's story a little bit. I was a fucking trainwreck when I got into BMX. I had more issues that the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble. I had more hang-ups than Kim Kardhasian's walk-in closet. I looked pretty normal, but I was weird. BMX, and particularly freestyle, gave me a place to ride out my frustration and anger, and to focus my creativity and intense drive. That's true of most riders in the 1980's, to some degree. 1980's BMX freestyle was not for "normal" people. Hopefully BMX never will be.
This morning, I woke up about 4:30 am, and worked on a picture I'm drawing for Craig Grasso, one of my favorite guys to ride with BITD. While drawing, I listened to the documentary A Wicked Ride. If you haven't watched it, check it out. It's about the BMX freestyle scene in New England in the 1980's and beyond. Even though it's about New England, all the guys in the first part of it totally remind me of being that kid riding alone in Boise. I was so removed from the Southern California center of freestyle, that it seemed like Oz to me, a place I'd never see or be a part of. A Wicked Ride really captures that feeling of being the kid who lived to ride, but only had the magazines, and maybe a trick show now and then, to connect us to this thing happening in Southern California.
Yet somehow, I wound up moving to Northern California with my family. Then I started a zine, and a year later, I wound up working at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines. So I totally remember being that kid in the middle of nowhere, living to freestyle when everyone around thought it was stupid. But I somehow became one of a handful of guys who wound up working in the freestyle industry in the 80's. There were a handful of others. Andy Jenkins came from Wyoming. Gork came from Sacremento. Lew and Scott Towne came from Michigan. Spike Jonze came from Maryland.
My ebook, Freestyle BMX Tales: Idaho Dork to Industry Guy, is my best stories from that era, from 1982-1986. Like A Wicked Ride, I was hoping that, by writing my experiences in that time, I could remind Old Schoolers of their adventures and struggles back then. I was hoping I could tell a part of all of our stories, by going deep into my own story. If you read my ebook, you can decided if I pulled that off.
Then, yesterday it dawned on me. I just wrote a book for guys who don't generally read too many books. Time will tell if that was a good idea. Then, right after I wrote that post, seriously, like fifteen minutes later, I checked my bank account. The online store platform isn't cool with my online bank account. I don't have a "real" account, mostly because I was homeless a long time, and haven't had a physical address. I have a P.O. box for mail, but usually you need proof of residence as well. So my recent sketchy life came back to bite me. I had to shut down sales in the online store until I get the banking issue worked out.
I jumped back on Facebook, and I had guys commenting, "Hey, I READ, can I get your ebook? Where's the link?" So I wound up talking to a bunch of guys, messaging one to one, and getting paid by Paypal, then sending them the ebook direct, one person at a time. It was a weird, but cool, day.
So here's the deal. If you're interested in my Freestyle BMX Tales ebook, I'm asking $3.43 for it. You can pay that by Paypal to: stevenemig13@ gmail.com . (steven, not steve, don't forget the "n"). Put your email address in the info on paypal, and I'll send you the ebook file directly, as soon as I can. Until the online store is worked out, that's the only way to get it. Or your friends could make you a copy for free. But if you do that, you'll probably have bad karma and crash really hard the next time you ride. Maybe. Hospital bills cost a lot more than $3.43. Just sayin'.
Seriously, the 263 page ebook is only $3.43. Several people have thrown me a little extra for it. That's not necessary. But I did use to be a taxi driver, and I never argue with tips. You won't get a free copy by showing me your boobs, though, just like in the taxi. Thank you to everyone who has bought one, and anyone who decided to. I figured with a low price I'd get a decent amount of people to check it out, and see how the whole ebook idea works for BMXers. Hey, the zine worked out for me 34 years ago, you never know 'til you try. If you check it out, let me know what you think. Otherwise, I'll see you all on Facebook.
To order a copy of this ebook, you can send me $3.43 by paypal to: stevenemig13@gmail.com , and add your email address.
As soon as I see the payment, I'll send the ebook to your email. Until I get the online store issues worked out, I'm selling these direct, one by one. It helps to message me on Facebook if to let me know you ordered. I'm not using Instagram right now, so don't DM me. A couple of people have read the whole book already, and the feedback's been good. Thanks everyone!
Was lifetime L.A. Laker player Kobe Bryant the best who ever played the game of basketball? That can always be argued. Was he one of the best to ever play the game? No question. One year ago today nine people died in a helicopter crash north of Los Angeles. We remember that crash today because Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi were among them.
Kobe Bryant was my favorite basketball player of all time. After hearing reports of his death one year ago, before we knew for sure, I started looking up videos of him. I found this one above and watched it. Top athletes remind us of the potential we all have within us, and inspire us to push our own limits in one way or another.
Not long after his death, I made a drawing of Kobe as a tribute. These take me 40 or more hours to draw, and I dive into the interviews, documentaries, and other work of whomever I'm drawing. In that process, I gained a lot more respect for Kobe, both on and off the court. This interview below is my favorite of everything I watched about Kobe. RIP Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, and the other killed in that tragic crash.
Phred at Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, NC shot this photo, and made this eflyer, for my first solo art show at his shop.
My friend Ann in North Carolina just sent me this article yesterday letting me know that Phred Rainey died. Or passed, as they say back there. Nobody dies in North Carolina, they all "pass." However you phrase it, one of the coolest people I met in my decade in NC is no longer among us.
I met Phred after a couple of hippies saw me doing my Sharpie art drawings in McDonald's by Hanes Mall, in Winston. I was homeless at the time, and trying to break into Winston's art scene, and sell my work, hoping to get my life back on track. The guys said, "Hey, that drawing is cool, you should show it to the guys at the music shop across the street. They have art on the walls, but this drawing is better than what they have up." I figured it was worth a shot, and walked over there later that day. I showed my drawing to the manager, and he liked it. He told me to come back the next day, when the owner of the shop would be there.
I went back the next day, and met a bearded, really friendly guy name Phred Rainey. I showed him a couple of drawings, I think I had a Jerry Garcia drawing, and one other one. He really liked it, we talked for a few minutes, and he put me in contact with Jane Buck, who handled the local art for Earshot Music.
Earshot music was a great indie "record shop" as we used to call them. They had all kinds of classic music on vinyl. They had every genre' you could think of. They had box sets, they had CD's, and some videos. They always had something I couldn't identify, but found cool, playing in the shop. It was just the old school type music shop you wanted to go hang out in, look through the bins, find that one thing you could buy at the moment, and find 25 more albums or CD's that you wanted to buy but couldn't afford at the time. It was a great music shop that reminded me of a smaller version of Amoeba Music in Hollywood, or Vinyl Solution in Huntington Beach, CA, but with a much wider selection, not just punk. But Earshot was a great shop... in Winston-Salem. With the move to digital music over the last 25 years, the cool record shop to hang out in and find new music has largely been lost. Earshot was one of those shops. I say "was" because I'm out west now, and I don't know what the future of the shop is.
Over the next few weeks, Jane and Phred put a couple of my Sharpie drawings up on the shop wall, and people like them, and one sold. While Jane handled the art, every time I went into the shop, Phred was usually who I talked to. They helped me get cheap frames I couldn't afford. He shot photos of my art, because I didn't have a phone or camera. He made the flyer above. We talked about ideas, and he was always just a really cool, really helpful guy. He didn't ask for anything, except a very small cut when a drawing sold.
I wound up doing a solo art show at Earshot, in November of 2017, and Jane lined up an interview with Lisa O'Donnell, who did an artist profile with me, for the Winston-Salem Journal. She, too, became a friend, and I later did a drawing for her daughter's birthday. I did eight drawings for the show at Earshot, and Phred put them up the night before. The Kurt Cobain drawing above, sold an hour after it went up on the wall, the day before the show. A handful of people showed up for the show. Because of that little show, and all the help from Phred and Jane, my Sharpie scribble style drawings started selling. And selling.
I had sold several drawings earlier, but the real sales came in late 2017 and the first months of 2018, almost all through Earshot Music. Phred knew I was homeless at the time, and often didn't take the shop's normal cut to sell my drawings. My point here is that Phred Rainey was one of those really great people, who continually went out of his way to help people find great music, discover new music, and help local musicians and artists to get some exposure, and get going in the Winston-Salem music and art scenes. I actually sold far more drawings through Earshot music, thanks to Phred and Jane, than when my art was up in a gallery (or or two) in Winston's Trade Street art scene downtown.
So I'm really surprised and sad to hear Phred has left this world. He was just a cool, solid human being, who went to great lengths to help those around him. I wrote this post about my interaction with Phred, but I'm just one of the hundreds, probably thousands of people who wandered into Earshot Music over the years Phred owned it. I had no idea he had leukemia, and it's really sad to hear he's gone.
The Earshot Music shop in 2018.
My Gene Simmons/KISS Sharpie drawing on the wall in Earshot for the art show in late 2017. I've sold over 90 original drawings in the last five years, and Phred and Earshot really helped me get my work off the ground, and into other people's hands.
I just found this photo in December, I think. I have no idea where he was supposed to land, but obviously, he didn't make it. And how 'bout the kink in the ramp, pretty gnarly. Early 1900's crazy man.
I'm pretty sure this is either a circus performer, or a daredevil who went around doing this loop. The circus idea comes from the rigging and rope nets to crash into, circus people knew how to do those things. There are 3 or 4 different photos of this loop and set up, and I think it's from 1910-1920 era.
Old School street riding, really old school. This is a safety bike, a penny farthing design, but with the little wheel in front to make it safer to ride. The inventor rode it down the U.S. Capitol steps, in the 1890's, I believe, to prove how much easier this bike was to ride, than the standard penny farthing.
I think this is from the 1930's to 1950's era, and I found it deep in some public domain files. Cool idea. Don't be surprised if someone brings this idea back to life, just on a beefier sprocket.
Ow. Just OW. Not only does this take strength and balance, but it had to hurt his head like crazy. Don't try this at home, especially if you're drunk. (Unless your friends are shooting video, anyhow).
Mega ramp, 1904 or 1905. This one actually had a date. This looks to be a 20 to 25 foot gap, and a pretty well built ramp. Keep in mind, though, that these bikes were all made with what we call "mild steel" not chromoly. He's hucking this gap on a bike that you could snap riding off a loading dock one time, and he's doing it without a helmet, without an emergency room to go to afterward, and without a Red Bull video budget. Gnarly.
This is from around 1910, I think. Look close at the back rim, there seems to be a flat spot. Let's put this nutcase in perspective: It took about 105 years, MUCH stronger bikes, and Morgan Wade, for this trick to be repeated. This guys balls must have clanged when he walked. In-freakin'-sane.
Hope you enjoyed this look back at the crazy bike riders of your grandparents and great-grandparents day.
I just finished my 363 page ebook about freestyle in the early 1980's. It's called Freestyle BMX Tales: Idaho Dork to Industry Guy. The ebook (aka digital file, not a dead tree book), has several of my most popular blog posts about the era from 1982 to 1986, when I got into BMX and freestyle, and freestyle itself was just turning into a sport. It's costs $3.43 (+ applicable taxes), and is available in my brand new online store. Check it out at the link below:
This is the version of the 2-Hip Meet the Street comp that I edited for the 2-Hip season video. That video is now on YouTube as 2-Hip BHIP. This was the first street contest most of us remember, though Dave Vanderspek put on one or to regional street comps in NorCal earlier.
Everybody was looking forward to this contest at the time, because we had no idea what was going to happen. Dave Vanderspek and Eddie Roman were known as street riding guys before this, though it was something all of us did daily. Wall rides had been a thing for a year or so, fakie wall rides were really new. Abubacas had been a trick on vert for a year and a half. None of us had seen a magazine photo of a wall ride more than 2 1/2 feet high in a magazine, before this contest. It's hard to explain now how new all of this was then.
Street riding wasn't really a thing yet, no one had any ideas where the limits were. Peg grinds were done on vert ramps, but no one really did them on street. It was two year after this contest that the first handrail peg grind was caught on video. We honestly had no idea what the obstacles would be, who would be the standout riders, or what new tricks we would see. This was one of the most fun contests I ever went to.
I'm the guy ghost riding his bike into the wall in the blue shirt. I did other stuff like sketchy footplant tailwhips, but decided to only put myself in the video doing something goofy. There were so many riders no one expected were doing cool stuff that day.
San Francisco innovator, Dave Vanderspek, was one of the first guys to do hard tricks on street, going back to 1982-1983. He does the bar endo on the box at 3:55. Freeze that shot, look how edged he is. That's some of the earliest roots of street riding, doing flatland tricks on a sketchy or high spot. Dave and the Curb Dogs showed us all footplants and blunts on parking blocks early on, too. Vander represents the deepest roots of serious street riding.
The other guy we all expected to rip it up that day was Eddie Roman, he got the first wall ride photo in FREESTYLIN' (on the Jinx Bank in Redondo). Eddie put walls in play, and that changed riding forever. I love Eddie's 180 to backwards bunnyhop off the box at 3:55, that's the kind of classic "Eddie Roman stuff" many of us expected. But guys like magazine guy Scott Towne(2:57), ramp rider Todd Anderson(2:10), Orange County local George Smoot (1:25), 2-Hip guy Kevin Martin(2:46), San Diego basher Pete Agustin (4:02), and "Conan the Bikebarian," pro racer/bodybuilder Rich Bartlett (3:12) ripped it up that day. Vic Murphy also ripped, but somehow we didn't get much footage of him. Mike Golden, the young vert rider from NorCal, was the only guy who jumped the roof of the car to flat. All kinds of BMXers threw down that day.
Craig Grasso (4:11)was known for being weird, artsy, and riding everything pretty well, and he was a standout rider all day. I spent a lot of time riding with Grasso in 1986, and I knew he was a great street rider. But he was way better than we all expected him to be in Santee. Another rider no one really expected to flat out rip at the Meet the Street was R.L. Osborn (3: 37). We all grew up looking at R.L.'s photos in the magazines, but he was believed to be more or less retired by 1988. R.L. came out and showed off 15 years worth of BMX skills applied to new obstacles.
The trick of the day went to Englishman Craig Campbell, with the wall ride to 360 (4:53), or 540 wall ride, we didn't know what to call it. That trick blew everyone's fucking mind. Craig got the trick of the day, no doubt. But the man of the day, which oddly surprised a lot of us, was Dave Voelker (1:07). We all knew Dave was a great ramp rider, and flat out crazy on his bike, but he wasn't one of the first guys that came to mind when someone mentioned street riding, before this contest. But Dave's insanely high wall rides, big jumps, and all around aggroness, made him the man of the day in Santee.
Yeah, this was his stomping grounds, but no one stomped like Dave that day. From Santee on, Dave was the first name that came to mind when street riding was mentioned. It sort of seemed like a changing of the guards in that way. The earliest pioneers of really pushing street, like Dave Vanderspek and his Curb Dogs, and Eddie Roman, handed the torch to guys like Dave Voelker, Vic Murphy, and Craig Grasso to really push the level of street riding as it morphed into its own genre.
Pretty much everyone got really psyched on street riding that day, and that's the work of Ron Wilkerson and the 2-Hip crew, for putting on this Meet the Street, and the ones that followed. This contest changed BMX freestyle forever. A year later the bike industry decided BMX and freestyle were dead, and turned their attention, and their money, to mountain bikes. Freestyle went underground, and street riding was a big part of the down years.
There's another video clip form this contest, edited by Dave Alvarez, our video editor at Unreel Productions, on pro caliber equipment. Here's that clip, go to 4:02.
Here's somebody's home video from that day, that shows several of the pro rider's runs. Check out what happens when Dave Voelker shoots his bike jumping the box. I forgot about that part.
If you've read a few of my Old School freestyle blog posts, you should check out my new ebook. It's big, 263 pages, but you can read each little chapter separately. You can download it anywhere, and it costs about the same as a cup of coffee. It covers me getting into freestyle in 1982-'86 in Boise Idaho. I write about meeting pros for the first time, riding in Golden Gate Park, [ublishing a zine, and stumbling into the BMX industry. I also get into the bigger picture of why BMX freestyle happened during our time, and how a few guys doing tricks in SoCal turned into a worldwide thing. I tell a little bit of every freestyler's story in telling my own story. Check it out and get you copy now at the link below:
This video came out in early spring of 1989, and was the 7th BMX freestyle video I directed or edited.
When it came time to put the first official 2-Hip contest season video together for the 1988 season, Ron Wilkerson called me up and asked me if I wanted to edit the video. Yeah, that surprised me, too. But to put it in context, this happened in early 1989. Eddie Roman, who I credit with really starting the rider-made video movement in BMX freestyle, was still working on Aggroman at the time, so he wasn't really known as a video producer yet. I had been working at Unreel Productions, Vision's video company, for over a year. I just got tapped as the Unreel cameraman that spring, after our old cameraman, Pat Wallace, moved on to a better job. Pat's the guy who shot all the contest footage in this video.
I had produced six videos for the AFA in 1987, and then got hired at Unreel. So from Ron's point of view, I was a rider and a video guy who could do the job, and work cheap. Cheap was $500 for logging hours and hours of footage, picking the best shots, and then editing it all together on Unreel's S-VHS system and getting a duplication master tape made. My bosses at Unreel were cool with loaning me the S-VHS edit system to do a side project, which was way cool of them. I think it took 3 or 4weeks of working nights, after working at Unreel during the day, to get this done. Ron got music from Bob Haro and the The Bohemians to use in the video. When I ran out of that music, I recorded myself drumming beats on a phone book and a little metal can full of thumb tacks. Hey, it was a low budget video, I was on a deadline, and it worked.
The intro part with Kevin Martin calling Ron, and then carrying the ramp pieces, was their idea, and the 2-Hip crew shot all those parts, and gave me the footage. I didn't really like the idea, but they did, and it was their video. The biggest thing to explain about making a low budget BMX freestyle video in 1989 was that nobody had really done it yet. Mark Eaton had made Dorkin' in York, which was really sketchy VHS footage of incredible riding by Kevin Jones, Mark, and the York crew. The riding was insane but the video quality sucked. Like all of us, Mark was working with no budget, and in his case, two VCR's to edit it. I hadn't see that video at the time I made this one. Eddie Roman was working on Aggroman, which was like a super low budget BMX and Kung Fu movie, shot on video. That came out soon after this video. The "real" freestyle videos of that era were the BMX company sponsored videos, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to make. The main ones were the BMX Plus videos, and GT Bikes video GT-V. Those were all shot and edited on pro level equipment, but by people who were industrial video producers, not freestylers. They had great technical quality, and good riding, but they also had guys wearing leathers and helmets to ride flatland.
There was no playbook for us low budget guys at the time. There was no standard way to make a low budget freestyle video then. This was one of the first rider-made videos ever. So it it kinda sucked in a lot of ways, but the riding was great for the time period. AND, this video had the first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California in it. Street riding competitions were brand new when that footage was shot, and a lot of freestylers watched that section over and over, and then headed out to street ride in their towns.
Unlike the AFA videos I directed, which sold about 25 or 30 copies each, this video sold a few hundred that first year, I think. Also, it was watched by most of the freestylers around at the time. Originally we called it 2-Hip: The '88 Adventure, but it got tagged 2-Hip BHIP sometime later, and 2-Hip just kept selling copies of this video for years, when people ordered T-shirts or other things. Then, for the 1989 contest series video, Ron Wilkerson asked Eddie Roman to make the video. Eddie was his normal weird, creative self, and made an awesome video called Ride like a Man, in early 1990. That's when the low-budget, rider-made freestyle movement really got going.
When I finished this video, I got Ron Wilkerson the master tape, and a duplication master (so he wouldn't wear out the original when he got copies made, and he gave me a check for $500. My little sister was heading off to college soon after that. So, being the good (and stupid) brother that I was, I got a money order for $500, and sent it all to her. She's been a teacher in North Carolina for many years now. Here are the remaining segments of the video, except the street part, I'm going to do another blog post about that.
This is the second of the six AFA videos I produced directed in 1987. Dave Voelker and Dino Deluca were still amateurs then, and Mike Dominguez, Josh White, Todd Anderson, and Ron Wilkerson battle it out in the pro class.
Unlike the previous post, of the AFA Oregon Pro Flatland video, this original VHS video has been watched... a lot. Yes, it really is a color video, but the tape was so worn out, it looks black and white on YouTube. That kind of thing happened in the world of actual video tape and generation loss, in the pre-digital era.
In any case, this is the second video I produced and directed for the American Freestyle Association in 1987. The flatland and quarterpipe/wedge ramp contest format had been going for two and a half years at this point. Ron Wilkerson took things to the halfpipe realm with the 2-Hip King of Vert contest series, following Dave Vanderspek's lead. Dave put on the first few halfpipe contests in San Francisco. But the AFA with the flatland and quarterpipe contests were the big dog in the 1980's freestyle contest world. Some of the AFA Masters national contests drew 400 riders or more in that era, and each got a 1 1/2 minute run. Let me tell you, there was nothing like having to judge 48, very comparable, 14-15 intermediate flatlanders, and try to get them in the proper order. Everyone hated the judging, but the winners. Since I had to judge contests sometimes, and I also competed, and was always in the middle (or back) of the pack in the national contests, I didn't bitch too much. Judging was impossible.
But the jam circles were a blast, and a week later, we forget who won anyhow, and just remembered the big tricks and the new tricks.
Check out me new online store for ebooks, stickers, T-shirts, art, and what ever else I can thing up...
In this video, we see top BMX freestylers, Martin Aparijo, R.L. Osborn, Ron Wilkerson, Chris Lashua, Josh White, Dave Vanderspek, and others, showing us the cutting edge of flatland in the spring of 1987.
One day, while I was working as the American Freestyle Association's newsletter editor, Bob Morales came into the little room. Bob started putting on skatepark contests in 1982, and flatland and ramp contests with the AFA, in 1984. By 1987, with three or four employees, we had about 3,000 members nationwide, we put on 6 national contests, and regional BMX freestyle contests were held under the AFA name in several areas. Bob said, "Steve, you wanna make a TV commercial? I just found out I can get local cable TV spots for $25 each in Austin." I had absolutely no background in producing videos, and no idea how to make one So I said, "Uh... sure." That's how things worked at the AFA, and BMX freestyle, in those days. Come up with a cool idea, then figure out how to do it, and then make it happen somehow. Bob, at the ripe old age of 23 then, was already a veteran serial entrepreneur, and "seat of the pants" didn't even begin to describe his style of business in those days. Bob always had about 17 different projects going, and it was hard to keep up. But it was interesting, if frustrating at times.
Our AFA Masters national contests were sponsored by a handful of BMX industry companies, and Vision Street Wear was a major sponsor. That was the new clothing line put out by Vision Skateboards owner Brad Dorfman. The rise of street skateboarding synched up with the rise of hip hop, break dancing, and urban culture going mainstream, so "street" was the cool thing in fashion at the moment. Vision also had a video production company, called Unreel Productions. Unreel sent a cameraman to every AFA contest, who shot footage on a broadcast quality Sony Betacam camera. The deal was that both Vision and Unreel could use that footage any way they wanted. So Bob gave me the phone number to Unreel, and I called them up, told them I worked at the AFA, and said, "We want to make a TV commercial, what do I do?" They told me to come by the next day, and we'd get started.
The Unreel crew, mainly Dave Alvarez, a wizard of a video editor, shepherded me through the process, and Dave did the editing with the shots I picked out. Soon we had a pretty lame 30 second commercial with cool BMX action in it. The commercial played on MTV in the Austin area before that contest. People did actually see it, and Austin, as usual, was a great contest. Even in 1987, it was Austin. The weird Texas city with the great music scene was also an early hot spot of BMX freestyle.
After that, Bob talked to me again. "You know... I kind of advertised some freestyle videos in the newsletter about six months ago, and we got some orders. But I never got around to making the videos. You want to make some AFA contest videos?" Again, I answered, "Uh... sure." And that's how I become a video producer. Unreel gave me VHS window dubs of the raw footage, I logged it at home on my roommate's VCR. Then I went in, picked the shots, and Dave Alvarez edited it all together in Unreel's half million dollar, component betacam edit bay.
So at a time when a pro quality video camera cost $50,000, and a good edit bay cost $500,000, the no-budget AFA had broadcast quality videos that sold 35 copies each. That's entrepreneurship, folks. That's also how I became a video guy. This was the first of six contest videos I produced for the AFA in 1987, before the rider-made video movement got going.
After letting this blog sit for a long time, I've decided to get it going again. Welcome back!
Check out my online store with ebooks, stickers, art, and whatever else I can come up with, at:
