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.
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.
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.
Freestyle BMX Tales: Idaho Dork to Industry Guy
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