Brett Downs birthday is today. Here's his compilation video from the last year of riding. There were a few "WTF did he just do?" moments in this for me. Thanks for the inspiration to ride, Brett.
Since about the time I turned 50, 5 years ago, I've been telling friends: At age 50 we stop aging, from now on we Level Up, like in a video game. Welcome to Level 50, extra man (or woman) added, rage accordingly. Brett live what I say. Props man!
Stealing's bad. We all know that. But nearly everyone has stolen something at some point. Mine is pretty much limited to free refills at fast food joints in desperate times, but stealing is stealing (unless you're Wall Street, then it's cool). I'm against stealing bikes bike parts, but I've had one or two stolen parts on my bike back in the early days, so I can't pretend I've always been above it. Besides, this is a great song by Jane's Addiction.
As I've written several times, I got into BMX riding in a trailer park we called Blue Valley, outside of Boise Idaho. It was the summer of 1982, there were about a dozen of us teenage guys in the park, and not a lot to do. We all had cheap BMX bikes, and a little "track" on the edge of the park. It had two berms, roosted by a motorcycle rider couple years earlier, and 4 small jumps. We just started spending more and more time in the evenings riding our bikes, and less playing football, basketball or throwing rocks at each other.
As we got more into BMX riding, we started breaking bike parts. Goosenecks, as we called stems back then, were often the first to go. When we broke something, like a gooseneck or a pedal, or bent a sprocket, that created the problem of replacing it. For things like pedals, we could often find somebody who had a rubber-style pedal off an old ten speed or kid's bike, to buy for $2 or something. But the more expensive parts, like the goosenecks, forks, handlebars, and rims, cost $40 or more. That meant we had to come up with a fair amount of actual money.
There were three main ways to make money as a teen, in a trailer park, outside of town in 1982. Mowing lawns, babysitting, or selling drugs. The drugs were mostly sold by the older guys (20-somethings) in the trailer park, or by kids at school. None of us were really into drugs then, a few kids smoked a bit of weed, but that was mostly it. It was a trailer park, in the desert, where the grass was dry, yellow, and grew really slow. Blue Valley was mostly lower middle class working people, with some poor trailer park-stereotype White Trash people mixed in. Nearly everyone mowed their own lawns. Sometimes you could mow lawns for one of the older couples and make $5 a lawn. But getting more than 2 or 3 lawn mowing jobs a week was the best anyone could manage, and that was only if one of us was trying to make money that week. None of us had our own cars, and we were 7 or 8 miles outside of Boise itself. Getting a "real job" for $3.35 an hour wasn't a viable option for most of us.
So that left babysitting. The standard pay for babysitting kids at Blue Valley in 1982 was $1 an hour and all the government cheese you could eat, no matter how many kids. Seriously, that's what we made. I only liked cheese on pizza, and the government wasn't giving out free mozzarella. The whole government cheese program was to help struggling dairy farmers. Anyhow, the couples who went out usually were gone for 2-3 hours. So it took a lot of babysitting jobs that paid $3 and a chunk of cheddar, to buy a new set of handlebars or even a sprocket. Like broke kids everywhere, we improvised.
At first we bought many of our bike parts at Payless. That was a drug store, similar to a Walgreens, CVS, or Rite Aid today, but they had a little more everyday merchandise. There was a toy aisle that had really cheap bike parts at one end. There were also no security cameras in those days. I was way to scared to steal bike parts, I was always afraid of getting into any kind of trouble. I was in enough trouble from my mom day after day for normal teenage stuff, like forgetting to take out the garbage. But a couple of the guys at the trailer park didn't mind snagging free stuff, like in the Jane's Addiction song above. I honestly forget who stole what, but a cheap gooseneck or two, and quite a few inner tubes and patch kits got snagged from the Payless our families all shopped at.
One kid realized that you could take a 26 inch, thorn proof inner tube out of the box in the store, and pack about 12 normal, 20 inch tubes in the box. The 20 inch tubes were $1.99 or something, and the thorn proof tube was $3.99, I think. So a couple of the kids would pack the big, thorn proof boxes, and get twelve $2 inner tubes for $4, saving $20. Those guys quickly became the inner tube suppliers for all of us.
I think every one of us from Blue Valley had parts from Payless drug store on our bikes at some , most of them bought, in 1982. When we went to our first race, as a group, at the local Fort Boise BMX track, some local rider asked where we came from. Suddenly there we were, this sketchy group of 9 or 10 young guys, in Levi's, T-shirts, and with paper plate number plates. But we were all pretty fast for new riders. One of our crew told the Fort Boise locals, "We're Team Payless." The funniest part is that a few kids actually believed that we were sponsored by a drug store.
As we kept breaking cheap Payless parts, we upgraded to what became our local bike shop, Bob's Bikes (and lawnmower repair), on Overland Road in Boise. A big trend in BMX components at the time was "anodized" aluminum parts. This was colored aluminum sprockets and chain rings, pedals, hubs, and stems. Anodized parts came primarily in red, blue, black, and gold. In this Old School BMX bike clip, you can see anodized parts on bikes #1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 10. Red and blue anodized parts were the most popular, and black was a bit less popular then. But nobody (who actually had money) wanted gold anodized parts. So one of the guys from Blue Valley went to Bob's to get a sprocket. He came back and told us he got $3 off on the disc (inner part of the sprocket, that you bolted the chain ring to), because it was gold anodized. Immediately, gold anodized components became a theme at the Blue Valley jumps. We bought the ugly gold parts nobody else wanted, usually for 10% to 30% off. I had my gold anodized Diamondback gooseneck for 2 or 3 years. My dad later took it to the shop where he worked, and had it bead blasted, which left it a raw, silverish, aluminum color, which looked cool, way better than anodized gold. A couple riders asked me about it at the track, I old them it was a rare, silver, limited edition stem or something. But it was the same gooseneck I had the week before, just with the gold color blasted off.
The sketchiest cheap bike part story from Blue Valley came when a new family that moved in. They bought the trailer right next to the basketball court, where we all met up to go ride, after supper each evening. Summer days were hot in Boise, so we watched TV or played video games all day, and ventured outside in the late afternoon or evening.
The new couple had two young boys, about 6 and 7 years old. Both kids had brand new, K-Mart bought, BMX bikes. So we spent a few days riding out at our jumps, all with cheap bike parts on our crappy bikes, while the two new little kids rode in front of new mobile home on brand new bikes. In typical trailer park fashion, one or two of our crew got jealous, those bike got stolen out of their unlocked shed one night. Two nights later, their dad came out to talk to us teen guys, while we were riding our bikes around the basketball court.
We all came together, sitting on our bikes, as he told us that his kids' bikes just got stolen a couple nights earlier. "Man, that sucks!" one of our group replied. We talked about having bike parts stolen, from time to time. We told him he should lock the shed, and we thought high school kids from in town came out to steal stuff every once in a while. None of our bikes had the bright chrome frames his boys' bikes had, so he said he knew we didn't steal them. But he asked us to keep an eye out for their bikes, and let him know if we heard any rumors about who stole them. Obviously, they guy thought one o fus had stolen the bikes, and someone else would soon rat them out.
We assured the guy we would keep an eye out for the bikes, and he thanked us and walked back into his trailer. Every single one of us had parts of those stolen bikes on our bikes as he was talking to us. I had one of the pairs of pedals. Honestly, I felt really bad about that one. But he bought his kids new bikes about a week later, the guy had a good job. I don't actually know which guys in our group stole the bikes, but the parts were sold by 3 or 4 guys the next couple of days. The frames for those two bikes are still at the bottom of the Blue Valley pond, covered in muck and duck poop, as far as I know.
By the time spring melt happened in 1983, and we could ride our jumps again, we all still had cheap frames, but they were built up with decent quality components. One day Rocky and Scott decided to ride all the way into Boise to check out a new video arcade. It was about an 8 mile ride each way. They made it back after dark, and told us about it the next day. They told us it was a really cool arcade. They also told us they met a couple of guys there with brand new, name brand BMX bikes. They asked the guys how they made enough money to buy such expensive bikes. Buying a $400 bike with the typical, $3.35 an hour job would take a long time. Those kids, who lived in a poor neighborhood, told our guys that their old bikes got stolen. Because their parents had renter's insurance, they got a check to replace their old bikes, and were able to buy brand new bikesmore expensive than the first ones. That was the first time I heard about trailer park economics, I think.
Not surprisingly, looking back, Scott and Rocky got their bikes "stolen" at the arcade a couple weeks later. In those couple of weeks, they just happened to have listed all the parts on their bikes (with a few serious upgrades), and found out that their parents also had renter's insurance. Sure enough not long after, the insurance bought Scott a Panda with Araya 7X rims, Redline Flight Cranks, and other top name parts. I never could figure out why Scott bought a Panda frame, of all things. But it was a good bike. Rocky went totally first class, getting a brand new Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo, the coolest race bike out, as far as we knew. Here's Harry Leary doing his his thing on his Diamondback in the UK, coming in 3rd behind Tommy Brackens.
After seeing, and riding Scott and Rocky's bikes, several guys talked about getting their bikes "stolen" for a while, but no one did. Scott and Rocky always swore their bikes actually got stolen, but that arcade was right by the Boise River. None of knew for sure what happened. But those bikes may have wound up in the river, so they'd never be recovered. None of us ever knew for sure, except those two, and they kept to their story.
At the time, the idea of scamming insurance to get a free bike didn't seem like a big deal. In the many years since, I've seen how prevalent scamming of all kinds is in poor communities (and wealthy ones, too), and that's why many insurance premiums are so high. It'd be cool if nearly everyone could make a decent living, and this type of scamming would largely die out. But I'm writing this during the Covid-19 pandemic, when tens of millions of Americans are simply struggling to survive, pay rent, and eat, and most major corporations are alive today because of record setting bailouts last year, and in 2008-2009. About 30% of the American public get some kind of help form the government at the moment, myself included.
My parents moved back into Boise in early summer of 1983, and I was able to mow a few lawns, and do odd jobs, to keep my bike running from then on. I wound up buying my Skyway T/A frame and fork set with my high school graduation money, in the spring of 1984. But in the summer of 1983, the Blue Valley guys quickly faded from the BMX racing scene, and I rode largely by myself day to day that year, and started getting more into the emerging thing called BMX freestyle.
I just wrote a 250+ page ebook about getting into BMX in the trailer park, all the way up to when I stumbled into the BMX industry in 1986. I got a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, which changed the direction of my entire life, for the better.
This story of struggling to get parts to keep our bikes running that first year is one of the chapters I left out of the ebook. I know nearly everyone had their struggles to buy bikes and parts in those early years. I wrote this post, reminding us all of those early sketchy days when most of us got a bit shady to keep riding, from time to time. Hopefully most of you have moved past that shadiness, and left it to the guys offering1985 Redline Flight Cranks for $7,000 a set on eBay now.
You can learn more about my Freestyle BMX Tales ebook, including how to order one, at this link:
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
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:
WPOS Kreative (Freestyle BMX Tales ebook)
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:
Brett Downs birthday is today. Here's his compilation video from the last year of riding. There were a few "WTF did he just do?...
