Friday, September 18, 2015

The End of BMX Plus


I found this clip above on You Tube of a BMX Plus! photographer shooting Gary Young doing a one hand tabletop wall ride for the 30th anniversary cover of the magazine.  Classic style.

If you're an old school BMXer of any kind, then you probably already know that BMX Plus! magazine is being shut down after thirty-seven years in business.  Those of you who know me or have read my blogs know that I worked for a short time at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN', so you may think I'm glad to see Plus close up shop.  Well, I'm not.  The first BMX magazine I traded my hard earned money for was the December 1982 issue of BMX Plus! with Stompin' Stu Thomsen  on the cover.  In those early days of my BMX life, BMX Plus! was the only BMX magazine carried at the grocery stores in Boise, Idaho, where I lived.  Later on, in a bike shop, my friends and I discovered BMX Action, but it was Plus that we flipped through first.  In those pre-internet days, magazines were the only source of BMX news for us riders in obscure parts of the country.  For Southern California riders, where the BMX scene developed, it was different.  They actually knew many of the riders in the magazines.  But for the rest of us around the U.S., and around the world, we had only those photos and words to learn about the BMX world.  Magazines were magic in those early days.

But we don't live in those days anymore.  Our little, weird sport of racing and doing tricks on a little kid's bike has now spread across the world.  The technological advances since then have led to many other forms of media (like this blog, for example) exploring, talking about, and showing the BMX world of today and yesterday.  For us old guys, it's sad to think that those days of awesome, full page photos that we ripped out of magazines and taped to our bedroom walls, are over.  No more stories of John Ker shooting a full roll of film of a rider doing a single hard trick, just to get that one perfectly focused photo.  Like it or not, the magazine days are drawing to a close.  It's always hard to see something we invested our time, money, and interest in come to a close.  I still love going to Barnes & Noble and flipping through magazine after magazine, not just BMX, but many different types.  That store is the only place around here that still has a huge magazine section.  Like all of you, I'll miss BMX Plus!.  I think I had one small article in it in the 80's, and a few words and a photo or two in Hi-Torque's freestyle mag, American Freestyler.  So I contributed a tiny amount to the 37 year history of BMX that it represents.  I read many, many copies of the magazine, put dozens of its photos on my wall, and knew firsthand some of the people who made that magazine in years past.  We now come to the end of an era.  But in this new world, other forms of media will rise up to take its place.  Thanks to the entire staff of BMX Plus! for all that you have brought us over the years, and I hope all of you are successful in your future endeavors.  

Crazy California 43- This blog's about weird, cool, and historic locations in California that have an interesting story. 

WPOS Kreative Ideas- This blog's about creativity, writing, art, blogging, promoting creative work, and whatever else I fell like writing about.  

Monday, September 14, 2015

30 Years of Self Publishing

Blog post:  Zines, and my 30 years of self-publishing

The second zine article in FREESTYLIN' magazine, August, 1986.  My zine, San Jose Stylin'; topped the list.

A zine is a small, self-published booklet.  They can contain thoughts, interviews, rants, photos, collage, artwork, poetry, and anything else you can put on a blank piece of paper.  They're usually made by a single person, but occasionally by a small group.  The Asian pop culture magazine Giant Robot started as a Xerox zine, for example.  Often there's theft involved, if only "borrowing" the office copy machine and paper, or maybe stealing staples or copy paper form work.  Sometimes they were called fanzines or chapbooks.  Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which helped inspire the American Revolution, was a basically a zine of its time period.  Zines are often horrible and wonderful at the same time.  You can say whatever the fuck you want in a zine, there are no editors or censors.  For much of the 20th century, from sci-fi in the 1930's to poetry in the 1960's, and exploding with punk rock in the 1970's and 1980's, zines have been a counter culture media staple for decades.  Despite the amazing internet publishing technology of the 21st century, zine culture remains strong. 

It's kind of depressing that the short documentary, "$100 & a T-Shirt," is the best thing on YouTube about zines.  Thousands upon thousands of different zines were published over the last few decades, but no one got around to doing a full on film about the many zine scenes.  In any case, that documentary sums up the zine publisher's motives pretty well.  (That video was embedded in the original version of this blog post, published in September 2015). 

The other day I was cooking pancakes for breakfast, and my mind was wandering as I cooked.  For some reason, it suddenly occurred to me that this month, September 2015, marks my thirty year anniversary in self-publishing.  Like many self-publishers from Generation X, it all started with a zine.  Just over thirty years ago, in late August of 1985, I finished my summer job at the Boise Fun Spot, a small amusement park in Boise, Idaho.  I packed up my 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, which was approximately the size of an aircraft carrier, and drove to my parents' new home in San Jose, California. 

My first couple of weeks in San Jose were spent unpacking, getting to know my new city, and looking for a job.  I soon found a job at a Pizza Hut, and began a routine of working nights at the restaurant, coming home and doing balance tricks in my room for an hour or two, caffeine buzzed on Pepsi and Mountain Dew I drank at work, and then going to sleep.  I'd wake up in the late morning, eat some breakfast, do the chores that needed done, and hop on my bike and street ride around San Jose.  I knew there were lots of good riders in the San Francisco Bay area, but I had no idea where they were or how to meet them.  Things were like that in the pre-internet days.

I had been toying with the idea of publishing a zine in Idaho, but I never got around to actually doing it.  I'd first heard of bike and skate zines in FREESTYLIN' magazine, and the idea of making a zine was appealing to me.  I'm not sure why.  I didn't think of myself as a writer then, I kind of thought of myself as a photographer, even though I only had a Kodak 110 camera.  Remember those little things?  After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, I decided to make my first zine, using photos from Idaho, and my trip to the 1985 AFA contest in Venice Beach, California.  

Like most zine publishers, I had a couple of problems when I started.  First, I'd never actually seen a real zine, I'd only read about them.  Second, I didn't have a typewriter.  Yeah... a typewriter.  Sure, the first Apple Macintosh computers had come out a year earlier, but only rich people bought those things then.  So I went to the huge San Jose swap meet, and bought a manual Royal typewriter for $15.  By "manual," I mean that it wasn't even electric.  It came in a big case, and looked like it was from the 1920's or something.  With that piece of crap typewriter, I began my writing and self-publishing career.

My sole purpose in making my first zine was to meet other freestylers in the San Jose area, and eventually, the other Bay Area riders.  Much to my surprise, it actually worked.  My first zine was three sheets of paper, with stories and photos on both sides, stapled in the corner.  I didn't even know that you were supposed to fold the pages in half like a little book.  I dropped off copies of my zine to a few local bike shops, and (snail) mailed copies to the editors and writers of the main BMX magazines.  I don't know why, it just seemed like the right thing to do.  My zine was called San Jose Stylin', and it was horrifically ugly.  But, in those pre-internet days, I started publishing news of the BMX freestyle world a month after it happened, at a time when the major magazines printed the news three months after it happened.  I became the de facto source for up-to-date freestyle news in the U.S..  That was totally by accident, the whole thing blossomed and evolved as it went.  I also interviewed the top riders in the Bay Area, who included pros Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson,  Oleg Konings, Hugo Gonzales, and Rick Allison, as well as lots of incredible amateurs.

Very much to my surprise, my zine was chosen as the top BMX zine in the country, by the guys at FREESTYLIN' magazine the next time they did an article about zines.  That led to writing a contest article for them as a freelancer, then ultimately a full time job at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  I had no idea when I started, but publishing that first zine led to a totally different direction in my life.  FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins changed the course of my life with one phone call.  He asked if I wanted to interview for a job at Wizard Publications, because of my self-published zine.  Andy himself really understood this, because his life changed when Wizard publisher Bob Osborn offered Andy his job, because of a post card Andy had written to him, after winning a bike in a contest.  Andy knew the randomness of serendipity, and the huge ways it could change someone's direction in life.  

I only lasted five months at Wizard, mostly because I wasn't punk rock enough, and didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  And because I was a kind of bossy, uptight dork back then.  I didn't meld well with that crew, and they laid me off.  They permanently replaced me with some East Coast biker/skater kid named Spike Jonze.  He was a cool kid, I wonder whatever happened to him?  Heh, heh, heh. (By the way, I stole "heh, heh, heh" from Andy J.)

After Wizard, I wrote and edited the American Freestyle Association newsletter for all of 1987.  From proofreading two magazines, and being a gofer at Wizard, I was suddenly writing, shooting photos, and laying out an 8 to 16 page newsletter every month.  And in my spare time I was putting heat transfers on T-shirts, and helping put on the AFA's local and national contests.  Less money, but I learned a lot more, and it was more fulfilling, and frustrating, at the same time.  

While at the AFA, I started producing BMX freestyle videos, and really bad TV commercials for AFA contests.  I also put out a single issue of an audio cassette zine that year.  Yeah, an audio cassette zine.  I made a kind of mix tape, with contest play by plays, interviews straight to tape, and random thoughts about freestyle, and some music.  Basically, I made a podcast 20 years before podcasts were invented, and 30+ years before podcasts became cool.  It wasn't the greatest idea, but it was fun to try in 1987.  You don't know how ideas will fly unless you try. 

From the AFA, I got hired at Unreel Productions, the video production company owned by Vision Skate Boards/Vision Street Wear.  My main job there was duplicating tapes for anyone in their companies who needed them.  During that time, I started publishing Periscope zine.  The idea that sparked that zine was that we all only see a little piece of the world through our own "periscopes."  Each of us focuses on certain things, a small part of the total reality, much like a submarine captain looking through a periscope.  So I wrote to the world about what I saw through my periscope.  That zine had a lot of BMX freestyle in it, but also other random thoughts and ideas about other things I was interested in.

The punk rock inspired, D.I.Y. idea of self-publishing morphed into video self-production, led by rider/producer Eddie Roman in the late 1980's freestyle world.  I produced or edited 7 BMX freestyle videos in the late 80's, six for the AFA and one for Ron Wilkerson at 2-Hip.  Much of that time I was a production assistant working with the crew making Vision skateboard, snowboard, and BMX videos and TV shows.  

Then in 1990, I self-produced my own video, with some late financial help from riding buddy, Mike Sarrail.  The video was called, The Ultimate Weekend.  I lost some money, but made a video I was pretty stoked on.  That led to producing and editing the first two videos for Chris Moeller's garage BMX company, S&M Bikes.  Ultimately, I produced, and/or edited 14 low budget BMX, skateboard, and snowboard videos.  Due to my video production background, I also wound up working in the TV industry in the early 1990's.  I worked on the crew of over 300 episodes of a dozen different TV shows, including four seasons on the hit show American Gladiators

A couple years later, while sleeping on the floor of the tiny apartment where Chris Moeller ran S&M Bikes, Chris showed me a book of Henry Rollins' poetry.  At that time, I had been writing poetry for several years, hiding it, and not telling anyone about it.  After reading Rollins' poems, I decided to do a zine of my best poems.  It took months to edit, type (this time on an electric typewriter), and publish that zine. It had 80 or 90 poems, and had so many pages that I had to duct tape the zine together, staples wouldn't go through all those pages.  The first poem in that zine was called "Journey of the White Bear," written after getting dumped by a girlfriend in 1988.  From that came my nickname, The White Bear, which became my pen name for years.  Chris Moeller kept calling that, making fun of me, and the name stuck.  I did two more poetry zines in 1996 and 1997.  I published several other zines in the 1990's and 2000's, a few of them 48 pages or more, which is huge by zine standards.

 Many years later, in 2001, I walked into the Van's Skatepark in Orange, CA, and freestyle legend Dennis McCoy was standing at the counter.  When he saw me, he told the guy he was talking to, "This guy makes the best zines!"  He couldn't even remember my name at the time, but he remembered my zines.  As many concussions as Dennis has had, I'm surprised he even remembers his own name anymore, but I was really stoked at his compliment, especially because I hadn't seen him in over a year.*  Another time, at the Huntington Beach U.S.Open of Surfing contest, I ran into former freestyle skater, long time friend, and Etnies vice president, Don Brown.  The same thing happened, he pointed at me and told his friend, "This guy does the best zines."  On that particular day, I had some of my newest zines with me, and gave them each a copy.

All told, I've published about 40 separate zines over the years.  Then, in 2007, working as a taxi driver, I first heard of blogs.  Blogs are easier than zines on many levels, and you can, potentially, reach a much bigger audience, thousands, even millions of people.  But they don't have the same feel that an actual physical zine does.  My taxi blog sucked, but it opened me up to a new form of self-publishing.  

In late 2008, after several tough years working as a taxi driver, which led to a year of homelessness, I went to stay with my family in North Carolina for a little while. Unable to find a job there as the economy collapsed into the Great Recession, I wound up getting stuck there for a decade.  But when I stayed in my parents' apartment, I finally had a computer to start learning about the internet, and everything I'd missed in years working 80+ hours a week as a taxi driver.  I was such a Luddite, I barely ever used a computer at all before 2008.  I actually went to the library and rented a computer for an hour to check email and Google a few things, up until that point. 

I started my first Old School BMX freestyle memoir blog, FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, in North Carolina, just to vent.  I soon started connecting with people from the early days of freestyle, both people I knew in the flesh, and ones I didn't.  I had no idea there was an old school BMX community online, but I tapped into it with my blog.  I also completely pissed off a couple of the people I once worked with at Wizard Publications, although that definitely wasn't my intention.  I was still figuring out the line between my personal stories, and other people's personal boundaries, at the time. 

After the FREESTYLIN' blog had run its course, I started a new, old school BMX freestyle blog called Freestyle BMX Tales.  That let me write about the rest of my time in the BMX freestyle world.  Later, as a joke, I started a blog about panhandling and homelessness called Make Money Panhandling.  I actually started that blog just to learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  I wanted to start a blog with the stupidest name possible that had "make money" in the title.  Then I wanted to move that blog to the top of the Google rankings, using SEO techniques.   Once I got going on it, I found I had a lot to say about homelessness and panhandling, since I'd struggled with it for a few years at that point.  

Those three main blogs garnered over 210,000 page views in their lifetimes.  Now in 2021, the third version of Freestyle BMX Tales (still up now, version 2 was on Wordpress), has over 38,000 page views.  The personal blog I retired a few months ago, Steve Emig: The White Bear, now has over 120,000 page views in about 3 1/2 years.  My newest personal blog, Steve Emig Adventuring, is creeping up on 2,000 page views, a few months into it's run.  That's over 370,000 page views across a few niche blogs, mostly about Old School BMX freestyle, Sharpie art, and economics. (Stats updated in 1/2021 for this ebook). 

All told, I've written well over 2,500 blog posts across 30+ blogs.  Most of those blogs sucked.  Sometimes I would get an idea for a blog, try it a while, and then realize it was a dumb idea, and give up.  But through publishing them, I have learned a lot about how "new media" works, and how to use it effectively.  By "new media" I mean, blogs, the various social media platforms, YouTube, Vimeo, Medium, the late Squidoo site, and all the apps people use daily now.  I studied the work of people like Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Amanda Palmer, and others who use these new platforms well.  More importantly, I've spent 12 years online writing about things I find interesting.  Hundreds of thousands of page views show that some other people find these things interesting as well. 

At a really dark time in my life, shortly after my dad's death in 2012, I took all the blogs I did up until then down.  I deleted close to 2,000 posts in one evening.  I immediately regretted doing that.  But I needed to keep writing and to keep blogging.  So I started blogging again, not long after, and I'm still blogging regularly, even after threats to severely beat me, buy a lynch mob-type group, because of my blog, in North Carolina.  Hoka hey, it's a good day to write.

Now (2015), 30 years to the month after publishing my first zine, I have two blogs.  The new version of Freestyle BMX Tales, which you're reading right now, and Become Your Own Hero, which is about two things.  (2020 note: Become Your Own Hero turned out to be one of the dumb idea blogs).  One, it's my journey to start all over in life as a middle aged guy reinventing himself.  Second, it's about making the most out of our lives.

I've done a really wide range of things over the last 30 years.  Most of the best things I've done can be traced back to my love of BMX freestyle, and my decision to publish that first crappy BMX freestyle zine in September of 1985.  More than anything, that first zine took me from being a daydreamer who never acted on my ideas, to a person who acts on some of my ideas, and then follows through to finish projects.  That's huge.  That's what publishing the first couple of zines did for me.  Everyone has good ideas.  Most people rarely, or never, act on them, and even fewer follow through and complete their own projects.  In today's new media world, completing your own projects is half of the game.  

I never became the financial success that many of my friends have up to this point, but my crazy adventures in life have left me with a wealth of stories.  And stories are what this particular blog is made of.  I have no idea where these current blogs will lead me, but I'm excited to keep writing them, and I'm stoked that all of you read them.  Thanks everyone for reading my stuff.  Who knows, maybe I'll still be at this in another 30 years.

(Note: December 2020: Five years later, and I updated this post a bit, and it is making it into my first ebook.  Still self-publishing, now for 35 years, and no end in sight).

*Dennis McCoy actually has a really good memory, check out his BMX Hall of Fame speech on YouTube.

This original post was written five months after I made serious suicide attempt in April 2015.  After my dad's death in 2012, but not specifically because of it, I started having serious mental health issues.  It was primarily serious depression, but I had other symptom for a while, as well.  I was on several medications at different times after that, and went to therapy consistently as well.  For over a year in 2013-15, I was on horrible medication that made me feel like a zombie, I had an asshole for a psychiatrist, and the meds killed my creativity and sapped all my energy.  I was living with my crazy mom, couldn't work, and was absolutely miserable.  

I stopped taking my meds for a month, my symptoms came back, and I took a massive overdose one morning.  I should have died, I took enough lithium to kill a rhinoceros, and another medicine as well.  I should have had massive brain damage.  Somehow I survived, which is pretty much a miracle.  I got a really cool psychiatrist afterwards, got on reasonable meds, continued with my group therapy, and focused heavily on my creativity from that point on.  After nearly dying then, I realized that for me creativity is what matters.  

Two months after writing this original blog post, I decided to try and sell my Sharpie scribble style artwork in a serious way.  I had no other way to make any money at the time.  I wasn't known as an artist at all.  I've sold over 90 originals since, a bunch of prints, and am now known mostly as an artist and blogger.  I weaned myself off psych meds in late 2017, with the help of a friend from my group therapy, who kept an eye on me during that time.  My life is much more fulfilling now, and it's finally starting to improve at the financial level, as I write this in part in December 2020.  

Suicide is not all it's cracked up to be.  If you're in or near that place, get to a hospital or call a hotline, and get some help. 

Friday, September 11, 2015

The Kuna Parade

My Story: The Kuna Parade

 I was a senior at Boise High school in the Spring of 1984, when I went to Bob's Bikes (and Lawn Mower Repair), my local bike shop.  I needed a brake cable or something else I could barely afford.  By that time, Bob knew I was into freestyle, and he pointed a flyer out to me on the display case.  "There's a trick show over in Meridian next weekend," he said.  My mind was blown.  As crazy as it sounds now, I didn't know there were any other BMX freestylers in Boise, then a city of about 100,000 people.  "Trick riding" was morphing into "BMX freestyle," and I'd read about the BMX Action Trick Team, and guys like Bob Haro and others who did trick shows.  But none of those teams had made it anywhere near Boise.  A few BMX racers did some tricks, but I was the only rider really into freestyle that I knew.  I read the flyer, and learned that there was actually a trick team in Boise, and they were doing a show.  Mind blown.  

I borrowed my mom's car that next weekend (which always involved drama), and went to watch the show.  I was so shy then, I was afraid to talk to the two riders, who actually had a "huge," six foot high, 8 foot wide quarterpipe.  I watched the first show, sitting on my bike, my brand new Skyway T/A.  After their first show, in a bike shop parking lot, I started doing some really basic tricks on my bike, maybe 100 feet away.  A short blond woman with lots of energy walked up, and asked if I was a freestyler.  At the time, no one in my high school of 1,200 people knew what BMX freestyle was.  I told her I was, and she was super friendly.  "I'm Jay's mom, Cindy," she said, pointing to the two freestylers sitting near the quarterpipe.  You need to come meet them."  So I sheepishly followed the woman back over to the quarterpipe, and she introduced me to her son, Justin "Jay" Bickel, who was 15, and his friend Wayne Moore, who was 17, like me.  

After about 30 seconds of awkwardness, we all started talking freestyle.  I hung out the rest of the day, and by evening, we were all friends.  From then on, I started driving across town to ride with Jay two or three days a week.  Not long after, Wayne decided to "retire" from freestyle because he got a job.  Jay and I reformed his trick team, dubbing it the Critical Condition Stunt Team.  Jay's parents, the only adults I knew who thought BMX freestyle was a good thing, became my "freestyle family."  Soon I was doing shows and riding in parades with Jay, all set up by his mom, at the time.

Living in Boise, the tiny, nearby town of Kuna was best known for the Kuna Cave.  It was an ancient lava tube where people would go to party, and occasionally crawl back as far as possible.  The cave was maybe 12 feet diameter where you climbed down into it, then turned to a 4 foot tube maybe 30 yards into it.  I went there once with my Fish &Wildlife class when I was in high school.  In those days, the ladder didn't have a safety cage around it, it was just a big, metal ladder going down about 20 feet to the floor of the cave from the opening above.  The inside of the cave looked then about like it looks in today's YouTube videos, except we found a dead black cat that someone had apparently sacrificed, which is really lame.

In those early days of the 1980's, when BMX trick riding was turning into freestyle, nearly every group of riders around the country had their own trick team.  That's just what we did back then.  Of all the shows and parades we did, the one that sticks out in my mind was the parade in Kuna. Like I said above, it was best known for the cave nearby.  Every year Kuna would have a big parade, and about a thousand bikers (the gnarly, old school Harley Davidson kind, not the BMX kind) would show up in Kuna to watch the parade, and party for a couple of days.  That was a time before Yuppies entered the biker scene.  Most of the bikers were burly, blue collar workers who liked to party and occasionally fight.  Those bikers scared the hell out of me.  But that was the scene when we showed up for the Kuna parade.

Jay and I had recruited two or three other riders who knew a few tricks, and we rode down the parade route doing 360 floaters, rock walks, bunnyhops, and a trick I called "chasers."  A chaser is when you jump off the bike, and it goes rolling along in front of you, then you run after it and jump back on.  It sounds stupid, and it was, but crowds loved it.  I got to the point where I would run in front of the bike, so it was chasing me, then fall back and jump on it.  Yes, I actually practiced that trick, just to do it in parades. 

The funny thing about the Kuna parade was that the town was so small, the entire parade would follow the parade route through town, and then turn around and go back through town the opposite direction.  That's what they had to do to make the parade long enough to be worth watching.  Now, like all parades, there were horses in it.  That meant that on the way back through town, we had to not only do tricks, but we had to dodge the horse poop.  So we were all bunnyhopping horse poop on the way back.  

Also, like most parades, there was a judges stand, and that's where all the parade participants could pause and do their best performance to try and win a trophy.  On the way to the parade, Jay told me that if we got second or lower in our class, he'd let me keep the trophy, but if we won, he wanted to keep it, with the other parade trophies his team had won before.  I was cool with that.  For our big trick, we decided I would do a big bunnyhop.  Now, in those days, every rider could do both high and long bunnyhops.  But I wasn't able to bunnyhop his bike seat, the way we R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff did in the magazines.  I was better at long bunnyhops.  So we had two of the other riders lay their bikes down, seat and bars to the inside, wheels out, and I would bunnyhop over the pair of bikes.  I'd never tried that before, so we practiced it a couple of times before the parade started, and I did it no problem.

The parade started, and we took off, doing our thing.  When we got to the judges stand, the guys laid their bikes down, and I bunnyhopped the two lying bikes with ease.  The crowd went nuts.  Most people had never seen a bunnyhop then, they thought you needed a ramp to jump a bike off the ground.  To average people, it looked like magic to make the bike fly so far without a ramp.  That's the same thing I thought when I first saw a BMXer bunnyhop.  We were all stoked, and we continued down the parade route.  On the way back, we passed the judges stand for the second time, and I had the two guys lay their bikes down with a gap of two or three feet in between them.  I had never really bunnyhopped an obstacle that big before, so I got a long running start and hauled ass towards the two bikes.  Jay's mom took a photo of me, and I was pulling up as I cleared the first bike.  I went so fast that I peaked after the second bike, clearing it by about ten feet.  While it wasn't up to Mike Buff standards, it was a good 13-14 foot bunnyhop.  The crowd REALLY went nuts that time.  All of us riders were stoked, and we ended up winning our class in the parade.  Jay kept the trophy, but I didn't care, we had a blast. 

Jay's mom was our main show coordinator then, and she set us up to do two shows on a basketball court near the parade route later in the afternoon.  We set up, like we normally did, and people started to gather around as we warmed up before the show.  By the time the first show started, we had about 500 bikers, virtually all of them in black leather of some kind, watching us.  I was scared shitless, I DID NOT want to piss that crowd off.  But I had nothing to worry about.  

We went through our normal show routine, and the hardcore biker crowd loved it.  They were hootin' and hollerin' and clapping through the whole show.  To close the shows in those days, I would jump off the back of our four foot high wedge ramp... onto the flat.  I usually did what I called a "wobbly,"  where I would wiggle the bike side to side like I was out of control and about to crash, and then drop my back tire and land real smooth.  Again, the crowd went nuts.  Several of the big, burly biker guys, and their wives/girlfriends came up afterward and told us how much they liked our show.  That was so cool.  It was the best show the Critical Condition Stunt Team ever did, in my opinion. 

Then, after the show, something else happened.  A cute girl, a couple of years younger then me, came up and said "Hi."  I was totally shy then, but my bike gave me courage, and I ended up hanging out with her all day.  My first show groupie.  I was so stoked on freestyle then.  We won our class in the parade thanks to my bunnyhops, we had two shows with huge, excited crowds, and I met a cute girl.  Life was good... and I was hooked on BMX freestyle.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

My First BMX Freestyle Show


This clip is sketchy, old, Super 8 footage of a BMX Action Trick Team show in 1984.  These days it's hard to explain how new and amazing freestyle seemed in those days.  Although I later worked and rode with R.L. Osborn,  I never actually saw a BMX Action Trick Team show with R.L. and Mike Buff. 

In the spring of 1984 I was a dork in my senior year at Boise High School in Boise, Idaho.  My passion was BMX, and at that time I was a mediocre racer, track designer, jumper, and interested in trick riding.  On a trip to Bob's Bikes (and Lawnmower Repair) I saw a flyer that changed the course of my life.  Bob showed me a flyer for a trick show that was happening in the nearby town of Meridian.  I wrote the date on my calendar and counted down the days.  I couldn't believe it, there was actually a trick team in Idaho! 

On the appointed Saturday, I drove to the bike shop parking lot in Meridian and watched as a couple of freestylers, along with their parents set up a quaterpipe and wedge ramp.  The ramp looked HUGE.  It stood six feet tall and eight feet wide.  What was funny was that the ramp broke into two, four foot wide sections, and they stacked the two sections on the back of a pick-up truck to transport the ramp to the show.  On the way, they hit a bump and the top section of the ramp bounced off of the truck and into the road.  It got scraped up, but wasn't seriously damaged.  They laughed about the accident, and set up the ramps. 

The riders that day were Justin "Jay" Bickel, who was about 14 then, and Wayne Moore, who was 17.  The first show started and I was blown away.  They did a bunch of flatland tricks that I had only seen in the magazines, and then kick turns on the wedge ramp, and finally airs on the quarterpipe.  I was so stoked.  They were getting two or three feet out of the ramp, doing variations, and that blew my mind. 

After the first show ended, I started talking to Jay's mom, and showed her a trick I had just learned, which happened to be a trick Jay did in the show.  She was psyched, and walked me over and introduced me to Jay and Wayne.  We talked about BMX and trick riding for quite a while, until it was time for the next show.  I watched that show, and then got Jay's number.  His mom, Cindy, said I should come over and ride with Jay and Wayne sometime.  From then on I started losing interest in racing, and I became a BMX freestyler.  I made the trip over to Jay's house to ride the ramps every chance I could.  That changed the whole course of my life.  I owe a great debt to Jay, and his parents, Dwight and Cindy.  They became my "freestyle parents,"  and I joined the trick team a couple months later when Wayne "retired" from riding, at the ripe old age of 17.  Like so many other riders in the early and mid 1980's, it was seeing a trick team perform live that really got me into freestyle.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

The Haro Bar Hop

In the trailer park outside Boise, Idaho, where I first got into BMX in 1982, we were jazzed by the first couple races we went to.  Around that time, we started scraping money together to buy BMX magazines.  BMX Plus! was the only one on the grocery store news stands, but someone discovered BMX Action on sale at Bob's Bikes, the bike shop we all went to.  Technically, it was Bob's Bikes and Lawn Mower Repair.  That was our shop.  We all bought gold anodized parts because he would give us a deal on them because everyone else hated gold colored parts.  That became an inside joke among our crew.

Anyhow, whenever one of us bought a BMX magazine, we'd hole up in our room that night carefully going through the magazine, page by page.  That was our lifeline to the "real" BMX world then.  We ate up every word of each magazine, often reading every article... and add... more than once.  Then, the next day, we'd share our magazine with the other guys in the trailer park.  We'd all crowd around the magazine, getting inspired by every picture, and dreaming of the bike we would buy... if we had a bunch of money.

Around that time in the BMX world, something else was happening.  A guy named Bob Haro started doing tricks on his bike in the late 70's.  He and others started riding bikes in skateparks.  Trick riding was born, and it was in its early stages in 1982 and 1983 as us trailer park kids devoured those magazines.  We did a handful of tricks then.  We did tire endos, where we'd roll our front wheel into an old car tire, and do an endo, then roll out.  I also learned how to pop a one handed wheelie.  I couldn't ride it, I would just crank once, put the handlebars against my leg, and left go for one crank.  Then one day, I saw a how-to by Bob Haro himself.  The trick was the bar hop.  Looking back, it's crazy to think that a trick that simple actually made it into the magazine.  I don't even think it was called "freestyle" then, it was still "trick riding." 

All of us were really competitive then, and I decided to learn the Haro Bar Hop before I let anyone else see that magazine.  So I went down the hill to the basketball court, and no one was around.  I rode in circles for half an hour trying to get the guts up to jump my feet up through my arms, and land sitting on the crossbar.  That was it, that was the trick.  Yet it scared the hell out of me.  I would pick up the magazine and look through the pictures, then I'd roll around and try to get the guts up to do the trick.  I was getting close when another rider, I don't remember who, rolled up.  "Whatcha doin' Steve?"  "Uh... I'm trying this bar hop trick I saw in the magazine."  He checked it out.  Then he started trying it.  The pressure was on at that point, I had to land it or else be heckled by everyone who learned it before me.  After a few more tries, I jumped my feet up, through my arms, and landed my butt on the cross bar.  Holy crap! I thought, I just did a MAGAZINE TRICK.  The stoke washed over me.  A few minutes later, the other rider pulled it, too.  It was early evening, and all the riders started showing up, everyone started trying the Haro Bar Hop, and most of them learned it that night.  But I learned it first, which was really cool, because up until then, I was the worst rider in the trailer park. My status improved a bit that day among the Blue Valley locals.

I learned another big lesson that day.  After doing the trick many times, I missed once and my bike went sideways and I came down with my hip hitting the end of the grip.  It hurt quite a bit.  And I walked my bike back up the hill and didn't try the trick again that night.  The next day after school I rode down to the basketball court and tried the bar hop again.  I was totally afraid to try it, and I never did another Haro Bar Hop.  Ever.  But I learned a big lesson from that.  When you fall, get back up and try that trick immediately.  Even if it hurts.  If you don't, the fear sets in, and that can be really hard to overcome.  I remembered that simple lesson the rest of my years of riding.