Pierre Andre

I'm continuing on with my 25th anniversary look back at my 1990 self-produced bike video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Go to 13:30 in the video for today's clip.

After the wall ride session with Keith Treanor and Randy Lawrence (and Alan Valek spectating), I continue on my ride to the Huntington Beach Pier.  At the time of this video, I lived on Sims Street, off of Warner, in the apartmentland near Huntington Harbor on the far north end of Huntington Beach.  I made the 3 to 4 mile ride to the pier every weekend that there wasn't a competition somewhere.  The main bike locals at the pier in 1990 were Mike Sarrail (inventor of no-handed and barspinning Miami Hop Hops), myself, and Randy Lawrence.  Many others came by now and then.  For the freestyle skaters, the main locals were Pierre Andre' from France, and Don Brown from England, as well as amateur freestyle skate Jeremy Ramey, an HB local.  We took turns sessioning and gathering crowds all day long every Saturday and Sunday on the empty patch of pavement just south of the pier.  That's where the outdoor seating for the lower level restaurant is now.

Unlike today's riders and skaters, we rarely had video cameras with us.  Actually, that really bums me out now, because I don't have any footage of our weekly sessions at the pier.  It just seemed too average then, so I didn't bother even shooting it.  Big mistake.  Anyhow, Don Brown was out of town on that particular weekend, to I asked Pierre if I could shoot a little footage of him for the video.  We went to the bike path loop just north of the pier and shot this footage in a few minutes.

Now, to put this in the context of the time, none of us had much money.  Pierre was the top freestyle skater form France, and was living off a small income from Vision, who owned Sims, his board sponsor.  One day, Pierre walked up to me and said, "I got a shoe manufacturer in France talked into making skate shoes."  "Cool," I replied, not thinking much of it.  That skate shoe company was named Etnies.  At the time of this video, Etnies was a tiny start-up company.  A lot of people thought it was Natas Kaupas' company, because he was the best known guy wearing the shoes then.  But Etnies was Pierre's baby, and he bought out the French company two or three years after this video was shot.  That shoe company grew into Sole Technology, which produces Etnies and E's shoes (and formerly Emerica shoes), 32 snowboard boots, Altamont clothes, and has a huge facility in Lake Forest, CA, where they built the city's skatepark, one of the best in Southern California.

Long before that, though, Pierre was a skater and friend I hung out with every weekend.  He gave me one of his old boards at one point, and I learned a bit of freestyle skating.  I remember one particular day, early evening, when I was sitting near the pier, with my back to the warm gray wall as dusk approached.  Pierre was skating in front of me.  I suddenly wondered where all of us bikers and skaters would be in 20 or 30 years.  We were just dirtbag kids to most people then, spending all our time on kid's toys like skateboards and freestyle bikes.  I had this sense then that some of us dirtbags would actually do some pretty cool things in the future.  But I had no idea what.  I just sat there content after a day of sessioning, watching Pierre perfect his skating.

These days, Pierre Andre' Senizergues is known as the founder/CEO/president of Sole Technology, and last I heard their annual sales were somewhere around $200 million a year.  That makes the company about four times the size of Vision Skateboards, which Pierre and Don skated for, and I worked for in the late 1980's.  Although he doesn't spend much time in the spotlight like other former bike/skate people such as Spike Jonze or Tony Hawk, Pierre is one of the most successful skaters in the action sports world.  The big lesson here is that when a kid commits thousands of hours to learning some activity, especially a highly creative activity like skateboarding, you never know what that kid may be capable of later on.

Pierre is not just highly successful and innovative, he's also just an all-around good guy.  The last time I ran into him was when I was driving a taxi, several years ago.  I saw him talking to some Japanese guys at the Huntington Beach Hilton.  I yelled out a "HI."  He left the Japanese guys, who happened to be his major distributors there, and walked over to talk to me for a couple of minutes.  Don Brown is now vice president of marketing at Sole Tech, and also helped me tremendously when I wound up homeless in SoCal.  You never know where your bike or skate friends will end up in the future.  

Dan Hubbard and Team Pro Motion

I'm continuing with my 25th anniversary look back at my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Today's clip begins at 12:20 in the video above: Team Pro Motion.

I  met SoCal local rider Dan Hubbard, or Danny as we called him back then, in 1986 when I worked at Wizard Productions.  Dan was a high school kid then, and had a 8 foot high halfpipe at his parents' house in Palos Verdes.  P.V. is a sort of hilly peninsula of upscale houses that juts out into the Pacific between Redondo Beach and Long Beach.  Gork and Lew took me to Dan's house, I think we just went up to ride.  Dan's halfpipe was my favorite ever for one reason.  It's the only ramp I ever got air on.  That's a long story, which goes back to this sketchy quarterpipe I bought from some skaters in Idaho.  My QP was six feet high, had a foot of vert, and had this gap in the plywood between the transition and the vert.  On my driveway, the vert was actually over-vert.  So I couldn't do actual airs, I would do airs a foot below the top of the ramp.  Somehow, that turned into a weird mental block for me, and from then on, I couldn't get out on any ramp.  Except for Dan Hubbard's halfpipe for some reason. 

In any case, I met Dan in '86 at his house, and he was a super clean cut kid and a hardcore rider.  He was at all the AFA SoCal local contests and was known for having a totally dialed, super clean routine.  He could ride flatland and vert, but flat was where he dominated.  He did well in contest after contest, hardly ever touching his foot down.  In fact, I remember one contest where a bunch of us were so sick of Dan's flawless routines, that we joked around about putting Vaseline on his rims so his brakes wouldn't work, just so we could see him screw up for once.  But we never did that, we liked Dan, after all. 

Like so many other riders in the mid-80's, Dan formed a trick team and did shows.  But he was one of the few that turned his trick team into a legit business, and by 1990, when this video was shot, Dan was a professional rider promoting his own shows.  The other two riders in this segment are his teammates, Jeff Cotter, with the long hair, and legendary Camarillo Ramp rider Todd Anderson. 

For this section, Dan set up his ramp in a parking lot on the North side of Redondo Beach, with Palos Verdes in the background.  I shot the three riders from a whole bunch of different angles, so I could show off my editing skills when put this segment together.  Dan and Jeff were local SoCal riders at the time, not very well known on the national scene.  Todd Anderson, on the other hand, was already a legend, and I was really stoked to get them all in my video. 

Years later, Dan told me that this was the only bike video he'd ever been featured in.  And I have him riding to my lame-ass song, "Cottage Cheese Disease."  I'm really sorry about that Dan.  In any case, the three of them busted out that afternoon.  Dan did his signature flawless flatland combos and a cool fakie on the ramp.  Jeff showed off his flatland chops, including the Pop Tart, a jump up to a bar ride, which was a pretty new trick at the time, and still seems insane to me.  Todd Anderson, of course, showed off his classic ramp style.

In the time after this video was shot, Dan continued to run his trick team, and still does today, as far as I know.  He has one or two teams doing shows for kids and promoting freestyle around the U.S.  Jeff Cotter went off and joined the Ringling Brothers Circus after this was shot, and hung out with Jose Yanez, the guy who did the first backflips on a BMX bike.  Jeff was the first freestyler to learn flips, and did them into water at the end of this video.  Todd Anderson rode for a while longer, then went on to shoe horses for a living, which I believe he still does today. 

I addition, Dan Hubbard went on to become a successful Hollywood stuntman, and got past his squeaky clean reputation as a rider, and has done some really crazy stuff over the years for TV shows and movies.  One of the best things about looking back at this video for me is seeing where all these riders have gone since this was made. 

The Blues Brothers Wall

I'm continuing with my 25th anniversary look at my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Today I'm talking about one of my favorite riding spots of all time, The Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, CA.  Go to 11:20 in the video above. 

This story starts with mid-80's BMX ramp legend, Josh White.  I was riding at the Huntington Beach pier one weekend, in 1988, I think.  Josh White rolled up and started talking.  He said he'd heard about some walls at the beach that were great for wall rides.  He asked if I knew where they were.  The funny thing was, I had no idea.  I'd ridden up and down the H.B. bike path nearly every weekend for a year, and I had no idea what Josh was talking about.  So we went looking for them.  We headed north from the pier on the bike path.  Once around the condo complex, we started up a hill on the bike path.  I rode that section every weekend.  But instead of following the bike path up, we took a sandy dirt trail I'd never taken.  Despite my nature of exploring every nook and cranny looking for things to ride, I'd never taken that lower road by the sand. 

A whole new world opened up to Josh and me.  Immediately, we saw one of the retaining walls he was talking about, but it was sandy at the bottom, not good for wall rides.  We kept riding north, and below the main bike path, but above the sand, there was this level, 40 foot wide ledge, with a bunch of painted retaining walls.  I'd ridden on the bike path just above those walls for a year, and never knew they were there.  Several of the walls had murals on them, the murals you see in this section of the video.  Finally, even with about 14th street, we found The Blues Brothers Wall.  It had two main murals, one of the Blues Brothers from Saturday Night Live and movie fame, and a big mural of the Three Stooges.  There was also a painting that said, "green eggs and ham, Sam I am."  That quote, of course, is from Dr.Seuss. 

That particular wall had fairly well packed dirt up to the base of the wall, perfect for getting speed to wall ride it.  In addition, someone had built up a good lip of dirt on the very left end of the wall, and a smaller lip farther down the wall.  Josh and I immediately started trying wall fakies, a trick I'd never done before (or since).  Perhaps the best aspect of that wall was that it was slightly under-vert.  It's maybe 80 or 85 degrees, steep enough to still be a wall, not a bank.  But it's just mellow enough to allow HUGE wall rides.  I loved that wall from the start.  Within a few minutes, I was rolling up and doing smooth wall fakies.  Josh on the other hand, was rolling straight up the wall, then pulling off and doing a lookdown out of the fakies.  Josh's riding amazed me many times over the years, and that was another instance.  I'd never even heard of anyone doing a lookdown out of a wall fakie at that time. 

Then we started doing wall rides.  Within minutes, I was hitting the small lip to the right, and riding three or four feet up the 11 foot high wall.  Up until that time, I only really did wall slides, where I'd bunnyhop off a bank and touch both tires to a wall, but not really grip the wall.  On the Blues Brothers Wall, I could totally ride the wall.  It was so much fun.  At least until Josh started doing wall rides.  Within a couple attempts, hitting the larger lip, he was riding about 7 feet up the wall, going twice as high as I did.  We had a blast that day, and I started riding that wall nearly every weekend on my way to the pier. 

That leads to the short clip in The Ultimate Weekend.  Riding the wall are myself (red shirt), Keith Treanor (black shirt), and Randy Lawrence (white tank top).  The quick over/under double wall ride is Randy up high, and me below.  I think that was the first over/under wall rides ever in a video.  In the clip, I do a fakie, and Randy and Keith both take their shots at no hand fakies, which were cutting edge riding at the time.  Then Keith and Randy to some big wall rides.  Also, there's a shot in the intro of the video of me wall riding over my sister's head while she's sitting.  That's also on this wall. 

Then we see Keith practicing a rail slide, just below the wall, with Randy holding him in position.  This looks really stupid today, but that's what we actually did back then, before anyone had actually done a handrail slide on a bike.  We had the idea, but no one had actually pulled it off yet.  In fact, the first handrail slide down steps ever in a BMX video, was Keith near the end of The Ultimate Weekend.  Double peg grinds on street were a brand new thing in 1990, and Keith was breaking new ground in this clip by climbing onto a rail and sliding down into the sand. 

Then Randy said, "Hey, how 'bout if I do a 360 into the sand next to that woman down there."  I thought he was nuts.  First, there was a lip about two inches high he had to bunnyhop over.  Second, doing a bunnyhop 360 down five feet was pretty rare in 1990.  Dennis Mccoy was the only person I knew who 360'd down stairs back then.  But I set up for the shot, and Randy did a perfect 360 first try, startling the hell out of that poor woman getting a tan. 

In the years that passed, I kept riding that wall.  I lived about three blocks from there in the late 90's, and rode the wall all the time.  I eventually did 6 to 7 foot high wall rides there.  The record belongs to Dave Clymer, who got a tiny photo doing a wall ride at the top of the 11 foot high wall, which is still crazy today in my book.  Dave said he even rolled in the top of the wall once, which was really hairy. 

Me, I learned a bunch of wall ride variations there.  I learned alley-oop wall rides, even to the point of back-pedaling and doing a rollback on the wall.  One day I started bunnyhopping from farther and farther away, trying to see how far of a bunnyhop I could do and still land in a wall ride.  I managed to do it from about 6 to 7 feet away.  I did a few rollback wall rides.  I'd do a 180 in the dirt, and hit the wall rolling backwards and get a tiny wall ride.  But there was one variation I never could get.  Several times I tried to do a framestand wall ride.  I would hit the wall at speed, and do a low, long wall ride.  Then I would move my feet off the pedals and onto the frame and stand up on the frame.  What I wanted to do was a fully upright framestand, no hands, while on the wall.  I always wussed out, and never could let go of the bars.  I still want to nail that trick if I ever get back in shape.  I've done long frame stands on on the 45 degree banks of the Santa Ana River Ditch, and on a steep bank of about 60 degrees.  But I could never get that trick on the Blue Brothers Wall.  I've never seen anyone else to that yet, but I'd really like to. 

Oh yeah... I just thought of one more thing I tried-and failed at-on the Blues Brothers Wall.  I don't have a name for it.  Basically, it was a fakie wall ride fakie.  I'd ride towards the wall, do a 180 bunnyhop at speed, and ride backwards into the wall, trying to ride straight up it rolling backwards, and then roll back down forwards.  Years later when I saw a photo of Ruben Alcantara doing a "realie," that's what I thought he did.  But he did a 180 into that nose down position.  As far as I know, no one's ever done a fakie wall ride fakie.