Jeff Cotter Flatland run in 1988

I met Jeff Cotter in 1987, while working for the AFA.  He was part of the Lakewood posse that included Ron McCoy, Nathan Shimizu, Ron Camero, his little brother Tim Cotter, and Derek Oriee.  All of those guys were good riders, and always at the SoCal local AFA contests.  Jeff was sponsored by Ozone at one point, and by Vision Street Wear.  None of that crew became top pros, but they were always good, polished, flatland riders.  They often came down to the Huntington Beach Pier on the weekends where Mike Sarrail, myself, and a few of the Vision freestyle skaters would ride for the crowds. 

So why am I showing a clip of one of the hundreds of good flatlanders from the heyday of 1988?  Because Jeff went on to take a job riding in Ringling Bros. Circus not long after this.  He flew to Japan and was doing shows with Jose Yanez, the inventor of BMX backflips.  When Jeff came back to SoCal in 1990, I was shooting footage for my first self-produced bike video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Jeff told me he could do backflips into water, and I went to Long Beach to shoot footage of him.  While he was flipping into the lake, I asked him if he'd ever tried backflip variations.  He said he never really thought of it, so he gave it a shot.  He did a stretched one handed flip into the lake, and a real quick no hander, which made him the first actual freestyler to do any kind of backflip variations.  Mat Hoffman was doing backflip fakies and flairs on vert then.  But no one in the BMX freestyle world had done flip variations on video.  Jeff Cotter, Lakewood area flatlander, wound up being that guy. 

I shot the footage of Jeff flipping into the lake right as I was getting ready to edit my video.  Back in those days, I had to pay $25 an hour to rent the edit equipment, and I set a solid deadline to stop shooting footage.  Jeff called me a week after that deadline, and said he had learned flips ramp to ramp, making him the first freestyler to do so.  But I was just getting ready to edit, and I didn't go shoot footage of him for the video.  That was my mistake. 

Jose Yanez was a rider from Arizona who learned flips and then double backflips into water, back when everyone thought that was impossible.  But Jose wasn't a serious racer or freestyler.  Jeff, the flatlander from Lakewood, became the first freestyler to do flips ramp to ramp, and to try one handers and no handers.  In the weird world of BMX riding progression, you never know who will break new ground with the tricks that change everything.  Jose did it first.  Mat Hoffman took flips to halfpipes first.  And Jeff Cotter brought flips into the mainstream freestyle world. 

At 44:11 in this clip, you can see Jeff flipping into a lake in 1990.

I've got four new blogs now:

The Big Freakin' Transition- about the future and economics

Crazy California 43- weird and cool locations in California

Full Circle- about writing and the writer's life

 And a fiction blog...

Stench: Homeless Superhero