I'm still stuck in North Carolina, so I didn't make it to the party. I was surprised to see a shout out to me from old friends Mike Sarrail and Randy Lawrence in this clip. Thanks guys.
It's cool to say we're Old School in the BMX world. But at this point, we're just old. I can live with that. Thirty years ago this year, a 16-year-old kid and a 19-year-old kid were sick of breaking bikes and bending rear dropouts when they jumped. So they went to a welding shop called B&E that actually built bikes for several BMX companies. The kids asked the machinists if they could weld two rear dropouts together on a bike to make it stronger. The shop said they could, and S&M Bicycles was born. The "S" stood for Greg Scott, and the "M" was for Chris Moeller. They pooled their money, got a few frames made, sold them quickly, and then made some more. Once they got a little momentum, Greg wanted to rent a business office, get some furniture, and start looking like a "real" business. Chris, the younger of the two, was more interested in plowing all the money back into making more bikes and other stuff. Chris was also highly influenced by his grandpa, who had built a very successful construction equipment business. Chris' grandpa had a quote, "Partners are good... for dancing." He liked to be a lone wolf when it came to running his business. Chris took those words to heart, bought out Greg's interest in the company, and went to town.
A natural salesman, Chris renamed the company S&M Bikes, and sold stuff like crazy. His business method was simple, but not easy. Make bikes and stuff that wouldn't break, sell them all at a profit, get more stuff made, sell that for a bigger profit, and repeat. I think he was running it out of his bedroom in the P.O.W. House (Pro's Of Westminster) when I shot some video there for my video, The Ultimate Weekend, in 1990. That's the clip in this video above with the punk rock "Jesus Loves Me" song in the background. That was the first time the S&M Bikes crew and the P.O.W.'s showed up in a BMX video.
A year later, Chris called me out of the blue and said he wanted to make a video for the fledgling company. The super low budget result was Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer. I lost my job in the course of making that video, which is one of the funniest BMX stories out there, and I wound up sleeping on the floor of Moeller's apartment for close to a year. At first a guy named Shaggy, who looked just like Sccoby-Doo's friend, slept on the couch, and later Bill Grad (R.I.P.) I sat on a chair by the kitchen phone and sold bikes, bars, forks, and stuff. I helped sticker frames and pack orders. I helped Chris stack the bike boxes onto a skateboard and push them a block to the shipping place, before UPS made the garage an official stop.
There are a million things that could have wiped out S&M Bikes along the way. But the little, punk rock-inspired bike company with the crazy jumping owner kept plugging along, and celebrated its 30th anniversary last weekend in Riverside, California. Looks like a good time was had by all at the Bro Fest. And Matt Berringer put an exclamation point on the trails session with a over 40-year-old front flip. A lot has come and gone in the BMX bike world since 1987, but riders having fun and pushing their limits kept S&M Bikes a solid force for three decades now. Props to Chris Moeller and everyone who's been a part of S&M Bikes over all those years.
Here's more footage from the jam:
Nate Richter's footage.
MTB and S&M 30th party (party starts at about 11:40)
S&M Bikes also premiered their new video, Hot Dogs Who Can't Read...
I have two new blogs I'm doing now:
Crazy California 43- This blog's about weird, cool, odd, and historic locations in California
WPOS Kreative Ideas- This blog's about creativity, writing, art, blogging, promoting creative work, and whatever else I fell like blogging about.
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