This clip is well worth watching for the old school trickery by Drob and and Golden Gate Park crew in 1986. But at 5:07 in the clip, you can see me chasing my bike. That was a stupid trick I did in parades in Idaho, but it got me in this TV clip. In the time between when this clip was shot, and when it aired, my goofy little freestyle zine landed me a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines. My life changed forever.
After five months as a magazine gofer/proofreader, I got laid off, mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. They hired some kid named Spike a couple of months later. Cool kid, wonder what happened to him. Anyhow, I rode every day with Craig Grasso for a month (which I highly advise, he's hilarious), called around the industry, then landed a job as the newsletter editor for the American Freestyle Association. That job moved me from Hermosa Beach a bit south to Huntington Beach, a working class surf town at the time.
In my stint at FREESTYLIN', I did drove Windy Osborn to a photo shoot at the Huntington Beach Pier once, where she shot pics of freestyle skaters Henry Candioti and Don Brown. So I knew both skaters and some bike freestylers hung out there on the weekends. When I moved there, I headed down to the pier every weekend to session. I met a tall, lanky rider named Mike Sarrail. He was a master of Miami Hop hops, and invented the Undertaker, among other things. We hit it off, and rode together every weekend with skaters Pierre Andre, Don Brown, and whoever else wandered by on bikes and boards.
That summer, I had this cool idea. Like most "cool ideas," it seemed awesome at the time. I wanted to blow off the dinky AFA newsletter and do a newsletter/newspaper thing covering bikes, skates, surf, and whatever else seemed cool. I threw the idea at Mike, and we started planning it out. In those days before the internet, it could have been cool. Probably not. But maybe.
After dreaming about it for a while that summer of 1987, Mike and I decided to make some T-shirts to sell to raise a little money. I took a photo of a rider doing a lookdown, and we made iron-on transfer T-shirts that said, "S&M Productions... We're coming" with the pic of the lookdown in the middle. "S&M" stood for Steve & Mike. We sold the T-shirts around Huntington Beach, and didn't make much money. I think if you look real hard at my Facebook pics, you'll find a pic of me doing a Shingle Shuffle under the HB Pier wearing one of those shirts with the sleeves cut off.
Anyhow... like most of my "cool" ideas back then, it was mostly dream and little action. We never made the multi-sport newsletter (or videos) and S&M Productions fizzled out. So that's the story of how S&M started 30 years ago in the BMX freestyle world.
Oh yeah, one guy who bought one of our shirts said, "Hey, there's some BMX racing guys doing a company called S&M, too." Turns out he was right.
I've got 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 feel like blogging about.
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