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

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.