Next weekend in Riverside, California is the annual Boozer Jam, combined with the 30th anniversary party for S&M Bikes. I won't be there, and I doubt anyone really cares. I've told many BMX stories over the years, but few about my interactions with Chris Moeller, S&M Bikes, and the P.O.W. House. This seems like the perfect time to throw some of those stories out into the blogosphere.
I first heard of Chris Moeller from Gork, the editor of BMX Action. He and Windy went to shoot photos of some pro racer at some jumps on Brookhurst by a grocery store in Huntington Beach. Gork came back freaking out about this 16-year-old kid doing all these insane jumps while they were there. That kid, of course, was Chris Moeller.
I've learned over the years that just when you think you have Chris figured out, he surprises you. So here's a story that will surprise many of you. I first met Moeller when I rode with Gork to a national in Lake Elsinore. On the way, we picked up Chris who'd ask Gork to hitch a ride to the race. Gork and I were in the front seats of the Wizard Publications Astro van, and Chris sat on the floor in the back with his bike. I don't think Chris said two words for the whole trip, which was about an hour. My first impression of Chris Moeller was that he might be a great jumper, but he was really shy.
Sometime after that, Gork showed us at Wizard this amazing series of photos of Chris doing a no-footer, head high, for about 25 feet, on a downhill jump at Hidden Valley in Huntington Beach. Without a doubt, it was the craziest jump I'd ever seen photos of at that point. Gork took the photos, Xeroxed them (ask you dad what a Xerox is, kids), and made this amazing, multi-image sequence... totally by hand. It was awesome. I met a slew of amazing riders in 1986, Mat Hoffman, Joe Johnson, Josh White, and Chris Moeller, among others.
After getting booted from Wizard, I landed as newsletter editor at the American Freestyle Association in Huntington Beach. I was in the area, but as a freestyler hanging out at the pier, I rarely ran into Moeller then. I went on to work at Unreel Productions, the Vision video company. In early 1990, Unreel was dissolved, and I moved to the Vision main office. it was there one day that Vision BMX team manager, Mike Miranda, told me about four riders that rented an apartment in H.B.. They called themselves the HBP's, or Huntington Beach Pros. Some months later, I learned that several more riders had joined the pack and rented a house in Westminster, the much more affordable city inland of Huntington Beach. They renamed themselves the Pros of Westminster, or P.O.W.'s. It was the first serious rider house in BMX.
That same year, I decided to shoot and produce my own video. I'd produced six videos for the AFA, one for 2-Hip, and worked at Unreel when they made a bunch of really hokey videos, like Freestylin' Fanatics. I decided to make a video that showed real riding, and CURRENT riding, which only Eddie Roman and Mark Eaton were doing then. And to be honest, those were really sketchy at the time, though the riding was insane. So I shot video most every weekend through 1990, and edited the video in October of that year.
I wanted good jumping in the video, not just freestylers doing flyout jumps. The best doubles jumpers in the sport then were the S&M and P.O.W.'s. So I called them up, and I went to shoot at the P.O.W. House, and then later at Edison, some jumps squeezed in a little area behind the high school. The clip above is what I came up with for the video. It's short, but it was insane jumping for that time. Here's a list of most of the guys in this segment:
John Paul Rogers- :17, :26 (S&M rider, P.O.W.)
Alan Foster- :29, :46 (P.O.W., I didn't know he had a little brother who rode then)
Chris Moeller- :31, 1:06, 2:00 (The "M" in S&M Bikes, and the guy who built the company into what it is today)
McGoo- :33 (Official comedian of the BMX industry)
Dave Clymer- :40, :56, 1:09, 1:24 (S&M rider and P.O.W.)
Eric Milman- :50, 1:11 (P.O.W.)
Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson- 1:02, 1:22, 1:28, 1:32, 1:36, 1:45, 1:45, 1:50, 2:04 (S&M Rider)
Greg Scott- 1:30 (The "S" in S&M Bikes originally)
Also in the clip are Dave Cullinan, Kim Boyle, Josh White, and Mike, a local kid. The toe -dragger tailwhip that Crazy Red does at the end is the first tailwhip over doubles in a BMX video ever. The 360 that Moeller does at the end was the biggest 360 I'd ever seen at that point. The music is two live tracks by The Stain, a Toledo punk band. Someone has to be pioneers in everything, and the S&M/P.O.W. guys were the main pioneers when dirt jumping was starting to turn into its own sport.
I've got four new blogs now:
The Big Freakin' Transition- about the future and economics
Crazy California 43- Cool and weird locations in California
Full Circle- about writing and the writer's life
And a fiction blog-
Stench: Homeless Superhero
