Memories of Scot Breithaupt Part 4

This clip is a bunch of still shots of Scot Breithaupt and friends from the early days of BMX racing, and his company SE Racing.

It was those nights watching Scot edit his ESPN shows at Unreel Productions that I really got to know the Old Man of BMX.  He was on yet another comeback, and his outrageous enthusiasm was flowing heavy.  While his editor pieced together his TV shows, Scot told us tales of his life in the early days of BMX, and some of his crazy tales from outside BMX.  The story that stuck in my mind was Scot telling me that once, at one of the early downhill tracks, he actually passed another rider by jumping right over the guy's head and landing in front of him.  By that point, I knew to take everything Scot said with a grain of salt, and sometimes half a salt shaker.  He did lots of crazy stuff in his life, but he also was prone to exaggeration. 

I think it was early 1989, when Scot approached me and said he needed a cameraman to shoot video at a race for the weekend.  He agreed to pay me $200 and rent a car for me to drive to Reno with all the equipment after I finished work on Friday.  The race was the Reno Nationals, and I picked up the car and camera equipment and headed north from Costa Mesa, California.  I'd been to Reno once before, in the summer, and planned to take the same route.  I'd head north to Sacremento, then head west over the mountains into Reno.  Somebody, I don't remember who, said it was a lot shorter to take route 395 through the mountains.  I didn't know any better, so I took that route... in January.  I hit Bishop, the last town before Mammoth and June Lake, and I was told I needed to buy chains for the car because of the snow up ahead.  Now I grew up in Ohio and Idaho as a kid, so I was used to driving in snow and it didn't bother me much.  But I drove right into a snow storm.  When it got bad, I pulled over to put the chains on.  I put the first chain on the back wheel when a driver from another car walked up to me.  "Uh... do you know that car is front wheel drive?" he asked.  It was a rental, and I had no idea.  So I took the chain off and put them on the front wheels.  I plugged along slowly, not realizing how far it was from Bishop to Reno.  I tool off the chains and put them back on a couple of more times.  In all, it was a frustrating 11 hour trip through a blizzard to get to Reno.  But I finally made it. 

I was exhausted, and got my key at the front desk and headed to my room.  There was Scot, watching TV, next to a king size bed.  I just wanted to sleep, and I asked Scot why the hell there was only one bed.  He said that was the only room available.  I'll be honest, I was worried.  I knew Scot liked women, but I wasn't sure if his tastes went any farther than that.  He assured me it the king size bed was an mix up, and I went to sleep.  Scot didn't bother me in any way, and we got up early the next morning and headed to the track. 

For the first time, I saw Scot Breithaupt in his world, the world of BMX racing.  He knew everyone, and everyone knew him.  I went out on the track and shot video for an hour or two, and then I'd touch bases with Scot, to see who he wanted me to focus on in the upcoming races.  At one point, Scot was hanging with a bunch of older guys between motos.  They all had raced with him in the 70's, and were sharing stories from those days.  I realized I was watching BMX history and I just hung out and listened.  Then one of the guys said, "Hey Scot, do you remember that time you jumped right over my head at Corona?"  They all laughed about it and shared their memories of  that race.  I thought, "Holy crap!  It actually happened.  Scot literally jumped right over this guy's head in a race and passed him."  Then another guy chimed in, "Hey, you jumped over my head, too, at another track."  Scot himself had forgotten all about that one.  My mind was blown.  Here I was shooting video for one of the best BMX racers ever, a guy who was one of the main promoters of the whole sport in the early days.  My skepticism of Scot's stories went down dramatically that afternoon. 

After that day's racing, we put the camera gear in the room and headed downstairs for dinner.  Scot led me to a blackjack table, bought some chips, and handed me a few $2 chips.  He said to just bet one chip per hand and have some fun while he won us dinner money.  I shook my head.  In the next 20 minutes, Scot won about $50 at blackjack, then said, "OK, let's go eat."  After dinner, we switched to a room with two queen beds, and I plopped down on my bed, exhausted."  Scot wanted to go to the bar and check out the ladies.  I just shook my head.  "Man, I'm still tired from yesterday.  Wake me up in the morning."  He took off to go have some fun, and I crashed out.

The next day he raced and hung out with the old timers, and I shot video.  We packed up the rental car after the race, and headed back to Southern California... the right way.  The whole trip back he told me stories about BMX and all the crazy stuff he'd done in the early days.  He also told me some of his plans for producing TV shows.  On one hand, I was stoked at the opportunity to hear all those crazy tales from a legend in the sport.  On the other hand, I was wondering if he was actually going to pay me for working that weekend.  As we got into L.A., Scot said he was a little short on cash, and he gave me $30 of the $200 we agreed upon.  He said he'd pay me the rest in a couple of weeks. That was Scot in action.  He would amaze you with his ability to get things done, like sell a bike TV series to ESPN, and produce shows on a shoestring, and then he would wind up short on cash, and he'd end up owing you.  The crazy thing is that I didn't mind that much.  I had a fun time that weekend shooting video and listening to legendary BMX racers talk about the good ol' days.  I never did get that other $170, and at this point I couldn't care less.  I was one of the many people who got to know Scot Breithaupt personally, and I have my tales to tell about this guy who, more than any other single person, made BMX what it is today.  Ride in Peace, Scot.  C-ya!  

Memories of Scot Breithaupt part 3

This You Tube clip shows various incarnations of Scot Breithaupt as a TV announcer in the late 1980's.  That was the time I worked closely with Scot on a few projects.  The other on-camera guys are veteran alternative sports announcer Dave Stanfield, and BMX freestyle promoter Ron Stebenne.

I crossed paths with Scot Breithaupt again in 1988.  I forget exactly how he came back into the picture, because two things were happening at once.  I was working at Unreel Productions, which was the video company owned by Vision.  At the time, several companies were under the Vision banner. Vision, Sims, and Schmitt Stix skateboards, Sims snowboards, and Vision Street Wear clothing were all part of the Vision  family.  Don Hoffman, a former surfer and skateboarder, was into video work, and put together Unreel to do all the video work for Vision's companies, as well as trying to make TV shows about alternative sports.  Vision was growing in leaps and bounds at that time, and put a lot of money into Unreel.  They built a half million dollar edit bay in a nice office unit in Costa Mesa, California and hired about eight people to staff it.  Unreel produced a skateboard halfpipe contest called Holiday Havoc, and made a TV show out of it which they pretty much gave to ESPN to try to get their foot in the door with the young sports network.  In 1988, Unreel was producing high quality TV shows about skateboarding, BMX racing, BMX freestyle, snowboarding, and body boarding, which they planned to sell to ESPN.  But ESPN wasn't interested in those sports at that time.  So Unreel was having trouble selling the shows.  ESPN didn't think there was a large enough TV audience to justify airing action sports. 

Unreel hired Scot Breithaupt as an announcer for the 1987 Socko AFA Masters finals TV show.  I was just a production assistant at Unreel, so I don't know exactly what the deal was, but they hired Scot to try to sell Unreel's shows to ESPN.  Scot saw an opportunity, and wound up selling ESPN a TV series of his own.  He found a video editor, found some events to cover in the bicycling world, and approached Unreel to rent their edit bay to edit his shows.  The heads of Unreel didn't totally trust Scot, but he was paying good money to rent the edit bay, so they let him and his editor come in at night to edit his shows.  I got the job of staying there with Scot and his editor to keep an eye on him.  It was totally easy.  I would do some of my dubbing work, and when I ran out of my work, I sat around down stairs watching surf videos.  When that got old, I'd sit in the back of the edit bay and watch Scot and his editor put the shows together.  Scot called his production company L.M. Productions, which stood for "last minute."  His logo was a clock with the hands set at two minutes til midnight. That summed up his production practice.

Scot's shows were hurriedly put together, and didn't have near the quality of the TV shows Unreel was making.  The difference was that Scot actually sold his shows because of his incredible ability as a salesman and promoter.  I think Scot was a salesman and promoter first and foremost, and then a BMXer.  I'm not trying to put him down, but he was such an enthusiastic guy by nature, that he blended that with his love of BMX and was a main force in building BMX racing in the 70's.  In the late 80's, he put that same enthusiasm into producing TV shows.  That's how one particular show came about.

Scot was editing his show on a Sunday night, and asked me if I had any ideas for the next show.  He needed to shoot video of some kind of bicycling event and make a TV show in two weeks, which is unheard of in the TV world.  He had already covered cycling, mountain biking, trials riding, and GPV's and skateboard luges.  He wasn't sure what to do next.  At the time, BMX street riding was just starting to take off.  Ron Wilkerson at 2-Hip held the first major bike street contest earlier that year. Dave Vanderspek actually held the very first bike street contest in northern California, but it didn't get any magazine coverage.  Ron's contest in Santee (near San Diego) really sparked freestylers to take to the streets en mass and ride the world like it was one giant skatepark.  So I replied to Scot, "How about street riding?"  His first question was something like, "What, just riding around the street?  BMXers had always done that, jumping curbs and riding off loading docks.  I explained to Scot that street riding was becoming its own thing, just as dirt jumping was beginning to do at the time.  I told him we were doing wall rides, box jumps, wall fakies, footplants, and all kinds of other tricks in urban environments.  I can't remember specifically, but I probably pulled out some of the footage of the 2-Hip Meet the Street contest to show him.  I do remember that it took me about 20 or 30 minutes to talk Scot into the idea.  It sounded weird to him, but he needed a show, and he agreed on a street contest.  Then came the interesting part, where Scot's amazing ability to make stuff happen came into play.  We started planning the contest.  Scot decided he would get the "stonehenge" ramp from GT, a junked car, and a few other obstacles.  He would find a place to hold the contest.  My job was to get word out and make sure a lot of good riders showed up.  By the time we were done talking, his enthusiasm had transferred to me.  I was totally stoked, we were going to put on a BMX street contest, and it was going to be on TV.  Holy crap.

Scot and I worked out details each night while his editor was working on that week's show.  Somehow, Scot made his promoting magic happen.  He got the parking lot of the old surf theater in downtown Huntington Beach, which was right behind Wimpi's burgers, for any of you old school HB locals.  By that next Saturday, we had GT's stonhenge jump ramp, a wrecked car, some oil drums, and some wall ride ramps.  My work alerting the riding community panned out as well, and we had about 50 riders show up.  Craig Grosso and Pete Augustin were doing huge (for the time) wall rides, Rich Bartlett, Randy Lawrence, and many others launched over the jump ramp, and the Huntington Beach Street Scene was a rousing success.

Scot and co-announcer Dave Stanfield met myself, Randy Lawrence, and a few other flatlanders at the Taco Bell at Bolsa Chica and Heil in Huntington Beach, and we shot the introduction to the show in about half an hour.  Everything was totally low budget and on the fly.  Then Scot and his editor showed up the next Sunday night to start editing the show.  To put this into perspective, Unreel spent several months working on each TV show it produced.  Scot and I agreed on the idea on a Sunday night, had the contest the next Saturday, and the show aired on ESPN eight days after that.  It was insane, but a lot of fun.  The Huntington Beach Street Scene wound up getting the best ratings of any of Scot's shows, by far.  It also was the first made-for-TV BMX street contest ever, seven years before the X-Games began.  I'd love to show you all the show, but it's not online.  The master tape is probably in a box somewhere with the rest of Scot's footage.  As I learned over and over again in the BMX world, amazing things happen when you wind up in the right place at the right time.  What started as a boring job for me, staying up all night while Scot edited, turned into something really cool.  I got to see Scot's promoting ability in action that week, and it reminded me how we can all make cool things happen if we focus our energies on an idea.  That couple of weeks are my best memories of Scot Breithaupt, the Old Man of BMX.     

Memories of Scot Breithaupt part 2

This is a You Tube clip showing the legendary SE Racing bus that toured the U.S. in 1977.  Along with Scot, I know Perry Kramer, Stu Thomsen, and Bob Haro were on that tour, I'm not sure who the rest of the guys were.  The turret on top of the bus in some of the photos housed a tennis ball cannon.  When one of the SE riders won a race, they'd shoot tennis balls over the pit area.  The turret got torn off by a low overhang once, as did all the bikes stacked on top of the bus. 

It was either late 1984 or early 1985 that my Boise riding buddy and trick teammate Justin Bickel called me up.  "I got co-sponsored by SE!" he yelled over the phone.  Jay, as we usually called him, soon got his SE Quadangle, put a coaster brake on it, and a standing platform so he could do framestands.  He was the soul freestyler in Idaho that was sponsored, and that was the coolest thing in the world then.

In the summer of 1985, Jay's parents, who had become my "freestyle parents" at that point, offered to take me to the AFA contest being held in Venice Beach, California.  I paid them some nominal amount that didn't come near to covering the cost of my trip, and we were off in their Mercedes station wagon.  Jay's dad was a lawyer, so we stayed in a stylish hotel in Marina Del Ray, just up the bike path from Venice.  It was my first trip to Southern California, and I was amazed by the endless suburbs, insane traffic, and the best freestyle riders in the world at the contest. 

On our first full day in SoCal, we went to the SE factory.  It was a big shock to me.  I had taken field trips to the local factories on Career Day in 8th grade in Ohio, and I thought every factory was a huge building with dozens, if not hundreds of workers toiling away.  When we got to SE, I knew almost nothing about the company, it's history, or Scot Breithaupt.  We were greeted by Scot as we walked in.  Perry Kramer was also in the office that day, as was Mike Devitt (I may have misspelled his name), he was the business guy at SE, who kept the operations running.  After we all talked for a while, Scot took us on a tour of the operation.  On one side of the warehouse was the  shipping area, with the typical heavy duty shelving units stacked with products.  They had a shopping cart there they used to pull orders, and it had handlebars welded on to it, and a number plate that said, "Shipper Ripper."  I thought that was the coolest thing.  What struck me as weird is that there was nobody working in the shipping area. 

Scot led us back to the back of the shipping area, and there were two big quarterpipes, eight feet high and eight feet wide, facing each other.  At that time, most kids who had quarterpipes built them six feet tall, so the SE ramps seemed huge.  They were built so SE's ramp rider, Todd Anderson, could practice when in the area. 

After showing us the ramps, Scot led us to the manufacturing side of the building.  There was one welder, just one, working in his booth welding frames.  I learned that Scot had dropped out of the scene for several years in the early 80's due to his bad habits.  When I visited the factory in 1985, they had just been getting the company going again for several months.  SE Racing was on an upswing again, this time incorporating the emerging sport of freestyle into the mix along with racing.  I couldn't believe that this major bike company only had about four people working at it.  It really put the tiny little BMX industry, which seemed huge to me as a kid reading the magazines, in perspective. 

Once the tour was over, Scot told Jay and I to grab our bikes and session the ramps, so we did.  At that time, I could air just about at coping on a six foot ramp, and Jay could get two or three feet out.  I was airing under coping on the eight foot ramps, and Jay got out a little, I think.  At one point, we were taking a breather, when we heard an engine rev in the front of the building.  Next thing we know, Scot came screaming around the shelving units on an 80cc dirtbike.  He passed us with a big smile, and dove down another aisle.  He raced a few laps around the warehouse, passing by us each time.  Then he handed the bike over to Perry, who took a few laps, trying to go faster than Scot.  Then Scot took a few more laps, then Perry again.  Jay and I just shook our heads.  "These crazy guys run one of the best companies in BMX?"  we asked ourselves. 

After a good session on the ramps, Jay and I got some water, then we all wound up in the shipping area, listening to Scot and Perry tell us stories about the SE Racing bus and the crazy nationwide tour they went on in 1977.  He talked about the magazine photos on the wall, and gave us each an old Oakley poster, which was already a classic in 1985.  It was a group shot of about 20 top BMXers from around 1980, and the caption said, "Oakley:  Our R&D team works weekends."  It would be really cool to have that poster today.  We all thanked Scot and Perry for their hospitality, and headed over to ACS, which gave Jay and I each a brand new thing called the ACS Rotor.  We had to put our bars up about an inch for the Rotor to fit, which made our bikes feel kind of weird.  We went back to the hotel and practiced the rest of the night, getting used to the feel of our bikes with higher bars. 

The next day, when we both competed in flatland, Scot was on hand to encourage us.  IN addition, we hung out with Todd Anderson, Craig Grosso, and I think Fred Blood was on SE by then.  Steve Broderson, another Camarillo Ramp rider who rode a cruisier, was also part of the group we hung with.  I was blown away by the riding that weekend, there were so many amazing riders and everyone had a different style back in those days.  I went back to Idaho with a lot more passion about riding, having tasted the national scene for the first time.  Meeting Scot and Perry Kramer, the "P.K." in P.K. Ripper, was one of the highlights of the trip.