Things don't always go as planned #1

 I've been getting some stills off video I shot for the DIY book I'm working on.  Here's a few that didn't work out as planned.  Not sure who the top one is.

 Dave Clymer, Dover, Newport Beach, CA, 1993

Chris Moeller, Twin Palms, I think.  1993

 Moeller again, Dover, Newport Beach, 1993

Uploaded this one by accident, Keith Treanor, with the most clicked turndown I've seen him do.  2-Hip Mission Trails KOD.  '91.

My main blog now is about building creative scenes, check it out:
The White Bear's Making a Scene

Over under wall ride in 1990

Ever go through old photos or magazines and find something you totally forgot about?  This is one of those.  Since I started working on the DIY book based on this blog, I finally got around to capturing some stills from the BMX footage of mine that has survived thanks to the internet.  This is a still of Randy Lawrence doing a wall ride over me doing a wall bounce at the Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, CA.

This is one of many walls north of the HB pier, and this one happened to have both a lip to hit it on the far left side, and the least sand in front of it, which made it possible to hit it.  The wall is also a bit under-vert.  I never measured it, but it's about 80 or 85 degrees, which is just enough to make it easy to go much higher than a true vert wall.  But only Randy, and later Dave Clymer, could get near the top of it.  I honestly forgot just how high Randy Lawrence was going until I stilled this on the video.  Even better, I'm pretty sure this is the first over/under wall ride ever documented.  When I googled that last night, looking for other double wall rides, I couldn't find any.  There was one photo of two guys on a banked wall, maybe 60 degrees steep, but that was it.

When I made that video in 1990, the rider-made video movement wasn't even a movement yet.  Eddie Roman had made a student film, Aggro Riding and Kung Fu Fighting and Aggroman.  I had produced six AFA contest videos in 1987 and edited the 1988 2-Hip season video, now on You Tube as 2-Hip BHIP.  I think Mark Eaton made the first Dorkin' in York, edited on VHS working with 2 VCR's wired together.  Videos made by riders were still a brand new thing, and we were making it up as we went.  All of these videos had a lot of things never seen by riders before in videos.  Not only were we documenting progression in riding itself, but we were documenting the growth and progression of street riding, the changes in ramps, and progressing in video producing itself.  We were literally just making this shit up as we went along, just like we'd done with zines a few years before.

 There were several firsts in The Ultimate Weekend, but the double wall ride is one I totally forgot about.  I'm pretty stoked on that.  If anyone else has pics of a double wall ride back in the day, show me on Facebook.  There must be some other ones out there somewhere.

My main blog these days is about building creative scenes, check it out:
The White Bear's Making a Scene

Rooftop is still ragin'

Watch the new Mike "Rooftop" Escamilla edit from United Bikes on Dig BMX.

I haven't told many stories of the infamous P.O.W. House.  Here's one.  In about '93, we had the King Roach, Mr. Didog himself, ruling the world from his couch in the living room of the P.O.W. House.  Since work was kind of a pain in the ass, but food was necessary, Didog dreamed up a plan.  He'd let the local kids ride our backyard ramp in exchange for a can of food each from their mom's kitchen.  Strict no beets rule.  What could possibly go wrong? 

Didog was eating like a trailer park king for about two weeks, until the damn little brats started fighting each other in our backyard, and mini-vans with angry parents showed up.  So much for the local munchkins.  But there were a couple of slightly older kids that came over to actually ride.  Both of the kids were pretty good back then.  One was Brian Castillo and the other was Mike "Rooftop" Escamilla.  I asked one of the guys in the house where Mike's nickname "Rooftop," came from.  He told me, "That kid's so crazy that one of these days he's gonna kill himself out riding and we're gonna have to tie his bloody, broken, corpse to the rooftop of the car to get him home."  I don't know if that's the real story, but after seeing him ride, even back then, it sure made sense.  Now, about 24 years later, it STILL makes sense.  Another great clip Mike.  Hope you're you're not relying on Obamacare in 2017.

My main blog now is about building creative scenes, check it out:
The White Bear's Making a Scene

Mike Dominguez BLASTING airs in 1988

I've been going through old video clips for research on my book, and I saw this one pop up on the side on You Tube.  Had to watch it.  I was at this contest watching this.  The ramps are both 8 foot high quarters with no vert, I know, I've helped set these ramps up.  This is Mike Dominguez at his peak.  Before Simon Tabron and Jamie Bestwick and Kevin Robinson and Dave Mirra and when Mat Hoffman was just a hot up and coming (though already full factory) amateur, was Mike Dominguez.  The railing on these ramps are exactly four feet high.  His first air is a solid 12, maybe 13 feet out.  His 540 is AT LEAST 8 to 9 feet out if you count by lowest point of the bike, like many did at the time.  If you go by sprocket height, it's 10, maybe 11 feet out.  I think this is the highest 540 I've ever seen done live.  EVER.  This isn't footage I shot, but I'm sure glad somebody shot it.  These are some of the highest airs ever, by anyone, on the AFA era 8 foot quarterpipes.  Austin, Texas AFA Masters 1988.  Enjoy.

My main blog now is about building creative scenes, check it out:
The White Bear's Making a Scene

Recent BMX drawings

 Here's the three I've done over the last few months.  On the left is my take on a classic early photo of then Haro pro Ron Wilkerson.  Top right is my color take on one of my favorite street photos ever, the epic black and white shot of Vic Murphy launching a one foot tabletop off a curb jump.  Bottom right is my color drawing of the best photo I've ever taken, a B & W panning shot of Dave Vanderspek on his GPV (gravity powered vehicle) at the Palm Springs Tramway race and ramp jam in 1987.  I do sell these drawings, and I'll also be giving some away now and then to people who buy my BMX magnus opus:  Freestyle BMX Tales: The Book. 

 Here's a closer look at the Wilkerson drawing.  I usually add words and phrases to my drawings.  In this case, a bunch of things Ron contributed to BMX freestyle.  All three of these drawings are 18" X 24", and all done in my unique "scribble style" with Sharpies on paper.

Vic top, Vander bottom, slightly closer up pic.  You can see more of my work on my art blog: Steve Emig Art.

My main blog now is about building creative scenes, check it out:
The White Bear's Making a Scene

My Footage of Mat Hoffman and the First BMX 900 in a Contest

I stumbled across this a couple of days ago and linked it on FB, so some of you have seen it.  I won't go into the details right now, I'll do that next post.  But this is footage I shot in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (eh) in early 1989, as a cameraman for Unreel Productions, the Vision Street Wear video company.  It's the first 2-Hip King of Vert of the year and there was still snow outside, as I recall.  Mike Dominguez, who pioneered the 900 attempts, and pulled a couple on his own ramp, was retired.  As you can see in this clip, Brian Blyther and Dave Voelker both hucked 900 attempts in this contest.  But it was Mathew Hoffman, then 16 or 17, and still an amateur, who landed one.  It's at the very end of this clip.  As you can tell by the crowd reaction, the 900 was a huge deal then.  Twenty-seven years later, they're still a pretty big deal.  I have a lot of stories from this contest, which I'll go into in the next post.  For now, just enjoy the hilarious commentary by Eddie Roman and friends in the beginning, and the first 900 (in ANY action sport) at the end.

I have new blogs now, check them out:

The Big Freakin' Transition- The future and economics

Crazy California 43- Weird and historic locations in California

Full Circle- Writing and the writing life

and a fiction blog- 

Stench: Homeless Superhero

Eddie Fiola flatland

During the summer of 1985, while I was living in Boise, Idaho, I went on two trips.  Both of those trips were made possible by my "freestyle family," the Bickels.  First they took me to the Venice Beach AFA contest in June of 1985.  Later that summer we went to a then little known town called Whistler, British Columbia, for a freestyle contest held in association with the BMX World's races. 

Jay Bickel and I spent a day and a half staring out the windows of his parents' Mercedes station wagon looking for sasquatch in Idaho, Washington, and British Columbia.  We didn't see one.  We arrived in the ski resort town of Whistler which was pretty much empty in the summer of 1985.  That was fine by us.  Since it was the Bickel's vacation, they landed us a two story suite in the main hotel which had a sauna in the suite among other things.  Once we unpacked, Jay and I took our bikes to the town square area where a bunch of Canadian riders were hanging out.  We soon learned what a Norklifter stem was.  A company in Canada called Norco made knock-offs of all the main parts, including the Redline Forklifter stem, which was real popular then.  There were 40 or so Canadians, a really fun bunch to ride with, and a group the freestyle world didn't even know existed.  Rob Dodds is the one name I remember, though I ran into other Canadians I met on that trip in later years.

Much to our surprise and delight, the GT/Brittania summer tour rig rolled up the second day we were there.  Out of the RV popped Eddie Fiola, the original King of the Skateparks himself, and East Coast pro Chris Lashua.  They had a few days off while doing shows at the World Expo (or whatever) happening in nearby Vancouver.  That night, with no ramps set up, we got the typical flatland jam circle going.  Much to everyone's surprise, Eddie Fiola rode out and busted out a bunch of flatland we didn't know he could do.  He wasn't known as a flatlander at all to us kids who relied on FREESTYLIN' magazine as our lifeline to the sport. OK, I think he got a cover doing a gut lever once, but that was all we'd seen.  But having done shows for several years already, he had a smooth and very well dialed bag of tricks.  The one that blew us away at first was his rolling moonwalk.  We'd never seen that.  We all started yelling when he busted that out.   We all looked at each other, "Fiola rips on flatland?  Really?"  His tricks weren't super hard for the most part, but he did everything smooth and with his characteristic style.

There is one flatland move of Eddie Fiola's that always blew me away, though.  He would either rollback off a quaterpipe or snap a front wheel 180, then he'd roll backwards standing on the back pegs, and then go up into a backwards, 1 foot nosewheelie.  And he would always get nearly upside down on those things, and he could ride them quite a ways.  No one did that trick like Eddie Fiola, and I never even came close to learning it, though I tried for a while.

The few days we all had both riding and just hanging out with Eddie and Chris Lashua were epic memories for our weird, mostly unknown, group of riders from the Northwest.  I wasn't part of the industry then, I wasn't that great of a rider at all, but Jay and I had a blast hanging with that Pacific Northwest and GT/Brittania posse.  Even with all the cool stuff that came after, that's still one of my best riding memories.

My main blog now is about building creative scenes, check it out:
The White Bear's Making a Scene