Pierre Andre

I'm continuing on with my 25th anniversary look back at my 1990 self-produced bike video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Go to 13:30 in the video for today's clip.

After the wall ride session with Keith Treanor and Randy Lawrence (and Alan Valek spectating), I continue on my ride to the Huntington Beach Pier.  At the time of this video, I lived on Sims Street, off of Warner, in the apartmentland near Huntington Harbor on the far north end of Huntington Beach.  I made the 3 to 4 mile ride to the pier every weekend that there wasn't a competition somewhere.  The main bike locals at the pier in 1990 were Mike Sarrail (inventor of no-handed and barspinning Miami Hop Hops), myself, and Randy Lawrence.  Many others came by now and then.  For the freestyle skaters, the main locals were Pierre Andre' from France, and Don Brown from England, as well as amateur freestyle skate Jeremy Ramey, an HB local.  We took turns sessioning and gathering crowds all day long every Saturday and Sunday on the empty patch of pavement just south of the pier.  That's where the outdoor seating for the lower level restaurant is now.

Unlike today's riders and skaters, we rarely had video cameras with us.  Actually, that really bums me out now, because I don't have any footage of our weekly sessions at the pier.  It just seemed too average then, so I didn't bother even shooting it.  Big mistake.  Anyhow, Don Brown was out of town on that particular weekend, to I asked Pierre if I could shoot a little footage of him for the video.  We went to the bike path loop just north of the pier and shot this footage in a few minutes.

Now, to put this in the context of the time, none of us had much money.  Pierre was the top freestyle skater form France, and was living off a small income from Vision, who owned Sims, his board sponsor.  One day, Pierre walked up to me and said, "I got a shoe manufacturer in France talked into making skate shoes."  "Cool," I replied, not thinking much of it.  That skate shoe company was named Etnies.  At the time of this video, Etnies was a tiny start-up company.  A lot of people thought it was Natas Kaupas' company, because he was the best known guy wearing the shoes then.  But Etnies was Pierre's baby, and he bought out the French company two or three years after this video was shot.  That shoe company grew into Sole Technology, which produces Etnies and E's shoes (and formerly Emerica shoes), 32 snowboard boots, Altamont clothes, and has a huge facility in Lake Forest, CA, where they built the city's skatepark, one of the best in Southern California.

Long before that, though, Pierre was a skater and friend I hung out with every weekend.  He gave me one of his old boards at one point, and I learned a bit of freestyle skating.  I remember one particular day, early evening, when I was sitting near the pier, with my back to the warm gray wall as dusk approached.  Pierre was skating in front of me.  I suddenly wondered where all of us bikers and skaters would be in 20 or 30 years.  We were just dirtbag kids to most people then, spending all our time on kid's toys like skateboards and freestyle bikes.  I had this sense then that some of us dirtbags would actually do some pretty cool things in the future.  But I had no idea what.  I just sat there content after a day of sessioning, watching Pierre perfect his skating.

These days, Pierre Andre' Senizergues is known as the founder/CEO/president of Sole Technology, and last I heard their annual sales were somewhere around $200 million a year.  That makes the company about four times the size of Vision Skateboards, which Pierre and Don skated for, and I worked for in the late 1980's.  Although he doesn't spend much time in the spotlight like other former bike/skate people such as Spike Jonze or Tony Hawk, Pierre is one of the most successful skaters in the action sports world.  The big lesson here is that when a kid commits thousands of hours to learning some activity, especially a highly creative activity like skateboarding, you never know what that kid may be capable of later on.

Pierre is not just highly successful and innovative, he's also just an all-around good guy.  The last time I ran into him was when I was driving a taxi, several years ago.  I saw him talking to some Japanese guys at the Huntington Beach Hilton.  I yelled out a "HI."  He left the Japanese guys, who happened to be his major distributors there, and walked over to talk to me for a couple of minutes.  Don Brown is now vice president of marketing at Sole Tech, and also helped me tremendously when I wound up homeless in SoCal.  You never know where your bike or skate friends will end up in the future.  

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. 

The Blues Brothers Wall

I'm continuing with my 25th anniversary look at my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Today I'm talking about one of my favorite riding spots of all time, The Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, CA.  Go to 11:20 in the video above. 

This story starts with mid-80's BMX ramp legend, Josh White.  I was riding at the Huntington Beach pier one weekend, in 1988, I think.  Josh White rolled up and started talking.  He said he'd heard about some walls at the beach that were great for wall rides.  He asked if I knew where they were.  The funny thing was, I had no idea.  I'd ridden up and down the H.B. bike path nearly every weekend for a year, and I had no idea what Josh was talking about.  So we went looking for them.  We headed north from the pier on the bike path.  Once around the condo complex, we started up a hill on the bike path.  I rode that section every weekend.  But instead of following the bike path up, we took a sandy dirt trail I'd never taken.  Despite my nature of exploring every nook and cranny looking for things to ride, I'd never taken that lower road by the sand. 

A whole new world opened up to Josh and me.  Immediately, we saw one of the retaining walls he was talking about, but it was sandy at the bottom, not good for wall rides.  We kept riding north, and below the main bike path, but above the sand, there was this level, 40 foot wide ledge, with a bunch of painted retaining walls.  I'd ridden on the bike path just above those walls for a year, and never knew they were there.  Several of the walls had murals on them, the murals you see in this section of the video.  Finally, even with about 14th street, we found The Blues Brothers Wall.  It had two main murals, one of the Blues Brothers from Saturday Night Live and movie fame, and a big mural of the Three Stooges.  There was also a painting that said, "green eggs and ham, Sam I am."  That quote, of course, is from Dr.Seuss. 

That particular wall had fairly well packed dirt up to the base of the wall, perfect for getting speed to wall ride it.  In addition, someone had built up a good lip of dirt on the very left end of the wall, and a smaller lip farther down the wall.  Josh and I immediately started trying wall fakies, a trick I'd never done before (or since).  Perhaps the best aspect of that wall was that it was slightly under-vert.  It's maybe 80 or 85 degrees, steep enough to still be a wall, not a bank.  But it's just mellow enough to allow HUGE wall rides.  I loved that wall from the start.  Within a few minutes, I was rolling up and doing smooth wall fakies.  Josh on the other hand, was rolling straight up the wall, then pulling off and doing a lookdown out of the fakies.  Josh's riding amazed me many times over the years, and that was another instance.  I'd never even heard of anyone doing a lookdown out of a wall fakie at that time. 

Then we started doing wall rides.  Within minutes, I was hitting the small lip to the right, and riding three or four feet up the 11 foot high wall.  Up until that time, I only really did wall slides, where I'd bunnyhop off a bank and touch both tires to a wall, but not really grip the wall.  On the Blues Brothers Wall, I could totally ride the wall.  It was so much fun.  At least until Josh started doing wall rides.  Within a couple attempts, hitting the larger lip, he was riding about 7 feet up the wall, going twice as high as I did.  We had a blast that day, and I started riding that wall nearly every weekend on my way to the pier. 

That leads to the short clip in The Ultimate Weekend.  Riding the wall are myself (red shirt), Keith Treanor (black shirt), and Randy Lawrence (white tank top).  The quick over/under double wall ride is Randy up high, and me below.  I think that was the first over/under wall rides ever in a video.  In the clip, I do a fakie, and Randy and Keith both take their shots at no hand fakies, which were cutting edge riding at the time.  Then Keith and Randy to some big wall rides.  Also, there's a shot in the intro of the video of me wall riding over my sister's head while she's sitting.  That's also on this wall. 

Then we see Keith practicing a rail slide, just below the wall, with Randy holding him in position.  This looks really stupid today, but that's what we actually did back then, before anyone had actually done a handrail slide on a bike.  We had the idea, but no one had actually pulled it off yet.  In fact, the first handrail slide down steps ever in a BMX video, was Keith near the end of The Ultimate Weekend.  Double peg grinds on street were a brand new thing in 1990, and Keith was breaking new ground in this clip by climbing onto a rail and sliding down into the sand. 

Then Randy said, "Hey, how 'bout if I do a 360 into the sand next to that woman down there."  I thought he was nuts.  First, there was a lip about two inches high he had to bunnyhop over.  Second, doing a bunnyhop 360 down five feet was pretty rare in 1990.  Dennis Mccoy was the only person I knew who 360'd down stairs back then.  But I set up for the shot, and Randy did a perfect 360 first try, startling the hell out of that poor woman getting a tan. 

In the years that passed, I kept riding that wall.  I lived about three blocks from there in the late 90's, and rode the wall all the time.  I eventually did 6 to 7 foot high wall rides there.  The record belongs to Dave Clymer, who got a tiny photo doing a wall ride at the top of the 11 foot high wall, which is still crazy today in my book.  Dave said he even rolled in the top of the wall once, which was really hairy. 

Me, I learned a bunch of wall ride variations there.  I learned alley-oop wall rides, even to the point of back-pedaling and doing a rollback on the wall.  One day I started bunnyhopping from farther and farther away, trying to see how far of a bunnyhop I could do and still land in a wall ride.  I managed to do it from about 6 to 7 feet away.  I did a few rollback wall rides.  I'd do a 180 in the dirt, and hit the wall rolling backwards and get a tiny wall ride.  But there was one variation I never could get.  Several times I tried to do a framestand wall ride.  I would hit the wall at speed, and do a low, long wall ride.  Then I would move my feet off the pedals and onto the frame and stand up on the frame.  What I wanted to do was a fully upright framestand, no hands, while on the wall.  I always wussed out, and never could let go of the bars.  I still want to nail that trick if I ever get back in shape.  I've done long frame stands on on the 45 degree banks of the Santa Ana River Ditch, and on a steep bank of about 60 degrees.  But I could never get that trick on the Blue Brothers Wall.  I've never seen anyone else to that yet, but I'd really like to. 

Oh yeah... I just thought of one more thing I tried-and failed at-on the Blues Brothers Wall.  I don't have a name for it.  Basically, it was a fakie wall ride fakie.  I'd ride towards the wall, do a 180 bunnyhop at speed, and ride backwards into the wall, trying to ride straight up it rolling backwards, and then roll back down forwards.  Years later when I saw a photo of Ruben Alcantara doing a "realie," that's what I thought he did.  But he did a 180 into that nose down position.  As far as I know, no one's ever done a fakie wall ride fakie. 

Oreo Pancakes and Cottage Cheese Disease

As some of you may remember, last October, 2015, was the 25th anniversary of the release of my only completely self-produced BMX freestyle video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Last November, I started going through it bit by bit, telling stories of how it happened.  But right after I got started, my old laptop broke.  It didn't crash, the hinge literally broke.  Being unemployed, I couldn't afford to fix it.  I finally started selling some artwork, and made enough to get it refurbished.  But my blogging has been pretty spotty since then.  So now I"m back at it, starting where I left off in the video.

I'll start with a little refresher on why I made this video and what I had in mind.  The basic idea was to go through an awesome weekend of riding, like many of us did every weekend then, just amplified.  I first pitched this basic idea to Andy Jenkins, Lew, and Gork while working at Wizard Publications in 1986.  Wizard was the home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, and Andy was thinking of pitching a video idea to Oz, our publisher.  The guys didn't like my idea, so it rattled around my brain for the next three years.  The Wizard video never got pitched, and I got laid off and permanently replaced by some East Coast kid named Spike Jonze.

I went to work for Bob Morales at the AFA, and left the Wizard crew and the South Bay (Redondo Beach, Torrance, etc.) behind.  I moved a ways south to Huntington Beach.  HB was a suburb beach city firmly rooted in surf culture then.  It was kind of the dirty beach city then.  There were oil pumps throughout town, pumping away since oil was discovered there in 1920.  Because of this, HB wasn't as elite and trendy as nearby Newport Beach, just to the south.  HB locals didn't care.  Unlike most of the Southern California coast, Huntington Beach didn't have houses built right up to the sand.  Somehow, the beach was open to all, except for one condo development just north of the pier that snuck across Pacific Coast Highway when no one was looking.  Most of the 8 mile stretch of Huntington Beach sand had huge parking lots next to it, so it attracted people from all over Southern California on the weekends.

The strong surf culture in HB went back to 1914, when Honolulu local George Freeth did a demo of surfing next to the pier.  Not long after, Duke Kahanamoku, known as the father of modern surfing, spent a lot of time there.  The waves in HB are rarely huge, but they are consistent.  There are three to five footers nearly every day.  Surfers settled there because of the consistent waves and cheap rent.  Surf culture was originally hated by city leaders in the 50's and early 60's, but eventually, it took over the town.  HB became a hub of surf culture, and in my time a hub for skateboarding, BMX/freestyle, snowboarding, freestyle motocross, and later MMA fighting.  It seemed nearly everyone in town did one or more of these sports.  To be honest, Andy Jenkins and the guys at Wizard did me a great favor by laying me off, because moving to HB was one of the best things that ever happened to me.  I was surrounded by this huge action sports, entrepreneurial, punk rock inspired world.  The AFA was in HB.  GT Bikes was in HB.  Vision Skateboards, which included Sims and Schmitt Stix skateboards, Sims snowboards, and Vision Street Wear, was next door in Costa Mesa.  Quicksilver clothes was in Costa Mesa then.  Many smaller but influential companies were clustered in that same area.  It was a much more immersive scene than the South Bay, where Wizard was.  I didn't realize it then, but I was right in the middle of the action sports explosion of the 80's.

I made $5 an hour at the AFA in 1987, which was a little over minimum wage then.  I started at Unreel, Vision's video company for $1100 a month in late 1987.  My pay increased there to $1750 a month there by early 1990.  I wasn't making great money, and I complained about that all the time.  But I was truly living the life.

From my earliest days in HB, I would get up on Saturday mornings, eat a big breakfast, and ride to the Huntington Beach Pier.  Well known SoCal rider Mike Sarrail was a local there, despite living an hour away.  Several freestyle skaters, like Pierre Andre (Senizergues), Don Brown, Hans Lingren, and Jeremy Ramey skated there every weekend.  On any given weekend, Bob Schmelzer, Ed Templeton, and Mark Gonzales might swing by.  The Lakewood area freestylers, Jeff Cotter, Ron McCoy, Nathan Shimizu, Derek Oriee, and Ron Camero came by often.  Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson showed up to ride now and then.  The HB pier had been a known spot for years, and anyone could show up.  It was an amazing scene.

For some reason, I didn't actually put our pier sessions in the video.  I can't remember why.  That really pisses me off now, because that was the core of it all.  But it seemed too normal then, I guess.  So what you see at 10:39 in this video is me waking up in my single bed and trashed bedroom.  Three of my pots I made in high school pottery are on the night stand.  The cat was named Silis, after some guy in a western TV show.  I referred to Silis as a "furry basketball with legs."  It was huge, and VERY unfriendly.  That fucker bit my hand once.  Pancakes or cold pizza were often my breakfast on weekend mornings.  I decided to up the ante a bit for the video, and I made Oreo pancakes.  The key to those is using Oreo Double Stuff cookies and making the pancake batter pretty thick.  I've only actually made those twice, but they are tasty.

Continuing my Saturday morning montage, which I did some tricky video shots and editing to show off my creative skills, I ride down the bike trail to the pier.  There is the official walking/jogging/bike trail along PCH on the north end of downtown HB.  But there's also a lower trail, just above the sand.  All the painted walls are on the lower trail, which I didn't even know existed for a year or so after I moved to HB.   

As for the song... "Cottage Cheese Disease."   That phrase was one that Gork used to describe women's cellulite.  I used to joke that it would make a funny punk song.  So I wrote the lyrics to the song, sang it into a tape recorder, and sent the tape to Jon Stainbrook, leader of the punk band, The Stain, in Toledo, Ohio.  They turned it from a punk song into a rap, which is what you hear in the video.  Yes, it's lame, and I'm a mysogonistic douchebag for writing it.  But it is funny.  I'll get more into this clip in the next post.

What I Learned From the Gator Tragedy

Gator was a great skater in the 1980's, no doubt about it.  At that time, vert was the king of the skateboard world.  Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawk battled for first place contest after contest.  But Mark "Gator" Rogowski was always in the mix, a top five pro in vert.  Hosoi had the high airs and style, Hawk had the tech tricks, and Gator was known for his big bag of tricks.  He could do just about anything on any wall.  In 1989, when this video was produced, Gator was the flagship pro skater at Vision skateboards, followed closely by street skating innovator Mark Gonzales.

In 1989, I worked at Unreel Productions, the video production company owned by Vision.  At the time, the Vision family of companies included Vision, Schmitt Stix, and Sims skateboards, Sims Snowboards, and Vision Street Wear clothing.  The skateboard industry was peaking, and snowboarding was in its infancy.  At Unreel, head producer Don Hoffman and the rest of us were trying to make a video as cool as the Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade videos.  Vision was huge, but Powell had the best image in the skate world.  The clip above comes from 1989's Barge at Will, the best skate video Vision ever made.  I was working on the crew that made that video.  Gator had the anchor section in the video.  The pool skating segment he dedicated to "Sus-Swayne," a nickname for Duane Peters, the Master of Disaster.  Gator wrote and recorded the song in the pool segment.  This video came out, sold quite a few copies, but still didn't rate as high as the Bones Brigade series with skaters.

At the same time, the world was changing... big-time.  Vision Street Wear sold incredibly well in 1988, and then floundered in 1989.  The skateboard company didn't understand the fashion world.  Money became an issue in the Vision world.  A big contract with Tom Sims of Sims Snowboards ended, leading to a legal battle over that company.  Vision had moved into a huge, 100,000 square foot facility in Santa Ana, and then sales dropped in both clothing and skateboards.  In addition, the skateboard world itself was undergoing a revolution.  The weird little genre of street skating, led by Vision's own Mark Gonzales, was beginning to take over and grow bigger than vert skating.  Very few kids across the country had drained pools or a vert ramp to skate.  The original skateparks of the 1970's had all been bulldozed.  But every kid had some pavement to street skate.  The Big Three companies of skateboarding, Vision, Powell-Peralta, and Santa Cruz were still focused on vert skating.  Meanwhile, a washed up freestyle skater named Steve Rocco started a little company he named World Industries as a joke.  He saw the future was in street skating, and he focused on that.  The Big Three thought Rocco and street skating were jokes.  They were wrong.

It was a weird time to be a top vert skater.  The huge board royalty checks were starting to shrink.  Kids were taking to street skating and not paying as much attention to vert.  The future was uncertain.  During this time, Brad Dorfman, the owner of Vision, had a meeting at Unreel one day in late 1989, and told us he was shutting down the video company.  I was the lowest guy on the totem pole there, basically a production assistant/video duplicator/cameraman.  Myself and a woman would stay, but we got moved to the main Vision building in Santa Ana.  The woman soon found another job in Hollywood, and I became Unreel Productions all by myself, tucked into an office in the Vision Promotions Department.  Don Hoffman hung around as a freelance producer, working when needed.

At that point, Gator was facing big changes as well.  He bought a big house out in the boonies, in the general area of Tony Hawk's Fallbrook house.  But Gator was alone much of the time.  He also ran into a group evangelical Christians one day.  After a fairly long conversation, they seemed to think that Gator needed to be saved from his evil life as a skateboarder.  On one hand, Gator was one of the best vert skaters, something he had dedicated himself to for years.  He reaped the fruits of all those hours skating.  Then he suddenly had some people telling him that skateboarding itself was evil, and that he needed to be saved from it.  I know this, because Gator himself told me.  Now not only was his position as a top vert skater uncertain, but his very purpose as a human being was in question.  Gator started to act weird.  We all saw it.  And no one really did anything about it.  Somewhere along this time, Mark officially changed his name to Gator Mark Anthony.  I never was sure why.

Pro skateboarders then and now, have a lot of free time on their hands.  At Vision, they were allowed to wander through the offices whenever they wanted.  There was kind of an unwritten rule to be nice to them.  They sold lots of skateboards, and that kept us all working.  So we didn't piss them off.  If they were a bit annoying or weird, we'd just let it slide.  The incident that stands out to me was one day Gator wandered into my office at Vision.  It was a long office, and I usually sat at a big desk at the back, facing the door.  In front of me were two long folding tables, both filled with the video equipment I used to make dubs and edit offline videos.  Gator often came in when he was in the office, and we'd talk a bit, or I'd show him the latest footage of another skater or something.  One day he wandered in, and he seemed pretty depressed.  He walked along the tables full of equipment, running his finger along the table and touching the various nobs.  Then he looked up at me, "Hey... do you think I'm a good person?" he asked out of the blue.  I told him I thought he was.  Then he told me about the Christians he'd been talking to and that they thought skateboarding was not a good thing.  We talked for a few minutes.  But I didn't really dig deep.  I just blew it off as him having a bad day.  I didn't want to upset Gator.  I patronized him.  I let the whole thing slide.

During that year, Gator had his ups and downs.  He actually threw himself into his skating at one point, and won a contest, beating out both Hawk and Hosoi, as I recall.  He was stoked.  But it didn't last.

As for me, I spent six months sitting in that office, not doing much of anything.  I quit, and went to work in a TV production office with the woman who used to work at Unreel.  I left the faltering world of Vision Skateboards behind.  Then one morning, that woman asked me, "Did you hear about Gator?  He murdered a girl."  I was floored.  I was never a close friend of his, but we talked fairly often, and I was one of the people who noticed that he was getting weird that last year.  And I was one of the people who did nothing about it.  I held at least a little responsibility for that young woman's death.

The woman I was working with said, "Wow, this would make a great movie of the week."  I was floored a second time, "He was our friend," I responded.

I did A LOT of thinking about Gator in those months and years afterward, as he was convicted and went to prison for murder.  Could I have changed things?  Maybe, maybe not.  I'll never know.  But I could have tried.  After the Gator tragedy, I've made it a priority to step in if I see someone treading in those dangerous waters.  Has it made a difference?  Yes, at least once or twice.  A young woman I worked with, who became my best friend for several years, struggled with depression, bi-polar disorder, and suicidal thoughts.  I talked her out of suicide on the phone more than once.  On another occasion, a woman got in my taxi and thanked me for talking her daughter out of suicide.  I didn't even remember her daughter.  But apparently I helped her during a taxi ride.  There have been other people I met in my taxi and on the streets who were in really bad places, and I talked with them as best I could.  There have also been people I know who I could not help.  They were in such deep denial that I couldn't break through it.  I'm not patting myself on the back here.  There are times when I was stressed out and didn't help people as much as I probably could.  Like everyone, I've had my own issues to deal with, like prolonged battles with homelessness and unemployment.  But after the Gator tragedy, I made a vow to myself to try and help people when I can.

Dave Mirra's tragic death took the entire BMX and action sports world by surprise.  There have been a myriad of written pieces, videos, and ramp jams in his honor.  But no one got to him in time.  I challenge all of you in the BMX world to take the same vow I did after the Gator murder, vow to TRY and help the people you see in deep struggles.  You can't save everyone, and you can't beat yourself up for not being able to save everyone.  But you can try your best.  Think about it.

Several years ago, a young film maker produced a documentary about Gator.  I went to a premiere in Newport Beach that included a Q & A with the director afterwards.  I told her I knew and worked with Gator, and asked how she picked the video footage for the film.  I asked that because I was the tape librarian at Unreel, I hand labeled every one of the 2,500+ tapes.  I knew the footage better than anyone, because I made dubs of nearly every tape, and watched them as they recorded.  She told me she only had two or three days to pick the tapes she wanted to use.  I was amazed, because she grabbed most of the best footage of Gator.  Not all of it, but most.  She did a really good job telling this tragic story.  You can watch that documentary here:  Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator.

I have new blogs now, check them out:

The Big Freakin' Transition- The future and economics

Crazy California 43- This blog's about weird, cool, and historic locations in California, that have interesting stories.   

Full Circle- Writing and the writer's life

and a fiction one- 

Stench: Homeless Superhero

Mark Eatons Tribute to Dave Mirra

I was an industry guy who still rode a lot when Dave Mirra started popping up on the scene.  So my memories of him are a lot different than today's young riders who grew up watching Dave winning gold after gold in the X-games.  This is the best tribute to Dave I've seen from the guys in my generation.  It's no surprise that it comes from the video files of Mark Eaton. 

Another thing that most of you know now is that riders all over are painting their pedals gold as a tribute to Dave Mirra's legacy.  I'm not sure who started this idea, but it's going viral now.  Ride in Peace Dave.

Lets Talk About Suicide

Suicidal Tendencies, "Institutionalized."  All Mike wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi...

For all of us who were around the punk scene in the 80's, the song above is a classic.  Most of us have felt like that at some point.  "Just leave me alone, I'll figure it out."  Most of us do "figure it out" one way or the other most of the time.  But some people don't figure it out.  They wind up taking their own lives.

The untimely death of BMX legend Dave Mirra brought this subject to the forefront.  We don't know what actually happened, we're left hanging with the vague words, "apparent suicide."  Rumors and theories will flow.  Try not to buy into them.  Most of us are still in shock.  From our outside perspective, he seemed to have it all.  Dave was a highly skilled, highly decorated rider, one of the best ever, he had one or more businesses, a family, was competing in other sports at a high level.

I'm not going to focus this post on Dave.  This post is for everyone out there.  I, personally, have been to the depths of suicidal thoughts.  For whatever reason, I'm still here.  I talked myself out of suicide at age eleven.  This brings me to the first point to understand.  In my experience, most people who get to thinking seriously about suicide don't want to die, rather they just don't see a way to go on living.  There's a huge difference.  People get overwhelmed.  Life throws more at them then they think they can handle.  Sadness turns into depression, which can slip into deeper levels of depression.  There comes a point where they don't see any way to continue living.  The problems just seem insurmountable.  For some people, abuse or trauma in the past can lead to this.  For others it may be a collapsing business, job, or financial obligations.  For some a break up or divorce can lead to these depths.  If you add addiction of any kind into the picture, things get worse in a hurry.  It's important to realize that this feeling of being completely overwhelmed can happen to anyone.

Sometime the person can "figure it all out" like Mike in the song above.  But many times they can't.  Many years ago, I met a young woman while working at Cirque du Soleil.  She was pretty crazy, which might be why we hit it off.  I never became her boyfriend, but instead I we became best friends for a few years.  She had been through horrific abuse as a kid.  When I met her, she was a "cutter," with several scars on her wrists.  On at least two occasions, I wound up on the phone with her while she had a razor blade to her wrist.  Her personal demons took her right to the edge, and I was the one who happened to be on the precipice with her.

Here's what I didn't do.  I didn't talk to her about God or religion.  To the highly religious people reading this, that may sound horrible.  But it's my experience that when a person is so close to suicide, talk about religion usually pushes them towards death, not away from it.  I don't remember what exactly I told my friend.  But for the most part, I told her really dirty jokes until I got a small laugh out of her.  I know that sounds horrible, but that's how I was able to break the spell. If you can break the person's spell of despair, there's a pretty good chance they'll make it through the night.  When things calm down, you can try to talk a little more sense to them.

This brings me to another point.  When someone is near the point of suicide, you don't have to help them find a reason to live the rest of their lives.  You just have to help them find a reason to live for ten more minutes, or half an hour.  Remind them of something they want to do in the near future.  Remind them of someone who pissed them off that they want to get revenge against.  Again, that sounds horrible, and I'm against revenge in general.  But that might give them a reason to keep going for now.  You can't get back at the people who've hurt you if you're dead.  (Forget all the vampire/zombie stuff, OK?  That's just movies and TV).

In the long run, I just loved my friend, as a friend, at a time when she truly believed she was unlovable.  I was there for her, and she for me, during both of our dark times for about three years.  Even though I never slept with her, we shared a weird intimacy that few know.  Ultimately, she didn't need me anymore, and went on to have a successful life.  It really hurt when we parted ways, but it was time for both of us to move on.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that you never know when you may be helpful to a complete stranger who is going through dark times.  I once had a woman get into my taxi and thank me for talking her daughter out of suicide.  I had no idea who she was talking about.  You have a lot of really weird conversations in taxis.  I thought the woman was messing with me at first.  But she was adamant about it.

The point of all of this?  When your friends seem to be going into dark places, be there for them as best you can.  Maybe they just need some time to figure things out, like Mike in the song above.  Maybe they just need a Pepsi.  Maybe they just need to know you're there to help them out.  Or... maybe, they can't get through it, and they need to seek professional help.  The human mind is an amazing, miraculous thing.  But it can also create fears and depression that drives people to do terrible things.  Do what you can to be there for the people in your life, friends, relatives, and strangers.  But don't let them take advantage of you.  This is something I still struggle with.  If things don't get back on track with you just being a friend, seek the help necessary.  But take a real close look at yourself, first.  You can't go around changing everyone into the person you want them to be.  Some times you just have to get away from really toxic people.  And sometimes, you are exactly the person to help them through the darkness.  You may never know for sure.  Do your best to help those you can.  I'll end this post with a quote that was helpful to me at one point.
"The mystic swims in the same ocean the psychotic drowns in." - Unknown
Do your best people.