Freestyle BMX Tales: The Book

This is Freestyle BMX Tales: The Book, part 1.  That big square up top is all the pages of part 1, (20 full size pages) laid out.  I'm calling this "the coffee table book of BMX zines."  It's either one of my greatest ideas... or one of my worst.  I'm never sure.

Here's a few excerpts:

"On another street, I followed Rick Thorne between two big rig trucks, both of which were moving slowly.  Unfortunately for us, they were moving closer to each other.  We both hit the gas, cranking hard to get past them.  Rick pulled up his front wheel and turned the bars to squeak through the narrowing gap.  I did the same thing right behind him, yelling in excitement as I cleared the trucks."

"The sound wound up, and with a yell, Scot came screaming around the corner of the warehouse racks on an 80cc dirtbike.  Jay and I looked at each other, wondering if that was a normal thing in the SE warehouse."

"A few weeks later, completely out of nowhere, Andy (Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN') called me up at home, in San Jose, one afternoon.  He asked me if I was planning to go to the next AFA Masters comp in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I told him I was.  'Would you like to cover it for us?'  I grabbed a putty knife to scrape my bottom jaw off the floor.  'Uh...yeah.' I muttered somehow."

"This punk kid sailed 25 or 30 feet down the hill, head high, blasting a huge no footer.  Nobody jumped like that back then.  Those were the first photos I saw of Chris Moeller..."

"'Uh-boo-buh-kuh,' Andy told me, I don't know what the trick is or how you spell it.  He's coming here in an hour and you'll be driving Windy and Ron to the photo shoot.'"

I got into BMX in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho in the summer of 1982.  I saw my first local freestyle show in the spring of 1984.  BMX freestyle became my thing, and I dreamed of being a pro rider someday, getting free bikes, and touring the country.  I never did become a pro, but I did get some free bikes and managed one skateboard tour.  I didn't have the guts or charisma to start my own company in the 80's or 90's, so I became a kind of wandering sidekick, the right hand man to some of the top people building freestyle.  I became part of the Golden Gate Park scene in 1985, getting to know Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson and the rest up there.  My zine landed me a job at Wizard Publications, where I worked with Andy J., Lew, Gork, and Windy.  I went on to work for AFA owner Bob Morales, the guy who turned trick riding into the sport of BMX freestyle.  That led to video work, and I worked for Don Hoffman at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company.  A lot of BMXers don't know Don, but he made several of the first freestyle videos, and his parents owned the legendary Pipeline Skatepark.  I went on to self-produce a video called The Ultimate Weekend, in 1990.  The next year, young Chris Moeller, who ran S&M Bikes out of the garage of a one bedroom apartment at the time, called me up to make their first video.  I became his sidekick/roommate for quite a while, and also lived in the P.O.W. House during the early 90's, rooming with guys like Dave Clymer, Todd Lyons, John Paul Rogers, Alan and Brian Foster, and a bunch more.

I have a lot of stories.  I'm putting the best ones into a weird book of sorts.  It's a handmade thing, a D-Ring binder, filled with 20 pages to start, all hand laid out by me, zine style.  It comes with a few custom stickers and a couple of 11" X 17" copies of my drawings.  Each book is signed and numbered, and I'm hand numbering the pages of every copy.  Part 1 of Freestyle BMX Tales:The Book is out now, and costs $20.  Every 4 to 6 weeks, I'll have another 20 pages (and some goodies) for $10.  I've got a lot of stories of those old school days of BMX freestyle.  I'll keep putting some on the blog for everyone to read.  But the best collection of my stories, thoughts, and lessons from those days will be in the book.  You can order yours today at my Go Fund Me page.  The books are numbered as the orders come in.  #3 is up for grabs as I write this (11/262016).  Order yours today.