Bike memes #4

Never forget...

It's my opinion that bicycle trick riding began about ten minutes after the first guy learned to ride the first bike, when a cute girl walked by.  Just an educated guess.  This is a circus rider from about 1890, or so.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This was about 100 to 110 years ago.  Look at the size and shape of this loop.  Then think about the fact that the guy was riding a mild steel bike, possibly a fixed gear (but probably not).  There are a few photos of this loop, some are of the guy practicing (note the crash pads), and a couple photos are of this loop set up for a circus or demo.  Seriously, this is Mat Hoffman level crazy for its day. 

Ow.  Yeah, it's completely impossible, too.  But just... OW.

This photo was in the archives all by itself.  I have no idea what the hell he was trying to land on.  But  a huge crowd showed up to watch him figure out that kink was a killer. 

This photo just makes me laugh.  We all know that feeling.  The stoke is real. 

This chimp doesn't seem particularly happy about being dressed up and posed on a bike.  That's where this caption came from.  

As hard as it may be to believe, I was actually factory sponsored for about a year.  Raleigh was a huge company, BMX was a tiny thing to them, but some marketing person came up with this odd, and totally cool, retro ad, while I rode for them.  The two man team of David Morris and me didn't do much as a team, except one photo shoot for Super BMX, and demos at the annual bike trade show in Long Beach.  David did shows up in the northwest, I believe.  I actually did really like the bike, seriously.  It was a double top tube, Torker/Haro freestyler design, with Hutch Trick Star geometry.  But to hit the mass market price point, the down tube was mild steel.  And so were the first handlebars, which I found out the hard way when a pair snapped mid-air, during a bunnyhop.  If the bike had been 100% chromoly, it would have been one of my favorite bikes of the 80's.  But I think I snapped 7 of them in a year. 
 

I think this photo is actually dated 1905 or 1910.  Think about this, it took 100 years AND Morgan Wade, to do this trick again.  This guy was fucking nuts.  Also notice the flat spot in the rim.  

I forgot this one.  OK, now all of my current BMX memes are on this blog.  There are a 3 or 4 memes from my own photos about 2 or 3 posts before these vintage meme posts.  Enjoy... share as needed. 

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My bike memes #3

When I first learned to ride a bike, which was at age 6, in 1972, this was my dream bike.  My dad built my first rat bike out of a pile of parts in our garage.  I had five different bikes I wanted him to build up back then, but the super long chopper was the ultimate ride I could imagine.  Easy Rider had just come out, and harcore bikers riding choppers were a prety frequent sight back then.  I didn't even hear of BMX for five more years, as a kid in small town Ohio. 

First, be glad you don't have to wear a marching band uniform to jump a 20-25 foot gap.  Second, be REALLY glad you live in the age of Chromoly, this guy was jumping on a mild steel frame.  Now how crazy does this jump look?

The guitarist we all know as Slash today was actually a gifted BMX rider, jumper, and racer in the mid-1970's, when he was about 13-14.  Then he met skateboarder Steven Adler, who showed him a guitar...

I made this one for all the BMX collectors out there.

Yep, ladies were pulling tricks waaaaaaay before Krys Dauchy came along. 

I'm not sure why this monstrosity was built.  But I love the fact that this guy is about to attack something wearing a black derby. 

Self-explanatory.

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BMX memes #2

This kind of bike is something I've seen being used on TV/movie studio lots a lot.  Tech guys will throw a small light, props, tools, or other equipment, in the big, sturdy basket, and deliver it to one of the sound stages.  Obviously, there are other uses for the big baskets, as well.  

I actually did this a few times while working on the set of American Gladiators in the early 1990's.  I had my BMX bike (an S&M Dirtbike at the time), that I rode to work a couple of years, and a beach cruiser one other year.  Once in a while, one of the women on set would ask to hop on my handlebars to ride over to the lunch stage, which always seemed to be all the way across the lot.  I remember giving Ice, the Gladiator a ride once or twice, and a few other women, as well. 

The bike shop in this photos is Orville and Wilbur Wright's shop in Dayton, Ohio, around 1900-1910.  I made this meme because so many people see BMXers (or skaters, snowboarders, etc.), as loser "adrenaline junkies," too lazy to work, or not very smart.  I just wanted to remind people never to underestimate a couple of bike riders.  The Wright's not only tuned bikes, they invented aviation.  For real.

This seems like a whole lot of set up for a not-so-exciting circus act, but it's also probably in the 1900's-1920's, when no one had seen anything like this.  And after watching the highlights of the Florideah Swampfest, which happened last weekend, building crazy ass shit and then trying to ride it isn't all that different today.  It's probably just about as dangerous, too.

The whole "43" thing in BMX started as an inside joke, with the Curb Dogs in San Francisco, in 1986.  Like the "420" story in pot culture, it slowly radiated out, and now 43 is kind of like the "lucky number" for all of BMX.  This is unit 43 at my old storage unit complex.  I just lost my unit, I couldn't keep the payments up, and it was #143.  Really. 

I wasn't sure what kind of caption to put on this freakin' crazy photo.  This is what popped in my head.  What I keep wondering is if this guy killed a leopard while out in the bush on a bike, what the hell is hiding in that tall grass behind him? 

I wrote my "Become" poem in about 1992... during the P.O.W. House days.  This one I drew on picture of northwest rider Monte Hill tweaking a turndown. 

Todd Lyons, a one time roommate of mine, and now the media savy brand manager for SE Bikes, is always getting kids giving him shit because the SE cruisers sell out of bike shops too fast.  I had TL in mind when I made this one recently.  

 I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

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Another blog idea I tried a while back...

The Spot Finder     

 

My BMX memes #1

That top drawing, and the upside down bail below, are ones I drew in my #sharpiescribblestyle, back in 2016, I think.  The one handled tabletop is Jason Davies, and he did actually give my a thumbs up to draw that photo of him, quite a while before he passed away, in May of this year.  Ride In Peace, Jason. It's a bit cut off, the quote reads, "Bike: a four letter word, that when used properly, relieves the stress that leads to the use of other four letter words."

 

 In 2019, shortly after returning to California, I was working to promote a BMX website that didn't work out.  During that time, I started digging through thousands of public domain, vintage photos online, looking for bike related pics.  I found quite a few, including several that no one had seen before, at least in modern, BMX times.  So I started making memes of them.  "You complete me," above, is one of the many.  Most of the vintage photos in these memes date from the 1890's to the 1920's. 

When I lived in the P.O.W. House back in 1992-1993, we had a motto about life that we called "The 3 B's."  That stood for "Beer, Bikes, and Bitches."  Typical 20-something guys' priorities.  It later got extended to "The 5 B's, 'Bikes, Boards, Beer, Bongs, and Bitches.'"  Obviously, from the photo above, the bikes and babes theme goes way back, long before our day.

1980's freestyle legend Craig Grasso was lost to the Dark Side for quite a while, and none of us had heard from him in years at one point.  I made this meme back then.  He has since reappeared on the scene, and is living and doing art in Las Vegas these days. 

The is the first meme I made, trying to figure out how to work PicMonkey, back in 2019, I think.  I nabbed the photo of RonWilkerson blasting on the Woodward West Mega ramp. 

Did you have a grandpa that used to say things like, "Back when I was a kid we ate road kill 'possum for Sunday dinner, and we were THANKFUL.!"  Well, I did.  OK, not the road kill 'possum part, but he did actually tell me he walked 4 miles to school barefoot once or twice.  And that I wasn't thankful for anything.  That grandpa idea was in my head when I drew this one.  The photo is one of Dennis McCoy's worst bail photos, which I borrowed.

 I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

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