The first big innovator in lip tricks on vert, Haro pro in the 1980's, 1/2 of the 2-Hip Trick team, and the guy who started putting on 2-Hip King of Vert, and then Meet the Street contests, in 1987-88. Later came Wilkerson Airlines. Ron Wilkerson, one of the most influential BMX freestyle riders ever. Hey, he invented the abubaca, and a bunch of other stuff.
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I think this clip is from the 1987 GT Bikes video Demo Tape. In any case, industry legend McGoo does a quick interview with Eddie Fiola as they look at his 1985 run from the King of the Skateparks series. Eddie ran skinny, 1 3/8" rims for that contest, and people thought he had a 22" bike or something.
At the time, quaterpipes ranged from the Bob Haro designed, 6' high plan in the magazines, to 9' high. Most ramps went just up to vert. The face wall of the Pipe Bowl at Pipeline skatepark, however, was an 8' transition with four feet of vert. The pipe itself was 20 feet diameter. You had to be badass just to air out of that wall in the deep end. The fence is five feet high, and Eddie routinely got two or three feet over that.
This was the first skatepark where BMXers could really blast airs more than 3 or 4 feet out. Eddie Fiola established himself as the first King of the Skateparks, and was the most widely known pro freestyler to all us kids out in the rest of the country then. His riding, along with the other skatepark riders, inspired kids all over the U.S. and U.K. to build sketchy ramps and learn to blast airs.
In today's world of mega airs, it's hard to understand just how earth shattering these huge airs were at the time. The 540 was a brand new trick as well. Having the full pipe to pump speed out of, as well as a deep pool with no coping, helped Eddie and the others take riding to a whole different level. Without Pipeline skatepark, that jump in the progression of skatepark riding may have taken years to happen.
The Badlands movie, tellling the story of Pipeline Skatepark, is now raising money on Kickstarter. It's a huge skateboard story, but it's also a big part of BMX freestyle history. Click the link and help support this movie getting made.
Blogger's note- June 14, 2021- Don's still trying to find funding to make the Pipeline documentary, which really needs to happen.
Blogger's note- 8/12/2023- The Kickstarter campaign to make the Pipeline documentary didn't raise enough, as far as I know, and I don't know if Don is still looking for money to fund the doc.
I do most of my writing on Substack now, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
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.
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.
