Go to 1:03 in this video and you'll see the enigmatic Skyway pro Oleg Konings doing a scuff trick. I can't remember what he called it. Why is this a big deal? Because, to the best of my knowledge, this was the first scuffing trick EVER. I personally saw Oleg doing this trick in 1985, when I first moved to the Bay Area. He had been doing it a while at that point. For those of you who found freestyle in the very late 1980's or later, "scuffing" is the act of pushing a foot on a tire, then dragging that foot to control the speed, which helped you keep your balance.
Right before I left NorCal for my job at FREESTYLIN', Golden Gate Park local Tim Tracy had invented another scuffing trick, it was a forwards side glide with his leg over the handlebars, scuffing on the front wheel. It was amazing at the time, but like Oleg's earlier scuff trick, it didn't catch on.
At an AFA Masters contest in Oregon in the spring of 1987, the NorCal crew unleashed the Backyard, and that was the trick that blew up and got the whole freestyle world learning scuff tricks.
Here's Dennis MCoy in 1987 bustin' some scuff tricks. At 1:01 in this clip he does a funky chicken, into a spinning front peg scuff thing. Then at 1:45, he goes into a locomotive, which is what the backyard soon morphed into, thanks to Kevin Jones. At 1:56 Dennis does the backyard, the trick that started a whole flurry of scuffing moves. Within a year, scuffing moves started turning into gliding moves, and that was the foundation for all of today's flatland. And it all started with a weird kid from NorCal called Oleg Konings.
Hey guys, I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while. My computer broke, and accessing other computers has been sketchy at best. Anyhow, I'm continuing on with look back on the 25th anniversary of the release of my self-produced 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend.
Today's section starts at 4:37 in this clip, with a Huntington beach flatlander named Red. As I recall, his real name was Joe Goodfellow. He's no relation to "Crazy Red" Mike Carlson, found later in this video. By 1990, I had given up on ever being a pro flatlander, although I would still go out and practice flatland nearly every night. During 1987 and 1988, the scuffing/rolling tricks took hold, led by the Golden Gate Park crew debuting the Backyard to the world. Technically, scuffing started with the insanely original NorCal Skyway pro Oleg Konings in about 1985. But his scuffing tricks didn't catch on. In 1987, the Backyard caught on, and then Kevin Jones blew minds with the Locomotive, his no hand version of the Backyard. Suddenly, the many individual styles in flatland began to merge into the forward rolling tricks movement. Let me correct myself, actually, Denny Howell doing the whiplash in 1986 got the forward rolling trick idea going. Then the others I mentioned followed.
On one hand, these tricks were super hard for the time period, and really innovative. But on the negative side, everyone's riding style started to look like everyone elses. That bummed me out. Since my motivation was to always be trying something new, I took my flatland in a different direction. While nearly everyone else was stoked on rolling tricks, I started trying to invent new hopping tricks. Not the stationary hops of the mid-80's, but a new kind. I did a backwards wheelie one day, and tapped my back brake and hopped in the middle of it, then landed and continued the wheelie. I kept playing around with weird tricks like that. By the time I shot this video, I could do half-cabs six or eight feet, looback half-cabs, rolling backwards bunnyhops, nollies, full cabs (rollback 360 bunnyhop) and I was trying "King Cabs (rolling backwards into a 540 bunnyhop). I also had this absolutely crazy trick I tried for about three years, the bunnyhop tailwhip, which I never landed cleanly.
Now, I know these days most of those are standard street tricks. But in 1990, these tricks were considered stupid. So I didn't put any of them in this video. I went with the Huntington beach locals like Red, Andy Mucahy, newcomer Sean Johnson (the black dude) and a few others. I met these most of kids when they were just getting into BMX freestyle, and I was one of the guys who taught them some basic tricks. Over the years they became damn good flatlanders. They weren't the top riders in the country by any means, but they were good, they were local, and I gave them five minutes in the video.
One other thing to note was that I used a skateboard to film some of the tricks, like the Hang 5 at 4:53, Andy's hitch hiker at 5:19, and one or two other tricks. To BMXers and skaters, that was simple, low budget camera work, and it looked pretty cool. But a year later, working on an actual TV production, I showed these shots to pro cameramen, and they were blown away. They had no idea how I got those shots rolling around a moving rider. When I told them I did it on a skateboard, they flipped. Not only were us BMXers and skateboarders progressing in our own weird little sports, we were also progressing in art, photography, and in video camera work. Our weird little videos not only stoked riders, but they helped change the way Hollywood did its work years later. Pretty cool.
