FREESTYLIN' mag tales

My new blogs

2010-01-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

For those of you running across this blog January 2010 or later, I just want to let you know that I'm now 80-some posts into my next old school BMX freestyle blog. In that blog I'm meandering through memories roughly from 1982 to 1994 in the world of BMX, freestyle, street riding, dirt jumping and the assorted stupidity that surrounded those sports. You can check it out here:

Freestyle BMX Tales

I've also started a blog where I search out videos and clips from the whole alternative sports world, and review them. In that blog you'll find links to clips from BMX, skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing, surfing, and anything else I think you might find interesting. Check it out here:

Session Sports Video and Website Reviews

Need a laugh? Check out my comedy blog:
The White Bear's Comic Freak Show

Make Money Now!

2009-10-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

I've started another new blog for your entertainment:

Make Money Panhandling

Hey, it's a recession and everyone could use a little extra money (and a few laughs), right? Check it out.

More Old School BMX tales...

2009-10-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

For reasons I don't quite fathom, people keep signing up as followers on this blog. THIS BLOG IS OVER... DONE...FINISHED...KAPUT. OK? I'm glad people are still stumbling across it and checking it out, but I've moved on. To read more old school BMX freestyle stories about the eleven year period that I didn't work at FREESTYLIN' magazine, check out my new blog: Freestyle BMX Tales. I'm continuing on with stories of my adventures in the early days of freestyle, roughly from 1982 to 1993. If you were around in those days or just want to pretend you were, check it out.

Steve Emig aka The White Bear

It was just a magazine, the end... for real this time

2009-08-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

It was just a magazine, by no means a major one in the magazine world. Yet FREESTYLIN' magazine launched the careers of artist/designer Andy Jenkins, adman Mark "Lew" Lewman, real life superhero Spike Jonze, and artist/director Jeff Tremaine. And for a little while, I worked there. Obviously by this blog and last year's book that Andy, Lew, Spike and Nike put out, it had an amazing influence on a lot of people. I know FREESTYLIN' magazine changed my life.

I've rambled on far too long about my time there, and I'd like to thank everyone for their comments, good and bad along the way. I'm still unemployed, and might end up driving a taxi here in Winston-Salem for a while. Or not. The director of the homeless shelter I'm staying at asked me to come in tomorrow for an interview, but was a bit evasive about who was doing the interviewing. So either I'm going to tell some reporter that it's a cool homeless shelter, or I'm going to be "interviewed" by a psychiatrist. If it's the latter, I may be going away for quite a while. One of my "friends" here hinted at that today, so I figured it was best to just end the blog now, just in case.

If things work out, I'll be working on one of my other blogs in the near future, though I need to take a break from blogging for a while. I'll get into more BITD freestyle stuff in :

Freestyle BMX Tales

freestylebmxtales.blogspot.com

and into bikes, skating and similar stuff in:

My Huntington Beach

myhuntingtonbeach.blogspot.com

Bye.

Dizz Hicks

2009-08-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

He was the only guy in the '80's who could get the whole crowd psyched to watch the wedge ramp. He was John "Dizz" Hicks. He was also Gork's former teammate from Sacremento, and CW factory guy while I was at Wizard. I remember how stoked Gork was when he was able to schedule a photo shoot with Dizz doing airs in front of the Goodyear blimp, which has it's home a few miles from the former Wizard office.
Dizz was the combination Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and Anthrax metalhead of the freestyle world. And he rocked the wedge ramp like no other. With blond longish hair and oversize studded wristbands, he'd come out and clock one contorted kick turn variation after another, then roll back towards the quarterpipe jeering and giving the metal sign to the cheering crowd. That was Dizz at contests and at shows.
One night as we were working late, Windy did a photo shoot of Dizz inside the warehouse. I think she put a gel over the light that lit up the warehouse door in the background, similar to the cover of issue #10 with R.L. I can't remember why I was hanging out, but I just wanted to watch Dizz ride. I'd met him once, I think, but didn't really know him. While he was doing all his crazy wedge ramp variations with the metal hand signs and contorted facial expressions, he was totally professional in between. Windy would give him some direction, and he'd just say, "Yes, ma'm." He probably had the best manners that night that I'd ever seen on a photo shoot. It was weird sitting there watching him ride, then be so mellow in between tricks. I learned a lot about professionalism that night watching Dizz. If he wasn't talking to Windy about tricks, he'd come over and rap with me for a minute or two while catching his breath. I'd just met him, but he was totally cool, which I didn't really expect from a guy with such a crazy image. My best memories of my time at Wizard are the weird little moments like that, just talking and chilling and joking around with different people.

Brian Scura

2009-08-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

Since I was the low guy on the FREESTYLIN' totem pole, I got some jobs that Andy and Lew just didn't want to deal with. One of those jobs was to listen to wacky freestyle mad-scientist Brian Scura explain how to adjust a Gyro, which had just come out. Brian went over his "simple" instructions on how to adjust your Gyro and keep it from fluttering, FOR 45 MINUTES. Then I had to write that into a "simple" How-To. Thanks guys.

I invented the Hang Ten hardflip on a skateboard

2009-08-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

Warning: This another self serving, non-FREESTYLIN' post...

While waiting for a computer to open up here at the lovely but under-funded Winston-Salem library, I read an article about Bob Burnquist in Outside magazine. So when I got on the computer, I checked out a couple Burnquist vids. Another clip showed up, for the "Hang Ten Hardflip." I checked it out, and here's some clown doing this lame ass trick that I did in '88 or '89 at the Huntington Beach Pier. The goofball goes into a long explanation, so long that I wasn't sure if it was real or he was just pretty fly for a white guy. He said he invented the trick in about '92.
I used to ride most every weekend from '87 to '91 or so at the Huntington Beach Pier with a few flatlanders, like Lunchbox, who often comments on this blog. The other guys down there were the Vision Skateboards' freestyle skaters. These included Pierre Andre, Don Brown, Hans Lingren, along with Per Werlinder and Daryl Grogan occaissionally, as well as some local skaters, like freestyler Jeremy Ramey street locals like Ed Templeton. Anyhow, Hans Lingren, the Swedish contigent of Vision's freestyle skating foreign legion, showed me a new trick one day. He had both feet side by side, like for a freestyle-style nosewheelie, then he would snap the board up, nollying as the board went straight up. He would grab the board and turn it in a half twist, and land on it in a normal stance. I had a freestyle board then, Pierre had given me one of his old ones, so I started trying the trick when Hans went to eat. By the time he came back, I was doing the trick consistently, without the grab, much to his dismay. He couldn't do it without the grab, and I couldn't do it with the grab. So we both had a new trick. So I was doing what some guy is now calling a "Hang Ten Hardflip" three or four years earlier. And there were probably half a dozen guys doing it long before that. Rodney Mullen probably did it when he was three.

Zines, part 4

2009-08-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

On that last post, I forgot to mention that Re/Search put out two books about zines, I've been reading Zines Volume II the last few days. They have interviews with zine publishers (from 1997) who do (did?) Dishwasher zine, Sidney Suppey's Quarterly and Confused Pet Monthly (published since 1979), Aim Your Dick, and Murder Can Be Fun, among other zines. If you're the least bit interested in zines, check these out. I saw Volume II on Ebay a lot in recent months.
When the FREESTYLIN' book came out last year, the thing that really pissed me off the most was that I didn't get to have any input about the zines section. So I guess I'm remedying that now.
Of course, we're now well into the digital media/internet age. Is there even a place for Xerox zines anymore? Should we all just do webzines and blogs instead. It would be easy to say that zines were a neat fad, but digtal media is the only way to go. You can go off on any obscure subject with a blog or website now. So why make an actual Xerox zine anymore.
Here are a few reasons:
1. There's just something about giving people an actual object, a physical zine, that you don't get from digital media, with the possible exception of a DVD. But that's still not the same.
2. Zines are more novel now than they were in the '80's or '90's. You get a totally different reaction when you hand someone a zine as opposed to handing them a card and saying, "Hey, check out my website."
3. Zines are, by their nature, collector's items. There will probably be zines around long after all digital media is long gone. Remember, both analog and digital media mediums are constantly changing. When's the last time you watched a Betamax tape, listened to a cassette, or pulled up something from a big floppy disk. With each change in formats, you need to update your archives to be able to keep using it. But you can pick up a 20 year old zine and read it any time.
4. Whenever you put anything on the internet, you're giving a copy to everyone online, including your parents, priest, ex's, the police, the FBI, the NSA, private intelligent agencies and databases, and lots of other people. With a physical zine, you decide who gets a copy.

Zines, part 3

2009-08-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

For more on zines, check out the Wikipedia article on "zine" and stuff about Factsheet 5, Book Your Own Fuckin' Life, Riot Grrrrl, and the DIY movment.

Zines, part 2

2009-08-10T11:28:00.000-07:00

Much to my surprise, my very lame San Jose Stylin' zine worked. Within a few days of putting out copies at a few local bike shops, I got a letter from a rider in San Jose, a guy by the name of John Vasquez. Now a lot of you reading this may not know who John Vasquez is, but he was legendary in the Bay Area. He was one of those guys who Vander, Drob, and Bert Peterson and the others would talk about seeing him doing something ridiculously hard one time or another. He was the only guy then who could do a full 360 bunnyhop, crazy high, and land smooth on both wheels. Everyone else back then would bunnyhop 270 and pivot 90 degrees on the back wheel.

Anyhow, I digress, I went to ride with John and his team, his ramp guy, Vince Torres had a ramp, and I met my first Bay Area locals within a couple weeks of putting out my first zine. I called around and found out about the Beach Park Ramp Jams that Robert Peterson put on, and made it to a Golden Gate Park Sunday session a month or so later.

At my first Beach Park Jam, I met Menlo Park local John Ficarra. John was big and loud, and became the assistant editor of my zine. "Assistant Editor" means he wrote one article, then told me the title artwork sucked for the next ten months. John was also the only guy I've seen break four out of five spokes of a Tuff Wheel with a single tailwhip. He lived right by Beach Park Bikes, so after the ramp jams he'd always say something like, "Hey we're getting a pizza and watching Faces of Death, you should come over." But I always had to head back early because I was using my dad's car and had to pick him up from work.

So I inadvertantly became the "zine guy" of the Golden Gate Park crew. In the months after that, I interviewed most of those guys: Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Chris and Karl Rothe, Hugo Gonzales, as well as the less known guys like Mike Golden, John Vasquez, and others. Armed with my ultra-lame 110 camera, I shot photos of them, and even skaters like Tommy Guerrero hitting the jump ramp at Golden Gate Park.

It was a great time to start a freestyle zine, after I stumbled into one of the best freestyle scenes there was then. Form the publishing standpoint, I had the idea from the start to send zines to the main people in the sport, which there weren't very many of then. I sent my zines to FREESTYLIN', BMX Plus, and even Super BMX I think. I sent them to Bob Morales at the AFA, and to his AFA affilates, Randy Loop in Ohio, Ron Stebbene on the East Coast, and the Bickels in Idaho, who really gave me a start in the sport. All those people only accounted for about ten zines, but that was the smartest thing I ever did. My advice to all zine makers: send zines to the people you look up to and who inspire you. I made myself known to the people putting on the contest and the magazines, and by the time I met them, we had some common ground. I've done this with later zines and have received letters back from writers like Tom Brown, Jr of The Tracker books, Dan Millman who wrote Way of the Peaceful Warrior books, and even a couple lines from bestselling author Dean Koontz telling me to keep writing. How fucking cool is that? If you write to Koontz by snail mail, he'll put you on his newsletter list, yeah, he has a zine, Dean fucking Koontz. Sure, it plugs his books, but it's damn cool for a guy as busy as he is.

I also sent zines to the BMX zine makers I'd heard of, in a FREESTYLIN' article I think. So I started trading zines with them. San Jose Stylin' zine opened up a whole knew world to me. Suddenly I was talking, both on the phone and through the (snail) mail, to many of the people who made up the BMX freestyle industry. I got Vac'Zine (from Sacramento I think), I met Brian Reed through zines, some kid from New York sent me his zine that his whole family helped out on, though I can't remember the name. Zines take a lot of work, and a lot of money, but it's really cool when you start trading with people with similar interests.

Like most of the best things in my life, I just kind of stumbled into the zine world, completely oblivious to the thousands of others starting to do zines as well, sparked by the desktop publishing/computer revolution. To me, bike, skate, and punk rock zines were all that existed, it was years before I learned of the larger zine world.

When I met Andy Jenkins and Lew at a Velodrome AFA contest, they immediately said they loved my zine when I told them who I was. I was floored. Then a month or two later they called me out of the blue and ask me if I wanted to cover the Oklahoma contest coming up. I said I would. Then, in the summer of 1986, that epic July issue of FREESTYLIN' with the tiny photo of Josh White on the cover came out. Just to be clear, I'd call that issue epic if I had nothing to do with it. But as providence would have it, my first article and the first review of my zine came out in that issue.

By that time I was spending over $200 of the $400 I made each month on my zine. I had forty or fifty names on my mailing list, I think. After Andy said my zine was their favortie, my mailing list jumped to about 120 over night. It's a good thing they hired me, I couldn't afford the zine anymore.

The freestyle zine guys were mostly guys that were really into riding, but not great riders. Mike Daily was probably the best rider of the bunch of zine-makers. I remember first seeing his zine, Aggro Rag at FREESTYLIN' with a sequence of Kevin "The K" Jones doing some ridiculous trick in it. That was the first I heard of Kevin. I didn't get to keep that copy, it was Andy's.

When I started at Wizard, I soon found that Andy was doing his own zine, Bend Zine, under a pseudonym, Mel Bend, and I just didn't get that. I was thinking, "you work at a MAGAzine, what the hell are you doing a xerox zine for?" And it wasn't even about freestyle, it was skating and drawings and stuff. But if looked fucking cool. It was during my apprenticeship to Andy and Lew at Wizard that I learned about Xerox art and non-bike, skate and punk zines. I got to gingerly flip through some of Andy's skate zines now and then, and I really realized how much San Jose Stylin' sucked as a zine. But I was working at a really cool magazine, I had no urge to do another zine after that. Then I got fired.

I wound up editing the AFA newsletter for most of 1987, so that was my next zine, more or less. I played around with graphics and Bob Morales showed me how to do layouts on actual art boards. My next job was at Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboards' video company. Suddenly I had a decent paycheck AND access to the office copy machine. I started doing a zine called Periscope, mostly bikes, but with some other stuff. The idea was that everyone sees life differently, as if we each have our own pericope to view the world. That one was real sporadic, but that's when I really became a zine guy. I've been doing zines ever since, on and off.
Once again, much to my surprise, I got another magazine job from a zine in the late '90's, the short-lived BMX Rider magazine put out by Petersen Publications. They did a one shot BMX magazine with an article about the P.O.W. BMX House, which included me. So I sent them a zine, Session Sports, I think, to say thanks. the editor read my "Interview with Sasquatch," and called up and offered me a job. You never know where a zine's going to lead. Zines led me into the BMX freestyle industry, then back out of it, then back into it.
The last of my zine collection, going back to the early '90's, Made up largely of issues of Backdoor zine from Canada, was lost with everything else I owned in the storage unit incident last fall. I've covered that issue way too much in early posts.
I've done about 25 zines, the latest ones 20 to 48 pages, with a lot more style than my humble start with San Jose Stylin'. I am a zine guy now. I have more ideas than I could possible publish, even if I had a job. The only reason FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales is a blog is because I couldn't afford to do a zine when I started it. Basically, I turn my lame ideas into blogs. The better ideas I'm keeping for zines.

Zines

2009-08-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

This is my 200th post on this blog, so I have this weird air of formality today. Believe me, no one is more surprised than me that this blog made it to 200 posts. It's actually kind of pathetic that I've written this much about a magazine I worked at for five months. But there was a lot packed into those five months.

Zines.
I'd never seen a zine when I made my first one. I'd only read about them in FREESTYLIN'. I didn't know you were supposed to fold them in half to make them look like little books. I didn't know how to do lay-out. I didn't know how to do Xerox type art. I didn't know you could be funny and do collage stuff. I didn't even know, for months, how to pronounce the word "zines." Did it have a long "i" or did you say "zeens." I finally found out it was the second one. I didn't think I was a writer. I didn't want to be a self-publisher. I wasn't into punk rock. I'd never heard about the "D.I.Y." or Do It Yourself movement. I didn't know, for years, that there were thousands of other people out there publishing zines around the world. I didn't know that it was a movement. I didn't know it was counter culture.
I didn't know anything.
So I made a zine.
It was September of 1985, and I'd just driven my '71 Pontiac Bonneville from Boise, Idaho to San Jose, California, to move back into my parents new apartment. I was ninteen years old, and I'd spent the summer managing a tiny amusement park in Boise called The Fun Spot. I'd rented a room at my best friend's house for the summer after my family moved to San Jose because my dad found a new job. I made $3.15 an hour, under minimum wage even then, for that summer. I'd come home after work, get my Skyway TA and my ghetto blaster, and go out in the street where I'd listen to a Billy Joel double album and practice freestyle tricks. Freestyle was my life. It gave meaning to my life. I couldn't afford to go to college, and I'd decided to "take a year off." I'd made my first long driving trip alone, which scared the Hell out of me. But I made it to San Jose.
San Jose sits at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay, 40 minutes in light traffic from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, which is where many of the best freestylers in the world got together every Sunday. Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer and all the Curb Dogs. Robert Peterson and the Skyway factory Team, and Hugo Gonzales, the craziest ramp rider known, lived somewhere in San Jose. I'd met Oleg Konings and Peterson at a contest, but just said 'Hi' to them. I just wanted to meet those guys, and hopefully ride for them. I'd decided a year before to see how far this freestyle thing would take me, much to the dismay of my parents and most of my friends. Doing tricks on a little kid's bike and talking about becoming pro was not something done in 1985. But it felt right. So I decided to make a zine hoping I could use it to meet the Bay Area riders. That's all I wanted.
I got a job at a local Pizza Hut pretty quickly, right down the street from the freaky Winchester Mystery House. I had a little bit of money. I went to the huge San Jose swap meet and bought a manual Royal typewriter for $15. Manual as in not electric. The margin thing was stuck right in the middle, so I'd have to hit margin release on every line. My mom shot photos of me balancing on my bike with the typewriter on my lap, pretending to type. I couldn't find replacement ribbons for the typewriter, because it was so old. So whenever I got to the end of the reel to reel silk ribbon, I'd rewind it by hand, then start typing again. I laid out the zine like a newspaper, and hand drew the title, "San Jose Stylin'" in pseudo-Old English type. I laid out the photos the way I wanted them on the page, then traced around then lightly with a pencil. Then I would put the sheet in the typewriter and type in the blank areas until I ran out of room. Each article or story ended when I ran out of room om that page.
Then I used Scotch tape to stick the photos on. My first issue was six 8 1/2 X 11 pages, three sheets copied on both sides and stapled in the upper left corner. I wrote about the 1985 Venice Beach AFA contest I went to with Jay Bickel and his family. I told about Jay and I going to the SE Racing warehouse on that trip, who Jay was co-sponsored by. The first photo was me balancing on my bike on the edge of the roof of the foodstand of The Fun Spot in Boise. I was wearing super-short OP chord shorts, and pink and black cycling gloves.
My zine was horrible. It had typos and no art or style. But it was a zine. I made it. I finished it. I put some out at local bike shops. I sent a few to people around the country, including Andy and Lew at FREESTYLIN' magazine.

Todd Anderson, part 3

2009-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Since Todd was R.L. Osborn's ramp guy during my stint at FREESTYLIN', Todd was around on a pretty regular basis. One time they had him ride the T.O.L. ramp out in the parking lot and hang up his rear wheel on purpose for a photo shoot. I think it was for tires, did Peregrine make tires? Or maybe it was for Peregrine 48 rims. In any case, he did a good sized air and hung up, on purpose, 30 or 40 times in a row. The photo was a close-up of the tire hitting coping, to show that either the tires or rim could take it. How he hung up, on purpose, with a coaster brake, I don't know.
Another time R.L., Todd, and a few others were sitting around with us telling tour stories. One guy mentioned that Todd was totally shy on tour, but that the show groupie girls would start talking to him, and sooner or later the guys would look up, and Todd had wandered off somewhere with one of the girls. Todd claimed they were exaggerating, but they said his shy guy thing really worked. His was a single guy then, so he wasn't messing around on a girlfriend back home. That was the same year Josh White earned his knickname of Dr. Love from his tour exploits, I think.
The other tour story I heard about Todd, also greatly exaggerated I'm sure, was about his bathroom habits. One of the guys, another rider I think, said Todd "wouldn't take a dump for about three weeks, and when he did it looked like an anaconda in the bowl." I can't remember who told the story, but he included a graphic description of a particular incident. Todd said the guy was drunk at the time, and blowing it all out of proportion. Gotta love tour stories.

The Camarillo Ramp

2009-08-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

One of the results of wide angle lenses being used by magazine photographers is that whatever they're shooting winds up looking bigger, better, and grander than it really is. When I first saw the legendary Pipe Bowl at Pipeline Skatepark in 1985, it looked tiny in comparison to those wide angle photos I'd seen in the magazines. "I could almost bunnyhop over the whole bowl if I had a straight run to it," I said.

The Camarillo Ramp was another of those legendary places. Built by Doug Randazzo, it had become THE place for super high airs by the time I started working at FREESTYLIN'. Camarillo local Todd Anderson was leading the way for that crew, he'd ridden for SE Racing for a while then became R.L. Osborn's vert rider on the Redline Trick Team. Todd had been getting most of the coverage up until then, but soon Dino Deluca became just as well known in the freestyle press. Much to my dismay, I couldn't find a decent photo of any of those guys on the original Camarillo Ramp to link to. But it was a legend by the time I drove up there with Windy for a photo shoot with Todd.

I've said many times in this blog that when I started riding seriously in Idaho, my biggest dream was to someday be able to just sit and watch a magazine photo shoot. My first trip to the Camarillo Ramp was one of those days I was completely fucking stoked to simply be there. Camarillo is a ways north of L.A., More than an hour's drive from the Wizard offices in Torrance. We drove over these mountains and down the other side is what seemed like a totally rural area compared to the L.A. basin. We were in a good sized valley, but small enough that both valley walls were visible. It was a two lane road with orchards on both sides. There were dirt driveways every so often that disappeared into the lines of trees. As we approached one of these drives, Windy said, "that one," and I pulled into a drive. I drove past some lines of trees and then into an open area. And there it was, the Camarillo Ramp, home of the ten foot air club. It looked like a piece of shit. There was the quarterpipe with the fat PVC pipe height pole with the oversize numbers. At the bottom of the ramp were sheets of plywood forming a runway from the roll-in, maybe sixty or eighty feet away. The whole thing looked like it had been made with wood, nails, and screws from Midnight Lumber Supply. The roll-in was a steep wedge-shaped ramp with a deck big enough to hold several riders on top.

I pulled the Wizard Astro van onto the little dirt parking trail that paralleled the ramp runway. Doug Randazzo, the ramp owner and a amazing rider in his own right, showed up a couple minutes later. We talked to him for a while, waiting for Todd to show up.

Todd Anderson rolled up a few minutes later and Doug took off to go to work or something. So it was just Todd, Windy, and I in this field surrounded by trees. A field that produced more riders who could heft ten foot airs then anywhere else on Earth at the time. I think I sat in back of Todd's pick-up and just watched. He did a few warm-up airs, each six or seven feet or more, then started going through his reportoire of variations as Windy clicked off photos. He did his super-clicked, coaster brake enabled lookbacks, one hand one footers and I can't remember what else.

In those days, every ramp had a slightly different transition, there was no standard, there wasn't even a standard height, and you never really saw a ramp rider at his best until you saw him on his own ramp. On that day, I saw Todd Anderson on his home ramp, busting airs in the ten to eleven foot range, which was as high as anyone could go then. He was doing variations at seven or eight feet, and he was riding a coaster brake.

I don't remember what the shoot was for, I can't remember if he was still on a Redline or if he was on a General. What I do remember is that I was in the background of the photo when it came out, sitting on his truck, tiny and almost unnoticeable. But it was the only pic that showed my face I think.

Over the years, it's fascinated me more and more how some weird, little, obscure place turns into a landmark in the bike and skate worlds. Larry's Donut Bank. Pipeline Skatepark. Del Mar Skatepark. The Tubes in Illinois. Sheep Hills. Push Trails. Golden Gate Park and The Embarcadero in San Francisco. Calabassas Trails in San Jose. Burnside. F.D.R. Love Park. Mission Trails. Sixth and Commonwealth banks in L.A. (That's where Bob Haro is doing that kickturn in the FREESTYLIN' 2008 book). The ones I've listed above are old school spots, and there are dozens today, like the Levitz Gap in Huntington Beach that skaters were hitting a lot before I left. The Camarillo Ramp was one of those early spots where a few guys started pushing each other. A scene formed and they progressed to the point where they were all among the best in the world at riding bikes on ramps. In the process of doing so, the elevated a small field and a bunch of 2x4's and plywood to the position of a landmark. That landmark ramp was eventually torn down, and a second Camarillo Ramp was built, a halfpipe. Northwest ramp rider Josh White joined their scene for a while at the second ramp. I never made it to that ramp, but I'm glad I got to hang out for a couple photo shoots at the original ramp.

Leviathans and Cirque du Soleil

2009-08-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

Since I seem to have opened up a can of worms with my mention of Anthony N's double front flip on the mega-ramp at the X-Games, I'll comment here rather than on the comments section of the last post. If this doesn't make sense, read those comments first.
Darckchilde talks about that crazy "leviathan" mega-ramp. To the best of my knowledge, I think the mega-ramps started with skater Danny Way nearly ten years ago. Bob Burnquist kept it going. Like Radamb said, the mega-ramps are basically the bike and skate version of the aerial skiing jumps that showed up on TV in the '70's. The mega-ramp is part ski jump, part Evel Knievel jump, and part Cirque du Soleil aerial acrobatics, and part BMX or skateboarding. I see mega-ramps as an inevitable tangent of the alternative sports generation that started with little kids watching Evel Knievel, Speed Racer, and Bruce Lee, much to our parents dismay. Most of us remember hitting "big" jumps as a kid that were 6" high, and hitting six foot high "vert" ramps in the early '80's. Those turned to 8' quarterpipes that turned into ten foot tall halfpipes, and now, the leviathan mega-ramps with a 70 foot gap.
The craziest sports I could see on TV when I started riding seriously ('82 or so) was big wave surfing on the Hawaiian North Shore and aerial skiing, with people doing triple back flips with three or four twists. That shit blew me away then. It still does. When I went to the '91 2-Hip King of Dirt at Mission Trails and saw guys hitting Death jump, I knew double back flips would happen some day on a bike. Death Jump at Mission Trails ("Mission Trails KOD from S&M's Feel My Leg Muscles" on You Tube if my link doesn't work) was the original mega-ramp in the bike world, as far as I'm concerned. Mat Hoffman started on his mega-quarterpipe/weedeater phase right after that I believe. Sure, mega-ramps aren't the freestyle we remember, but it was bound to happen.
Another idea I'd like to add here is that ANY sport where you fly through the air ultimately turns into Chinese-type acrobatics, which Cirque du Soleil is one of the best examples of these days. Flips, flip twists, multi-flips and twists, and flatspins; these have been done by humans for at least a couple thousands years, maybe more. Now they're being done over huge gaps with bikes, skateboards, snowboards, and inline skates.
As for what constitutes an "extreme sport," moutaineering (as opposed to rock climbing) and parachuting are the only sports where the magazines that have regular obituary columns as far as I know. Bull riding is definitely extreme and downright stupid if you ask me. Real rally racing is pretty dangerous, but not the X-Games parking lot races. Like many of you, I prefer "alternative sports" to the lame catch-all name of "extreme sports." About 10 or 11 years ago, I wrote a small zine called "Warrior Sports" where I delved into the idea that all these alternative sports that have grown huge in the last 30 years are aspects of the warrior spirit manifesting in the youth of today's modern society. So I prefer the term "Warrior Sports." But that's just me. Well, me and Dennis McCoy, he said he dug that zine.

Double Front Flip? Holy Crap!

2009-08-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

While it's hard to find much creativity in the younger riders, they definitely pull some crazy-ass shit these days. Living in a homeless shelter, I get to see half an hour of TV, Entertainment Tonight, a night, basically the Michael Jackson news. And that's it. I missed the X-Games, Fuel TV and videos. So I plodded through the X-Games highlights here on You Tube to see what I missed. Anthony Napolitan's double front flip on the mega-ramp is just off the hook. And he landed perfectly. Nuts.
Personally, having been to several X-Games as a spectator and brotographer/video guy, my favorite stuff is the prelim riding, which you never see on TV. The X-Games are really just a big "kill yourself for cash" demo these days, but some crazy stunts go down. I was standing next to the ramp when Tony Hawk pulled the 900 ten years ago, and that whole session was off the hook.
I'm old, I'm fat, and don't even have a bike at the moment. But I can still think of tricks, both big and little, that have yet to be done. What will it take to light a creativity fire under today's riders?
Anyhow, more Todd Anderson and the Camarillo ramp stories later this week...

Todd Anderson, part 2 O Captain my Captain

2009-08-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

In the movie Dead Poet's Society, one of the main characters is named Todd Anderson. What's weird is that he looks a lot like the Todd Anderson of the freestyle world. Weird.
My first look at an actual FREESTYLIN' magazine was issue #3, with Todd Anderson doing a one-footed table over a convertible VW bug full of BMX legends. That blew me away as a goofy freestyle rider in Idaho. I couldn't find a clean large shot online just now, but I know Scot Breithaupt (arguably the inventor of BMX racing), Perry Kramer (the P.K. in PK Ripper), and racer Toby Henderson are among those being jumped in that photo. Todd also had the cover of FREESTYLIN' issue #39, the covers of two issues of BMX Plus! (May '87 and July '91), and an issue of Ride. That's a pretty long run as a pro ramp rider. The funny thing is, only one of those shots was of Todd doing a lookback, the trick he was best known for early on. And that lookback isn't super-clicked. Plus, Todd got the cover of the second FREESTYLIN' magazine freestyle book in 1986, as I mentioned before.
I also just found a recent pic of Todd at Andy Shohara's 40th B-day party, pulling decent air out of a bowl. I didn't know he was still riding. Cool. More on Todd next post.

Just for the record...

2009-08-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

Since I went off on the religion tangent yesterday, let me make it clear: I'm neither a "born-again" Christian or a follower of Islam. The last religion I belonged to was Lutheran, so if you need to label me, that'll do. There were several police cars driving by me real slow this morning as I walked up to the bus stop. One mention of Islam and people freak. Or maybe it was because I pondering out loud last night whether I should kick my supervisor's ass this morning. I live in a homeless shelter with 60 guys, about 35 of which are snitches(narcs, rats, whatever you call them). So I figured word would get back to my supervisor. I wanted to see what his reaction would be. Usually he stays in the van at the spot where he picks us up. Today he launched out of the van ready to fight. I just stood there amused. It's so easy to fuck with ignorant people. Guess what, my " insurance still wasn't approved" so I can't work this weekend, the best money making days on that pathetic job. Wow, I didn't see that coming. Smell that? That's sarcasm.
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog...

Todd Anderson

2009-07-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

Todd Anderson hit the ramp at speed as I stood on the deck, next to Windy. I was holding the flash for her as I remember. The buzz of the tires and the shifting clank of the metal ramp were followed by Todd clicking one of his legendary, over-cranked lookbacks, inches away from Windy and I, five or six feet out. He was doing them a bit low so Windy could shoot it straight on, with the back wheel closest to the camera. I'd seen them many times, but Todd's lookbacks never ceased to amaze me. On an average one, he'd get the front wheel twisted around about 270 degrees, and occaisionally another 40 degrees or so. What really blew me away was that Todd rode ramps with a coaster brake. I just couldn't fathom that.
We were shooting the cover for the upcoming FREESTYLIN' book, the second of the two books on freestyle that Wizard Publications put out. R.L.'s show ramp was set up on empty Kashiwa Street. It was early evening, and the neighboring business people had gone home. Andy, Lew, and Gork were either inside working or had headed home. I had wandered out to watch the shoot, and climbed the ramp and held the flash when Windy asked for my help.
She first shot nearly a whole role of film of Todd doing the lookbacks from the ground angle. Then, as the sun dipped on the horizon, she climbed up on the deck and shot photos up close. Todd was the ultimate professional, he just kept hitting the ramp, one perfectly overclicked lookback after another. He'd probably done about forty of them when Windy decided to go inside to get something. For all of the head on shots, she'd been shooting the fill flash straight into Todd's face to light him up. At first it was pretty light out, but the light was fading quickly, and the flashes seemed brighter and brighter. I was seeing spots and I was just standing there holding the flash.
Todd flew out on the deck to take a breather. I asked him, "How can you see the coping to land with that flash in your face every shot?" Todd answered casually, something like, "After the first one I was pretty much blind, I'm just riding by feel." My repect for Todd's aerial abilities soared. Windy came back out, and Todd kept going into full dark, perfect lookback after perfect lookback, flash in the eyes every time. He never complained. Windy asked him if the flash was getting too bright, and he said it was fine. He rode until full dark. He must have done 50 or 60 lookbacks in a row, never sketching out.
That's why Oz, Windy, Andy, and Lew picked Todd Anderson for the cover shot of the second FREESTYLIN' book. I tried to find that cover shot on Google, but couldn't find it. If anyone has it online, let us all know where.

Nonconformist

2009-07-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I never really try to be a nonconformist. I seem to do it by accident. Somebody gives me a suggestion on what to do and I say, "No, I think I'll try it this way." Then they get pissed at me. It was this nonconforming streak at some level that got all of us into BMX freestyle a couple decades ago. While some may have been seeking fame initially (I know I was), we didn't ride as a way to make tons of money or meet women. There was just something about this weird, creative, new, little sport that attracted us.
Although I was really dorky, I've always wanted to do my own thing. I grew up in a pretty restrictive enviroment, so when I moved out on my own and started at FREESTYLIN', I just wanted to do my own thing. It wasn't like I wanted to do anything crazy, it was more the little things I sought. If I wanted to go ride, I'd ride. If I wanted to get a pizza, I'd go get a pizza. But my own nonconformist streak is part of what got me exiled from Wizard Pubs. Andy and Lew hinted that I should start skating and start taking photos at various times. Being a social retard, I didn't really get it. I had started skatboarding ten years earlier, before either of them. I just didn't have a "real" board or try slappies and the emerging street tricks. I had a Pentax camera, but never learned to work a light meter. I wish they would have sat me down and said, "Hey if you get a little better at shooting photos and don't mind shooting skaters, you can start taking some of the workload off of Windy, which is what we need around here. But since they hinted at it in a weird way, I rebelled. I got let go, and as we all know, Spike filled that role.
Over the last few years, I've had a lot of people come out of the blue and "suggest" I take my life in a certain direction. I didn't know if they were undercover cops or just freaks, although many times it seemed like an organized effort. Sometimes they seemed like undercover cops, sometimes just random people who for some reason seemed REALLY adamant about me pursuing certain interests and giving up others. Since I've been in North Carolina, I've learned that one or more members of my family were contacting people in California in an attempt to force me to leave California and move closer to my family, and ultimately become an indentured servant to my parents. Unfortunately, it ultimately worked, sort of. It seems those one or more family members are still at it, now contacting those I've been trying to get a job from, as well as staff members at the shelter I'm staying at. The message is clear this time, multiple people daily are telling me that "if I find Jesus" then" my life will start working out". The unspoken threat in that statement is that if I don't conform to their wishes, I will not be able to get even the lamest job, like the one I spoke of in the last post.
Heh,heh,heh. I'm listening to The Descendents on You Tube right now, and "My Day Will Come" just started. Classic.
I've spent many years of my life studying religion, spirituality, and philosophy, among other things. Along with that, I've read the New Testament of the Bible, start to finish, several times. I've read a sizeable chunk of the Old Testament. Proverbs 25:24 is a favorite of mine. I've studied a lot of Joseph Campbell's work on religions and mythology from around the world, especially The Power of Myth. Plus, I believe in metaphors and I believe in dinosaurs, so I just don't buy the whole born-again, evangelical thing. I think Jesus was a great guy. If he was around today, I'd play hackey-sack with him. If the born-again thing works for you, that's fine. But leave me out of it.
I grew up Lutheran, but lately I've taken to calling myself a "Born Again Taoist" because no one in Winston-Salem knows how to counter that. I'm just trying to keep out of religious arguments these days.
I will keep nonconforming until the Christians kill me. Or until I get back on my feet on my own terms, which I'd prefer.
Now all of you can either go watch the movie Billyjack or go pray for my soul.

"Conform or be cast out" - Rush

All Time Low

2009-07-31T08:12:00.000-07:00

Warning, this is another non-FREESTYLIN' post, so either skip it or start bitching.

Yesterday I started new job, a job I'd been trying to get since I came to Winston-Salem, 7 or 8 weeks ago. It's a job standing on a corner selling newspapers. It's basically legal panhandling, except you make half as much money. I hopped in the van yesterday, and signed an 8 or9 page contract that included a life insurance card... seriously. I was the last one dropped off, at a corner no one else wants to work because it's not busy enough. I got rid of 23 of the 30 papers they gave me, making 50 cents for each one, plus tips. I gave three or four away, got some tips, and spent about $4 on food. All in all I made $7 or $8 for my seven hours working. Then I went back to the homeless shelter where everyone asked me how it felt to "be a working man again."
It feels fuckin' wonderful guys, now please shoot me... heh,heh,heh.
When I got picked up after working yesterday, the first thing the guy asked was, "Have you made up with your parents yet?" I've talked to this guy once, maybe twice. I don't remember mentioning my parents to him. Then he talked, well, he always kind of shouts, about this hot new multi-level marketing company he just joined, sprinkling in thoughts about Jesus and how George W. Bush was framed from time to time. No wonder all the other newspaper sellers think he's a dick. I mentioned that everyone else thinks he's a dick because I'm pretty sure he'll read this at some point.
Today, rather than put me on the slow corner again, he dropped me off downtown with 30 papers. Now I HAVE to pay for 25 papers, 25 cents each, although the nine page contract didn't specify a certain number had to be bought. So maybe somebody's skimming a little. I don't really care. But downtown, the car traffic doesn't sit still long enough to sell to cars, which is what us paper sellers do. I was supposed to sit on the corner and sell papers to people walking by in Winston-Salem's little partially redeveloped downtown district.
I immediately sold a paper to a construction guy who was obviously a friend of someone at the paper, because he walked off the job as I stumbled up and said, "Hey, are you selling newspapers?" As an intelligent and fairly creative guy, I'm being actively recruited by the evangelical Christian nutjobs and by Islamic guys. Seriously. The way this works is that if you start going to church, they use their network of parishoners to find you a good paying job and also use former homeless people as church P.R. pawns. "Bob was homeless, but then he found the Lord, and look at him now!" That kind of thing.
So after that first guy bought a paper, I couldn't sell another one. There weren't many people around, and without an official newspaper seller vest, I just looked like some bum hustling papers. And hustlers scare the yuppies. And the yuppies are the people I was supposed to sell to.
So I took my backpack full of laundry I need to do, and my 29 newspapers, and I walked to the bus station, and I took a bus to a corner where I knew I could sell some papers. I assume that's when the construction guy called his fellow parishoner and said I wasn't on my corner. I sold a few papers, enough to cover most of the $6.25 I owe them, I had breakfast, then I took a bus back downtown. I took the rest of MY 25 papers, the ones I have to pay for, and I passed them out for free. Then I went back to my corner. I tried to sell the remaining five, but it wasn't happening. Then the boss of the day drove by and asked how it was going. I told him I couldn't sell many, but I gave a bunch away. That didn't go over too well. He called his boss, and they decided that "my insurance form hadn't been approved yet." The day boss apologized and said he "had to take me off the corner."
Remember kids, lame ass jobs can be art.
Then he said what would really help my life is if I found Jesus. Seriously, he said that. Hey man, I DID find Jesus. He was passed out behind the couch, and guess what... he DID have the remote. So now I have to go out tomorrow morning at 6am and see if I can work. The religious extortion here in NC is ridiculous.
Ok, I'll try to do a post about Todd Anderson later today...

Subliminal Message

2009-07-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

North Carolina still sucks. How much does it suck? If North Carolina was a hooker it could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch through a 100 foot garden hose.

Fred Blood

2009-07-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

One of the guys that came by FREESTYLIN' a bunch while I was there was the weird but entertaining Fred Blood. Fred was a pro vert rollerskater when there was no money to be made skating in the early '80's. So he became a BMX freestyler. He couldn't really ride that well, and went directly from novice class to pro because he'd rather get last in pro than the novice class. He was a shameless and effective self-promoter that somehow followed R.L. Osborn and got a contract with General bikes, even scoring a pro model. He named the Decade, a trick that took him ten days to learn. Unfortunately Woody Itson had already got a sequence in BMX Plus calling the trick the Walkaround. But Fred was in FREESTYLIN' and his name stuck. He tried for years to wire a flatland trick he called the Chocolate Swirl, or was it the Strawberry Swirl. Anyhow, he would ride at a slow speed, jump straight up and try to do a 360 with his body, then land back on the pedals. Basically, it was a rolling body varial. Rider Jay Bickel said Fred actually pulled it a couple times, but I never saw it. If you Google photo Fred, there are some pics, including the pathetic "My Stuff" ad. He was fun to hang around with, I'll give him that.

T-shirt slogan of the day

2009-07-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

I thought up a T-shirt/sticker slogan yesterday and sold T-shirt rights for a bottle of Diet Coke this morning. Yes, I'm that pathetic, I can't afford to make T-shirts. The idea was:

You had me at
"Fuck Off"

I made some cheap stickers with these slogans recently, five of the ideas I thought up:

Why is my P.O. always P.O.'d at me?

We don't have a town drunk, we all take turns ('80's T-shirt)

Eat a live toad every morning and nothing worse will happen all day ('80's bumper sticker)

The voices in my head are texting me (Josh H.)

I know Jesus loves me, but is he hiring?

If brains were cell phone mintues, you'd be calling collect

I'm not crazy, and if you say I am one more time
I'll send my invisible ninja leprechauns after you

If you don't think you can make a difference in the world
fart in a crowded elevator and see what happens

Winkle and Bru

2009-07-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of people that would come by the Wizard Pubs warehouse on a regular basis. R.L. had his office there, so he was around every day or two if he wasn't traveling. Eddie Fiola came by to ride the ramp or see Windy, Steve Giberson came by when Oz wasn't around, McGoo came by often, as did Fred Blood.
R.L. had a couple guys who worked for him, his roadies basically, so they also came by the warehouse regularly. They were known by the knicknames Winkle and Bru, I can't remember what their real names were. If R.L.'s ramp or trailer needed repairs, or they were getting ready for a roadtrip, they'd set up outside and do the work. R.L. didn't keep the rig at Wizard, but brought it there to work on or get loaded up for trips. I don't remember Winkle and Bru freestyling, I'm not sure where they came from, but they were part of the Wizard family. Most of my interaction with them was sitting around hearing road trip stories at lunch or after work. The craziest one I remember was that Winkle had the undisputed record for the longest drive by a single person in the BMX freestyle touring world. They hit the road in Torrance, California for a BMX Action Trick Team Show in Tennessee. Winkle drove the dually and trailer straight through, 52 hours I think it was, to Tennessee. They got there a day early, got rooms, and Winkle hit the bed and slept for two days straight, sleeping through the show. R.L., Bru and everyone else swore to the story, and Winkle said he lost track of the Cokes he drank and NoDoz he took to stay awake, and on the road that long.
I don't remember much else about them, but if you go back a few posts, you'll see that Winkle and Bru are riding in Lew's car, The Beast, the photo of which is in the FREESTYLIN' book put out last year.

Subliminal message

2009-07-23T06:56:00.000-07:00

You Tube clip of the day "Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car"

More popularity crap...

2009-07-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm bored. That's why I do a blog. Yes, as I said, this Google popularity thing is very unscientific. But I'm going off on a tangent, and I find it interesting. First, here's some ridiculously famous people and how many results came up on Google.

Michael Jackson- 240,000,000
Jesus- 200,000,000
Barack Obama- 83,400,000
Madonna- 78,600,000
Paris Hilton- 64,600,000
Jonas Brothers- 54,800,000
50 Cent- 54,100,000
Miley Cyrus- 49,900,000
Elvis- 48,700,000
George W. Bush- 46,100,000

A lot of people think the words "rich" and "famous" go together, so here's the five richest guys in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

Bill Gates ($40 billion)- 25,200,000
Warren Buffet ($37 billion)- 5,550,000
Carlos Slim Helu ($35 billion)- 200,000
Larry Ellison ($22.5 billion)- 977,000
Ingvar Kamprad ($22 billion)- 643,000

Mainstream Athletes:

Michael Jordan- 48,800,000
Tiger Woods- 30,500,000
David Beckham- 20,000,000
Jeff Gordon- 16,400,000
Kobe Bryant- 15,600,000
Paul Rodriguez- 15,300,000
Tony Hawk- 10,800,000
Lebron James- 8,190,000
Mark Gonzales- 7,030,000
Serena Williams- 6,490,000
Dale Earnhardt, Jr.- 5,440,000
Maria Sharapova- 5,370,000
Richard Petty- 1,510,000

Cool dead people:

Bruce Lee- 32,400,000
Evel Knievel- 1,190,000
George Carlin- 7,650,000
Johnny Cash- 27,500,000
Kurt Cobain- 4,070,000

Current BMXers:

Rob Darden- 3,840,000
Scotty Crammer- 2,700,000
Garrett Reynolds- 2,600,000
Morgan Wade- 700,000
Ben Snowden- 635,000
Ryan Nyquist- 68,900
Daniel Dhers- 48,400
Ryan Guettler- 41,500

Old and Mid School BMXers:

Dave Voelker- 11,400,000
Brian Foster- 8,030,000
Eddie Roman- 7,660,000
Brian Blyther- 7,380,000
Chris Moeller- 5,530,000
Shaun Butler- 2,270,000
R.L. Osborn- 2,260,000
Mike Dominguez- 1,740,000
Mat Hoffman- 1,730,000
Cory Martinez- 1,610,000
Josh Stricker- 1,360,000
Dennis McCoy- 504,000
Cory Nastazio- 161,000
Dave Mirra- 103,000
Eddie Fiola- 58,100
Woody Itson- 27,100
Martin Aparijo- 8,260

Skateboarders:

Chris Cole- 17,200,00
Paul Rodriguez- 15,300,000
Tony Hawk- 10,800,000
Mark Gonzales- 7,030,000
Bam Margera- 1,660,000
Ed Templeton- 1,470,000
Don Vito- 1,270,000
Rob Dyrdek- 1,230,000
Ryan Sheckler- 1,200,000
Rodney Mullen- 671,000
Bob Burnquist- 207,000
Geoff Rowley- 148,000

Snowboarders:

Tom Sims- 79,700,000
Craig Kelly- 16,700,000
Damian Sanders- 6,930,000
Terry Kidwell- 783,000
Kevin Pearce- 419,000
Terje Haakonsen- 117,000

Motocross guys:

Robbie Madison- 1,600,000
Travis Pastrana- 772,000
Hal Strauss- 607,000
Jeremy McGrath- 384,000
Mike Metzger- 157,000
Seth Enslow- 24,500
Tommy Clowers- 24,500

Michael Jackson is More Popular than Jesus

2009-07-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

I was talking with one of the guys from the homeless shelter Sunday, and he flipped out when I said that Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson were on about the same level of fame in my world. As a black man from the South, he saw Farrah as only a minor star from thirty years ago. This led to a long discussion over how different people are famous depending on your background and interests. He told me, "this isn't your little world, this is the REAL world." Now he's never been out of the Carolinas, and I've lived in six states now, and met dozens of people from around the world. Yes, Michael Jackson was a lot more famous than I thought he was, but it was that poster of Farrah in the swimsuit that got a lot of young guys through the 70's.
I started wondering how some of the alternative sports icons would hold up to mainstream athletes, musicians, and other famous people. So yesterday (July 20, 2009), I looked up a bunch of people by typing their names into Google in all lowercase letters, and wrote down how many results came up. Here's some of what I found, according to Google results.

Michael Jackson is more popular than Jesus

Tony Hawk is more popular than either Shaq or Oprah

Miley Cyrus is more popular than Michael Jordan

Bruce Lee is more popular than Buddha

Barack Obama is more popular than Madonna

Johnny Cash is more popular than Jon Stewart

Don Vito is more popular than Evel Knievel

Kurt Cobain is more popular than Janis Joplin

Chris Moeller is more popular than Jim Morrison

Duane Peters is more popular than Christian Hosoi

Matt Hoffman (with 2 "t's") is more popular than Mat Hoffman (with 1 "t")

Dennis McCoy is more popular than Daniel Dhers

Andy Jenkins is more popular than Spike Jonze

I'm more popular than Jeff Emig (how'd that happen?)

Here's the results on those, the name is followed by the number of Google results that came up.

Michael Jackson- 240,000,000
Jesus- 200,000,000
Tony Hawk- 10,800,000
Shaq- 5,100,000
Oprah- 8,800,000
Miley Cyrus- 49,900,000
Michael Jordan- 48,800,000
Bruce Lee- 32,400,000
Buddha- 28,600,000
Barack Obama- 83,800,000
Madonna- 78,600,000
Johnny Cash- 27,500,000
Jon Stewart- 20,900,000
Don Vito- 1,270,000
Evel Knievel- 1,190,000
Kurt Cobain- 4,070,000
Janis Joplin- 3,950,000
Chris Moeller- 5,620,000
Jim Morrison- 4,960,000
Duane Peters- 209,000
Christian Hosoi- 103,000
Matt Hoffman- 2,180,000
Mat Hoffman- 1,660,000
Dennis McCoy- 498,000
Daniel Dhers- 409,000
Andy Jenkins- 773,000
Spike Jonze- 754,000
Me (Steve Emig)- 308,000
Jeff Emig- 23,4000
but Matt Emig the martial arts guy beats us both with 427,000

I'll be back with more of my very unscientific survey next post: alternative sports stars versus mainstream sports stars and porn stars. Josh Hisaw, the pizza cook/dish bitch that helped me think up names to Google has 110,000 results for his name, more than skateboarding legend Christian Hosoi.

Krys Dauchy

2009-07-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

If you were a freestyler in the mid-'80s, you can already picture that iconic photo of Krys Dauchy doing a stomach stand with her legs bent over backwards and her feet touching her head. She told me she thinks that pic first appeared in the reader's photos in March '86. In a sport full of teen and 20-ish guys with raging hormones came this young woman from Ohio with pixie-like cuteness, a spine seemingly made of rubber, and much to the surprise of many guys, riding skills. She competed with the guys, using her gymnastics background to pull backwards gut levers, backwards bar rides, and several other tricks many of us couldn't do. But it was the picture of her taking the balancing stomach stand to a new level that filled the mail bags during my stint at FREESTYLIN'. About two thirds of our mail then was letters from guys either saying they wanted to go out with Krys, or more graphically describing what they'd like to do with her. I opened a lot of those letters, but seriously don't remember the details. Lew or I would open them and usually just glance at the contents, "another Krys letter." Most of them were just stuff like, "How can I meet Krys?" kind of stuff.

There's just something about really flexible women that get guys' imaginations going. Gymnasts, dancers, contortionists... most every guy fantasizes about them at some point. Krys became the"token Barbie doll" of '80's freestyle, as she once described it. She not only showed that a woman could hang while riding with the guys, she worked for Ohio AFA guy Randy Loop, taught kids to ride at Woodward, was sponsored by GT. She also dated prominent eastern riders Mark Roldan and Joe Gruttola.
The woman we remember as Krys is now a single mom in Ohio and has changed her name to China. She was also was one of the first of the old school riders to read my blog, and encouraged me to keep writing one more than one occasion when I was fed up with this blog. Thanks China.
She's got a bunch of photos and some stories from BITD on her site, chinakrysdarrington.com . Check it out.

Collectors

2009-07-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

I just got an email from a guy named Simon who said he's putting a copy of issue number one of FREESTYLIN' on Ebay UK today. Check it out if you're collecting them.

Speaking of beasts...

2009-07-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

In non- FREESTYLIN' news, the police here in Winston-Salem shot and killed a black bear a couple days ago. They shot it about a mile and a half from where I camped out in the woods during a thunderstorm my first night here. According to the news stories, there's an estimated 11,000 bears in North Carolina. That doesn't include all the fat, burly, gay guys, which are also known as "bears." How do I know things like that? I used to work as a porn store clerk years ago, where I learned a lot of things I didn't really want to know. And I was was Chris Moeller's roommate for years, he's actually the one who told me what a "bear"was. I didn't ask where he learned that. Just for the record, my knickname "The White Bear" was tacked on me a decade earlier and has nothing to do with the gay "bears" or the North Carolina bears roaming Winston-Salem. Hey, this city's named after not one, but two, cigarette brands. If they want to get the bears out of town, just teach 'em to smoke. Or tell them to go find a job, that would get them to leave, too.
We finally got some late night craziness in the homeless shelter I'm staying at. A couple guys were whispering loudly last night and woke a few of us up. Another guy told them to quiet down, as we were all trying to sleep. The two guys talking could have gone down to the smoking room and continued their coversation. But no, the one guy went off on the guy who asked him to be quiet. Within seconds, he was yelling and threatening a couple guys. Wisely, the second guy who'd been talking kept quiet. To put this in perspective, this happened in a room where about 60 guys were sleeping, almost all of them either ex-cons or Vietnam vets. I had the good fortune to be laying in a bed in between the two parties arguing, a front row seat, as it were. It was one of those situations that could have exploded into craziness real quick. I was just laying there thinking, "You've got to be kidding me..." The guy who started yelling over-reacted so much I just couldn't believe it.
The cool thing about ex-cons is that they've done their time, and they really don't want to do more, especially for something stupid. A cop showed up and the guy who over-reacted got another bed for the night, in jail.
The yelling woke everyone up, except the one guy who got some really good meds from the VA yesterday, he slept through the whole thing. Just another day in the life of a Has Been BMX industry guy turned homeless blogger...

Riders on The Beast

2009-07-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

On pages 13 and 14 of the FREESTYLIN' book is a panning shot of Lew's car, The Beast, loaded down with Wizard Pubs locals and a couple racers. They, as best as I can tell, are the following people: Eddie Fiola as a hood ornament, Andy Jenkins leaning out with fist held high, Craig Grasso leaning forward with both hands up and gloves on, Lew driving, R.L. Osborn has sunglasses on and his left fist high, unknown person sitting in back window with face covered, Winkle, one of R.L.'s roadies, has dark hair and is giving a chaka, Stu Thomsen has blond hair and his face covered by arms, Tommy Brackens is the black dude in the GT shirt, McGoo is hugging Tommy and holding something big up in the air, it might be Ceppie Maes below McGoo, but I'm not sure, Bru, R.L.'s other roadie has sunglasses and his mouth open, and Gork, BMX Action editor is on the back end of the car. If I got any of those wrong, let me know.

FREESTYLIN' covers

2009-07-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

I was looking through all the FREESTYLIN' magazine covers in the FREESTYLIN' book, a couple days ago. I was looking something up for this blog. I got the idea to go through and come up with a few statistics about the cover photos on FREESTYLIN'. Yeah... I have way too much time on my hands....

There were 53 issues of FREESTYLIN' magazine.

First Cover shot: Ron Wilkerson (at Golden Gate Park, I believe) Mike Dominguez was on the mock up of the first cover used to promote FREESTYLIN' in BMX Action

Most covers: Four each for Eddie Fiola and Brian Blyther

Three each for R.L. Osborn, Martin Aparijo, and Josh White

Two each for Ron Wilkerson, Todd Anderson, Mike Dominguez, Rick Moliterno, Craig Grasso, Dave Voelker, Gary Pollak, Chris Lashua, and Kevin Jones

Most individual photos on the cover: Skater Rob Maggi with a five shot sequence, the only sequence to ever appear on the cover.

Biggest surprise when I did this research: Mat(t) Hoffman only got one cover on the magazine, but he did get the cover of the 2008 book. I spell his name Mat(t) because it was spelled Matt, with two "t's" back then, but it's officially Mat now. Got that?

Total photos on cover: Men- 72

Women- 0

Despite her massive popularity and skills, Krys Dauchy never got a cover shot.

Riders featured on cover were primarily:

Flatlanders- 13

Vert Riders- 21

Street Riders- 4

Only non-freestyling biker on cover: Chris Moeller. Although his jumping skills made him one hell of a street rider, Chris is best known as a dirt jumper and has always considered himself to be a racer.

Youngest rider on cover: Scott Freeman, age 13, I think, issue #6

Oldest rider on cover: R.L. Osborn, age 25 or 26, I think, issue #50, this one is an educated guess.

Actual photos on covers:
Vert- 22
Flatland- 24
Skateboarding- 11
Street riding- 6
Jumping- 1
Wedge ramp- 1
Posing- 1

FREESTYLIN' magazine staff efforts on cover:
Andy Jenkins- Words by Andy next to small photo of Josh White on issue #15, Andy's mug (I think) xeroxed on tiny TV on issue #17, Andy's artwork on his skateboard was the back ground on issue #23
Mark "Lew" Lewman- His words took most of the cover on issue #24, There's a photo of him doing a backside slappy on issue # 30
Spike Jonze- A photo of his feet is the background for issue # 45

Artwork on cover- Andy's board with his work on issue #23, graffiti provided a backdrop for the cover of issue #28

Riders featured by area:
Southern California- 19
NorCal- 4
East coast area- 6
Midwest- 3
Oklahoma and Texas- 2
San Diego, California- 4
York, Pennsylvania- 3

Riders who appeared on cover once: Rich Sigur, Woody Itson, Hugo Gonzales, Scott Freeman, Nathan Bryan, Dave Vanderspek, Tony Adams, Ceppie Maes, Pete Augustin, Jason Parkes, Mat Hoffman, Dennis McCoy, Pete Kearney, Marty Scheslinger, Mark Eaton, Nathan Shimizu, Terry Jenkins, Chris Moeller, Eddie Roman, Kevin Slaten, Joe Johnson, Ruben Castillo.

Skateboarders who appeared on cover: -Jason Jesse, Bob Schmelzer, Jeff Kendall, Mark "Gator" Rogowski, Eddie Reategui, Rodney Mullen, Tim Tillman, Rob Maggi, Don Brown, Chris Miller, Lew, Tony Hawk.

Longest span between cover shots: Ron Wilkerson, issue # 1 and issue # 46

There wereno conspiracies on cover shots, the main factor when I worked there was the quality of the photo and how it would work as acover. When I started looking at all the covers, I expected them to be mostly vert shots, but there were quite a few of flatland, nearly the same amount. The ad sales women always wanted the big advertisers on the cover, because that made their job easier, I imagine. But that was never the main factor. I did notice that Schwinn rider Jason Parkes appeared on the cover, in a studio shot, wearing a Schwinn jersey, just two issues after my first article where Schwinn threatened to pull all their advertising. I'm pretty sure that was done to appease them since they were so pissed. That kind of thing happens. When people got down on the mag for not covering the East Coast, there was a cover or two of Eastern riders. But the decisions were made month to month, it wasn't like we had a meeting to plan an issue and said, "OK, Josh White needs to be on this cover. Minor politics aside, the power of the photos put them on the cover. The actual covers were designed by Janice Jenkins, the art director, and Andy when I was there. Later on Jeff Tremaine took over Janice's job.
I think my favorite cover was the one with the tiny photo of Josh White, July 1986. But I'm kind of biased because that issue had my first article and the first review of my zine. Todd Anderson jumping the car full of SE guys is another great one. Style-wise, the one with Andy's board as the background looked really cool.
What were your favorites? Weigh in and let me know.

The 2008 FREESTYLIN' Book

2009-07-08T11:53:00.000-07:00

This blog was initially inpired by the FREESTYLIN' book, Generation F, that Andy Jenkins, Mark "Lew" Lewman, Spike Jonze, and NIKE put out in 2008.

The day I met the Lord...

2009-07-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

Nuh... nuh, nuh, nuh... nuh, nuh,nuh... dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee. That guitar riff didn't have much meaning for me when Andy told me to go out front and help Brian Scura's ramp rider set up the ramp. It was late afternoon, and there were few cars on Kashiwa street. But there was a van with a weird looking flatbed trailer carrying a ramp. Setting up the standard quarterpipe took a little bit of doing in 1986... usually. I found a young guy with scraggly blond hair by the ramp. He introduced himself as Dave Voelker. I asked what I could do to help set up the ramp, because he was doing a photo shoot with Windy. He said he didn't really need help, so we talked as I watched him unload and set up the most ingenius quarterpipe I'd ever seen. But that made sense, Brian Scura, the mad scientist of the BMX world, had designed and built the ramp and trailer. With the help of a two jacks, rollers, and rails, and the specially designed trailer, Dave could set up the ramp by himself in less than ten minutes. I pretended to help, mostly because I didn't have much to do inside, and I wanted to see this guy ride. I'd heard a couple people talk about Scura's new ramp rider, this Dave kid from San Diego. I really didn't expect much from him, because as brilliant as Brian Scura was, he made much of his living doing school shows, and he was a goofball. So how could his ramp rider be?

My question was answered as Dave got the ramp squared up on the street in front of the Wizard office, and took a couple warm-up airs. I watched this unknown guy from San Diego bust his warm-up airs in the six or seven foot range. That was high for anyone back then. Then he did this crazy footplant under coping where his body was nearly upside down. I think I screamed, because I thought he slipped and was going to land on his head and brake his neck. Dave just laughed at my reaction, then came back to adjust the ramp a little. We talked for a minute or two, and he started warming up again, and Windy came out to shoot the pics. After what I'd seen of Dave riding, I wanted to stay and watch the whole shoot, but it was still working hours, and Windy said she had it handled, so I went back inside. I tried to explain to Andy and Lew how crazy Dave's footplants were. Like me, they didn't expect much out of Scura's school show ramp rider, and they couldn't imagine that a footplant could look insane. But five o'clock came and we all headed out to see the last few airs of the shoot. After watching those, we all knew this Dave Voelker guy would be one to watch from then on. Not only that, he would ingrain ACDC's "Back in Black" into the minds of every '80's freestyler by riding to it at every contest for years. Dave went on to be knicknamed "Lord Voelker" in a GT ad he didn't like, but with his always exciting riding, the name stuck. He pushed quaterpipe riding, did a lot of the craziest early street riding, and finally got landings down enough to rip on halfpipes. He even made flatland look exciting with his fast and furious bunnyhop 360's, one right after another. A couple years ago, somebody was talking about the best all-around riders of the early days of freestyle. I was a bit surprised when Voelker was the first name to pop into my head. I thought it would be Dennis McCoy or maybe Jay Miron, or R.L. Osborn or Eddie Fiola of the earlier days. But the more I thought about it, Dave Voelker really was one of the best all around riders BMX freestyle has ever seen.
One of Dave's classsic crazy footplants is on page 74 of the FREESTYLIN' book, and Dave appeared on two covers of FREESTYLIN', the July '87 issue and the June '89 issue. On both covers he's doing lookdowns. Dave was a really down to Earth guy when I met him that afternoon in 1986, and he always has been ever since.

Pancakes and Bones 2

2009-07-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

Working at Wizard Publications was a great experience, but it was still a job. Most of the time at the magazine I was actually pretty bored. My main workload, proofreading the mags, came at deadline time, and I didn't have a lot to do the rest of the time. As good as the job was, I looked forward to the weekends, that was my time. My Saturday and Sunday morning ritual took shape pretty quickly. I would get up, hit the bathroom, then fix a huge plate of pancakes, usually about twelve, thick, 4" pancakes, and then put in the Bones Brigade II video, Future Primitive. As I recall, I was the first one up usually, and Lew or maybe Gork would wander out while I was eating and watching the Bones II video. Then I'd jump on my bike and go off on an all day solo mission. The whole street riding idea was still in its infancy, influenced largely by Andy and Lew who were influenced by the skateboard scene. Inspired by that opening segment of Future Primitive with Tommy Guerrero, I'd just wander the streets of Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and the surrounding areas, looking for stuff to ride. I was never a great rider, but I've found a lot of great spots on my solo missions. One of those Saturdays I discovered the Jinx Bank, which I wrote about a while back. Occasionally I'd ride with Lew or Craig Grasso or Chris Day a while, but I loved going off riding by myself. After a while, any direction I headed, I had a series of spots I'd hit. I'd hit the Jinx Bank, Larry's Donut Bank, the Fatburger Banks, the Wall ramp, the church bank, jump curb jumps, and bomb down 190th Street Hill. I rode up to Venice Beach two or three times, which was a ten mile ride or so. There's always something happening there.
Ultimately, I'd head back towards the Redondo Beach Pier by mid afternoon and get a couple slices of pizza. Then I'd wander to The Spot, and usually find Lew or Chris Day there, and ride flatland a while. Janice Jenkins, Andy's sister and FREESTYLIN's art director, would ride by on her road bike and hang out sometimes on the weekends. We'd ride for the people passing by or just sit and watch the people sometimes. I'd head back to the apartment and chill for a while, then go out and session The Spot more at night. Riding was life then. Those were pretty good times. Except I was still trying to meet the women walking by, trying to impress them by doing tricks, and it just didn't work then, especially for me. Usually they'd say something like "Grow up and get a real bike." Not too many women wanted to be seen with BMXers then. Ah, life in the '80's.
One Saturday, I took my camera and shot photos of street spots. I took pics of curb jumps, banks, and stuff like that. This was before wall rides, ledge grinds, and handrails, so jumps and banks were our spots then. I had this idea of doing an article about street riding and the stuff you saw out street riding. The spots, the weird people, street performers, the whole scene. My article idea didn't fly, but all my street photos gave Gork an idea, and he wound up doing an article for BMX Action about street obstacles or something. I thought that was funny, because I had envisioned laying out this cool article for FREESTYLIN', and they didn't like my idea, so Gork does something with the idea in BMX Action. I think he even used a poem I wrote called "The Session," which I never kept a copy of.
I began wandering the streets on my bike in Boise, Idaho, then with Curb dogs and Golden Gate Park crowd in San Francisco, and then in Southern California. Now, decades later, I'm still wandering the streets, living on them at times. Freestyle drew me into the culture of the streets, and I'm still exploring that world. The funny thing is, as a kid I dreamed of being a hunting and fishing guide or something. I always dreamed of living in the wilderness, but my life wound up going in the opposite direction. Funny how life works, isn't it?

Carolina Hootenanny

2009-07-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

There's punkers in North Carolina, whaddaya know. As an umemployed bum here in Winston-Salem, I wander past the bus station a few times in the course of every day. For the 4th of July weekend they had the Heavy Rebel Weekender, a rockabilly/psychobilly/honkytonk, event right across the street. I used to work the Hootenanny in my taxi every year in Orange County, CA, and this was the NC equivalent. There were about 70 bands, a custom car show, mud wrestling, burlesque dancers, a stand-up bass contest, and a 'nanner puddin' eatin' contest. I didn't make it inside, but lots was going on outside on Trade street, Winston-Salem's little art community. Hot rods, flat black lowered cars and trucks, classic lead sleds, a customized VW bug with a kickstand, and some motorcycles. There were also lots of hot rockabilly women to keeps things interesting. It was a three day event, and there are probably pics by now on the Heavy Rebel Weekender website. I pulled up the Koffin Kats, one of the headlining bands, on You Tube, and there's lots of videos. If you like psychobilly, check 'em out.
Yes, this has nothing to with FREESTYLIN', I'll get back to that tomorrow.

Why was there skateboarding in FREESTYLIN' magazine?

2009-07-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

This is the post I started yesterday, but went off on the ten year cycle tangent. The reason there was skateboarding coverage in FREESTYLIN' was because it brought in more money. I was told that. But judging by the comments on previous posts, the money wasn't coming from where you guys thought it was. We didn't cover skateboarding so hardcore skateboarders would pick up the magazine. I'm sure some kids would pick it up because of the skaters on the cover. But the money the skateboarding coverage brought in was advertising money. If you go through those issues with skaters on the cover, you'll find skateboard company ads in them.
From my point of view, I was bummed any time pages were wasted on non-freestyle stuff. Those stupid fashion articles they did in early issues of FREESTYLIN' drove me nuts. I just thought there were so many riders who could have been featured on those pages. I didn't mind the music pieces, they were usually only a page. When it came to skateboarding, I had mixed feelings. I liked going on the shoots, and I was amazed by what skateboarders could do. But I would have rather seen bikers on most of those pages. I'm glad I went on the Rodney Mullen shoot and the one with Don Brown and Henry Candioti, all featured in the December '86 issue. But it was a BMX freestyle magazine, and every page devoted to skating or something else meant a deserving rider wouldn't get their due coverage.
I wasn't in on the decision making behind including skateboarding, that was Oz's decision. But Oz didn't know skating, and Andy did. So when Oz decided to include skateboarding, Andy got to pick some of those skaters featured, the rest were picked by advertising dollars I think. That's how Rob Maggi got a photo shoot, I went on that one, too. But Andy was able to give coverage to Spidey Demontrond, Bob Schmelzer, and even Rodney Mullen, who was undercovered then in the skate media then because he was a freestyle skater. So I think it was pretty cool, all in all. at a time when skaters were taught to hate bikers on priciple, FREESTYLIN' bridged the gap between two weird sports that used the same obstacles, and I think that was a good thing ultimately, althought they over did it in some issues.

The Ten Year Cycles in Action Sports

2009-07-02T07:28:00.000-07:00

I'm going to stay on the skateboarding in FREESTYLIN' idea for a while, but I'll preface it with this idea.
First, let me explain my belief that there are business cycles of a roughly ten year duration in the alternative sports. It seems to go like this. In the beginning of a decade, the sport is small, composed largely of hardcore participants, and the companies involved in the sport are companies focused on that sport. The sport grows as the companies and participants promote it. Around mid-decade, the sport attracts attention of larger, mainstream companies in semi-related or unrelated industries. These companies pour money into the sport, latching on to the cool factor or hipness of this "edgy" sport to hit the young demographics. These mainstream companies offer absurdly high dollar contracts to top riders, put lots of lame-ass ads in magazines, sponsor events, and, perhaps most importantly, they feature riders from the sport in TV ads seen by tens or hundreds of millions of people. All this hype attracts a tidal wave of new riders into the sport. Some come because they like the sport, most come because they think they can get good and make bank and get laid by jumping on the bandwaggon. After two or three years of pumping money into the sport, the mainstream companies find another hot, new trend to latch on to, and they pull their interest, their money, and their media power out of the sport and the sport "dies."
But the sport doesn't die. Once again the salaries are lower, the sponsorships harder to get, the hardcore magazines are thinner, it's down to the hardcore enthusiasts. This is when the new companies, rider or skater owned companies, get started. New products born of NEED are created. New styles of riding or skating emerge, and sets up the cycle for the next wave. This lull seems to happen around the end and beginning of the decades. I don't know why, but this cycle seems to peak mid-decade consistently, so far. It's my belief that the influx of money and promotion from large, outside companies is a large factor in causing these cycles. I think the cycles would happen anyway, but the surge of outside the industry money makes them bigger.
Another important aspect of these sport/business cycles is that the size of the sport grows each cycle. When the sport "dies," it doesn't go back to the size it was ten years before, it starts at a higher level. So freestyle as we know it turned into a "thing", as opposed to just some guys doing tricks, around 1980. It grew from '80 to '84, and magazines appeared, along with BMX (racing) companies sponsoring freestyle teams, and organized (sort of) contests. With a bit of TV exposure, a few mainstream companies put some money into the sport, like Mountain Dew, Socko (sports drink), Levi's, and Addidas. The sport grew from '85-89, and attracted a lot of new riders. Then, at the Long Beach trade show in early '89, suddenly all the bigger bike companies were saying, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are where the money's at now." I actually heard that sentence several times at the trade show. Boom, BMX freestyle "died." But during those down years in the early '90's, it reformed, with rider-owned companies leading the charge, and a new wave was born.
Skateboarding is in it's fifth decade of these cycles, BMX racing in it's fourth, BMX freestyle in its third. And about to die.

Dual and Silk

2009-06-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Lew, at some point, came up with the idea that it was good to be "dual and silk." Being dual meant that you rode bikes and skated, silk meant that you were smoooooooth. All in all, that was pretty cool, I thought. Most bikers I knew skated at some point, we all did as kids. Lew rode his bike most every day, he was a serious rider. He also would go out and session curbs on his board, as would Andy. In some ways, it was really weird that they were into both, because the scene was so much different then. The old school pool skaters of the mid-'80's hated bikers. It wasn't just that they thought bike freestyle was stupid, most of them vehemently HATED bikes. I think that came from the stupid bikers in the early skateparks getting in their way or crashing them.
The BMX freestyle scene and the skate scene were two completely different scenes in the mid-80's. Yet, as bikers, we often made friends with skaters so we could ride their ramps and spots. In the middle of this comes an artist from Wyoming, Andy Jenkins, who is greatly influenced by the skateboard/punk rock scene, but he gets hired on a fluke at the first BMX freestyle magazine. So Andy started bringing that skate punk influence into FREESTYLIN', I think because he wanted to show his artistic chops to the skate scene he admired. I'm speculating on what Andy's motivations were, but that's the feeling I got working there. Lew joined the club and introduced the idea of being dual and silk.

My situation

2009-06-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

To answer a question that was asked on the comments. I'm still unemployed. I'm living for free in a homeless shelter in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for a couple months. I have a library card here allowing internet access, which is how I'm typing this. I'm trying find odd jobs for cash to get clothes and stuff so I can find a job of some sort. I may settle down here for a while if I can find a decent job, or I might save money and hop a bus back to California. I'm making this up as I go these days.
If anyone reading this is in the area, there's a TON of street riding spots here. Ledges, banks, bank to walls, stuff like that.
Songs of the day: No Doubt "A Little Something Refreshing," and "Oi To The World."

Skaters on the cover of FREESTYLIN'

2009-06-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

Looking through the FREESTYLIN' book yesterday, I was struck by how many skateboarders appeared on the cover. I knew Oz was adding a little extra skating in the magazine during my stint there to expand the magazine and take advantage of the skateboarding boom then. Andy and Lew wanted to add some skating because they were into it as well. I didn't realize that there were skateboarders on all five covers, issues #18 thru #22, while I worked there.
So here's a list of skateboarders who appeared on the cover of this BMX freestyle magazine.

Jason Jesse, issue #11
Bob Schmelzer, #12
Jeff Kendall, #13
Mark "Gator" Rogowski, #14
Eddie Reategui, #18
Rodney Mullen, #19
Tim Tillman, #20
Tony Magnusson, #21
Rob Maggi, # 22
Andy Jenkin's skateboard, #23
Don Brown, #25
Chris Miller, #28
Lew, #30
Tony Hawk, #31

Dave Vanderspek was a skater as well, but he wasn't skating on the cover, #11, I think. Skateboarders or a skateboard were on the cover of fourteen out of fifty-three covers. As a hardcore freestyler, that may have bugged you, but I never really minded that much. At least they picked some good ones, for the most part. I went to the shoots with Rodney Mullen and Rob Maggi. the first amazing and humble, as usual, the second was really underwhelming.

Thoughts on the FREESTYLIN' book...

2009-06-27T11:26:00.001-07:00

As most of you know well by now, my name being left out of the 2008 FREESTYLIN' book was the initial reason for starting this blog. Since then the blog has turned into something I never expected, and I'm trying to completely tell about my short time working there. I'm glad Andy, Lew and Spike did the book, and I think they did a really good job. But like the rest of you, I thought some people were left out of the book that should have been in it. I flipped through the book online yesterday, and listed everyone who was in it, and people I thought should have been in it. Now so it doesn't totally sound like I'm bagging on Andy, Lew and Spike, let's pretend that someone's going to make a movie about FREESTYLIN' magazine. I know that's never going to happen, I'm just using the idea so you can give your input. If they made a FREESTYLIN' magazine movie, who should be included that wasn't in the book? What subjects or scenes were left out? Here's my list, in random order:
Martin Aparijo, Mike Buff, Dave Vanderspek, Hugo Gonzales, Todd Anderson, Dino Deluca, Steve Broderson, Jason Parkes, Vic Murphy, Brad Blanchard, Dave Nourie, Rich Sigur, Tony Murray, Krys Dauchy, Dan Hubbard, Steve Blackey, Jeff "Shinglehead" Venekamp, Mark "Lungmustard" Eaton, Mike Daily, Chris Lashua, Dennis Langlais, Greg Macomber, Scott Freeman, Rick Moliterno, Doug Randazzo, Ron Wilton, Gary Pollak, Large Ray, Ruben Castillo, Robert Peterson, Brian Scura, Fred Blood, Jon Byers, Dale Perez, Frank Garrido, Randy Tischman, Mike Loveridge, Pete Kearney, Rick Thorne, Steve Swope, Steve Potts, Carlo Griggs, Dave Clymer, Rick Allison, Chris Rothe, Karl Rothe, Mark McKee, Steve McCloud, Chris Day.
Obviously, they couldn't have written about all those guys in the book, but several of them definitely should have been in there. So if there was a movie, I'd like to see those guys interviewed.

Here are some riding scenes I'd like to se covered from the FREESTYLIN' days:

San Diego/Dirt Brothers
Wilkerson's house/Enchanted ramp
Camarillo ramp
Rockville BMX
Midwest/ Kansas City
Midwest/Moliterno & Rampage crew
Northeast scene/Lashua, Langlais & crew
North Carolina/Denny Howell, Leigh Ramsdale & others
Early Austin, Texas scene
Lakewood, CA guys, Jeff Cotter, Ron Camero, Nathan Shimizu, etc
The NorCal/Golden Gate Park scene got a bunch of coverage, but not enough to cover all the good riders there.

OK, who'd I leave out from the FREESTYLIN' days, '84-'89. Who do you readers think were big influences then????

Comedy interlude

2009-06-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

I just posted my poem/comedy bit "Ode to the Word 'Fuck'" on my blog, Water Cooler Hero, for anyone interested. I created that blog to compile my dad's old jokes. watercoolerhero.blogspot.com in case I screw up the link.

Eddie Fiola, part 3

2009-06-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

Eddie Fiola in the mid '80's was a showman. That's what our world was. The freestyle shows came before the contests. Eddie gained fame as the King of the Skateparks battling Mike Dominguez and Brian Blyther and others. But I think where he really excelled was as a showman. He did both vert and flatland with a great amount of style. He went high, he broke new ground, but he always had a flair both on and of his bike.
During my time at Wizard, I think Eddie was about 2/3 the way through a GT sponsorship contract that was known for burning riders out on riding. A whole crop of new ramp riders were coming up, like Ron Wilkerson, Todd Anderson, Dino Deluca, Josh White, Joe Johnson and Mat Hoffman. The skatepark contests were over and the quarterpipe and wedge ramp combo had taken over. Many saw Eddie as a fading hero of the sport. Some said the excessive touring for GT, doing shows eight or nine months a year, had burned him out. Eddie was a pioneer and vert legend slowly heading into obscurity, according to most.
While nobody really said that to Eddie's face, that was the general feeling about him the whole time I worked at Wizard. But Eddie was dating Windy while I worked there, and lived close by, and would come ride the T.O.L. ramp out in the parking lot on a regular basis. Let me tell you, nobody, but NOBODY, could ride the T.O.L. like Eddie Fiola. He ruled that thing. A couple guys, like Dominguez, Josh White and Mitch Collins aired a bit higher. But Eddie would just work every inch of that ramp, all by himself, usually with nobody around. He often came during the day, while we were working, so we'd only see him during a break, at lunch, or after work. When I did watch him, it was obvious he was riding just for fun. He'd throw his variations, one footers, tabletops, one hand-one footers, at overhead height, wall after wall. At a time when Mat Hoffman was just getting noticed for his new variations and beginning to do multiple variations, Eddie had been throwing alley-oop over and outs (can-can to one footer) super smooth, for a long time. I'm pretty sure that was the first multiple variation air anyone did. We were all wrong then, Eddie Fiola was a long, long way from being washed up. Last time I saw him ride, a couple years ago, he was still riding with that same style. Except now he does it in between movie stunt gigs.

Memoirs

2009-06-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Memoirs, that's the word I was looking for a few posts ago when I said I wasn't a journalist. This blog is my memoirs about my time at FREESTYLIN' and what it was like. I've agonized over many posts, and I've left things out that I thought were too personal on several occasions. The Wizard crew was a pretty clean cut group, especially considering how much ground they were breaking with BMX Action and FREESTYLIN'. I've hurt a few feelings, but I stand by what I've written. Sometimes feelings need to get hurt for us to grow. Deal with it.

Eddie Fiola, part 2

2009-06-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

I was wandering around the Dallas airport in the spring of '86, April if memory serves. I had flown in from San Jose and was connecting to Oklahoma to go to the AFA Masters contest there. I had been planning to ride in the contest anyhow, but much to my surprise, Andy Jenkins of FREESTYLIN' had called me out of the blue and asked if I would write an article about the contest for the magazine. Uh... yeah... I'll write an article. Andy's life had changed forever with a thank you note a couple years earlier, mine changed with a phone call sparked by the zine I'd been doing.
While waiting for my flight, I saw Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo and some blond guy walk up to the gate. They were also on my connecting flight. I said "hi" to Eddie, who I'd met the previous summer in Canada, and spoken to for a couple minutes at the previous contest. I'm not sure if he remembered me, but he seemed to, and introduced me to Martin and the new guy, a ramp rider by the name of Josh White. Josh had just done the photo shoot for FREESTYLIN' that would end up with the iconic tiny cover photo of him, and a spread inside that changed ramp riding forever. But it was April, and that article would hit the stands in the July issue, along with my first zine review and article. When I met him, Josh was just some up and comer, although I was surprised at how good Eddie and Martin said he was. Josh was one of several stories that weekend. But at the airport, I hung with Eddie, Martin and Josh, waiting until the last minute to get on our flight. I was becoming part of the BMX freestyle industry, much to my surprise. I was also chillin' out with Eddie Fiola, the most famous guy in the little world I looked up to. And he was a cool guy.
Later that day, at practice at the contest, Eddie walked up to me and started talking. I forget about what, but it blew me away at the time, he just acted like I was one of the guys then. It was a big lesson for a kid who'd started riding in Idaho. My heroes were people to, and pretty down to earth people at that. As I was talking to Eddie, some curly headed kid rode up and interupted us. The kid said, "Hey Eddie, you ever seen anybody do an air like this?" then put one hand on the opposite side of the bars and took the other hand off. It was a switch-handed air, something that seemed completely crazy then. I think Mike Dominguez's no-footed can-cans were the craziest trick then. Eddie looked at the kid with a grin and said, "No... I've never seen that one before." The kid got a huge smile on his face and rode off. That kid was a fourteen-year-old named Matthew Hoffman.
I got to just hang out at practice, watch guys ride, I talked to Windy the photographer for the first time, and even got on top of the ramp to shoot some photos with my new Pentax. I was having the time of my life. From that point on, Eddie Fiola, the biggest name in the sport, was an acquaintance, perhaps a friend, of mine. While Josh White, Mat Hoffman, and Joe Johnson all put themselves on that map at that contest, Eddie was still the master showman, both on the ramps and flatland. His rollback nosewheelies on the frame standers always amazed me. He would get almost upside down and glide them forever, I could never understand how he did those.

Readers Comments

2009-06-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else find it funny that the only people who seem to be pissed off about me writing about FREESTYLIN' are the people who worked there and held great power over riders' reputations and even careers back in the '80's? Every serious rider I know was pissed off at one or more of the magazines at some point for either something they did write or something they didn't write, or whose photo got used when there's didn't. That's life. Freedom of the press sucks when you don't own the press. But when someone writes about them from a different point of view, they get upset. So here's some quid pro quo people. If anyone from the former FREESTYLIN' staff, or any other reader wants to leave comments about me and this blog, do it here, on the comments to this post. I won't respond or alter your words in any way. Good or bad, let me hear what you think.

I'm back...

2009-06-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

For better or worse, I'm back. I left my parents' place after a fight, spent a couple nights on the streets, and am now living in a homeless shelter in a city in North Carolina. I should be starting a very low paying job sometime this week.
In my absence, I got a scathing email from Windy Osborn. The good news is that it really is Windy. When she first commented on R.L.'s post a long time ago, I thought it might be one of the Orange County guys messing with me. But from this email, I believe it's really her. The bad news is that she's very angry with me. I understand. I won't quote from her email, but this gist of it is that I'm a very pathetic person talking crap about others to give some meaning to my pathetic life. That may very well be true.
She also referred to my being a journalist and not fact checking. So let's get one thing straight, I'm not a journalist, I have never been a journalist, and don't intend to become one. I was DEFINITELY not a journalist while working a Wizard Publications. I was a guy to did several jobs around the warehouse, proofread FREESTYLIN' and BMX Action, and did some writing. I consider journalism to be objectively covering an event or scene. I've never done that. As enviromentalist and philosopher Derek Jensen says, "Every writer is a propagandist." No human can be objective, and I don't claim to be. I'm a writer, video producer, and artist. I may not be very good at any of those, and I accept that. But I put great effort into doing the best I can. This blog is my memories, as accurately as I can remember, recounting my experiences of working at Wizard Publications. Everyone remembers things differently, and memories aren't perfect. But I'm doing the best I can to recount my experiences at Wizard and what it was like when I worked there. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't have the magazines to look back on, and if I really can't remember something, I don't write it, or I research online where possible. It's not my intent to piss anyone off, but if I didn't, I wouldn't be much of a writer now would I. This blog has nearly run its course, and I assume there's a reason so many people read it. I'm definitely not being sensationalist, I have never promoted it, and in case you haven't noticed, I'm not making a dime off of it. And I'm a guy who could use a few dimes.
I'm going to continue writing my memories of my time at FREESTYLIN, and the people involved in that time. If that angers you, so be it. I gave up trying to please everyone a long, long, time ago.
With that said, I'll get back to the stories in a day or two.

Game over

2009-06-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

I asked my mom to borrow the car to go turn in some job applications a few minutes ago, and by the end of the ensuing argument, she kicked me out of their house. So I am again on the streets. If I survive the immediate future, then I'll try to pick this blog up at some point. Bye for now, and thanks again for reading. -Steve Emig aka The White Bear

Eddie Fiola

2009-06-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

I started this post this morning, can't finish it...
I ran into Eddie Fiola, now I long time friend, or at least long time acquaintance, a year or so ago. I think it was at the Van's Skatepark at Orange, CA. He had a Dukes of Hazard crew jacket on, and I asked if he worked on the movie. He told me he "jumped a Charger 68 feet." I just thought, holy crap, I know someone who jumped the General Lee, how cool is that.

I started riding a lot in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho the summer of 1982. By that fall, we had a little scene out in the desert, and once in a while one of us would pick up a magazine and everyone would check it out. I remember seeing an article about BMXers riding at Pipeline Skatepark some time after that. I think that's when I first heard of Eddie Fiola. To me he was the first superstar of freestyle. I missed hearing about the other early riders like Tinker Juarez, Fred Becker and Jeff Watson. I'd hear about Steve "Bio Air" Bennett once in a while. But when I started reading the magazines consistently, it was Eddie Fiola who was the best known freestyler.

I met Eddie at the AFA velodrome contest in early '86, the same contest where I met Andy and Lew. He was really cool and we talked for a couple minutes.

UK Old School

2009-06-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

OK, this isn't a message board, but nick hayday let me know there's a U.K. Old School BMX site, radbmx.co.uk I glanced at it, so check it out you bloody limeys. But first put a kettle on for a spot of tea, or grab a pint of ale if it's after 9 am or if you're Scottish. Heh, heh, heh.
A lot of good riders came out of the U.K., I know, they all slept on my couch at some point.

Old School Mags online

2009-06-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

I just got an email from Antisocial telling me there are a lot of old school BMX mags online. You can check either oldschoolmags.com or 23mag.com . My short stint at Wizard is missing from the archives, but they have the BMX Action mags form that era and lots of others from about '76 to '90. I know most of you reading this are far more knowledgeable about Old school BMX stuff online than I am. But this might be news to some of you. I'm definitely going to check some issues out. As I've mentioned often, the FREESTYLIN' 2008 commemorative book is online, as are several of the early BMX books. There are also the sites vintageBMX.com and OSBMX.com, which have info, message boards and all that.
Since I'd literally lived offline until six months ago, except for email and the occasional Google search, and my taxi blog, I had no idea about any of this when I started this blog. So if there are any other old shcool BMXers and freestylers that stumble across this blog, check out the above sites. Google those site names, in case I capitalized the wrong thing.

Jan caresses the Rotor

2009-06-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

When I started at FREESTYLIN', they were finishing up the November issue, the one with Eddie Fiola sitting on his bike with the turquoise of the T.O.L. ramp behind him. That was the NORA cup issue, I believe. Like I've said before, I don't have any copies of FREESTYLIN', I'm doing this whole thing from memory. So the first issue I saw the beginning of was the December '86 issue. I got the job of writing the Schwinn bike test for that issue. That came with the "Yo Rock and Roll" seat, which had a roller on the back of it for doing Dizz Hicks-style seat grinds.
It was my first article I had to write while working at the magazine, but I'd done one freelance article covering the Oklahoma City AFA contest before I started there. I'd done a zine for nearly a year, but I really had no idea how to write an real magazine article. Like most everyone Oz hired, I loved BMX freestyle but had no idea what I was doing in the beginning. I was also really anal about details and took things WAY to seriously. So I went up to talk to Valerie, FREESTYLIN's ad saleswoman. I asked her what the median age of readers was. She took me into Darlene's office next door, who was the ad saleswoman for BMX Action. They seemed surprised and elated at my request, and a little baffled by it. I guess it was a different approach than Andy and Lew took. They gave me reports for both magazines, results of the reader's surveys that gave me the median ages of readers and a bunch of other info. To me it just seemed natural to find out who really reads the magazine,how old they are, what they think about, what they like, and them write the article with this group in mind. Makes sense, doesn't it?
So I poured over the survey results and got an idea of who the majority of kids were who read the magazines. The median age was 11-12 for BMX Action I think, and 13-14 for FREESTYLIN', something like that. So I wrote an article aimed towards junior high boys. In the story, a kid was staying home sick from school, and watching TV. He turned on a game show like The Price is Right, and they were giving away a new Schwinn freestyle bike. As the announcer described the bike, Jan the beautiful model caressed the Rotor. For some reason everyone who read it loved that line, "Jan caresses the Rotor." So Don Toshach, whom I was replacing, was still there, and he thought the article was a good start for me. Don gave me some tips, and I re-wrote a bit. Andy and Lew thought it was cool, so my article went to print.
Windy and I went down to San Diego for the photo shoot with Pete Agustin and Jason Parkes. I learned a big lesson from that shoot, never rely on directions from a freestyler who doesn't own a car. I got lost, wasted a couple hours of Windy's afternoon, and never asked Jason Parkes for directions again. Jason did do the megaspin, a trick that blew minds at the time, and was a superlong sequence in that aritcle, and Pete did some aggro Pete Agustin stuff.
The article seemed good, although I mentioned that the "Yo Rock and Roll" seat didn't really work like it was designed. When you pivoted over on the back of the seat, the roller caused it to roll, and you'd lose your momentum for the seat grind. Several of us tried it, and nobody could get a decent seat grind. The seat with the little roller was just one of those stupid ideas engineers come up with after watching a bit of video, Dizz Hicks in this case. Some calls were made before the article was sent to the printers, the wording about the seat was changed a little, saying it didn't work that well, and everything seemed cool.
Now for those of you not familiar with the magazine publishing process, the time line goes something like this. You spend a month planning, writing, shooting photos, and editing the magazine. Then the whole mess goes to the art department for 2 to 3 weeks, and they put the pieces together on artboards (in 1986) with directions for the printers. Then it went to the printers, and they put it all together and shoot the films used for the actual printing. A couple weeks later the publishers get the "blueline" copy. It's a hardboard copy of what the magazine will look like. The editors, and more importantly (to them), the ad salespeople check the whole thing to find any mistakes. There were usually a couple which were fixed by the art directors. Then the magazine went into printing mode. A couple weeks later we got the tear sheets. Tear sheets are a copy of the magazine that wasn't bound together and trimmed on the edges. It's the actually magazine in an unfinished form, the cool guy edition. We would all check over these, and the ad women would send tear sheets to all the advertisers so they could check out the magazine before the public.
That's when the fun started. A day or two after the tear sheets went out, I heard a commotion up front, and someone called for me. I felt like a kid going to the principal's office. I was scared. I quickly found out that the management of Schwinn hated the article, and were threatening to pull their ads, $50,000 worth of ads, for the entire year. That also meant Valerie pretty much wanted to shoot me because she worked on commission. In a few minutes, I learned how the media really works. I lost my magazine writer virginity, and they didn't even spit first.
The price you, the reader, pay for a print magazine doesn't even pay for the cost of printing. Magazines, and all other forms of mainstream media, are paid for by advertisers. These advertisers pay not only for their ads, they pay for everything at the magazine, and they usually expect free advertising in the form of editorial content. I learned that the bike tests we did were basically advertisements. The biggest advertisers got the most bike tests, because that makes kids want to buy bikes. It's kind of an unofficial part of the business. The advertisers can control magazine content by pulling their ads or threatening to pull their ads when something they don't like is written. This happens in every form of media. This is how personal agendas, like say religious or social beliefs, for example, influence media content in mainstream publications and TV productions. The advertisers want to create an atmosphere at the publication or production where the lowly writers or producers simply know they can't write about certain things. Then the writers and producers self-censor themselves to keep their jobs. Then you end up with propaganda, or P.R. (public relations), as it's known today. Mainstream media is awash in P.R. today. That's why the major coporations want to get rid of net neutrality and gain control of the internet. You can't have any yahoo with a keyboard and video camera putting their ideas out, how do you maintain the ruling elite in a world like that?
So why were the bigwigs at Schwinn pissed off about my article? Was it because I said the "Yo Rock and Roll" seat didn't work? Actually, much to my surprise, not really. They were mad because the "article was too juvenile" and because there wasn't a color photo of the test bike in the article. Luckily for me, half of the blame went on Windy and everyone else about the photo, or I probably would've gotten the boot right then and there. I wrote the article aimed at the kids who actually read the magazine, how stupid of me. Also, when we did the photo shoot, Jason and Pete were riding their own bikes, because Schwinn hadn't bothered to give their team riders the new bikes yet. Stupid bike company dorks.
Andy and Lew went to bat for me, and told me that somebody was always pissed off about something, every issue. Ultimately, the advertising gods were appeased without a human sacrifice, which was good, because I would have been it. I was totally gun shy in my writing after that, and self-censored myself to a great degree, which is what they wanted. I wound up doing more sidework and less actual writing after that. That was my real welcome to the magazine world.

Subliminal Message

2009-06-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

It's not global warming... it's the chem trails screwing up the weather.

Random thoughts

2009-06-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

First, I clicked on this morning to find that this blog has hit fifty followers. As I keep saying, that blows my mind. Thanks to the three new followers who just signed up, I'll try to keep this thing interesting. It's funny to me that I've now written far more about my time at Wizard Pubs than I ever wrote while working there, and this time I'm writing for free. I've also been writing for longer than the five months I spent there, but as you can tell, a lot happened in that five months. Looking back, I guess the thing that pops out the most in my mind is the people I became aware of while at Wizard that have gone on to influence all of us. Little Matthew Hoffman, now Mat, hit everyone's radar at the Oklahoma City AFA contest in '86, which I wrote my first FREESTYLIN' article about. I met Josh White for the first time in the airport going to that contest, a month or so before he got the JULY '86 cover and photo essay in the mag that changed the way we all looked at ramp riding. I also first heard about Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, Kevin Jones, and that biker/skater kid from Rockville BMX, Spike Jonze while at Wizard. Club Homeboy started while I was there, and I think R.L. Osborn switched from Redline to General Bikes during that time, if memory serves me. Seeing what all of these then up-and-comers have done since, along with those already known, continues to amaze me.
Some of you may be wondering why I wrote so little about Kevin Jones on that previous post. It's no disrespect to Kevin, one of the most influential riders ever. But at the time I was at Wizard, he was just a silohuetted photo in a zine, who seemd like a guy to keep an eye on. I'll write more about him in future writings, no doubt.
And for reader Ryan, who keeps bitching about me getting off track... hey man, it's my blog. Skip the posts that seem stupid to you. I've written much more here than Andy and Lew actually wrote in the FREESTYLIN' book, since the book was mostly interviews. I'm not dissing them, the interview idea was good. But I wish they would have written more about their own experiences. And as for my crazy family life these last few months, that's the background that brought this blog into existence. It's part of the story. Which leads me to my quote of the day:

"I've got the antichrist in the kitchen yelling at me again... yeah I can hear."
- Tori Amos

Both of my parents ran out of Zoloft a few days ago, so it's been real fun around here. Speaking of which, politicians have made a big issue about gay marriage the last few years, as you all know. Personally, I have no problem with gay marriage, I think gay people should have the right to be just as miserable as everyone else. The highly religious people opposed to gay marriage say that marriage is sacred. Hey, anyone who thinks marriage is sacred, come meet my parents. Enough said.

Kevin "The K" Jones

2009-06-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

I first heard the name Kevin Jones while working at Wizard. Mike Daily sent an Aggro Rag zine to Andy, with some photos of himself, Mark Eaton, and Kevin Jones. It was a pretty cool zine, and aparently Mike thought it would help Kevin's skills get noticed if he gave him a knickname, thus "The K." Much like meeting Spike for the first time, we had know idea how much influence the riders from the little town of York, Pennsylvania would have. Shortly after I left Wizard, Kevin Jones, Mike Daily, and Mark "Lungmustard" Eaton put York on the map, and changed the course of flatland forever.

Subliminal message

2009-06-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

Watch the movie The Salton Sea with Val Kilmer. Great characters.

A lesson in character assasination...

2009-06-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

A while back my mom said she would like me to meet a local business man here in Kernersville because he might be able to help me find work. This man is the owner of apartments and real estate around here, including the apartments my parents moved out of after a fight with the manager. Here are some excerpts from the letter my mom wrote encouraging this business man to help me find work, all errors are from the original:

"... He gained a lot of weight(over 100 lbs) and got a infection which put him in the hospital. It was very serious, and he stayed with friends, and later became "homeless". We finally got him here in Nov."

"He has "settled in" to NC, and wants to work, and was hired by a friend to write a Article or more, on "Frestylin". His friend owns the magazine in Denmark."
(She's refering to Will at Dig/digbmx.com, she gets a little confused sometimes)

"Steve does not know a lot of resources in Kernersville, and I wondered ifyou would be kind enough to meet with Steve. He is a nice 42 yr. old man. He has never been married, does not drink, smoke, or use any drugs. He does not even take aspirin. He was angry, and bitter when he came, but has worked through some of that. People there thought "because he was homeless, he was a "mental case". Steve would like to start a business (Buy and re-sale) "

With friends and family like this, who needs enemas. For some reason, the businessman never called to meet with me, I can't imagine why. Letters and phone calls like this have been happening my whole life. I've been investigated by several law enforcement and intelligence agencies for many years because of letters and phone calls like this. And for some reason I can't find a decent job.
The lesson for today kids is this: if you engage in defamation and character assasination against family members or friends, don't leave your psycho letters on the hard drive of the computer used by the person you're attacking. Especially if they write a blog. Heh, heh, heh.
For those of you wondering why my life is so weird, now you know.
When I got on the plane to come to North Carolina, I lost all hope of ever recovering and living a decent life again. Since I have absolutely nothing to lose, I think it's time to start having some fun here in North Carolina...

Rodney Mullen, part 3

2009-06-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

Man, I'm as bad as Andy and Lew, writing three posts about a skateboarder in a blog about a freestyle magazine. But Rodney is just an amazing guy.

What really set him apart to me was how he practiced. Rodney was so anal retentive in those days, that he didn't just try a new trick 25 times until he landed it once, like most skaters or bikers. Rodney had his routine when practicing. He would tape his fingers, pull the socks up, put the knee pads on, then stretch and all that. Then he would do the swivel wheelie things, and a few other tricks, to warm up. Then he would just start going through his reportoire, doing the stuff he had totally wired, in the order he had planned for the next contest. Keep in mind, skating was a very contest oriented sport then. The thing that blew me away was that Rodney would practice all by himself, for two or three hours straight, and he'd step off his board maybe two or three times. That was when trying his newest tricks. His skating just progressed so naturally, that new tricks seemed to be completely worked out in his head before he actually tried them. So he would land them within a couple tries. Then he would add that trick into his routine, and practice it in until he had it totally dialed and could do it in his sleep. Rodney is the polar opposite to the "huck it and hope for the best" attitude that's so prevalent in riding and skating today.

I hung out so much watching Rodney then that he started asking my advice on tricks. He'd do something new and ask me how it looked. What do you say to Rodney Mullen? The first couple times I just said, "It looks fucking impossible, like everything else you do." He'd laugh, then ask a different way, asking if I could tell what the board was doing, did it look solid, or too aggressive, stuff like that. Keep in mind, this was mid-1986. His newer tricks then, as I recall, were fingerflip daffy ollies (fingerflip ollie airwalks), handstand to inward flip (that still doesn't seem possible), the one foot rocket ollie, and half flip underflips. Yes, I saw Rodney doing halfflip underflips in '86. He asked me how it looked, and I couldn't even tell what the board was doing, even after watching three in a row from four feet away. Rodney took the board in his hands and showed me that he was flipping the board over one way, then catching the top, now upside down, with his toe, and flipping it 1 1/2 times the other way, and landing on it. "How do you come up with this shit?" I asked. Rodney just laughed. It was pretty cool, He asked for my opinion while putting together his routine for the next contest, so I saw his whole process. I looked at riding totally different after that. I saw it was something you could really think about and put a lot of effort into.

I was really stoked when Andy and Lew said I could do the interview with Rodney for the December 1986 issue. Lew still knew him better than me, so I thought he would do it. But I got to, and Windy and I met Rodney at The Spot one afternoon, and she shot the pics and I did the quick little interview. Like always when she shot someone she wasn't familiar with, Windy had Rodney go through a bunch of tricks to see what would make the best photo. The finger flip daffy ollie, as Rodney called it, later known as the finger flip ollie airwalk, was one of Windy's favorites, and that photo of Rodney ended up on the cover, alongside Rick Moliterno is I remember correctly.

Inside the magazine, there were a few pages devoted to skateboarding, and a one page interview of Rodney. I talked Rodney into doing the one foot rocket ollie for the photo shoot, he didn't really want to do it, and Windy didn't think it photographed well. But I dug that trick, and convinced them to "just try it a couple times." Now the rocket ollie, since I don't have the photos, goes like this: he would ollie the board, and as it popped off the ground, instead directing the board up and forward with his front foot, Rodney would move his front leg back out of the way, and the board would stand up against against the inside of his back leg, then it would drop down and Rodney would put his front foot back on. Rodney didn't want to do the trick because he "didn't have it dialed in yet." In Rodney speak, that meant that he would do it perfectly nine times, then land slightly on his heel a bit on the tenth one. In any case, they ran the sequence in the mag, which I was stoked about, and Rodney was as well when he saw it.

At the end of the short interview, I asked Rodney Mullen my trademark question: "What is the meaning of life?" I'd asked that of all the NorCal guys in my zine before, and several others, because I really wanted to know. Life made sense when I was riding, but it definitely didn't the other 22 hours a day. When I asked Rodney, he hesitated only a moment, then said, "Kittens playing with yarn." Windy giggled. I was floored. "Kittens playing with yarn," I thought to myself, "what the hell kid of answer is that?" But it was one of those lines that just stuck in my head. As the years passed, I decided it was one of the most profound lines I've ever heard. If you can live your life with the focus, the intensity, and the sense of play of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, you're doing pretty well.

Rodney's month in California ended, and he headed back home to Florida, and to make the decision that had been troubling him all summer. He was 19 and out of high school. He wondered if he should continue putting so much effort into skateboarding, or if he should put his intellect to use by going to college and becoming either a doctor or an engineer. I think he went to school for a semester or two, but luckily for us all, he ultimately stuck with skateboarding. After inventing half the tricks (well, probably far more than half) in freestyle skating, he went on to revolutionize technical street skating in the '90's. And 23 years later, I'm still waiting to see someone do a one foot rockect ollie down a ten step.

Rodney Mullen, part 2

2009-06-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

On one of those nights when Lew and I were talking to Rodney as he skated, Rodney mentioned that Steve Rocco vehemently hated BMX. Since Rodney was staying at Rocco's place, that gave Lew an idea. "You know," Lew said with an evil grin, "We have a whole bunch of I heart BMX stickers at the office. I could bring you some to decorate Rocco's place." Rodney loved the idea. So the next night Lew brought a couple packs of the I heart BMX stickers and gave them to Rodney. The night after that, Rodney told us that he had plastered them EVERYWHERE in Rocco's apartment. He started with by putting one right in the middle of a blank canvas that Rocco had ready to paint. Then Rodney hit the expected places like the refrigerator and bathroom mirror. He said Rocco went ballistic when he saw the one on the canvas, then went into a Tasmanian Devil rampage around the apartment pulling down all the stickers as Rodney watched and laughed. But Rodney had hid some of them so well that Rocco was still finding them weeks later, and freaking out every time he did.

Lew stopped hanging out with Rodney every day, but Rodney and I kind of hit it off, and his skating amazed me, so I wound up hanging out and talking to him almost every night for the month that he was there. Usually I'd go down to The Spot after work, ride for a while, and I'd take a break when Rodney showed up and talk to him for a while, then go ride some more while Rodney practiced. Lew was down there almost every night, but he didn't hang out and watch Rodney skate as much as I did.

One of those first nights hanging out, Rodney told me I could try his board if I wanted. Now for anyone who doesn't know, in the '80's, freestyle skaters were the nerds of the skateboarding world. Their tricks were super hard, super technical, but not big and aggro, "real skateboarding" meant ramps and pools then. Rodney was an unusual case. He was one of the Powell Peralta Bones Brigade skaters, and a lot of good skaters respected him because he had won almost every contest from age nine to nineteen, and he'd invented a ton of tricks like the flat ground ollie, the kickflip, and the ollie impossible, among many others. But he was still a freestyle skater, so while he made a living, sort of , he wasn't making the crazy money like the vert guys.

So I stepped on his board and pushed off a little... and fell off the board about four feet later because the trucks were so tight. Rodney laughed, then stood up and told me to try again. So I tic-tacked Rodney's board a bit and stepped off. He said something like, "Here, try this," and did a pressure flip style kick flip. That was the predecessor trick to the ollie kickflip. For the pressure kickflip, you put both feet side by side, over the back trucks, and push the side of the board down and the board flips over and you land on it. I felt like I was wasting Rodney's time, but he kept instructing me until I landed the first one. It was weird because I didn't really hang out with any skaters before that, and here was this guy who was in the Bones 2 video that I watched every Saturday morning, and he was teaching me a trick. It was pretty damn cool.

Another night, I was riding at The Spot and Rodney was skating over on the concrete area. I stopped for a minute and looked up when I heard another skater in the distance. The approaching skater had a big, full sized board, and was coming through the parking garage. Now there was a four foot wide, curb height, concrete island separating the parking area from the bike path and concrete area where Rodney was. The approaching skater popped an ollie and did a 180 over the four foot island. My jaw dropped. I'd never seen anything like that before. It just blew me away.

As I watched from the distance, I realized that the amazing skater looked familiar. "Hey, that's that Gonz guy," I thought to myself. I sat there for a minute watching Mark Gonzales and Rodney Mullen talking, then went back to riding. When I looked up a bit later, they had come over on the brick area, and Rodney was showing Gonz how to do an ollie impossible. I just sat and watched for a while. I think Rodney may have introduced me to Gonz, I can't remember. I watched for a while, then headed home and told Lew what he'd missed.

Rodney Mullen

2009-06-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

" I don't have the balance for wheelies."

- Rodney Mullen to Lew, August 1986

Shortly after starting at Wizard, Lew said I had to meet this skateboarder down at The Spot, a freestyle skater by the name of Rodney Mullen. Lew raved about how amazing Rodney was, saying he'd won every contest for ten years or something, and listing all these things Rodney could do. I told Lew I'd seen Ray Meyer skate in NorCal, a freestyle skater and Maurice Meyer's brother. Lew said Ray was good, but Rodney was on a whole different level. Lew went on and on about Rodney as we road down to The Spot. That seemed weird because Lew was into street skating, which was a pretty new idea in 1986.
Lew and I rode a bit, then took a break, sitting on our bikes and waiting for Rodney to come down. Sure enough, an unassuming guy, then 19 years old, rode up on a rickety old black beach cruiser he called Agnes. It was Rodney. He was staying with a washed up, has been, freestyle skater named Steve Rocco. Yes, Rocco was considered washed up then, at least from what I heard. Not long after that Rocco started doing Santa Monica Airlines and went on to create World Industries. But on that late summer evening in1986, Steve Rocco was a has been living by the beach and Rodney was the best freestyle skater in the world, and staying at Rocco's house for a month before heading back to Florida to start college.
Lew started talking to Rodney, who just seemed like a nice guy. Really nice. Like, "I wonder if this guy is gay" nice. I just kind of stood there wondering what all Lew's hype was about. Rodney started his practice ritual, which was weird in itself. When Lew and I rode, or most any bikers in those days, we'd just go to our spot and start riding. But Rodney Mullen had a ritual.
He would pull his tube socks up, to his knees, and put his knee pads on to hold the socks up. I think he even taped the socks up. Yes, he wore knee pads for freestyle skating. They weren't for sliding on, they were for doing pogos, which was the reason for the high socks as well. Rodney would carefully tape several of his fingers for the finger flip tricks. Then he would stretch thoroughly. The whole time I saw this I was thinking, "C'mon man... get on with it." Then Rodney would check over his board, tightening the super tight trucks if necessary, and checking the tiny wood screws in the ends of the deck. Those screws kept the board from de-lamming during the pogo tricks.
Then... finally... Rodney Mullen started skating. He skated on the concrete area at the end of The Spot. It wasn't as wide as our brick area, but it was nice smooth concrete. One of the first things he did was a wheelie where he would wiggle the front end of the board back and forth in a twisting motion. He would do this for nearly a minute I think, his front wheels never touching the ground, and the front end of his board moving more that 270 degrees back and forth. This was just a warm-up for him, and it seemed completely impossible to me. Much like Lew, I was in awe immediately.
At that point, Lew stopped talking and watched Rodney warm up. Once Rodney got through the warm up, Lew came up with some seemingly impossible trick for Rodney to try. Lew did that four or five days in a row. He would spend all day trying to think up something Rodney couldn't pull off. The only one I remember was the third day or so of this. After warming up, Rodney looked at Lew, waiting for Lew's crazy request. Lew said, "OK, ollie the board and land straight into a one wheel wheelie." Rodney looked at Lew and replied, "I don't have the balance for wheelies." Lew and I looked at each other like, "What did he just say?" Then Rodney tried it. On the first two tries, he popped a small ollie and landed on one back wheel, and held the wheelie for a couple feet. On the third try, Rodney snapped the ollie, landed solidly on one wheel, nothing else touching, and rode the wheelie for nearly fifteen feet then set it down gently. Lew's mouth dropped open in amazement, as did mine. Rodney just kept on skating. Lew gave up on the impossible tricks after about the fifth night. Rodney pulled off everything Lew could think of within two or three tries.

Readers Poll

2009-06-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new version of my blog... Naricisscist ad Nausem.blogspot.com Heh, heh, heh. Ok, I think I mentioned that I made a zine a couple weeks ago asking friends and family to borrow money so I could get myself established here and get a small business going buying stuff at auctions and selling on ebay. I did some figuring and worked out that if I could borrow $2500, I could do all the basic stuff I need to do, and within a few weeks I'd be making more than I could at any job I could find here in Kernersville. I hate it here, but it's cheap. So I figured if I could borrow enough money to give myself a reasonable chance of getting back on my feet, I could deal with living here and re-establish myself. Once I was earning a living, I could start doing some of the writing and other projects I have in mind.
So I sent out my zine with the basic plan to 25 people and asked each of them to loan me $100 for one year. I said I'd pay them back $150... 50% interest. Everyone on the list could afford $100, I wouldn't be putting anyone out to a great degree, and I'd have enough money to start rebuilding my life. My plea for a modest loan was met with resounding silence. Like cue the cricket sound silence. Nobody even bothered to get back to me to tell me to "Fuck Off." I've received nothing. Not a dime. I expected several of the "friends" to blow me off. But I figured the family members would help out, at least a little. Nope. One Uncle called here, and we've been playing phone tag, but that's it.
Now that was the only way I could earn any kind of living here and have a chance of getting my life back together. Which means I need to leave North Carolina as soon as possible and go to somewhere where I stand a chance of getting back on my feet. That means I should be going back home to California... soon.
Or I need to raise or borrow about $2000 in the next couple weeks. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm not asking for your money, I'm asking for ideas. Here's some of mine:

1. Put out limited edition, signed and numbered zines, along the lines of what I've written here, and sell them to you guys (and gal).

2. Start Club White Bear, and charge a membership fee, which would get you a zine every month and a super low-budget comedy video once or twice a year.

3. Go back to panhandling.

4. Recreate the infamous "steamer" incident, except for much more money. The industry guys know what I mean.

OK, I was just kidding about "The Steamer." But you get the idea. Hey, I'll go get a lame ass restaurant job here for a while if it appears I could get myself going again. But I'm not going to work for $150 a week here and scrape by, I'd much rather do that in Cali.

Give me your suggestions...

Suicide prevention for dummies

2009-06-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

Since I mentioned suicide in the post yesterday, and since the neighbor guy who keeps tabs on me for law enforcement asked how I was feeling this morning, I think I need to address the suicide issue. Yes, when someone mentions suicide, it can be a warning sign. Or it can just be a joke from someone who has a dark sense of humor. It all depends on the context.

I was only really suicidal once in my life, when I was eleven years old. It lasted a couple months when my home life and school life got a bit worse than usual. I got molested by a high school kid in the park, and shortly afterwards our doctor wanted me to undergo some surgery because my balls weren't growing fast enough. Seriously. Instead they put me, at age 11, on steroids, and I've had bitch tits ever since. All of those incidents kind of pale in comparision to everyday life in my house then. My parents had money troubles, we almost got evicted, yada, yada, yada, you get the idea. So it seemed like a good time to call it quits and see if reincarnation really was for real. I figured that ifI was lucky, I might come back as a dolphin or something cool like that.

I struggled through a couple really tough months, and finally talked myself out of suicide. How did I, as an eleven year old do that? Well, it sounds stupid, but my thinking at the time went this way. I was a complete failure at everything at that time, except doing well in school. So I figured that if I actually tried to commit suicide, I'd most likely fail at that, too. And if I tried to commit suicide and failed, I would get in so much trouble from my parents, that my life would be worse. Of course, they would have been great for a couple weeks, but after that initial sympathy phase, they would have let me have it, and then I would really have wished I had been successful in killing myself. So basically, I didn't kill myself because I didn't want to get in trouble with my parents if I screwed up the suicide.

I know that sounds funny now, but it's true. And since age eleven, I've never been truly suicidal since. I have, however, been to the point where life was completely hopeless and logically, there was no point to go on. Now since I have been to the edge of the abyss and come back, I can step back and say, sarcastically, "Well, this would be a good time to commit suicide." I laugh at the stupidity of the situation, and then I go take a walk, go to a movie, get a pizza, or back in the day I would go ride or skate. Then I'd go on with my life.

The reason I think people connect with what I write now is because I've been through the meatgrinder many times and come out the other side. I know everyone has been through terrible times in many different ways. But I'm a poet and philosopher at heart, which means I'd just keep going into the metaphorical darkness when most people would turn around, scared to death of their own psyche. In a Jungian sense, I've not only met my shadow, I partied with it for years, trying to understand it. That's how I survived five years of taxi driving, with no protective plexiglass in the cab, and without even carrying pepper spray or a gun. Having dealt with my own psychological darkness, I could deal with other's dark sides without resorting to violence, for the most part. You've probably seen The Dog Whisperer show where Caesar rehabilitates vicious dogs. Well, I was The Drunk Whisperer. Hysterical women? No problem. Drunk and violent MMA wannabe on a testosterone binge? I got it handled. Drunk pissed off South Central cop trying to start a fight with Huntington Beach cops? I talked him down. Drunk psycho Vietnam vet who told me him and his buddies used to kill taxi drivers in 'nam? He paid the fare and even tipped me. Drunk, off duty cop waving a knife around next to my head? I shot him. Even taxi drivers have a breaking point. OK, not really. But I did laugh when he got out of the cab, tripped over a curb and slammed straight onto his face.

So while I mention suicide from time to time, I have no intention of doing it. I learned long ago that many of the best things in life often come right after you logically have no reason to go on. That's the whole point, life isn't logical. Life is fucking nuts. Our society, in the course of everyday life, pollutes and poisons the very air, water, and ecosystem that sustains us. No sane life form would do that. You have to be a little crazy to survive in this world. Especially now. The world is downright nutty.

So how do you deal with thoughts of suicide or violence? The best way I've found is a really dark sense of humor. I had a young ladyfriend once who was really close to the edge. We'd talk on the phone every night for a while. She mentioned suicide half-jokingly one night, and I knew she was really serious about it. So I said something like, "Oh puleeeeze tell me you're not going to do the whole razor blade and bath tub scenario, that's just so cliche'." I got a little laugh out of her, which is what I wanted. It only takes a little laugh to break the spell of the darkness. Then I said something like, "If you're really going to kill yourself, you have to do it nude and in public because you're hot." Another little laugh. "Think about the poor EMT's who have to bag you up, If they have to clean up your mess, the LEAST you can do is be naked for them." A little bigger laugh. "In fact, I think what you really need is to come over to my place and take out your self-loathing by having really dirty sex with me." In about ten minutes on the phone, I took her from sitting there on the phone, with razor blade in hand, to rolling on the floor laughing. The spell was broken.

That young lady went on to become a fine, upstanding swinger, and productive member of society. She would have been more productive if she had slept with me, but that's another story. The big secret to getting past suicidal urges is that you don't have to give the suicidal person a reason to live forever. You just have to find a reason to live for another ten minutes. Then go get a pizza, or rent a funny movie or something. The point is, suicidal thoughts are a kind of spell, and you just have to break the spell for an instant, and those thoughts start to fade away. Humor often works. But another way is to simply put off suicide until the next day. Just say to yourself, or whomever, "Well, life totally sucks right now, it almost certainly will suck just as much tomorrow, so let's go get a pizza and you can off yourself in the morning, OK?"

Procrastination is said to be a bad thing by most people. But suicide is a good thing to put off. Or you can do some artwork, listen to music, watch a comedy video, run naked through the grocery store, whatever. Just put off suicide for a bit and go do something crazy. Not Columbine crazy, but riding your bike through Wal-Mart kind of crazy. Have a little fun.

Another good way to get past suicidal thoughts is to plan the most amazing suicide ever. Seriously. Don't just stick the vacuum hose on the exhaust and into the car window. If you're going to kill yourself, be creative about it. Base jump naked off the top of Half Dome at Yosemite, without a parachute, while driving a forklift and reciting Shakespeare in German. Or something like that. Remember the guy who stole a tank from the National Guard and took it for a joyride through San Diego years ago? I don't know if he planned to die that day, but he gave us our money's worth. I bet that's onYou Tube somewhere, and that happened in the early '90's. You get the idea. If you spend enough time planning an amazing suicide, you won't want to kill yourself anymore. Then you can write a screenplay from your idea. Or a reality show treatment. The Fox network would love it.

How to get the FREESTYLIN' book

2009-06-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

As most all of you know, there were 2500 of the FREESTYLIN' 2008 books put out, mostly distributed through Nike boutique shops, because everyone knows that's where the old school freestylers hang out, right? I heard they were going for up to $800 on ebay shortly after their release. So if you want one, how do you get it?
There were two on ebay last weekend, bids at $99 for the regular box and $499 for the mud box and toys. A reader named Yankcrime said a lot of Nike shop employees wound up with the books, and don't know what to do with them. Yankcrime said he scored a mud box set for $50. That's the best idea I've heard so far. So if there's a Nike sneaker shop nearby, check with the employees, somebody might have the book stashed away at home. If not, they're on ebay if you're willing to hand over the sheckels for one.

Monumental?

2009-06-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

When I first heard that the FREESTYLIN' book had come out, I was still living on the streets of Orange County, CA. I was at the library checking my email. Yeah, even bums have email. That was last September (2008). One of the first reviews I read of the book, and the best, was by Kurt Schmidt. He wrote about how he got his copy, opened it, and went through page by page, and all the memories that flooded back from the experience.
I read that, and a few other random comments about the book. Then I picked up my small backpack and got back to the business of staying alive. As a homeless guy, my main concerns were: Where am I going to sleep tonight? and where's the best place to panhandle a few bucks for tomorrow's bus pass and food? So while the FREESTYLIN' book intrigued me, I didn't think much about it. I also forgot all about Kurt's blog.
Finally, by November 2008, the police pressure on me to leave Orange County was so heavy that I gave in and accepted my mom's offer of a one way plane ticket to their house in North Carolina. Now I've never lived here, I didn't know anyone here, except my family.
This is the BMX world, many of you reading this came from dysfunctional families, and so did I. When I got the job at Wizard in 1986, and moved away from my parent's place, I vowed to NEVER live in their house again. You get the point, this is not a happy place. So when I got here, I wasn't thrilled, and I just wanted to see my Dad before he died, and visit with my niece and nephew. Then I wanted to get back home to California, back to the streets, and keep working towards getting my act together.
One of the few benefits of my parents house was that I had unlimited acces to the internet for the first time in my life. I read more about the FREESTYLIN' book and looked up all the other things that came to mind. I got the idea of doing a zine in response to being left out of the book. But I was broke, and trying to make some money doing odd jobs to get by here. I also couldn't borrow money to save the stuff I had in storage in Cali, and I lost all my video work: 20 years worth of raw footage and the masters to the videos I produced. I also lost almost all my writings and artwork.
Now it's easy to say, "Big deal, it's just some old hi-8 tapes." But that box of footage represented much more to me. The thing that kept me going through four years of living in my taxi and a year on the streets was the video I wanted to produce someday. I'd been in the BMX freestyle industry for several years pretty early on, and I was one of the first riders to self-produce videos. I burned out, and faded from the industry in the mid 90's. But I 'd been in touch with the S&M and Sheep Hills guys ever since, so I had some idea of what was going on.
My life went into a downward spiral in '99, for a bunch of reasons, but not drug or alcohol related. It's been really tough ever since. When life gets really bad, you have to find something to look forward to in the future. It doesn't really matter what it is, you just need something, ANYTHING, to hang onto day after day. For me, the thing I hung onto was the idea of the retro video I wanted to do. I wanted to put all my videos and unproduced footage together and say to the BMX world, "OK, it's not huge, but this was my contribution to the thing we called freestyle."
When I lost that footage, it devastated me. I lost the thing that made life worth hanging onto. I was trapped, living in the worst place in the world for me, unable to buy healthy food to heal from my year on the streets, and unable to find work until I healed. It was one of those times when I looked at my life and said, "Well... this would be a good time to commit suicide." Now just to be clear, I wan't listening to Tori Amos and looking for razor blades, but I was pretty low. Much lower than I ever got in a year on the streets. I'm actually much more broke living here than I was as a bum. I needed to vent.
I'm a writer at heart, and journaling has been a big part of my life for well over a decade. But I can't do that here because I knew my mom would read it, and take any odd phrase as proof that I needed psychiatric help. Hey, I was a taxi driver, of course I'm crazy... but that doesn't mean I'm insane. So I started this blog just to write something. Being left out of the FREESTYLIN' book just gave me a starting point. I didn't tell anyone about the blog, and I never expected more than a few people to stumble across it.
So today I got an email from a reader named Michael who's trying to get ahold of one of the books. He also sent me a link to a piece on Kurt Schmidt's blog about the Haro team reunion show in Europe. I started checking Kurt's blog out, and found that he referred to my blog as "monumental" for the old school crowd. OK, I understand the "mental" part, but "monu-mental" blew me away. Seriously, I don't think this is that good. But it has obviously struck a chord with the old school crowd, an internet scene that I didn't even know existed when I started writing this thing.
Now the thing about reviews is that a creative person really shouldn't pay much attention to them. If you believe the good ones, then you have to believe the bad ones. If you're creative, you can be destroyed by mean spirited criticism or by believing your own hype. But there is an exception to the rule. The people who are die hard parts of the scene should be listened to. I'm not saying I believe everything I read. But it meant a lot to hear Kurt Schmidt (krtschmidt.com) gush over my writings. And I totally dug the "word cloud" he did of the blog, and have a copy hanging on my wall (next to the air mattress) now. I don't know Kurt, but I know he's been making stuff happen in the freestyle world for a really, really long time. So thanks Kurt. It means a lot when a pillar of the scene makes comments like that.
I'm really stoked all of you read this. I'm really trying to whine less and keep cranking out stories of my time at Wizard. I've lived a weird life, and there's a lot that I want to write down, so when this blog has run its course, I'll move on to something else. Hopefully. My living situation is still up in the air, so anything could happen at this point. I'm still living moment to moment, day by day, just like I was on the streets. But there's some light at the end of the tunnel now. I just hope it's not a train.
Oh, Kurt wrote that I was Jeff Emig's brother. For any who don't know, Jeff Emig was a major force in motocross in the '90's. I've never met him, unfortunately. I worked on the supercross TV series in '91, when Jeff was an up-and-coming 125 rider. At one race, my former roommate, Randy Lawrence, tried to introduce me to Jeff. There aren't too many Emigs in this world, so we fiugred Jeff and I must be related at some level. But every time Randy and I went to Jeff's pits, he was riding, and when he wasn't riding, I was busy with crew work. So I missed meeting him. When Jeff really got famous a few years later, my family came to the conclusion that my dad and Jeff's dad were cousins, so Jeff and I were second cousins or something like that. Recently, some relative said that isn't true. So I don't know if Jeff Emig and I are related. If nothing else, a lot of people can pronouce my last name since Jeff got famous. There's also a younger martial arts forms guy named Matt Emig who's amazing, especially with nunchucks. Check him out on You Tube, he'll blow your mind. He blew his knee out last year, so I don't know if he's competing again yet.
Thanks again to everyone who reads this blog... even the FBI agents posing as thirteen-year-old girls posing as old school BMXers (heh, heh, heh).

Dirty Glass

2009-06-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

In the early days of this blog, I had people getting on my case about my telling embarrassing stories about my one-time co-workers. Isn't that what pretty much everyone does on their lunch break and while drinking beers after work? Hey, I'm not the guy who thought it would be funny to take a dump in a cat box. I just watched in awe. That's a story that just has to be told at some point.
Personally, I thought I was embarassing myself more than anyone else in this blog. I was a 20-year-old-virgin through my entire short stint at Wizard Publications. It doesn't get much more embarrassing than that. Half of the reason I rode at The Spot every night is because I was under the delusion that doing tricks on my little bike would impress some hot California woman walking by to want to come home with me. It doesn't get any more pathetic than that. As Robert Heinlein once said, "Virginity is an odd fetish easily remedied." Luckily for me, mine was remedied shortly after leaving Wizard, by a former model who had appeared in Penthouse, no less.
The desire for love and lust is one of the great motivators of human beings. So here are a bunch of songs about love, lust, and loss. I'll start the list with the unassuming woman many credit with starting the whole genre we now call punk rock: Patti Smith. She was a "street urchin" poet and singer, in New York, in the early '70's. You'll recognize some of these songs, but maybe this list will introduce you to a couple new ones, or remind you of some old ones you haven't heard in a while...
All but a couple of these can be found on You Tube clips:

Patti Smith- Because the Night
Johnny Preston- Running Bear
Dropkick Murphys- Dirty Glass
Deadly Sins- There is a Light
Johnny Cash- I Walk the Line
Soft Cell- Tainted Love
Social Distortion- 99 to Life
The Ramones- Baby I Love You
The Buzzcocks- Ever Fallen in Love
The Dickies- She's a Hunchback
The Offspring- Session
Blink 182- All the Small Things
All- Clean Sheets
Lagwagon- Razor Burn
Janis Joplin- Me and Bobby McGee
Joss Stone- Son of a Preacher Man
Patsy Cline- Three Cigarettes and an Ash Tray
Maria McKee- If love is a Red Dress
Kerry Getz- Beautiful to You
Bobbie Gentry- Ode to Billy Joe
No Doubt- Don't Speak
Dramarama- Anything, Anything
The Romantics- What I Like About You
Human Drama- Love Will Tear Us Apart
CWA-Only Straight Girls Wear Dresses-another lesbian tribute
Melissa Etheridge- Come to My Window
The Indigo Girls- Closer To Fine
The Misfits- She
Green Day-She
The Zeros- Cosmetic Couples
All- She's Just My Ex
Tina Turner- What's Love Got to Do With It?
Jane's Addiction- Jane Says
Guns N' Roses- My Michelle
Tank Girl- Let's Do It (Joan Jett & Paul Westerburg)
Gene Vincent- Be-Bop-A-Lula
Eddie Cochran- Somethin' Else
The Stray Cats- Rock This Town
The Brian Setzer Orchestra- Fish Net Stockings
Save Ferris- Come On Eileen
Reel Big Fish- Take On Me
The Carpenters- We've Only Just Begun
The Fugees- Killing Me Softly
The Cranberries- (They Long To Be) Close To You
Johnette Napolitano/Holly- Hurting Each Other
Dishwalla- It's Going to Take Some Time
Cherry Poppin' Daddies- When I Change Your Mind
Dropkick Murphys- Kiss Me I'm Shitfaced
ZZ Top- Tube Steak Boogie
Veruca Salt- Seether
Babes in Toyland- Swamp Pussy
ZZ Top- Pearl Necklace
The Buzzcocks- Orgasm Addict
Nine Inch Nails- Closer (Star Trek + NIN on You Tube clip)
Bruce Springsteen- I'm on Fire
Alice Cooper- Cold Ethyl
Meat Loaf- Paradise by the Dashboard Lights
Billy Joel- Only the Good Die Young
The Red Aunts- Roller Derby Queen
Green Day- Basketcase
The Vandals- Cafe 405
Operation Ivy- Bombshell
L7- Til the Wheels Fall Off
Hole- Doll Parts
Avril Lavigne- Skater Boy
Nirvana- Polly
Pearl Jam- Better Man
Boomtown Rats- Don't Like Mondays
Social Distortion- Ring of Fire
Queen- Somebody to Love
Phantom of the Opera- Phantom of the Opera
Les Miserables- I Dreamed a Dream
Sarah McLachlan- Better Than Chocolate
Muddy Waters- King Bee
Bruce Springsteen- Rosalita (live)
Joan Osbourne- St. Theresa
Tori Amos- Silent all These Years
L7 & Dave Grohl- Used To Love Him
Guns N' Roses-Used to Love Her

Thanks to Mike Sarrail for introducing me to a lot of these bands back in the '80's.

Dream jobs are jobs, not dreams...

2009-06-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of August, 1986, I started at Wizard Publications. My thoughts were mostly along the lines of, "how the hell did I get here." I had spent a year working at Pizza Hut in San Jose, pretty much running the night shift most of that time. Before that, I spent the summer managing a tiny amusment park called The Fun Spot in Boise, Idaho. At age 19, I over saw thirteen employees, six rides, a food stand, and a miniature golf course. So when I got to Wizard, I was ready and rarin' to go.
I spent that first night going through slides for the BMX Action tenth anniversary party with Gork. The next couple working days Don-boy Toshach, the guy with an English degree, taught me the basics of proofreading. He gave me a few stickers. They showed me my office and made sure I had all the basics. And then it was time for me to get to work and start crankin' on the two greatest magazines in the universe. And there wasn't a damn thing for me to do... for nearly three weeks. Andy, Gork, and Lew were making most of the phone calls and doing all the writing on the November issue that was getting finished up then. So I just sat. I didn't know what the fuck to do. Lew showed me where the old black and white photos were, so I could go through them and wallpaper my office with my favorite ones. I read The Elements of Style cover to cover the first couple days. Gork showed me where the old magazines were after a few days, so I started going through them, stacks of old BMX Actions, since I'd read all the FREESTYLIN' mags published already. I felt bad, I was used to the fast paced,better keep busy restaurant pace. I hated to get paid what seemed like a lot of money to just sit there. I only made $400 a week, but that was a lot of money after Pizza Hut. But that's what my job turned out to be. I learned real quick that dream jobs are jobs, not dreams. As cool as it was, I was a 20-year-old peon with no experience taking the place of a guy with a degree in English and literature.
That lasted two or three weeks, then suddenly the guys dumped all the copy for both magazines on me to proofread within a couple days. I think they gave it to me the day before deadline, and the deadlines for the two mags were a couple days apart. Gork was a bit more organized then Andy and Lew, but they were all fond of writing at the last minute. So suddenly I had fifty or sixty pages of typewritten copy and 24 hours to find every single mistake in all of it. And there were a lot of mistakes. That's when the long nights became mandatory. We'd all go in at 9 am or whatever, and work until 10 or 11 pm for three or four or five days.
I muttled through it, and got everything proofread within about three days, I soon found out that was normal for those guys. And then, those issues went to the art department and I had 2 1/2 or 3 weeks with nothing to do except to build a bike now and then or drive Windy to a photo shoot.
Emboldened by surviving my first wave of proofreading, I got on Gork, Lew, and Andy's cases the next month and they had EVERYTHING excpet a few photo captions in my hands before deadline. Oz himself told me that was the first time FREESTYLIN' had ever made deadline.
It was also the last. Andy and Lew reminded me I was the new guy and my whipcracking didn't work the next month.
For my whole five months at Wizard, I had to find busy work a couple weeks each month, then put in the long hours at, and after, deadline. It was a great job... but it was still a job. That was one of my biggest lessons there. My biggest lesson was learning how advertising works in the media. I'll get to that later this week.

Chris Day, part 2

2009-05-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

During my stint at Wizard, Chirs was one of the people I saw almost every day, and they left him out of the book, too.

FREESTYLIN' books on ebay right now...

2009-05-30T04:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, for all you old freestyle geezers out there following this blog, here ya go... I got an email from a guy named Michael today. Well, I think it was a guy, but the email didn't specifically mention gender. There was that chick in the Bangles named Michael Steele back in the '80's. You know, the one with died red hair in the "Walk Like an Egyptian" video. I always kinda liked her. I mean, sure, Susanna Hoffs was the cutesy one, but there was something about Michael Steele. Isn't that also the name of the token black Republican?
Anyhow, Michael in the email asked about the FREESTYLIN' book, which is officially titled The Nike SB FREESTYLIN' Book 2008: Generation F, or something like that. So just to be thorough, I checked ebay before answering Michael. I heard those things were selling on ebay for $750-$800 right after they came out. But there's one on ebay right now (Saturday, May 30, 2009) with a single bid of $99.00. There's a second one, with the "mud" box and Michael Lau toys on sale with a Buy it Now price of $499. Let the bidding frenzy begin. Whoever is selling it can send my commission check to the address in the "Club White Bear" post... heh, heh, heh.

Gladiators concussion clip explained

2009-05-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah... yeah, I know, this blog is about my adventures at FREESTYLIN' magazine. But I've been trying to get a copy of this hit I took on Gladiators for about 15 years now. Follow the link on the previous post, go to the You Tube clip halfway down the page, and my concussion hit is at 4:39 in realtime and again at about 4:55 in slo-mo. I'm the guy in black with the white shield-type karate pad. The contender is April Wheat, a college cheerleader and gymnast from Texas who was also in the Army reserves as I recall. This whole clip is highlights of gladiator Victoria "Jazz" Gay. Jazz was really cool, but you definitely would not want to make fun of her last name. For pure strength, it would be a tough call between Victoria and Shelly Beattie, who played Siren on the show. Both of them could whoop most any guy you know.
Anyhow, the game is the pyramid, and I was a spotter, the guy in black holding the big white pad at the bottom. What you can't tell from TV is that the red mats that appear to be the ground are actually a scaffolding platform eight feet above the real floor. So our job as spotters were to keep the conteders and gladiators from rolling or bouncing off the platform onto the hard floor below. Even with the women, this game was scary for us. With the men, it was insane. They would often come down, gladiator and contender together, tangled up, in a ball with arms and legs flailing.
The object of the game is for the contender to get to the top of the pyramid and push a button. The gladiators, obviously, tried to keep this from happening. In this clip, Jazz throws April down, April lands on her feet on one of the lower steps and the momentum forces her into a head first dive. It's actually different than I remembered it. I thought she was thrown from about ten feet up and did the flip at the last minute. But things happened fast for me in that game. So April is falling headfirst, her gymnastics instincts kick in and she tucks to land on her back. One of her heels catches me right in the side of the head, the other one hit me between the shoulder blades and left a skid mark on my back that lasted for a few months.
What you don't see in this clip is that April and I both bounced up, eyes wide, and simultaneously asked each other, "Are you alright?" We nodded that we were, and she got up and kept going.
The game ended quickly. Reed, the cameraman, had been only a few feet away. He looked at me and said, "You better go get checked, that was like a car wreck!" I had the adrenaline pumping, and didn't feel much yet. His words really tripped me out because cameramen are the most jaded people there are, they've seen everything and nothing phases them. And Reed was freaking out. So I had one of my guys jump up to take my place, and I went backstage to see the trainer. Our trainer, if I remember correctly, was the trainer for the L.A. Rams, Gladiators was just a side job for him. They took real good care of the numerous injuries the gladiators and contenders suffered. But us spotters were pretty much seen as expendable on the show. I was the head spotter, I led a crew of seven guys plus myself, but I was still just a spotter. I told the trainer (Chris?) that I just had a cheerleader dropped on my head, and they said I should get checked out. There was no blood or anything, so he said I could either go to the hospital to get checked or put ice on it. Now, it was early in the day, and while my crew were all good guys, I was the only veteran and things went south if I wasn't around. So I told the trainer, "give me a bag of ice."
I sat down on the bleacher steps just outside the entrance to the gladiator's training room backstage. When the pyramid game ended, my crew and the grips changed the set for the next game, and everyone else got a break while that was happening. So I was sitting there with an ice pack when Bob Levy, the director, rushed in towards the gladiator's area. He stopped as he walked by, then said, "Are you the one who got hit?" I said I was. At that point I was kind of dazed, the pain and stiffness from the whiplash of the hit were setting in, but there was no mistaking the childish glee in Bob's demeanor. Bob was a short, pudgy, dorky looking guy, often compared to George Lucas in appearance. But he was, and still is, a BRILLIANT sports director. He already had won 7 or 8 emmys, and he's still racking them up directing football and other shows. Directors love exciting TV, and Jazz, April and I had just provided him with some wonderful television. So as soon as I said I was OK, Bob exploded with enthusiasm, "We got a GREAT shot of that hit, come out to the truck and check it out when you feel up to it." I said I would, and Bob dissappeared into the training room.
I sat there with the ice pack for quite a while, and then went to lunch as I started feeling better. April and several of the gladiators and other crew people asked if I was OK. I was feeling a little out of it, but I went on with the day. It seemed really bright outside, and that's when I realized my pupils would change size. That lasted for about 2 1/2 days. Walking back from lunch, I went to the TV truck to see the clip of my hit. One of the truck guys tried to find it, then told me the tape had been sent out for editing already. We shot that show in July '93 I think, and the show didn't air until the next April or May. I did catch it on TV, by accident, but didn't have a VCR to record it.
My head has taken quite a beating in my life, but that was the best hit ever, and I'm stoked to fianlly see it. I called the bubbly cheerleader April the Spotter Slayer after that. But the knickname didn't stick. Like riding, it doesn't look near as gnarly on TV. Thanks Anthony, I don't know how you found it, but I'm totally stoked you did.
Ok, Monday I'll get back to the FREESTYLIN' stories.
Now, while we're at it, does anyone have footage of the Troy McMurray/Metal Mulisha fight from Irvine a few years ago? There's a fat guy with a backpack that gets his head stomped on by the Mulisha members. I'm the fat guy. I didn't have insurance then, so I didn't go to the doctor, but my head hurt for five or six weeks, so I think they cracked my skull a little. I'd really like to see that one, too.

On a darker note, since I'm talking about American Gladiators, I'd like to give me condolences to every one who loved Siren, Shelley Beattie, on that show. Shelley took her own life early last year, which is unspeakably tragic. She was deaf, overcame immense obstacles and became a top body builder, an American Gladiator, a member of the all-female America's Cup yacht team, among her accomplishments. She was an amazing person. Shelley and Salina Bartunek (Elektra) were my two best friends on the show. I'm late in saying this, but Shelly, there's a lot of us who miss you. R.I.P.

Gladiators concussion clip

2009-05-29T06:27:00.000-07:00

Reader Anthony is my new hero. I watched a couple hours of Gladiators clips trying to find a shot of me last night after a neighbor told me ESPN Classic had been showing the old American Gladiators. Here's the clip... concussion

American Gladiators

2009-05-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, one of my wierd jobs in the '90's was to get my ass kicked by the American Gladiators. I found a clip on You Tube of a show with me in it. It never works when I try to link to You Tube, and I still don't know why. So if you're really bored, search "American Gladiators Play or Pay", and you'll find it. I'm in the background of the blue contender's tower at :43 and 1:40.
I'v been trying for years to find the clip where contender April Wheat was thrown off the pyramid and landed on my head. Well, actually she did a flip and kicked me in the head. It was the best concussion I've ever had. My pupils wouldn't change size for 2 1/2 days after that. I'm fine, though, there were no long terms effects[;p'SOUe rvhvl;dgzjho[retuoIEFGho;zsugo!!!
It was Season 6 Episode 9 I believe. If anyone happens to find that clip, let me know.

D.I.Y. or Die

2009-05-28T11:27:00.001-07:00

I watched the 2002 documentary D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist, by Michael Dean this morning. I heard about it years ago when I bought a book he wrote called The $30 Film School. He shamelessly promoted his film all through the book. I always meant to check it out, but never found it. So I watched it on You Tube today. It's a bunch of interviews with independent artists and musicians of all flavors. Ian Mackaye and Lydia Lunch, and Mike Watt are among those interviewed. It's well worth watching, I recommend it. Watch it on You Tube, then buy a copy, so he can afford to do more stuff.

Don't forget, doing stuff yourself is only half of D.I.Y., the other half is actually paying money for stuff other people do.

Well, except this blog, this is free. Well, I mean I wouldn't mind if you all sent me $20 just to be cool, but that's not why I do it. I'm not sure why I do it. I guess I take comfort from the fact that so many people are wasting their company's money by reading my ramblings when they're supposed to be working. That's reason enough.

Chris Day

2009-05-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

"Does Chris know we moved?" Lew asked me as Chris rode away from The Spot.
"I don't think so." I replied.
"Let's keep it that way as long as we can."
"OK."

Chris Day was a kid of about 15 when while I worked at Wizard Publications. He was one of the most dedicated Spot locals, down there riding almost every night. He had begun doing his flail boomerangs before I moved there, swinging around the front of the bike like a gymnast doing a flair. They really were amazing. Several riders did boomerangs with the flair style, but no one did them like Chris Day. He kept pushing them until he was kicking his feet high in the air, almost doing handstand boomerangs.
Chris was an amazing up-and-coming flatlander during my stint at FREESTYLIN'. But he was fifteen, and could also be pretty damn annoying. I met him when I flew down for the interview, before I actually worked there. Chris would just walk into Gork and Lew's apartment, not really bothering to to knock. And every time he'd walk through the living room, into the tiny kitchen, open Gork's cookie jar, and grab three or four cookies and start eating them. Then he'd say "Hi." He was basically a good guy, but he was totally into riding, lived near the magazine guys, and so he hung around us whenever possible. There just weren't any riders his age around. He got to be a little bit much after a while. When it looked like I'd be working there for a while, we scouted around and found a three bedroom apartment, in Hermosa Beach, half a block from Andy and Kelly's place. When we moved, we just kind of forgot to tell Chris. So for three weeks, until he figured it out, Chris would go to our old apartment in Redondo, and bang on the door and tell us to let him in. Finally he figured it out, I think when some foreigner who was sleeping on our couch rode back from The Spot, and Chris followed him. We acted like it was just an oversight.
Occaisionally, Chris would ride over to the Wizard warehouse, about four miles, if he knew we were working late. Sometimes we'd let him in. But often, we were on deadline, and we wouldn't answer the door because we needed to get everything done since deadline was a couple days before. One night we were all working, and Gork had his stereo cranked, like usual while working nights. As we sat in our offices, in the quiet pause after each Metallica song, we'd hear Chris banging on the warehouse door, thump, thump, thump, "Hey guys... it's me... Chris...let me in!" thump, thump, thump. One night he did that for half an hour. And we ignored him. A couple nights later we were working late again, and Chris came by. He stood out there in the dark, in a desolate business park, banging on the warehouse door for over two hours. Occaisionally, we'd walk out of our offices for something and ask the others, "Is he still out there?" Usually it was followed by the distant sound, "It's me! Chris!" We'd shake our heads and go back to work. We weren't trying to be mean to him... well maybe a little bit... but mostly we were trying to get the work done we'd been putting off for the previous three weeks. After his two hour door pounding session, Chris finally got the message, and left us alone when we were working. Mostly.
Near the end of my stint at Wizard, we were having a little party at our place, and Chris asked if we had anything to eat. Now that wasn't too funny in and of itself. I think Chris had scored a few beers in during the party, and was pretty buzzed. Him asking for food sparked a memory in Lew. Early in the holiday season, Gork's grandma had sent him some persimmon brownies. Now I have nothing against persimmons and I definitely like brownies. But something about combining the two just didn't work. Gork put them in his new cookie jar, and we nibbled on them that first week, then pretty much forgot about them. A couple weeks later, somebody opened the cookie jar and noticed that the persimmon brownies were growing a beard... mold. So, much like the eight month old refried beans they once showed me, the persimmon brownies went from being a snack to being an experiment.
It was about a month later when Chris asked for something to eat. Lew looked at Gork and I and said, "I think we have some brownies." One of us, Gork I think, told Chris they were kind of old and that he shouldn't eat them. Chris said he was starving, and he didn't care. While that was going on, I slipped into the kitchen and looked into the jar. The "beard" on the brownies was about 3/8 of an inch long. I made a face at Gork and Lew, letting them know the brownies were pretty scary. But Chris headed to the cookie jar, claiming he was starving and didn't care if they were a little old. Gork, Lew and I just smiled as Chris dug into the cookie jar and pulled out one of the hairy brownies. The other riders at the party started laughing as they realized what was going on. We expected Chris to take a bite and spit it out once he realized how nasty they were. Oh no, much to our surprise, Chris wolfed down almost the whole batch of mold-ridden brownies, as the rest of us gagged just watching. He had eaten five or six before he even noticed the mold, and when he did, he just shrugged his shoulders and kept chowing them down. We almost felt bad for him. Almost.
When I started at Wizard, Chris would come down to The Spot to ride with us, and was really stoked if R.L. Osborn showed up. By the time I moved away six months later, R.L. was coming down to The Spot to ride with Chris, he'd improved that much and was really pushing flatland then. Andy and Lew gave Chris an amateur profile in the mag about then, and he was in the mix of the better flatlanders for a while.
Last I heard, he's still putting on contests somewhere.

Shot fired...

2009-05-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

One night, when we lived in the Hermosa Beach apartment, we heard firetrucks roll down the alley that was directly in front of our apartment. We looked out front and saw there was a garage on fire a few houses down. Now all of those beach apartment buildings were small, two or three unit places, usually only a few feet away from each other to make the most of the expensive real estate. So a fire could spread quickly. Lew and I walked down the alley to investigate. The firemen were on it, it looked like they would have the garage fire contained soon, and Lew and I started talking to another guy watching. We soon learned that it was his garage on fire. He was handling it pretty well, trying fo figure out how it might have started. His car wasn't in it, and he would lose some tools, but not much else. Nobody was hurt or anything, so that was good.
As we talked to him and watched the firemen, we'd here a pop every once in a while, followed by a kind of whistle. We asked the guy if he had fireworks in there. He said no, thought a moment, then got a really strange look on his face. "I do have a couple boxes of my grandpa's old thirty-ott-six shells in there though." My eyes got big and I started backing away as we heard a couple more pops. The guy ran to tell the firemen. Lew asked why I was backing up. "Those are bullets exploding!" I said as I ran back to our apartment. Lew took my word for it and ran right behind me.

Subliminal Message

2009-05-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't wipe your friends on the side of the couch.

Kernerville Federal Penitentiary

2009-05-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

I've now been trapped against my will at my parents house in Kernersville, North Carolina for a little over six months. I've been trying to get a small business going because the job market is so terrible here. If you've read the early parts of this blog, you know that I spent a year living on the streets because I saw that as a better option than coming here to my parents' house. this house is the abusive situation I escaped when I got the job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN'. I vowed never to live under this roof again, no matter what.
Since at least the mid 1990's, my mom has been calling friends of mine whose names I mentioned inadvertantly. I remember coming home from work when I was Chris Moeller's roommate and he had just talked to my mom. "Your mom is completely fuckin' nuts," he told me. "Oh, yo noticed," I replied. At that point, she was trying to get proof from my friends that I was gay because I hadn't gotten married yet. Chris told me that much. Now believe me, if you grew up in my house, you'd be pretty leary of marriage as well. I don't know what my mom told the other friends and roommates of mine she's talked to. What I do know is that I've been under repeated investigation by law enforcement for at least the last eight years, and probably longer. I became quite adept at picking undercover cops out of a crowd. That's really not that hard, every taxi driver, bartender, or cocktail waitress learns to do the same thing as a matter of necessity. Cops are, by nature, bad actors. There are some good ones, but very few. Most of them might as well be wearing clown suits they're so obvious. So whenever these type of people would show up in my life, I'd fuck with them. I feel it's my civic duty to help bad undercover cops get better. They don't seem to see it the same way. Just for the record, all that investigation led to an open container conviction (and I rarely drink), an illegal U-turn ticket, and two panhandling tickets. That's not a very good return on the investment of hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars that have been spent keeping an eye on me. But hey, there's no understanding government, right?
I walked away from my taxi on Thanksgiving weekend 2007. I was in such bad health that I really didn't expect to live more than a few weeks. I didn't really care then. But I did live. A month later, as I spent Christmas on the streets, I purposely didn't call my family. After all, I'd been living in my cab for four years, and they didn't want to help me get back on my feet. I thought, "fuck 'em" Ok, whatever. I just did my own thing.
My family, however, didn't see it that way. They reported me missing to HBPD. I found this out a couple weeks later when Sheep Hills local Adam Pope saw me on the sidewalk and told me to call Barspinner Ryan. My family had found Ryan, and talked to the Huntington Beach Police. What happened to me over the next ten months was nothing short of pure terrorism. The cops wanted me out of Orange County. I simply wanted to live. I had a drug crazed gangbanger say he was going to make me his bitch while trying to sleep at a bustop one night. I exploded out of my sleeping bag, my knife drawn, and convinced him otherwise. Two nights later, I woke groggily in the same bustop to find the lights had been shut off and a cop walked up and pointed a Tazer at me at point blank range. He was looking for a vandal. He was also a very trigger happy rookie. I stared right into his eyes and answered his questions. He didn't know what to do, so he walked off and kept looking. I endured incidents like that for ten months because I knew living on the streets was better than living in my parents house. I may have been a wanted man, but at least I was a free man.
After ten months, the police knew every place I went, if I got on a certain bus, they had a good idea where I was going. I couldn't even panhandle food money anymore, let alone actually get working again. But the funny thing was, there were a few cops who figured out what was going on, and actually felt bad for me. They actually would throw me a five dollar bill now and then to help me out. There are a lot of bad cops out there, but some good ones as well.
It took more than ten years of my mom calling everyone in my life and saying God knows what, but I finally decided to come here. My dad's been in bad health, and I didn't know how much longer he would be around. I survived my childhood because of him, and he's the only reason I tolerate the psychological abuse of this house.
My mom has been trying to force me to get on disability since I got here, and refusing to help me hang on to my video footage, writngs, computer, and video camera was part of her plan. It's been a dark time for me, and I've been through some fairly tough times before this. For those who don't know, driving a taxi is fairly challenging. Being homeless is fairly challenging. Being under surveillance for things you never did is fairly challenging.
I try to channel my pain, anger, and frustration into something positive. This blog has been one of those things. I've also been doing some artwork, I've even sold some since I've been here.
I've also been trying to get a small business going. I took my tax refund last week and made a zine describing the ebay business I want to get going. I sent it out to 25 friends and family members, asking 24 of them to loan me $100 for one year. I figure that if I raise $1500 to $2000, I can get a set up on ebay, get a bank account, Paypal account, and start making at least as much as I would with a minimum wage job. Once I establish that base, I can start doing more creative work and see what pans out. The response to this blog has been overwhelming, I'm now writing old school stuff for Dig, and I'm sure I can use my writing to help support myself at some point.
Yesterday, my uncle Tom sent my mom a check for $100. Back in January when I first told him my ideas for this business, he sent her a check for several hundred bucks out of the blue. Now I don't know if either of these were meant for me, I'm not allowed to see the letter he sent with this check, and I was told he didn't send any note with the check in January. This is the kind of stuff I'm dealing with. My mom says he's always asking if I've got my business going yet, but when I talk to him on the phone, he doesn't mention it. Obviously, I need to talk to him directly. But this is the kind of stuff I'm dealing with here. If most of the people loan me the hundred bucks, I can EARN a living here, I know that. But I don't even know if I'll even see the checks if they do come in the mail. That's how crazy this place is.
I'm sure some of you will think I'm bitching and feeling sorry for myself with this post... mostly because I am. But I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be in a situation where the head of the household, my mom, wants to keep me from making a living.
The point is this, if I can borrow some money to get this little business going, then I can deal with living here and I'll keep writing. If I can't borrow the money to keep going, I'll have to take to the streets again, and try to get back on my feet solo. And as soon as I leave here, my mom will call the cops and tell them I'm mentally ill and need to be forced on disability. Her plan was to force me on disability so I get "$600 a month"(she heard that amount somewhere) from the government, and I'll be put on drugs so I'll be "happy" and I'll live here and pay half their rent until they die, taking care of them the whole time.
Sorry... Homey don't play dat.
So if this blog stops suddenly in a week or two, it's because I've taken to the streets to save my own life. And now back to our regularly scheduled freestyle stories...

Subliminal Message

2009-05-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

Remember people, it's not really a "reality" show if there isn't a bong by the side of the couch.

Chris Moeller

2009-05-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

Chris Moeller was quiet. Go back and read that sentence again, you'll probably never see those four words together again. The first time I met Chris Moeller, Gork and I were heading to a race in Lake Elsinore. We stopped in Huntington Beach at a gated condo complex at the end of Lake street, where the young jumper lived with his mom. A sixteen year old Chris Moeller was wating by the gate with his bike. He hopped into the back of the van, I think it was the Wizard van, not Gork's, and we headed to the race. The drive was more than an hour, and Chris hardly said a word. He just sat in the back as Gork and I talked about whatever.
I first heard of Chris Moeller when Gork walked in from a photo shoot one day. He'd gone to shoot a bike test of somebody at some trails in Huntington Beach, only a few hundred yards from where Sheep Hills would later be built. Some local kid was there riding, out jumping the BMX Action test rider. That local kid was, of course, Chris Moeller. Gork came back from the photo shoot telling us about this crazy kid he saw at the shoot. I can't remember what trick Chris was doing that day, but it was something no one had done on jumps before. Chris was doing a can-can X-up or something. Gork couldn't give his normal test rider the boot on the spot, so he got Chris' phone number. If I remember correctly, he called Chris for the next bike test, only a few days later. Gork was so blown away by Chris' crazy jumping, that Chris almost became a mission for him.
On that first test, as I recall, they shot at Hidden Valley in Huntington Beach, the longest lived trails in HB. Chris did this HUGE no footer down the bonzai hill jump, getting head high and going about 25 feet. Gork came back from the shoot raving about that jump. He said it was one of the craziest things he'd ever seen. When Windy developed the sequence, Gork spent a whole day Xeroxing the photos and making a multi-image sequence of Chris flying down that hill. That was before photoshop folks, Gork did it all by hand, he was so amazed by it. It came out great and they used Gork's Xerox in the test. Chris Moeller, aka Mad Dog, became the top BMX Action test rider overnight. That's when I first got to know Chris. I'd get a test bike in, put it together so Windy could take the studio shots, then I'd tighten everything up and Chris would come in and check it out. We'd tweak it a little for him to ride, if necessary, and they'd take off for the shoot. I remember Chris got a cover of BMX Action before I left I think, doing a one hand no footer if memory serves. In late 1986, Chris emerged as some crazy jumper kid from Huntington Beach. By the time Gork and Rich Bartlett held the first King of Dirt jam several months later, Chris was co-owner of the fledgling S&M Bikes, with Greg Scott. At that first jam in Palmdale, S&M sponsored all the craziest jumpers, except some kid from Utah named Fuzzy. Chris later bought out Greg and took over S&M, which had its 20th anniversary a couple years ago. You can find footage of that party on You Tube. Chris helped make dirt jumping into a sport with his crazy jumping, and he built S&M into a formidable company, now with Fit Bikes, with his crazy antics both on and off the bike.
When I first started this blog, several people strongly encouraged me to go off on Moeller, both former S&M riders, media people, and industry guys. Chris hired me to edit the first official S&M Bikes video in '91, and I wound up sleeping on the floor of his tiny apartment. If Chris was the Steve Rocco of the BMX world, then I was his Rodney Mullen, the uptight intellectual guy he'd bounce ideas off. I was roommates with Chris for about five years, and I saw a lot of crazy stuff go down in that time. But that's not what this blog is about.
While Chris Moeller has inspired us all with his insane jumping and business acumen, he's also pissed off virtually everyone at some point. I'll end by describing Chris this way. Being around Chris is a lot like doing shots of Bacardi 151, it's fun every once in a while, but if you're around it every day, it'll kill ya.

Quasi and Pseudo

2009-05-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

One of my most annoying traits while working at Wizard was my incessant use of the words prefixes "quasi" and "pseudo". I can't even remember how I used them, but it used to drive Andy batty. I just used to used them a lot, quasi this and pseudo that.

Gucci Life?

2009-05-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

I had to wonder when I saw someone called "Gucci Life" was follower number 44. when I hear "Gucci," I think Newport Beach Cougars or Beverly Hills shooping on Rodeo Drive. Pretty cool blog, they put up the Mondo Vision Clip with the first street contest, and also have a clip of a monster truck actually landing a backflip. Cool Blog...

Craig Grasso clip

2009-05-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

It never works when I try to link to You Tube. To see the clip, search "Mondo Vision pt,3 - Vision Street Wear" on the You Tube search engine. The street contest is near the end of the clip, Grasso's name comes up, you'll see him.

Craig Grasso

2009-05-22T00:35:00.001-07:00

"Dude... you've got a big basket," Craig Grasso said to me. We were in the back of a pick-up truck going somewhere. I can't remember whose truck it was or where we were going. "Basket?" I said. Craig was kind of weird, and he a few unique words in his vocabulary. He pointed to my crotch. "Basket" was his word at the time for the crotch region, the package. I seriously started wondering if he was gay.
Craig was a real good rider, he was down at The Spot almost every night. He had weird hair, inspired by Robert Smith of The Cure, also kind of like a young Einstein. He wore freaky clothes. I kept my distance from him for a while after the basket comment.
But riding with him night after night I came to the conclusion he was just weird, not gay. One night I rode down to The Spot, and I told him that there was a Gene Loves Jezebel concert on MTV later that night. He stopped his bike and just looked a me. I was the new guy who listened to Bruce Springsteen and REO Speedwagon. "You don't like Gene Loves Jezebel, do you?" he asked me. "Not really, but I know you're into them, and I saw the commercial right before I left the house." For some reason Craig seemed totally amazed that a straight-laced guy like me would tell him about a Gene Loves Jezebel show on TV. But that broke the ice, and Craig and I got along great after that.
Craig was always entertaining. He'd do a thing he called the flail, just to mess with people walking by. He'd come racing down the bike path, the start swerving like he was about to crash, and people would freak out and jump out of the way. That was always good for some laughs. Criag's Flail was is not to be confused with Chris Day's flail boomerangs, which are something entirely different.
I think the second street riding article in FREESTYLIN' came out while I was working there. Now people had been riding street since the begininng. That photo of Bob Haro in the FREESTYLIN' book was shot at the 6th and Commonwealth banks in L.A., years before "street riding" became a term. But Grasso was always was one of those guys who wandered around checking out street obstacles. I took him to the Jinx Bank after Lew declared it jinxed, and we sessioned there a bunch of times. I think that's where Craig got the first wall ride fakie photo later on.
Of all the people in the Wizard Pubs scene, Craig and Rodney Mullen were probably the ones I got along with best. Craig kind of questioned everything, and Rodney was just real introspective, both traits of mine as well.
After I got fired at Wizard, I had enough money saved to pay another month's rent at the apartment I shared with Gork and Lew. Grasso was the only guy around during the daytime, so we just started riding together, going on these all-day sessions. Those four weeks were one of the great riding times in my life. We rode the wall ramp in Hermosa, and some skater's halfpipe over the hill. We wandered around hitting Larry's Donut Bank, bombing down 190th street hill, and just riding whatever we found. We just went out roaming around, riding the known spots and scouting out new ones. It was some of the best weeks of riding ever for me.
Then I got a job at the AFA with Bob Morales, and he came and picked me and my stuff up, and I was gone to Huntington Beach to start another chapter of my life. In those days at Wizard, Craig was just a good rider who liked screwing around on street stuff. But as street evolved into it's own thing, Craig was a pioneer.
Here in Mondo Vision, you can see Grasso at the first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California in 1988.

The Number 43

2009-05-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

Yes! Forty-three followers now. I'd been planning to write about the number 43, so I guess now's the time. For me, it started when I was in first grade and living outside Massillon, Ohio. Some of my friends and I were talking about why people think the number 13 was unlucky. Yeah, I was six, but we were wondering about it. We decided that the person who thought 13 was unlucky was dumb, so we decided it should be our lucky number. We decided to pick some other lucky numbers, because we were six and it seemed we could use as many lucky numbers as possible. For some reason that I still don't understand, odd numbers just seem cooler and more weird then even numbers. As we were picking numbers, someone mentioned that channel 43, one of the snowy UHF channels then, played the scary monster movies. That was all we needed. Forty three became the official lucky number in our little group. We lived in white trash apartments next to a big woods. We watched Speed Racer and Johnny Sako and Giant Robot after school. We listened to the big kids singing along to Three Dog Night's "Joy To The World," and Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown." We thought Bruce Lee, who was still alive then, was the toughest guy ever. And 43 was our lucky number.
Not long after that, we all learned to ride bikes without training wheels. Within a couple weeks we were riding through this HUGE hole, about a foot deep, on our bikes. It was the start of offroad riding for me. That was ten years before the trailer park in Idaho where I really got into BMX and freestyle. But those were the formative years for me.
The number 43, along with 13, have been lucky numbers to me since then. When the number 43 pops up unexpectedly and synchronistically, I consider it a good sign. And so it was one day after work at Wizard when I walked out into the parking lot and the NorCal posse rolled up. Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzales, Chris and Karl Rothe and all the rest, 17 in all I believe. I started talking to Maurice Meyer and Karl Rothe, as Andy, Lew and Gork were talking to the rest. I told them that I'd just transcribed an interview with Bert Peterson. "It was ridiculously long," I said, "like forty-three pages." One of them stopped in his tracks and yelled to get everyone's attention, he told me to tell everyone what I'd just said. "Well, actually it was forty-one pages, I think." "You just said forty-three. You said forty three." "Yeah," I replied, "I said forty-three." They all yelled weird stuff in unison.
"What's the big deal about 43?" I asked.
"For some reason, that number just keeps popping up everywhere lately. It's just weird." They all began talking about different times the number 43 had popped up in their lives. Unknown to me, it had become the lucky number of the NorCal riders after I left the scene. I explained that it had been my lucky number since I was a kid, which just added to the 43 mystery. Form there, the number 43 just permeated throughout the freestyle world for several years. I don't know why.
For what it's worth, I turn 43 in July.

Duh-duh-tuh-duh

2009-05-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

The receptionist's voice came over the phone, "Dave Vanderspek for you." I picked it up. It was Vander, he was laughing and talking to someone else it seemed. He said somehting like, "Hey, you know that trick Windy shot of Christian yesterday?" The "Christian" he spoke of was Christian Hosoi, the skater, a good friend of Dave's.
"Yeah, Dave, what about it?"
"That fakie thing he did is called a duh-duh-tuh-duh, just make sure you get the name right."
"What?" I had no idea what he was saying.
Dave repeated himself.
"Uh... OK. How do you spell that Dave?"
"Just like it sounds."
"I was afraid of that."
"Why can't we just call it a wall ride fakie? That's what it is."
"Because duh-duh-tuh-duh is the sound the skateboard makes when you do that trick."
"OK, Dave... duh-duh-tuh-duh it is."
In the 1980's freestyle world, when Dave Vanderspek entered the picture, anything could happen. I figured out the spelling, and I think we actually printed it in the mag that way. He said something to whoever was with him in the room, and I heard Christian Hosoi's distinctive laugh in the background, and Dave hung up.

Spike Jonze really was a BMXer

2009-05-21T00:05:00.001-07:00

Let's see if I can make this work...
Spike Jonze

I dig Dig... and Vintage BMX

2009-05-19T00:51:00.000-07:00

My first piece for the Dig BMX website is up now, called "Spike Jonze was a BMXer." You can find it through the search engine. I'd link to it, but that's never worked when I tried it. I'll figure it out one of these days...
I also put an overly long diatribe on Vintage BMX, responding the the thread about this blog. I'm all over the Has Been BMX world now. There's a lot of good thoughts on that thread, mostly from Mike Carruth, one time BMX Plus guy, and Vintage BMX guy now. Maurice Meyer, one of my many NorCal mentors, speaks up, too. Cool.
I swear I used to get paid for writing this stuff once...

Cosmo

2009-05-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Cosmo was the "Factory Watchcat" of Wizard Publications. I'm sure most of you remember that. While working there, I learned why he was the factory watchcat. Oz explained this one, I believe. If you have a pet at a business, and you make that pet a mascot, then you can write off your pet food and vet expenses. Sneaky.
I don't remember much about Cosmo. He... I think it was a he... was always around, but would disappear for hours at a time. I think he would sleep on one of the big shelves in the back corner of the warehouse. He would wander into our offices at times, sniff around a bit, and leave when he felt like it. He was... a cat. And a cool one. Anyone could pet him, but he didn't let it go on long enough to be annoying. I think the office and warehouse was about 5,000 square feet, and that's a lot of space for an indoor cat.
Cosmo was photocopied at least twice. Janice and I Xeroxed him for a possible table of contents page, and he was a little freaked out by the bright green light. But he basically just chilled. I was surprised at how well he handled it. Oz, on the other hand, didn't handle it very well when he saw us Xeroxing Cosmo. I remember hearing another tale, when Spike was there, about them copying the cat. That's about all I remember about Cosmo.
He was not as spectacular as Media the mountain lion I made friends with last year while I was homeless, but Cosmo was one of the coolest cats I've ever known. He was totally down to earth, he never let his fame get to him.

Beetle not beatle

2009-05-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

I just noticed I spelled "beetle" wrong in that title. With an "a" in it,the word denotes John, Paul, George and Ringo. Beetles wreak havoc on plant life and dung. Beatles wreaked havoc on the social conventions world wide. Speaking of which... is anyone out there REALLY into John Lenon and the Beatles, I bought a bunch of Lenon tribute mags and Beatles mags at an auction and am looking to sell them. Let me know...

The GT Green Beatle Award

2009-05-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

Part of my job at FREESTYLIN' was to put together the test bikes, check the head tube angle and fork rake, and then disassemble them again to ship back after the test. This is really funny because I'm such a lousy mechanic that I couldn't get a bike shop job in Idaho. In any case, I managed well enough.
On one GT bike, I emptied out the box, and a big green scarab-type beetle fell out. It was dead. So being the sarcastic dork I am, and having a lot of spare time, I typed up a letter to Shaun Buckley at GT and asked if the beetle was an accessory on all GT models, or only on the top of the line ones. Much to my surprise, Shaun, who didn't even know me, wrote back a formal letter saying that only one green beetle was shipped out each year, to a lucky winner. By finding the beetle, I was the official 1986 GT Green Beetle Award winner, and because of finding the beetle, I would leave a charmed, elegant life forever... or something like that.
Obviously, I must have gotten the illustrious green beetle instead of someone else who truly desrerved it. But it was pretty funny Shaun took the time to write back such an elaborate letter.

Listen to Kerry Getz

2009-05-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

I may be a complete loser by all normal standards, but I've met a lot of really talented people in my weird life. I know Mat Hoffman, Spike Jonze, Ed Templton, Rodney Mullen, and I've met many people, famous and not, who are pretty damn talented. But if I had to pick the single most talented person I've ever known, it would have to be a singer/songwriter/guitarist from Newport Beach named Kerry Getz. Her forte' is acoustic, dark, moody music. Her stuff is one of my favorites to listen to while doing artwork, there's just something about it that enhances my creative mood. She's one of those artists that can take a while to turn on to, because it's not really catchy pop stuff, but once you've heard her a bit, you find yourself going, "man, I'm in a Kerry Getz mood," and pulling her music out. Her songs "Beautiful to You" and "Suspended in December" are on You Tube, clips from when she opened up for Leon Russell at The Coach House last December. Or you can check out her website: kerry-getz.com . I think some of her stuff's on itunes, as well. I've been to a fair amount of good live shows, but Kerry's the only person I've ever seen stop an entire bar (Muldoon's in Newport) dead in its tracks with a song. She broke into Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz", a capella, one night, and within 30 seconds the enitre bar was quiet. The bartender, servers, bar patrons, even the busboy all stopped to listen. It was like she stopped time... seriously. Even the restaurant patrons outside the walled bar area got quiet. It was the single most amazing performance of any kind I've ever seen. So if acoustic guitar songs interest you at all, check out her music. And no, she's not related to the skater who spells his name the same way.

McGoo

2009-05-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's another one that could get me in trouble...

Harold "McGoo" McGruther reigns as the comedian of the early BMX and freestyle world. He's probably still the primary comic of the industry, but I've been out of the industry scene a while. He was a B pro racer at one point. His first paid writing job was selling a joke to Hustler magazine, for $25 I think. He worked many jobs in the BMX world. I believe he once described the company SNAFU as being comprised of "a 40 year-old-roadie, a Marine, and a rich lady." McGoo was the 40-year-old roadie in the scenario. He was the Mental in Mental Jimmy's in the early 90's. He and Chris Moeller produced the best zine in the history of BMX, Gone: the rider's eulogy. He currently has a damn funny blog called Crown Lounge which I haven't read near enough of, being the self-absorbed loser I am. And during my short stint at Wizard Publications, McGoo was the team manager of the legendary CW Bikes Freestyle Team consisting of Dizz Hicks and Ceppie Maes. You guys remember the CW freestyle bike, the one with a standing platform big enough to land a helicopter on.
While I was at Wizard, there was a circle of insiders around the magazine. That was made up of the editorial guys; Andy, Gork, Lew, and me, plus the people we hung out or rode with on a regular basis. Those were R.L. Osborn, Craig Grasso, Chris Day, Todd Anderson, McGoo, and I'd throw in Steve "Guy B" Giberson since he was dating our receptionist, Dian. McGoo was around either the Wizard office or at The Spot at least two or three times a week when he was in town. As a freestyle team manager, he knew that the guys who spend time around the magazine get the coverage. But more than that, he was just a blast to hang around.
In my first few days after starting at Wizard, Gork and Lew told me to hop in the van, we were heading to McGoo's place. I think we met him at some restaurant in Orange County near his house. He came in talking about good and bad features of his "man purse", the little bag he was carrying that had become fashionable. Then he went off on some dance band he had been listening to in his car. He just kept on going. He's just always on. Everything turns into a spontaneous comedy routine when he gets talking.
Before long we finished eating, and were trying to think of something to do. I was the new guy, so I was just tripping out at the fact I was chowing down burgers with McGoo, Andy, Lew, and Gork. Someone came up with the idea of heckling hookers on Beach Boulevard. So we raced off in two cars and drove up and down Beach Boulevard in Westminster and Garden Grove. Back then, there was a fine array of women of the evening working that stretch of road, interspersed with a few burly looking Guardian Angel guys keeping them safe from idiots like us. We drove up and down a couple times yelling stupid shit out the windows. Then we stopped at a Burger King that the prostitutes used as a break from work. We got some drinks and McGoo regaled us about the previous weekend when he stopped there for a burger, and there was a couple hookers eating at the next table. Just to be funny, McGoo asked, "Hey baby, how 'bout a date?" The one closest looked at him with a scowl and said, "I'm on my lunch break!"
"I got turned down by a HOOKER!" McGoo yelled as he told us the story, raising a few eyebrows from nearby diners. As usual, he had us cracking up most of the night. Now, just to be clear about this... since people actually read this blog now, no one was actually picking up hookers. OKAY? We were just yelling at them.
Like I said, McGoo was the CW Team Manager then, and he had a not so friendly rivalry going with Frank Scura, who was the Hutch Team Manager then I believe. So we walked into McGoo's house one night, and had had a pair of glasses on with a penis for a nose. We looked at him questionably and he snapped, "How do you like my Frank Scura mask guys?" As usual laughter ensued.

Paperclips

2009-05-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

One day we were sitting around talking on break, and I think Andy was annoyed by something Derek, the accountant did. Andy was the casually dressed, weird art guy, and Derek was the super straight laced accountant who came in a couple times a week, and whose office was right next to Andy's, if I remember correctly. Andy was always trying to get Derek to loosen up, and Derek was always encouraging Andy to be more professional. It wasn't a bitter feud, just a little ongoing rivalry. So we were sitting around at break trying to think of a way to get back at Derek for whatever he did to irk Andy.
Lew, of course, had an idea. "What if we took all his paperclips in the little paperclip holder and made them into one continuous chain?" We all laughed, agreed it would be funny, and went back to work, forgetting the idea. All except me, that is.
Now we all had these little paperclip holders which were a smoky color, transparent, but just barely. When you shook the holder, two or three paperclips would pop out the hole and get stuck on a magnet encircling the opening. So a couple days after Lew mentioned the idea, when everyone had forgotten about it, I took all my paperclips out and started hooking them together in a chain. My office was in the back of the warehouse, so I could pretty much see anyone approaching, and hide them. Lew was next door, he could pop over unexpectedly, but I could usually hear him coming out of his office. So I made a chain of all 250 or so paperclips, and fed them back into the little container, with the last one attached to the magnet. Then, the next morning, when everyone went out to the lunch truck, I lagged a minute, and switched my paperclip holder with Lew's, giving him the paperclip chain. I went out to the lunch truck like normal for my daily Coke and blueberry muffin. I went back to work... waiting.
Hours later, a weird yell emanated from Lew's office, "Hey... what the hell? Wha.... EMIG!" I sauntered over to his office. "You called me?" I asked. Lew pulled a chain of paperclips from the clip holder, about three feet long, "What the hell is this?" I just started laughing, I couldn't keep a straight face. "You were right Lew, it would be funny to hook somebody's paperclips together in a chain." Much to my surprise, he was really pissed, and marched down to show Andy. Andy got a laugh out of it, then saw that Lew was pissed, and told me to unhook them all. Gork came out, saw the chain of paperclips, and just started cracking up. Lew calmed down, then his mischievious nature came back. "You know, since we have the paperclip chain already made... we might as well give it to Derek." Devilish grins emerged as Andy switched the paperclip dispenser with Derek's.
We had to wait a couple days for the pay off. But it came. Derek, with his accent from his native country (somewhere in Africa, I think), said something like, "Hey, what's the meaning of this?" and walked out of his office holding the paperclip container and a three foot chain of paperclips emerging from it. All of us editorial guys walked out of our offices, feigning surprise at his dilemma. They pulled out the whole chain, which was seven or eight feet long. I got the job of unhooking all the paperclips, which I didn't mind. The humor that resulted from hooking them all together was well worth the effort.

Music Wars

2009-05-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill album came out right after I started at Wizard, if I remember correctly. Lew thought that album was the best thing ever once he bought it. So he started playing it in his office, at home, and in his Walkman. He played it everywhere except Gork's van, which was a Rap Free Zone. Now I wasn't really into rap, which was pretty new in 1986. But the Beastie Boys album was pretty cool... the first ten or fifteen time I heard it. Since my office was down on the end next to Lew's, I heard it CONTINUOUSLY... for days. I got sick of it. So I went to the mall one day and decided to find the best anti-Beasties/drive-Lew-crazy music I could. After much deliberation, I decided on The Doobie Brothers, an album with "Coal Black Water." It was perfect. Lew started playing the Beastie Boys the next morning after we got to work, I put on The Doobie Brothers, equally loud. Now we couldn't play music very loud during office hours, but we could play it loud enough for the guy in the next office to hear it. Within a minute, Lew was in my doorway, "What's that?" he said, pointing to my cassette player. "It's The Doobie Brothers," I said with a grin, "I love that part in "Coal Black Water" where they're singing two different sets of lyrics over each other." He shook his head and left. I played that album over and over as Lew did The Beastie Boys. After about two days of this, Gork and Andy had to mediate a truce, as I recall. Lew was limited to only playing The Beastie Boys two or three times each day, something like that.

The Doobie Brothers came into play on another great day in my life. Years later, I was standing on the Huntington Beach Pier, waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger to show up and give a speech. It was the day before that crazy California governor's election with 130+ people running for the office. Among others, the race included the comedian Gallagher, porn star Mary Carey, Gary Coleman, Arnold, and my personal favorite, Jack Grisham from T.S.O.L.
I had already pissed off security that day by walking up to an obvious plain clothes security guy and asking, "Is that guy with the machine gun in the purple duffle bag one of your guys?" He gave me an evil look, and a once over, assessing my threat level. Hey, I was just trying to help. So I stood in front of him purposely, so he could keep an eye on me.
About 300 to 400 people showed up, most of them non-H.B. locals, obvious bussed in Arnold supporters. Word came that Arnold's bus would be late, so they had other people talking. After a while, they introduced a guitar player from The Doobie Brothers, and said he would play for us. The announcer yelled to the tight-ass Republican crowd, "Does anyone have a Doobie Brothers album?" I saw my opportunity and yelled out, "Does anyone have a doobie?" I looked at the security guy and he was so pissed I thought he was going to throw me off the pier.

On the videos, monetizing and such...

2009-05-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've lost all my video footage, both master tapes and raw footage. I know I've mentioned this way too many times. I sit here whining into the keyboard and forget people around the world read this. James from Australia sent me a copy of 44 Something, and a guy from Belgium just offered to send me The Ultimate Weekend. I have a VHS of T.U.W., so I'm good there thanks for the offer. If anyone has copies of the 1987 AFA videos (Oregon Pro Flatland, etc.), The Huntington Beach Street Scene ('89) or S&M's Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer, I'd like to get those at some point, but I'm in no hurry. I'm working on starting my whole life over, and BMX videos are a low priority right now. When I started writing this thing, I didn't really expect anyone to actually read it. I just needed on outlet, and this was it. The response to this blog continues to amaze me.
And to Sean, my unofficial P.R. guy, who suggested monetizing this blog. I looked into that months ago, and decided I'm not going to use this blog to make money directly. If I get work because of my writing here, that's one thing. But this blog is free to all who are interested, no annoying pop-ups, no matter what my financial situation is.
If any of you send something to the Club White Bear post address, I will send you a free zine, and I'll probably shamelessly hit you up to buy other crap I do in the future. I'm doing that totally offline, you have to actually mail me a note with your return address. I'm a zine guy at heart, and I've started doing big zines, often 48 pages, on various subjects. I have about 20 ideas I want to do right now, and the only way to find out about those is to snail mail me a note.
You Tube clip of the day:
Last night I came down with what seems to be an intense case of food poisoning, which led to the worst case of projectile vomiting and diarrea I've ever had without alcohol involved. So here's a great little ditty on that theme:
Killer Pussy- Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage

This is a great song to listen to if you're having a crappy day at work.

Another speed bump...

2009-05-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

If you've read much of this blog, you know my current living situation leaves much to be desired. I'm living at my parents' place, I've been getting turned down for restaurant jobs, and I haven't been able to borrow enough to get a small Ebay or similar type business going. My mom handles their finances... sort of. We just lost cable service, and the Roadrunner internet service is scheduled to get turned off at any moment. So this blog may slow down considerably if I have to go to the library and do it. I do intend to keep it going, I'll probably just slow down the number of posts I put out. We'll see what happens...

History

2009-05-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

"There are times when you feel like a hero, and times when you are a hero, and they're almost never the same times." - Richard Marcinko, leader of the U.S. Navy's Seal Team Six

As for us from the early days of BMX freestyle, I think there were times when we were making history and times when we may have felt like we were making history, but those were almost never the same times. The simple fact of it is, all of us who were riding in those days made a little bit of history. That may sound pretentious, but it's true. OK, none of us were George Washington or Plato or Da Vinci, but we were part of an activity, that we turned into a sport, that was part of a larger movement that has greatly influenced the world. The activity was trick riding on bicycles, which probably started about ten minutes after the first push bicycle was built in the 1830's or whenever. Bob Haro led the way into taking BMX trick riding into a performance arena. He started doing shows. R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola and others followed. Skatepark rider Bob Morales started holding skatepark contests, then flatland and ramp contests. The performance turned into a sport. The early activity or the sport attracted all of us. Then we threw our lives into it, and it became a lifestyle.
BMX freestyle was also part of the larger action sports movement. I trace that all back to surfing, brought back to life after hundreds of years of absence by George Freeth, Duke Kahanamoku, and a few Waikiki, Hawaii locals around 1900. George and Duke went to California, and surfing to root there. George died early, in 1919 I think, after a harrowing surf rescue of some swimmers, and Duke led surfing into history. Surfing was an activity, then a demo performance, then a lifestyle, and finally a blossoming industry when we got into freestyle. Surfing spawned skateboarding. On other fronts, off road motorcycling had turned into motocross over a couple decades. That spawned BMX, bicycle motocross racing in the early '70's. Bob Haro and a few others took those BMX bikes into skateboarding's skatepark pools, and BMX freestyle was born. It was not only born, but it was born to a generation inpired by Evel Knievel and Bruce Lee in their formative years. The purile fifties picket fence lifestyle had sparked the cultural and sexual revolutions of the '70's. Then we came in and the action sports world became another revolution.
We weren't trying to start a revolution, I think most of us were the weird kids in school looking for a place to channel our angst, anger, frustration, and most of all, our creativity. We found that channel on bikes made for little kids. Meanwhile, punk rock crept into the festering seams of society. Skateboarding turned from the pools to the streets. Urban inline skating was born. Snowboarding started growing exponentially. Wakeboarding came into being. Later came freestyle motocross and wake skating. We helped create a whole new type of sports, sports where creativity is a constant factor and contests don't dominate the scene. By spending hours learning and inventing tricks on our little bikes, and by shooting photos, making zines, making videos, starting our own companies and all that followed the riding, we change the world. The little sport where we used to know virtually every rider in the country has spread across the world, it's become something that none of us imagined.
And now, twenty-some years later, we are starting to write our history. Once again, much like the '80's, skateboarder Stacy Peralta led the way by producing the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys a few years ago. Then he took it mainstream with Lords of Dogtown. I knew, as I was watching the documentary, that the time had come to start telling our story. I began thinking of doing my own video. But for personal and financial reasons, I wasn't able to pull it off. Mark Eaton, on the other hand, did do it with Joe Kid on a Stingray. Now I've heard pretty much every old school rider dog on Eaton about that docmentary because he forgot this person or that person. But no one has made a better documentary. I think Mark did a fantastic job considering how much he took on. I think Andy, Lew and Spike, sparked by that guy at Nike whose name I forget, did a great job with the FREESTYLIN' book last year. But neither of those are The Complete and Final History of BMX Freestyle. I see both of those projects as a Table of Contents of our history. It's up to us to figure out what chapters need to be written (or filmed) and to put them out. This is a D.I.Y. industry, remember? If no one is doing what you think needs to be done, Do It Yourself.
For whatever reason, I wasn't mentioned in the FREESTYLIN' book. Andy said the other day it was a simple oversight. At this point it doesn't matter because that omission sparked me to sit down and start this blog. This is part of my story of those days, and as I've found out, there's an great old school scene out there. There are writers and photographers and collectors and promoters and video producers out there. If there's a scene that's been neglected or a story that needs to be told from our heyday, tell it. If you don't, who will?
I was never a great rider, but I had the good fortune to be part of several scenes in the early days of BMX freestyle, dirt jumping and the transition into stunt riding, or whatever it's called now. The way life worked out, I now have a lot of time to sit down and write. I encourage all of you to do the same. Collectively, we will write and produce our history.

Subliminal Message

2009-05-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

Subliminal Message:
Paul Nagel is one of the great artists of our times

Welcome...

2009-05-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to all the new followers of this blog. I just realized this blog has more followers than Steve Swope's Kickstand blog. How the hell did that happen? One mention of Windy's chest and this thing blew up, much to my surprise. My life is a weird dichotomy right now. This afternoon, I got turned down for a job at Wendy's. I'm serious. I checked the mail when I came back, and I got a DVD from a reader named James in Australia. I mentioned that I didn't have a copy of the S&M Bikes video, 44 Something, which I edited. He sent me one. Thanks, James. It didn't work on our DVD player, but I think that's because you guys have PAL system and we're on NTSC. I can get it transferred, no prob. I also got a long email from Bruce in New Zealand, telling me to keep at it. Thanks for that. I've got a bunch of long comments from Sean Murphy, with more support for my written ramblings. Thanks Sean, but... uh... cut back on the coffee and take a deep breath now and then... heh, heh, heh. Then I clicked on just now and see Mike Carruth, former BMX Plus editor, and Greg Flowers, midwest freestyle icon, on the followers list. Thanks for dropping by, hope I keep you all entertained.
It's weird because I've been around the Huntington Beach/Sheep Hills BMX scene for the last 17 years or so, and now I'm hearing from the riders I knew before that time. It's pretty cool. If any of you go back and read the older posts, which at least a few have done, you'll see that my life's in a pretty screwed up place at the moment. It could be worse, there could be an ex-wife or two or child support in the picture. But those are about the only two mistakes I haven't made.
My life has taken a weird path which basically started by goofing around on a little kid's bike in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho. I'm still on a weird path, but I'm a much better person for it, all in all. I was at a real dark place when I came to North Carolina and lost all my video footage from 20 years of biking and skating. When I started this blog, I didn't really have a plan. The general idea was, "I'll write for a few weeks about my experiences at Wizard Publications, then I'll either hitchike back to California or commit suicide." Now before anyone gets too freaked out, I had no definite plans to kill myself, I'd just gotten to a point where it seemed like one of the more logical options. That's happened a lot in my life, and I've found that to be a good time for procrastination. Hey, if life really sucks today, it'll probably nearly as bad tomorrow, and you can always off yourself then. If you put off thoughts of suicide for a couple days, something usually comes up to get you engaged again. In this case, people started responding to my blog. The woman you all remember as Krys Dauchy has been following this blog since about day 2, and her support of it has meant a great deal to me. Then Keith Treanor and Randy Lawrence contacted me, both good friends and riding buddies in the '80's and early '90's. I just kept typing away when everything else seemed dismal. I'm still too fat to ride after my time as a taxi driver, so writing is my main outlet for now.
I've found that the best happenings in life usually come just after the point where any sane person would give up and throw in the towel. This blog has been another one of those occurences. So thanks for reading, and if I ever get that restaurant job, I'll save some money and make it to an Old School get together. Then we can catch up and talk about how cool we were... or how cool we weren't but thought we were. Glad you all have taken some of the time when you're supposed to be working to check my tales. I'll try to keep it interesting and perhaps even thought provoking. Enjoy.

Just for the record...

2009-05-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

OK everyone... I'm really, really, REALLY not trying to start a war with Andy Jenkins, or anyone else from back in the day. I'm just telling my tales from my days at the mag. Anyone I've pissed off is more than welcome to start a Steve Emig Sucks blog if it bothers you that much.