Freestyle BMX Tales

Freestyle took my virginity thank god

2012-02-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

I was a shy kid. How shy? Remember the movie Rainman with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman? Well, if you put Tom's outgoing salesman on the far right of the spectrum, and autistic savant Raymond (Dustin's character) on the far left of the personality scale, I would have been a little bit to the right of Raymond. In today's world if I were a kid, I would be diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome (pronounced ass-burgers), I would be put on crazy mood altering drugs, and I'd commit suicide by age 12 or so. Our society is killing off a lot of smart but dorky kids these days in that way.

Anyhow, I managed to make it through high school in Boise, Idaho, live in a trailer park with slutty trailer park girls, and get a year into the BMX freestyle industry as a virgin. I was 20 when a 25-year-old singer in a rock band named Amanda walked into the AFA looking for a job as a receptionist. I remember she stared me straight in the eyes the first time I saw her, and smiled seductively. I didn't realize it, but I was a gonner right then.

We worked together at the AFA for a couple months, and went out for beers a couple times, but I chickened out and things never progressed. She realized stronger measures were needed to break me in, so she brought up the idea of having a hotel party after the finals at the Velodrome that fall. She rented a room, made all the arrangements, and we "invited" a bunch of riders to come by and party. I think I was the only one who didn't realize that no one was supposed to come to the "party." So Amanda an me sat on the bed, waiting for people to arrive, and sipping a bottle of peach brandy she produced from nowhere.

No one showed up.

So she turned on Dirty Dancing, on HBO, and suggested we get more comfortable. How freakin' shy was I in those days, you ask? We laid there and watched the entire Dirty Dancing movie, in our underwear, and I didn't make a move because I wasn't sure she really wanted me to. Yeah. I was pretty much Rainman where women were concerned.

As the credits began to roll on the movie, she finally said, "God, somebody has to get this started, and just grabbed me." Game over. Well, almost. Even after a heavy makeout session, I was still too scared to get Mr.Happy up for the challenge. So we did just about everything else. Not what she had in mind, but it broke the ice.

About six am, I woke up ready for action. I grabbed her and woke her up... sort of... and FINALLY lost my virginity. Two pumps and a squirt. Really... really pathetic. And she wasn't too happy about that. But the ice had been broken, and I had become a man (if not a very good one) at the hands of an quite attractive, and much more experienced woman. Hell, she'd even had a photo of her in Penthouse in her modeling days.

Amanda wound up following me to Unreel Productions a few months later, and about six months in, she dumped me. I was crushed. That night I wrote a poem called "Journey of The White Bear." Five years later I self-published that poem in a zine, and Chris Moeller started making fun of me, calling me The White Bear. That's where my nickname/pen name came from. And it's all because BMX freestyle led me to a cougar, and she went to a lot of work to break me in. Thank God for aggressive women. And BMX freestyle. In that order.

She wound up getting pregnant while working at Unreel, and later married my best friend at the time, the video editor at Unreel. I even went to the wedding an almost caught her garter in the toss. How weird is that? we were all good friends somehow. I actually got an email from her a few months ago and blew her off. I'll probably get another one now. Oh... and just for the record, I got my endurance up to an hour before she dumped me, so that wasn't the reason. I just wasn't enough of a partier for a rocker chick in those days.

The 630 air

2012-01-23T16:54:00.001-08:00

In my year at the AFA in 1987, part of what we did was a Southern California contest series. Obviously, in SoCal, just about anyone in the freestyle world of 1987 could show up at a local comp. But it was mostly a dedicated group of amateur riders. Dan Hubbard was consistently clean, almost annoyingly clean in his completely dialed runs. Jeff Cotter, Derek Oriee, Ron McCoy, Nathan Shimizu, and Ron Camero showed up at all those comps, representing the Lakewood area scene. Brad Warden from San Diego got big air on the ramps, and sometimes even managed to land on the ramps. He was a Dave Voelker protege' then. Eddie Roman, Brad Blanchard and the Dirt Brothers crew showed up most of the time.

I even met Vic Murphy at one of those comps. Some kid came up to me, said his friend was from Alaska, and asked if I wanted to see a "Summer Air." "What's a Summer Air" I asked. "That's where I hang-up both wheels on purpose," the Alaska kid replied. "Why the hell would you want to hang up both wheels on purpose?" I asked back. So the kid showed me the Summer Air. He did about three of them, intentionally tagging from and back wheels as he came in every time. It was scary to watch, but pretty freakin' amazing. That was Vic Murphy.

But the guy who stands out most in my memory is someone whose name I can't even remember. He was a black guy, about 6' 1", and a pretty solid guy. He liked to ride ramps, and could get four or five foot airs, which was good for an amateur in those local comps. He could do a few tricks. But the stand out was when he tried 540's. He tried two or three 540's every contest. And he never really made one actual 540 degree spin. Every single time he would pull away from the ramp, over-rotate, and slam on the bottom of the ramp. He was a good guy. We liked him, and we all pulled for him every time he rolled up to huck that 540. But contest after contest, he crashed.

Then, at a contest on the corner of PCH and Main, we had a contest in an empty lot where Huntington Surf & Sport now stands. When his run came around, the guy who always over-rotated his 540 attempts rolled up to try his 540. He over-rotated and slammed hard to the ground. We yelled in support of his attempt, and he got up and tried again. We could see the determination on his face. He rolled towards the ramp, up the quarterpipe, and he spun. He spun away from the ramp, pulling out like he always did. And his wheels came down, sideways, on the very bottom of the ramps. He landed with a huge thud. Sideways. But he was on the pedals, and he rode off. He finally landed a 540, after months of trying. In fact, he went over 540. I did a little math in my head and yelled, "He just did the world's first 630 air." We all laughed and slapped him on the back. From then on, he pulled his 630 degree (540 + 90), flatbottom landing air every contest.

Stuff like that is what I remember looking back at those AFA local contests from 25 years later. Fun times.

Ronin interviews John Salami

2012-01-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

I'm jumping ahead about five years here... John Salami was a pro BMX racer in the 1980's and 1990's, and one of my roommates at the infamous P.O.W. BMX House in the early 1990's. P.O.W. stands for Pros of Westminster, a city inland of, and cheaper than, Huntington Beach, California.

The original text of this post has been removed by me at the request of John Salami.

Huntington Beach surf culture in the 1980s

2012-01-05T06:32:00.000-08:00

I keep trying to find a You Tube video of a late 1980's BMX freestyle contest in Huntington Beach, but haven't found one. But this film student video from 1982 really sums up the surf culture of the Huntington Beach area in the 1980's. This was the world I walked into when I went to work for the American Freestyle Association in 1987.

Huntington Beach started in about 1905 at Pacific City, which was intended to be a small farming town of fine, upstanding, God-fearing folk by the sea. But not too many people were psyched on moving there in the early 1900's. When they built the original HB pier, in 1914, I believe, Hawaiian surfing revivalist George Freeth gave a surfboard riding demo. The ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing had been undergoing a revival for several years in Waikiki, and George Freeth and the younger Duke Kahanamoku both traveled to California to demonstrate their swimming, diving, and surfing skills. George was one of the earliest lifeguards, as was Duke. The surf culture began to take root along the Southern California coast way back then, much to the dismay of the respectable people of the area.

In 1920, they struck oil in Huntington Beach. I mean in Huntington Beach, in the downtown area of the city itself. Suddenly the sleepy little farming town became a bustling oil boomtown. With that oil and money came roughneck oil workers, making good money drilling all over downtown. With the oil workers came 1920's counter culture, bars, night clubs, and of course ladies of the evening. In my personal opinion, this is when Huntington Beach really set itself apart as a hub for counter culture. There are photos in old books of motorcycle races on the beach in the 1920's and 1930's. The Golden Bear nightclub, which was revived in the 1960's through the 1980's, began in those oil boom days. Huntington Beach became a haven for wild ones and a party city.

As the Southern California coast built up, suburbs formed around the little downtown area, but not to the level seen in other coastal cities. Surf clubs formed in the 1950's and 1960's, and the slacker surfers were seen as losers but most folk. Huntington Beach was the "dirty city" to the rich folk, who preferred Newport Beach just to the south, with it's natural harbor. The waves weren't great in HB, there was no epic point break or coral reefs, just eight miles of sandy beach breaks. But there were almost always some waves. And the rent was cheaper than other coastal cities because of the oil rigs all over downtown and the Bolsa Chica wetlands. More surfers congregated in Huntington Beach, seemingly for those reasons. The surf culture grew. The early 1960's Jan and Dean song "Surf City," was about Huntington Beach. Yet those 60's and 70's surfers were constantly in trouble with the Gestapo-like HB police, known for decades for wielding heavy handed "justice."

By the early 1980's, the surf culture was dominant among everyday people in Huntington Beach. With the surf culture were several early skateboarders. In the 1980's and 1990's came hardcore punk rockers,BMXers, BMX freestylers, street skaters, snowboarders, motocrossers, strippers, porn stars, MMA fighters, and then nu metal bands like Korn. Then came the damn yuppies, which like locusts, destroy everything in their path. So now Huntington Beach has trademarked the name "Surf City," there are hotels and pricey condos along the beach, and rich people from around the world consider it "edgy." Oh well, nothing gold can stay Ponyboy.

But the video above is a real good look at the Huntington Beach I moved into in 1987, where surf culture dominated, and the BMX freestyle and jumping was part of the weird world of alternative sports lifestyles. Those were good times.

BMX freestyle munchkins in 1987

2011-12-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

This clip's from "Challenge of the Flatlanders." Never heard of it, but that doesn't mean much. Vintage footage, 1987, I believe, of Trevor Hernandez and Greg Macomber, and a lot of familiar faces. Most of this footage looks like it was taken from the AFA videos I produced, because it's shot by the Vision/Unreel Productions cameraman, who was out on the contest floor. I'm baffled, not sure where this footage appeared originally. Anyhow, it's some vintage AFA Freestyle Masters footage.

My start in video production

2011-12-12T16:55:00.000-08:00

This is what a professional video camera looked like in 1987. This model is from 1991, but it's the closest I could find on You Tube. Vision Street Wear sent a cameraman from Unreel Productions to all the AFA Masters freestyle contests starting in 1987. These cameras weighed about 35 pounds with the battery, they didn't work in low light, and the camera cost about $50,000 new. These lenses alone cost around $16,000. Vision Street Wear sponsored the AFA Masters series in 1987, and for two or three more years. The footage that was shot from those contests was sitting in boxes in the tape library at Unreel Productions. they never got around to using any of the footage. Unreel was the Vision -owned video company with a separate office in Costa Mesa, not far from the Vision headquarters on Whittier Avenue.

So Bob Morales walked into the AFA office one day and asked me, "Hey Steve, you wanna make a TV commercial?"
"Uh... sure. How do I do that?"
Bob just found out he could by local cable TV spots on MTV in Austin, Texas to promote the Masters contest there. He told me to hop in the van, drive over to Unreel, and tell them I wanted to make a 30 second TV commercial. Bob was totally stoked on the idea of having a commercial for the AFA, and we went into a spontaneous brainstorming session. Then we called Unreel, and Bob talked to Don Hoffman, the head guy there. I hopped in the AFA van and drove to Costa Mesa. Don led me upstairs, past the receptionist desk, to a series of rooms with a few tech guys milling around. Then he took me into the edit bay. That was the room where they actually chopped the shows together. There was a pudgy, goofy looking young guy with long hair in a rollaround chair sitting in front of a wall of video screens. The always busy Don Hoffman said, "This is Dave, tell him what you want to do." The room literally looked like the bridge of the starship enterprise. I couldn't even imagine knowing how to work all that high tech stuff. It really blew my mind.

Dave was a real friendly guy, and I told him what we wanted to do. He led me into the tape library, a room kind of like a walk in closet. There were floor to ceiling shelves with shoebox sized boxes of betacam tapes. Most were poorly labeled, with something like "BMX Ohio," on the end of the box. Not much to go on. We grabbed a few boxes, and Dave led me back into the edit bay. He switched one of the VTR's (Video Tape Recorders- pro quality VCR's) on to manual control and showed me how to work it. The footage came up on a small monitor in front of me. I shuttled through tapes at high speed, looking for recent contests, both flatland and ramp footage. Meanwhile, Dave typed furiously at a weird keyboard and video footage went fast and slow on several different monitors. He was editing something.

When I had about ten tapes picked out, Dave introduced me to another guy named Dave, and said I needed window dubs of those tapes. The second Dave took the stack of tapes from me, and told me to come back the next day. I had no idea what a window dub was. It took me months to actually realize it, but I'd just become a video producer.

Back to the BMX freestyle

2011-12-10T07:47:00.000-08:00

Like I said in the series of Interesting Times posts, I think the Occupy Wall Street movement signals a major shift in the mentality of our society, the Laborers beginning to rise up against a horribly corrupt power structure run by the corporate dominated Acquisitors, using P.R. Sarkar's theory. We're in for a wild ride in the next few years. But this blog is about BMX freestyle in its early days, and I left off in 1987, when Dennis McCoy was the dominate new pro in both flatland and ramps. Here's DMC busting flatland in Wayne, New Jersey in 1988.

Interesting Times post 22

2011-12-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

Alex Jones of Info Wars talks about Section 1031 at 9:20 in this clip.

OK, thought I was done with this series of philosophical/political posts. And then this happened...
The U.S. Senate just passed the latest Defense Department Apropriations Act which included section 1031. That section makes the United States (and all territories I assume) part of the "battlefield" for the "War on Terror." That allows U.S. soldiers, you know the guys and gals we pay a salary to protect us, it allows them to detain ANYONE, ANYWHERE, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely, WITHOUT ANY CHARGES. Read about Section 1031 here. If President Obama signs this bill, it becomes law.

Did you ever wonder in history class (if you were actually awake in history class) why no one in Germany stood up to the Nazis or spoke about the concentration camps? Well, if this bill passes, you will be one of the people ignoring the concentration camps... and paying for them. If this bill passes, the United States will instantly surpass Nazi Germany in the ability to do evil to its own population. The U.S. has nukes, biological weapons, and surveillance equipment that Hitler would have given his left nut for. And we have Guantanamo, one of the worst torture camps in human history. How can I say that? Did you know Guantanamo Bay Detention Center had a children's section? Look up Camp Iguana. Did you know that the prisoners being tortured there are not allowed to commit suicide? It's in the media reports. They intentionally keep you alive so they can torture you endlessly. Why? After all, experts from the CIA and FBI, among others, say torture doesn't work well to gather intelligence. People will say anything to stop the torture. Somebody in the power structure behind that camp (and Bagram) just want to torture people for the hell of it (no pun intended). My bet's on the Dominionist Christian and Evangelical Christian power brokers, but that's just an educated guess. Read the books The Family and American Facists to see what I'm talking about. When President Obama signs this bill, the United States of America that our founding fathers fought for ends. Period. Everything the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights stands for ends. This is why I never had kids. I'm completely serious.

Sure, America may be collapsing in a fundamentalist facist police state, and the economy sucks. But there's always a bright side. Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR is hiring people to staff the concentration camps here in the U.S. Hey, at least somebody is creating jobs.

Why am I writing this? I know damn well I'm in line to be sent to the camps. If I piss off the government enough, maybe I'll get a suite.

"The Hand That Signed The Paper"a poem by Dylan Thomas. Remember this when Obama signs the Defense Apropriations Bill.
Depressed? Watch this.

Two days later- While this incredibly important bill in Congress is getting almost no mainstream press coverage, there has been a few mentions of it. As of December 9, 2011, President Obama said he won't sign it with the unlimited detention for citizens clause in it. Let's hope that whole part gets edited out of the bill.

Why I'm not starting a bike and skate park

2011-12-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

Here's the Props Road Fools crew sessioning Ray's MTB mountain bike park in Cleveland, Ohio a couple years ago.

OK, I'm broke, that's a big reason I'm not starting a bike and skate park. But that's what business loans and investors are for. Since I've been bored out of my skull since getting stuck in North Carolina three years ago, I've been looking to do something worthwhile. I ran across this video of the Ray's MTB park in Cleveland one night, and I thought this was the greatest idea ever. There's no good skatepark here in the Piedmont Triad Area of NC, a region that has 1.2 million people, and home to the company that owns Van's. Yeah, there's no skatepark in Greensboro, where Van's shoes parent company lives. How pathetic is that?

Anyhow, I landed in Winston-Salem, started looking for work, and kept watching that video of Ray's MTB, and all the other videos, and started thinking seriously about starting a bike and skate park here. The basic concept was an indoor, wooden skatepark, BMX park, and MTB park all under one roof. The idea kept building, and I finally decided to start doing a business plan for it. When I started figuring, the numbers worked. It would take a pretty good size initial loan, but even with a mediocre amount of bikers and skaters, it would be able to make a profit and make a dream park. There are dozens of huge warehouses here sitting empty, more than 20 over 20,000 square feet in Winston-Salem alone.

While I don't really want to live here, I thought building a really cool park might make it worthwhile. I was really getting serious about the business plan. I priced warehouses, I sketched ramp designs and made materials lists to see what the ramps would cost. I drew a bunch of park layout ideas and dreamed about it. I thought of all the industry people I know, and pondered who might be willing to put up funds if I got the plan together. I had the whole business plan outlined and was gathering the details to put a kickass biz plan together and start looking for financing. A park like I was planning could gross about a half million bucks a year with a reasonable amount of business. More than enough to pay operating expenses and build one hell of a cool warehouse.

And then I heard on the news one day that the North Carolina passed a crazy new anti-abortion law. And I remembered just how fucked up North Carolina is. North Carolina is part of the Bible Belt, and everything here is run by a southern good ol' boy network and born again Christians. That's fine. But that culture destroys creativity and any kind of alternative opinions. Conformity rules in the South, and for 300 years weird people have not been tolerated. People are hired for jobs here because the person hiring knows them or a family member, not because they can do the job. That's fine, that's the way they liked things here.

And then the economy started going global thirty years ago, and manufacturing jobs started going to places with even cheaper labor. The Eastern U.S. industrial belt turned into the Rust Belt. Factories closed down, people lost their jobs, and highly intelligent weirdos in California and Washington invented personal computers, software, and a huge economy that changed the world and created hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth. But not in North Carolina. Or not much, anyhow, the Raleigh area has some high tech and biotech firms.

The super smart people behind the tech economy tend to avoid the South like the plague. The new economy is made up of highly creative people, and creative people like to hang aroundother creative people in places tolerant of freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos. Think San Francisco or Austin as two good examples.

So now cities and regions all over the South are actively trying to attract the very people they've been running out for 300 years. There's a cool little art scene here in Winston-Salem. But it's still the South, and the people in charge, both in business and politics are some of the most ignorant, small minded motherfuckers in the United States. The horrible anti-abortion law passed here just reminded me that there's no way I can start a skatepark, are any sizeable business here. While there is an alternative culture here, and it is growing, it's still 30 or40 years behind California. California's the place for me. Trying to start a bike and skate park here would be a complete waste of my time. My life in California was intentionally destroyed by the evangelical power structure and the Homeland Security infrastructure. I lovingly call these people the Christian Mafia, because that's how they operate. There's a nationwide network of these power players in the evangelical community, and these people excel at manipulation, but they completely lack creativity. There are people trying to force creative people to move to this area, but they can't tolerate true creativity. An creativity doesn't work that way.

Sorry, I just needed to rant a bit. Point is, I'm not going to start a bike and skate park in North Carolina. It's a good idea. I hope someone buila park like I was planning somewhere. It would be a lot of work, but it would rock. So now I'm just saving money so I can go back to California as soon as is feasible.

A sort of punk rock Christmas

2011-12-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

"Silent Night" by The Dickies.

It's time of the year to revel in blatant and moronic consumerism while paying lip service to a cool guy named Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago. The Christmas standards are playing in almost every store and public building, so here are some alternative holiday songs.

"Jingle Bells"- Brian Setzer Orchestra (this link has the whole BSO Christmas extravaganza)
"Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight)"- The Ramones
"A Punk Rock Christmas"- Green Day and friends
"The 12 Drugs of Christmas"- Tenacious D
"Merry Christmas (you bastard)"- Blink 182
The Vandals Christmas Formal
"Oi to the World"- No Doubt (the only video where Gwen Stefani has a fight scene)
"Christmas Vacation"- The Descendents
"Won't Be Home For Christmas"- Blink 182
"Joy to the World"- Bad Religion
"Punk Christmas" -Green Day
"Silent Night"- Christmas on the Johnny Cash Show, 1970
"Here Comes Santa Clause"- SKAyway
"Santa Clause is Coming to Town"- Bruce Springsteen
"Santa Clause is Coming to Town"- Alice Cooper
"Santa Clause is Coming to Town"- Steven Tyler
"Santa Clause is Coming to Town"- Jackson 5
"Fuck Christmas"- FEAR
"We Three Kings"- Blondie
"Jingle Bells"- X
"The Anti-Christmas Carol"- Joss Stone
"Blue Christmas"- The Partrige Family
"Blue Christmas"- Elvis
"Chanuka Song"- Adam Sandler
"Christmas Wrapping"- The Waitresses
"Christmas Wrapping"- The Donnas
"Xmas Time" The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
"Rockabilly Christmas"- Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
"Story of My Life"- Social Distortion, KROQ Acoustic Christmas 2010
"Bad Habit"- The Offspring, KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2008
"Read My Mind"- The Killers KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2006
"Longview"- Green Day, KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2004
"Walk"- Blind Melon, KROQ Acoustic Christmas 1993
"A Christmas Carol"- Achmed the Dead Terrorist
"Farting Jingle Bells"- Who the fuck really cares?
"Baby It's Cold Outside"- Joan Osborne and Bo Bice
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"- Pat Benetar
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"- Tori Amos
"Merry Christmas"- Bjork
"I'll Be Home For Christmas"- Indigo Girls
"O Holy Night"- Jewel
"Away in a Manger"- Emmylou Harris

Six degrees of BMX freestyle

2011-11-29T17:16:00.000-08:00

This is the "freestyle" scene from the bicycle messenger movie Quicksilver, which came out in 1986. I'll be honest, I thought Rad totally sucked, except for the flatland in the credits. But I totally dug Quicksilver. Hey... never said I was cool. I always wanted to live in a warehouse after watching this movie. I finally did it when I lived in a warehouse art gallery in 2005-2006.

Martin Aparijo busts out first on a direct drive in the jam circle. Then Woody Itson is letting loose. I don't know who the third guy is, the one with the moustache. The last rider is Pat Romano, an artistic cyclist and the premier bike stuntman in Hollywood in the early 1980's. We also see Kevin Bacon (he really is everywhere), comedians Paul Rodriguez (skater P-Rod's dad), and Louie Anderson. The girl is Jami Gertz, who also appeared 80's classics Less Than Zero, Sixteen Candles, and the TV show Square Pegs, where she appeared with a young Sarah Jessica Parker.

Two days later... After writing this post, and being reminded that both Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson are in it, and that they both appeared in my 1990 BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend, I realized that I have two degrees of seperation from Kevin Bacon, or a "Bacon number" of 2. Cool. Don't know what I'm talking about, read this wiki on the six degrees of seperation from Kevin Bacon.

Interesting Times post 21

2011-11-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

The older I get, the more I think Tank Girl may just be the best movie ever made. Let's face it, it'll take a punk rock attitude to make the Apocalypse (TM) fun. Here's Lori Petty in the role she was born to play. Do you need a kiss? Are you worried about your reputation? Do you need an oil change? How 'bout an old movie style dance number? I sure hope the end of the world is this much fun. And yeah, that is a young Naomi Watts playing Jet.

So... I just wrote a whole bunch of posts inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protest and subsequent movement. So what happens now? The Occupy protesters have been kicked out most, if not all, of their campsites. Isn't that it?

I don't think so. As I wrote before, I think we've just entered the period of time when the average, everyday, common people start rising up and saying they've had enough. The Occupy idea took off like wildfire, fueled by feeling that people have kept just under the surface. The average people of the U.S. are hurting, many struggling to get by in a world that seems more corrupt by the day. a huge number of people in Ohio recently voted to keep unions for state employees, much to the surprise of the political elite of that state. I think we are going to keep seeing actions like these, protests and mass, online organized, grassroots movements about one cause or another. My best guess is that we have five or ten years of this before it all comes to a head.

So what do I see happening in this second decade of the 21st century? I see weather getting more intense and causing more and more serious damage in more places. I see some unexpected, grassroots political movements happening before the 2012 presidential election. This will freak out the current political power structure, and the evangelical world, which is a large part of the current power structure. I see protests erupting into riots at some point, quite likely caused by agent provocateurs, and violent police crackdowns. This is in addition to the police/government/religious psyops against individuals in the protest world. I guarantee the psyops are happening right now. It will be years, but these government psyops against citizens will eventually come to light.

I see interruptions of normal life, causing emergency situations, happening more and more frequently. Some will be weather caused, like floods, heat waves, tornadoes, and earthquakes, as well as short term food shortages caused by natural disasters, an probably civil unrest. By that, I mean a scenario where a protest turns violent, riots happen, and a martial law type scenario plays out with paramilitary police, trucks not being able to deliver food and goods, and serious crackdowns on what's left of our civil liberties. We only have a three day food supply in this country, so it wouldn't take much of a situation to run food stocks out. It happened in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. That type of thing will happen more and more.

I think we will also see more outbreaks of fatal diseases, like the flu and MRSA infections, and these will kill larger and larger numbers of people in each case. MRSA (hardcore staph) infections kill about 20,000 people a year, more than AIDS. I've had MRSA four times, and almost died the first time, it's no fun.

In short, I think this decade that we're a couple years into will be a nearly non-stop disaster fest. Most of the disasters will be far away, but there will be incidents that hit home. Everyone should have a basic disaster kit, with food, water, battery radio, extra medicine, and all that stuff, because you will need it at some point.

There are a huge number of people in this country that honestly believe that we may be near an apocalypse time. The evangelical Christians have been indoctrinated with the Left Behind book series and lots or preaching. Other people are falling for the Mayan 2012 hype. You know what happens in 2012? One invisible line in space crosses another invisible line in space. It's just a good time to mark the 26,200 year Earth precession cycle. That's it. This video explains what really happens on December 21st, 2012. It also explains that the actual event took place in 1998. All the apocalypse hype is B.S. concerning 2012. Whatever may happen then will happen only because people have believed a bunch of hype. Even the Mayans didn't have an apocalypse prohecy about that day, their long calendar simply ends. Here's an explanation of the whole precession concept.

In the same way, there is absolutely no reason to believe in a Biblical apocalypse based on the book of Revelations in the Bible. Did you know that the entire book of Revelations is a dream? Yep, early on it says the writer was "in spirit" or dreaming, depending on the version. So the entire "armageddon" idea, which is a mispronunciation of Har Megiddo, a hill in current Israel. There's nothing in Revelation, or the Bible in general, nothing at all, that specifically mentions our times.

We're in for some crazy times, no doubt about it. And yes, I do think there's a decent chance that civilization as we know it could completely unravel. But more likely, those of us left in 2020 will look back at what happened the way we look back at Y2K now. Remember that? The world was supposed to end because there was a zero missing in computer clocks or something like that. I, personally, think a lot of crazy stuff will happen because a handful of powerful people want to depopulate much of the world, and to take control of what's left. The apocalypse stories and the 2012 hype are just P.R. campaigns to aid in that goal. But I think this evil plan will unravel, things will get pretty chaotic, and a decade (maybe two) from now, the Warrior mentality that P.R. Sarkar spoke of will come to power in the U.S. (or whatever it's called then).

That's it, this is what I've spent my life looking into, starting with the planetary alignment in 1982 (83?). I read Nostradamus. I read most of the Bible. I read Revelations several times. I looked into American Indian prophecies. I looked up the 2012 precession in 1998, before the apocalypse hype was created around it. I'm a dork an an amateur futurist. I've been looking into the future, trying to figure out what will happen since I was a kid. The apocalypse stuff is hype. the American Indian prophecies paint a real dim future for us, but only if we continue to live out of tune with the Earth. We really are at a major turning point for civilization as we know it. There will be a lot of turbulence in coming years. Our civilization will collapse at some point, because that's what high civilizations do. But it doesn't have to happen right now. And even when it does eventually happen, a lot of people will survive. They have every other time. Those people wind up as the native tribes the next time someone starts building a civilization a few thousands years later. The Aztec culture collapsed. The Mayan culture collapsed. The Inca culture collapsed. Ancient Rome collapsed. Chinese empires have collapsed. Ancient Sumeria collapsed. And it is quite likely that high civilizations before that may have collapsed, leaving us with stories of Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu.

This is our time. What happens in the next decade is up to all of us. Stock up on food. Learn basic wilderness survival skills. Do things that scare you on a regular basis and build your courage. Most importantly, live your life well on a day to day basis. Civilization may go on a hundred more years, but you could get struck by lightning tomorrow. As the mythologist Joseph Campbell said, "Life is a wonderful, wonderful opera... but it hurts." Live well, people.

So why all the hype about a coming apocalypse? Because if most people believe the world is about to end, you can talk them into anything... like, say... the New World Order. Like any Pinky and the Brain episode, this is all about a bunch of devious motherfuckers trying to take over the world.

Writer's note- I typed up this post last night at the central library here in Winston-Salem. When I walked out to my taxi, a police car drove by, looking in my direction. No big deal, could be a random coincidence. Then I drove directly to a parking lot where I hang out waiting for taxi calls. I had just parked in an empty corner of that parking lot when a white Crown Victoria, an unmarked police car, made a big curve in the parking lot, and drove right by me. I could see the police lights in the window, it was definitely a local police car. He didn't stop, just drove right by me and out of the parking lot. This was less than five minutes after I left the library from writing this blog post. So it appears that the Winston-Salem police were reading this blog post as I wrote it. I've had this sort of thing happen with many of my blog posts. The police never stop, never threaten me, or never talk to me. They just drive by a lot after posts like this one. Apparently these drive bys are supposed to be warnings or something.

The police don't seem to get it. I've lost EVERYTHING. I was forced out of my home of Orange County, California. I lost my life's work. I lost one of the best collections of video footage in the BMX freestyle world. YOU CAN'T SCARE ME ANYMORE. I've had my life threatened so many times that it doesn't even phase me anymore. I've spent three years in the living hell that is the Piedmont Triad Region of North Carolina. I'm a dead man. I've lost everything. I will write whatever I feel needs to be written until you motherfucking Christian nazis kill me. I've had my life completely destroyed by what seems to be a combination of the Homeland Security infrastructure and the Evangelical Christian political power structure, and my family.

Dear people in power: I lost all hope for any future life when I came to North Carolina. I can't make a living here. Every attempt to raise enough money to go back to California meets unseen resistance. There's no bike/skate scene to hang with here. There's no one I can talk to on an intellectual level. There's absolutely nothing for me here. I don't care if you throw me in jail for no reason. I don't care if you kill me. I lost all reason to keep living when I came to NC. There's a lot I want to write about, and I'm going to keep on writing as long as I'm able.

On a related note, the current defense spending bill in Congress includes provisions to make the entire world part of the "War on Terrorism" battlefield. If also includes provisions to detain ANYONE, ANYWHERE in the world INDEFINITELY without charges. The bill hasn't passed... yet. Man, Hitler would have got a chub if he could have passed a law like that. If that law passes, a lot of Americans, the most interesting ones, of course, will start disappearing. I may very well be one of them. So add that to things I see coming in this decade: Americans and other people being "disappeared" Pinochet-style. There will also be violent and deadly force by police and the military against peaceful, lawful CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED protesters. There's some crazy shit coming down the pike. Are you ready?

OK, I've said my piece on the Occupy Wall Street movement, the collapse of the American republic, and why your kids don't have a future... back to the BMX and all that.

Interesting Times post 20

2011-11-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

The Pegboy Response

Back in about 1992, I was sleeping on the floor of a little apartment on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, California. BMX industry guy Bill Grad slept on the couch, and the single bedroom was occupied by a pro BMX racer, amazing BMX jumper, and fledgling bike company owner Chris Moeller. With a little bit of help from me and Bill, Chris ran S&M Bikes out of the garage.

Mornings started late in that little apartment, usually with a bit of a hangover, and always with some music to get motivated. Nirvana's Bleach, Green Day's Kerplunk, and Pegboy's Strong Reaction were the three main albums we listened to in the morning.

On day while boxing up some orders, Chris joked that if I ever wanted free tickets to see a band play, just call up KUCI radio, and say, "I'm calling about the tickets." They played a lot of underground bands, and usually the person who answered the phone had no idea if the DJ had just told people to call for tickets. Chris said they would almost always put you on the list for a show. Now Chris was known for weaving tall tales, and I called him on it. So he picked up the phone, dialed the number, and handed me the phone. "Uh... I'm calling about the tickets," I told the girl who answered. She was a bit confused, and then started listing bands. One of those bands was Pegboy, playing in Hollywood a week later. I was stoked and said, "I'll take Pegboy." She put me on the list with a "+1," meaning I could bring a guest.

So a week later, Chris and I drove to Hollyweird to see Pegboy for free. I think it was at Club Lingerie, which isn't as cool as it sounds. But it's a good little club to see live bands. We watched an opening act or two, and then Pegboy came on. A small slam pit started in the crowd of about 200 people, but most of us were just standing there moving our heads as punkers tended to do. It was an all ages show, and there was one young kid having a good ol' time. He was maybe 12 or 13, and he jumped up on the two-foot high stage, bounced around the band, and dove back into the crowd. He bounded around the pit for a bit, then he'd jump back up on stage and do it again. And nobody seemed to mind. A lot of us were smiling, thinking, "Man if someone would have brought me to this show when I was 12, I'd do the same thing."

Nobody minded this young kid jumping around... except the two big bouncers, who grew increasingly annoyed with the kid. At one point, the bouncer pushed through the crowd, grabbed the kid by the arm, and pulled him off the stage and back into the crowd. The kid mellowed out for half a song, then he jumped up on stage again. When the bouncer headed towards him, he'd jump back down into the crowd and "behave."

It was a pretty mellow crowd as punk gigs go. A small, hardcore group of fans enjoying a great, bet largely unknown, band. But that kid having his fun grated on the bouncers nerves, and several songs into the set, they both started pushing through the crowd to grab the kid. Both bouncers weighed 250 to 300 pounds, dwarfing everyone in the crowd. But the most amazing thing happened. Us people in the crowd decided we'd had enough of the stupid bouncers. As the bouncers pushed through the crowd, the crowd tightened around them, seperating the two bouncers from each other, and by pure body mass we stopped the two bouncers in their tracks. Nobody threatened them, nobody raised a fist, we just all pushed in until they couldn't move. The more agressive bouncer twisted around and struggled a bit, and we all pushed tighter. The bouncer realized he wasn't going anywhere, and that WE, THE CROWD, was in complete control. He didn't know what to do. One guy from the crowd said, "The kid's just having fun, he's not hurting anyone, LEAVE HIM ALONE." The guy didn't shout, didn't threaten the bouncer, he simply stated the intention of the crowd out loud.

The one bouncer backed away immediately, his experience telling him it wasn't worth a big fight. The less experienced, more agressive bouncer stood looking at us all for maybe fifteen seconds, and then he realized the obvious. He raised his hands and nodded in acknowledgement, and then the crowd opened up, and he went back to standing by the back wall. I even saw his head moving to the music by the end of the show.

To me, being the philosophical dork that I am, I was amazed by the spontaneous action of the crowd. Chris hardly noticed. I came to think of this non-violent crowd response to the abuse of authority as The Pegboy Response.

Now let me say this yet again. I'm not a protester. I don't want to see protesters being idiots, and I don't want to see cops being idiots. I don't want to see martial law declared. I don't even want to see cops getting their asses kicked. The Occupy Wall Street movement, and everyone of similar mindset, have legitimate complaints about the direction and corruption affecting us all. The corporate, political, and religious power structure has a right to do honest business in their respective fields. The police controlled by the power structure have the job of dealing with legal protests in the best legal and moral way possible. I would love to see everyone involved sit down calmly and work all these issues out.

But I doubt that's going to happen. What's happening in this country right now is a part of a cycle that last hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The shit is beginning to hit the fan, and the fan is on overdrive. A lot of people are going to get caught up in the moment and act stupidly. That will probably lead to a form of martial law at some point. And that's no fun for anyone. Well, it's fun for the cops, until it ends. In any case, I encourage everyone to act with cool heads and as much courage as you can muster. The more that happens, the better this big societal transition will be for everyone.

Interesting Times post 19

2011-11-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

This isn't policing, this is terrorism by police. Nothing EVER justifies use of chemical weapons, and tear gas IS a chemical weapon, against unarmed protesters. EVER. In rare cases it may be the best course of action against a violent criminal. Maybe. But against unarmed, non-violent protesters, there is NEVER an excuse for this. Seriously guys, how small is your penis, and your brain, that this is the best option you could think of?

As a taxi driver I ROUTINELY get violent people thrown in my cab that the police can't, or won't, handle. I've had a drunk cop waving a knife next to my head. I've had a top MMA guy grab me by the neck. I'm always outnumbered, and I've handled every incident with my intelligence and a sense of humor. No one has ever been harmed in the HUNDREDS of altercations I've dealt with.

There's an old saying, "Slavery ends when the slave stops responding." The same is true for terrorism. Terrorism ends when the terrorized person stands up and stops being afraid. Unnecessary incidents, like the one above, happen only because WE let them. Next time people, drop the cameras and handle the situation. And yes, a situation like the one above can be handled NON-VIOLENTLY.

By the way, I was warned by my taxi company owner that I should "stop writing that anti-government stuff on your blogs." I've already lost everything. There's no fucking way I'm going to stop. Besides, I'm not writing "anti-government stuff." I am giving you a big picture context for what's happening in the U.S. right now, and I'm explaining what will happen next if people don't work things out in an intelligent way.

Interesting Times post 18

2011-11-15T17:52:00.000-08:00

Here we have Johan Galtung being interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now on June 7, 2010, regarding his book, The Fall of the U.S. Empire... and then what? Here's part 2 of the interview.

The Law of Social Cycles
by P.R. Sarkar

This post is the reason I've written all the previous posts. This is a big idea, and it affects every single one of you, and it affects all of your children. In this post, I will tell you a bit about our future in the next decade.

In December of 1989 I was working at Unreel Productions, the video are of Vision Skateboards, Visions Street Wear, and Sims Snowboards. My parent moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, and flew me there to spend Christmas with them. I debated about whether I should take my bike, and actually got hold of NC rider Leigh Ramsdale, and talked about doing some riding while I was in NC. But I was staying for a few days, and Leigh was 90 miles away, and I knew my parents planned for me to stay with them the whole time. So I left my bike in California and flew to North Carolina.

I was soon bored out of my skull, and found there was no local skatepark to visit in Greensboro. On a trip to a local grocery store, I picked up a book to read to occupy my time in NC. The book was The Great Depression of 1990 by Ravi Batra. Hey, I'm a dork, and I found the book fascinating. Batra was an American economist from India, and was predicting a great depression to begin in 1990, and last a few years. He was heavily influenced by a philosopher from India named P.R. Sarkar. Sarkar had come up with a theory he called The Law of Social Cycles. Basically, it said there were four basic mentalities of people in any society, and one of those societies always dominated that society. Because that particular mentality was dominate, all aspects of society were influenced by it. So in that book I read in 1989, economist Ravi Batra applied P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles to the United States, and predicted a great depression beginning in 1990.

With Batra's and Sarkar's ideas in the back of my head, I watched as the United States plunged into a deep recession in 1990, just as Batra predicted. Like many other people, I struggled through tough economic times that lasted until 1996. Nearly everything that Batra predicted happened, and that economic downturn was dubbed a "double dip recession." It wasn't as intense as Batra predicted, and the Federal Reserve and U.S. government rushed in to keep it from becoming a full on depression. How bad did it get? Citibank, the largest U.S. bank, was functionally insolvent at one point in 1991 or 1992. Had the government let it collapse, we would have had a depression to rival the 1930's most likely. So watching that recesssion happen reinforced Batra's and Sarkar's ideas to me. Simply, both of their ideas made a lot of sense.

I thought more of Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles. He described four basic mentalities in societies. The Warriors were people who looked up to courage and physical abilites. Professional athletes, firemen, policemen, and soldiers are some of those with Sarkar's Warrior mentality. BMXers, surfers, skaters, snowboarders, and motocrossers also fall into that category. Intellectuals are people who use their brains to achieve in society. Examples of Intellectuals are teachers, professors, writers, musicians, artists, and clergy. As I thought about it, I realized I was an Intellectual in a Warrior world, the world of BMX and skateboarding. As much as I wanted to be a great rider, I simply wasn't. I was a pretty good writer who wrote articles, zines, and made videos about writing. The next of Sarkar's mentalities is the Acquisitors. Acquisitors are highly intelligent in most cases, but they use their intellect in business. Acquisitors are the entrepreneurs, landlords, financiers, and people who own businesses. The last mentality is the Laborers. The Laborers are the majority of any population, and they work for someone else. If they get motivated, they may move into one of the other categories. But most Laborers work for the ruling mentality their whole lives, and are reasonbly happy just being workers.

There is no set length of time that one mentality will dominate society. The Warriors, the Intellectuals, or the Acquisitors may rule for hundreds of years. During that time, that mentality will affect what type of government there is, what games and sports people play, and what occupations people look up to. While there is no limit on how long one mentailty may dominate society, there is an order to which mentality comes next. Here's the order for Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles. If we start with the Warriors, next comes the Intellectuals, next comes the Acquisitors, and then back to the Warriors. The length of a Warrior age may vary, but they will always be followed by the Intellectuals, then will come the Acquisitors, and so on and so on.

But what about the Laborers? Well, the Laborers are always the majority of people, BUT they are always not motivated. The Laborers never take control. But they do play a key role at one point. At the end of the Acquisitor Age, business becomes incredibly corrupt, and there comes a point where the Laborers rise up in rebellion. They've had enough, and they take to the streets in protest against the massive corruption. Sarkar calls this the Acquisitor cum Laborer age. The Laborers don't get their own Age to dominate, but they rise up to end the corruption of the late Acquisitor Age. Society at that point reaches a highly volitile stage, and one of two things happens. Either the Society collapses, or the Warrior mentality takes over.

In The Great Depression of 1990, Batra hinted at a coming Laborer uprising, but he barely mentioned it. But since reading that book in late 1989, I've been expecting a point where there would be a massive uprising of the Laborers, the common, everyday people. I watched the massive Left Wing reaction to the George W. Bush presidency, and the actions helped super rich individuals and multinational corporations become much richer, bigger, and more powerful. Now we have corporations that have their own armies, corporations that have more money than most companies, and some corporations that have more power than most countries. Corpoarations rose in power, and "suddenly" we have the Dot Com Bust, the Housing Collapse, and a banking collapse followed by The Great Recession... all in a single decade.

And now we have this wierd little Occupy Wall Street protest, and within a couple months similar protests and occupations appeared in over 2300 cities. This is a true grass roots movement with millions of sympathizers worldwide. Maybe billions. The number of actual protesters is relatively small, but they are spread widely throughout the world, and a huge segment of the population agrees with at least a part of what the protesters are talking about.

In my opinion, as someone who heard this theory 21 years ago, I believe we have now entered the Acquisitor cum Laborer period in the United States. This will heavily affect all the countries that look up to, invest in, are have business relations with the Untied States. In other words, what happens here in the next decade will affect much of the world. We are in for five to ten years of the most turbulent times in U.S. history. The corporate backed power structure, and the Evangelical Christian power structure which has infiltrated that corporate power structure, don't want to give up their power.

As I write this, the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City was moved out by riot gear equipped police last night. The protesters, by all accounts peaceful, were forced out, 150 to 200 protestors were arrested for refusing to leave, and all the camping equipment was thrown into garbage trucks. But a handful of protesters stayed in the area, now guarded by corporate security people. About one thousand protesters were back today, according to reports by Democracy Now, and they were meeting in their circles again. And they're talking about taking their teaching circles and working groups into all their own communities.

To use a cancer metaphor, Mayor Bloomberg (a billionaire media owner) sent paramiliatry armed police as chemotherapy to destroy the tumor of the protest encampment. But the "tumor," the protesters, is back nearly as big the next day. Not only that, but cells from that tumor, the individual protestors, are spreading EVERYWHERE now. And that wierd little movement will metasticize all over the United States and the world.

"No army can stop an idea whose time has come"
-Albert Einstein

Right now, the Inteligence Industrial Complex, the spy infrastructure that emerged as a reaction to the 9/11 tragedy, is going into overdrive. As best anyone can determine, at least $80 billion to $100 billion a year is spent spying on the American public and looking for "terrorists." These domestic spying agencies and private companies are working overtime to infiltrate, manipulate, and destroy this Occupy Wall Street Movement. The intelligence infrastructure sees these protesters as a threat to the current corporate power structure. Billions of dollars will be spent in the coming years to stop this movement. But I think we are finally at the point where the Occupy Wall Street Idea is too big to be stopped.

Now... am I writing this because I thoroughly back the Occupy wall Street Movement and I want them to knock these damn corporations and billionaires down to size? No. I'm really a capitalist. Well, technically I'm a tribalist, and I'd live like an Indian in the woods if I could. But in today's world, I want to start a business, I want to make BMX, skate, and comedy videos, and maybe build a cool skatepark somewhere. The actions of this movement and the government/corporate reaction is going to screw up my life. I wish the government and corporate guys could sit down, say, "Damn, we went to far, lets restructure society and break up these mega corporations into a reasonable size where competition will keep them all from getting out of hand." But that's not going to happen. The time has come, the people are starting to rise, and they will continue to rise until a new, more stable societal structure emerges.

Unfortunately, I think Johan Galtung in the clip above is right, the United States as superpower and world policeman will collapse within the next ten years. At that point, either a new, more intelligent form of the U.S. will emerge, or civilization as we know it will collapse and we'll see the Mad Max days. Either way the coming decade is going to suck in a lot of ways. But it WILL be interesting. Remember, Russia survived the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, thought not that well. And Germany survived the Nazi regime and horrors, and is a vital country once again.

Things will seem pretty normal for a while, but when it hits the fan, crazy stuff will happen real quick. Get ready for some craziness.

Interesting Times post 17

2011-11-12T11:37:00.001-08:00

Are corporations evil?

Are labor unions evil?

Tools and Weapons

That's right, I'm pissing off both the right and the left political hemispheres with this post. As we all know by now, the Occupy Wall Street and related protests are mad about corporate injustice and corruption, among other things. At the same time, voters in Ohio rang in strongly the other day to allow state workers to keep the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

So... are corporations an evil monstrosities that need to be destroyed? many people on the left blame capitalism for our current economic woes. At the same time, many people on the right blame labor unions for raising wages and making companies uncompetitive. Do we need to do away with corporations like many on the left think? Or do we need to do away with labor unions, like many on the right think? Or is there more to the story.

Here we come to the idea I call "tools and weapons." To start with, is a hammer a tool or a weapon. Most of you just said, "tool," right. Is that the truth? One person could take a hammer and build you a house. Another person could take a hammer and hit you in the head, knock you out, and steal your wallet. So is that hammer a tool or a weapon?

How about an AK-47 assault rifle, is it a tool or a weapon? Again, one person could shoot you with the AK-47 and steal your car. Another person could shoot a deer with the AK-47 and feed you all winter. So is an AK-47 assault rifle a tool or a weapon?

In the case of the hammer and the AK-47, it all depends on the intent of the user, and how it's used. The same is true of any other physical item, or even any idea. Both corporations and labor unions can be used as either tools or weapons. In many cases they can be both, a tool at one point in time, and a weapon doing damage at another point in time.

Very few, if any, of you reading this could survive for long without corporations. Our entire existence, and almost everything we use comes from a wide variety of businesses and organizations. Many of those organizations and businesses are corporations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants money to a lot of radio and TV programs loved by left wing people. My favorite radio station KPFK (90.7 fm, Los Angeles) is a corporation, as is the Pacifica network that it's a part of.

On the other side is labor unions. Most labor unions are a really good idea when they are formed. But ultimately they become huge, bloated bureaucracies that add huge costs to the businesses or government agencies their workers work for. This does make the businesses and agencies financially unhealthy at some point.

Both corporations and labor unions can be either tools or weapons. They can both help lots of people or hurt lots of people, or be relatively benign. So if we do away with all corporations, we will throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. We will throw away much of the infrastructure that supports all of us. But if both corporations and labor unions continue the way they are, our society will ultimately collapse in some way. We need corporations, labor unions, and all other entities to be run well, run responsibly, and have checks on their power to avoid them getting out of hand.

The pendulum has swung far to the right in the United States, and hundreds, maybe thousands of corporations are horribly corrupt and poorly run. We're all paying the price for this. One of the great benefits of the whole Occupy Wall Street movement will be beginning to swing the pendulum back the other way. But if things go too far, we will all suffer because of that, too.

Interesting Times post 16

2011-11-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

My personal favorite comedian, the late George Carlin, explains how our economic system really works in three minutes. I believe this is from his "Life is Worth Losing" HBO special in 2006. Yeah... 2006... before the financial collapse, when housing prices were still high.

Chase Gouin needs your help

2011-11-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

Chase Gouin in Dorkin' 10, 2001, video by Mark Eaton.

BMXers, Chase Gouin, one of the most incredible flatlanders ever, needs help. He's sick with a crazy fungus and looking for financial help to seek the needed medicall help. This page on the Odyssey site tells the details and has Paypal info.

Here's what I remember about Chase. He showed up in the Eddie Roman produced Mat Hoffman video Headfirst in 1991 and blew all our minds with his flatland links. Headfirst was UNDOUBTEDLY the most influential BMX video ever. No other video even comes close in its effect on the sport, and all the flatland in the video was of Chase.

In late 1991 or early 1992, I set up a video shoot with Bill Nitschke, mostly because he was doing bunnyhop tailwhips, a trick I'd been trying unsuccessfully for about four years. We sessioned at The Spot in Redondo, and Bill brought along Perry Mervar and Chase. Perry was the man of the day, and both he and Bill did one big amazing link after another, blowing my mind every time. Then over to the side was Chase, who was having a "bad day." His bad day consisted of doing minute long links of tricks and variations I'd never even thought were possible, and then he'd get off balance at the end, jump off and yell, "Fuck!" Or something of the sort. The stuff he was doing that day in 1991 would gets you some props in a jam circle today... if you could find enough flatlanders to actuall form a circle.

Oh yeah, just for the hell of it, about that time Chase took a year and learned every single trick he could do SWITCH. Opposite foot, oppostie direction, whatever. No one else had even thought of trying that. In my mind, chase Gouin is the most amazing flatlander EVER. Seriously.

Good luck Chase!

Follow the link and help him out if you can. And there are a couple of videos on that site.

Anyone who can contact Chase directly, have him check out this video and that doctor's website for this doctor. Maybe it will help.

Interesting Times post 15

2011-11-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

Abuse of Power

I just watched the entire You Tube video of a Texas judge beating his daughter sadistically with a belt because she downloaded some video games. This particular video went viral in recent days (November 2011), put up by the daughter 7 years after the abuse happened. I was never beaten the way this girl was as a kid, but I did live with the same kind of fear she did. Even though I watched it on a computer at the library, I cringed with each blow. The pure evil in the man and woman in the clip is horrible on many, many levels. But the really sad part is that people like this man run much of our country. I listened to the Schnitt Show, a right wing radio show, talking about this video a couple of nights ago. The host, who I disagree with on most subjects, talked about how horrible this abuse was. Then he opened the phone lines. Three of the five callers on the air, all Southerners, said there was nothing wrong with beating the 16-year-old girl the way the judge did. Luckily, most of the people in the rest of the country disagree.

I bring up this horrible video, which most of you have probably watched, because the main issue in that video is the main issue that led to the Occupy Wall Street uprisings. Abuse of power. The man in the video, a respected judge in his community, most likely a Christian, completely abuses his power as a parent. In the same way, a huge number of our business and political leaders have abused the power given to them, which has cost millions of people their homes, their retirement income, and their standard of living, among other things. With any position of power comes the responsibility to use that power as wisely as possible. Our dysfunctional political and economic systems, like the judge in the video, have fallen to the Dark Side, to use a Star Wars analogy.

This has been going on for decades, slowly and methodically changing our civic institutions. I believe the Occupy Wall Street movement has caught fire so quickly because we've reached the point where everyday people are finally admitting something has gone terribly wrong. Like the family in the beating video, there is no easy road to fix things. The abused are always afraid of retaliation, and abusers are always in serious denial. So we get to the point we're in now, and the shit hits the fan. And the fan is on high.

Will level-headed thinking keep this movement non-violent, despite the work of the hundreds of agent provocateurs, infiltrators, and military and private psyops agents working against the protesters? Probably not. The abusers in our society want to crush this movement and keep on abusing. When it comes right down to it, every grass roots social movement is an intervention. Things will get ugly before they get much better, I'm afraid.

We, as a society in the U.S., have allowed many of our leaders to abuse us. We need to heal to solve the problem.

By the way, I heard a guest announcer on Rush Radio (Greensboro, NC the Rush Limbaugh station here) not only back the Texas judge for beating his daughter, but this guest host said that the main problem with this country is that the rest of the country doesn't beat their children into submission like Southerners do. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. The unfortunate truth is that the Texas judge who brutally beat his daughter with a belt in that video is a pretty normal Southern Christian. Seriously.

Interesting Times post 14

2011-11-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Back to the left... Here we have Noam Chomsky, an MIT professor of Linguistics. But he's best known to most people for his books and speeches talking about political, economic, and social issues. In this 1993 speech, Chomsky looks at Free Trade and the "free market."

Interesting Times post 13

2011-11-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

Back to the right. Ayn Rand was born and raised in communist Russia and later came to the United States where she became one of our greatest thinkers ever. She's best known for the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. I have read both of these novels, which are about 2,000 pages together. I do not agree with everything she says, but she brilliantly explored ideas that no one else really delved into. She champions those self-made people who create and invent by using their intellect, drive, ambition, and hard work.

Interesting Times post 12

2011-11-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

The late Howard Zinn is probably best known for his book The People's History of the United States. I never read the book, but I have heard several lengthy interviews with Howard Zinn on KPFK (90.7 FM Los Angeles) radio over the years. In this clip, Howard, one of the great minds of the left talks about socialism and capitalism.

Interesting Times post 11

2011-11-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

OK, for the next tage of my "Interesting Times" series of posts, I'm putting up four great minds talking about capitalism and socialism. Here's Bill Gates, the computer nerd that became an entrepreneur and the richest man in the world. Are you going to just pass this clip by? He's talking about corporations using resources to help the poor, among other things.

For those who don't know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to eradicate polio forever, and to eradicate malaria, among other things. Damn greedy capitalists... heh, heh, heh.

Interesting Times post 10

2011-11-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

This is the trailer from Billy Jack Goes to Washington made in 1977, which I believe is the 4th movie in the Billy Jack series (counting Born Losers). It was Tom Laughlin's revamp of the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington idea from years before. This movie was considered so controversial at the time that it wasn't released until many years later, 2007, I think. Thirty-four years later, it sounds a lot like the complaints of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Corporate greed, institutional corruption, politicians doing the bidding of corporate power brokers, and the average people getting screwed by all of this corruption. Except now, most Americans have lost money, and many have lost their retirement savings because of the housing bubble, financial meltdown, and the continuing collapse of financial institutions around the world. There comes a time when the everyday people of the world have just had enough, and the begin to rise up en mass. I think we are entering that period in the United States right now.

Interesting Times post 9

2011-11-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

Full fight scene from the movie Billy Jack made in 1971. When you first watch Billy Jack, this is the part you remember until you've watched it a bunch of times.

Interesting Times post 8

2011-11-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the theme song from the movie Billy Jack (1971), "One Tin Soldier" by Coven. This is one of my favorite songs of all time. It tells such a great truth in such a simple story.

Interesting Times post 7

2011-11-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Another creative work inspired partly by the Vietnam War was the independent movie Billy Jack, written, produced and directed by Tom Laughlin, who stars as Billy Jack. Some people consider this the first truly independent movie.

In the movie, Billy Jack is "a war hero who hated the war," who lives on an Indian reservation in the American west. There's a progressive school on the reservation that takes in anyone who needs a place, and tries to teach them whatever they want to learn. BillyJack spends most of his time with an old shaman, trying to deal with his personal demons, but he also protects the Indians, kids at the school, and in this clip, the wild horses on the reservation. This was my favorite movie as a kid, though I only saw it about three times, late at night, on TV.

Interesting Times post 6

2011-11-02T16:16:00.000-07:00

About the same time Neil Young's "Ohio" was gaining fame, this song was also on the radio, one of the most popular songs of its day. Here staff seargent Barry Sadler sings " The Ballad of the Green Beret." The Green Berets were the only well known military special forces unit known at the time. I remember singing along to this songmany times when I was about 5 years old.

Interesting Times post 5

2011-11-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Four Dead in Ohio...

In 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a group of college students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, just outside Akron. Four people were killed, including one who wasn't a protester, just a student caught in the melee. Nine were injured. It was one of the first times in modern U.S. history were a military branch opened fire and killed U.S. citizens, and the incident inspired the Neil Young song "Ohio." Listen to Neil Young sing the original version live here. The video clip above shows photos and film footage of the actual protest and shooting.

My dad was raised about 20 miles from Kent, Ohio, and personally knew at least one police officer there that day. That officer told my dad that he saw protesters throwing chunks of concrete at police and soldiers off a roof. He specifically mentioned them throwing a street sign with about 20 pounds of concrete on the bottom of it.

This brings up a very good point. There aren't two sides to every story, every single person at any event has a side to the story. If there were 2,000 students and soldiers at Kent State on May 4th, 1970, then there are 2,000 stories. There are always parts of the story the public never hears.

Is this the future of the Occupy Movement? Does it have to come down to military soldiers killing the very people they've taken an oath to protect? Is there someone who wants it to go down that way? Is there a better way to work through this crisis? Of course there is. Will the better solution happen? I doubt it.

Interesting Times post 4

2011-11-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

A Vietnam era protest song. Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," from the early 1970's, when activists were actively protesting the Vietnam War. That war killed over 57,000 American troops, and more than that many Vietnam vets have committed suicide since the war. Nobody knows how many Vietnamese were killed, probably millions, I've heard.

We've had protests in this country many times. Is the Occupy Wall Street movement and Move Your Money project just another bunch of dirty, smelly hippies protesting the latest bad deeds by The Man? Or is there more to this?

Interesting Times post 3

2011-11-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Legendary, and I really mean legendary, comic writer Alan Moore talks about his thinking behind the writing of V for Vendetta in the 1980's. Alan also wrote The Watchmen, many issues of Swamp Thing, and a bunch of other epic comics/graphic novels. This interview will knock your socks off. Basically, V for Vendetta was a look into how facism happens.

Watch V's speech from V for Vendetta here. Keep in mind, this was written as fiction about 25 years ago. It wasn't written for the current crisis in the United States, but it's real easy to apply to our times. This is why this graphic novel and movie so inspire many of the Occupy protesters.

The question isn't what will happen this Saturday, the fifth of November 2011, the real question is: What will happen the fifth of November in 2012?

Interesting Times post 2

2011-11-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews Rob Johnson about the Move Your Money Project.

This coming Saturday, November 5th 2011, it appears a lot of people will move their money out of large banks and into small community banks. Why? The idea is that these huge banks helped drive the economic crisis by investing in CDO's, selling their mortages, and making risky bets that they shouldn't have. After royally screwing up and helping to cause a worldwide crisis, these banks were bailed out with taxpayer money because they were deemed "to big to fail." That meant that it was believed that if one of these huge banks went bankrupt, the result would affect and threaten the entire, worldwide banking system. So the poorly managed, huge banks were propped up and loaned money. They were supposed to use that money to stabilize the banks and begin loaning money to businesses and individuals again, which would pump up the economy. Instead, the large banks mostly hoarded that bailout money, and continued to give top executives huge bonuses. That's the basic idea.

So the Move Your Money Project was thought up by Arianna Huffington, Rob Johnson, and a handful of others as a way that ordinary people could show their feeling about the way the huge banks are being run. By moving your money into smaller community or regional banks or credit unions, it would also strengthen those smaller banks.

Here's where we come to what people in power always fear... average people acting in unison. Why did Bank of America just announce it will stop its recently enacted $5 fee? Because thousands of average people got really pissed off about it. If tens of thousands, or even millions of average people move their money to different banks this Saturday, it WILL have an effect on the banking system. Will it solve the banking system problems? No. Will it send a strong message to major banks that change is needed? Yes.

Here's a couple of things that most people don't know about banks. First, they only have to have about 1% or 2% of their total assets in cash. So if people who hold just 3% of the assets in a banks take their money out on the same day, that bank will run out of cash and become insolvent immediately. And that gets ugly REAL QUICK.

Second, for every dollar that you put in a bank account, they can loan out $9 or $10. So let's say Lebron James deposits a big Miami Heat check for one million dollars in his bank. The bank can then make and additional $9 million or $10 million in loans. If Lebron (just an example of a well known rich person) pulls $1 million out of his bank, then the bank needs other assets to cover its loans, or it needs to get rid of $9 million or $10 million worth of loans.

Third, if you've read any of Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad,Poor Dad books, you know that your savings and checking accounts are really liabilities to a bank. They're called assets, because it's money the bank has on its books. But in reality, money in your accounts is money that you can come and get at any time. This is why banks want large minimum balances, CD's that have time periods, and similar devices. That way the bank is reasonably sure that your money will stay in their bank for a while.

Part of what's happening with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Move Your Money Project is that average people are remembering that they always hold the true power in any society, if they act in unison. This Saturday could get really crazy. How crazy? Check this clip out from October 15th, 2011.

Am I going to move my money? Well, I have about $4 in my huge bank checking account, because I'm a poor taxi driver, and because an ATM deducted $20 the other day and didn't give me the money. I will probably keep my meager account right where it is, at least until I thoroughly research the smaller banks around here.

You can search the Move Your Money website by following the link above, and it will help you find community and regional banks in your area that THEY BELIEVE are not part of the huge bank world. Remember, a lot of banks have been bought out in the last couple years, and to be honest, this consolidation of banks is probably the main reason the financial crisis was orhcestrated in the first place. What... you didn't think this recession was an accident, did you?

Another question many people might have is: Why the hype for this Saturday, November 5th? That inspiration comes from the comic/graphic novel/movie V for Vendetta.

Interesting Times post 1

2011-11-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street protest, New York City, October 2011.

As most of you know, I am now working about 100 hours a week driving a taxi here in winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I don't have my own computer, so I have to go to the library to post on my blogs. As I was typing that last sentence, I got a text from my boss, no doubt wondering where the hell I am. So I can't post as much as I'd like. And I was planning to keep doing the old school BMX posts, about one a week or so, to keep this blog plugging along slowly.

But I'm going to diverge into a series of posts about the what's happening in our country right now. As you all know, we are in a long and intense recession. As you also know, a fairly unorganized group of people has emerged first as the Occupy Wall Street movement about a month ago, pissed off mostly about the role of major banks in our current crisis. Last I heard, there were Occupy groups in over 2300 cities worldwide.

When I was a kid, scenes like the one above happened in places like Beirut, Lebanon and other far away cities in "less stable" parts of the world. Now scenes of paramilitary police beating unarmed protesters are popping up on You Tube from major cities here in the United States, like New York City in the clip above, and the recent incident in Oakland. These scenes haven't hit small cities and towns... yet. But will they?

What is going on? Are these protesters just lazy hippies baiting cops? Is there really any reason for average people to be pissed off at major banks that make our incredibly complex financial system possible? Are you pissed off at the current recession and its affect on your life?

I've been a futurist, a person who tries to figure out what's going to happen in the future, since I was a little kid. I've been waiting years for something like the Occupy movement to happen. I wasn't hoping it would happen, but rather I saw it as inevitable. I think the Occupy Wall Street movement is the tip of a very large iceberg, and its emergence has taken the U.S. population into a new era, a very tumultuous one. In the next few posts I will explain my thoughts on what's going on, and what I think it all means.

There's an old Chinese curse that goes: "May you live in interesting times." Ladies and gentelman, we live in interesting times, and they will get a lot more interesting... unfortunately.

Jam Circle at a trade show

2011-10-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

Just stumbled upon this clip. A bunch of pros, apparently at a trade show somewhere, doing some flatland. Looks to be 1987 by the tricks and pros involved.

The start of my video career

2011-10-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

This is a clip from the second BMX Plus! video, Rad TV. I think this was produced in 1987, when I was working at the AFA. At that time, a pro caliber video editing system cost about $500,000 or more. Only a handful of video production companies had the means to do high end editing. So to make a video like this one, BMX Plus! would hire a video production company, normally one that made local commercials or industrial training videos. These people would "write" and storyboard the videos, plan them all out, and bring their own camera people with 35 pound Betacam cameras that cost $50,000 each. The cameramen never knew how to follow freestyle riders well, how to keep them in frame, and they often moved the cameras in weird ways to spice up the shot. In short, the camera work and editing were what they learned in college, not what BMX freestylers wanted to see. A video like this one above probably cost about $40,000 to $50,000 to make, in 1987 dollars. That would be about $100,000 today.

So one day, Bob Morales walked into the back room of the tiny AFA office and said, "I can get local commercial spots on MTV for $30 each for the Austin contest. You wanna make a commercial?" I said, "Uuuuh... a TV commercial? Sure. How do I do that?" He replied, "Go talk to the guys at Unreel."

Unreel Productions was the video company owned by Vision Skateboards and Vision street Wear, who sponsored the AFA Masters contest series. They flew a cameraman to each contest to shoot video. Video that had never been made into anything... until I came along. I hopped in the AFA van that afternoon and drove over to Unreel, on the bluff in Costa Mesa, off Whittier Street. I had no idea I was embarking on an entirely new career path.

Not another blog

2011-10-17T17:24:00.001-07:00

Although I don't have much time to continue this blog, I've started another blog called Fighting Ghosts. If you've read this blog for any lenght of time, you know I go off on a rant now and then about all this crazy stuff that's happened to me in the past decade. In short, it seems I was targeted by the Honeland Security system, and my life has been destroyed by it, although I've never been charged with any crime. To be honest, I think they want me to work for them, to be a brainiac like Abby on NCIS. I'm not a forensics expert like Abby, I'm a futurist and student of human nature. I've always been fascinated by trying to figure out what's going to happen in the world. I personally don't think I'm that smart, but it appears someone does. In any case, in the Fighting Ghosts blog I'm going to tell my story concerning the crazy events in my life. Believe me, truth really is stranger than fiction. Am I crazy? Or did this shit really happen? I'll let you decide.

Thank you Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

In 1997, I bought my first personal computer, an old Mac SE with a whopping 6k external hard drive. I published several zines with that computer, and I wrote my "Interview with Sasquatch: Big Feet and a Big Mouth," story on it. That slow, old Mac had the best computer keyboard I've ever used. Seriously, I wish I could have kept that keyboard and hooked into every computer since.

A decade later, I was trying to get my video career going again, and I saved up $1600 while living in my taxi, and bought a used Mac Powerbook and Final Cut Express. I'm a tard when it comes to computers, and I never had the time to really learn Final Cut. But I did type in about 165 poems into that Powerbook. That computer, with the only digital version of ten years worth of my original poems, was in a pawn shop in Westminster, California when I flew to North Carolina in November of 2008. I was hoping to come to NC, stay with my parents, and finally be able to delve into learning Final Cut. I would use my 20 years worth of old BMX and skate footage to make some old school documentaries and get back into the grind as a video producer in the new, digital editing world.

My family refused to loan me the $250 I needed to get my Powerbook out of hock, and to pay up the back payments on my storage unit in Huntington Beach, where my life's work, including my video master tapes and raw footage, were stored. I lost my Powerbook, my footage, and everything else I owned by coming to North Carolina, and I will never forget that. Intensely depressed, I started a blog about my days at FREESTYLIN' Magazine to vent my frustration a little. The completely unexpected response to my FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog kept me going through one of the hardest times in my life. I typed that blog, and all my blogs since on a PC, because I can't afford to buy a Mac. But I published those blogs using a mouse, popularized by Steve Jobs and the Apple team. I use Windows software, which was initially a knockoff of the Apple format on those early Macs.

I've never really been able to use my Apple devices to anywhere near their full potential. But the innovations Steve Jobs and the Apple Computers culture inspired have allowed me to put a lot of original content on the internet, and into self-published zines. I hope one day I'll be able to buy the multitude of Apple equipment I'd like to have, and to really put some unique content out in the world. And that was the genius of Steve Jobs, he saw the need and potential of making computers and digital devices that allow people to put their own work out into the world. Millions of people, maybe even billions, use Apple or Apple inspired equipment to work in the world, and the world is a much better place because of it.

By most accounts, Steve Jobs was an incredibly tough guy to work for. The main reason for this seems to be that somehow he knew that he, and the employees, could do better. And that drive for perfection created some of the most influential products in our modern age. I'm really sorry to hear that Steve Jobs died yesterday, but as we all know, his influence and visionary ideas will live on for a long time to come.

The video clip above is one of the most radical events in the history of all us alive in 1984. That weird little beige computer and the ideas behind it truly changed the world for the better.

And if there really is some place we go when we die, I hope Steve Jobs comes back once in a while to share ideas with Apple engineers and designers, and keep the Apple momentum going.

Chris Lashua 15 years later

2011-09-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

Chris Lashua was a really talented and motivated guy, as well as a good businessman back in the early BMX freestyle days. So what happened to him? Well, I was working in the box office of Cirque du Soleil, in Orange County, California, when I ran into him again. Chris got on with a circus in Japan, as I recall, Ringling Brothers, I think. His immersion into the circus world led to work with the fledgling French Canadian circus, Cirque du Soleil, in the late 80's or early 90's. I think he did a BMX freestyle act for a while, then decided to work up a different act. He heard about a thing called the German Wheel, built one, and began experimenting with it. By the time I ran into him again, in 1997, I think, he was the opening act in Cirque's Quidam show. He toured with Cirque for several years.

Cirque du Soleil started with a group of Montreal area street performers in the mid 1980's, back when we were inventing BMX freestyle. In the time Chris was with cirque, it grew from a weird little circus to an international phenomenon. There are a dozen or more Cirque shows now, four or five in Las Vegas alone, and four or five touring the world at any given time. Go to the Cirque du Soleil website and sign up for Cirque Club to get updates about when they will be in your area. I worked in the box office on five tours of Cirque, and it is, without a doubt, the best run company I have ever worked for. If I had to work one job for my entire life, it would be on the tent crew of Cirque.

Last I heard, Chris Lashua has a business in Las Vegas that designs new acts and builds equipment for them, sort of a supplier for Cirque du Soleil and other shows.

Chris Lashua in 1988

2011-09-28T06:41:00.000-07:00

Back to the BMX freestyle...

So I drove the American Freestyle Association rig to Reno for a bike trade show in 1987 with Mike Sarrail and Scott Robinson. After a crazy, all night drive, we unloaded the AFA and MOR Distributing trade show booths, and Bob got us a hotel room. As I recall, the three of us promptly went to sleep.

That afternoon, the fun began. Reno, Nevada is a fairly small city, a little Las Vegas. So there's the touristy gambling scene downtown, and then a whole bunch of local rednecks. and on that particular week in 1987, there were about fifteen BMX freestylers. The biggest name pro that showed up that weekend was Chris Lashua.

Chris was the best known pro freestyler on the East Coast at a time when BMX freestyle was definitely a West Coast dominated sport. Freestyle was born in Southern California, and the biggest scenes were still there in 1987. But Chris made a name for himself on the East Coast in several ways. First of all, he was a great rider, both ramp and flatland. He was also an innovator, bringing new tricks and style to the mix. I think he invented the 270 drop-in, among other things. Check the video above to get a taste of his flatland skills. Rolling backwards gut lever on the seat and handlebars? That's impossible.

Chris not only the first top pro rider from the East coast (Dennis Langlais was also a great rider on the East then), but Chris launched the East Coast's most successful trick team, originally the GT Mountain Dew Team as I recall. He was one of the few riders making a living from doing shows in those early days, sort of the R.L. Osborn of the East coast. He never got the coverage he deserved, and never really seemed to care.

That week in Reno, our motley little crew of riders sessioned the whole city of Reno. We got a circle going on the strip and street performed for the locals and tourists. We street rode all over the city. We hammered the nickel slots for all they were worth. We invented "Extreme Bowling," doing BMX variations on the lanes. A "Bio Air" in bowling is when the ball lands more than halfway down the lane. We got kicked out for that one. We all did shows at the trade show during the day, as well. The big story of the week, though was Chris Lashua's acrobatics. Witnesses said he tried a front flip over a trash can and into a hotel jacuzzi. but his timing was off and he cracked his head. I think. Something like that.

The point is, that was the first week us SoCal locals hung out with Chris Lashua, and he amazed us both on and off his bike. All around good guy, and motivated as hell. Chris was the de facto leader of the posse of riders in Reno that week, and led the way to a lot of fun.

The white Bear workout

2011-09-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

There's a reason us white bears are a little round in the middle.

Jose Yanez in 1987

2011-09-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

He wasn't really a freestyler. He was a jumper guy from Arizona. He learned backflips in water on a BMX bike. He did the first ramp to ramp backflips on a BMX bike in 1984. Here he is doing a double backflip into water in 1987. That's not a typo... 1987. In 1991, Jose and Bob Kohl both learned to backflip motorcycles, nearly a decade before guys like Carey Hart and Travis Pastrana tried flipping motorcycles. There was also a circus-type guy who flipped a motorcycle into water about the same time. Just found this clip and had to put it on the blog.

Thoughts on 9 11

2011-08-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy only days away, I figured it's finally time to tell my thoughts on the subject. I'm writing a series of posts of my thoughts about 9/11 on my conspiracy blog, Shining Light at Cockroaches. Check the link if you want to check out those posts.

Lions and tigers and bears oh my

2011-08-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

So I got last year's tax check a couple of months ago, and instead of hopping the first bus to California like I should have, I decided to get set up as a taxi driver here in Winston-Salem. I moved out of the homeless shelter and into a crappy taxi. The taxi business here sucks in the summer, but I've struggled through it, scraping by after changing to a better taxi company.

This weekend, the Wake Forest University students should be moving in, which is supposedly the impetus that gets the taxi business going again here. They say business is good through the school year. So this coming weekend should be the start of me actually making enough money to get a room to live in. I've been waiting all summer, sleeeping in a taxi 6 nights a week, with no place to shower, in 90+ degree heat, waiting for this weekend to begin the busy season.

Today I went to court as a witness for a guy who got tazed, an incident I witnessed. This was the first time I ever saw someone get tazed, and the first time I was ever asked to be a witness in a trial. I lost a few taxi rides in the time it took to clean up and go to the courthouse. I got there about ten til two this afternoon. I was waiting at the wrong courtroom for a while, realized my mistake, and went looking for the right one. I ran into the lawyer for the guys I was testifying for, he told me the case had been postponed for a month. No biggie, that meant I could go back to work in the cab, and not sit in court all afternoon.

I left court and started walking to my taxi several blocks away, and I noticed that there were people, dozens and dozens of them, standing outside one of the skyscraper buildings. I figured it was a fire drill or something. I went back to my cab, grabbed a bite at Burger King, and went back to work.

I turned the radio on, and learned that there was a 5.9 earthquake centered in Virginia somewhere. People here, and on much of the Eastern seaboard felt it. 5.9? Yawn... I'm from California, and I've been in several earthquakes, even one initially rated 8.1 in Idaho (since downgraded to a 7.0). While I was in court to testify for the first time about my first witnessed tazing, I totally missed my first east coast earthquake.

I've had three pro tennis players in my cab this week, two French and a Latvian (or Russian). First time I've had pro tennis players in my taxi. They're in town for the Winston-Salem Open tournament, because the guys who run this city have talked the New World Order into investing in Winston-Salem, in an attempt to revive this city, the former tobacco capitol of the world. Hey, it's still the only city in the world with two, count 'em, two cigarette brands named after it. Yet, Newports are the most popular cig here. The hood rats like menthols, what can I say? But the old money power structure here is trying to attract both wealthy elite type, and the creative class people that economic development specialist Richard Florida writes about. But half of the city is still empty buildings. OK, maybe a quarter of the city.

Now I don't give a damn about tennis, but it is a really hard sport, no question there. It's not a pansy sport like golf, which is happening in Greensboro this weekend. But the Winston-Salem Open should be interesting, because the finals are Saturday, right about when we supposed to get pounded by Hurricane Irene, which is heading directly for the North Carolina outer banks, which will put the edge of the storm right here. Awesome, after a week of odd firsts, it looks like I'll experience my first hurricane, expected to be Category 3 to 5, while living in a minivan.

Yes, Wake Forest University students like to party, but I have a feeling that a major hurricane may put a damper on the partying, which will put a damper on the taxi business this weekend, the weekend I've been looking forward to all summer. Jeeeeez.

Somebody shoot me.

The Socko Rocket Car

2011-08-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

The clip is of the Thrust SSC jet car from the U.K., which broke the world record land speed... and the sound barrier.

Sometime in the spring of early summer of 1987, Bob Morales assigned me the job of driving the AFA rig to Reno, Nevada, to haul the trade show booths for the AFA and Nor Distributing, a BMX distributor he co-owned with Todd Huffman. The AFA rig consisted of a ford van, and Gary Turner's old 30 foot long dragster trailer. I asked Mike Sarrail if he wanted to go, and he suggested Scott Robinson as a third man to help drive. For out efforts, we got an all expense paid trip to Reno, Nevada during the trade show, which lasted three days, I think. By all expenses paid, I mean we shared a cheap motel room, and we got three McDonald's meals a day. It seemed like a pretty good deal to us.

We gathered at the little AFA office, after I'd taken the van to get an oil change, and we loaded the stuff into the trailer, and tied it down as best we could. We threw our bags and bikes in the front door of the trailer, and hopped in the van. One good thing about Bob Morales always having too many things going on, once I got busy doing something, he didn't think much about it. He just assumed you'd get the job done, and went on to his other projects. So I hopped in the van with two guys who'd never pulled a large trailer before, and we headed north.

I think I'll get a few posts out of this trip, so I'll stick to one incident for this post. Somewhere on I-80, heading over the Sierra Nevada mountains from Sacremento to Reno, we stopped for gas in a small town. We'd driven through the night, and we were all a little tired and delirious. The gas station was busy, and I couldn't get the rig maneuvered right to the pump because of some redneck in a pick up in the way. We yelled out the window at the redneck, which is never a good idea, and suddenly he was cussing back. I didn't want to start a fight, and I really had to piss, so I ran into the restroom to relieve myself, and wait for the redneck to move on.

I came out a couple minutes later, and the redneck was not only moving his truck, he was apologizing to Mike for getting in the way? Mike just smiled as I walked up, and the redneck looked at me, "Hey, sorry about getting in the way... good luck on the record!" and he drove off. Mike pulled the rig next to the pump, and I started pumping the gas.

"What the hell changed his mind?" I asked Mike, amazed at the sudden change in the redneck's behavior. Mike laughed, "I told him that inside the trailer is the Socko rocket car, and we're heading to Bonneville Salt Flats to attempt to break the world speed record... and that you're the driver." My jaw dropped. Mike continued, "and I also told him that we had 3,000 gallons of jet fuel in the trailer, and that if we bumped into his truck it would blow the whole station off the face of the map. Rednecks like fast cars," Mike finished. We all laughed our asses off at Mike's quick thinking. Mike passed himself off as one of the engineers of the Socko Speed Record attempt, and gave the redneck a couple bottles of Socko to boot, since we always had cases of it laying around.

I looked at the AFA trailer, carrying harmless trade show booths. It was just a big long trailer with four foot long Socko sticker on the sides near the back. It actually did look like it could hold a rocket car. The whole way home we thought up facts and figures for the non-existent Socko Rocket Car, just in case we ran into another redneck at another gas station. By the time we got back to Huntington Beach, we had a the whole history of the Socko Rocket Car thought up, and amused Bob with the story. If he hade a little more money, I think he just might have actually built the car. It's amazing what a little quick thinking by Mike Sarrail can lead to.

The Socko girls

2011-07-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

Here we see a couple of serious playas (don't hate the playa girl, hate the game) at a gaming event throw some serious moves at a Mountain dew girl. Were we this pathetic back in the 80's? Probably.

So these marketing guys call Bob Morales at the AFA and say they want to talk about revamping the image of a drink called Super Socco. Somehow they take the advice of Bob and myself, and the new drink called Socko hits the markets, and we got cases and cases of the stuff to give away at both local and national AFA contests. The next part is obvious, we need some hot women at the events to hand out the Socko.

Today these groups of women are known as street teams. On most any weekend in Huntington Beach, or other popular areas, you can see a group of usually one guy and three or four scantily clad women walking around handing out some ice cold drink that's pretty new. In the 1980's, that idea was pretty new. There were beautiful women at trade shows handing out product, but the idea hadn't really hit the streets much yet. I don't know when it started, but Red Bull was one of the drinks to really get the street teams going.

But the little, dinky American Freestyle Association didn't have a budget to hire $500 a day models to hawk the new Socko. Bob was thinking a lot closer to home. He had a young woman named Jill who was managing the tanning salon that Bob and his mom owned. Yeah, I got a free tanning session now and then, one of the (only) perks of being the AFA newsletter guy. One of the other perks was that Jill became my roommate. It happened something like this...

The AFA crew went out of town for a contest, and when I came back, my roommate had moved out, along with the party guy loser who'd been sleeping on the couch. I made about $800 a month at the AFA and my rent was suddenly $850 for the two bedroom place on Warner in Huntington Beach. Bob gave us all a bonus after the contest, which I think was in Austin, one that always made us money. austin, Texas already rocked in 1987. So the bonus paid my rent, and for a couple weeks, I had a an apartment to myself for the first time ever. So I did what every young person does when the first have an apartment to themselves, I walked around naked for about three days. C'mon, you did it too in your first solo apartment, admit it. there was even a Friends episode about that idea.

Anyhow, Bob and I started brainstorming on who could move in and actually be able to pay rent. He said that Jill, over at his tanning booth, was looking for a better place. So I went to meet Jill, and we talked a bit, and Bob suddenly had both of his employees under one roof. I, an incredibly shy geek, suddenly had a good looking female roommate. Jill suddenly had a decent apartment which was closer to work.

Not long after came the Socko sponsorship, and Jill was asked to be the first Socko girl, and she got her ultra-hot friend Christine to be the other one. So now I had the Socko girls in my apartment most of the time, and every freestyler in SoCal wanting to come over and try to hook up with them. I, of course, also wanted to try and hook up with them. But with my Rainman level of shyness, I wound up being friends with Jill and Christine. Things never work out as planned. On many occasions they were bouncing around the apartment in their underwear, but I never hooked up with either of them, being the dork that I was (am). Even worse than being "friends," one night Christine told me straight up, "You're nice Steve, you're the kind of guy we want to marry... after we've had our fun." I pretended to have a knife in my heart, "Here, can you twist it a little more, that didn't hurt quite enough." They both laughed it off, but I was totally dejected.

Christine was a serious young party girl, and she managed it pretty well. She pulled Jill into the party/cocaine life, and Jill started having money problems. A couple months later, again while I was away at a contest, Jill moved out, and I had to pay the whole month's rent again. Women. I saw Christine now and then, and heard Jill moved back East with a coke dealer or something. Never heard from her again.

About four years later, I was sitting on the couch at the P.O.W. BMX house, and flipping through a Hustler magazine. In the back pages, there was a girl in a photo, spread eagle to the world, buck naked, of course. The ad said, "Call me, I'm Jill! Visa and Mastercard accepted." The last I saw of Jill the Socko girl was in a phone sex ad in Hustler. Benny freakin' henny.

The birth of Socko

2011-07-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

I don't remember Bob first mentioning the Super Socco thing. But in the spring of 1987, there was a drink called Super Socco, as advertised above. It was a competitor to Gatorade, a sports thirst quencher aimed at kids who played soccer and other mainstream sports. Apparently sales were lagging, so a couple of advertising guys apporached AFA head Bob Morales about promoting a new version of the drink. Bob probably walked into the back room of the little AFA office and mentioned it to me and his sister Riki, we were the entire staff then. something like that.

What I do remember is that we went to 7-11 and bought some Supper Socco, and analyzed it. It had a really raspy, citrus taste. Kind of acidic going down, and not as easy to gulp as Gatorade. It wasn't carbonated, but it just has a lot of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) I guess. We decided they needed to tone down the acidity a little bit, and came up with two or three flavors with thought made sense. It wasn't to serious, it was like, "well, this Super Socco stuff kinda sucks, but if they did this and this... it'd be alright." I decided to go along to the meeting, and Bob and I hopped into his BMX 633 and headed to the Huntington Beach Pier.

Where Duke's Steakhouse now stands at the base of the pier, there was a super-fancy restaurant called Maxwell's in 1987. It was the fanciest restaurant in HB, as far as I knew. And even though I sessioned below it on the bike path every weekend, I never even thought of eating there. Way out of my league.

But Bob and I walked into Maxwell's in our normal shorts and T-shirts, and were led to a table where two East Coast guys in suits sat. It was a trip. I ordered something fairly expensive, since they were picking up the tab, and I knew I'd never eat at Maxwell's again. We sat right by the window, looking out over the beach. It was a totally different atmosphere from the pavement ten feet below where friends of mine were skating.

The marketing guys were cool, and just started asking Bob and I questions about Super Socco, the taste, the name, and the image of it. I kept asking myself, "why the hell are you asking us?" But it was apparent that the marketing guys were inspired by the Moutain Dew commercial a couple years before, the one with Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn, and Ron Wilkerson riding in it. Mountain Dew was just starting to tie their brand to the "alternative sports," and these guys thought Super Socco should do the same thing.

So us two Huntington Beach beach bums talked with teh two suits, had a fancy dinner, and walked out thinking "well, that was a trip, maybe they'll give us a a couple hundred bucks to sponsor the next AFA Masters contest. Bob dropped me off at home, and I grabbed my bike and went out for a solo session like I did every other night. Bob and I went on with our lives, and pretty much forgot about the wacky dinner with the advertising guys.

Then one day, a truck pulled up and dropped off a few cases of Socko, the new and renamed version of Super Socco. I think Bob came up with the name Socko, but I'm not sure. Much to our surprise, the marketing guys listened to us, and this mainstream brand had been reformulated and renamed. They had done most of what Bob Morales and I suggested. We craked open a bottle and just kinda went, "Holy shit, those guys were for real." Socko wound up becoming the main sponsor of the AFA for the next year or two, plopping down $40,000 as I recall. That was a huge boost to the AFA, and it got a lot more people drinking Socko. So I guess it worked.

Once the sponsorship deal was signed, and the money was in the AFA bank, bob and I sat down one night an figured up how much money those marketing guys spent. We figured they spent at least $40,000 themsleves, and probably a lot more. As best we could figure, they probably had a $200,000 to $300,000 contract with the makers of Super Socco/Socko, and the AFA got $40k. It definitely got Bob thinking about the "real" advertising world for a while. But for me, the crazy thing was that some big corporation came to us, a couple of BMX freestyler guys, and asked us how to revamp a major project. And they listened to us! That blew my mind. I realized that BMX freestyle was creeping into the mainstream world, a world with sums of money changing hands that Bob and I could barely imagine.

Taxi driving news

2011-07-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm once again a taxi driver. It's kind of like being a modern day pirate, at least it has the same dental plan... none. Driving a taxi here in Winston-Salem pretty much takes all the fun parts away from cab driving. No killer days where I make $200 or $300, no porn stars and strippers flashing me, and no sitting for hours in front of Crabby's in HB watching beautiful women walk by. I'm now part of the "working homeless," which sucks a hell of a lot more than just being homeless. I seriously don't think I'll ever be able to make a decent living in North Carolina, not that I'd want to. Hopefully driving a taxi will earn me enough money to get back to California ASAP and star my life over... again.

Meanwhile, in taxi news around the world... A Cash Cab in Vancouver hit and killed a pedestrian. That sucks... but honestly, there are so many stupid pedestrians, it's kind of like natural selection. There should be a pedestrian season here in Winston, because they are really overpopulating... the stupid ones who walk in front of moving cars, anyhow.

Also, as Greece struggles with financial problems, someone there decided to allow anyone to become a taxi driver, which would make taxi permits worthless. So what did Greek taxi drivers do? They blocked traffic and closed down the airport and the harbor in Athens. More power to them. Don't fuck with taxi drivers, people.

2011-07-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

Here's Ron Wilkerson at the AFA Masters finals in 1987.

Prelude to a lame birthday

2011-07-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

After working 18 hours days through the holiday weekend (with one evening off), I wound up owing the taxi company $78. Driving a taxi in Orange County, I would have made about $400 on the 4th alone. It's a different world here.

Today is my 45th birthday, which just reinforces how much my life sucks. Yesterday was a weird one. A transvestite and a Christian stalker. Jeez. It's not a happy day. As soon as I catch up what I owe the taxi company I'm going to hitchhike to California. I can't take it anymore. Life here in North Carolina is truly a living hell. I'm tired of being terrorized by born again Christians.

I need a little George Carlin to get me through the day... Oh, and to Adam the Christian stalker who talked to me yesterday, here's a look at the Ten Commandments. I'm feeling better already. While we're at it, did you hear that the great Christian state of North Carolina just outlawed funding for Planned Parenthood. So here's the late, great George Carlin on being Pro Life. Hey... I'm feeling pretty good now. Now I remember why I was working on becoming a stand up comic. Maybe it's gonna be a decent birthday after all. Heh, heh, heh...

The next day... Well, my 45th birthday sucked. The highlights were a Little Caesar's pizza and seeing the movie Soul Surfer again just because it's about surfing... and I miss Huntington Beach. I talked to another taxi company about switching over, because I'm not making hardly any money at the one I'm working for. Nothing definite, just talked to the guy. It appears the company snitches sent word along, in typical, petty, North Carolina fashion. This morning I got a charge call, one where I don't get money, just a charge slip to pay the taxi company. Then my meter wouldn't work. It wouldn't turn on. It appears the taxi company intentionally disabled my meter so I couldn't make any money this morning. I dropped the cab off, still not sure what I'm going to do. One of the corporate guys who now owns the company gave me a bullshit story about the meter not working because I wasn't signed into the dispatch computer. But I was signed in with a live call when the meter malfunctioned. The annoying part is that he apparently believed that I would buy his bullshit story. Liars and thieves. 99.999% of the people in North Carolina are liars and thieves. That's what sucks most about being here, and why I've been trying to escape since I got here. I may very well be in the homeless shelter again tonight. We'll see.

OK, enough whining. Back to the BMX freestyle.

I need your help folks

2011-06-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, a local cyclist named Ibrahim Meyers here in Winston-Salem was in a bike/van crash, and he's still in criticial condition. Several of his friends and other bikers, including some local BMXers, ride around downtown in support of him each night. They're also throwing a concert/event July 10th to raise money for him for hospital bills, living expenses and all that, since it's hard to pay rent when you're unconscious. The event will include an art auction, which a lot of local artists doing work for, myself included. Here's what I'm asking, can any of you who own/run bike companies throw some items my way for this auction? Signed photos, stickers, signed T-shirts, that kind of thing is what I'm thinking. There is a hardcore little bike scene here, mostly cyclists, direct drivers, and mountain bikers, but there are some BMXers. Most of the people at the event won't know much about BMX, but a lot are bikers of some sort here.

Here's a link on the event for Ibe.

So why am I doing this? Like all of you, I spent a huge chunk of my life riding my bike around every day. It WAS my life for well over a decade. Like all of you, I had dozens and dozens of near misses with cars who weren't paying attention.

And I had one hit.

While living in Huntington Beach in 1998, I was riding my mountain bike home from the beach one day and cruised out from a blind corner at 15th and Pacific Coast Highway. I was planning to roll across the street and turn up, heading to my apartment a couple blocks away. There were a couple of oil wells on that corner then, and a six foot fence with plastic covering it, making it hard to see around the corner. I didn't have headphones on, and usually I could hear a car coming and slow down. But as luck would have it a guy in a black Jeep was heading up the street, and rolled through the stop sign and gunned it onto PCH. I rolled past the corner of the fence, saw the Jeep, and instinctively swerved in the same direction. All those years on my BMX bike turned into reflex action. In the second before impact, about ten minutes of thoughts poured into my head, the last thought being "You're toast." I knew with every fiber of my being that I was about to die. I somehow knew that the Jeep was going to hit my back wheel, I was going to be thrown to the pavement on my back, and the left front tire of the Jeep was going to roll over my lower chest and stomach, and crush my internal organs, which would kill me. Have you ever had a powerful dream where you just know things without knowing how you know them? It was like that, but a thousand times more intense. The driver of the Jeep was looking to his left, towards the traffic he was merging with as he accelerated. I saw him turn his head, see me right in front of his Jeep, and his eyes got big.

The black Jeep hit me with the driver's foot still on the gas.

The next thing I knew, I was doing a flailing, sideways somersault about ten feet from the Jeep. I rolled to a stop. I had blacked out for about half a second, and don't remember the actual impact. I didn't see my life run before my eyes. I didn't see Jesus or a light at the end of any tunnel or anything like that. I just had that rush of thoughts in my head, I absolutely KNEW I was about to die, and then I was rolling on the pavement.

The guy in the Jeep stopped and was totally freaked out. A guy walking on the bike path across PCH yelled, "HOLY SHIT! Are you alright?" and ran over to me. I laid there for a second and then stood up. Nothing hurt. I didn't feel a thing, which I later realized was adrenalin. REAL adrenalin, not the endorphin rush we mistakenly call adrenalin.

The driver couldn't believe I was alright, and he was more freaked out than me. Both wheels of my bike, a Raleigh Technium aluminum/chrome-moly combo mountain bike, were tacoed. we checked the Jeep, the scratches from hitting me were dead center on the front bumper. I don't know what happened. It was a miracle in the most literal sense of the word. I was supposed to die and I didn't... and I spent months trying to come to grips with that.

The Jeep driver noticed the book I'd been reading at the beach, which got thrown in the accident. It was In Search of the Warrior Spirit by Richard Strozzi Heckler. "I guess you found that warrior spirit," he said, still wondering how I walked away unscathed. "If I really found the warrior spirit, you wouldn't have hit me," I joked back. We put my fucked up bike in his Jeep, and he gave me a ride up the street to my apartment, asked again if I was alright, I told him I was, and he took off. He bought me two new wheels a couple days later, and I didn't sue him, even though everyone said I should because he was a chiropractor.

I sat down in a recliner in my living room, and told my roommate what had happened. I just sat there and twitched for the next eight hours, kind of out of it. I couldn't make sense of it. When the adrenaline wore off, my foot hurt a little, and hurt for five or six weeks, so I probably broke one of those little bones. But that was it.

Like I said, I spent a loooong time trying to figure out why I lived that day. Whatever higher force exists in the universe, it seemed to want to keep me around that day. I've been real careful not to name that force, because I think it exists beyond all of our names. The incident was part of my path to understand this world a little bit better. Sometimes you never get solid answers as to why things happen, and you just have to meddle along as best you can afterwards.

So why am I asking all of you to help out a bike rider you've never met, that I've never met? Because we're all hardcore bike riders, regardless of how much we ride at the moment. On any given day, it could be any of us. That's why.

Anyone who wants to help out with a donation of any kind, email me at thewhitebear43@yahoo.com and I'll find out the best way to help and where to send stuff. Ibe (prnounced EEB) is a popular figure here, much in the same way Stephen Murray is to the BMX world, and I'd be really stoked to see some bike industry people help out in one way or another. since I'm driving the taxi 18 hours a day, I don't have much computer time. So if you guys can spread the word, especially to anyone in the cycling/direct drive world you might know, I would be stoked.

Thanks guys.

Brian Blyther in 1987

2011-06-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

This clip shows Brian Blyther having a bad day at the Action Sports Cycle Series contest in 1987, the year I worked at the AFA. Smooth 540 out. Multiple variations at 7 to 8 feet. 540 canyon air. How many of you would've liked to have an off day like this in 1987? Yeah, me too.

So in the beginning, there was, of course, Bob Haro. He and Bob Morales and R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff started doing freestyle shows and touring in about 1979. But it wasn't until the early 1980's that a whole new group began seeing these BMX freestyle guys in the magazines, and trying it for ourselves. What really blew us young BMXers away was the riders in the King of the Skatepark series, the first BMX freestyle contests put on by Bob Morales. Eddie Fiola then about 19, was the "veteran" rider, and the first King of the Skateparks. Younger Mike Dominguez was the crazy up-and-coming kid rivaling Eddie. Brian Blyther was "The Smooth Guy." Brian developed a nose dive, super smooth style, and his tires barely made a sound on the ramps. Being a local at Pipeline Skatepark, Brian rode the full pipe a lot, and developed a slightly turned down, tucked aerial style which was his signature "Blyther air." He wasn't the craziest guy, but he could go as high as anyone, and was just amazingly smooth. I shot some video of him at Pipeline a couple of times, and he had me walk down in the bowl to get a better angle. "Stand there and DON'T move," he told me. He rolled right next to me and soared out of the bowl. It was fuckin' amazing. When I finally got a truck and was able to go ride Pipeline, I wanted to learn to ride the bowls like a cross between Brian Blyther and skater Chris Miller. I thought they were both the smoothest, most stylish guys in the pools.

Though known best for big airs and smoothness, Brian had a big bag of lip tricks. He invented the can-can footplant, and also invented the flatland tailwhip. Believe it or not, when we first started talking about someone doing a 900 air, I thought it would be Brian Blyther to land the first one, because he did the most consistent 540's of anyone.

When I made The Ultimate Weekend video in 1990, I was super stoked that I got Brian Blyther, and fellow skatepark rider Xavier Mendez, to ride the Nude Bowl for my video. It was about 110 degrees out in the desert, but Brian tore up the bowl, and ruled that section of the video. More than anything, I think Brian put smoothness in the vert arsenal, showing people you go do 8-9-10 foot airs and still land smooth, which was a rarity in the 1980's. Brian Blyther put smoothness in the trick bag, and inspired a lot of other riders to actually try and learn to land.

The announcers in this clip are BMX legend Scot Breithaupt and Dave Stanfield, an early announcer specializing in action sports. I just saw the Bethany Hamilton movie Soul Surfer last night, and Dave Stanfield is an announcer in the movie. Cool to see he's still at it. The movie got really preachy in a few parts, but was worth it just to see this awesome shot of the real Bethany surfing a HUGE wave at the end.

Status report

2011-06-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know my life has sucked since I got here to North Carolina. A big part of that sucking was the fact that I couldn't find work or get a small business started. There's no BMX industry here in the Winston-Salem/Triad area, and barely any BMXers or skaters at all. The only job I ever made decent money at, working on TV crews, doesn't exist here either, except for the occasional movie location shoot. On top of that, there's my family drama and the fact that I somehow got targeted by the Christian Mafia (best name I can think of to describe them), which has intentionally fucked up my life in the hopes I'd somehow "see the light" and become a born again Christian. Sorry folks, that's not happening. I don't believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or the born again Christian dogma. It's just based on a really bad interpretation of the Bible, so it doesn't make sense. Like I've said before, I actually had one person tell me that if I became born again (in their eyes, not in the true sense)that "all the people working against me will suddenly start working for me." How they justify fucking up peoples lives with Jesus'teachings is beyond me, since its the opposite of what he taught. So I've muddled along, and blogged like a madman for 2 1/2 years now.

I finally scraped up enough money to get started as a taxi driver, and I'm now working about 100 to 120 hours a week, and making $150 or so each week. Yep, you guessed it, that sucks. Most of the money I do earn goes right back into the gas tank, food, or bills. Like most taxi companies, the company I work for is the biggest obstacle to making decent money, they just don't have many calls. But I'm working and earning a tiny bit of money, and SLOWLY making a little progress in life. When the college kids come back to town in late August, supposedly the taxi business picks up here. We'll see.

I'm learning my way around Winston-Salem, a place where people have an aversion to tipping for some reason. Fargin' bastages. I don't know if I'm going to just save up enough money for a bus ticket back to California, or if I'll be able to actually make a living here. Time will tell. But I'm working, I don't have a decent place to live yet, and I don't have much time to blog. But I'll try to keep doing one or two posts a week on this blog. That's where things stand right now.

Street riding in London

2011-06-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Lily Allen goes street riding (sort of) in London in "LDN." To see her third nipple, click here.

Eddie Fiola in 1984

2011-06-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to find a clip of Eddie riding ramps form 1987, when I was working at the AFA, but couldn't find one. Here he is at the second flatland/ramps contest ever, Huntington Beach, summer 1984.

I think of Eddie Fiola as the first superstar of BMX freestyle. Eddie was the original King of the Skateparks, which was the first BMX freestyle contest series, put on by Bob Morales. Eddie blasted huge air for the day, 7 to 8 foot variations at Pipeline Skatepark, and even higher at times. Eddie was also one of the first guys to travel the world doing freestyle shows. He's a showman, and his riding always has amazing style, though some riders thought there was too much looking at the crowd and weird expressions. But that's what put Eddie Fiola on the map, his riding always got a reaction, whether it was little kids watching a show or hardcore riders.

In the early 1980's, if random kids knew anything about freestyle, they knew Eddie Fiola. Yes, R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff were touring extensively then, but Eddie Fiola was the first widely known pro freestyler. He still rides, he still has that same style, and he still owns that right hand drive Honda CRX I believe. He's a stuntman now, and jumped a Dodge Charger 68 feet for the Dukes of Hazzard movie. I don't know what he's done since.

There were a lot of skatepark riders in those early days, but Eddie Fiola riding the Pipeline Skatepark Pipe Bowl pretty much invented big air. Guys were doing three and four foot airs on ramps, but Eddie started blasting 7-8-9 feet at Pipeline, which was an insane 12 foot bowl with four feet of vert. It was amazing in those days, and thirty years later, Eddie still impresses you when he rides. The sport has evolved, guys go bigger, but few have the style Eddie Fiola put into vert riding.

Work sucks

2011-06-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

The past few years of craziness had me either working 80 to 120 hours a week and still being broke, or not working at all (except for non-paying work like art and blogging). Being broke sucks. But working a job that doesn't pay sucks a lot more than being homeless. I've worked about 70 hours in the last six days in the taxi, and made about $80. That's taxi driving. The summers are slow here because all the Wake Forest University college kids are gone. There are hardly any calls for cabs, and I'm sitting in a car all day in 95 degree heat. What really sucks is that there aren't enough drunks here. And most of them drive home drunk. This is The South after all, cops are a lot more lenient to people coming out of bars than the California DUI nazis. In Huntington Beach, I could get several loads of drunks on any given Monday night. Here the bars are pretty much empty half the week.

I know,none of you care about this, but if I actually make some money this weekend, then I will have a little time to blog. If I don't make much money this weekend, then I'll be working 18 hours days for a couple weeks. The point is, I won't be posting much for the next 2 or 3 weeks, but it should pick up after that.

I'm working

2011-06-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

I'm working as a taxi driver in Winston-Salem, North Carolina now. I started last weekend, and I just went into the office to pay my lease before coming to the library to get online. I got called into the office. The office manager said he had a report that I was drunk. I looked at him with a "You're joking, right?" look. He wasn't. Now in the old days of taxi driving, when companies were local and had dispatchers in the office, calls from crazy people who see you in traffic weren't an issue. The dispatcher would come over the radio saying,"Hey 619, some crazy old lady called and said you were drunk because you cut here off in traffic. I told her to stuff it." All the drivers would laugh in their cars, and the night went on.

But now huge corporations own taxi companies. My cab has GPS tracking, a low light camera that watches everything I do, including picking boogers. The "dispatchers" are actually low wage call center people, supposedly in Little Rock, Arkansas. Yeah, Arkansas. Paddle faster, I hear banjos! The part that sucks is that the office manager guy, who seems to be a pretty cool dude, was obviously upset by the incident. So that probably means it was the security people watching the video of me in my cab (can you say "invasion of privacy?") from 1,000 miles away, or maybe local police that reported me. Sure I probably swerved my car at some point, BECAUSE I'M A FUCKING TAXI DRIVER. When you're looking for addresses, which is almost always in a neighborhood you don't know well, you drive erractically. That's the nature of taxi driving.

What really sucks is that he didn't tell me who made the accusation. I'm sitting in a freakin' hot, piece of crap car for 12 or more hours a day in 90 plus degree heat. It's supposed to hit 95 today. I get MAYBE one call an hour, my last one was a $3.60 ride for a lady who had me help her load AND unload about 30 grocery bags. I'm not kidding, 30 bags. She tipped me 40 cents. I put up with crap like that all day, I pay lease and $3.60 plus for gas. And I barely break even on the slow days. And I'm supposed to care about some idiot who didn't like my driving and made an anonymous accusation about me.

OK, I just had to get that out of my system. Sorry for the rant guys. But the good news is that I'm working, I have a room (for the moment, anyhow) and I make actually be making a living at some point soon. Not much of a living, but a living none the less. These past two years of being stuck in North Carolina and dealing with my family bullshit have been a living hell. Far worse than being homeless in California, which was rather enjoyable, to be honest. The worst part was losing all my video footage and writing... my life's work... and not being able to get going on any interesting projects again. Hopefully now I'll be able to get some zines published, and get back to making videos again at some point. We'll see.

I plan to keep this blog going, at least a post or two a week, for the forseeable future. Thanks for reading, I'll try to keep writing something interesting.

Mike Dominguez in 1987

2011-05-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

Here's Mike Dominguez riding for Diamondback in late 1987.

This is the year I worked at the AFA. I think this was the season final contest at the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome. The annoncers are SE Racing founder Scot Breithaupt and Dave Stanfield. At that time, Mat Hoffman was an amazing up-and-coming amateur who always landed hard on his second or third air and tweaked his bars forward. Mat, of course, went on to become the best bike vert rider of all time. But in 1987, Mike Dominguez was the ruler. The ramps are eight foot wide and eight feet high with no extra vert. The railings on the ramp are four feet high, for reference. The canyons between the ramps are about six feet, maybe a bit more. Mike is going well into the 11 to 12 foot range. A couple of those airs may be 13 feet out or so. His 540 canyon air has his sprocket five to six feet out.

Mike Dominguez was the first to land a 900 air, but he didn't land one in a contest, or get one on video, which is a serious bummer. Mat Hoffman took that claim a couple years later. But it was Dominguez who showed the vert riders that a 900 was possible. How can I say that definitely? Go to 4:50 in this clip. Holy guacamole Batman! If Mike would have farted mid-air he would have landed this 900. You can't get any closer. This clip is also in 1987, two years before Mat landed his first 900 in Canada. I was judging that vert contest when Dominguez tried the 900, and I was shooting video from the deck of the ramp when Mat landed his first 900. I may have sucked myself, but I saw a lot of great moments go down in those days...

Funny sticker

2011-05-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

The weird looking guy on the motorcycle is the Wake Forest University Demon Deacon mascot.

Wake Forest University is the big, upscale college here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It's not a school for poor kids. If you go to Wake, your parents make some money. Now we've all seen the bumper stickers that say "my kid and my money goes to ________University." Well, last night someone plastered a bunch of stickers around downtown Winston-Salem that say, "My daughter is a $40K a year blowjob machine at WFU." Heh, heh, heh. Uh... can you introduce me to her?

songs that mention bike riding number 2

2011-05-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Queen performing "Fat Bottomed Girls."
"Get on your bikes and RIDE!"

Songs that mention bike riding number 1

2011-05-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

Lily Allen singing "LDN."
"Ridin' through the city on my bike all day 'cause a Phil took away my liscense..."

For all you stoners out there, this is post number 420 of Freestyle BMX Tales, so smoke up.

Gary Turner's old trailer

2011-05-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

This is NOT the AFA trailer, but it's about the same length. I don't think they even had toy haulers in 1987. This one's damn nice.

At some point in the spring of 1987, Bob Morales walked into the little AFA office and told me he bought a trailer to haul the AFA stuff to our BMX freestyle contests. I pictured a little 14 foot flatbed trailer or something. For the local contest, and SoCal national contests, we had a Brian Scura designed, wooden quarterpipe, a couple four foot tall speakers, and some P.A. equipment. Then there were some home made stanchions and rope to rope off the contest area. We didn't need a very big trailer. "How big is it?" I asked. "It's a 30 foot box, it's Gary Turner's old dragster trailer," Bob replied. For those of you who don't know, Gary Turner is a welder who started making BMX bikes in his garage for his kid in the 1970's. The "GT" in GT Bikes stands for Gary Turner. He got into dragster racing, and got new trailer when he moved up to a better dragster.

Thirty feet? Gulp.

I knew I was going to be the one driving it the most. You could do a lot of damage with a 30 foot trailer... and I didn't want to do that. Bob led me outside to check it out. It was fucking huge. A great big box. No windows. One side door and the rear ramp door. It barely fit in the driveway, a long strip of pavement with parking spaces on one side and the little industrial unit building on the other. Bob tossed me the keys and told me to pull it around back.

"Will it make it around the corner back there?" I asked Bob.
"Sure," Bob said, always the optimist. He followed me and watched my blindside. It made the corner, but not by very much. I pulled up by our little warehouse door, and got out. Bob walked to the back of the trailer and opened the big door. It was completely bare inside. Just a trailer. No built-in cabinets or furniture. "I could live in here," I said. Bob just laughed. As a matter of fact, I did live in there for a while at one point, but that's a story for another day. Once we got the trailer, my main goal was not to do this. For once, being an uptight, anal retentive, overly cautious dork paid off. I drove about 3,000 miles with that trailer that year, and I didn't put a scratch on it. With the van, the total rig was 49 feet long, and couldn't make tight turns because it didn't have a fifth wheel hitch. A semi truck cornered tighter than the AFA rig.

A couple weeks after I quit the AFA, Bob hired another kid as a helper, and that guy forgot to hook up the safety chain and brake one day while taking the trailer for a short trip. The guy hit some railroad tracks, the trailer bounced off the hitch, took off by itself, and rammed into a cinderblock wall. The crash messed up the first six feet of the box, and was a costly repair for the financially struggling AFA. It always pays to be cautious when hauling a trailer people.

Large Ray and DMC

2011-05-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

First of all, sorry about that last post. I've just had so much weird shit happen in my life over the last decade that I need to vent every now and then. All that crap really happened, but I need to move on.

Anyhow... in this clip we blow all those rose colored glasses of nostalgia away and show what the AFA contests were really all about, bad rappin' and talkin' shit. Large Ray, Dennis McCoy, and Ice Money talk and DMC rides a bit. For most of us BTID, this was the reason we went to contests, goofin' around in the jam circle.

Putting the ass in CIA asset

2011-05-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Fuck the Apocalypse, here's Huntington Beach local Dick Dale performing "Miserlou."

The other day, May 15, marked 2 1/2 years that I've been stuck in North Carolina, also known as living hell. Seriously, I can't even begin to explain how much this place sucks. So why don't I leave? You'd need a really high security clearance to learn the answer to that, I think. For reasons not entirely clear, a bunch of people went to a great amount of trouble to get me out of California and into North Carolina years ago. I pissed off some cops in Cali, but that doesn't come close to explaining what's happened to me in the last decade. I actually had a cop in Orange County in 2008 walk up to me when I was panhandling and ask, "Who ARE you. I've been on the force for 20 years and I've never seen them come down on anyone the way they're coming down on you." That was a veteran cop in Southern California that said that. I just laughed and replied, "So there is a "them." He nodded.

I've had over 700 people who appeared to be undercover cops or agents come into my life since I first noticed these people in 2000, after an incident with other cops. A few of them have alluded to being CIA, one mentioned the NSA, and one asked why I didn't want to work for the FBI. She seemed to think I worked for some other agency. I don't. But usually these people don't say it straight out, they just bring up the agency in the conversation. A lot of these people were obviously born again Christians, judging by their speech. In the book American Facists, which was written by a minister, the author says he's met Christian activists who do psy-op type missions on people here in the U.S. Hmmmmm. A couple of these odd people insinuated that I've been being used by the CIA most of my life. If that's the case, I've been putting the "ass" in CIA asset for a long time. Others tried to get me to agree with the official version of what happened in 9/11. I told them that was bullshit and everyone knew it. Many of these people would start up conversations (when I was in California) about what a great place North Carolina was, and how someone they knew got tired of Orange County (CA) and moved to North Carolina and loved it. OK, when you live in Cali, there are a lot of places you may think about going for a visit, but North Carolina is not one of them. It's not even on the radar. In my opinion, North Carolina was a place to be avoided at all costs.

My parents lived here in the late 1980's, brought by a job my dad got in this area. My sister wound up finishing college here, and met her husband to be here. They wound up living here after a short stint in San Jose. My parents wound up living here again in about 2004. And after years of really crazy stuff happening in my life, I told them I'd come for an extended visit. That was November 15, 2008, and I haven't been able to escape. I've been turned down for every job but one I tried to get here. At the one job I did get, selling newspapers on a corner for almost no money, on my third day, I was put on a corner where no one ever buys papers, and I took a bus to another location to sell enough papers to pay the company. Then I got fired. The guy who fired me said, "If you take Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, then all the people working against you will suddenly start working for you." That's pretty fuckin' creepy. That man was a habitual liar, braggart, alcoholic and a thief according to some who worked for him.

So what's the deal. Am I crazy? My mom thinks so, but she thinks everyone is crazy. And gay. My mom thinks everyone is crazy and gay. But that's another issue for another day. If I am crazy, why wasn't I forcefully institutionalized in California? An Orange County psychologist who admitted she took a ride in my cab to evaluate me, said I was "a little paranoid, but basically alright," and not at all what she'd bee expecting by reading the info given about me. I explained how taxi driving worked, and she got out of the cab saying, "Oh my God, I'd be paranoid, too!" She told me not to worry about anything.

Did the cops who robbed me in California in 2000 do a little creative work on my file? I fought to get my $300 back that they illegally confiscated, and my life hasn't been the same since. That's another possibility.

Or maybe all this has something to do with my family. My brother-in-law and a few others left a scientific testing company where they worked and started their own company several years ago. Their company (that's my brother-in-law in the pic) is now thriving, thanks in large part to their first major contract from Halliburton. Yeah, fucking Halliburton. So did the Halliburton security people looking into my brother-in-law see his weird, taxi driving, conspiracy theory talking brother-in-law (me) as a threat. It's possible. The really crazy stuff in my life started in late 2003, about the time that company was getting started. But weird stuff was happening to me long before that.

Maybe my uncle knows something. According to my mom, he made a call to a friend in California in 2008, and that friend was able to get every law enforcement agency in SoCal to "suggest" that I should leave California and move to North Carolina. That uncle, Wes Mayer, from Columbus, Ohio, claims to be business friends with Bill Gross of Pimco Bonds. Gross is an Orange County billionaire, and he might have the kind of pull to bring the hammer down on me, but it sure seem like he'd have much better things to do since he oversees billions of dollars in investments. Even more weird, Uncle Wes was transferred out of the World Trade Center towers about a year before the 9/11 tragedy. He worked for Met Life there, I believe. Pretty lucky for him.

In any case, I've had an incredible amount of weird stuff happen in my life over the last 10 to 12 years. I'm stuck in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which has no skateparks, hardly any bike or skate scene, and is a place where my favorite bands never come near on tour. The only thing Winston-Salem is good for is writing, because there's nothing else to do here. OK, there's a cool little art scene, but I live in a homeless shelter and never get to the galleries in the evenings.

I'm saying all this because I really wish that lunatic talking about the end of the world today was right. I'd be more than happy to go ont to whatever comes next, if anything. Why are national media companies giving an obviously mentally ill guy so much press? Because the Christian-political establishment has spent the last three decades gaining control of the mainstream media in the U.S., that's why. That guy's "non-profit" radio network went from being worth a couple million bucks a decade ago to being worth about $120 million now. THAT's WHY the mainstream press is giving that clown national publicity. It achieves both social and economic goals of the Christian-political powerplayers. It's a good thing the smart people in this country don't believe the mainstream media anymore.

The painful truth is, the world will not end 8 hours from now. And I will see about fifteen or twenty police cars driving slowly by me tomorrow as the world continues on. That happens every time I write a blog post like this. My brother-in-law won't sue me. Neither will my uncle. They'll just make a phone call or two when someone in the family reads this blog post, and local police will follow my every move tomorrow. And life will go on sucking just as much as it does today.

Happy Apocalypse everyone!

Rick Moliterno flatland run

2011-05-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

This is Rick Moliterno in a flatland run in 1988, the year after I worked at the AFA.

I met Rick Moliterno at the Tulsa, Oklahoma contest in 1986. I landed in the airport in Tulsa without klnowing where the contest was or having money for a hotel. Typical sketchy BMX kid, except that I was writing the article for that contest for FREESTYLIN'. I met an up and coming rider named Joe Johnson in the airport, and the Haro team took me in that weekend. I crashed on the floor of one of their rooms in the Holiday in Holidome with most of the top riders. Needless to say, it was the most amazing weekend of my life up to that point. I was suddenly a part of the BMX freestyle industry... and I beat Woody Itson at a game of pool after he trounced everyone else. OK, he scratched on the 8 ball, but I still won.

There was an intense thunder storm coming in that night, and Rick Moliterno had a pick-up truck with a leaky cap as I remember. He was going to a store to get a bunch of garbage bags to duct tape over the gap between the truck cab and cap to keep his stuff in the back dry. He and Haro team manager Billy Hop asked if I wanted to come along. So I did.

The storm let loose as we were under the awning of a gas station, but Rick got it patched up with a bit of help from Billy and me as I experienced the biggest thunderstorm I'd seen in years. Rick was already a AA pro racer then I think, and he was the first active pro racer to become a good freestyler. He seemed like an all around cool guy who had his head together more than most. That was my impression of Rick that first weekend.

I saw him at contests from then on. I never got to know him too well, but we all knew he was one of the top riders in the Midwest, which always got screwed in magazine coverage because the mags rarely made out there. In 1987 Rick was still riding as an expert. I remember this because I had to follow him at one contest that year. Me, I turned expert because the intermediate class was getting too hard. I rode three national contests the year I worked for the AFA. One contest I rode right after Rick Moliterno, and the next contest I followed Kevin Jones. It's hard to look decent following wither of them in a contest.

As most of you know, Rick went on to start Rampage Skatepark, which was THE place to ride in the Midwest for years. Then came Standard Bykes, and Good Times BMX shop. While all of us California guys were trying to get magazine photos, Rick was working hard and building a great scene out of nothing. I honestly still don't know near enough about the whole Midwest scene, except that there's a lot of great riders there, and the Baco and Props video guys came from there. So all the Midwest guys reading this, ad some comments about what us magazine readers missed from that early Midwest scene.

We are the Creative Class

2011-05-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

The guy in the clip above, professor Richard Florida, formerly of Carnegie Mellon University, and now teaching in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Back in the 1990's, teaching in Pittsburgh, he began to wonder why really talented students were taking jobs in places like Austin, Texas or Seattle, rather than stay in the hometown of the Steelers. It didn't make sense to him, and being an academic, he began looking into it. In 2002 he published a book called The Rise of the Creative Class, explaining his findings. He explains it well in the speech above, if you're interested in it. Basically, some cities are open to all kinds of people, and some weirdos collect there. Then an art and music scene forms. The scene attracts more freaks, geeks, and weirdos. Eventually it also attracts or develops entrepreneurs. Some of those new businesses they start hit big, and a cluster of companies develops. We've all seen that happen in the BMX freestyle and action sports world. I've started a blog commenting on Florida's Creative Class idea, because I think the action sports world is an inherent part of the creative scenes he speaks of, but the sports world hasn't really blipped on his radar yet. If macroeconomics and sociology interests you, check out my new blog:

Thoughts on the Creative Class

Huntington Beach area freestylers in the 1980s

2011-05-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

In 1987 and 1988, Vision Street Wear was exploding, and they gave almost everyone clothes. They also grabbed a bunch of the young freestylers from the area to do a flatland video shoot for Freestyling Fanatics. I hated this video when it came out, because like all Vision videos then, it was mostly old contest footage. Anyhow, in The Young Dudes section, about 2 minutes into this clip, you see a bunch of the riders who showed up at the Huntington Beach pier, and local AFA contests. Dan Hubbard and George Smoot are in the intro part, then you see Nathan Shimizu, Jeff Cotter, Ron Camero, Leo Chen, and Scott Robinson, who, along with Mike Sarrail were part of the HB area scene when I worked at the AFA. While none of these were top pros, it was a good group to ride with, actually several small groups, so we had many good sessions in the late 80's. On any given weekend at the HB pier, usually a couple of these guys, and other SoCal local riders, would come by and session for a while.

The HB pier didn't have the best riders anywhere, but it was a great spot to hang out, and most top riders came by at one time or another. So we could be having a little session for a crowd when Martin Aparijo or Ed Templeton or anyone in the BMX or skate scene rolled up. It was a known scene, so when anyone was in the area, even guys from the U.K., they'd come by the pier to see what was up. When I think of freestyling in the 1980's, I think of all the amazing sessions at the HB pier, not the contests.

Mike Sarrail Part 2

2011-05-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

We've all heard a ton of conspiracy stories about politicians or bankers or businessmen or the Masons or whomever working behind the scenes to do one nefarious thing or another. That stuff does happen to some extent, it's the only way to explain much of what goes on in the world.

But there are also a lot of intelligent, decent people working in the world to help other people out and make the world a better place. As corny as that sounds, Mike Sarrail is one of those people. He wasn't a pro rider, but he knew most of the pros in the 1980's. He didn't ride pools, yet he was a local at Pipeline Skatepark. He didn't have a trick team, but he gave advice to a lot of people who did. He invented a few tricks, the three I remember off the top of my head are the barpsin Miami hop hops, no-handed Miami hop hops, and the Undertaker. I think it was Bruce King from San Diego who got the credit for the Undertaker, a sort of walk under trick. Mike came up with it about the same time, and told BMX Plus photographer John Ker that it was called the Necrophiliac, just because Mike wanted to see the magazine print the word "necrophiliac." A necrophiliac is a person who has sex with dead people, which John Ker knew, and didn't shoot the photos of Mike that particular day because of the name. It really would have been funny to that word in a how-to. That was Mike's punk rock background coming out.

Mike Sarrail in the late 1980's was one of those guys who gave other guys rides to the local contests. He was always teaching tricks to up-and-coming riders. A few of those he taught included riders like Krys Dauchy, Jeff and Tim Cotter, Ron McCoy, Nathan Shimizu, Ron Camero, Dan Hubbard, Andy Mulcahy, Randy Lawrence, myself, and many others. Mike was one of those guys who'd been around BMX and freestyle so long, that he could teach you tricks he couldn't pull off himself. I think if you put Joey Ramone, R.L. Osborne, and Obi Wan Kenobi in a genetic blender, you'd wind up with someone kinda like Mike. I called him goofy looking in the last post to give him a reason to write a big, long comment and remind me what I forgot. But he didn't take the bait. He's a good guy, no matter how much we may argue in the comments. And I still owe him money from 1991, so send him a dollar (or $20) and tell him it's from me.

Mike Sarrail part 1

2011-05-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

This clip is from the Unreel Productions video, Freestylin' Fanatics, from 1988 or 1989. At 6:12 in this clip, you see Martin Aparijo doing Miami Hop Hops, and the voice-over mentions that Mike Sarrail, the photographer sitting in the background, invented the barpspin and no-handed Miami Hop Hop variations. It's true. I know because Mike is a friend of mine (at least until he reads this post) and I wrote that part of the voice-over for that video.

In this post, a while back, I wrote about meeting Mike at the Huntington Beach Pier in early 1987. Mike Sarrail then was a 20-something flatlander, 6 foot 4 inches tall, and kind of goofy looking. He pretty much always wore jeans and a punk rock T-shirt, GBH or something like that. But he often rolled up wearing a leather jacket, and his medium brown hair was kind of long, so he looked like a heavy metal enthusiast. Like I said in that other post, we started talking about women, and I said I wanted to fuck Krys Dauchy, and he grabbed me, threw me against the arcade wall, and screamed, "She's my cousin!" He had this completely psycho look in his eyes, and I thought I was a goner. That's how I met Mike, and he became my best friend during those early Huntington Beach years.

Mike really isn't Krys Dauchy's (she goes by China now) cousin, but she did hang at his house on trips to Cali. Mike was a weird cat then. I don't mean in a bad way, because despite his well honed psycho look, he's actually a really nice guy. First I got to know him as a rider. Even though he lived 30 or 40 miles away from Huntington Beach, he was the most local BMXer on the weekends at the Hutnington Beach pier. He was already good friends with Pierre Andre, Don Brown, Hans Lingren, and all the local skaters that frequented the H.B. pier on the weekends. He also knew all the BMX freestylers that wandered by, from Woody Itson and Martin Aparijo, to Chuck and Joe Johnson (the spandex brothers) to the Lakewood up-and-comers like Jeff Cotter, Nathan Shimizu, Ron McCoy and the rest. As I started hanging out with Mike, it was a trip, because he seemed to know everybody in the BMX world. So in those early months working at the AFA in 1987, I rode down to the pier on the weekends if there wasn't an AFA contest somewhere. Mike showed up every weekend in his lowered blue Datsun pick-up. It turned into my routine. Go to the pier on Saturday and Sunday and draw crowds and session for the crowds with Mike, Pierre, Don, and whoever else was around. The cops would show up , disperse the crowd, the roll off. Then we'd draw another crowd. after a while, we'd take a break, go get a burger at Wimpi's (Double Wimp burgers kicked ass) or get a slice at Papa Joe's or Maxi's up on the pier. Or maybe hit TK Burger (the only place still there in its original spot from those days). That was my life during those days.

R L Osborn flatland 1985

2011-05-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

This info on this clip says "NFA," and I can't remember the deal with that. But here's one of the original innovators of BMX freestyle, R.L. Osborn doing a looong flatland run in 1985. He's rockin' a TRP seatpost, by the way. What ever happened to Simon Taufique who did TRP?

Next day: Mike Sarrail gives the brief details of the National Freestyle Association in the first comment below. I forgot all that.

WTF

2011-05-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

My panhandling blog is now getting over 3,800 page views a month. WTF? This blog is at about 1,800 a month at the moment. Crazy.

Josh White Huntington Beach 1985

2011-04-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

In the spring of 1986, Northwest ramp guy Josh White did a photo shoot on the TOL ramp at Wizard Productions that landed him a tiny cover shot on the August 1986 issue. He became an instant legend with his super high airs and super stretched variations in those photos. Here's Josh getting high and landing sketchy a year earlier when he was still unknown. Go back and watch the alley opp onto that five foot wide GT ramp again. That's Bob Morales, American Freestyle Association founder that he almost runs into. That GT ramp was nine feet high and only five feet wide, not a big target for a big alley oop.

Still haven't seen a tornado

2011-04-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

We had three tornado warnings here in Winston-Salem yesterday. There was a big ol' foghorn sounding buzzer going off and this ominous voice telling people to get the hell out or something. I couldn't really understand it. A cop walking by said there was a radar spotted funnel cloud a few miles away, and I saw it a few minutes later. Now I grew up in Ohio, where tornadoes come by every spring, and occasionally do a lot of damage. In my two years in NC, I've had more tornadoes come closer than in Ohio, and I still have not actually seena tornado. Yesterday was the best funnel cloud I've ever seen, and it was headed right toward my sister sitting at her son's baseball game. But it didn't touch down. Less than two weeks ago, a tornado ripped through Sanford, NC, about 70 miles from here, and about 100 miles from Greenville, NC, the foam pit trick capitol of BMX. Eleven people were killed and there was a ton of damage. Dozens more were killed in other Southern states, and there was tons of damage. Crazy stuff. While I like watching a good thunderstorm now and then, I'll take California's brush fires and earthquakes over NC's tornadoes and hurricanes. For all you conspiracy people out there, there was a sky full of chem trails the day before the Sanford tornado. Hmmmmm....

Danny MacAskill Way Back Home

2011-04-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

Holy crap! Crazy bikin' Scot Danny MacAskill in a short video called "Way Back Home." I guess I'm taking a break from our regularly scheduled old school BMX freestyle stories. I'd never seen this clip before. It's fuckin' amazing. Beautiful camera work and editing, too. I'll shut up now, just watch it. Here's the link this clip on You Tube, to see the full wide screen.

Beau Forrest trials riding

2011-04-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across this clip while looking for something else. Yeah, I know, it's not freestyle, but his bike skills are amazing. This guy, Beau Forrest, died in an accident at age 18, here's a news story.

Living the Life in Huntington Beach

2011-04-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

Agent Orange, live at Gallagher's in HB, playing "Everything Turns Grey."

This show above happened a long time after the 1980's Huntington Beach scene, but it's the right feel. Agent Orange and other 80's punk bands were the background music to H.B. in the late 80's.

In 1987, I had a job at the AFA, a room in a decent apartment, a factory Raleigh sponsorship (go ahead, laugh), and all weekend to ride around town. I was living the BMX freestyle life... sort of. I made $5 an hour, so I couldn't afford a car, or much of anything else, and I bitched about that all the time. I went out every night and rode, mostly practicing flatland, all by myself. I rode down to the pier on the weekends, usually taking a really meandering route to hit my favorite street spots. There were a couple of banks on the way to the pier. The HB library pond was dry for quite a while, and I took Bob Morales' old Alva skateboard to ride and skate there a bunch of times. It was bumpy, mellow two or three foot high banks. It was just fun to roll around and do little jumps, or rock & rolls on the skate. There were some banks next to the oil fields on Goldenwest right by PCH. I used to carve along those and do little nose bonks. I'd take an hour or more to make a half hour ride to the pier. There I'd meet Mike Sarrail, Pierre Andre, Don Brown, Hans Lingren and whatever locals were in town that weekend. Ed Templeton was an up and comer then, and I ran into him at Huntington High on a regular basis. That was the main street riding spot then. The stage, the two little benches, and several small stair sets for the skaters. And crazy police. The police would come charging into the high school in their cars at speed, and the skaters would scatter. One good thing about being a BMXer then was that the cops thought I was just some loser watching the skaters, so I could roll off without getting hassled most of the time.

The Murdy "ashtray" skatepark didn't exist then. The Huntington High skatepark didn't exist then. Sheep Hills didn't exist then. I didn't know about the Blues Brothers Wall then. There were some jumps out at Bolsa Chica, but they were mostly little mountain bike trails, not really jumps. I just wandered and found little curb jumps or banks to goof around on. There was a truck loading place by the police shooting range on Gothard, and it had really steep, banked walls. I used to go there and do framestands on the banks, which was gnarly because they were so steep. It was almost like doing a framestand wall ride, which I later tried at the Blues Brothers Wall, which was about 85 degrees steep. I never got them, but I know they're makeable.

That was it. I got up, ate some cereal, went to work at the AFA, helped Bob Morales on his latest amazing idea, wrote and produced the newsletter, then went out an rode for three or four hours each night, and all day on the weekends. Other than getting shot down by women, that was pretty much my life. I was always bummed about being broke, but I didn't have the personality to start a business then. So I worked for $5 an hour in the industry, and rode and rode and rode.

As an old guy with a totally screwed up life, and even more broke now, I wonder what I was complaining about. But I didn't think our little, goofy sport back then would lead to what it has. I was just trying to ride as much as possible before I had to settle down and get a "real" job. Somehow, we never realize we're living the life of our dreams when we are living it. It kinda sucks that it takes 20 years of bitching and retrospection to realize how cool things used to be. But that's life.

OK, old schoolers, I've finally got a new zine in the works, the beginning of Club White Bear. I'm not sure what that means, cause I'm making this shit up as I go. If you're interested, send an email to clubwhitebear@gmail.com . I need an actual address to send the zine to. The first ten people get a free zine. For the rest of you, I'm gonna ask $2 to cover postage and zine costs. I'm still broke, you all know that...

Happy Easter

2011-04-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

So... a couple thousand years ago, Jesus, a spiritual healer and teacher, was killed on a Roman torture device called a cross. And now his followers (who quote Paul's teachings far more than Jesus' teachings in church) celebrate his death and resurection with colored eggs, bunny rabbits, and jelly beans. Tell me again how bunnies and jelly beans came into this... Happy Easter everyone. Except for you China, happy whatever you celebrate this time of year.

Martin Aparijo

2011-04-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

One of the early masters and innovators of flatland, Martin Aparijo. This is at an AFA Masters contest in Tucson, Arizona in 1988. Rolling tricks and linking trick together had already become standard at this point. No watch this clip of Martin in 1986, to see how far his routine had evolved in those two years. That first clip is another one loaded on You Tube by Krt Schmidt.

Happy Stoners New Year

2011-04-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hey, you all know it's 4/20 today. If that means something to you, I put up some funny videos and links to the real 420 story on my Session Sports 43 blog.

Eddie Fiola flatland run 1988

2011-04-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

Still best known as King of the Skateparks in the early days, everyone forgets Eddie Fiola could bust some style on flatland as well. Not the hardest tricks, but whenever Eddie did some flatland you'd find yourself going "Yeah!" at some point, usually during his moonwalk. AFA Masters competition, Witchita, Kansas, 1988.

Brian Foster at the Incline Club

2011-04-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

Keith Treanor linked this one on Facebook. My onetime roommate at the P.O.W. BMX House, Brian Foster, still tearing it up at a place called the Incline Club. This is on Transworld BMX's website.

Hey, just realized this is the 400th post for Freestyle BMX Tales. Cool. Man, when I start rambling...

Check out my new multi-sport blog: Session Sports 43

My new blog

2011-04-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

I've stepped it up a little bit and started a new multi-sport Wordpress blog: Session Sports 43 43 followers now... cool.

The Bicycle Source Grand Opening

2011-04-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

This is Mike Buff jumping off the roof of the original Bicycle Source in 198-something. '83? '84? around then. The new Bicycle Source is having their grand opening party this Saturday in Orange, California. If you're old, you rode, and you are in SoCal, go to the opening. And put some video on You Tube afterwards. Or at least some pics. The original Bicycle Source mechanical wizard, Steve Blackey is one of the forces behind this, and so is Dan Hubbard, who also owns Creative Sports, the premiere freestyle show company in the country. Check the link for details.

4/19/2011- Mike Sarrail has some photos of the TBS grand opening on his BIKE group on Facebook, if you're old school and part of that group, check them there. Otherwise, keep checking the TBS website linked above, or Transworld Ride, they should have some soon. Besides, owners Dan Hubbard and Steve Blackey, Eddie Fiola, Jeff Carroll, Mike Sarrail, Derek Oriee and a bunch of younger guys were there, that's the ones I know of.

Dennis McCoy flatland 1988

2011-04-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

This clip, after watching the last one, shows you how fast freestyle was evolving in the late 1980's. Dennis McCoy flat out rocks it with this run. Rolling tricks had taken over, and Dennis' trademark super fast footwork was reliquished to about ten seconds late in his run. I don't think anyone riding spent more time on their bike in those days than Dennis McCoy. I learned this after the Austin, Texas AFA competition in 1987. The contest was over, most of the people had taken off to catch flights home, and I was in the big back area of the arena we were in. I was trying to learn backyards. Backyards had emerged at the previous contest, in Oregon,unleashed by the ever creative NorCal guys. They were all doing backyards, and no one else was, and it was the first of the scuff tricks to go bigtime in the freestyle world. I'm not sure who invented them, but it was someone in the Golden Gate Park scene. I was waiting for Bob Morales to get back from doing something, so we could start tearing down the ramps and other stuff. I had 20 minutes or so to ride, so I was trying to learn backyards. I could step into the trick, and get three or four scuffs, and then I'd fall. I heard some noise, and saw a few riders race into the back room where I was, playing swap rock with a beer bottle that had been lying around. One of the guys flicked the bottle with his front tire, everyone else missed it, and the bottle slid into a wall and shattered. Game over. Most of the guys rode off. One stayed to see what I was doing. It was Dennis McCoy. Dennis had missed the Oregon contest, and missed the all night sessions where everyone tried to learn backyards. He hopped off his bike, and asked me how to do them. So I showed him. Face away from the back of the bike. Turn the bars backwards behind you. Step up on one peg, hang onto the bars behind you, and push on the back tire, scuffing your foot as you go to adjust the speed and keep your balance. Dennis did one or two squeaks, then tipped over. I tried it, and did three or four scuffs. Dennis tried again, then me. In a few minutes, we were both doing three or four scuffs, and couldn't get any farther. Bob Morales showed up, and we showed him what we were doing, and we talked for a few minutes. Bob and I took off to tear the ramps down, and Dennis went out to find his Feather Duster, an old heap of a car he loved, as I recall. I showed up a month or two later at the next contest, working for the AFA. I could still do three or four squeaks on backyards. Dennis McCoy had them wired, and put backyards in his routine. Dennis was like that. If you showed him a trick at one contest, he would be doing it better than you at the next contest. He had a reputation for stealing tricks for a while, and hardly anyone would show him a new trick for a few years. On that day in Austin, Texas, as Dennis and I tried backyards and did them about the same, I realized that Dennis really wasn't that gifted as a rider. He didn't pick up backyards any faster than I did, and I was competing in 17 Intermediate at the time, while he was pro. Dennis just worked harder and rode more than any of us. He was truly living it, he was driven, and he busted his ass learning trick after trick. That earned him the title of top overall pro rider in 1987, and for as long as the overall class lasted after that. More than 20 years later, Dennis is still learning new tricks, and doing things that were beyond our wildest dreams in 1987. The older we get, the more Dennis amazes me as a rider. Is Kansas City really that boring? There's nothing else to do but ride? No. Dennis just keeps at it more than most. The last time I ran into Dennis was a few years ago, at the Van's Skatepark in Orange, California. He was talking to the guys at the front desk, and when he saw me, he said, "This guy makes the best zines," and he started talking about a zine article I wrote saying he was better than Woody Itson in 1986. Dennis couldn't remember my name, but with as many concussions as he's had, I'm surprised he remembers his own name. But he remembered my zine from 20 years before, and that was really cool. Hope he keeps riding til he's 100.

Dennis McCoy flatland 1985

2011-04-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure this is the contest that put Midwest kid Dennis McCoy on the map as a flatlander. His super fast footwork blew our minds. Seriously, look at the crowd reaction. I'm one of 'em, this was the first natioanl contest I made it to, thanks to the Bickel family from Idaho. AFA Freestyle Masters, Venice Beach, California, summer 1985.

Knife fight at the homeless shelter

2011-04-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

I got to watch a real, live, crazy knife fight yesterday outside the homeless shelter, read about it here.

Mat Hoffman at the Old School BMX Reunion 2011

2011-04-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

This is one of two clips on You Tube right now of Mat Hoffman hitting the woodward West mega ramp at Steve Swope's Old School BMX Reunion this past weekend, April, 1-3, 2011. How hig does Mat get here? I paused it, but it's still hard to tell because the brotographers are all back a bit, so it's hard to use them to guage it. Fifteen plus at least. Mat is 39 years old. Seriously, I think Mat's an alien. Somewhere there's a planet entirely dedicated to growing him new bones, ligaments and tendons. Has to be. After posting this a few minutes ago, I checked Facebook. There are a bunch of pics, not sure who took them. Woody Itson, Andy Shohara, and Ben Snowden all have them up. Yes, Mat's getting at least fifteen feet (measuring to lowest point) in the clip above. Ben Snowden got about 8 feet on the mega, and Andy Shohara threw a super stylish invert a few feet out. The old men are still busting out! If you're friends on FB with any of these guys, check the pics there. Props to all of you, and whomever shot the pics and video. Hope to see you all there next year. Jared Souney has a bunch of pics up from the reunion (the link is back four posts), and I'm sure Vital, Dig, and Fat BMX sites will have something up soon.

Ryan Nyquist at Old School BMX reunion 2011

2011-04-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here we have Ryan Nyquist hitting the Woodward West mega ramp at the 2011 Old School BMX Reunion put on by Steve Swope. Play it again and watch how high he goes. Clip by "justflyz" on You Tube.

Dave Nourie at 2011 Old School BMX reunion

2011-04-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

For anyone who doesn't remember, this trick is called The Gumby. If you don't know who Gumby was, ask your grandma. Dave Nourie created the Gumby and a bunch of balance tricks in about 1984 or 1985, and became a Haro factory rider, touring with Ron Wilkerson and Brian Blyther for years. He's 40-something now, and you can hear the Gumby grunts, but it's rad he's still pulling it off. This clip loaded to You Tube by "jumpflyz" whoever that is.

First pics of 2011 Old School BMX Reunion

2011-04-03T10:17:00.001-07:00

Jared Souney already has some pics up of steve Swope's Old School Reunion 2011. Check them out here. Seriously, Dennis McCoy doesn't look any different than he did in 1987. Except for that goofy looking Animal hat, anyhow. Heh, heh, heh. Monday, April 4th- Jared has more pics up, same link. Among them is one of Mat getting ridiculously high on the mega-ramp. Mat Hoffman must be an alien. Has to be. They have some super genetic engineering to rebuild him, that must be it.

Old guys and a mega ramp

2011-03-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

This clip has the oldest BMXers to hit a mega ramp that I know of. In 2007, the riders were Mat Hoffman (35), Kevin Robinson (36), Chad Kagy (29), Steve McCann (24), and Morgan Wade (24), at the time of this session. This was a Transworld Ride shoot at Bob Burnquist's house near San Diego, California. Only Mat would speed jump a fifty foot gap to get more speed for the quarterpipe. Jeez... Steve Swope's Old School BMX Reunion starts tomorrow (April 1st, 2011) at Woodward West. According to the website, the mega ramp will be open on Saturday. Oscar Gonzales said Hugo was looking forward to trying it. Sounds like there will be some really interesting video hitting the web in the next few days. Check the link for details, and the RSS feed. Also, I got a thank you email from Bob Haro about that last post. How freakin' cool is that?

Bob Haro

2011-03-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

In the beginning... there was Bob Haro. Bob, goofing around on your bike turned into something that changed my life. It changed the lives of so many of us. I went from a kid in a trailer park in Idaho riding a $5 BMX bike to a little part of the industry in it's first wave. That little bike, and the scene/sport/lifestyle you invented took me places I couldn't possibly imagine. It did the same thing for hundreds of us in the 1980's, and tens of thousands since. Thanks Bob.

Old School BMX reunion 2010 video

2011-03-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Swopedog had this idea... Why not get all the old guys together for a weekend? Here's a video of the Old School BMX reunion in 2010 I think, organized by Steve Swope and held at Woodward West. Man, this just looks so cool. I really need to finagle my way into it next year. The 2011 reunion is happening this weekend, April 1-3, 2011, here's the Facebook page. Check the major websites like Vital, Dig, and Fat BMX, I'm sure they'll have footage next week.

Martin Aparijo in 1988

2011-03-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

When things turned from BMX freestyle shows into competitions, there were two standouts in flatland, Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson. Here's Martin in 1988 at an AFA Masters contest in Tucson, Arizona. Yes, I know R.L. Osborn was a great flatlander in those early days, too, for those who will point that out in the comments. But Woody and Martin came across as "the flatland guys" to many of us reading the magazines.

What an AFA contest sounded like

2011-03-26T06:13:00.000-07:00

The judges at American Freestyle contests in the mid to late 1980's were mostly parents in their late 30's and 40's. They heard this song so many times, even they knew the words.

Amateur Todd Anderson Huntington Beach 1985

2011-03-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

There's a suites hotel now where this contest took place, the old Surf Theater parking lot in H.B. No more surf Theater, no more Wimpi's, Papa Joe's has moved and lost it's surf hangout feel. : - ( Camarillo ramp legend, SE rider, and portable quarterpipe owner Todd Anderson tears it up in the 17 Expert class. Remember that cover of the third issue of FREESTYLIN'? The one with the kid doing a one-footer over a convertible Volkswagon? That was Todd Anderson jumping over a bunch of BMX legends, like Scot "OM" Breithaupt, Perry Kramer (the PK in PK Ripper), Toby Henderson, and I think Dino Deluca was in there, among others.

Again, this is an early American Freestyle Association contest brought to us by AFA founder Bob Morales. Todd tears up the wedge ramp, busts one of his amazing lookbacks, and airs and alley-oops a big canyon. The all white ramp is his, the one he's airing off the most. In a little over a week, Todd, no a happy horseshoeing guy, will be hanging with other freestyle greats at the Old School get together in California.

Dizz Hicks Venice Beach 1985

2011-03-19T12:54:00.001-07:00

Here's one for the Hessians out there. One of the most original and fun to watch riders of the AFA freestyle era was John Dizz Hicks. Though best known for his killer wedge ramp riding, Dizz was also an innovator in flatland. Here's some of his upside down flatland and wedge ramp riding from a show. AFA Freestyle Masters competition, Venice Beach, California, summer 1985.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

It don't get more punk and Irishy than the Dropkick Murphys singing "Dirty Glass" with Stephanie Dougherty from The Deadly Sins. Have a good day, and take a taxi home you crazy drunkards.

If you're a mysogonistic douchebag like me, party like a Poxy Boggard...

Off The Wall frame on BMX Museum

2011-03-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

Somebody has an old Off The Wall frame on BMX Museum at this link, wondering what bike it is. I tried to register to BMX Museum, but it didn't work. So here's the info, like the post someone found on this blog. Grand Delta was a Taiwanese company based in San Jose, and their American guy called me because he saw a zine I did, San Jose Stylin'. The old man of Grand Delta wanted to jump on the BMX freestyle bandwagon, in early 1986. So they made me (Steve Emig) the freestyle team manager since I seemed to know what I was talking about. I put together a team of basically the Ground Control guys, which were sort of the 2nd string from the Golden Gate Park scene. All the pros then, Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzales, and Rick Allison were all sponsored already. So I got my best friend in the scene, John Ficarra, and Mike Perkins, Tim Tracy, and I think Mike Golden on the original team. The bike IS an Off The Wall, that's the name. It's not a CW or anything else. The Grand Delta old man saw a Van's shoes ad, and thought "off the wall" was a cool name. The bikes were neon green, neon orange, and neon blue. They had about a 70 degree head angle, which is basically like a Harley Davidson for freestyle. In other words, they sucked.
Then we got a Uni wheel disc co-sponsor, and I think Uni bought the rights to the company or something. My whole team manager position only lasted about two or three months. The brand turned into Air-Uni, and the bikes got better, but not great. Then Air-Uni morphed into Ozone, and had Craig Grasso, Jeff Cotter, and some other pretty good riders riding for them. It actually turned into a pretty good team for a while.
I have no idea how many bikes Off The Wall sold, but it was probably a lot in K-Mart type stores. But the name didn't last long, and the bikes were part mild steel to start with, I think. so if you build it up, don't ride the thing. Maybe someone will buy it, it is a little piece of NorCal freestyle history. Hope this helps.

The Bicycle Source Grand Opening

2011-03-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

To everyone who freestyled in the 1980's, FREESTYLIN' magazine was practically sacred. When I got hired at Wizard Publications in 1986, I soon learned that there was a place that R.L. Osborn, Andy Jenkins, Gork, and Lew all looked up to. that place was a little shop nearby called The Bicycle Source. The mechanic there, Steve Blackey, was the guy who tuned R.L. Osborn's bike, and built up R.L.'s new bikes. There was a painting of R.L. and Mike Buff on the front of the store. Buff jumped off the roof in a legendary photo sequence. The Bicycle Source was the most hardcore BMX shop there was.
Now Steve Blackey and Dan Hubbard are bringing back The Bicycle Source. The grand opening is April 16th, 2011, in Anaheim, California. I got an email from Steve Blackey about this. I even got an email from Bob Haro. Holy Crap! Bob freakin' Haro emailed me. Dan Hubbard is a rider from way back, I remember riding his ramp while working at Wizard BITD. Several years ago, when things started getting really sketchy for me, Dan Hubbard helped me out in a big way. And I still owe him some money. Maybe I'll hitchhike out there and work at The Bicycle Source as an indentured servant til I pay him off. (Yeah, after I work my debt off to you Mike S.) These guys are as hardcore and old school as BMX freestyle gets. If you're anywhere near Anaheim, go to the grand opening, then send me some photos. Check the link above for The Bicycle Source website and more info. They have Eddie Fiola T-shirts available right now.

Tuesday, 4/19/2011- Mike Sarrail has some Bicycle Source grand opening photos on Facebook on his BIKE group, if you're old school part of that group, check them out. Otherwise, keep checking their website, they should have some pics up soon.

Check out my new multi-sport blog: Session Sports 43

Cow Fart Tax

2011-03-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

Heard about this in the documentary The Obama Deception. Supposedly this tax will be intsituted at some point to destroy family farming in the United States as part of the New World Order plan. It they start a human fart tax I'm gonna be in trouble...