Tommy Guererro's classic part in Bones Brigade II: Future Primitive. This part, that seems so basic now, inspired me to spend dozens of long Saturdays and Sundays wandering the South Bay area of Southern California in 1986, and thousands of hours of BMX wandering after that.
"200 years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground. It took the minds of 12-years-olds to realize its potential." -C.R. Stecyk, the quote seen right at the beginning of Tommy's section (above).
For me, it really started with the New York canal in Boise, Idaho, when I was starting high school. My family moved to 909 East Saratoga drive, in Boise, in June of 1981. That subdivision was known as Centenial at the time. If you pull that up on Google maps, the street view photo shows a hill rising behind the house. The New York canal, a big, concrete canal, with about 45 degree walls, runs along the top of that slope, allowing water to flow from just below Lucky Peak reservoir to farmland near Lake Lowell, nearly 30 miles away.
The next summer, as I've mentioned many times in previous blogs, my family moved to a trailer park we called Blue Valley, out past the Boise airport. My parents' plan was to save money for a year or two, then buy a house and finally settle down, permanently, in Boise. In that trailer park, in 1982-1983, I got totally into BMX, and started racing.
The first part of my parents' house plan actually worked. A year later, in June of 1983, we moved back into town, back to the Centenial area, to 4029 Morningwind. Again, the big New York canal was close by. In the winter months, the canal was usually dry. I could ride a few blocks, push my bike up the steep canal bank hill, and ride in the canal. I would roll in one wall, carve up the opposite wall, and bunnyhop near the top, and pretend I was Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, or Mike Dominguez, riding Pipeline Skatepark, like the photos I'd seen in BMX magazines. That was the first "street riding" I really did.
Later I would ride into downtown Boise, and wander around looking for stuff to ride. There was a perfect tabletop jump built into the lawn of an office building right next to the state capitol building. A couple of us would come racing around the corner, hit the table, and do a little kickout or turnbar tableltop attempt, and then ride off. We'd come back a minute later to hit it again, and usually the security guy was running out the door to chase us off at that point. There was also a little skate ditch near the BMX track, where we would do kickturns. "Street riding" wasn't a thing yet in BMX, it was just part of the random riding around I did, often with one or two of the local racers.
Over the next year, I got more into trick riding, which was starting to be called "BMX freestyle." The Haro Freestyler, a bike made just for freestyle, came out. In 1984, I met Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore, who had the only trick team in Idaho. Wayne retired, at the ripe old age of 17, and I joined the team. I started doing shows and riding in parades with Jay, and sometimes with a few of the racer guys, who could do a few tricks. BMX freestyle became my thing. I graduated from Boise High School in 1984, and bought a Skyway T/A, with red Z-rims, my first "real" BMX bike, with my graduation money. I continued to ride around the streets, finding little jumps or banks here and there, to do tricks on, like pretty much every other BMXer everywhere at the time.
In the summer of 1985, my dad got a job in San Jose, California, and my family moved there. I rented a room in my best friend's house, and worked my summer job, managing a tiny amusement park called the Boise Fun Spot. In August, when it closed for the season, I packed up my ugly, brown, gigantic, 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo to San Jose.
While I had an old handmade skateboard that I bought in Ohio for $2, and actually did skate now and then, I had no idea what was going on in the real skateboard world at the same time. In the 25th anniversary Thrasher magazine coffee table book, there's a photo of Mark Gonazales, with a caption that says something along the lines of, "In 1984, Mark Gonzales jumped off the side of a ramp (1:55), and things got gnarbuckle." Street skateboarding was starting to morph into its own thing, apart from vert/pool and freestyle skating. Leading the charge were Mark Gonzales from Southern California, skating for Vision, Tommy Guerrero from San Francisco, skating for Powell-Peralta (and the Curb Dogs), and Natas Kaupas from SoCal, skating for Santa Cruz.
Issue #1 of FREESTYLIN' magazine, featuring a cover photo of Ron Wilkerson, riding in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, shot by Bob Osborn.
Also in 1984, the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine came out, edited by one Andy Jenkins, BMX racer, art student, and skater. Andy was a fan of Thrasher, and a talented, emerging graphic artist, and helped bring the punk rock and street inspired vibe to BMX freestyle. That was something Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs were already doing. A few issues into the magazine, in the April 1986 issue, came the first "street" riding article. The tricks were pretty simple, though Rick Allison's 5 foot backwards drop-in was insane at the time. All of us freestylers around the world, who devoured every issue of FREESTYLIN' (you can read it here), started looking at the urban landscape in a different way.
I started my zine, San Jose' Stylin', mainly to meet the other BMX freesytlers in the area, since I was new to the area. Within a month I met the incredible John Vasquez and his friends in San Jose. They told me about the Beach Park ramp jams, held at the bike shop where Skyway team member, and Master of Balance tricks, Robert Peterson, worked. At my first jam, I met Bert, Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and several other great riders. I got to know Menlo Park local, John Ficarra. Not long after, I started catching rides with him and several others to the Sunday afternoon jams in Golden Gate Park, up in San Francisco.
In Boise, I was one of the only fish in a really small pond that was BMX freestyle. Suddenly I started riding with these amazing riders, pros and amateurs alike, from the Bay Area. We often went to the Embarcadero after the flatland sessions at the park. Embarcadero was this place with big, blocky ledges and steps, you can see Maruice Meyer and others riding it at 3:27 in the video below.
Ride Like a Man, the 1990 2-Hip video, produced and edited by Eddie Roman. The first few minutes are a good look at street riding when BMX freestyle was "dying," as the first wave of popularity of the late 1980's ended.
Not only did I see Tommy Guerrero and other skaters blasting off launch ramps in Golden Gate Park in 1985, but I was riding with the Curb Dogs, Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and others, who were leading the charge in BMX street riding at the time. They got me looking for more urban riding spots. A few hours of riding at the park, and downtown San Francisco with those guys, and I would drive back down to San Jose tired, but totally psyched to ride as much as I could all week.
I worked the evening shift at Pizza Hut about 5 nights a week, usually getting home around midnight or 1:00 am. I often worked on my zine and did balance tricks in my room until 3:00 or 4:00 am. Then I'd crash out, wake up around 10:30-11:00, have breakfast, argue with my mom about something, and do whatever household chores needed done. In the afternoons, I would go ride for two or three hours. Sometimes I would practice flatland in a nearby parking lot. But I began to start wandering on my bike more and more, looking for urban places to session. I wandered all over the San Jose area looking for banks, little jumps, ledges and benches to footplants on, and anything else that looked fun to ride. Riding on the weekends with the Curb Dogs/Bay area riders inspired me to spend more time just riding around, exploring. On my days off from work, I would sometimes ride around for 7-8 hours, into different areas.
I found the Calabassas jumps (the dirt jumps in this clip), I bombed down the hills above Mountain View, chasing road bike guys at 40 mph. I wandered over to Cuppertino, and explored the edges of downtown San Jose at times. With the influence of the Curb Dogs, my riding expanded from just spending hours learning flatland tricks, to riding around and just having fun on my bike. There were very few other freestylers in 1985-86, but I ran into a few now and then. Mostly though, I spent a ton of time solo riding, both practicing flatland, and wandering and riding street obstacles.
It's impossible now to describe just how weird BMX freestyle (and street skating) were in the mid-1980's. All of us older Gen X kids grew up in a world where there were four "real" sports. Those were football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, and all were on the three channels of TV when we were kids in the 1970's. To "play sports" back then meant having an overweight coach, with polyester shorts and a whistle, yelling at you for two hours a day, at practice, and making us do windsprints. Then a handful of the good guys would play in the game, while the rest of us sat on the bench. At the end of the game, whther we played or not, one team was "winners" and one team was "losers." If you made the best play of your life, but th team lost, you were still a loser for the week. If you played like shit, but your team won, you were a winner that week. Forsome of us who were not natural athletes, that shit never made sense.
In BMX, we just went out on a "little kid's bike" and did whatever the fuck we felt like doing, just having fun. We pushed each other naturally, nobody had to push us to improve, we pushed ourselves and each other. The funny thing is, action sports, like BMX freestyle, andskateboarding, just keep evolving, where traditional team sports get a kind of rigor mortis, solidifying into set rules and ideas. They were fun to play at times, but BMX and skating were much more fun for us weirdos of that era.
After close to a year living in San Jose, my zine, much to mine and everyone's surprise, wound up landing me a job at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, in August of 1986. I hopped on a plane down to L.A. with my bike, a suitcase, and $80, and started a new life. I had just turned 20 years old, and a week later I was proofreading two magazines that were published worldwide. I moved in with Gork and Lew, two of my co-workers, sleeping on their couch for a couple of months, in Redondo Beach, until we found a three bedroom apartment. Once again, I found myself in a huge metro area that was new to me. I soon began wandering around on my bike on the weekends, exploring the South Bay area of Los Angeles county.
Nearly every weeknight we sessioned at The Spot, on the north side of the Redondo Pier. Usually it was Lew (:56), Chris Day, Craig Grasso, and Gork most nights. A couple of times a week, R.L. Osborn, would come down and session, and industry guy McGoo came by occasionally, sometimes with CW riders Ceppie Maes and Dizz Hicks. There were solid flatland session every night. Lew introduced me to freestyle skater Rodney Mullen there, who skated by The Spot when in town, and I even first saw Mark Gonzales there once, skating with Rodney. Once in a while we'd go ride the Fatburger Banks, or another street spot, bu tmost nights it was lots of flatland practicing, with some goofing around.
On the weekends though, that's when I really started going on some all day exploration rides on a regular basis. If there wasn't a contest somewhere, it was a solo day for me. I would wake up around 7 or 8 am, and make a huge plate of pancakes. Then I'd put on the Bones II video above, Future Primitive, and watch the whole thing. After that, I'd grab my bike, and take off in one direction or another. It was a 4 mile ride to our offices in Torrance, and there were some street spots along that route I started along that route, wandering off to new areas. Some days I would head up or down PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), which is a big surface street in that area. There was a 5 sidewalk section curb jump on PCH, right by Redondo Beach Boulevard, it was about a 20 feet jump, that we'd hit on our way to work. Twenty feet is a long jump off a curb cut, and we usually landed back wheel on the 4th of 5th section, with our front wheel near the landing curb cut. One Sunday morning, hauling ass on the sidewalk along PCH, I got the light, and hit the jump with more speed than usual, and cleared the long gap. I only did that twice. Bombing down 190th street hill at speed, on the border of Redondo and Hermosa Beaches, blocks from our 2nd apartment, was another thing we often did.
My best street spot find in Redondo Beach, though, was rediscovering what came to be known as the Jinx Bank. One day I was driving the Wizard van to a photo shoot with Windy Osborn, our photographer, and Haro pro Ron Wilkerson. We went to a sketchy, ellpitical transition quarterpipe behind a bike shop, where Ron debuted the abubaca. Windy shot the sequence, and Ron changed vert and street riding forever, with one photo sequence. On the drive over, I got a glimpse of a cool looking bank behind a nearby building, and then rode back a couple of weeks later, wandered around a bit, and found it.
Hidden behind a business was a little parking lot that sloped steeply down. There was an asphalt bank up against the back of the building, which went from flat to about three feet high, to over six feet tall on the end of the bulding. Wall rides had not been invented yet. But I found that it was a blast to hit the big end of the bank, then fly up, footplant on the wall 3-4 feet above the bank, then drop back into it. The first three times I went there, I broke bike parts twice, and Lew rolled his ankle the time I took him. He said, "That banks a jinx, I'm not going back." It became known as the Jinx Bank, and I rode it nearly every weekend while I lived there. But the Jinx Bank gained its own fame a year later when Windy shot this photo below of Eddie Roman there.
I was really an uptight dork in 1986, and I didn't really click with the crew at Wizard. So I got laid off after 5 months there. I paid my rent for a month, and stayed home, calling around looking for other BMX jobs. Then I'd go riding all day with Craig Grasso. We rode all over the South Bay, hitting the few local ramps, street spots, and just having a blast in general. After three weeks, I lined up a job working for Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association (AFA), and moved to Huntington Beach a week later to be editor/photographer for the AFA newsletter.
Another new area, a new job, and more weekends of wandering on my bike. I quickly started hanging out at the H.B. pier, with the local freestylers and freestyle skaters. But I also went exploring on my bike, finding the known local spots, and some new ones of my own. I found Hidden Valley (28:12), which has always had a few BMX jumps, the banks that used to be along Goldenwest Street, Huntington Beach High, Mesa View elementary (big skate spot), and when Josh White came down once, we found the Blues Brothers Wall. Over the many years since then, I rode the whole length of the Santa Ana River ditch, which has lots of hips and huge banks the whole way. Mike Miranda showed me the jumps above where Sheep Hills is now, and I found the ditch below. I even stumbled across the moon. Really, there's a park in Costa Mesa, right off the river trail, where there's a huge concrete moon surface. A couple of the craters on it are big enough to skate on, a little bit. Not much fun on a bike, but a weird find, nonetheless.
Moon Park, in Costa Mesa, California. Photo stolen off the web.
Over the 20 years I was riding my BMX bike almost every day, a lot of the best times were just the long, rambling, solo, exploration rides. I jumped 25 feet off a hip in the Santa Ana River ditch (I shot video to check the distance). Yeah, I am definitely not known for jumping, but it was a spot where someone like Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, or Brian Foster could probably jump 35-40 feet, landing on the huge banked wall. I also did 100 foot long framestands on the banked walls of the river ditch, and even did short ones on a 60 degree banked wall I found in H.B. (destroyed in the 90's). I rode with Ed Templeton at Huntington High, and sessioned the H.B. Pier bank for months when the chain was cut, opening it up to bike and skate sessions again in 1989.
Looking back, I wish I would have shot some video of some of those sessions. But I lost all my video footage (and master tapes) in a move in 2008, so it may not have made much difference. But all those sessions, usually solo, wandering around and looking for places to ride, led to some great riding spots, and just a lot of fun days of riding. This is an aspect of riding nearly everyone has done at some point. But we never really think about it. Yet a lot of the great street spots were found by riders, often not the top riders, who just wandered around and found cool places that were not designed to ride or skate, but lent themselves to great sessions anyway.
During all those years of solo exploration, I also ran into a lot of graffiti and street art, homeless and other people in urban settings, and met other riders and skaters. Once in a while, like when I rediscovered the forgotten Jinx Bank, you find a spot destined to become legendary in our world. These are some of the best times of my life on "the streets."
The last trick I learned, in 2003, was doing nollie 180's (curved nosewheelie into a gnarly speed bump, to a 180), in a parking lot in Garden Grove where no one else ever rode. It's actually less than half a mile from the Van's skatepark in Orange. I'd nollie the speed bump every time I rode by, and stopped to learn nollie 180's one day. Soon after I went back to taxi driving, and was soon working long hours, seven days a week. I started gaining a ton of weight, and haven't ridden seriously since. I'm working now towards getting back on track financially, which will allow me to start losing weight, get a decent bike, and get back to riding daily, at some point.
So that's a look at the usually ignored part of street riding, actually riding around aimlessly, and just exploring behind, around, under, over, and through urban places, to find new riding spots. Maybe I got you psyched to go do a little exploring yourself.
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