How parking lots changed my life

This is the Huntington Beach Street Scene, produced by the Godfather of BMX himself, Scot Breithaupt, way back in 1989.  Goofy as this show looks now, it was the very first BMX street contest to appear on TV, only about a year after Ron Wilkerson's first Meet the Street contest, in 1988.  And yes, that's me in the blue Vision shirt, and Randy Lawrence (now a legendary motocross mechanic/trainer, and Ryder's dad) in the white, in the intro.  This came out Six years before the X-Games.  

Parking lots.  Large paved areas to park cars, outside of grocery stores, malls, discount stores, restaurants, and anywhere else we park cars and trucks to go buy something.  Seen one parking lot, you've seen them all, right?  Not if you're a BMX freestyler or skateboarder.  When I first got into BMX in 1982, and started learning early flatland tricks, my friends and I road mostly in the streets in front of our houses.  As one of the first wave of flatland freestylers, inspired by magazine photos of the originators like Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff, Martin Aparijo, Woody Itson, a few hundred kids acorss the U.S. started seeking out empty patches of asphalt or concrete to practice our tricks.  For me, it was the streets in the trailer park, then by our house in Boise, then playground area of a school, after everyone had left for the day.  After a move to San Jose, California in 1985, the end of the local grocery store parking lot near our house, and the paved area at my sister's high school, Del Mar High.  

Jeff Cotter with a pop tart (jump up to) bar ride in Redondo Beach, in a parking lot in Redondo Beach in 1990.

To us freestylers, and a few skateboarders practicing flat ground tricks, every parking lot began to have its own unique characteristics.  This one is angled on one end, but flat beside the store,  This one has a bank to wall on one side.  That one is really old and rough.  As a couple thousand of us dorky, 1980's flatlanders began practicing tricks, and inventing new ones, we became connoisseurs of fine parking lots.  Yes, I realize how fucking stupid that sounds.  But when you're rolling on one wheel on a bike, balancing on a peg, frame, or seat, a smooth, flat piece of asphalt makes all the difference in the world.  We began to seek out the best parking lots in our different areas, around the U.S., and a few places around the world.  Was it smooth, flat, and level?  Did it have annoying security guards, like many office buildings did.  Were there any street spots nearby, like banks or ledges or loading docks?  Was there a fast food jonit close to get drinks, and chill out after two or three hours of riding?  Certain parking lots rose above the others to become our local flatland spots.  

We got to know the local shop owners, homeless people, and people who stumbled by drunk and said, "I used to ride for Redline in the 70's."  We all had our flatland spots, and we spent hundreds of hours there, maybe over 1,000 hours... in a certain parking lot, every year.  They were our training grounds.  We learned to deal with the pain of gouged shins from slipped pedals in those parking lots.  We learned that our mental state had a huge affect on pulling our tricks in those lots.  We pushed ourselves, night after night, to improve and progress as riders, in those pakring lots.  We became really good at something, in those parking lots.  We tried to pick up girls who drove by, and got rejected because we were BMXers, in those parking lots.  We grew into different people, trick by trick, night by night, in our favorite parking lots.  We learned skills that took us to contests and shows around the region, the country, and in some cases, around the world, in those parking lots.  We learned that we could amuse ourselves for an hour, doing endo variations on a single parking block, in those parking lots.  Or paved schoolyards.  Or parking garages (for the northern guys in the winter).  

Eddie Roman doing Eddie Roman stuff, in a schoolyard in 1990.  He produces religious videos now.  

Starting with Bob Haro and a few others in the late 1970's and early 1980's, BMX freestylers, flatlanders in particular, but also street riders, grew into a different kind of person, in parking lots.  The Taco Bell/carwash parking lot you see us riding in that clip above was one of our spots, in the late 1980's.  I rode there, and later Andy Mulcahy, Joe "Red" Goodfellow, and the other guys, whose names I forget now, rode there nightly.  That spot is at Bolsa Chica and Heil in Huntington Beach.  There's a Starbucks where the gas station on the corner used to be, but Taco Bell and the DIY car wash are still there, 34 years after that video was shot.  Not only did my acting debut happen at one of my spots, but I learned to stay behind the camera afterwards.  Thousands of hours spent in parking lots, doing goofy tricks (to most people in the 1980's), riding a "little kid's bike," led me into a creative sport that changed my life, and it changed me.  I published zines, got more into shooting photos, became a writer, and later a video cameraman and video producer, because of the thousands of hours I spent in parking lots, learning to do tricks on a BMX bike.  Stupid as it sounds, parking lots helped change the course of my life.  Since this blog is about my "street life," I knew I had to give some props to all the parking lots, and similar places, that were my training grouns for BMX freestyle 30-35 years ago.  

Here's Dan Hubbard in 1990, doing a front wheel 360 on his wedge ramp, in a parking lot in Redondo Beach, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  Dan announces the Supercross races now.  

What was the best thing to come out of all those hours spent riding and goofing around in parking lots?  The overall best thing, for me, was just to come to grips with the fact that I'm a guy who likes to create things.  35 years ago it might have been a unique variation or a new trick.  Then I created zines.  I shot a bunch of photos, which I published in zines, and a few made it into real magazines.  Then came videos, which lead to being a crew guy on TV shows later.  The biggest thing was that BMX helped me realize that I'm a writer at heart.  I've now been published in about 40 zines, 7 magazines, one newsletter, and over 2,500 of my own blog posts in the last 13 years.  

The other great thing about getting into BMX freestyle, and spending all those years in parking lots was all the cool, weird, creative, and amazing people I've met along the way.  Like this guy, and this guy, and this guy.  I met this guy in a parking lot, at 3162 Kashiwa Street in Torrance, California.  Later because of video work, I worked with this woman, and this guy (on the left) and this woman (on the right, on her first TV show) and even this guy, and many, many others, because I started spending time, learning bike tricks, in parking lots, in 1982.  One thing led to another, then to another.  So why am I a fat, broke, homeless loser writing a blog in a library now?  Apparently it's because I'm lazy, unmotivated, and not all that bright.  Or something like that.  What can I say, life is weird.  It's not just me, every one of us who started learning BMX tricks in parking lots, and got serious with it, had it lead to all kinds of adventures, and meeting a whole bunch of different people we wouldn't have met otherwise.  

So here's a toast to the lowly parking lot, which can be a lot more than a place to park your car while you go buy food that goes up in price every 30 seconds.  Cheers.