Much to my surprise, I found some footage of the T.O.L. Ramp, the Tower of Love, named after the Huey Lewis song, "Power of Love." It played on the ghetto blaster one day while R.L. Osborn and Ron Wilton (or was it Mke Buff?) were building the ramp in the Wizard Publications parking lot. This is Eddie Fiola, Josh White, and Dino Deluca shredding the TOL a couple of years later, for the G-TVvideo, put out by GT Bikes.
One morning, in the fall of 1986, I think it was on a coffee break, FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenikins told Mark "Lew" Lewman, Gork, and myself, that we were going to have a little meeting in the parking lot, after work. He told us he was thinking about pitching the idea of making a second Wizard Publications video, a FREESTYLIN' video, to our boss, Bob Osborn. Oz, as we called him then, was the publisher of two magazines, BMX Action, then ten years old, and FREESTYLIN', about a year and a half old. Andy told us to come up with some ideas for a video, and to keep it quiet, and we'd talk it over that night.
The reason why Andy wanted us to be low key, is because BMX Action magazine, and R.L.'s BMX Action Trick Team made a video about a year earlier, this video:
In those days, in 1985, only pro video production companies had the equipment to make high quality videos. Consumer VHS and Betamax videos were sketchy quality, and "pro-sumer" equipment didn't exist yet. So to make a video, you hired a production company, usually one that spent most of its time making industrial videos, TV commercials for local businesses, and stuff like that. A pro quality video camera then could cost $50,000, and an editing system, easily $250,000 to $500,000. Because of that, making videos, of any kind, was really expensive. I don't know how much the BMX Action video, Rippin', cost, but we suspected it was around $40,000. That is what we heard BMX Plus spent making their freestyle videos. That's like $100,000 or more in today's money. Anyhow, when you hire people who know nothing about the brand new sport of BMX freestyle to make a freestyle video, they make a high quality, well shot, well edited video... that isn't very watchable by 15-year-olds. So the BMX Action video lost a lot of money, and Oz didn't like the subject of videos being brought up. He, like all good businessmen, did not like to lose money.
But a few weeks before our meeting in the parking lot, someone loaned Gork an 8mm video camera, the pre-cursor to Hi-8 video. He started shooting stuff, and since Gork, Lew, and I were roommates, and Andy lived nearby, we experimented with the video camera, did some goofy, funny skits, and shot a little footage of ourselves riding. Then Gork got super motivated for a few days, and edited our best stuff into a little video, we called it the Gork Video. After watching this pretty funny video we made, for no money, Andy had an idea. A good idea. He thought he might be able to sell Oz on the idea of making a FREESTYLIN' video, but doing most of it ourselves, for almost no money. That would make it much more likely to make some money, or at least break even, while promoting the magazine.
So that evening, after Oz and most of the staff had left, Andy, Gork, Lew, and me sat down on the curb, in the shade of the TOL Ramp, and tossed out our ideas for a video. I forget what the other ideas were. My idea was pretty simple, it was pretty much how we lived. We'd leave work on a Friday evening, and just go ride as many different places, with as many different riders as we could, all weekend. It would be the ultimate weekend. Then we'd drag in to the office Monday morning, and go back to work.
Lew and I rode flatland at The Spot in Redondo Beach almost every night, with Craig Grasso and Chris Day. Gork came down to ride 3-4 nights a week. As the editor of BMX Action, he had more responsibility, and more work, then Lew and I. But he got his freestyle on often, anyhow. R.L. Osborn came down there often, and McGoo, then CW freestyle team manager, swung by once in a while, often with Ceppie Maes and John "Dizz" Hicks. Right there were some sessions any freestyler in the country would love to attend... or watch on video.
If there was a contest locally, we'd pack up Gork's van with our posse, and go ride with the best rider in SoCal. Sometimes we'd go session with other groups and scenes, or maybe someone's ramp. So my video idea was just to pack all those sessions we had anyhow, into one weekend, for the video. That idea was soundly rejected by the other three guys. They tossed out their ideas, which I don't remember, and the meeting ended. Andy said he'd do some thinking, and decide whether we should hit up Oz with the idea.
I got laid off a couple of months later, and as far as I know, they never hit up Oz to do another video. This other idea of Lew's, a little thing called Club Homeboy, came along instead. But the thought of doing a video of what seemed like the ultimate weekend, stayed in the back of my mind as I went on to work at the AFA for a year, and then Unreel Productions/Vision, for 2 1/2 more years. In 1990, I self-produced The Ultimate Weekend myself. Now, in 2020, it's the 30 year anniversary of that video, and I'm getting going on the 30th anniversary sequel, The Ultimate Weekend II. Stay tuned...
The insane intro to the 2006 remake of the James Bond classic, Casino Royale. Looking up this clip after the movie came out is how I learned what parkour was. Personally, this is probably my favorite chase scene in any movie ever. The scene I saw last night was pretty much the opposite of this scene.
As you all know, I'm homeless right now. Working making and selling art, I'm scraping by through this Covid-19 shutdown like everyone, but I just can't afford to pay rent for the time being. I sleep on a sidewalk in front of a retail location that seems to be permanently being remodeled. While there are a handful of working people, late night tweekers, and the occasional homeless zombies that wander by at night, people mostly leave me alone.
I was asleep last night, when I woke suddenly to the sound of heavy running footsteps. I leaned up on one elbow, and pushed back the top of my sleeping bag. A stocky guy in boots ran by me. I heard another set of footsteps coming towards me from up the street. I groggily realized that the stocky guy was being chased, but I wasn't sure why, or by whom. A security guard, a solid guy himself, but in much better shape, dressed in all black, ran by me. The stocky guy dove into the open side door of a minivan, parked 50 feet away. Well, "dove" isn't the right word. It's more liked he flopped headfirst onto the floor of the minivan, legs still outside the van. He screamed "Go! Go! Go!" to the driver.
The security guard stopped about ten feet past me, as the minivan started to take off. But the stocky guy was only half in, so as the van tried to roll away, his feet dragged on the ground, nearly pulling him out of the van, and he yelled something. It was like a comedy chase scene from a movie or something. The van was trying to take off, but the fat guy was being dragged along, halfway in, halfway out. Imagine Chris Farley doing a spoof of the Casino Royale scene above, it was something like that.
About that time, my head cleared enough to realize that the security guard was from the weed, excuse me, cannabis dispensary a couple buildings up, and the stocky guy trying to make a getaway was stealing weed, apparently. The security guard could have tackled the stocky guy, while he was hanging out of the van, and I think he would have won that scuffle. But he stopped. From his point of view, there could have been three people in the van, a gun, a knife, a pit bull, who knows. So he ultimately made the smart move. But hey, I was just a spectator, I wanted to see him go balls out and tackle the guy.
The minivan slammed on the brakes, the stocky guy got his arms and legs all going, like a baby sea turtle, swimming for the protection of the sea. He climbed further into the van, and it hit the gas and took off. Not a clean getawat at all, but a getaway none-the-less. I was laying there, propped up on my elbow, sort of laughing at the crazy scene, and the security guard turned and looked back at me. H didn't say anything, but it was like he was mad at me. I was thinking, "Hey, I'm not the one getting paid to protect the weed, man, that's your job." He walked back up to their door, and started talking to another worker.
I didn't even realize that place was a dispensary until recently, since it's mixed in with a bunch of entertainment industry businesses. I thought it was some kind of studio. People would work late, and occasionally cars would stop and go in. But this weekend, with the holiday after the Covid-19 shelter at home period, the place was cranking. It seemed everybody was needing some weed.
I've seen weird shit on the streets, but that was one of the funniest looking incidents. OK, who wants a Sharpie drawing? I really need to rent a room. Shit's weird outside at night.
The main skateboard montage from the 2001 movie Extreme Days. You can see the bigger of the two launch ramps I built at :43 and 1:29 in the clip, when they ollie and air the dumpster off it. The skate montage is decent, for the time. The movie, however, is one of the worst ever made.
I was sitting in the Denny's at Beach and Ellis in Huntington Beach, in the spring of 2000. I was freshly back from one of the coolest weeks of my life. A few weeks before, I went to a book signing with activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, seen here, coming down after living for two years in a redwood tree, to keep the 600 year old tree from being cut down. I heard about the book signing in Santa Monica on KPFK radio, and went there one night in my taxi. Much to my surprise, longtime BMX industry guy, Frank Scura, was there, working with Julia. He's the one who introduced me to her.
After meeting her, and hearing her talk that night, I read her book, about living for two years, 180 feet up in a tree. I spent much of my childhood wandering around the local woods. But I'd never seen the huge redwoods in person. I decided I needed to drive up the California coast, which I'd never done, solo, and go see the giant redwood trees. The next day, I dropped off my taxi, packed up my Datsun 280ZX, and headed north.
It was one of the most epic weeks of my life, but that's a story for another day. I shot video of the trip, and later made a 20 minute video of me driving up the coast, seeing young elephant seals, going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where I saw wild sea otters and a seal, in addition to the fish inside. I went to Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco, after driving across the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time. That's where I saw my first redwood trees. Then I continued north, and spent a few more days driving around redwood country, walking around, and even inside, huge redwoods. You can't even begin to comprehend those huge, old trees in photos or video. You have to see them in person. I hit Pinnacles National Park on the way back south, and then headed back to Huntington Beach, where I had been living in my taxi for a few months.
With a kind of mellow natural high going, I headed to Denny's for a big meal. I was going to figure out what to do next. The plan was to maybe get a room for the night, and then go back to taxi driving the next morning.
Then I overheard a couple of guys talking at a nearby table. They were part of a crew making a movie, and the director wanted some skateboard ramps built for it. I'd heard that kind of talk a lot while working in the Studio City/North Hollywood area, years before. But it was unusual to hear in Huntington Beach.
The director wanted a ramp, so skateboarders could jump over a bunch of barrels. You know, because that's what skateboarders do naturally, build ramps and jump over barrels. Apparently the guy had seen one of those old videos of Tom Sims or someone jumping barrels in 1972. I decided to ask the guys what they really needed. So I walked over, said, "Hi," and told them I overheard them, and that I used to work for a skateboard company. They told me what their director wanted, and even they knew jumping barrels was dumb, but hey, directors ask for dumb shit all the time. They had no idea where to find a skateboard ramp builder. The internet still wasn't widely used for things like that in 2000. I knew how to build launch ramps, which is what they needed, I'd worked in the TV industry a few years before, so I knew how production worked. I just happened to be the right guy, at the right time, with the right skills. That's how you find work in "Hollywood." Except I wasn't even looking.
I walked out of Denny's with a verbal contract to build two big skateboard launch ramps, and a "handrail," for $500. In typical Hollywood fashion, I had 48 hours to get the job done, and deliver it to a site in Hollywood. No problem. Of course, I was living in my car, a 280ZX, and had no real carpentry tools, and no place to work. Details. I'd worked on 300 TV episodes of several TV shows, I knew that doing the impossible immediately was standard operating procedure. Luckily, I did have some money in the bank, which made the job possible.
I drove over to my old apartment on 15th street, in downtown H.B., and asked my former roommates if I could borrow the driveway out back for a day. They were both cool guys... and stoners... so they were mellow, and said, "Go for it." My next stop was Home Depot, where I bought a couple of power saws, plywood, 2 X 4's, a screw gun, screws, and other things I needed. I went back to 15th street, and got to work. The producer guys I talked to said they wanted ramps four feet high, which is huge for a skate launch ramps or. I also had no idea what they would really be jumping over, or onto. So I decided on a short, steep ramp, and a longer, mellow one. So I made a 6 foot transition, 4 foot high ramp, and a 9 or 10 foot transition (I forget exactly), 4 foot tall ramp. I got the transitions drawn out, and and everything ready to go, and left it in my old roommates' garage. I got a motel room for the night, got a pizza and a good night's sleep, and came out ready to work the next day.
Working alone, it took longer than I expected, and I got the wood cut, and started putting them together in the early afternoon. But my old roommates lived in a sixplex, where 5 cars packed into the little driveway area every night. As afternoon came along, I realized I needed to move everything, I also needed a U-Haul to transport the ramps, and I needed a place to work late into the night. It was going to be a tough night to get the ramps done, and take them to Hollywood, by the 7 am call time the next morning.
I packed everything up, and bought my old roommates a 12 pack for letting me use their driveway. I drove up to a place in the San Fernando Valley. In fact, it's only about a block from where I'm sitting right now, pirating wifi, to write this blog post. There's a huge banked wall I used to ride my bike on, behind a shopping center. The place has huge lights on it all night. Out of sight, and well lit. Perfect. I pulled the U-Haul behind the building, and got to work plying the ramps. I called around earlier that day, trying to find a portable grind rail, but couldn't find one that somebody had pre-built, so I just blew it off.
A couple of people wandered behind the shopping center, and asked what I was doing. I told them I was making skateboard ramps for a movie, and needed a well lit place to finish working. They were cool with that, and there was no drama. I finished the ramps about 2:30 am, as I recall. With no traffic, and half asleep, I drove back over the hill to Hollywood. The location was a church, right in Hollywood itself. (Yes, there are churches in Hollywood, city of "sinners"). I pulled into the church parking lot, and fell asleep in the cab of the U-Haul.
I woke up to the sounds of somebody talking nearby. The first couple of producers showed up about 6:30 am, and started getting things organized. They wanted me to just leave the ramps. But I wanted to stay and see who was skating on them, and just hang out on the shoot. For one thing, I knew what a craft service table was, there's always free food on movie shoots. I asked them if they had people to move the ramps, which were big and heavy? The producers looked at each other. "Tell you what," I said, "I'll stay and move them wherever you want, no charge." They were cool with that, so I stayed.
An hour or so later, the skaters showed up, three of them. The only one I'd heard of was Chet Thomas, part of Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade then, as I recall. The steep ramp was good for rock 'n rolls, but way to steep to launch to flat. But the big, mellow ramp worked well. They ended up ollie-ing and airing over a dumpster, off the ramp. You can see that in the clip above. They also ollied over a VW Thing car, with the stars of the movie in it. So I hung out, had fun, and got a little crap about not getting a rail. But I got a couple of free meals, the shoot bought me a bunch of tools, and one of the producers wanted the steeper ramp for his kid. We put it in his pick-up. I took the other ramp back to Huntington Beach. I wound up donating it to a little skate park in Seal Beach, where it lived happily ever after. Hey, it's a movie story, it has to have a happy ending, right? I got paid my $500 a couple of weeks later, and that was my first and only movie job (as opposed to TV production), on an absolutely horrible movie. That's Hollywood.
Here's a better example of Chet Thomas skating. As a bonus, a couple of these shots are from Huntington Beach. Cool. Full circle.
Probably the most famous song ever about taxi driving, Harry Chapin's 1972 song, "Taxi."
It was a Monday or Tuesday evening, some time in the mid-2000's. I worked so many hours, 7 days a week, from 2003 to 2007, that the years and days blend together. I think it was 2003 or 2004. I pulled into a kind of lame shopping center in Huntington Beach, at Beach and Atlanta. I dropped a passenger off at Tumbleweed's, a country/redneck bar, less than a mile from the beach in Surf City. An early summer evening, maybe 7:00 pm, and it was still plenty light out, though the shadows were getting long.
As I drove back out of the shopping center, rolling slowly in front of the stores, I saw movement far off to the left. In the shadow of a big rig truck, parked in the corner of the parking lot, there was haggard looking, overweight woman waving frantically at me, and yelling "Taxi!" I noticed about four large trash bags sitting next to her. A homeless woman. OK, I was living in my taxi at the time, technically homeless myself, but I was also working 80+ hours a week in the cab, and making money. I didn't want to pick her up. I just didn't want to pick up some crazy, smelly, old, crazy woman, take her a mile, and have her bitch about the $4 fare, and then not tip me.
That was my first thought. My stereotypical reaction, like most people's reaction, to the image of that woman with the trash bags. Then came the reality of the moment. It was a Monday (maybe a Tuesday), early evening. I just dropped off a call I got from dispatch. I wouldn't get another call for at least an hour, it was just a slow time of the day, and of the week.
Another thing about taxi driving was that we actually spent most of the time waiting. That gave me time to be a good guy now and then, so I had a new thought. I decided to roll over, pick up the sketchy looking homeless woman, and just give her a ride. There's a certain kind of karma in the world of taxi driving, as shady as most taxi drivers are, good deeds often come back in the way of fares in the taxi world. It's a thing we had all experienced. Every driver had times when they took a ride they didn't want, and as soon as they got to the destination, they got another fare for $100, or five rides in a row for $90 total, or something like that. So the taxi driver in me decided to give the woman a ride, since I wasn't doing anything else anyway.
So I turned up a row of cars, and rolled up to the old, homeless woman in the shade of the big truck. She opened the back door, and I sat there as she hefted the four trash bags full of lord knows what, into the back seat. She didn't smell that bad. But not very good, either. The woman looked like she could be your grandma, if your grandma smoked crack from the age 19 to 64. Stringy hair, dirty T-shirt, some kind of worn jacket.
"Where you headed?" I asked. "The Filling Post," she said. I knew the bar, kind of a dive bar, 5-6 miles up Beach Boulevard, towards the freeway. I pulled out of the parking lot, didn't turn the meter on, and headed up the road. I didn't feel like talking, and the homeless woman didn't say much, so we had a quiet ride up Beach Boulevard. I turned into the shopping center that housed the Filling Post, and pulled up near the curb, in the empty parking lot. I put the cab in park, and waited for the woman to get out.
She asked, "How much?" I said, "Don't worry about it." The homeless woman repeated, "How MUCH?" Again, I said, "Don't worry about it," feeling good for be a really cool guy, and doing my good deed for the day. Taxi driving was usually, all hustle, all day, continually asking myself, "How do I make $125 in fares today?" So I felt good about taking a little time to be a good guy, and giving this homeless woman a free ride. Then she yelled, "HOW MUCH IS IT?"
"Damn," I thought. "It'd be about $13-$14," which was a true statement. I may not have been the the most profitable cabbie, but I was fair. The homeless woman in the back seat, behind me, the 60-something woman who looked like she'd been on a bender for a year and a half, reached into her bra, which tripped me out, since I was looking at her in the rear view mirror. I looked away from the mirror. Her hand came back out of her bra, as she asked, "You got change for a hundred?" My head snapped back up, looking into the rear view mirror again, where I saw her fanning out four brand new, crisp, $100 bills. Mind blown.
Now, taxi driving is all about making money. You don't drive complete strangers around, seven days a week, and deal with drunk idiots every night, because you like people. Taxi driving is about MONEY. Suddenly, I wasn't a smug good guy. I was a taxi driver again. "Uh...no," I answered her question. "I'll go get change in the bar," she said.
Since I suddenly knew she had money, a lot of money, she was my new best friend, for the next 3 minutes, anyhow. Taxi driver mentality. She stumbled out of the cab, and waddled into the bar. I launched my 350+ pounds out of the driver's seat, ran around to the open back door. I picked up each of her garbage bags, and treated them like they were vintage Louis Vuitton luggage. I placed each one of them neatly on the curb.
The woman came back out, didn't really look up, and handed me $25. "Need change?" I asked, completely dumbfounded. "No" she muttered. "Can I help you with your bags?" I asked. "No," she answered again, " I got 'em." I shook my head, got back in the taxi, and drove off, completely baffled by what just happened.
If the story of the homeless woman ended right there, it would still be one of my favorite taxi tories. But that's not where the story ends. A few months later, I went to pay my lease one Monday morning at the taxi office. Next to the payment window, there was a flyer that said, "Taxi Driver Art Show." I asked the woman in the window about it. She told me Richard, a taxi driver who worked mostly inland Orange County, had a little, indie art gallery, and that he was asking if any other taxi drivers wanted to make some art for a show. I'd talked to him a few times, so I knew who he was. I called his cell, and asked about the show. He told me about his gallery, and said I should come by and check it out that Friday, when they had bands play, and it was open. I could check out the scene, look at the gallery, and decide if I wanted to make something for the show.
That was a year or two before I started doing my Sharpie scribble style drawings, but I drew some pen and ink stuff now and then, and goofed around with markers and made collages, as well. That Friday, I swung by the gallery, in the early evening, before it got too busy in the cab. The gallery, AAA Electra 99, was housed in a small office unit near John Wayne (aka Orange County) airport then. Electra was far from your typical gallery, the kind with lots of white wall, and very few pieces of art, spread far apart. The little gallery had all kinds of art, weird sculptures, paintings, drawings, many flavors of creativity, crammed in every nook and cranny. It was like a huge pile of art exploded in the small space, and got stuck everywhere.
I saw Richard, and he told me about the place, and told me to wander around. The bands, which seemed to be two or three teenage garage bands, set up on the walkway in the courtyard area, right outside the gallery door. As I wandered through Richard's section of the gallery, I saw two, 8" X 10," black and white photos, set between Richard's punk rock flyer looking marker drawings. One photo was an old woman passed out in the back of a taxi. The other was a photo of the same woman, hazy eyes looking at the photographer, also from the taxi's back seat. It was the homeless woman I gave a ride to a few months before, the one who pulled the four $100 bills from her bra. Mind blown again.
I found Richard and said, "The two photos, I had that same woman in my cab once." I told him about the ride, and the $400. He said, "Yeah, that's Sally, she's a prostitute, she hooks up with truckers." I suddenly remembered that I picked her up next to a semi truck. I had thought she just stopped there to rest in the shade. Richard told me he used to driver her to her main hooking bar in downtown L.A., where she'd meet truckers to screw. He also said, Sally always had money, and always tipped well. Richard's former girlfriend had been along on a ride once, and snapped the pics of Sally, the old, haggard prostitute.
Like I said before, taxi driving is all about money. When you pay the taxi company $550 to $600 a week to rent a cab, then have to put $300 worth of gas in the car, that meant the first $850 to $900 a week in fares was just to break even. The average fare then was about $12, and if we wanted to actually make money, we had to hustle day and night to find every ride we could. We had good days, but making good money was never easy. It was always a constant hustle. When you found someone who took long rides, always had money, and tipped well, you wanted them to call your cell phone every time they needed a ride. So Sally had been a regular fare for Richard for a couple of years, until he found a weekend driver for his taxi, and just worked days.
A month or so later, I was sitting in the taxi line in downtown Huntington Beach, the 3rd or 4th taxi in line. An old woman turned the corner of the trendy bar district, pushing a shopping cart, with a trash bag in it, towards us. She looked looked to the first driver in line, one of the Arab guys. He looked at her, and said, "I'm not driving you, go away old woman." I saw it was Sally. The second driver also shooed her away. I jumped out of my cab, ran around to the passenger's side back door, and yelled, "Sally, right here, I'll give you a ride!" The other drivers thought I was an idiot. They only saw an old homeless woman, just like I did, months earlier, in the shopping center parking lot. Sally got in , and I gave her another $15 ride, this time running the meter, and she paid me $25 again.
I got back to the taxi line. The same driver was still in the first spot. It was early evening, and it wasn't busy yet. I pulled up, with $25 more in my pocket, and waited for the next fare. I did the same thing, a handful of other times, giving Sally a ride when other drivers turned her down. Taxi karma. Heh, heh, heh. Just another reminder, to quote Tolkien, "Not all that's gold glitters, not all who wander are lost." And try to remember not to judge a book by its cover. I never had a problem with Sally, and always got decent rides, she always tipped well, and there was never any drama. She smelled a little funky sometimes. But so did I after sitting in the cab for 14 hours. Nothing a quick spray of ozium couldn't cure.
I stumbled across this clip several months ago, and later found the whole video, A Wicked Ride. This video more about any other, reminds me of what it was like to be a freestyler in the 1980's, far away from Southern California, when freestyle was taking off. Joe Johnson really pushed vert riding in the mid and late 80's.
For me, it started with an unexpected phone call in the spring of 1986. I was in my upstairs bedroom of my family's house, in San Jose, California. The phone rang downstairs, and a moment later, my mom yelled up, "Steve, there's a call for you." Remember those days when a house had two, maybe three phones, and we didn't know who was calling? I picked up the upstairs phone, and a male voice said something like, "Steve, this is Andy Jenkins from FREESTYLIN' magazine." My jaw dropped. I muttered some kind of response.
I met FREESTYLIN' magazine's editorial staff, Andy and Mark "Lew" Lewman, at the AFA Masters Velodrome contest a few weeks earlier. I'd been sending them copies of my zine, San Jose Stylin', for 6 months or so, where I covered the NorCal freestyle zine, interviewing the Curb Dogs, the Skyway team, and other locals. Much to my surprise, Andy and Lew both said they really dug my zine, which blew my mind.
Anyhow, Andy asked if I was planning to go to the AFA Masters contest coming up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2 or 3 weeks later, and I said I was. He asked, "Do you want to cover that contest for FREESTYLIN'?" Jaw on the floor again. I was some goofy kid who got into freestyle in Idaho, then living in San Jose for seven months, and I started my zine six months earlier, just as an excuse to meet the NorCal riders. I liked shooting photos, and didn't mind writing and actually making the zine. But I never expected anything to actually come of it. Suddenly, I'd been hired to do a freelance article for FREESTYLIN', the coolest of the three BMX freestyle magazines, by far.
A couple weeks later, I packed up my bike in a non-descript box, and called it "camping equipment" at the airport check-in, so I wouldn't have to pay the $25 bike fee. I learned that trick from Skyway pro, Robert Peterson. I flew alone to Dallas/FortWorth where I had a layover. It was the first time I'd ever flown by myself, and a was a nervous guy to start with, and pretty much scared shitless about the whole trip. I was 20-years-old, couldn't rent a car, and didn't know where the contest was actually being held in Tulsa. I mean, it was freaking Oklahoma, how big could Tulsa be? My plan was to land in Tulsa, talk to some of the other riders flying in at the airport, bum a ride to a hotel, crash on somebody's floor, bum another ride to the contest site, and talk to everyone, write good notes down, record thoughts on my cassette recorder, then go home and write a cool article, all the while maintaining my Pizza Hut job. Oh, and actually compete in 17 & Over intermediate flatland, too.
Waiting for my plane in the DFW airport, I saw two guys I recognized from the magazines, GT pros Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo, and some blond kid was with them. I was totally shy then, and super nervous, but it was fucking Eddie and Martin! So I walked over and introduced myself. They were cool, and introduced me to the blond kid, named Josh White. They said he was the new GT ramp rider. We were all on the same plane into Tulsa. I saw them at baggage claim, and asked if they could give me a ride to the hotel. They said their rental car was packed with three guys and bike boxes. So I hung out by baggage claim, waiting for all the riders from around the country to fly in, so I could find a ride to the hotel. And then find out where the contest site was, and bum a ride there. Organization while traveling wasn't my strong suit then, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.
I waited. And waited. People came and went, but not one young guy with a bike box. I started to get nervous. Maybe I really should have called around and actually found out where the contest was. Finally, about an hour later, some really normal looking kid with brown hair pulled a bike box off the baggage claim carousel. I went over and asked if he was going to the contest. He said he was. I said I needed to find a ride to the hotel, and then find a room to crash in. The kid said his name was Joe, he was from Masachussetts, and he rode for Haro. I nodded and said that was cool, but inside I was thinking, "Yeah, some co-sponsored wannabe from the East Coast." Haro didn't have any factory riders from the East, everyone knew that. I told Joe my name was Steve, and I was writing contest article for FREESTYLIN'. Joe said that was cool, and was probably thinking, "Yeah, sure, this kid's some guy who does a zine or something. Only Andy and Lew write for FREESTYLIN'."
But Joe was cool, and he said his friends were picking him up in a van, and would probably be able to give me a ride to the hotel, and then to the contest. Hey, it was a ride, and I wouldn't have to spend my weekend's food money on a taxi. So Joe and I put our boxes and suitcases on airport luggage carts, rolled them out to the pick up curb, and waited. Both of us were pretty quiet by nature, so one of us would say something, the other would answer, and then we'd kind of go silent for a few minutes. Then one of us would say something else. We got bored waiting, and started goofing around, doing tricks on the luggage carts.
We had luggage cart backwards infinity rolls pretty well down, half an hour later, when a van rolled towards us. Joe said, "Hey, there they are," or something like that. The van rolled up, and it was the freakin' Haro tour van. I couldn't believe it. I'd never met any of the Haro riders before. I'd just met the top GT pros, and that new kid Josh, in the DFW airport, and suddenly I'm looking at the Haro van. Haro and GT were the two top teams in freestyle then, with Hutch a close third. The driver's side door opened, pro rider Ron Wilkerson jumped out, and looked across the front of the van at us, "Hey Joe! What's up!" I looked at Joe, dumbfounded. Ron Wilkerson, Haro pro, and one of my heroes, knew who Joe from Massachusetts was. What the fuck? Joe said, "This is Steve, he's writing the contest article for FREESTYLIN', can we give him a ride? Ron said, "Yeah, hop in."
Next thing I know, I was in the back of the Haro tour van, jam packed with bikes and riders. I wound up sitting on the top tubes of several bikes jammed together. Ron, team manager Billy Hop, Brian Blyther, Dave Nourie, and assistant team manager, Jon Peterson were all there, and a couple other people, too, as I recall. Jon Peterson started talking to me, and I wound up hanging with the Haro team, and sleeping on the floor of one of their rooms, with Tony Murray, Jon, Joe, and a couple others, packed in it. It turned into the craziest weekend of my life, up until then, and my baptism into the BMX freestyle industry.
The two amazing young bucks on vert, amateurs Josh White and Joe Johnson, were the talk of the weekend. They were both blasting on the Haro quarterpipe, giving the veteran vert pros, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, and Ron Wikerson some serious competition in practice. There was also some weird kid no one knew riding in amateur vert that weekend. At a time when most riders wore open face helmets, t-shirts, and Levi's in practice, this unknown kid had a Bell Moto full face helmet, shoulder pads, knee pads, and elbow pads on. We called him The Stormtrooper, because he had so many pads on. But The Stormtrooper turned out to be really good, too, getting high airs, and a couple of original variations, though he landed hard sometimes. He ended up getting a photo in the magazine article, and Andy Jenkins asked me to find out his name. I called around the AFA, and other places. The Patterson brothers, who put on the AFA local contests in Texas knew the kid. "Oh, that's Mathew Hoffman, he's 14, that kid's amazing on ramps." And that's how I met Joe Johnson (and Josh White, and Mat Hoffman).
Here's my footage of the day Joe Johnson pulled his first ever double tailwhip, at 11:34 in this clip, from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, in the spring of 1989. Mat does this pretty cool trick at the end of this video, as well.
