The firsts in The Ultimate Weekend

In 1990, I self-produced a BMX freestyle video, becoming one of the first actual riders to produce a video.  Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, Jeremy Alder, and myself were the first actual riders to produce our own, individual BMX videos.  Before that, in the mid 1980's, a business, like BMX Plus, BMX Action, hired video production companies, usually ones that made local TV commercials or industrial videos.  A high end pro Betacam video camera cost $50,000 then.  A good video editing system cost $500,000.  So it cost a lot to make a video. In the late 1980's, Stacy Peralta at Powell-Peralta skateboards, and Don Hoffman (my former boss) under the Vision Skateboards umbrella, produced skateboard videos.  GT Bikes also produced a couple videos.

Consumer video equipment came out, and then it got upgraded.  S-VHS video was a better than VHS, though a long way from pro quality, and suddenly regular people could make a video.  So a few of us started doing that.  Bob Morales had me produce contest videos for the AFA in 1987, working with Unreel Productions (Vision), who shot video of our contests.  That's how I got started in video.  I wound up going to work at Unreel, basically a production assistant, not a producer.  During that time, in early 1989, Ron Wilkerson at 2-hip hired me to produce the contest season video for the 1988 season.  So I was learning about video production on the job, and Eddie Roman was doing a similar thing down in San Diego.

As video equipment got less expensive, and as us riders got sick of how the larger company videos were put together, something crazy happened.  We started making the kind of videos we would want to watch.  Without really thinking about it, Eddie, Mark, Jeremy and me started a revolution.  We just wanted to make the kind of videos we wanted to watch.  By doing that, we showed other riders that it was possible to make our own videos.  By 1992-1993, as small companies began to pop up, everyone started making their own videos.

In early 1989, the bicycle industry gave up on BMX and freestyle, and shifted their attention, and money into the new big trend, mountain bikes.  BMX freestyle went into recession, then a year later, the whole country went into a recession.  Riding went underground.  But it kept progressing.  Street riding was really taking off.  Dirt jumping was just beginning into its whole thing.  Riding was progressing at an incredible pace when I decide to make The Ultimate Weekend, so I wound up getting quite a few firsts in this video, as did the other videos of the era.  Here's a list of the things that were a first in The Ultimate Weekend,to the best of my knowledge.  All times given are in the video, embedded above.

-The first mini-ramps in a BMX video- H-Ramp at 2:30, Primo & Diane's ramp, 19:48, Mouse's ramp, 38:13.  As crazy as it sounds now, mini-ramps were a new thing in 1990, the first one I ever heard of, the Towne Street ramp in Costa Mesa, CA, home of some Schmitt Stix skaters, was built in 1988, I think.
-The first time the Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach was in a BMX video, 11:26.  It's 11 feet high, a little under vert, it's a great spot.
-The first time someone used a skateboard for a "dolly shot" in a video, 5:30.  I showed the shots of Andy Mucahy and Red doing rolling tricks, where I skated along close to them with the camera, to professional video people in Hollywood.  They couldn't figure how I got those shots.  The idea of skating next to someone with a camera was new to the TV industry then.
-The Slater Ditch, aka Cancer Ditch, near the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Huntington Beach, 9:55.  This ditch is about 100 yards from today's Wetlands Trails, used by several top BMX and MTB jumpers.
-Oreo pancakes in a BMX video, 11:09.  Pretty proud of this one.
-First time pro freestyle skater Pierre Andre' Senizergues, the Etnies, E's, Emerica shoe company founder, was in a BMX video, 13:33.  Don Brown would have been in the video, he just wasn't there the day I took my video camera to the H.B. Pier.
-First time Magnolia Trails in Huntington Beach was in a video, 13:59.
-First flatland tailwhip on a bank, Alan Valek, 16:26.
-First backyard "skatepark" in a BMX video, Primo and Diane Desiderio's house, 19:48.  Here's Primo and Diane doing their skate thing a couple years earlier.
-First spine ramp in a BMX video, 19:48
-First 360 over a spine in a BMX video, Keith Treanor at 21:12, then Gary Laurent at 22:55.
-Tailtap to nosepick on a mini-ramp, Gary Laurent, 23:08.
-The second double peg grind on a ledge, me (Steve Emig), 
-Oceanview flyout jump, Huntington Beach, 23:24.  Keith Treanor flat out RULED this jump in 1990.
-First time the the Nude Bowl was in a BMX video, 27:24.  In 1990, THERE WERE NO SKATEPARKS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.  We either had to find and take our chances of a bust in backyard pools, or drive an hour and a half out into the desert to the Nude Bowl.  The name comes because it was an abandoned nudist colony.  Stoked I got Brian Blyther and Xavier Mendez to come out for that session on a 105 degree day, along with our typical crew, Keith Treanor, John Povah, Mike Sarrail, and myself.
-First Smith disaster on a quarterpipe, Jess Dyrenforth, 30:27.  On Martin Aparijo's quarterpipe.
-First icepick on a quarterpipe, Keith Treanor, 30:40.  Martin's quarterpipe.
-First time the Santa Ana Civic Center was in a BMX video, 31:08.  This place is still ridable, I saw a couple shots there in the recent Odyssey video.
-First street rail icepick slide, John Povah, 32:43.
-First handrail double peg handrail grind down steps, Keith Treanor, 33:18.  Eddie Roman got the first street double peg grind in a BMX video, not sure who the rider is, in the 2-Hip Ride Like a Man video, 3-4 months before The Ultimate Weekend came out.  That was a rail next to a walkway, with a little downhill to it.
-First S&M Bikes shield logo in a BMX video, 33:51, spray painted on the side of the VW bus.  I assure you none of us had any idea how iconic that logo would become in the future. 
-First time the P.O.W House (Pro's Of Westminster, the first BMX rider house) was in a BMX video, 34:00.  Also the first time backyard BMX jumps were in s video.
-First tailwhip jump over doubles, Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson, 35:51.  It's a tow dragger, but we'll take it.  For years I thought this was the first tailwhip in any BMX video.  But Mike Krnaich nailed that one in the Bully Slow Ride video, which I never saw back then. 
-Edison Trails, Huntington Beach.  Before Sheep Hills was built, Edison was the spot for the serious H.B. area jumpers, like Chris Moeller, the S&M riders, and P.O.W House guys.
-First 1 hand, 1 foot 1/2 barspin air, Bob Kohl, 43:46.  His halfpipe, outside Chicago.
-First backflip jump(into water) by an actual freestyler (not Jose Yanez, the flip inventor), Jeff Cotter, 44:24.  Jeff, best known as a flatlander to us, worked with Jose in the circus in Japan, and learned flips from Jose.  He actually learned them ramp to ramp, right before I started editing, but I was on deadline, and refused to shoot video of it.  My mistake.  Also, I had footage of Mat Hoffman doing the first backflip fakie attempt in the U.S., in Indiana at the 2-Hip comp.  Ron Wilkerson asked me not to use that footage, he wanted it only in the next 2-hip video.  So I didn't use that shot in The Ultimate Weekend.
-First one hand backflip jump, into water, Jeff Cotter, 45:16.  I asked Jeff if he'd ever tried flip variations, while we were shooting, and he said, he hadn't.  So he gave it a shot, and the one hander went well.
-First no handed backflip attempt... ANYWHERE in a video, Jeff Cotter, into water, 45:16.
-First music by Howie Mandell's stage band, in a BMX video.  The Stain, led by Jon Stainbrook in Toledo, was a chameleon of a band.  The played punk shows as a band in the Toledo area.  Every major punk band stayed at Jon's house, when in the Toledo area, in those days.  He knows everyone in punk.  All the musicians did their own personal music (used in this video), and they were also Howie Mandell's stage band when he did comedy shows in that region.  The shots of Jeff and Mark  playing back stage were at a Howie show at University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, in the summer of 1990.  Jeff Kollman is still working as a musician today.

So that's it, that's the "firsts" I think I can safely claim from The Ultimate Weekend, back in 1990.   I watched Eddie Roman's/2-Hip's Ride Like a Man, and Bully's Slow Ride, to double check this list, and took several things off the list, that they had in their videos first.  The Ultimate Weekend came out in October 1990, and those videos, both really progressive as well, came out in the summer of 1990. 

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