Made my day seeing new stuff. Thanks Shephard!
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Recent street art in my area- 8/25/2020
Monday, August 24, 2020
Transitions: A bike, a suitcase, and $80
My wheels were in my big, old fashioned suitcase, the kind you carried, with no wheels. I had a box, about half the size of a bike box, that had the rest of my bike in it. When I checked in at the San Jose airport, I told them it was camping equipment, a trick I learned from Skyway pro, Robert Peterson. That saved me the $25 bike fee on the airplane. We could do that back in 1986. My parents dropped me off at San Jose airport, one of those airports where you still had to walk 100 yards out to the airplane to board it. The suitcase had my clothes, and wheels, I think I was running Araya 7X race wheels then, maybe I still had my red ACS Z-Rims, I can't remember. The box contained the rest of my bike. I had $80 in my wallet. The money was made working nights at a Pizza Hut that was just down the road from the Winchester Mystery House. I boarded the plane, and made the short flight down to LAX in Los Angeles. It was dusk, right at the end of July, 1986, when I landed. I was met by three guys, my new co-workers, Andy Jenkins, Craig "Gork" Barrette, and Mark "Lew" Lewman, the editorial staff of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.
Eleven issues of my San Jose Stylin' Xerox zine about the Golden Gate Park/Bay Area BMX freestyle scene, had landed me a job at Wizard Publications, publisher of those magazines. We piled into Gork's van, after handshakes and retrieving my luggage. We talked about freestyle, or something, as Gork drove down PCH, Pacific Coast Highway. PCH is anything but a highway there, it's a surface street, the ocean is not visible most of the time, and there are dozens of stop lights, and plenty of traffic. I don't remember the conversation in the van. I do remember that I was wearing Levi's and a long sleeve, button up shirt. The reason for that is because I was so fucking nervous about my new job, that I developed a serious case of the hives. Then I laid out to tan a couple days before, which apparently makes the hives worse. So I rocked jeans and button up shirts for more than a week, until the hives finally went away.
I had turned 20 years old three weeks earlier. I had never taken a single college course, after graduating from Boise High School in 1984, but I was replacing a guy with and English degree, Don "Don-Boy" Toshach. I would mostly be an assistant to the three other guys in the van, working on both magazines. But I would also be the new proofreader of both magazines. If one single mistake made it into print, in either magazine, it would be my fault. That's part of why I was so nervous. Plus I was just super uptight and anal retentive, and shy, in general. I was still a virgin at 20, and hoped BMX would relieve me of that. It finally did, but it took another year.
It was dark when we got to Torrance, and we didn't go to Gork and Lew's apartment, where I'd be sleeping on the couch for the time being. We went straight to the Wizard office, at 3162 Kashiwa Street, in Torrance. The reason for that is that the BMX Action 10 year anniversary party was that Saturday. They picked me up on Thursday night, and Friday would be my first day of official work.
But Gork parked the van, and the three guys led me into the the small door on the side of the small warehouse. We walked past the legendary TOL halfpipe that R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff had built a year or two before. It was surreal for me.
Only 11 months earlier, I was the dorky kid you see in the photos above. I was the manager of the the Boise Fun Spot, a tiny amusement park in Boise, Idaho. I was one of about 5 BMX freestylers in the Boise area, and half of the only freestyle team in town. Like riders all over the U.S., and a few parts of the world, I waited for every issue of FREESTYLIN' to come in the mail, and I read every fucking word, ads and all, at least twice, the first day each issue arrived. Then I read it again the next morning, usually. The magazines were our only view to the larger world of the weird, new, little sport of BMX freestyle. There was no internet, few videos, and no TV coverage of BMX back then. Suddenly, a year later, on a dark evening in July, I walked into the door of Wizard. By some crazy stroke of fate, my life totally changed in a day. I would be a small part of writing and putting out those magazines that were read anxiously by riders worldwide.
I wound up spending most of that night, sitting six feet off the ground, on a big shelving rack. I helped Gork go through a bike box full of color slides, photos taken during ten years of BMX Action magazine. We needed to find 100 of the best slides, for a slide show to play at the anniversary party. I was clueless on the history of BMX racing, and when I found some interesting slides, I'd show Gork, and he'd school me on who that was, and tell me about them. Slide by slide, I spent my first night learning about th ehistory of BMX racing. Finding photos of "Trash Can" Morgan, jumping in combat boots, was the highlight of the night for me.
About three hours later, we headed back to the apartment, and I made my bed on the couch, and we all headed off to sleep pretty quick. I struggled with feelings of being overwhelmed, would I be able to actually do me new job? I wondered why my my zine had landed me the job. But I was really tired, and I fell asleep pretty quick.
Sometimes we make slow steady progress in life. Sometimes we seem to head backwards, and everything goes wrong for a while. Sometimes we have to struggle to simply survive for a long period of time, and then, suddenly an amazing opportunity comes out of nowhere. That chance gives us the opportunity to show who we really are, and who we are capable of becoming. Either we sack up and take a shot, or we freak out and don't take the opportunity, and spend our lives regretting it. Starting that job at Wizard Publications, that night at the end of July 1986, changed the entire course of my life. And I'm glad I took the job, and took the chance to head off on my own in Southern California. It's been a wild ride since, but that job started me on a real world education I never would have got any other way.
Sunday, August 16, 2020
California Dreamin': Watching The Wrecking Crew live in 2008
Three legendary members of The Wrecking Crew, Don Randi on keyboards on the left, Jerry Cole on guitar next to him, and Hal Blaine on drums, in the back. This little, epic, gig came together from the work of Newport Beach singer/songwriter Kerry Getz. Filling out the show are friends of Kerry's, Adam Marsland, Teresa Cowles, Alan Lebeouf, and Shawn Bryant. This show took place in the Anaheim Marriott hotel lobby, during the NAMM trade show, which drew about 70,000 musicians and industry people from around the world. I was watching this show live, sitting on a big couch, 15 feet from the stage, sitting next to Jerry's wife, and a friend of hers. I didn't know how amazing of a show I was seeing at the time. These three hadn't played together in years at the time.
How good were these guys? Here's Don Randi, known as Elvis' favorite piano player, swinging with some friends a few years ago. Here's an 80-something Hal Baine on drums, playing a part he played on the Paul Revere & the Raiders hit in the 1970's, "Indian Reservation." Here's Jerry Cole, back in the day, playing a few licks on top of a rather famous piano. These guys were three of the Los Angeles studio session musicians who recorded more than 180 hit records in the 1960's and 1970's.
Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, Sonny & Cher, The Mamas & The Papas, The Monkees, hit TV show intros like Bonanza, Batman, Mission Impossible, and many more. This group of 20 or 30 musicians played the music on the actual albums for dozens of bands. Together, this group became known as The Wrecking Crew. These were the Los Angeles musicians' musicians of their era. They could play anything, any style, pick up a new song in minutes, and come up with new licks and riffs and new arrangements to make a band's mediocre song into a radio hit. So many of the songs most of us heard on the radio growing up. For the Baby Boomers, and the younger years of Generation Xers, like myself, The Wrecking Crew was the musicians we heard on the radio much of the time. So many of the songs these people recorded our ingrained into our lives, these 20-30 musicians wrote much of the soundtrack of our lives. Do any of these songs sound familiar? This is some of the music the Wrecking Crew gave us.
"California Dreamin'"- The Mamas and the Papas
"Good Vibrations"- The Beach Boys
"California Girls"- The Beach Boys
"You've Lost That Loving Feelin"- The Righteous Brothers
"Be My Baby"- The Ronettes
"Da Do Ron Ron"- The Crystals
"I Got You Babe"- Sonny & Cher
"These Boots Are Made For Walking"- Nancy Sinatra
"Indian Reservation"- Paul Revere and the Raiders
"Gypsies Tramps and Thieves"- Cher
"Love Will Keep Us Together"- The Captain & Tenille
"Daydream Believer"- The Monkees
"Witchita Lineman"- Glen Campbell
Sometimes a thought pops in your mind, and you follow it, and it leads to something amazing you never expected. That's how I came to be watching three members of The Wrecking Crew play with a few younger musicians, one night in early 2008.
The night the night before the gig above, Kerry Getz, who brought these musicians together, told me of the name The Wrecking Crew. Word had it that the name, "The Wrecking Crew," came because they would take a band's song, throw much of it out, completely re-write and rearrange the music, and make it better. This group of L.A. session musicians pumped out hit after hit after hit. So everybody wanted them to play on their albums, to hire these musicians for studio sessions. Then the bands themselves had to learn to play the upgraded, rewritten version, of their own songs before they could tour. Or in many cases, especially in the 60's, producers would cut records with these studio session musicians, and then hire people to be the band for that record.
NAMM stands for the National Association of Music Merchants, and every year they have a huge trade show in Anaheim, California, that draws 70,000 or so musicians and music industry people from around the world. Kerry Getz is an Orange County local singer/songwriter, and she would put together acts to perform in the lobby of the Anaheim Marriott each evening during NAMM. The Marriott and the Hilton are the two main hotels right by the Anaheim Convention Center. During NAMM, the lobbies of those two hotels, have a Who's Who of the music industry walking through them. You never know who might be playing, or walking by, or standing there, listening, with a drink in hand. Playing those lobbies were a great chance for up and coming musicians to show their stuff to industry people, and provided ambience to people wandering by, after a day at the trade show.
I became a fan of Kerry's after seeing her play at Triangle Square in Costa Mesa, one afternoon in 2000 or 2001, I think. I started going to her local gigs a few years later, taking a little time off when I was a taxi driver. One night, in January 2007, during NAMM, I was taking a couple of people in my cab to the Anaheim Marriott, and told them my friend Kerry booked the acts playing in the lobby, and to check the shows out. The couple in my cab said, "Oh we know Kerry! Yeah, she finds great musicians every year to play. You should come in watch them." So I parked my cab, after dropping the couple off out front. I went into the Marriott, and watched 3 or 4 bands play, and talked to Kerry a bit
A year later, the taxi industry had taken a dive, and I had wound up homeless in Orange County. Switching buses in Anaheim one night, I saw a bunch of musicians, and realized the NAMM trade show was there. So I headed into the Marriott, to see a free gig. I wasn't particularly grungy that day, and walked right in. After all, it was a lobby filled with a couple hundred musicians, roadie types, industry people, and others, so I didn't look too out of place. I watched a band or two play, then saw Kerry and said, "Hi." She was super busy, and her voice was hoarse, keeping two stages of bands going, but we talked a couple minutes. Then she said, "You have to come back tomorrow, I have The Wrecking Crew coming to play!" I had no idea who that was, but I knew Kerry herself is a musicians' musician, insanely talented, and she LIVES music. So I knew I had to come back the next night, and I did. That's how I found myself sitting on a big fluffy couch, watching the gig above. Don, Jerry, and Hal don't really go off in "California Dreamin'" above, but in the course of the 45 minutes or so set that night, they all got a chance to show their chops. Like everyone watching, maybe 40 people, I'd heard all of these songs hundreds of times each growing up. I had some sense that it was really cool seeing these studio musicians playing these classic songs. But I really had no sense of just how fucking amazing this little gig was.
So thanks to Kerry Getz for giving me the heads up about this amazing gig, 12 years ago. Here's Kerry playing a her cover of a song you all know well. Personally, I like this version better than the original, or any cover I've heard. And here's my favorite song of Kerry's originals, "This Thorny Rose." As a taxi driver years ago, I could never decided if I was a "wayward rogue" or a "guttersnipe," mentioned in this song. This song sums up the vibe of being a taxi driver, working all night, in the night world, the dark side of life that most people in the day pretends doesn't exist.
Seven years after the gig above, Donny Tedesco, son of Wrecking Crew member, and guitarist, Tommy Tedesco, managed to come out with a great documentary about The Wrecking Crew. It was years of struggle to get the music rights, and make it happen. If you're a musician, or simply like music, I highly recommend watching this film.
Sunday, August 9, 2020
A firsthand story I heard of the Nazi takeover of Germany
Here's a historical video of prisoners found when the Allies arrived at the Nazi concentration camps in Germany, in 1945.
As a taxi driver in the Huntington Beach area, from 2003-2007, I spent all day in my cab. I actually lived in my taxi most of that time, so I was in the car 22 hours a day, or more, usually working 14-18 hours, and sleeping a few. In those days before smartphones and wifi and streaming everything, I listened to the radio much of the time. Standard music stations get old real fast when you spend that much time in a car, so I listened to KPFK, a listener-sponsored station from L.A.. They had a wide variety of programing, mostly left leaning news, and local L.A. news shows in the morning, and interview shows and various music shows at other times.
KPFK is not a public funded radio station, and it's not part of NPR. It's one of five stations in the U.S. that are part of the Pacifica radio network, which goes back to 1949, up in Berkeley, California. They are all funded almost entirely by listener donations. It was, and is, basically a radio network built by activists. But it has a wide variety of different programs, and a lot of them have smart people to listen to, unlike ratings based talk radio, and pop music stations. Since they go back to 1949, Pacifica also has an incredible archive of recordings, ranging from famous political speeches from decades ago, to interviews with well known people over 50 years, to music like Billie Holiday sing "Strange Fruit" live. Once in a while show hosts dive into the immense Pacifica Radio Archives to find historical recordings, for a show.
One day they played an interview with a woman who was a young girl of 8 or 9, when the Nazis took over Germany, in the 1930's. It was an interview recorded in the 1960's or 1970's, I believe. The part of that interview that stuck with me was the woman talking about when she first realized something was really wrong with her country then. Her family lived in Berlin, and one day they drove into the city, and she said she noticed that the homeless people we all gone. There were several homeless people they would drive by in certain areas, and overnight, they had all disappeared.
What really struck this young girl then was that none of the adults said anything about it. They all pretended that it hadn't happened. The woman being interviewed, remembering back to that time as a girl, said that day was the day she sensed something really bad was going on, but it took quite a while to figure it out, because no one was talking about the things happening, like the homeless people all disappearing overnight.
It was quite a while before the stories of Jews, Gypsies, political dissidents, intellectuals, gays, and other groups being rounded up began to creep through German society. Today, primarily because of the 6 million Jews and others murdered in the camps, we know of the atrocities, and least some of them, that went on. But the woman in that interview said the homeless people were the first group to disappear, and no adult said a thing. Later Germans believed they were the first people taken to the concentration camps, and executed.
In this crazy time of 2020, dealing with a pandemic, and some people in our government who seem bent on a drive towards authoritarianism, and in particular, the recent abductions of Americans recorded by unmarked commandos in unmarked white vans, I was reminded of the woman's story I heard on the radio, 15 or so years ago. As the saying goes, "Those who don't learn from history, are destined to repeat it."
Will we let the United States of American, this grand experiment in democracy, end, and devolve into a horrific dictatorship? Time will tell. Authoritarian regimes don't take control, they are given control by people living in fear. We are making many of the same mistakes the Germans made. How far will we let things decline? Hopefully not much farther.
Legend has it that people outside Independence Hall, in 1787, asked Ben Franklin what kind of country the leaders inside had crafted. Franklin reportedly replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." I, personally, want to keep it. What about you?
Monday, August 3, 2020
This blog hit 1,000 page views!
Homer and Bart, will you kindly do your thing?
Thank you. I started this blog on March 4th, 2020, right as the Covid-19 pandemic got going here. Being homeless, I had to search out wifi spots and power outlets for months, just to blog. So I didn't do near as many posts in March, April, and May as I normally would have. But then, nothing it "normal" now.
I never have any idea if anyone will actually check out my new idea when I start a blog. Seriously, I don't. I just feel it's time for a new direction, and I get to work. My last main blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear, was creeping up on 100,000 page views, my 2nd blog to hit that mark in the last 12 years. So I decided to retire it at that point, and take my BMX stories, weird life stories, my Sharpie Scribble Style art, and adventures, big and small, to this blog. I'm also writing my brainiac economic/futurist ideas in another blog, The Phoenix Great Depression.
More to come on both blogs for quite a while to come, I hope. Thanks for checking this blog out, especially since all my blogs are now banned from linking on Facebook and Instagram, because of one blog post. Hey, shit happens...
OK, back to work on my end. Hope I write some stuff you like.
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Doing a photo shoot with Eddie Fiola at Pipeline
Classic Eddie Fiola, tearing up the Pipe Bowl at Pipeline Skatepark, Upland, California, 1985.
If you're a BMX freestyler from the 1980's, you know BMX racing, and then freestyle, were born in Southern California. The early stars were guys that grew up in the SoCal BMX scene, and took to trick riding. Bob Haro got the ball rolling, then came R.L. Osborn, Bob Morales, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Martin Aparijo, Woody Itson, Mike Dominguez, and several others. These were guys that were there in Southern California in the early 1980's, and then freestyle began to grow into a sport and a lifestyle.
As these guys started getting photos in the magazines "trick riding," and riding in skateparks, the idea spread. Weird kids across the U.S., the U.K., and around the world got stoked on this new thing called BMX freestyle. I was one of those kids. I got into BMX in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho, in 1982. Blue Valley trailer park had about a dozen teenage guys, and 4 teenage girls. One girl was older than all of us, and dated older guys. Of the remaining three girls, one had a long term boyfriend, one was a prude, and the last one was ugly, but liked to mess around. Since all of us were taking turns with the one ugly girl, we had a lot of time on our hands, out in the desert, far from town. So we started riding our crappy BMX bikes every evening, and trying to outdo each other. BMX became our thing that summer, and we all started racing at the end of the 1982 season.
We also started buying BMX magazines in late 1982. In the January 1983 issue of BMX Plus!, I saw an article that blew my mind. You can find that article, on scan page 27, if you look up the issue here. My mind was blown by this photo of a HUGE, DEEP skatepark bowl, with a pile of bikes in the bottom, and all these riders sitting on the lip of the pool. I had no idea that skatepark pools like that, the Combi-Pool at Pipeline Skatepark, even existed. I had no idea BMXers rode in skateparks then. It was all new to me. I'd never lived in a city that had a skatepark. I'd never seen one. I lived in Ohio as a kid, then New Mexico and then Idaho. Lots of woods, some desert, no skateparks. The article in BMX Plus! opened up a whole new world to me, showing me the gnarliest form of BMX... skatepark riding.
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That was way before the internet, before rider-made videos, a time when regional things could remain unknown to the larger world. This was back when there were 15 channels on TV, only BMX Plus! was on the news stand at Albertson's grocery store in Boise, and most of BMX was unknown to us kids across the U.S. and the world. All we had were the magazines, BMX Plus! at first, and then we discovered BMX Action when we started buying bikes parts, at Bob's Bikes (and Lawn Mower Repair), in Boise. For all of us kids riding out in the non-California part of the world, the BMX magazines were our only look at the BMX pros and riding then.
As 1983 progressed, and I got more into racing, and then into freestyle, I saw more and more photos and articles with Eddie Fiola, the original King of the Skateparks. Like riders all over, I saw him as the best known rider in the sport at the time, though R.L. Osborn was close. I went to Boise High School, had 400 kids in my class, and maybe 3 of them, all skaters, had heard of Eddie Fiola then. I was the only BMX freestyler in my school. He was Michael Jordan in my world of freestyle, but freestyle was still unknown to mainstream Boise culture.
While I began to dream of someday becoming a pro freestyler, and going on tour across the country, I also lived in an everyday world where dreams didn't come true. It was high school in small town America, we all drank beer on the weekends, and talked big about things we wanted to do someday, but nobody every actually made those dreams happen. People in magazines and on TV were "those other people," in that weird world of famous people. And normal people knew we'd never be a part of that world. We'd grow up, flunk out of college, and work at some factory job that we hated our whole lives. That was the "real world," in 1983, while I was in high school. But I wasn't "normal," I was weird, and I just kept dreaming of some kind of life other than working in a factory or office at a job I hated.
Racing turned into freestyle for me, and I joined Idaho's first, and only, trick team, with Justin Bickel and Wayne Moore. Then Wayne retired, at the ripe old age of 17, and Justin and I reformed the team, naming it the Critical Condition Stunt Team. We did a few free shows, and rode in a bunch of parades around Boise. BMX freestyle became my thing.
One thing led to another, and in 1985, my dad got a job in San Jose, California. My family moved there. I finished my summer job in Boise, then drove to San Jose. If you've read my blogs for a while, you know I started a zine, met the Curb Dogs, Skyway team, and the Golden Gate Park crew, and rode with those guys for a year. Then Andy Jenkins, FREESTYLIN' magazine editor, called up one day, and offered me a potential job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN', based on 11 issues of my zine.
Less than a year after leaving Boise, Idaho, I was suddenly working at Wizard Publications, was roommates with Gork and Lew, and Eddie Fiola came in the offices regularly, because he was dating Windy Osborn then, and to ride the T.O.L. Ramp out in the parking lot. Somehow, and it still baffles me, a big part of my ridiculous dream to make it in BMX freestyle, came true. OK, I never became a pro rider, I was along way from that. But I wound up knowing all the pros, going on photos shoots, sessioning with them at The Spot at night, or on weekends. I became a part of the BMX industry, but was still that kid from Idaho thinking "Holy shit! Is this really happening?" as I hung out with the people who'd been my heroes only months earlier.
This is the AFA freestyle newsletter in 1987, on the left is the first issue I worked on, but done mostly by Bob Morales. On the left is the renamed newsletter, with my photo of Eddie Fiola at Pipeline on the cover, a few months later.
The thing about California, Southern California, in particular, is that it has a culture where a lot of people not only dream big, but then work to achieve their dreams. The freestylers coming up in the late 1970's, and early 1980's, were in Southern California culture, they knew people who had built businesses, or made big money in real estate, or appeared in TV shows or movies, or tried weird and creative ideas. While most Californians are pretty normal, working people, there's always been a culture of trying new things out here.
In most of the U.S., and other countries, I imagine, people with new ideas were made fun of, and often stamped out by the local powers at be. California has been a place where weird ideas can germinate and take root, for at least 200 or 300 years, maybe longer. California itself was a weird idea, first as part of Mexico, then later part of the U.S. A small group in NorCal even pretended to be their own country for a while. So while BMX freestyle was a "cool new thing" to try for the early riders like Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, R.L. Osborn, Mike Buff, Bob Morales, and others, it was something earth shattering and amazing to the rest of us across the country and the world. The places these riders rode, the buildings where the magazines were located, the ramps and pools and riding spots we saw in the magazines, became truly legendary places to those of us who got into riding in places outside of SoCal.
Few places were on the scale of Pipeline Skatepark, in Upland. Up-land, even the name of the city seemed to know big air would happen there. The Pipe Bowl, with its 8 foot transition and 4 feet of vert, but no coping, with Eddie and Brian and Mike blasting 7-8-9 feet out, and that huge full pipe in the background, that was hallowed ground to us young riders of the mid-80's. The most amazing air photos of 1983-1984-1985 all seemed to happen in that one pool.
Somehow, in late August or September of 1987, I wound up there one afternoon, shooting photos of Eddie Fiola. Armed with my Pentax ME Super, a couple rolls of film, and the stock, 50mm lens, I walked around the pool whose photos I'd drooled over for years. I got laid off at Wizard, in December 1986, mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. I spent a month riding with Craig Grasso every day (which I highly recommend), and then Bob Morales hired me to be editor/photographer of the AFA newsletter. We decided to do the main interview and photos with Eddie one month, so I called him up and set-up a photo shoot.
Here's the weird thing. At that time, in 1987, there was this story going around the BMX industry that Eddie Fiola was burned out on riding. The skatepark era had come and gone. We were in the AFA contest, quarterpipe era. Yeah, Eddie ripped on quarterpipes, but there was a whole new group of riders coming up and challenging "the old pros." Todd Anderson, Dino Deluca, Dave Voelker, Dennis McCoy, Josh White, Joe Johnson, and that crazy young kid from Oklahoma, Mathew Hoffman. They were all nipping at the heels of Fiola, Blyther, and Dominguez on vert. Plus GT made their riders tour all the freakin' time. The word in the industry, in late 1987, was that Eddie Fiola had had enough. He was going to ride out his three year contract, and walk away from BMX freestyle. Maybe he'd go act in commercials in Hollywood or something, he'd done a bit of that. Nobody knew. Anyhow, that was the industry rumor when I drove the AFA van up to Pipeline skatepark one afternoon in 1987, to meet Eddie Fiola, shoot photos, and tape an interview.
I'd only been there once, with Justin Bickel and his family, in 1985. We didn't get to ride, we just looked through the fence. The Pipe Bowl seemed so much smaller, and the full pipe bigger, in real life. The place was still legendary, and mysterious, to me in 1987. Eddie Fiola showed up, wearing Levi's and a T-shirt, and we went in. In about 60 seconds, the whole myth of Eddie Fiola being a burned out pro blew apart. Eddie just started fucking SHREDDING the Pipe Bowl. And he was having FUN. He was on home turf, no contest, no crowd, no sponsor's banners on the fence, only a handful of skaters in the other pools. It was just me and Eddie at the Pipe Bowl. And he was going off. Huge airs, 7-8 feet+ out of the 12 foot deep bowl. His classic one hander-one footers, and other variations. He carved high over vert in the full pipe. He talked to me as he was riding. I saw a whole bunch of the lines we never saw in magazines, the smoothness, the flowing style.
I wanted to get a photo of Eddie doing the footplant at the back of the pipe. By this point, I'd seen a couple of videos of Eddie riding the Pipe Bowl, and he always did a footplant on the five foot fence, above a ten foot deep section of pool, behind the full pipe. We never saw that in the magazines, and it was basically a stall point for him. But it was so much gnarlier in person, and it was something there'd never been a photo of in the magazines. I wanted to catch something I hadn't seen before, so my sketchy photo of his footplant became the cover shot. There were a few more photos of Eddie in the article, but I lost my copy of this newsletter about 30 years ago. The photo above of the newsletter just popped up on Facebook.
Yes, is was the AFA newsletter, not near as cool as a magazine photo. Eddie was doing me, Bob Morales, and the AFA a favor by letting me do that shoot. He could have blown it off. The cool thing about the AFA newsletter was that every serious freestyle got a copy mailed to them. The might not have talked about it, but everybody flipped through the AFA newsletter back then.
I was stoked Eddie did that photo shoot. Because watching Eddie Fiola ride the Pipe Bowl was magic. And to walk the edge of the bowl shooting photos, where Oz, John Ker, Windy, Guy-B and others had shot the photos that made me want to stick with freestyle years before, was fucking amazing. Eddie rode quarterpipes well. And he tore up the T.O.L. ramp at Wizard. But only at a skatepark, with all kinds of lines and terrain, could I really see what made Eddie Fiola the original King of the Skateparks, the #1 guy for us kids in 1983-1984, as "freestyle" blew up in the magazines. His flow and style in the pool showed me why freestyle was such a cool thing.
Looking back from 33 years later, Eddie and Martin ride flatland for fun at HB Tuesdays every week (in Huntington Beach, either by the pier, or across from the Hyatt, in the parking lot). I've also seen shots of him riding pump tracks, which looks like a blast. So much for the "burnout" industry rumor, from way back then. Riding bikes is still fun, and always will be, and Eddie's got as much style now, as ever.
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