In June of 1985, Jay Bickel and his parents offered to take me along to the 1985 AFA Masters contest in Venice Beach, California. Jay and I got along real well, and I paid them a fraction of what the trip cost, and owe them a lot for taking me to my first big freestyle contest. We stayed in Marina Del Rey Hotel, Jay's dad was a lawyer, and they always traveled in style. I had no idea how good I had it then.
After competing in the first two freestyle contests in Idaho (and winning 17 & Over flatland in spring of 1985), the Venice Beach '85 AFA Masters was my first major contest. Flatland and ramp contests were only one year old at the time. American Freestyle Association founder Bob Morales had moved his efforts from putting on BMX skatepark contests, to promoting BMX flatland and quarterpipe contests in 1984. Bob, then a 20-year-old rider/entrepreneur/promoter turned BMX freestyle into a sport, and opened it up to hundreds, later thousands, of hungry riders nationwide.
But the day before the actual flatland contest, we hopped in the Bickels' Mercedes station wagon, and headed out into Southern California traffic to see a couple of Jay's sponsors. Stop one was at ACS, the component company that made the plastic, spoked Z-Rims that I rode then. They also had a brand new thing that just came out, the ACS Rotor, back brake cable detangler device. The "Potts Mod," invented a couple years before, got us freestylers running our front brake cable through our stem bolt, which kept it from getting bound up on barspin and flatland tailwhip tricks. But the back brake cables were still an issue in those early days of freestyle. A series of inventors came up with three different "detangler" devices to solve that problem, in 1985 and 1986. The ACS Rotor was the first of those devices to come out, followed later by the Robert Peterson designed Skyway Spinmaster, and a bit later, but much more trick, the Gyro designed by Brian Scura. As luck would have it, Jay Bickel was co-sponsored by SE Bikes, and by ACS then.
So Mr. Bickel drove us through the craziest traffic I'd ever seen in my life, and we wound up at a pretty average looking industrial building, where ACS was housed. I don't remember much, but the guy we talked to there was real cool, and gave us a tour of the business. What I remember is he didn't really talk to Jay and I as kids, but actually listened to us, as riders, and seemed interested in my thoughts on riding Z-Rims, and how different BMX components worked. Then he showed us the ACS Rotors. We'd heard of them in the magazines, but they weren't out yet, and we hadn't seen one in person. He showed us the new Rotor, and I think it was set up on a bike, and asked us what we thought. As basic at the Rotor seems now, it seemed pretty freakin' amazing back then.
Much to both of our surprise, he handed Jay and I ACS Rotors, and we assured him we'd get them on our bikes, and ride them in the Venice Beach contest the next day. As crazy as it sounds, Jay Bickel and me, two pretty good, but not great riders, but kids from fucking IDAHO, were two of the first freestylers to actually compete with the ACS Rotors on our bikes. Rotors became standard on freestyle bikes in the next few months, but we just happened to get them before most of the factory guys. That was just luck and good timing. I think one other rider had a Rotor the next day at the Venice Beach contest. So Jay and I wound up having pro riders and top ams stopping to check out our bikes, and ask us about the Rotors. I'd never even seen any top riders in person at that point, let alone met and talked to them. Suddenly guys I saw photos of in the magazines were asking me about how the the Rotor worked. Crazy.
After repeatedly thanking the guy at ACS (I totally don't remember his name, sorry), we piled back into the station wagon and headed off to Long Beach. Another 45 minutes or an hour in traffic, on what seemed like gigantic freeways, and we rolled up to another industrial building. We headed inside, and were met by the guy the Bickels dealt with primarily, SE Bikes business manager, Mike Devitt. He was professional and friendly, and led us into the office.
I need to preface this by saying that I'd been riding BMX pretty seriously (for an Idaho kid) for 2 1/2 years then, since 1982. I'd been reading BMX magazines since late 1982, early 1983. I didn't know shit about the history of BMX. I was 18, nearly 19, and Jay was 16, I think. There were no BMX documentaries then, and even Jay's "old" magazines, only went back a year or two before mine did. I knew who the current racing pros were then, like Stu Thomsen, Greg Hill, Harry Leary, Brent and Brian Patterson, Eric and Robbie Rupe, and a few others. As a freestyler, I knew who the top freestylers were, R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, Woody Itson, Mike Dominguez, Brian Blyther, Ron Wilkerson, and so forth. But I didn't know anything about how long they had been riding. I didn't know anything about who ran the different BMX companies, or how they started, or any of that. I was fucking clueless on what BMX had been before 1982. I was a young kid dreaming of becoming a pro in a brand new sport, the history of BMX racing and freestyle didn't matter to me then.
With that in mind, Mike Devitt pointed to two guys sitting on a nearby desk. Both had dark hair. One had real curly, longish hair, and the other guy had a thick beard, and thick wavy hair, 70's style. Mike said, "This is Scot Breithaupt and Perry Kramer." Jay and his parents had met Scot before, and knew who Perry was. But to me, they were told older guys (mid to late 20's), goofing around. I said, "Hi." They talked to us a bit. I had no idea who I was talking to.
Then Mike led us out for a tour of the factory. I got another shock. As a kid who grew up in Ohio and Idaho, I'd been to several of the factories my dad worked at, and took tours of a few factories as a school kid. My dad was a draftsman/engineer, who worked in an office. But over the years, he took me to some of the factories where the things he designed, like custom locomotives and mining machines, were built. To me then, a factory was a huge building, it was loud, there were high ceilings, forklifts rolling around, and dozens or hundreds of people busy working on big machines everywhere.
So when we walked into the SE Bikes factory, I expected to see dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people, big machines, welders, machinists, forklifts driving around, and all of that. The SE bikes "factory" was fucking empty. And it was quiet. Nothing was happening. First we saw the shipping area. No one was there. There were five or six rows of big, industrial shelving racks, piled with boxes which had the familiar SE Bikes logo. The coolest thing was a shopping cart with a pair of handlebars welded on it. It had a number plate that said, "Shipper Ripper."
Then Mike led us through a big doorway to the factory side. There were pieces of frames and forks in places, and one guy busy welding. One welder, that was the SE "factory" workforce in the summer of 1985. The Bickels later told me that Scot, the founder, had gotten heavy into drugs a couple years earlier, and the company had nearly collapsed as he went deep into the dark side of life. With Mike running the business end of things now (in 1985), they were getting it going again, and that's why it seemed like this huge brand in my head, but only had 4 people working there. And Scot and Perry, at least at the time, weren't really working.
I honestly had no idea what they were even doing there. They acted more like kids hanging out at a bike shop, joking and goofing around, than business guys, when I first saw them. I had no idea those were two of the best racers in the history of BMX, and that Scot helped create BMX racing itself. I just saw two 20-something guys joking around.
But that didn't matter much, they had two"huge" 8 foot high quarterpipes in the back, facing each other, halfpipe style, with 20 or 30 feet of floor between. They were built so SE factory vert rider, Todd Anderson, could practice when he came by. Mike said, "You guys want to ride the ramps?" "Uh... YEAH!". I may have always sucked at riding ramps, but I still loved trying to ride them. We grabbed our bikes from the station wagon, Jay's SE Quadangle with a coaster brake, and my freewheel Skyway T/A, rockin' red Z-Rims, and we did our best to air out of those huge ramps. Jay had a slightly undervert, 6 foot tall quarterpipe, in their driveway, which is what we were used to riding. I think Jay got a foot or two out of the 8 foot ramps, and I aired a little under coping. But we had a great time anyhow.
We were taking a breather when we heard something that sounded like a chainsaw start up in the front of the warehouse. We also heard some laughing. Jay and I looked at each other, confused. Suddenly the noise got louder, and Scot came racing around a shelving unit on an 80cc dirtbike, foot out, carving the the turn on the slippery warehouse floor. He whooped as he blew past us, and disappeared around the corner, down the far aisle. He made 4 or 5 laps around the warehouse, and then we heard the motorcycle idle a minute, rev up again, then Perry came ripping around past us. Jay and I just shook our heads, and went back to riding the quarterpipes.
After we were pretty worn out, we wound up by the wooden shipping bench, and Scot pointed out photos taped to the wall behind it, telling stories about each one. I seriously had no idea how ingrained Scot Breithaupt was, or that he went back to the very beginning of BMX racing itself, in 1970 (Chill out Dutch guys, I know your grandpas rode cruisers on dirt 20 years earlier, but BMX began in 1970).
Scot ended up giving Jay and I each an old poster, he had a stack of about 100 of them. It had about 12 or 15 top racers, including Scot, Perry, Stu Thomsen, and the late Kyle Flemming, on it. It was an Oakley grips poster, and the caption was "Our R&D department works weekends." The poster came out in 1980, I think, so it was already old in 1985. I think Scot and Perry signed them for us, I honestly don't remember. I wasn't into autographs then. But the poster was on my wall for the next 2-3 years. Scot also found a photo of the old Team Terrible Bus, from its epic days, and then took us out back and showed us the the remains of the bus, rusting on the side of the building. He told us they once had a turret on it with a tennis ball cannon. When one of their riders would win, they'd shoot tennis balls out across the pits at races. I'm not sure if that was true or not, but it sounded cool. But someone drove under a low overhang at a hotel, and knocked off the turret, and about 20 bikes.
After a good hour of stories from Scot Breithaupt and Perry Kramer, we headed back to the Marina Del Rey Hotel, where we stayed in style all weekend. It was only after we left the SE factory that the Bickels told me that Perry Kramer was the guy the legendary PK Ripper bike was named after. "Whoa, really?" was my reply. There's an old saying that goes, "When a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets." I had no idea while talking to Scot and Perry that I was meeting two of the major forces in the history of BMX racing. Those two goofballs (as they seemed at first glance) did a lot for BMX in the 1970's and 1980's.
Jay and I spent a hour or so getting the ACS Rotors on our bikes, and dialing them in, which forced us to raise our stems and handlebars about an inch or inch and a half. It was the night before my first major contest, and with the Rotor on my bike, everything suddenly felt weird with the higher bars. So we adjusted our seats to match the higher handlebars, and then went out to the parking lot to practice our routines over and over and over, to get them down with our new ACS rotors. That was our first full day in Southern California that trip, for Jay Bickel and me, leading up to the Venice Beach AFA contest, the next day.
