This was my first trip as a cameraman for Unreel Productions. This is all my footage, the editing (or lack of it) and hilarious commentary is by Eddie Roman and friends. This is in the last half of the 1990 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, spring, 1989. I was the only guy in the gym with a professional level video camera, shooting with a rental Ikegami betacam that weekend.
After about a year and a half working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video production company, they entrusted me to fly across the country and shoot video. That doesn't sound like a big deal today, but the betacam pro video cameras we used cost about $50,000 each then. In this case, I flew to into Canada, with the lovely Leslie, a new woman in the Vision promotions department. She had worked for the NFL, and was completely dialed on smart business traveling. I was not. I got yelled at in customs in Canada, because I only had my driver's license, not a passport. "You guys act like Canada's just your back yard, eh. We're another country!" I think that customs woman was a former lineman in the Canadian Football League, but she eventually let me in, as Leslie sailed through, passport in hand.
We got a rental car, and drove somewhere to rent my camera for the weekend, better than Unreel's Sony betacam's, I wound up with an Ikegami component Betacam, 35 pounds of 1989 high tech. While betacam sounds like betamax, it was a different system. The tapes looked the same, but betacam was broadcast quality, what TV stations used, and betamax was like VHS. Then we drove to the hotel, where I hadn't bothered to get a reservation, I thought the Vision promotions people handled that. Leslie, of course, had her room, and I asked to share, since they were out of rooms, or at least said they were. I told her I'd sleep in the bath tub or something. Used to dealing with sweet talking, but not very organized football players, Leslie said something along the lines of "Not a fucking chance, you can sleep in the car." I think I had them call Ron Wilkerson or something, and once they found out I was working for the big sponsor of 2-Hip, Vision Street Wear, they released a blocked off room, so I was in business.
Somewhere in the hotel, lugging the heavy camera bag and my old-fashioned (no wheels) suitcase, I ran into Rob Dodds. He was a good vert rider form western Canada, we'd met at a contest in Whistler three years before. Rob's sponsors sent him to the contest, but saving money on rooms always helped. Back then, half of us showed up at contests like that, and I told Rob he could crash on the couch in my room. Whoever had rooms paid for in those days, often let a couple (or so) riders crash on the floor for the weekend. A couple years later, I once rented a room on my credit card, and had 16 roommates for the weekend.
While we were unpacking, and Rob was building his bike, and I was trying to figure out how to work the Ikegami, Rob told me he'd been trying no-handed 540's back home. Sure, those are done regularly now, but in 1989, he might as well have said he was trying a corked out 1440 with a quad tailwhip. A no-handed 540 seemed completely insane at the time. But then, Rob was a Canadian, AND a vert rider. He got his bike dialed, I figured out the Ikegami, and we headed to the college gymnasium, where the practice sessions were taking place. Leslie, by then, had figured out I was pretty much an idiot, and went her own way to promote Vision Street Wear. I think she was putting up contest banners around the gym.
Since I'd worked for FREESTYLIN', the AFA, and Vision/Unreel over the three previous years, I knew Ron Wilkerson, all the photographers, and the top riders already. So that was cool. I was just nervous about fucking up something on the camera, and either missing good footage, or breaking a $50,000 video camera. Despite being a "video technician" back at Unreel (officially, anyhow), technology and I never had a good relationship, and really expensive pieces of tech, like the Ikegami, scared the shit out of me. I was really uptight back then, and super anal retentive about pretty much everything. But once I got a little footage shot, the camera and me got along fine.
When I got up on the deck of the ramp, the main obstacle became John Ker, the BMX Plus photographer. John's a good guy, but he'd jump in front of me, or anyone, for a good shot. With the huge Betacam on my shoulder, my entire right side became a blind spot. I soon realized that gave me a great advantage. If I got on the left side of the deck, I couldn't see John, and the other photographers. So if John got in my space, I'd swing the camera to the left, and clock him in the head with the big, heavy, back end of the camera, and say, "Oh damn, I'm sorry, you're in my blind spot." I did that to John all weekend, and at every King of Vert after. Heh, heh, heh. There wasn't just competition among the riders, it got pretty competitive for the camera angles on the deck, as well.
As Eddie Roman says in the funny commentary, the mobile 2-Hip contest ramp was known as the "boat hull." Usually one side was a little under vert, and one side was a bit over vert, and riders felt like they were riding a huge letter "V", tilted to one side. But they ripped it up anyway. Joe Johnson seemed to be about the only rider who could consistently do good variations on both sides of the ramp. If you watch that clip, you'll see that almost every rider, pros included, have a pump side of the ramp, and a variation side. Back to back to back variations weren't the norm back then, and Joe was the one guy leading the pack in pulling off lots of variations on both sides.
The talk of that weekend was some unknown guy from Canada called "The Terminator." He was some crazy guy, like a Hugo Gonzalez-type mentality, the guy who would try something completely insane. He was an amateur that none of us in the states had ever heard of. But word was that he was going to try some kind of backlfip on the vert ramp. At the time, only Jose Yanez, the weird, lake jumper guy from Arizona, had landed, or even tried, a backflip on a BMX bike. He did it in 1984, and 5 years later, no freestyler or racer had tried it. Nobody was sure what this Terminator guy had in mind, some said it was a abubaca to backflip, and some said he was going to try a backflip fakie. Any kind of flip trick on a vert ramp seemed death defying then.
So that's what all of us were looking forward to all weekend. Finally, the amateur finals came around, and the Terminator went through some decent variations, then rolled in and went for the trick we'd all been waiting for. He went up for a fakie air, back wheel near coping height, and he leaned back awkwardly... then ejected and dropped hard to the flat bottom. And it was like all the air left the room. "That was it?" we all thought. He didn't even remotely commit to the flip, and it was a bad crash for that era. But he limped away without serious injury. After his run, all the hype of the weekend was gone. The vibe in the room settled into a backyard ramp session vibe, just everyone riding an dpushing for fun. Except, it was a jam with the best riders of the era, except Eddie Fiola, who was doing shows somewhere.
The 300 or 400 spectators, and all the riders, just thought, OK, now we just chill and watch everyone else do their stuff. The Canadians were psyched to see the factory pros, and top ams ride in person. Us industry people were just thinking, "OK, it's another 2-Hip King of Vert, let's get some good photos or video." There was no big expectations of any big tricks after The Terminator's run. It was just a big vert jam vibe.
In this video above, we see ams like Jon Byers, Gary Pollak, Steve Swope, and Chris Potts, among others, ripping it up. Then pro, Joe Johnson (white GT uniform), nails a huge tailwhip air, which he invented. Then he hucks... and lands, the first double tailwhip air EVER (at 11:30 above). What? The jam vibe just keeps building and riders kept ripping.
The 900 had been in people's minds since late 1987, when Mike Dominguez talked about trying them on his own ramp. While there's no video or photos, Mike landed a couple 900's, without a crowd, in 1987 or 1988. Honestly, some people weren't sure he had actually landed one, and even for the incredible Mike Dominguez, it was a "Merry Christmas" trick. Then, at the 1987 2-Hip finals at Wilkerson's Enchanted Ramp, Dominguez came within a hair of landing a 900 in a contest (4:56 in this video). Suddenly, the mythical 900 air seemed possible to the top riders, and it was a question of who would land the first one at a contest.
The Kitchener contest was almost a year and a half later. Several riders hucked 900 attempts at the end of their runs, but still no one had landed the elusive 900 at a contest, or even for photos or video. In this video, we see Brian Blyther and Dave Voelker both huck 900 attempts, and both get near the 720 point in the rotation. Then comes Mat Hoffman, who I think was still an amateur at this point. Mat hucks a 900 attempt near the end of this video, and gets as close as Dominguez did in 1987. So Mat gets up and tries again, and at 14:43 in this video, he lands the mythical 900, the first time it had ever been done in a contest, or on video. History is made, in a big way, in BMX vert riding.
As luck would have it, that happened at the first contest I worked as a video cameraman, with a pro quality video camera on my shoulder. Here are the other two main angles of Mat's first 900. I'm not sure who was on the deck, but it's Eddie Roman, with his S-VHS camera, catching the 9 from the ground. When Mat does the warm up airs in the first shot, you can see me on the opposite deck, with the Ikegami, I'm the second guy from the right on the deck, just to the right of Mat in the air. I was was wearing the ever-non-fashionable Vision Street Wear spotted "cow" pants. Hey, it was the 1980's. After Mat's 900, and Joe's first double tailwhip air, I think we were all on a natural high, (and a few guys had herbal highs, as well), as we walked out of the gymnasium.
Back in the hotel room, the Ikegami drove Rob Dodds and me crazy. Pro video cameras, in those days, did not have playback. The tapes were pro betacam, which couldn't be played, except in pro video decks. So I couldn't go back and watch my footage. As luck would have it, though, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, and Dennis McCoy were staying in the room next to us. Rob and I headed out, to go eat dinner, just as Swope and Dennis walked out to go eat. We asked, "Where's Mat?" Steve Swope said, "look through the hole," pointing at their door. For some reason, the peephole in their room door got knocked out, over the course of the weekend, so Rob and I took turns looking in it, from the outside. Mat Hoffman was sitting there with someone's camera hooked up to the room's TV. He'd play the video, then rewind, then play it again. He was sitting in a chair right in front of the TV. He was watching his 900, over and over again, analyzing it, in whatever way Mat analyzes his riding.
Dennis McCoy shook his head, "He's been doing that for an hour, watching it over and over." We talked with Steve and Dennis for a minute or two, they were heading to dinner, too. Or trying to, except they couldn't get Mat away from the TV. Finally they walked back in their room, "Mat, c'mon, we gotta go eat." It took a couple more minutes, but they got Mat away from watching the footage, and the five of us headed to a Denny's-style diner, next to the hotel, for dinner. A bunch of other riders were heading that way as well. On the walk to the diner, Rob told Mat about his attempts at no-handed 540's. That got Mat's attention, and they were soon talking shop, vert guy style, trying to figure out how to do a no-handed 540 without the bike drifting away, mid air. That's the problem Rob had been having with that trick.
The five of us, Mat, Steve Swope, Dennis, Rob Dodds, and me, wound up at a table, pigging out on some good diner food. There were probably 30 or 40 other riders in the diner, it was a good size restaurant. Since all of us had witnessed Mat Hoffman make major freestyle history by landing the 900, riders kept walking up an congratulating Mat on the 9. When not talking to the riders walking up, Mat and Rob kept working out how to make a no-handed 540 actually happen. Guess what trick Mat debuted at the next King of Vert, at Woodward camp. You got it, Mat nailed a no-handed 540.
We stayed over Sunday night, and Leslie and I took the rented Ikegami camera back, then flew out of Canada, and back to California. After a rough start at traveling for work, I was beginning to get the hang of things, and headed back to California, and back to normal life. But I wasn't on the same flight as Leslie, so she asked me to fly stand-by, so we could be on the same flight, out of Chicago. Luckily I got a seat, and Leslie and I got along much better on the way home.
Finally back at Unreel, I got to make sure my footage came out. Unreel was weird, as production companies go, and the footage from this contest never got used in a Vision video. But 2-Hip also had the rights to use the footage, and Ron Wilkerson tapped Eddie Roman to make the 1990 2-Hip video, and we have this hilarious video above from Kitchener.
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