AFA Austin Pro Flatland- AFA Masters Round 3- 1987

This is the third video I produced for the AFA in 1987.  AFA Masters Round 3, Austin Texas, late spring of 1987.  

Three things that actually happened in my life

 I've had a lot of weird stuff happen in my life, particularly in the last 23 years or so.  While I've been living my odd life, and trying to make a living, here are three weird things that actually happened.  

Late September 2001- I went into my bank one day, Union Bank, then on the corner of Bolsa Chica and Heil in Huntington Beach.  It was two to three weeks after the 9/11 attacks happened, and people were pretty freaked out and paranoid about other events potentially happening.  I was about $4 overdrawn in my checking account, an account I'd had for 12 or 13 years, since I worked at Vision/Unreel Productions in the late 1980's.  The bank teller didn't take my money, and went to talk to a supervisor.  After several minutes, she directed me to another area, saying the bank manager needed to talk to me.  The bank manager, a woman I'd never talked to before, said I couldn't add money to my account.  She gave me a check for $18, seemed visibly afraid of me, and said I couldn't have an account at that bank anymore.  I was confused, and couldn't figure out what was going on.  Over the next couple months, it seemed some group somewhere was putting pressure on my life.  Things have been weird since.    

Spring of 2008- The weekend after Thanksgiving in 2007, I dropped off my taxi for the last time.  The company had flooded the county with cabs, and I just wasn't able to make any money any more.  My weekly taxi lease was about $550 per week, and I had to spend about $300 per week on gas.  So I had to make over $850 in fares just to break even, and then make money for myself beyond that.  I just couldn't do it any more.  I'd also gotten sick, because I'd been working 80 to 110 hours a week, living in my taxi, and not eating healthy because I was always stressed out.  So, after living in my taxi for most of the time between 2002 and 2007, I went from working more than 80 hours a week to fully homeless and living on the streets LITERALLY overnight.  I WORKED my way into homelessness.  Yes, that sucked.  

Within a couple of days, while living on the streets of Orange County, California, I started panhandling to scrape up money to live day to day.  Within a few weeks, I found an obscure freeway off ramp in south Orange County where I could usually get a decent amount of money, which helped me to get a motel room for a night about once every two weeks.  The local police that covered that ramp rolled by at times, but I dodged them by hiding in the bushes every half an hour or so, while they rolled by.  After several weeks, the officer eventually drove several miles out of the way, parked on the opposite side of the freeway, and walked up on me, catching me panhandling on the ramp.  Instead of yelling, or trying to arrest me, he walked up quietly, and asked, "Who ARE you?  I've never seen them come down on anyone the way they're coming down on you."  At that point, I'd been experiencing weird, behind the scenes pressure on my life for several years.  I asked the officer, "So there IS a them?"  He just nodded.  He didn't explain who "THEM" was, but said he'd never seen anything like it in his 20+ years as a cop.  He didn't ticket me, he just said I had to leave the off ramp, which I did.  

September 18th or 19th, 2008- I lived homeless on the streets of Orange County, California from late 2007 until November 15th, 2008, when my family flew me to North Carolina, where both my parents, and my sister and brother-in-law wound up living.  I wound up living in my parents' tiny, two bedroom apartment, and I never did find a real job in NC, I worked for a taxi company for close to a year.  I got stuck in NC for ten years, and I don't want to set foot in that entire state for the rest of my life.  

All that aside, before I went to NC, while homeless in Orange County, California, I often rode a couple of the all night buses, end to end, to get some sleep.  Lehman Brothers Investment Bank went bust, and closed down on Monday, September 15, 2008, sparking the visible start of the 2008 Great Recession crash.  

One of those nights, either the Wednesday night or Thursday night after the Lehman Bros. collapse, I got off the Katella Avenue bus about 1:30 in the morning.  That bus stop was at the corner of State College Blvd. and Katella in Anaheim.  I walked over to the 57 bus stop, in front of an AM/PM gas station, to wait of that bus.  There were five or six other homeless people who were also waiting at that bus stop.  I sat on a  boulder in the lawn there.  There was a closed (for the night) McDonald's across the street, and a Denny's, that was open, caddy corner to where I was.  

A young guy, maybe 24-27 years old, in a dark suit, cross the street from near Denny's, and walked right up to me.  OK, people rarely wear suits in Southern California, unless they work in banking, finance, or are going to a funeral.  Nobody wears a well-fitting suit at 1:30 in the morning.  I knew something was up.  

As I said, the guy ignored everyone else, and walked right up to me.  After standing there awkwardly for a few seconds, he asked, "Have you seen the  news about the economy?"  I told him I had, saw the headlines on the newspapers in the newspaper machines.  Then, in an almost pleading voice, he asked, "What's going to happen?"  Keep in mind, I was an overweight, disheveled homeless guy, and if was 1:30 in the fucking morning, on a weeknight!  I had talked to dozens and dozens of people, usually in pairs, in my taxi over the previous 6 or 7 years, as well as some who walked up to me at bus stops while I was homeless.  

I gave him a disgusted look, because I really didn't want to talk to anyone about that shit.  Obviously, any knowledge I had of an economic or financial markets nature WAS NOT helping my life out.  I wasn't mad at the young guy in the suit, but mad at whomever sent him, and dozens, probably hundreds, of others people like him, before that.  After pausing a bit, I told him my thoughts.  "A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money," I began.  I told him I thought it was a good time to buy gold and wait out the chaos.  Stocks were dropping, and I thought there was a much bigger drop coming.  I told him I thought there would be a major bailout.  "Buy gold, sit on it for 6 -18 months, as things crashed, and look for good buys when values dropped, on stocks, on real estate, on vintage collectible cars, whatever.  People sell all kinds of things at big discounts during recessions.  The young guy in the sharp suit asked a few more questions, then walked away, back across the streets, and disappeared into the parking lot behind Denny's.  Fucker didn't even give me a dollar or two for breakfast in the morning.  They never do.  

So now, as it looks like we're about to see a replay of September 2008 in the economy, I just wanted to put these three weird things out there.  Looking back, these were three inflection points in the weird shit happening in my life over the past 23 years or so.  

The low budget action sports videos I produced, directed, and/or edited- from 1987-2001

This is one of the craziest pieces of video I shot and edited.  It's from the 2-Hip King of Vert at Mission Trails, outside of San Diego, in 1991, featuring Death Jump.  Death Jump was about the craziest jump anywhere at the time.  Personally, I think Death Jump was the beginning of the mega ramp era in BMX, it had the basic shape of a mega ramp, and was HUGE fo rthat time.  This segment features Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, Keith Treanor, Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson, Mat Hoffman, Dennis McCoy, Bill Nitschke, and Vic Murphy.  This footage was in S&M Bikes' Feel my Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer in 1991.  It also led to Mat Hoffman getting a gig with the Stuntmaster's TV show a year or so later, when I shared about 15 minutes of this raw footage with motorcycle jumper Johnny Airtime, who worked at the same production company I did.  

In the spring of 1987, Bob Morales, founder and owner of the American Freestyle Association (AFA), where I worked, walked into the back room of the little AFA office, and asked, "Steve, you want to make a TV commercial to show on MTV for the Austin contest?"  Since I had absolutely no idea how to make a TV commercial, and I knew Bob wouldn't take "No" for an answer, I said, "Sure."  That's how my video production career began.  Here are the low budget videos I produced, directed, edited, and/or shot footage for, between 1987 and 2001.  

1987

Oregon Pro Flatland- American Freestyle Association (AFA)- produced and directed

Oregon Pro Ramps- AFA- produced and directed

Texas Pro Flatland- AFA- produced and directed

Texas Pro Ramps- AFA- produced and directed

Ohio Pro Flatland-AFA- produced and directed

Ohio Pro Ramps-AFA- produced and directed

1989

2-Hip: The '88 Adventure, aka 2-Hip BHIP- 2-Hip/Ron Wilkerson- directed and edited

Part 1, Part 2 (Santee Meet the Street contest), Part 3 , Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

1990 

Tuff Skts promo- Producer/director/editor/cameraman- Originally a 7 minute promo for the Christian Hosoi/Vision skateboard company, Tuff Skts.  The company lasted less than a year.  This is the only surviving version of this promo is this re-edited clip from Sk8-TV in 1990, with lame music (I used Muddy Waters and Bad Brains)

Ride Like a Man- 2-Hip- directed and edited by Eddie Roman- I was cameraman for most of the vert contest footage in the last half of the video

Mat Hoffman's first 900 at 14:43 (From Ride Like a Man)- This is all my footage, after the intro part with Eddie's girlfriend.  Also has Joe Johnson's first double tailwhip air in a contest.

Skater's Quarterly Video Magazine #2- NSI Video- editor/cameraman for original footage/intros

The Ultimate Weekend- Producer/editor/cameraman- My first completely self-produced BMX video 

Skater's Quarterly Video Magazine #3- NSI Video- editor/cameraman

Snowboarder's Quarterly Video Magazine #1- NSI Video- editor/cameraman

1991

Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer- (full 1 hour, weird ass version)- S&M Bikes- camerman/editor

"Leg Muscles" segments, Perry Mervar, Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, Keith Treanor, Alex Leech, Jimmy Levan, Pistol Pete Loncarevich

1992 

H.B. Video Zine #1- camerman/editor- Cheap "video magazine" of chunks of raw footage I shot at contests and of SoCal locals riding

H.B. Video Zine #2- cameraman/editor

1993

44 Something- S&M Bikes- director/editor/cameraman

2001

Animals- My second self-produced BMX video- producer/director/editor/cameraman- 100% my footage.

This list doesn't include the videos that I kind of worked on, mostly as a production assistant, while working at Unreel Productions/Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear in 1987-1990, or the 300 or so TV episodes I worked on as a crew guy from 1989-1995.

Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer- the first S&M Bikes video- 1991

When "Leg Muscles" came out, in late 1991.  Riders who ordered it opened the package, and shoved the video in their VCR, looking for footage of the craziest BMX jumpers in the world.  And the video started with bad acting from John Holmes porn videos, the intro, and then this... Perry Mervar, on an S&M (Dirtbike, I think), tearing it up on flatland for 5 1/2 minutes.  This whole video was a low budget practical joke, Chris Moeller style, and having flatland first was Moeller's idea.  Pretty funny.  And Perry was one of the best flatlanders around at the time.  

So... I was living in a sketchy apartment in North Hollywood in 1991, working 2nd shift dubbing videos at a video duplication company.  Chris Moeller, who was running S&M Bikes out of a garage, called me up.  "Steve, I want to make a video for S&M.  Here's the idea, we take a John Holmes porn movie.  We show the bad acting, and then when they cut to sex, we cut to bike riding."  That's how this video began.  

I shot the footage with my full size, S-VHS camera, on the weekends.  Chris bought an S-VHS prosumer deck, a high quality VCR, which cost about $2,000.  I wired my camera to that, and edited on the floor of his tiny living room, Play-Record-Pause style, camera to VCR.  I was drinking a 40 of Old English as I edited, and hit peak drunkeness around John Paul's part.  I finished the rest the next day.  Other than than the S-VHS VCR, total production costs for this video were about $250, including beer.  The whole rider-made video movement was just beginning, and Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer, was one of the first of those videos.  The title came from a pick-up line Dave Clymer used to pick up his girlfriend in a bar.  

I just learned yesterday that Snakebite BMX put up most of the clips a month ago.  The fast-forward porn parts, and a John Holmes fight scene, have been lost to history.  But here are the segments.  Enjoy.  

Jimmy Levan

Mike Priest

"Pistol" Pete Loncarevich (riding an S&M Holmes with GT stickers on it)

Alex Leech

John Paul Rogers and Kim Boyle

Mission Trails 2-Hip King of Dirt- 1991 (Outside San Diego- Home of Death Jump)

Keith Treanor

Dave Clymer

Chris Moeller

I lied...  Actually, I didn't know.  BMX Movie Database now has the full version of Leg Muscles, with the bad porn acting and everything, it's an hour long.  Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer.

"...I'm just a spoke in the wheel, Johnny."

"And who's the hub?  Chief Harris?"

Sponsored by S&M Bikes, Super Glue 4, chain wallets, and sideburns.

The Club White Bear logo... still no stickers yet...

 The black, downward pointing triangle was the Nazi concentration camp symbol and insignia for lesbians, prostitutes, pacifists, vagrants and beggars (aka Germany's homeless at the time), alcoholics, drug addicts, asocial/antisocial types, and the mentally ill.  I'm re-appropriating the downward pointing black triangle, as someone who has now spent 15-16 years homeless.  I worked as a taxi driver and restaurant worker for about 7 years while fully homeless (and living in my taxi).  The other years I've been blogging like crazy, and doing my Sharpie artwork, trying to turn that into viable living.  I'm taking a negative symbol, and now using it as a symbol for promoting art, creativity, and making cool shit in today's world.  

A few years back, while writing a blog post, I think, it occurred to me that "most progress in the world comes from the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos."  They make the art, the music, come up with new ideas and inventions, and create new businesses.  Those are the people I most readily identify with.  

The White Bear, is my nickname, which comes from a poem I wrote after getting dumped by my girlfriend in 1988.  I published the poem in my first zine of poetry, called We're on the same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing, in 1992.  I was living in Chris Moeller's tiny "Winnebago" apartment on Alabama Street, in Huntington Beach, at the time.  S&M Bikes was run out of the single car garage at the back of the apartment then.  Chris started making fun of me, calling me The White Bear, and the nickname stuck as my nickname among BMXers (except in the P.O.W. House, where they called me Sluggo).  So I took The White Bear as my poetry pen name, and now use it on my main blog and my Substack site.  

The lighter black square around the bear's head is there because I hand drew the bear, and the black didn't match the black of the triangle, because I suck at graphic design.  So I just left it.  

So that's what my logo is, and how I cam up with it.  Stickers and a zine coming... some day.  

Bunnyhops are what first amazed me about BMX freestyle...

The state of BMX bunnyhops, summer 2023.  All three of these are bunnyhops, and they just won BMX Best Trick in Street at the X-Games.  Think about that.  

It was the fall of 1981, and I was riding the school bus from my house out in the Centennial subdivision, to Boise High School, in downtown Boise.  I was leaning against the window, on the right side of the bus, on a rainy fall day.  We passed over the Boise River, next to Boise State University, which even us locals didn't take seriously then.  The joke for seniors was, "Are you going to college?"  "No, I'm going to Boise State."  Where BS comes before U.  The now famous blue football field was regular green grass then, and that was where our high school team played their games.  We only had a practice field by the school.  

As the bus crossed the next intersection, by the Morrison-Knudsen main offices, there was a big mud puddle in front of the high curb.  The puddle was about three feet across.  A young guy on a BMX bike, probably headed towards the junior high, raced along side the school bus below me.  He effortlessly pulled the bike up into the air, sailed over the three foot puddle, and landed perfectly smooth on the high curb.  The little move blew my fucking mind.  That's the first bunnyhop I ever remember seeing in real life.  That was a year and a half before my family moved out to the trailer park where I got into BMX.  I don't know who the rider was, but seeing that perfectly smooth bunnyhop out the school bus window in 1981, blew my mind then as much as the tricks in the video above blow my mind now.  

Several months later, I entered a bike-a-thon to raise money for some cause.  I had a tan ten speed that I planned to ride at a 5 minute per mile pace for the full 18 miles.  I did just that.  About 12 miles into that bike-a-thon, a kid on a BMX bike passed me.  We were out in a rural part of town, near Barber park.  Ahead of us, there was a cardboard box sitting in the road.  Just and empty box, about a foot square.  The BMX guy was ahead of me, coasting along, dropcrank.  He saw the box, and began pedaling.  He effortlessly bunnyhopped the box.  Again, that blew my mind.  I didn't know any BMX riders then.  It was a couple of months before I moved out to the trailer park where I got into BMX (sitting at about 43 degrees, of lattitude, just sayin').  That's the second bunnyhop I remember seeing in my life.  The unknown BMX rider pedaled on ahead of me, leaving me to my slow steady pace.  

Bunnyhops  are what first attracted me to BMX, before I even got into it.  I learned them myself, about a year later.  

In the last few years, as my hundreds of blog posts have added up, a handful of people have told me, "I started reading one of your posts last night, and got sucked down the rabbit hole."  There's this idea I've had for several years now, since I have a bunch of blogs.  Now I'm finally doing it.  Are you up for a trip down the Rabbit Hole?  If so, click the link below.  Bon voyage.  

Rabbit Hole #1

When you follow the link, there will be another link at the bottom of that post, to continue on down the rabbit hole.  Enjoy.  

 

Josh White's first tailwhip jump

This is one of my most popular BMX posts ever, with over 1,200 views originally...  It didn't transfer perfectly, I'll come back tomorrow and space the paragraphs.  

Here's GT pro rider Josh White working the first four quarterpipe set-up at an AFA Master's contest in the fall of 1987. Blasting out of obscurity (pun intended) in Oregon, to instant fame in the BMX freestyle world, Josh raised the bar considerably as he broke onto the scene in a big way. He was known for going incredibly high for the time period, hitting honest 10 to12 foot plus airs when that's where the ceiling of the best riders was, and doing variations a 7 or 8 feet up. Keep in mind the ramps then were 8 foot high by 8 foot wide, wobbly, wooden quarterpipes, that usually came just up to vert. Josh also set himself apart with his super stretched variations. This was said to come from years of training in kickboxing (MMA didn't exist then, BTW), and daily stretching through all those years. But the thing that I never could figure out about Josh was that he would approach the ramps at what seemed like half the speed of any other vert rider, amateur or pro, and then blast 9 or 10 feet out. He could just pump more air out of his speed than anyone, and even he didn't seem to know quite how that happened, because I actually asked him about it once. As fate would have it, I met Josh in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, on a layover to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, AFA Masters contest in April of 1986. I traveling on my own, but had been tapped to write the article about that contest for FREESTYLIN' magazine. So I knew it was going to be a pretty cool weekend for me. That amazing weekend started when I saw GT pro freestylers Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some blond kid in the DFW airport. I'd met Eddie in Whistler, British Columbia the year before, where he and Chris Lashua hung out for a week on a tour break. I knew he didn't remember me, but it gave me, a pretty shy guy by nature, a reason to go say "Hi." Eddie was really cool, remembering the week in Whistler, and introduced me to top flatlander Martin Aparijo, and the new guy, Josh White. Eddie added, "Josh just did his first photo shoot for FREESTYLIN' the other day." I said, "Oh, cool." We talked for about fifteen minutes, until the last possible minute to board our plane, and then took our separate seats. The next day, I saw just how good of a vert rider Josh was, holding his own (and then some) with all the heavy pros like Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, and the rest. I wound up hanging out with the Haro team all weekend (since I was traveling on my Pizza Hut salary and had no room or rent-a-car), and spoke with Josh, Eddie, and the others here and there over the course of the weekend. Almost all the pros, and many top ams, were staying at the same Holiday Inn motel, playing pool, and doing flatland in the parking lot all weekend, and everyone was talking about the new GT vert guy, Josh White. In another bit of coincidence, that photo shoot Josh did with FREESTYLIN' led to a small, and completely amazing, photo on the cover of the August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN'. In that same issue happened to be an article about zines, where my zine, San Jose Stylin', was listed at the top BMX freestyle zine in the country. And, my article about the Tulsa contest also was published in that same issue. Now I'm definitely biased, but I also think the cover design was the coolest cover FREESTYLIN' ever did, which says a lot. They had many amazing covers. This is it: In those days, magazines took three months to come out, from writing and photos to finished copies, so this epic issue hit newsstands in late June. A one hand no-footed can-can was simply unheard of then. A seven foot high, super stretched one hand no-footed can-can, on the famous T.O.L. ramp, was simply un-fucking-believable. This cover, all by itself, raised the bar of BMX vert riding, and the article inside raised it even higher. The icing on the cake was Josh's quote, blown up in big letters, "I consider myself a ground rider." With this issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine, Josh White exploded onto the national BMX scene. Meanwhile, deep inside the magazine, I kind of oozed quietly into the background periphery of the national freestyle zine, as a writer/zine guy. Within days of this magazine hitting the stands, I interviewed for, and was hired at, Wizard Publications. So this issue changed the course of Josh's life, and my own, and shed light on some other up-and-comers in the freestyle world, little Mathew Hoffman got his first editorial photo, Joe Johnson got his first magazine mention, and NorCal bros. Chris and Karl Rothe got a photo. For an obscure part of the country to have a freestyle contest at the time, the 1986 Tulsa AFA contest shined a light on a lot of new blood in the BMX freestyle world. By the time the magazine hit, Josh was already touring the country for GT Bikes. I moved to Redondo Beach, California, and began a new life of my own, first as a magazine guy for a few months, and then as the guy you yelled at when the ramps moved at AFA contests, and as their newsletter editor. While I never knew Josh well, we knew each other, talked from time to time, mostly at mostly at contests. Josh became legendary as part of the mid-1980's quarterpipe riders, pushing the older skatepark riders in the rapidly progressing vert scene. Josh went on to join the high air posse of Todd Anderson, Dino Deluca, and the other Camarillo riders. In my life, I spent the last half of 1986 working at Wizard Publications, then nearly all of 1987 working for Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association down in Huntington Beach. Bob got me into video work, which all happened at Unreel Productions in nearby Costa Mesa. Unreel was the video unit of Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear, which were soaring in popularity at the time. My life turned to one of either taking the bus or riding my freestyle bike the length of Huntington Beach every morning, then cleaning up at work. On the days I rode, my 11 mile ride home was a wandering cruise to a whole series of H.B. street and flatland spots. I spent most of my weekends sessioning under the H.B. Pier with inlander-but-local freestyler Mike Sarrail, and freestyle skaters Pierre Andre', Don Brown, Jeremy Ramey, and the random locals who came by, like Mark Gonzales and Ed Templeton. On one of those many weekends at the Huntington Beach Pier, in later 1988, I think, Josh White rolled up. We got to talking, and busted some flatland for the beach crowd. Then Josh told me a friend of his said there were some walls right by the beach that would be good to ride on. Wall rides were a brand new thing then, and everyone was looking for good walls to ride. Josh told me where these walls were supposed to be, right on the beach, from Goldenwest south. I rode the bike trail day after day for over a year, right by there, and was always looking for new places to ride. I told Josh would have seen them if they were there. But it sounded like something worth looking for, so he and I headed off to find these mysterious walls. We rode north from the pier, and where the bike path headed up the hill, kind of across PCH from Taco Bell, (about 11th street), he asked about the lower, dirt path. For some reason, I'd never ridden it. It was dirt, and when I was heading to the pier to flatland all day, I didn't want to get my brakes all dirty, I guess. So Josh White and me ride up this wide dirt area, below the bike path and above the beach itself. It's actually where the railroad into H.B. was built in the early 1900's, just before the big oil boom of 1920, as I found out later. Much to my surprise, there were all these old, crumbling, slightly under vert, concrete retaining walls, about 11 feet high, with murals on them. Most of them had thick sand in front of them, preventing a ride up to hit them for wall rides. We finally found one that didn't have much loose sand, the wall with the Blues Brother mural, and the Three Stooges painted on it. On the very left corner of the wall, there was a built up mound of dirt, maybe 18 inches high, a lip to get your bike up on the wall. Obviously, someone had ridden it before. Best of all, the wall was just a bit under vert, maybe 80-85 degrees steep, which made it easy to get much higher up than any normal wall ride. Josh was doing 4 or 5 foot high wall rides right off the bat, and nearly 7 feet up before we left. I wall ride the other way, and found a tiny lip, a few inches high, farther down the wall, and got maybe three feet up the wall. I was stoked. Being able to actually grip on the wall, rather than the wall slides we had been doing, made us feel like a hero on the Blues Brothers Wall. Then we got into a fakie wall ride session. While I'd done fakies on small walls with launch ramps before, I could never get the back wheel bounce to do a true fakie wall ride and land it. But I could roll up the Blues Brothers Wall, like a ramp fakie, and I was having a blast. Josh was getting a couple feet higher up the wall. Hey, he was Josh White, vert superhero. No surprise there. Right before we gave up on that session, he was doing fakies, pulling off the wall, and tweaking a nearly clicked turndown on the way down, and landing them. I'd never seen anything like that before. While Josh rarely came by the H.B. Pier after that, I started riding those walls on a regular basis. I did have a couple of more sessions with Josh, and others, over the next year or so. So that day, I got to know Josh a bit better, just as a rider. The Blues Brothers Wall, and several others, are in my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend (below), from 10:57 to 12:20, and around 13:26. At that time, I had moved jobs from the AFA to work at Unreel Productions, which was on edge of the Costa Mesa mesa, looking north over the oil fields near what is now Sheep Hills. The Sheep Hills trails we know now didn't exist then, but there were some jumps above Sheep's current location, where the condos above Sheep Hills are now, by the bottom end of 19th street. There was a good sized hip jump, and a roll-in then flyout ditch jump, and also a four foot deep, concrete ditch, with banked walls, at the bottom of the hill. As a freestyler who was never good at jumping doubles, I was all about the ditch jump. This jump was 5 minute ride from the Unreel office, and I realized I could hit it on my lunch break. This was probably the spring of 1989, I think. I started riding over there and getting a quick, half-hour jumping session in at lunch, then hitting the deli near our office on the way back for a sandwich, and eating in my dub room as I got back to work. Life was good. One day, I was hitting the ditch jump on my lunch break, and Josh White rolled up. I was trying to learn tailwhip jumps, something I'd been struggling with for two years at that time. Joe Johnson did tailwhips on vert then, and even doubles, and I think Mat Hoffman was doing single tailwhips at that time and learning doubles. But no one had done a tailwhip off a jump yet, even off a flyout jump. I had worked out the basic move, leveling the bike off and getting the back end around, but I couldn't land them. I was always beside the bike, not up over it so I could land it. I'd also been trying bunnyhop tailwhips for a year and a half at that point, which everyone knew was impossible. That was just my stupid idea that would never, EVER happen. That's how different the thinking was at the time. Saying you wanted to land a bunnyhop tailwhip in 1989 would be like telling people you want to land a bunnyhop double backflip today. Never gonna happen. (Watch, someone will do a bunnyhop double back off a drop in or something now, give it a year). At the ditch jump, Josh said he'd thought about learning tailwhips off jumps, but just never tried it. So we took turns hitting the flyout jump, getting maybe 18 inches off the ground, and trying to land a tailwhip. I got close, but couldn't land it. Josh worked out the basic movement pretty quick, and then was getting about to the same point. Neither of us could land it. I headed back to work, leaving Josh riding alone, and that was the last time I saw him at that ditch jump. A couple of days later, back out at that jump, I snapped my chain heading into the ditch, went over the bars while just rolling in, and dove, Superman-style, into the sandy dirt. The whole side of my face and body was covered in dirt, those painful, stinging scrapes, and then some blood. I scootered my bike painfully back to Unreel, washed up in the bathroom, and went back to work. All afternoon, one person after another walked into my room and asked, "What the hell happened to you?" I only went for a couple more lunchtime jump sessions after that, and started hitting the jump, and other local spots, after work, on my long, sessioning, ride home. This is my 1990 self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend. The footage was shot over the spring, summer, and early fall of 1990. If you go to 23:16, you'll see me do three quick double peg grinds on a ledge with screw-on, knurled pegs, and then it leads into a section at a flyout jump. That jump was called Oceanview, and was an epic spot for a few years, in Huntington Beach. It was located at Oceanview High school, on the corner of Warner and Gothard in H.B., and was a big skate spot, as well, in the 1990's. A big addition was built onto the school years later, and this spot is under roof now. This video section is from a collection of about 6 or 7 different sessions over a few months. Keith Treanor is the standout rider, in the black T-shirt obviously, and John Povah, Woody Itson, Josh White, and Andy Mulcahy are also in it. Josh has the white T-shirt, gray shorts, and light hair. All the footage with Josh was shot in half an hour, one evening when I ran into him there. It was just us, and one local kid, who wandered off pretty quickly. After shooting him doing a bunch of his standard vert variations, some of which he'd never tried on dirt. Josh and I got talking about that time we were both trying tailwhips the year before, at the ditch jump in Costa Mesa. He told me he'd never tried them again. But Oceanview was the perfect jump to land one. So... with my two-hour camera battery fading, and dusk approaching, Josh White started trying to land his first tailwhip off a jump. He got the feel back pretty quick, and was coming real close. Remember, NO ONE... EVER, had landed a tailwhip off a jump then, as far as I know. If you go to 25:19 in this video, you see Josh come close to landing one, and then, off balance, come running towards the camera. That was the second to last try Josh took that night. I know this because, on the next try, Josh White landed the first tailwhip off a jump I had ever seen, or heard about. Even today, 29 years later, I believe that was the first tailwhip jump ever landed. And my battery died as his bike left the jump. My camera shut off when bike was mid-air. I missed the shot. I missed the shot of the first tailwhip jump ever landed. I screamed. That wasn't out of place, because Josh White screamed, too. He was super stoked. He didn't realize we were screaming for different reasons. Josh was about ready to strangle me when he asked to see the footage, and I told him my battery had died while he was mid-air. We watched it back, and I think it clicked off just as his bike was leaving the jump. Darkness set it, both in the Huntington Beach evening, and in our souls, knowing what I'd just missed documenting. Ultimately, we just shook our heads and rode off in our separate directions. Sorry about that one, Josh. If you go to 35:48 in the video, you'll see Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson do what I believe is the first dirt jumping tailwhip to ever appear in a BMX video. This one happened at Edison Jumps, behind Edison High School, on the other end of Huntington Beach. That's located at 21400 Magnolia in H.B. It's a toe dragger, but it's a tailwhip, and it happened on double jumps, not a flyout jump, about three months after the one I saw Josh do. Josh White is also all over this section, but that was shot on a different day than the session with Crazy Red, Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer and the rest. I never met Crazy Red until that day. By the way, this section is the first time the S&M Bikes/P.O.W. House crew appeared in a video as well.