My Best Halloween Story

The first year I worked Halloween in Huntington Beach, California as a taxi driver, I really wasn't expecting much.  My first call of the night came from an apartment in the city/state streets, a few blocks from downtown.  My customers came walking out, laughing, already a couple drinks into the night's festivities.  The two 20-something women were both really attractive, and dressed as sexy Catholic school girls.  Their boyfriends followed them out, both in what looked like black choir robes.  "What are you guys?" I asked.  One of the guys answered, "They're naughty Catholic schoolgirls, and we're priests."  Both guys held up small wooden paddle ball paddles they had on lanyards around their necks."  The women bent over, allowing the guys to give them a couple taps on the butt with the paddles.  They were a fun group to talk to, and as I dropped them off, I realized that driving a taxi on Halloween might be a really cool thing.  It was.  Everyone was in costume, joking around and laughing, with a lot less drama than most nights. Halloween became one of my favorite nights of the year to be a taxi driver.

The next year, I was living in my taxi, working 7 days a week, and thinking about dressing up.  The best idea I could think of would be to dress up as a crash test dummy.  I thought that would be pretty funny in the cab all night.  But I worked way to many hours a day, and couldn't get it together.  So I decided to dress up as Travis Bickle, the crazy role Robert Deniro played in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver.  That's him in the drawing above, I drew that to commemorate by time as a taxi driver.  I went to a hair salon, and an Asian lady had a hell of a good time shaving my head into a Mohawk.  She'd never been asked to do that before, and couldn't believe I really wanted it, even for Halloween.  To be honest, she cut it a bit long, and I looked a little more like Howard Jones than Deniro.  I bought a camo T-shirt, because I was too fat for the Army field jacket that Deniro wore.  Then I got a cheap pair of "Unabomber" mirror sunglasses, to finish it off.  I drove around downtown HB, waiting for my first call.  A lot of people noticed my costume and got a laugh out of it as I drove around.

But, apparently not everyone was laughing.  My first call was at a real nice house in the suburbland near Springdale and Talbert.  A solidly built guy, not in costume, walked out.  As I drive him downtown, he immediately asked about my look.  I told him I was dressing as Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver, the most iconic taxi character of all time.  The man told me he was an off-duty HB police officer.  "You're not going to wear that costume around Huntington Beach."  I thought it was a question, so I responded, "Sure I am, that's where the business is."  In a much more forceful voice, he repeated, "Your ARE NOT going to wear that costume driving a cab in Huntington Beach."  I realized he was being serious.  If you lived in HB in the 80's or 90's, you know what I mean.  "C'mon, man, I said, "it's Halloween!"  I dropped him off downtown, and he obviously wasn't happy I was there.  But most of my passengers loved the costume.

Later that night, about midnight or so, I picked up a guy dressed as a pimp.  He was a 20-something white guy, in a crazy purple suit, with a huge, large brimmed hat with fur around the edge.  He'd drank his fill, and was heading home to Costa Mesa early. 

I headed up Adams street, and had a green light to cross Brookhurst when a raised, Toyota pick-up came screaming out of the parking lot on the left, about 100 yards in front of us.  The truck peeled out to the right, hit a median strip he apparently didn't see, then shot across three lanes in front of my cab.  The truck hit swerved back to the left, side swiped the curb, and rolled over onto its side, then its top on the sidewalk.  I hit the brakes as we approached, and the truck rolled back onto its right side. 

The pimp and I both screamed, "Oh Shit!"  I looked back at him.  "Sorry man, this is serious, I gotta stop."  He nodded, and I pulled over near the truck and turned on my flashers.  Nobody thinks of it, but when you're driving around constantly as a taxi driver, you wind up being the first responder to accidents on a regular basis.  I was afraid I'd walk up and find an arm or something hanging out of the truck.  The roof was partially smashed in, but not completely.  Before I could even get my phone up, a skinny kid, about 18, slid out the right passenger window, upside down, head first, which was right by the ground.  Much to my surprise, he jumped up to his feet, and yelled at me, "Help me get my truck rolled back over before the cops come, I got an empty 12 pack in the cab."

I looked back at the pimp, ten feet behind me on the sidewalk.  He, too was shaking his head, wondering how this kid had even survived.  I looked across the street, a woman was already on her cell phone calling 911.  I looked at the kid, "Dude, there's no way your getting out of this one... seriously, are you OK?" 


The pimp really wanted to get home, but we stayed, taxi meter turned off, until the police showed up a few minutes later.  As I drove off, the pimp said, "I'm glad we weren't 100 yards farther up the road, that crazy fool would've T-boned us."  "Me too," I replied.  The rest of that Halloween night in the cab was fun, but my Halloween story trumped all those of my passengers that night.

The Story Of My Key Chain

I've been carrying the same key chain for 30 years now.  Here's the story of that key chain.

As many of you already know, I got into BMX in Boise, Idaho, and began to focus on freestyle there when BMX freestyle was just turning into its own sport in 1984.  My family moved to San Jose, California in 1985, and I started my first zine there as a way to meet other riders in that area.  I became a part of the Golden Gate Park freestyle scene, which included Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs, Robert Peterson, Maurice Meyer, Hugo Gonzales and the Skyway factory team, and the Ground Control amateurs.  I sent copies of my zine, San Jose Stylin', to the magazine editors, including Andy Jenkins and Lew at FREESTYLIN' and Gork at BMX Action. At the AFA Master's Velodrome contest in SoCal in early 1986, I went up and introduced myself to Andy J., and told him I had been sending them my zines.  Much to my surprise Andy actually remembered my zine, and said they really liked it.  I was stoked beyond belief.

A month or two later, Andy called me up out of the blue.  I seriously couldn't believe that the editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine actually called me.  Keep in mind, I was from IDAHO.  I was blown away by the fact that I actually knew and rode with a few pro riders, and the magazines seemed like this far away alternative universe to me.  It never really occurred to me that I'd ever work there.  So Andy asked me, "Hey Steve, are you going to that next AFA contest in Oklahoma?"  I told him I was.  "Would you like to write about that contest for us?"  I think I grabbed a knife from the kitchen to scrape my jaw off the floor.  I could not freakin' believe that phone call was actually happening.  Andy told me they couldn't pay my expenses, but they could pay me for the story when it came out three months later, which would reimburse most of my expenses.  Somehow, I wasn't sure how, I had just landed a freelance article for FREESTYLIN'.  I was in shock.

So I used my Pizza Hut money to pay my way to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the spring of 1986 for the first AFA Masters contest held in that state.  I couldn't afford a motel room, but I was sure I could crash on somebody's floor.

I flew solo, and had a layover in Dallas.  Somehow, every flight west of the Mississippi seems to layover in Dallas.  As I was walking up to my gate, I saw none other than Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some blond guy standing nearby.  I checked in, and went over to talk to them.  The summer before, my Idaho teammate Jay Bickel and I went to a contest in Whistler, BC, Canada, and hung out for a week.  As luck would have it, Eddie and Chris Lashua were on tour there, and hung out a few days.  So I already knew Eddie a bit.  I said "Hi," and reminded Eddie about meeting him the summer before.  He introduced me to Martin, and the blond guy, a ramp rider GT had just picked up named Josh White.  We were all on the same flight into Tulsa.  I honestly couldn't believe I was hanging out with those guys before the flight, it was a total fanboy moment for me.

I saw them again in Tulsa, but they couldn't give me a ride because their car was packed to the gills.  I loaded my big box full of "camping equipment" onto a luggage cart.  Most airlines charged $50 to ship bike boxes in those days, but if you took your bike apart, put it in smaller boxes or suitcases, and called it camping equipment, there was no charge.  I learned that trick from Robert Peterson.  As I wandered through the airport alone, I discovered my first problem.  I didn't actually know where the contest was in Tulsa, and I couldn't really afford a cab to get there.  So I just hung out and figured I'd see other riders flying in.  After a while, another solo guy with a bike box showed up.  I'd never seen him before.  He was a clean cut, dark haired guy from the East Coast named Joe Johnson.  He told me he'd just been signed to Haro, but I didn't believe him.  But he was cool, so I hung out with him, and we took turns doing infinity rolls on our luggage carts.

Finally his ride showed up... the Haro Factory tour van.  Ron Wilkerson jumped out from behind the wheel, "Hey, Joe, how'zit goin'?"  I realized that kid Joe Johnson really was a new Haro rider.  Joe told them I didn't have a ride... or a place to stay, and that I was writing the story for FREESTYLIN', the Haro posse said, "Hop in."  I sat on the frame tubes of Wilkerson's, Blyther's, and Dave Nourie's bikes on the way to the hotel.  The Haro team manager, a big guy known as Billy Hop, was sitting shotgun, and Jon Peterson, the assistant team manager was sitting in the back, and we started talking.  Once again I was sitting there thinking, "Is this really happening?"  We stopped at McDonald's on the way, and I tried a sausage biscuit, and new thing McDonald's just introduced.  It was awesome.  But not as awesome as sitting on the frame tubes of the Haro Factory teams bikes as Ron Wilkerson drove like a maniac to the hotel.  By the time we got there, Jon Peterson told me I could crash on the floor of their second room, where him, Joe, and a couple other people were staying.  Ron, Brian, Dave, and Billy Hop were in the other room.

The hotel was the classic 1980's Holiday Inn Holidome.  It was a U-shaped hotel, with the inside of the "U" closed in.  In that area was the pool, a small miniature golf course, and pool table and a ping pong table on a higher level right by the huge wall of windows.  I unloaded myself in the Haro room, and wandered around.  The same thought kept replaying in my head, "Holy crap!  I'm part of the freestyle industry... at least for this weekend."  I wandered around, talked to different riders, and caught a ride to the contest site with the Haro guys for ramp practice that night.  It literally felt like a dream. 

I got on top of the Haro ramp during practice, and started shooting photos with my Pentax ME Super, a camera I was just learning how to operate.  As it turned out, I set the ASA wrong, so all my photos turned out really grainy.  I did learn that those new guys, Josh White and Joe Johnson really could air on the quarterpipes.  I also got introduced to Windy Osborn, the very attractive photographer for BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' that nearly every young rider had a crush on.  She gave me a few hints about keeping notes and taking photos.

I'll be honest, most of that weekend is a blur.  I rode as a 17 novice, and I don't remember my run at all.  Here's what I do remember from that weekend.  The first night, I followed someone into the hotel room being shared by Mike Dominguez and Brian Blyther.  A few of us were talking to Mike when Blyther came out of the shower wearing a towel.  Suddenly, the door on the hallway side of the room rattled.  The door started to open and it caught on the security lock.  Some guy trying to open the door started cussing.  At the same time, Mike yelled at us to grab everything and run out the door on the Holidome side.  We pulled their half built bikes, luggage, clothes, and stuff out as Brian followed... still wearing nothing but a towel.  Once we were safely in the main Haro room, Mike and Brian filled us in on the story.  They decided to nab a room key from the front desk so they could have their own room.  None of us hanging out realized that were were talking to Dominguez in a stolen room.  Since I was the guy who appeared most unlike a BMX guy, I was appointed to go to the front desk and see what was going on, under the guise of getting some change for the Coke machine.

Nervous but emboldened by the faith these top freestylers put in me, I headed to the front desk.  There I found a young couple, still dressed in their wedding clothes, screaming at the desk clerk because someone had been in their room.  It was all I could do to keep a straight face.  I patiently waited my turn to ask for change, soaking in the story.  The clerk apologized, having no idea who the hell had been in their room, and gave them another key.  Then he apologized to me for the wait, and gave me change for a dollar.  I meandered back into the main Haro room and filled them in.  Lesson for the night, don't take your bride to Holiday Inn when there's a BMX freestyle contest in town.  We actually met the couple in the Holidome later and acted surprised when they told us their crazy story.

Not long after that, I was hanging out in another room, and witnessed my first pro caliber fart lighting contest.  I won't name names, but one of the guys explained why we should never light farts naked.  He still had the burns to remind him as he told us his harrowing story.

The next morning, I rode to McDonald's with the Haro guys, and scarfed a couple more sausage biscuits.  To this day, that's still my favorite breakfast at McD's.  At the contest, I took my camera bag and wandered around, taking notes for the magazine story.  Much to my surprise, Eddie Fiola walked up, recognized me from the airport the day before, and started talking to me.  It was yet another fanboy moment.  We were talking for a few minutes when a couple of goofy looking kids rode up and interrupted.  The kid with the curly, dark hair said, "Hey Eddie, have you ever seen anyone do an air like this?" and he put one hand on the opposite side of the handlebars, then took the second hand off.  It was a variation neither of us had seen before.  Eddie laughed, "No... I've never seen that one before."  The two kids looked at each other, as I was mad at them for interrupting my talk with Eddie Freakin' Fiola.  The kids got ear to ear grins, and rode off.  A couple years later I was telling someone this story when it finally clicked... wait, the air that kid showed Eddie was a switch-handed air.. those kids were Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope!

That night, there was a crazy thunderstorm, which put a damper on the jam circle in the parking lot.  Woody Itson won a game of pool, and beat everyone for about an hour straight.  Finally I got up the nerve to play him.  I'm by no means a pool shark, but my friends and I in Idaho used to sneak into the Boise State student union when we were in high school and play pool a lot.  I gave Woody a run for his money, in yet another fanboy situation.  Woody hit all his pool balls in, one ball ahead of me, then made his shot on the 8 ball... and he scratched.  I beat Woody Itson at pool.  I managed to win one or two more games before Woody wanted a re-match.  He beat me soundly the second game, and took over the table for much of the night.

About that time a Haro rider named Rick Moliterno said he needed some help waterproofing his truck to the rain wouldn't get inside the bed.  So I hopped in the back of the truck in the thunderstorm with a couple other guys and rode with him to a gas station where we helped him use duct tape and garbage bags to cover the area between the cab and the cap so the water wouldn't leak in.

That whole weekend, I talked to Jon Peterson quite a bit.  On Sunday morning he said, "Hey, follow me."  I followed him back to his room, and he dug into one of his bags.  "We had a ton of these we never sold," he said, "so we made them into key chains."  He handed me a black, plastic, two fingered brake lever key chain.  I was stoked.  I think I put him on my zine mailing list after that.  I put all my keys on it that day, and rode with the Haro team to the arena again to watch the pros ride.  I can't remember much of that day, I was still overwhelmed at just being there and talking with all the guys who'd been my heroes 48 hours earlier, as well as the Skyway guys I knew from home.  I literally felt like I had accidentally won some prize vacation all weekend.

On Sunday afternoon, the Haro van dropped Joe Johnson and me back at the airport, and they headed back out on tour.  I flew home alone, still kind of wondering if it had all been a dream.  Then I remembered the key chain.  It was real.

Every time I've gone to a concert or through any kind of security, the guards always look at my weird key chain and wonder how you smoke pot with it.  On two different occasions I've actually asked if there were any BMXers in line behind me.  Each time, a guy said he was, and I asked them to tell the guard what my key chain was.  Both times the guards gave me the OK after a complete stranger told them it was a two finger brake lever for BMX bikes.  One time, a guard himself was a BMXer, and asked me where I got it.  He was stoked to hear my story.

So... why have I carried an old brake lever as a key chain for over 30 years?  I guess it's to remind me that amazing things can happen if you keep working hard and smart.  That weekend was my start in the BMX freestyle industry, which led me to lots of great times.  That's the story of my key chain.

The Dream of Living in a Warehouse

The BMX movie Rad and the bicycle messenger movie Quicksilver both came out around the same time, 1986, as I recall.  Even though I was a hardcore BMX freestyler then, I was really bummed out by Rad, because it was such a ridiculous story.  At the time, I was much more stoked on Quicksilver, which had an actual freestyle jam circle scene in it, even if it was with road and fixed gear bikes.  It did have Woody Itson and Martin Aparijo doing what they could on the big wheel bikes, along with veteran stunt rider Pat Romano.

Then there was this corny dance scene, which really sparked something in me.  No, I wasn't dreaming of dating a ballet dancer.  Well, not that often, anyhow.  But I loved the idea of living in a huge open area in a warehouse, like this scene.  I thought it would be so cool to be able to ride flatland in my living room.  I didn't tell anyone, but I secretly wished I could someday live in a space like that.

That idea was actually sparked when I was a kid by the TV detective show Vegas.  Dan Tanna, the private detective in the show, drove a red, '57 Ford T-Bird, and parked it in his living room, which was in a non-descript warehouse in Las Vegas.  My dad always watched the show, and we both thought that was the coolest place to live... open the car door, get out of the car, grab a drink, and sit on the couch a few feet away.

Only months after Quicksilver came out, I got hired at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, and started a new life in the BMX industry in Southern California.  As expensive as SoCal real estate was, it was obvious the warehouse life wasn't going to happen.  Like so many dreams we all have at one time or another, it faded into the deep recesses of my mind.  I went on to live many different places, have well over a hundred roommates, and did many different types of work.

After an injury in 1999, I became a taxi driver, which was a tough way to make a living.  I wound up living in my taxi for a few months, and taking showers at the gym as I learned the ropes.  Once I did, things went pretty well, and I lived most of the year 2000 in Huntington Beach, California, able to support myself by working only weekends in the cab.  Things were looking up.  Then a accident at the DMV invalidated my driver's license by mistake.  Things got sketchy quick, and I spent a couple years telemarketing and working at a restaurant while I got the mess worked out.

On Labor Day weekend, 2003, I went back to taxi driving.  It took about a month to get back in the groove and figure out where the nightlife was, which was where I made my money giving rides.  Just as I started making decent money, the taxi company took out our radios and replaced them with dispatching computers.  The whole business changed literally overnight.  I was living in the cab and working seven days a week, 14 to 18 hours most days.  In the next two years I only took five full days off.  I gained 100 pounds, lost all  energy, and my focused on nothing but making money day after day.  I had given up all creative pursuits and became a cranky taxi driver struggling to pay the taxi lease each week.  Most people don't realize that taxi drivers have to pay about $600 a week to rent the cab, and pay out another $300 a week in gas.  It's a tough gig.

Then, in late summer 2005, a taxi driver I knew named Richard offered me a different deal.  In addition to driving a taxi, he owned an indie art gallery named AAA Electra 99.  I rented wall space in the gallery to put up poems I'd written years before.  By 2005, the gallery had moved to a small industrial unit in Anaheim.  Richard's deal was this, I would rent his taxi on the weekends, work the bars and clubs like I always did, then I could live in the gallery during the week real cheap.  I thought about it for a few days, then took him up on it.  You can get a look at Electra here.

It took me about a day to actually realize that my dream of living in a warehouse not only came true, but it was a warehouse crammed full of art and kitsch, a creative environment if I ever saw one.  The only downside was that I didn't have a freestyle bike, but I was too fat to ride one anyhow then.

On my second night at the empty gallery, I was sitting in the tiny bathroom taking a dump.  The bathroom there was plastered with band flyers on all four walls and the ceiling.  I didn't really have to take anything in to read, because it was cool to just check out the flyers.  But for some reason, I'd taken a pencil and post-it note pad in with me.  I think I was making a list of things I had to do that week as I adjusted to me new home.  I sat there and drew a little drawing of Mickey Mouse (I was in Anaheim, after all) watching a concert and throwing the heavy metal sign with his three fingered hand.  It felt so good just to draw again.

When I finished, I got some Scotch tape and taped the Mickey drawing on the bathroom wall.  From then my creative juices just started pouring out.  I slept about 14 hours a day the first couple of weeks, trying to make up for two years of sleeping 4 to 5 hours a day in a parking lot in the cab.  I ordered pizza, and just started making posters of my poems.  I played with different ways of coloring with markers.  One day, my "scribble style" Sharpie drawing just happened.  I liked the way it let me shade with markers, and I've been drawing in that way for the 11 years since.  I never gave up on creativity again after my months living at Electra.  When I did go back to driving a cab full time, I drew pictures while sitting in the cab on my downtime.  It was my time living my dream in a warehouse art gallery, and drawing as P.A., the gallery momma cat and her six kittens roamed around my feet, that led to actually making a few bucks from my artwork over the past year.  Here's my latest, my take on a classic photo of street rider Vic Murphy launching an incredible 1 footed tabletop off a curb.  It's funny how things work out.

The Vander Photo

At some point during my short stint at Wizard Publications, Windy Osborn told me the basics of how to shoot panning shots.  In an effort to learn, I took my Pentax ME Super to the Hermosa Pier one Saturday and shot a whole roll of film of people riding by on bikes and even a few seagulls flying.  I was trying to get the panning shot idea down.  Windy made a contact sheet of all my photos, and they all sucked.  The bike rider or sea gulls were all blurry, as well as the backgrounds.  Windy gave me some more pointers.  I did learn that a shutter speed of about 1/15 or 1/30 of a second was about right, though.  I didn't try any more panning shots.  The year of 1986 ended, and with it, my job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines. 

I moved on to edit the AFA newsletter, and I shot all the photos for that, as well.  My Pentax let me cheat as a photographer.  I didn't have to learn how to use a light meter.  By changing the f/stop setting ring, I got a look inside the viewfinder of the shutter speed.  So I would just twist it until I got the shutter speed I wanted.  So I never learned about f/stops either.  Gravity Powered Bikes, or GPV's were a little side hobby that many BMXers got into in either '85 or '86.  The initial idea was to take spare bike parts, build them into a low slung bike without pedals or a chain, and ride down big hills powered by gravity alone. 

Gork, the editor of BMX Action got into GPV's early on, as did a bunch of other racers and some freestylers.  After all, who doesn't like to go bombing down a big hill at breakneck speed?  There were a couple of magazine articles about GPV's, but no organized races.  At some point that year, 1987, someone, I can't remember exactly who, decided it was time for an organized race.  Abunch of guys showed up, and had a good ol' time.  Another race was promoted.  Unreel Productions, Vision's video company, became part of the deal, and I think they did most of the organization of it, as well as shot video of the event.  The road chosen was one never used for a GPV race before, it was the Palm Springs Tramway Road, way out in the desert of SoCal.  Unlike most of the roads GPVers normally rode, there weren't a lot of turns.  It was a big, steep drag race for the most part. 

My friend John Ficarra, co-editor of my zine in NorCal, was one of the guys who came down for the race.  He stayed at my apartment for a night, and we drove out to Palm Springs in his old BMW, it was either a Bavaria or a 2002.  Anyhow, the crazy GPV crew took over a motel in Palm Springs for a couple of days, and there was a lot of craziness going on.  At one point I wandered into a motel room where Dave Vanderspek and a few other guys were hanging out.  We were all joking around, and around midnight or so, Dave headed out to try the hill in the dark.  He left with another rider, their two GPV's, and a twelve pack of beer under his arm.  I wasn't sure they'd even make it back.  But that was the spirit of GPVing.

I wasn't riding in the GPV race, I was basically just snapping some photos for the AFA newsletter, and possibly to sell to one of the magazines as a freelancer.  The event included a halfpipe contest in the parking lot up top, and the GPV race.  The GPV's themselves came in a multitude of different styles.  Gork had a homemade pointy fairing and sixteen inch wheels, which were better for cornering.  Most guys had 20 inch wheels, a few rode 24 inch.  Every GPV looked different and no one knew who would win.  Dan Hannebrink, an aeronautical engineer (or something like that) got into GPV racing when someone asked him to make them a fairing.  Several riders were using Hannebrink made front fairings on their bikes.  Dan himself, though, had a full fairing, which proved to be a huge advantage on that particular hill. 

Here's my big confession.  I decided to dedicate a full roll of film to trying panning shots, which I hadn't tried since the day at the Hermosa pier months before.  But I knew about what shutter speed to use.  So I walked about 150 or 200 yards down from the starting line and started shooting panning shots.  As you old guys know, this was back in the film days, when we didn't know how our photos looked for days, until the film was developed.  I focused on the yellow lines in the middle of the road, and shot photos as the riders rolled by.  Here's what I mean by a confession.  While it looks like Dave Vanderspek in the photo above is going about 90 miles an hour.  He's actually only going about 20 mph, because I shot the photo so close to the starting line. 

It was a fun day... except for John Ficarra, who crashed his brains out in a turn.  He did end up getting a great crash photo in the Orange County Register newspaper, though, and he was stoked on that.  I can't remember who won the vert contest, but the newly sponsored Mathew Hoffman blew our minds, and Josh White blasted his hyper extended and super smooth airs, along with several others. 

After the event, I called Gork and told him I shot a bunch of photos.  He told me to bring my black and white film by, and Windy would develop it and print a contact sheet, to see if I had any magazine quality photos.  I dropped the film off, then drove back up to Wizard a few days later.  As it turned out, my panning shots turned out much better than my first try at them.  Most were fairly clear with the blurry background.  But there were about four that were nice and sharp, with a well blurred background.  Gork, Lew, Andy Jenkins, Windy and me all looked at them through our loops.  Instantly, the guys gravitated to the photo of Dave Vanderspek.  Dave was a favorite rider of all of them, and his weird, non-fairing, supertuck just looked badass.  A couple other photos were actually a tad better in quality, but this photo of Vander was their favorite.  Gork said he wanted to run it in BMX Action, and I was totally stoked.  Andy J. and Lew also loved the pic. 

This photo of Dave Vanderspek is still the best photo I've ever taken, and it wound up being used in BMX Action, FREESTYLIN', and the one shot magazine Homeboy.  I think Gork actually paid me $100 for the pic, and the other two times they just used it.  All in all, I'm really stoked on that photo.  Besides being a great GPV shot, it just seems to sum up Dave Vanderspek's FULL SPEED AHEAD attitude towards living life, at least to me.

So now, as I'm working on turning my writing and art into a business, I've been looking for a photo to make a poster of.  Obviously, it needs to be a photo I have the rights to.  I've been thinking about taking a still out of one of my videos.  But I just kept thinking about trying to draw the Vander photo.  So over this weekend, I did.  Here's the color drawing of the black and white photo that's become a bit legendary.

If you'd like to get a poster of it (or two), message me on Facebook or email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com.  RIP Vander.

You can watch the Unreel edited footage of the Palm Springs Tramway in this clip at 5:09, and there's a quick shot of Vander at speed at 7:25.

The End of Pipeline Skatepark

There's a documentary out, and a damn good one, about Mat Hoffman called The Birth of Big Air.  I imagine most of you reading this have seen it.  But it's about the birth of mega airs off mega ramps.  The real birth of big air started at Pipeline Skatepark with Eddie Fiola.  In the clip above we see Eddie in his heyday, rockin' a sticker Mohawk and 1 3/8" rims just to add a little flair to the whole thing.  Eddie wasn't the first guy to do airs.  Bob Haro did airs in early skateparks and later on the first quarterpipes.  R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff did airs.  But Eddie Fiola, in the incredibly gnarly Pipe Bowl at Pipeline Skatepark in Upland, took the aerial to a whole new level.  From three or foot airs on a quarterpipe, Eddie pushed it to the seven and eight foot out range.  And it wasn't on a six foot QP.  The Pipe Bowl had eight foot transition and four solid feet of vert.  How many of the guys doing insanely high airs today can get eight foot out of a transition with four feet of vert?  Soon after Brian Blyther and Mike Dominguez were blasting that high too.  NorCal crazy man Hugo Gonzales, local Jeff Carroll and upstart Steve McCloud got up in that range as well.

There were other contests at other skateparks in the early 80's put on by Bob Morales, but the biggest air always seemed to be at Pipeline.  I first saw magazine photos of the skatepark and riders in BMX Plus! in '82 or '83 as a high school kid in Idaho.  I thought those guys were completely nuts.  I couldn't even imagine riding those huge pools, let alone airing out of them.  Somehow, in a course of events that still amazes me, I wound up part of the BMX/freestyle industry in the late 1980's.  Even crazier, my boss in 1988 and '89 was Don Hoffman, whose parents owned Pipeline.  I bought Mike Sarrail's old truck a couple weeks before Pipeline closed, and made it up there five or six times in those last couple weeks.  That was enough to learn one line in the Pipe bowl and one line in the insane Combi Pool.  I couldn't even come close to airing out, but I could carve tile in the round half of the combi and where tile would be in the Pipe Bowl, as well as get a bit over vert in the full pipe.

But the real fun for me came after the park closed.  Don was the head producer at Unreel Productions, the video company owned by Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear.  I was The Dub Guy at Unreel, meaning I spent most of my time making copies of different videos for people throughout the Vision empire.  But I was also the lowest guy on the totem pole, and I got asked whenever someone needed a little help.  Don had all kinds of video ideas he wanted to try before Pipeline got bulldozed.  At the same time, several skaters in the Vision woodshop were Pipeline locals; Chuck Hultz, Kelly Belmar, and Chris Robinson, too, I think.  So Don and I would head up to Pipeline nearly every weekend to shoot video of those guys and Steve and Micke Alba, Eric Nash and a few others.

I wasn't getting paid for helping out, but I was allowed to bring my bike in and ride.  So I'd shoot a little video of the skaters, help Don trying different ideas, and then I'd be able to go ride Pipeline... all alone most of the time for a half hour or so.  Then I'd go back to shooting video of the skaters again.  It was epic all the way around.

I also got to call a couple of riders, mainly Eddie Fiola and Brian Blyther, to see if they wanted to session a while.  So at times I would be inside the Pipe Bowl, a 35 pound, $50,000 betacam on my shoulder, while Eddie and Brian swooped by me at speed and did their lines and airs around the pool.  Then I'd ride a little on my own.  Then I'd get the SVHS camera, and shoot wide shots of the skaters in the Combi.  Meanwhile, Don was trying to get some "point of view" or P.O.V. footage of the skaters.  At one point we literally bolted an SVHS-C camera to the top of a skate helmet.  But the camera weighed 3 or 4 pounds, which messed with the skaters' balance.  We also quickly learned that skaters don't look where they're skating half the time.  So that footage sucked.  Then Don got Micke and Steve Alba to do their old doubles lines, with the guy in back holding the camera in his hand, pointing at the guy in front, and that looked really cool.  This was decades before ultra-light GoPro cameras that make this kind of video so easy to shoot today.  And Unreel couldn't afford the expensive "lipstick" camera set-ups that were the smallest video cameras out back then.

During this time that we were having these weekend sessions, Don's parents, Stan and Jean, were starting the process of cleaning out the pro shop, and getting the park ready for its demolition.  That included taking down the fences around and in between the bowls.  On one hand, this allowed for some lines and transfers that head never been possible before.  On the other hand, it messed up some lines.  One weekend Eddie showed up, put his helmet on, and rolled into the Pipe bowl like he always had.  If you watch the video above, you'll see that doing a footplant on the fence behind the full pipe was part of Eddie's line.  What he didn't realize when he rolled in was that Stan had taken down that fence that week.  I was sitting on my bike in by the front of the bowl, and I heard this "AAAAAaaaaaaauuggh!" from Eddie. I couldn't figure out what had happened.  Eddie flew out for his typical footplant on the five foot high fence, only to find there was no fence.  So he did an awkward kickstand landing on the concrete from over five feet out.  He tried riding a bit more, but finally said that he relied so much on that fence being there, that it totally messed up his lines.  He didn't come back after that.

I think Brian was trying 720 flyouts out of the Pipe bowl, possible because a fence had been taken down.  As crazy as it sounds, I wasn't watching.  I think I was busy shooting video of the skaters, and saw him out of the corner of my eye.  I think he pulled a few, but I can't remember for sure.  720's, even on a flyout jump, were amazing in 1989.  As for myself, I found a cool line out of one of the small bowls in the back.  It was either the 4 foot or 6 foot deep bowl.  I would get some speed, roll through it, flyout and land in a short nosewheelie then go into the ditch.  It was a ten or twelve foot gap, not huge by any means, but I'd never seen anyone jump a few feet, do a short nosewheelie, and then go straight to landing in the ditch.  So it felt really good.  I kept tagging my back wheel on the edge of the ditch, but it was still cool.

Eddie and Brian came by to ride a few times, but then they took off on their tours or something.  So the last few weekends it was Don, me, and 6 or 8 pool skaters.  Don got to try a whole bunch of new videos ideas, and got some really cool footage out of it.  I got to ride Pipeline all by myself several times, and with Eddie and Brian a few times.  And the OG pool skaters got their last epic sessions in the most legendary skatepark bowl ever.

One time after everyone was pretty tired, we all just sat on the edge of the square part of the Combi pool, feet dangling into it.  Steve Alba.  Micke Alba.  The wood shop guys I mentioned earlier.  We were all drinking Gatorade or something, and the skaters were looking for lines they'd never tried before.  And they found a bunch.  I just watched as one would point, "what if I did a grind over there... then carved this way, then hit that wall..."  It was a fly on the wall moment for me, one of those times when it's just a magical moment... and you actually realize at the time it is, so you just let it happen.  Then they got up and actually tried a few of those new lines as Don and I shot video.  One my last day there, several of the skaters pulled blue tiles from the shallow end as a keepsake.  Once they walked away, I pried off 6 or 8 blue tiles for myself.  Those tiles sat in my nightstand drawer for more than a decade, before finally getting lost in a move.

Then it ended.  I didn't go up to the skatepark for the final session.  The Pipe bowl was already gone at that point, and we'd shot all the video we would ever use... and then some.  Then it was gone.

Here's video of the last skate session in Pipeline's Combi Pool, followed by a clip of Jeff Grosso and Steve Alba talking about those days.

Last session at Pipeline

Jeff Grosso 's Loveletters to skateboarding: Badlands part 1

Random Stories From a Weird Life

I went out to lunch with a friend today who I've known for about three years.  Somehow we got on the subject of TV shows, and I started telling him a few random stories about my days working on the crew of American Gladiators and a couple other shows in the early 1990's.  After one story he said something like "I've never heard you talk about that before."  My response was something along the lines of, "Yeah, I've got tons of weird stories.  One of my old skate friends keeps telling me I should write a book about my taxi driving days, but I never get around to it."  I've joked now and then about having hardly any money but tons of stories.  I know, everyone has stories.  But not stories of people having sex in their taxi for an hour, or moving Harry Potter's castle (twice) or seeing a mountain lion up close while being homeless.  Oh yeah... and the taxi driver stories, the TV crew guy stories, the furniture mover stories (seriously, there needs to be a furniture mover "reality" show), and homelessness stories, not to mention stories from my BMX and skate industry days.  I've written over 700 BMX stories in previous blogs, and only made it from 1982 to 1987.  In this blog I'll just wander through the memory banks and see what pops up.  Anything to keep you entertained in your cubicle when you're supposed to be working.  We'll see how it goes...