It's up to us Old School riders to teach younger riders BMX history

Here's the trailer for Joe Kid on a Stingray, Mark Eaton's 2005 documentary that's our BMX version of skateboarding's Dogtown and Z-Boys documentary.  This is the best overall history of BMX and BMX freestyle there is, but there are tons more old school videos showing different riders, scenes, and time periods.

Yesterday, I had lunch with Rich, the owner here at Block Bikes, and Dakota Bratt, who I didn't really know anything about.  Halfway through his football sized wet burrito (OK, not quite that big), he showed me this clip.   What?  Manual across a skatepark, to backflip, back to an extended manual?  Freakin' amazing.  It would take me a month to learn how to do that trick in a video game.  So, Dakota's got mad skills.

Over the course of lunch, Rich and I, both in our 50's now, were talking about riding back in our early days, the 1980's, and how things have changed so much.  We talked about the absurd amounts of money in the BMX world, compared to the days of $200 pro purses.  We talked about the X-Games, and competition riding compared to video segment based riding, and just riding for fun.  We talked about how old many of the basic tricks are, yet the young guys today combine them, and take them to huge levels, and to different street obstacles.  We talked the idea I threw out a couple of blog posts ago, of having contest where a rider/video person team would have a 6 hour video shoot, a single day of editing, and what kind of rider and video person would do well in that scenario.  I explained the 5 categories of getting a trick dialed in (from that same post), compared to today's one-and-done video shoot tricks.  All in all, it was a really interesting conversation.

But time after time, Rich or I would start talking about something, and we'd have to ask Dakota if knew about this rider, or about that trick, or something else that happened long ago.  Many of the things were huge events in our day, but are simply not even known to Dakota's generation.  He's 25, I think he said, he's not a 13-year-old Woodward camper.  He's been riding for several years. This continual stopping to ask Dakota if he knew about this rider or that event led our conversation to the Old School Versus New School thing.  We weren't dissing him, but more exploring his view from his years and riding, and sort of wondering if today's riders even care about the history of BMX and freestyle.

In one sense, I noticed a kind of bias in Rich and myself, that a rider should want to know the history.  Personally, I think it would be cool to see younger riders exposed to a bunch of the old school history, riders, and tricks that fell by the wayside.  There are a lot of of tricks, that with a proper introduction to the younger riders, might add new ideas and fresh style to the New School lexicon, and give them some new avenues to explore as riders.  As I thought about it, I realized that Rich and I knew BMX and freestyle history because we lived through most of it.  And since we were both involved in the industry, we wound up meeting riders that came before us, and learning their stories, and later watching many of the home videos that now populate YouTube and other sites.

The whole thing reminded me of something else.  I got into BMX riding in Boise in 1982, started buying magazines in late '82, raced through 1983 into 1984, and then focused on freestyle, the new thing that became a sport that year.  So when I got a job a BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines in 1986, I was only four years into the whole thing.  But the first night working at the magazine, we went into the office, working overtime, because the BMX Action 10th anniversary party was that weekend.  Gork (gOrk at US BMX these days) and I dug through a bike box full of ten years worth of color slides, looking for the best 100 photos to put in a slide show.  It was an old school BMX event... in 1986.

It turned into about the best thing that could have happened for me.  I didn't know hardly anything about the history of BMX, or even the early days of freestyle.  And I was suddenly working at two of the magazines.  I would find cool slides, having no idea who most of the people were, and I'd show Gork a slide, and he'd tell me all about it.  I got a great, and really interesting, overview of BMX history, on night one of working at Wizard Publications.  It was just a weird bit of timing that I got hired, primarily for FREESTYLIN' magazine, at that particular time.  With Gork being so cool, and taking the time to explain all these riders to me (photos of Tinker Juarez, and "Trash Can" Morgan stand out in my memory), learning the history of this sport I was so psyched about was fun, and interesting.  But today's riders don't get a cool introduction to BMX history like I had that night.  Yes, there are videos online they can find, but there are thousands of videos from their own era to watch, let alone everything else they have access to these days.

I realized that younger riders have no obligation to go look at old riding videos and learn the history.  It's a progression-based sport, they're looking forwards, not backwards.  If all of us Old School riders think there's something worthwhile about younger riders learning our collective BMX history, then it's our obligation to find a way to show it to them.  And it's our obligation to make it interesting for them, to give them a proper introduction to what they missed, simply by being born at a later date.

As I thought about this, I remember when Stacy Peralta's skateboarding documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys, came out in 2001.  I lived near the Van's Skatepark at a mall called The Block, in Orange, California.  After winning several awards at film festivals, the movie actually played at the theater at The Block, and everyone at the skatepark was talking about it.  The moves in the documentary were largely basic by 2001 standards, but the Z-Boys had incredible style.  Within a few weeks, I started seeing kids, young kids, at the skatepark mimicing the guys in the movie.  Kids 6-8-10 years old were doing stylish carves on the banks, and even wearing a fedora in one case, like Jay Adams in the movie.  The documentary was widely watched by all ages of skateboarders,  and brought a whole new flavor and great style to a couple of new generations of skaters.  I think it's possible to do something similar in BMX from time to time.  I think Old School tricks, style, and ideas can add some fresh blood into today's, and tommorow's BMX riding.  

How could this be done? If you own a bike shop, skatepark, or just have a house with a good ramp where kids ride, you could have an Old School video night.  Get some younger riders and some older ones together, and watch "Joe Kid on a Stingray," or one or two other classic old school videos, and then answer whatever the questions the kids may have.  You know, important questions, like "why did guys where really short shorts in the 80's?"  (Yeah, I'm guilty). 

Another idea at a local skatepark or riding spot would be to have an Old School vs. New School Game of BIKE contest.  If you or some friends can still ride fairly well, put your trick bag on the line against some young riders, and make sure somebody's shooting video.  A recent Scotty Cranmer video where Trey Jones and Big Boy tried to do tricks from an 80's "101 BMX Freestyle Tricks" book was hilarious.  They actually gave some props to us old farts, after trying 5 tricks each. 

If you like this general idea, I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to show younger riders some of our collective history in a fun and interesting way.  Oh, and if you go up against Dakota Bratt in a game of BIKE, and he says he's got a "manual trick" for you, just take the dang letter.