Brooklyn Banks Meet the Street 1989- Part 4: It's Magic

I know it sounds weird, but there was this time, long, long ago, when MTV played music videos 24 hours a day.  It was revolutionary.  A cable TV channel figured out a way to play commercials all the time.  That's what a music video is, a commercial for a song, to make you want to buy the album.  Yeah, OK, people used to BUY music, and there were these plastic things called albums...  Uh, this is going to take to long to explain. 

Back in those days of the early and mid-1980's, 70's punk rock was beaten down into a commercially profitable genre called New Wave.  Guys in oversize blazers, skinny ties, lots of keyboards and synthesizers.  That was the sound track of our young, Genretaion X lives, at least until someone took the time to properly introduce us to underground music like 70's punk and 80's hardcore.  In those days, even though I was into a brand new, little, underground sport called BMX freestyle, The Cars were one of those new wave bands that were in heavy rotation on MTV, on the radio all the time, and in my cassette player.  They were one of my favorite bands then.

When I became a part of Idaho's very first trick team, Justin "Jay" Bickel was the center of it.  Jay's parents, Dwight and Cindy Bickel, were totally on board and supporting our riding.  I owe them a ton.  Wayne Moore, the old guy (17 at the time) decided to move on after a few shows with the three of us performing.  Jay and I reformed into the Critical Condition Stunt Team.  We did shows and rode in parades all over the Boise area, nearly all arranged by his mom.  So thank you Jay, Cindy, and Dwight, you gave my weird self a place to find a purpose back then. 

I would drive over to Jay's house, on the west side of Boise, where Jay had a six foot high quarterpipe and a four foot wedge ramp in front of the garage.  We'd practice our tricks for hours, trying to impersonate R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff, the BMX Action Trick Team, 1,500 miles away in SoCal.  As we rode the ramps and did flatland in the street, we had one main cassette playing in Jay's ghetto blaster, The Cars first album.  It was a favorite of both of us.  The lead singer was this tall skinny guy named Ric Ocasek.  We saw him in music videos every time we turned on MTV.  The Cars were huge then.  That was the summer and fall of 1984.

Five years later, in the late summer of 1989, Rich Bartlett and I got tired after the Friday morning session at the Brooklyn Banks.  The two of us rode back to our posh hotel room in midtown Manhattan and chilled for a bit.  Maybe we needed to fix a bike or grab some tool, I can't really remember.  Anyhow, after a a short time in the room, we rode back towards the Brooklyn Banks.  It was a pretty casual ride.  We'd hit a little curb cut jump, or bunnyhop little things we saw along the way.  It wasn't a balls out ride, like the night time sessions with Mat Hoffman, Dennis McCoy, Steve Swope, Rick Thorne, and the other two guys, our roommates for the weekend (see previous Brooklyn Banks posts).  Rich and I were saving our energy to ride the contest area and the banks later, and for the night time rides.

We were both hungry, and decided to stop for lunch at a classic New York City deli we saw along the way.  We turned our bikes upside down, right outside the door, and pushed them close together, to make them slightly harder to steal.  We kept half an eye on the bikes, as we entered the crowded deli, a quintessential New York experience.  We got a couple of killer sandwiches and drinks (paid for by Vision Street Wear, thank you very much), and stood at the little shelf, facing out the window, to eat.  Life was good.  Fat sandwiches, listening to the loud New Yorkers yell at and joke with each other.

A tall, skinny guy walked up to the door of the deli, right outside our window.  I was busy eating when Rich said, "Dude look, it's Ric Ocasek!"  I looked up.  Holy crap!  The lead singer of The Cars, that band we'd both seen a million times on MTV, was outside the glass, a few feet away.  He looked super tall, maybe six foot six, and even skinnier, than on TV.  He seemed to be another local at the deli.  As he opened the door, he paused a minute, and looked down at our BMX bikes, which were probably an odd sight, even in New York City.  I don't know why, but he checked out our bikes for maybe ten of fifteen seconds.  Rich was stoked, "Dude, Ric Ocasek is checking out our bikes!"  I was stoked, too.

That was a time when BMX riders were not famous.  Sure, WE knew all the top names, hell we knew them all personally.  But the world didn't.  Even in 1989, BMX racing and BMX freestyle very rarely showed up on TV.  There was no internet as we know it now.  People read magazines, but BMX hardly ever got a mention in a mainstream magazine or newspaper.  As much as BMX freestyle blew up from 1984 to late 1988, it was still largely unknown to mainstream America.  Everyone had seen a bike trick or two, as quick cuts in TV commercials, but they didn't know anything about our sport.  Then suddenly, a famous musician, someone EVERYONE knew by sight, took a moment to check out these weird little bikes with axle pegs, sitting outside his local deli.  It was just one of those weird little experiences that stuck in my mind, and probably Rich's, too, from our crazy trip to New York City.  We were stoked.

Rich Bartlett (aka Block Bikes owner), and me, finished our sandwiches, headed out, and picked our bikes up.  We had a cool thing to tell the guys when we got to the Brooklyn Banks for the afternoon's riding session.  Let the Good Times Roll.

Story shared by Steve Emig

Bonus story:  After Rich read this yesterday, he totally remembered this weird little incident.  A part I forgot was that we waited outside the deli for a while to see Ric Ocasek come out.  I guess we wanted to say, "Hi." or something.  But Rich remembers us looking through the window, and Ric got his slice of pizza, and folded it in half to eat it, total New York style.  But he was talking with other locals, and taking a long time.  We got tired of waiting, and eventually took off to the Brooklyn Banks.

The video footage I shot at the 1989 Brooklyn Banks 2-Hip Meet the Street never got used for anything, as crazy as that sounds.  The tapes are in a warehouse somewhere, I imagine, and none of it is on YouTube.  So here's a taste of that contest from someone's surviving home video footage:

2-Hip Meet the Street: Brooklyn Banks 1989 - Part 3

Dennis McCoy is crazy.  Let's just start with that.  That's a big part of why we love him as a rider.  It's probably a big part of why he's still riding at age 52, and still ripping.  Or maybe he just REALLY wants to avoid getting an office job.  The riding from the clip above is all from two or more years after the Brooklyn Banks contest, as far as I can tell.

When I ended the last post about the 1989, 2-Hip Meet the Street contest at the Brooklyn Banks, (on this blog), it was the Thursday evening before the Saturday contest.  In the room Vision Street Wear Rich Bartlett and I were sharing, Dennis McCoy, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, up-and-comer Rick Thorne, and two other Kansas city guys, were picking their spots to sleep on the floor that night.  they were also doing a little bike tuning.  A few of us headed down to the street, without bikes, looking for food.  There was a mini-mart close by, and I wound up with a big hunk of cornbread, a Coke, and some other snacks.

After munching in the room, we all headed back out to go street riding.  Out of nowhere, I was roaming Manhattan with the two top riders on the planet, Dennis and Mat, and five other high caliber riders.  Keep in mind, I had a room paid for as the Vision video cameraman, not as a rider.  Also, I had sprained my ankle pretty bad about three weeks earlier.  It was nearly back to normal, but a little sore and weak.  I knew if I got sketchy and rolled it, even a little, I'd be heading back to the room.  I had to spend two more days with a 35 pound betacam on my shoulder, which would suck with a bad ankle.  So that stuff was in the back of my head. I also knew that if our posse got chased by security, cops, thugs, or a cop on a horse (the fastest threat), I was the slow kid in the pack.

All that mental baggage in my head, we headed out.  Our hotel was in Midtown Manhattan, around 36th or 37th street, as I remember.  We headed in the general direction of Greenwich Village, and the locals showed us where Washington Square Park was.  That became our base, if one of us wandered away from the posse or locals, and got kind of lost, we'd head back to Washington Square and meet up later.  Our spot for New York City pizza slices was near there, as well. 

Here's the crazy thing.  I can't really remember those rides.  I know how crazy that sounds.  I was riding with some of the best riders ever, on street, and I can't remember much.  You know how when you go on a really fun vacation, or maybe spring break, and so much crazy stuff happens, that it all blends together?  Things that on a normal day would seem epic, get forgotten, because even crazier things happen.  That's how that New York trip was.  Plus, it was 30 years ago, so that doesn't help.

In 1989, wall rides were happening, but we weren't grinding ledges much yet, and handrail slides hadn't been invented.  Tailwhip jumps hadn't happened yet either, though I was doing clunky footplant tailwhips.  But I was just weird then, no one else did them.  Most of what we were doing could best be called "applied street riding."  We were a pack of riders, just roaming, the kind of stuff Dennis and his Kansas City "street rogues" were known for.  We didn't casually pedal to a spot, and then try a gap or a grind.  Oh, the term "gap" wasn't part of our lexicon yet, either.  More than anything, we were a pack of BMXers, riding at a good pace, hitting things on the fly.  If it was in the way, we'd bunnyhop it, if there was a lip or curb jump, jump it and get some style in the air.  Hop up and down curves, swerve in and out of moving traffic, bump jump little curbs, tire grind a curb or step.  That's the kind of stuff we did, just non-stop.

Banks were big then, and bank to walls for wall rides.  So if we found one, we'd stop and session it, doing nosepicks, abubacas, blunts (back wheel stall, an abubaca without vert), or a 360 flyout if that was possible.  We'd do 180 bunnyhops, roll backwards in traffic, freak out drivers, then whip a 180 out and haul ass again.  Nollies were a favorite of mine at that point, a nosewheelie at speed into a speed bump, low curb, or random 2x4 on the ground.  It was just noon-stop rolling session without any real destination.  That's probably why I don't specifically remember much.  It was pure, hauling ass, in the moment, street riding.

When we got thirsty or hungry, we'd ride back to Washington Square Park, get a drink, maybe a slice of pepperoni, and eat.  There were two weird asphalt humps there, too far apart to really double jump, and we'd do little tricks on those.   We'd get flatland jam circles going with other pros, ams, and NYC locals at the Park.  That's what we did Thursday night, most of Friday and Friday night, and Saturday after the contest.  It was like all the basic bike skills, pedaling fast, foot out carved turns on pavement, bunnyhopping, all happening at warp speed.  It was so much freakin' fun.

Around 10:00 pm or so, we gathered again, and headed back to our hotel room.  More food and snacks were consumed.  A couple local guys followed us up to our room.  Bikes were tuned, and Dennis, crazy freakin' DMC, asked the locals, "Where's the worst place in New York City?"  They threw neighborhood names around, but decided it had to be Hell's Kitchen.  Dennis McCoy said, "Take me there."  The locals said, "No way."  Dennis kept on them.  Eventually Dennis found a couple crazy locals, and they headed off to take him to ride Hell's Kitchen.  We honestly weren't sure if we'd see Dennis McCoy again, that's how scary it was to the locals in those days.  New York City was gnarly enough, and we were in Manhattan, the rich borough.  Going to the worst place in New York seemed like suicide.  But then, it was Dennis McCoy who wanted to go.  How bad was Hell's Kitchen in 1989?  Here's a video of it about crack addicts there from 1988.  If you're an addict, this is a serious trigger, so pass this up and keep reading.  If you want to see it, here's Hell's Kitchen (NSFW).

After Dennis and the locals left, the rest of the posse, Mat, Steve Swope, Rich, Rick Thorne, and the K.C. guys, got ready for the late night session.  Like I said before, I knew I was the slow kid in the crowd, mostly because of my sore ankle.  So I sat  that session out, and hung out in the room and watched TV.  Those guys came back at maybe 2 am or so, with stories of dodging security guards, and police, crazy tricks, and off the hook, high speed street riding.  One security guard tried to corner Rich, who was a body  builder and a pro racer, and Rich gave him a pro elbow so he could escape.  I knew I made a smart move by not going, a couple guys almost got caught by security.

Dennis McCoy wandered in around 5:00 or 6:00 am.  We all woke up, and he had stories of Hell's Kitchen that even he thought were crazy.  So we listened a while, then all crashed out again.  We had two more days of New York City riding ahead, sleep was needed.

Brooklyn Banks Meet the Street '89- Part2

Yes, this is a skate video, and some stylish skaters for the day, too.  The reason I'm using this clip is that the second part of each rider's section has the exact area used for Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street, at the Brooklyn Banks, in 1989.  The contest was either late August or September 1989, so this video is the same time period as the contest.  In the videos from the actual contest, it's so crowded, that you can't really see this area, but this video shows it well.  The jump over the Jersey barrier at the end was in play as well.

In the last video, I told you that Vision Street Wear rider Rich Bartlett and I  (VSW cameraman) were sharing a kickbutt hotel room for this contest.  Because the corporate money, and even most of the bike industry money, pulled out of BMX freestyle earlier that year, many top riders lost their sponsors.  So I left off where we were at the contest site (seen in the clip above), and I'm pretty sure it was the Thursday before the contest.  After sessioning a while, Rich and I met up, and he told Dennis McCoy, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, up-and-comer Rick Thorne, and a couple other Kansas City guys, that they could crash in our room.  I thought, "Cool, this is gonna be a crazy weekend."

So this BMX posse of 8 of us started riding back towards our Midtown Manhattan hotel.  But we had Dennis McCoy in the group, and the New York City BMX locals loved them some DMC.  That's all they could talk about, Street Rogue #1.  As we started to ride off, half the freaking contest crowd started to follow us.  Some of them were other well known riders, heading to their hotels or crash pads, and a bunch were NYC locals who wanted to ride with Dennis.  All told, about 40-45 riders took off, and we soon stretched out into a block-long-string, weaving and bobbing in and out of traffic,on sidewalks and off, through Manhattan.  I was near the back of our group, which was leading the pack.  We weren't riding fast, but going more of a cruising speed, coasting standing up or dropcrank half the time.

I'd ridden with the Curb Dogs/Golden Gate Park scene in San Francisco for a year, and we'd get groups of 15 or 20 riders hitting the Embarcadero at times, and street riding a bit.  But this huge group of BMXers riding through NYC was a whole different thing, just crazy for that time period.

One or two of the better locals helped us figure out where our hotel was, and we all pulled up and stopped on the wide sidewalk in front of it.  As the guys from the back of the group got there, they were all yapping about something.  Now New York City BMXers, as a whole, were not rich guys, and some were pretty shady as well.  We learned that it was common at the time for them to ride by an outdoor grocery store, and grab and apple or something as the cruised past.  They also were really adept at snagging food bags, or a pizza box, from delivery guys, and riding off.  As a fairly honest guy, that blew my mind.  But for the rest of the weekend, I kept thinking about it, and realizing just how much stuff could be snagged by good rider.  Of course, if you got caught, there would probably be a beat down coming.

And that's what the guys were yapping about.  We passed a grocery store, maybe ten blocks into the ride.  It look a lot like the little one in the Seinfeld TV show, if you remember that.  There were outside fruit displays, and one or two riders grabbed an apple or orange as the back half of the huge BMX mass rode by.  But the store owner, well aware that BMXers, and other bike riders, stole stuff at times, watched our posse close.  He saw fruit get snagged, and ran after the riders, grabbing the last one.  Unfortunately, the kid he grabbed was Ruben Castillo, at least that's what we heard.  Ruben was one of the youngest guys in the national freestyle scene then, 14 or so, I think, and a small dude.  NYC locals circled back to help out, but our group, half a block in front of them, didn't know anything had happened.  So we kept riding. 

The locals said Ruben was kinda freaked out, not knowing why he'd been grabbed, cause he didn't steal anything.  There was shouting and yelling and pushing and shoving, the story went, and they got Ruben out of the shop owner's hands, and everybody made a break for it.  By that time, most of the group was blocks away, and those guys took a different route, and Ruben and brother Robert, so I heard, went to wherever they were staying.

Meanwhile, our group, down to 25 or so, circled around in front of our hotel, standing over our bikes, or sitting on the eats and top tubes, talking about BMX stuff.  We talked for half an hour or so, as the sun went down.  The NYC locals told Dennis stories and asked him questions mostly.  Yeah, Mat Hoffman was right there, too, and Swope and Thorne and us.  But Dennis was the guy held most in honor in NYC.  One or two at a time, the locals peeled away and headed home.  There was our 8 guys, and three or four more after a while. 

Finally someone said, "What's with that family over there, by the other end of the motel?  I thought they were taking a photo, but they haven't moved the whole time we've been here."  A few more of us had noticed them.  They were in the evening shadows, maybe 50-75 feet away.  Then we all looked at them.  Finally someone rode over to them.  It turned out they were bronze statues.  Just normal looking people that someone made statues of.  New York is weird.

Finally, our group of 8 walked our bikes through the lobby of our cool hotel, which even in New York got a lot of looks from other guests, then into the elevators and up to our room.

There were two beds, in corners of the room, which Rich and I got, cause it was our room.  That was standard BMX freestyle protocol in those days.  Yes, even Mat, Dennis McCoy and Swope Dog slept on floors when needed.  Our room had this insanely huge closet, which became the bike garage, all parked upside down, shoeboxed back and forth, to save space.  There was STILL room for 3 or 4 guys to sleep on the floor of our closet.  I'd never seen a closet that big, mega closets in houses weren't a thing then, it it seemed posh as hell.  It was bigger than two or three of the bedrooms I'd had as a kid.  The others claimed floor space in the main part of the room, bikes were tuned, and myself and a few others went down, found the market next door, and looked for cheap, but good, food.  They had big chunks of homemade cornbread, which caught my eye, and I lived on cornbread, Coke, and New York pepperoni slices for the next 2 1/2 days.

As always, this blog and this post are brought to you by Block Bikes, Rich Bartlett's shop, and specifically the new:

 Block Bikes Online BMX Shop

Check it out...

Brooklyn Banks Meet the Street '89: Part 1- The scenario

The bigger part of the Brooklyn Banks, about 28 (?) years after the contest I'm talking about.  Here are the Animal guys making the most of some of the finest brick laying work anywhere.  Even now, with a whole lot more street experience (of all kinds) under my belt, this place looks as gritty and urban and street as about anywhere I've ever seen.

BMX racing surged in the early and mid-1980's in it's second wave of popularity.  BMX freestyle was in its infancy during the mid-80's growing from two trick teams in about 1980,  Bob's Haro and Morales with one, and R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff with the other, into an actual sport.  BMX racing and freestyle blew up in the late 80's as corporate money from outside industries piled on the "fad."  Then in late '88 and early '89, the outside money started looking for other fads.  That's what big money does, but we didn't know that then. 

At the big bike industry trade show in January of 1989, I walked around, and I actually heard industry guys, in booth after booth, saying, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing!"  The ten or so manufacturers who had trick teams touring during the summer of 1988, dwindled to two or three teams out in 1989.  Sponsorships, even for the best riders, were pulled away.  BMX freestyle was dead... to the world.  But not to us hardcore riders, we just went underground.  When the big money pulls away, the D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) kids come out to play.

Myself, I hung out at the Huntington Beach Pier on the weekends, riding with more skaters than BMX freestylers, guys like Pierre Andre, Don Brown, Ed Templeton, and even Mark Gonzales.  I'd heard tales of the Brooklyn Banks, one of the very few places, like Love Park in Philly, that were famous East Coast spots.  When word spread that Ron Wilkerson was going to have a 2-Hip Meet the Street contest at the Brooklyn Banks in New York City, everyone was stoked. 

Personally, I was stoked because I had become the cameraman at Unreel Productions that year, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company.  Vision Street Wear was sponsoring the 2-hip contests, and I got sent, all expenses paid, to shoot video of all the comps, vert and street.  There was no way I was going to go cross country without that help, I wasn't that great of a rider, and it would have been an expensive trip.  I wound up being one of the luckiest guys that weekend, having airfare, an awesome room, and meals paid for.

As the event got closer, I heard that Vision was sending pro racer/jumper/street rider Rich Bartlett to ride, me as cameraman, and BMX team manager "Hollywood" Mike Miranda to... well I'm not sure.  He only had one rider to "manage," but it was a weekend in New York.  Can't beat that for free.  Mike took his girlfriend for a long weekend in NYC, made the most of it, and Rich and I were sharing a room.  So we flew there, met up, and Mike drove us all to midtown Manhattan, where we had the best hotel room I've ever had, before or since.  It was about three miles or so from the contest site at the Brooklyn Banks. 

I'll be honest, New York City scared the crap out of me.  It was huge, tall, people rushing everywhere, sketchy ghetto areas, and most of the buildings looked similar from street level.  I was seriously afraid of getting lost and dying in some sketchy way.  But that just added to the intensity.  We got there, I think it was Thursday, with the street contest happening on Saturday, and then a King of Vert on Long Island on Sunday.

Rich and I got settled in, and I felt weird, but cool, walking my bike through the hallways of a swanky New York hotel, down the elevator, and through the lobby.  Rich seemed to know where the banks were, more or less, and we headed off to find the contest site.  We rode pretty mellow, on the sidewalks, and eventually found the Brooklyn Banks, and maybe a 100 or so freestylers there already there riding.

We just sessioned  that afternoon, and as evening started to set in, I talked Rich.  He said something like, "I told Mat and Dennis and a couple guys they could crash in our room, OK?"  I said, "Sure."  As crazy as it sounds now, in September of 1989, Mat Hoffman and Dennis McCoy didn't have sponsors, and they, and pretty much everyone else, paid their own way to New York City.  It was customary then to crash on the floor of the motel rooms of guys who had sponsors, and Rich and I were about the only ones who did.  OK, I was a cameraman, not "sponsored," but, close enough.  So Rich Bartlett, me, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, Dennis McCoy, some new kid named Rick Thorne, and a couple other Kansas City street rogues, all started to ride back to our hotel room...

Part 2 in a couple of days...  meanwhile, check out the new Block Bikes Online Shop .
That's Rich Bartlett's new deal, and that's who's brought me in to make this blog rock.


Story shared by Steve Emig/The White Bear

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