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:

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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