I just talked to him last month on his birthday. I’d known him for 35 years, and he inspired me all the way through. He ran companies, organized events, fostered communities, and did it all with an infectious smile on his face. With the passing of Ronnie Bonner this week, the world lost an inspiration, BMX lost a legend, and many of us lost a friend.
Sometime in 1990, the National Bicycle League hosted a combination BMX freestyle contest and BMX race in my current home of Jacksonville, Florida. The contest was situated in the parking lot of the public library next to the BMX track, so there were races going on alongside the flatland and ramp contests. I met so many people there—Chris “Mad Dog” Moeller (the M of S&M Bikes), Root Girl, Ronnie Anderson, Perry Mervar—faces from magazine pages walking around in a parking lot. The one persistent name from that day was Ronnie Bonner.
At the time Ronnie was running a company called Underground Products. UGP largely followed the model of BMX entrepreneurship outlined by Bob Haro, making stickers, t-shirts, and number plates, all with a flair unique to Ronnie. I was making zines, stickers, and t-shirts, but at nothing close to the scale of UGP. We traded shirts and numbers and stayed in touch.
A year or so later, Ronnie and a couple of other BMX riders came up form Orlando to my parents’ house in Alabama. I had a stone-henge-style ramp, a wedge, a yellow parking block, and long PVC pipe for rail slides in our driveway. When the guys arrived late one Friday night, they tried to wake me up by throwing things at my upstairs bedroom window. When they were unsuccessful, they camped out on the ramps. When my dad got up the next morning, he let them in to sleep on the couch and living-room floor.
We had many such weekends over the next 35 years, usually in conjunction with some event that Ronnie organized. Just before moving from Atlanta to San Diego in 2000, I trekked down to Orlando for one of his Roots Jams. Aside from the main event held on multiple ramps and rails shielded from the Florida sun by a giant pavilion, there was the night before out in the city and the night after as well. Ronnie knew how to make the trip to central Florida worth everyone’s effort.
After he sold UGP in 2005, he wasted no time starting new projects. The Shadow Conspiracy and SubRosa quickly rose to prominence with quality products, stellar aesthetics, and innovative marketing. On an Unclicked podcast episode from last year, Ronnie talked about his favorite art form: the art of execution. “Everyone has ideas,’“ he said, “but very few people actually fucking go for it.” Putting your ideas into action is the real art.
The last time I saw Ronnie was at the opening of his bike shop in 2022. Juvee Hall is in a small building across the street from the warehouse that houses Sparky’s, the distribution arm of Ronnie’s empire, but it boasts a small showroom, repair shop, and an outdoor stage. It’s the only bike shop I’ve ever been to with cold-brew coffee on tap.
Like anyone who knew him, I could go on and on about all the cool things he brought into the world, his never-failing laugh and smile, and all the ideas he executed, but the short of it is that Ronnie Bonner was a mentor, an inspiration, and a friend, and he excelled at all of the above in BMX and beyond. He is already missed.