From an early age it was instilled in me that people judge you by how you look, how you dress, how you wear your hair, how you carry yourself. My dad won’t leave the house to do business or see someone without styling and dressing appropriately. We communicate something through every stylistic choice we make. As Umberto Eco (1973) writes, “I speak through my clothes.” To wit, I have seen firsthand many books misjudged by their covers. Still, coming up with this stress on conformity alongside the drive for expression inherent in art, skateboarding, and punk rock, I can’t help but toy with the conflict. In the Summer 1988 issue of Homeboy Magazine, pro BMXer R. L. Osborn wrote,
My girlfriend doesn’t dig my Megadeth t-shirt. ‘You’re going to shave one side of your head? Holey Levi’s? Throw ’em away. Your hair’s too long. Your hair’s too short. Why does your hair look like a rainbow?’ Everyone feels the heat from friends, family, and whoever else about independent style, yet I can’t help feeling that sometimes envy is covered up with uncool remarks. Hey. let’s be straight about this, it’s your life, your feelings, and your own personal way of expressing yourself and showing the true you (p. 81).
The piece was accompanied by photos of street kids with wacky hair with odd angles and colors, leather jackets with lots of zippers, spikes, chains, and other scary accessories. I was 17 when that issue came out, and though Osborn’s proselytizing wasn’t the first time I’d been exposed to punk aesthetics, it stuck with me. So, when I saw my DIG BMX Magazine colleague Ricky Adam‘s new zine, I immediately thought of R. L.’s words.
Ricky Adam’s zine, Glad to See the Back of You (Trajectories, 2013), is full of tattooed attitude. It’s a compendium of punk self-expression mostly in the form of custom jackets with back patches. Back patches are largely the domain of bikers or crust punks, the latter of whom fill this zine’s pages. Punk back patches are often cut from old screen-printed t-shirts and hand sewn onto denim or leather jackets or vests along with other patches. The hand-done aspect of them is rarely disguised and gives the look a D.I.Y., provisional feel, and their literal patchwork lends them to subversive bricolage (see Hebdige, 1979). By mixing patches as signs together, punks engage in what Eco (1972) calls “semiotic guerilla warfare.” They express their lack of desire to reunite with the parent culture and celebrate, even parody, the alienation that causes it so much concern (Hebdige, 1979). The crust-punk style takes this alienation to the extreme. Its a war is waged against the established look via its sardonic and scathing rejection thereof (Brummett, 2008; Hebdige, 1979).
Greil Marcus (1989) outlines the complexities of punk’s signification this way:
[A] load of old ideas sensationalized into new feelings almost instantly turned into new clichés, but set forth with such momentum that the whole blew up its equations day by day. For every fake novelty, there was a real one. For every third-hand pose, there was a fourth-hand pose that turned into a real motive (p. 77).
None of this is new, and it might still seem juvenile, but the underlying sentiments haven’t changed. Who cares what’s been co-opted? And who knows what authenticity means anymore? My friend Mark Wieman recently observed how thick and long The Long Tail™ has become. There’s simply no real mainstream anymore, and when it comes to punk and authority, I still feel like my 17-year-old self. I don’t own a pair of dress shoes.
The punk aesthetic of doing it yourself isn’t about doing it like everyone else. It’s about liberating what’s unique about yourself, exposing what makes you you. As Osborn concludes, “Show us who you really are.”
——————–
Ricky Adam’s Glad to See the Back of You is out in a limited run of 300 (mine’s #154), so get yours now.
References:
Adam, Ricky. (2013). Glad to See the Back of You. Leeds, UK: Trajectories.
Brummett, Barry. (2008). A Rhetoric of Style. Carbondale, IL: The University of Southern Illinois Press.
Eco, Umberto (1972). Towards a Semiotic Enquiry into the Television Message. WPCS, 3, University of Birmingham.
Eco, Umberto. (1973). Social Life as a Sign System. In D. Robey (Ed.), Structuralism: The Wolfson College Lectures, 1972. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 57-72.
Hebdige, Dick. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Routledge.
Marcus, Greil. (1989). Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Osborn, R. L. (1988, Summer). Page 65. Homeboy Magazine, 80-81.
I remember the first Aggro Rag I ever got. It was the thickest zine I’d ever seen. Its sixty pages weren’t folded as much as they were just curved in the middle, struggling against their own bulk. The product of one Mike Daily, Aggro Rag was the premier BMX zine. Heavy on the goings-on of The Plywood Hoods out of York, Pennsylvania, their tricks and travels, and the national BMX scene of the time, Daily’s rag rivaled the national glossies for writing and relevance.
For life. [reppin’ at Nemo HQ; photo by Jared Souney]Daily came to visit me a couple of times when I lived in San Diego the first time. This was early in the millennium and he lived just up the 5 in L.A. At the time, Daily was easing out of the BMX scene having worked at both Go: The Rider’s Manual and BMX Plus! during the 1990s. All of this is significant because I’ve been in touch with Daily since the mid 1980s through Aggro Rag and The Plywood Hoods’ Dorkin’ in York videos. For those spinning outside the orbit of freestyle BMX for the past thirty years, more background will be needed here.
The Plywood Hoods were like an indie-BMX Bones Brigade, like the Bulls with Jordan: a tight-knit crew of innovators who fidged high-tech, flatland maneuvers that it took the rest of the sport years to catch up to. It’s no hyperbole to say that Kevin Jones, Mark Eaton, Brett Downs, Mike Daily, Dale Mitzel, Jamie McKulick, John Huddleston, John Doenut, Jym Dellavalle, and various others utterly revolutionized flatland BMX. The rest of us only knew about this because two members of the crew were also budding media-heads. Mark Eaton made the legendary Dorkin’ in York videos that made the Hoods legends themselves, and Mike Daily made Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag. In the pre-web underground BMX network, those were the go-to sites.
Aggro Rag documented Hood hijinks from 1984 to 1989 the went on hiatus until last year’s reunion Hip-hop issue (to which I was proud to have contributed an interview with Aesop Rock). Now, like Garry Scot Davis’s Skate Fate, all the old ones have been collected into one, bright pink anthology of underground 1980s BMX freestyle history. As Mark Lewman put it to me: “If you want to know how it felt to be a 16-year-old freestyle fanatic in the mid-1980s, this is your manual re: how to roll. Those who recognize the name Aggro Rag, this book is already on your want list.” Oh, and it’s not just the zines bound up all pretty, there’s a bunch of new content as well, including exclusive new interviews with Kevin Jones and Dave Mirra, a foreword by Andy Jenkins, and an introduction by Mark Lewman.
As if that weren’t enough, Daily teamed up with Sub Rosa to put together a limited edition, Aggro Rag frame. It’s a new version of their already limited Pandora DTT (double top-tubes, holmes) frame, an updated version of the very one I currently ride. Along with Daily, Chip Riggs (whom some of you might know from later issues of Aggro Rag) did the graphics on this thing, and he had this to say:
The main goal with the project from Sub Rosa’s end was to pay tribute to what Mike had done with Aggro Rag and the Plywood Hoods to contribute to the sport and culture of Freestyle. We certainly wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for what Mike and the rest of the Hoods did. In regards to the frame we were trying to put together something that had a direct connection with the zine and that time period while still making something that was modern and ridable by today’s standards. I feel like we achieved everything we set out to do with the project and I hope people are as stoked with the outcome as we all are.
In keeping with other zine-like ephemera, Sub Rosa only made 43 of these things.
More than just a highly motivated, well connected, BMX media-maker, Mike Daily is a man of letters, a one-man creative spigot constantly spewing out inspiring solvents. During our time in Southern California, Daily released a collection of poetry and artwork (Stovepiper with contributions from Charles Bukowski, Bill Shields, Hugh Gallagher, Andy Jenkins, Greg Higgins, and many others) and wrote not one but two novels (Valley and Alarm). I used the release of the Aggro Rag collection as an opportunity to get dirty with Daily.
Roy Christopher:Let’s go all the way back: What prompted you to start Aggro Rag in the first place? I didn’t start a zine until I saw them in Freestylin’. What gave you the initiative to get one going?
Mike Daily: You’re talking with a guy who had Max Leg Gaters. Remember when some Pro BMX racers sported “gaiters” on the lower legs of their leathers? I know Clint Miller wore them when he was sponsored by Torker. So did Mike Miranda and Billy Griggs when they were on CW. Gaiters kind of made sense for motorcycle motocross racers because they kept high-velocity mud splatter out of the insides of their MX boots. The fad didn’t last long in BMX, though. How could it? Leg Gaiters were basically ventilated-mesh/nylon bell bottoms. (And the ‘70s were over.) The extra space to display company logos wasn’t worth the hazard of getting your pant-legs caught in the chain/sprocket. Pro Guard plastic chain covers failed for the same reason. However, Toby Henderson did make Pro Guards look cool when he was on Hutch.
Terrycables were a different story. I loved Terrycables: the dual rubber hoods for both the brake lever and the barrel adjuster on the caliper, the rectangular checkerboard logo silver foil stickers, the black and white patches for the jerseys. Terrycables were expensive, but I thought they were worth it because of how totally trick they looked. I took my first Terrycable (which I had mail-ordered direct from the California manufacturer) to Brian Peters’ house and asked Brian’s dad if he could install it for me. Terrycables were an MX-influenced aftermarket BMX product, and Brian’s dad Rich was handy with motorcycles. Mr. Peters removed the Terrycable from the bag, selected a wire-cutter from his wall of tools, and in one fluid motion–with absolutely no wasted energy–he clipped the metal cylinder off the end. I knew enough to know that the part he’d just cut off was the cylinder head made to fit inside the brake lever. Mr. Peters read the directions from the cardboard packaging, and confirmed. He apologized and began setting up soldering equipment. Two hours later, installation was complete. Brake-pull was crunchier than a rusted-out hand-grip exerciser, but damn did that Terrycable look trick on my Supergoose. T-rick…
Accessories. I went all-out on the BMX accessories: Haro lightning bolt number plate, SST Dirt Skirt, JT Racing wet weather gloves and Flite donuts to protect your thumbs from the grip flanges. Taking cues from Deric Garcia and “Chicken George” Seevers, I stacked multiple donuts on my grips to get maximum power-pull from the ends of the handlebars. My friend Dan Ahearn took donut-stacking to the next-level: his MXL-gloved hands barely fit onto his Oakley B-1B grips that were mounted on Galindo bars that already had bar end extenders inserted in them. I lived and breathed BMX, as they say—as so many of us did. My zeal for BMX accessorizing carried over into freestyle when I got more into “trick riding” in 1984. The GT that I’m riding in the photo taken at the first performance of the Plywood Hoods—one of the photos introducing Aggro Rag #4 (March ’85) in Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag: Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection—had been my dialed-to-the-max race bike. I’d added grip tape to the top tube and installed Skyway Tuff Wheels with Tioga Comp ST (stadium) tires, Skyway thread-on “axle extenders,” GT bolt-on fork standers, a front brake with Potts Mod and, of course, a Dyno D2 brake guard. I’d also replaced the three-digit number on my Haro number plate with “PLYWOOD HOODS” and added an abundance of stickers including Michigan J. Frog, which I got for a quarter from a gumball machine. I was 16 years old in that photo.
Printed matter, I found—ZINES–could be “tricked out” very much like a bicycle. It was such great fun accessorizing the pages with photos, stories, drawings, random clip art and ransom note-style lettering techniques, then immediately photocopying them “on the cheap” in an array of colors. Not too many different colors, though: Zines needed to be reproduced with enough black and white inside to give them the proper lo-fi look, and readability.
RC:I totally agree. There was a while there where you purposefully drifted away from BMX. What caused your turning more toward the cultural marginalia?
MD: “Purposefully”—I like that. The astounding heat of the San Fernando Valley where I lived from 1992-2001 would seem to be the main contributing factor in my drifting away from BMX over the years. Reluctance to put myself in more danger than I might’ve been able to handle at the time. In ’96, I broke my ribs on a shopping carts-railing at a Safeway on Reseda, for instance. I focused on writing a sustained work, which became my first novel, Valley. Andy Jenkins helped me edit the work-in-progress and later accepted Valley for publication. Andy designed the book and released it on his imprint Bend Press, “The Smallest Book Company,” in November 1998. Andy organized a book release party for me at L.A.’s The Garage, and Flogging Molly played at the event. When he was Editor and Art Director of Freestylin’, Andy had occasionally taken time to correspond with me by mail—often enclosing stickers. He’d always encouraged me since I was a teenager living in York, PA. Here’s the summary that Andy wrote about Valley:
Valley is a humorously visual story narrated by main character, writer/student, Mick O’Grady, as he ambles through his days in a sort of haze attempting to make sense of the numerous mysteries unraveling before him—from the odd-ball people he meets and associates with (a giant poet, drunken ex-linebacker, lost master journalist [Earl Parker], wired meth-head, etc.), to the margin scribblings, receipts and photos he happens upon in used books by his favorite authors. O’Grady’s literary inclinations result in curious overanalyzation—a practically itemized account of everything around him, the ordinary included. At one point he notes that a vending machine in the lobby has no “Q” button on it. Not 26, but 25 letters. Lost in his wonderment after buying the drink, he forgets it on top of the machine…
A.J. and Mark “Lew” Lewman are endless inspirations. Everyone who grew up reading their stories and enjoying their unique contributions to Freestylin’, Homeboy, GO: The Rider’s Manual, DIRT and Grand Royal shares the same feeling: gratitude.
I got more into poetry, fiction and music while I was finishing college at California State University of Northridge from 1993-1998, that’s for sure. Poetry: Kenneth Patchen, Jack Kerouac, Lew Welch, Steve Richmond. Fiction: Ronald Sukenick, Richard Brautigan, Kevin Sampsell, Mark Leyner. Music: Jawbreaker, Giants Chair, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees/Mark Lanegan, Elliott Smith. I know that reading an article you wrote and published in your zine Front Wheel Drive, Roy Christopher, got me to go out and find CDs by Shiner, a Kansas City band I listened to and liked. Thanks for that blue and white Shiner sticker you sent me in 1995. I still haven’t stuck it.
RC:Nice! Tell me more about your spoken performances. I only caught one of them in 2007 when we both lived in Portland. I remember someone making fun of me because I knew all the words.
MD: You knew all the words to “Drum Machines,” I remember that! Thanks, Roy. The words to “Drum Machines” (recited from my second novel, Alarm) are:
I wish there was a radio station that just played drum machines. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Eureka! Eureka. I just thought of something. I seem to have just thought of something. It’s like a comic. A four-panel comic. In the first frame one guy says to another guy, ‘Who’s your drummer?’ In the second frame it’s just a close-up of the other guy and he says, ‘Electricity. He goes by electricity.’ In the third frame the first guy says to the other guy, ‘Where’s he live?’ In the last frame is another close-up of the second guy and he says, ‘In a hole in the wall.’ And he’s looking at the reader. Whoa. I’m not paying attention. I’m swervedriving. I feel like crying. It’s raining. I exit the freeway and pull into a Krispy Kreme. I drive up to the window. I find my lucky two-dollar bill that I got in tips when I got on the mike at open mike and didn’t care if I messed up. And I didn’t mess up. A guy in a red, white and blue tracksuit said I tore shit up. I’m not making this up. I unwedge a nickel from the dash for the difference. ‘Two-oh-five out of two-oh-five. Here’s your three glazed originals and one extra one just for coming to Krispy Kreme! Have a nice night, sir!’ I drive off. I wish there was a radio station that just played drum machines. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Here’s a clip of that very piece [runtime: 6:59]:
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The spoken-word performances resulted from wanting to “talk” my writing without having to read it from a book or printed-out pages. I got my start doing spoken words in the late ‘90s when I worked behind the counter at an all-ages coffee house called Cobalt Café. Rick Lupert still runs an open mike night there. After I moved up to Portland, OR, at the beginning of 2002, I sought out local venues offering open mike and I participated. I ended up meeting individuals who remain some of my closest friends to this day, like Pecos B. Portland author and friend Kevin Sampsell inspired me the most to move here. After I bought his great book How to Lose Your Mind with the Lights On (Future Tense, 1994) at a Tower Records in Northridge, CA, I read the short story/poems collection cover to cover in one sitting. Since the early ‘90s, Kevin had been publishing chapbooks of his work and writing by others. Chapbooks are cheaply printed publications that are often self-produced by the author or poet. These “cheap penny books” originated in Great Britain in the 19th Century and were geared more toward the lower end of the market (the masses). In almost all cases, chapbooks were read for recreation and then discarded. I documented my deep appreciation for Kevin Sampsell’s work in Alarm, the novel and double CD that I put out myself in 2007.
RC:So what brought you back to BMX so fervently?
MD: I’ve always owned at least one 20” bike. I haven’t always ridden the bikes, but I’ve never been without one. In 2009, I decided that I wanted to rebuild the ’85 CW California Freestyle set-up that I had ridden in 1987, when I was most into flatland. My inclination to complete The Build was the best thing I could have done for myself. It was a tremendous feeling cruising that ride down the street after Shad Johnson at Goods BMX dialed everything in for me. With friend and fellow zineguy (Jargon of Delinquents) Luke Strahota, I went to an old school BMX get-together that year to check out the vintage show bikes. By chance at the gathering, I met Lisa Grossman, who raced BMX for factory JMC in the early ‘80s. I’d forgotten that Lisa and I had been pen pals when we were both 13 years old (she lived in OR, I lived in PA). The following year, Luke and I attended some jams and began meeting new friends from our scene and others. “Full circle” may be a cliché, but it’s an apt description for the fervency. Luke, by the way, is a talented drummer (currently bandleader for The Satin Chaps). A handful of times I’ve had the opportunity to perform my fiction to his live beats.
RC:Tell me more about Moon Babes of Bicycle City. We riffed a bit in 2010 on all the different types of bicycles being ridden these days, but I know nothing of the book’s premise.
MD: The first sentence of Moon Babes of Bicycle City is:
South of Roswell, north of Hope, east of an Apache reservation, west of Dexter and Lake Arthur lies Bicycle City, New Mexico.
Since I started working on the novel in 2010, I’ve filled numerous sketchbooks with research and riffs in anticipation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Mead composition notebook, a perfect-bound blank book from Michael’s or a ‘70s-era Wonder Woman personal journal survivor with a 3D cover…my approach is to let myself get a little sketchy with the work—have fun with it–so “sketchbooks” is how I refer to them. Glue sticks and collages are involved, and so is acrylic paint. I prefer writing with pencils and using typewriters. After publishing Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! “The Hip-Hop Issue” Number 13 zine in August 2012, I received a generous gift of files via U.S. mail from a fellow rider and enthusiast on the east coast. The shared digital library grants me full access to all the BMX and freestyle magazines I’d read so many times in my youth, I had memorized parts of them—including many issues I’d missed. I’ve been hesitant to insert the discs and see what’s on them. I can say this: I’m looking forward to it.
I had to shelve work on the novel in 2011 because I needed to get the Aggro Rag book done first. I couldn’t have completed Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection if it wasn’t for Bizarro novelist and friend Cameron Pierce, who initially had helped lay out most of the original 12 zines for the collection, and my friend Chip Riggs, whose contributions in graphic design and website development were extensive, to say the least. Cameron Pierce is my Tour Guide for Moon Babes—he’s my Editor and eventual publisher on his small press, Lazy Fascist. Read any one of his mad, inventive novels for insight to why Cameron has my utmost respect. Can I recommend one? Abortion Arcade. It’s a collection of three novellas published by Eraserhead Press (my favorite of the three is titled “The Roadkill Quarterback of Heavy Metal High”).
Moon Babes of Bicycle City is a book about the demented Moon family—Rodderick, Chatauqua and daughters named Suzue, Araya and Ukai—living in a bike clubs-ravaged New Mexico town where cars have been outlawed and the terrain is a world like no other. The family members struggle in a run-down environment to survive deceit and loss, is more along the lines of what happens in the book.
One thing I learned from my own struggles is this: Problems are funny.
Conflicts, hardships, disappointments: They arise.
They’re funny in that regard.
RC:True. Anything else you want to mention here?
MD: I worked hard on Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection for over two-and-a-half years. I have a daughter and I work 40+ hours a week. It was my after-hours goal to get this collection done and get it done right so I can move on this year to finish my new book. Thanks Tons to everyone choosing to pre-order a signed book direct from me with the package deals offered on aggrorag.com until Wednesday, March 13th, at 11:59pm PST. I’m expecting to ship all preorders worldwide from Oregon before the book’s official date of publication, 4.3.13.
Thank you, Roy Christopher, for the opportunity to give A’s to Q’s I hadn’t yet been asked. There’s sound reasoning behind why I chose to become one of your students by studying your work both in print and online. I knew there was some reason I hung out with you.
——-
Thanks to Mike Daily, Jared Souney, Mark Lewman, Ronnie Bonner, and Chip Riggs for helping me get this piece together.
Those disgruntled with our current “technopoly,” as Neil Postman famously called it, often argue for returning to a simpler time. This is, of course, impossible, as even their visions of simpler times include technology. For example, in The Nature of Technology (Free Press, 2009), Brian Arthur envisions a world where all of our modern technologies disappear, yet we’d still be left with some. He writes, “We would still have watermills, and foundries, and oxcarts; and course linens, and hooded cloaks, and sophisticated techniques for building cathedrals. But we would once again be medieval” (p. 10). As ludicrous as such an argument appears, I would like to return to a time that never happened, an alternate universe where bicycles dominated the roads, as well as the construction and spread thereof. I’m not alone in this fantasy. Many of us take to the streets on two wheels instead of four, and movements like Critical Mass try to take them over completely on a regular basis.
Critical Mass Chicago, 2007.
The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is… one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.
— David Harvey
For the uninitiated, Critical Mass is a monthly ride aimed at taking back the streets from cars, demonstrating the presence of bicycles, and reminding everyone that they’re on the road, too. The event is known for blocking thoroughfares, pissing off motorists, and regular arrests. Shift Happens: Critical Mass at 20 (Full Enjoyment, 2012), edited by Chris Carlsson, LisaRuth Elliott, and Adriana Camarena, is a twenty-year, global retrospective of the trials and triumphs of Critical Mass. It’s a monthly revolution that will start its third decade this week. The scope of these essays is as global as the movement, from Budapest to Berkeley and Paris to Ponce, and its birthplace in San Francisco, as well as from my beloved Portland to my current Chicago.
Strangely, the recent economic downturn might be a great opportunity. Sustainability, public transport, and bike lanes aren’t scoffed at anymore. — David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries
For a look at the social forces that created the bicycle as opposed to the ones it has created, it gets no better than The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (The MIT Press, 2012), edited by by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. I first encountered this volume — and its use of the bicycle as an astute example of technological change (in Pinch and Bijker’s essay “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other”) — in Andrew Feenberg‘s “Philosophy of Technology” class at San Diego State. It has since been treated to a much-deserved anniversary edition (the original version hit shelves in 1987). This collection established the approach of the social construction of technology (SCOT) as a viable methodology, and it’s not all about bicycles: eighteenth-century cooking stoves, twentieth-century missile systems, and thirteenth-century galleys get their due. The aforementioned chapter on the social construction of bicycles is still my favorite though.
The mere fact of riding a bicycle is not in itself sinful, and if it is the only means of reaching the church on a Sunday, it may be excusable. — 1885 reply to a letter from a young lady
If you’re looking for more focus on the bike itself, rather than its urban and sociological implications, there’s Bicycling Science (The MIT Press, 2004), by David Gordon Wilson, which is now on its third edition (its original having come out in 1982). This book has everything to do with human-powered wheeled vehicles — bicycles in the broadest sense of the term: from the general (e.g., basic concepts of human power, the history of the bicycle, etc.) to the specific (e.g., physics, aerodynamics, bearings, materials, braking, steering, etc.), and the weird and the future of bicycles. If you’re looking for the mechanical minutia of bicycles, Bicycling Science is likely to be the only book you need.
I’m admittedly biased, but I think the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions in the history of technology. I’ve been riding one since the age of four, and they’ve been my primary means of transportation for the past fifteen years. If you don’t ride a bike regularly, give it one shot. Bicycles are fun, and that one ride might be the door to a whole new world. These three books go a long way to covering both the history of that world and its implications in the twenty-first century. On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of Critical Mass, do yourself a favor, and, in the words of Mike Daily, ride first, read later.
References:
Arthur, Brian. (2009). The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. New York: Free Press.
Bijker, Wiebe E. (1997). Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Bijker, Wiebe E. , Hughes, Thomas P., & Pinch, Trevor. (2012). The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Byrne, David. (2009). Bicycle Diaries. New York: Viking.
Carlsson, Chris, Elliott, LisaRuth, & Camarena, Adriana (eds.). (2012). Shift Happens: Critical Mass at 20. San Francisco: Full Enjoyment.
Harvey, David. (2008, September/October). The Right to the City. New Left Review, 53.
Wilson, David Gordon. (2004). Bicycling Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Woodforde, J. (1970). The Story of the Bicycle. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
As with most of the bikes I build, I wrote up my new bike over on HEADTUBE. It’s a sweet Fairdale Parser Express that I got from Taj Mihelich. He even posted it up on the Fairdale site.
It’s another BMX-inspired ride, what I like to call my “big boy bike.”
Check out the full post on HEADTUBE, along with all of my other bike and bike-related projects. Many thanks to Taj for hooking me up with this thing.
I’ve expounded elsewhere at length about how zine-making during my teen years informed my life’s path, and I’ve mentioned fellow traveler Mike Daily before, but I haven’t really given him due credit. Mike Daily is a founding member of The Plywood Hoods, one of the most influential BMX crews in the history of our little sport. He also made one of the first BMX zines ever: Aggro Rag. Echoing my own feelings about making zines, Daily told Jared Souney in an interview for ESPN BMX in 2010, “Working with the printed page in mind has always been my way of creating something, from the early ‘zine designs to my cut-and-pasted writing journals. I like to lay things out visually, so the collage approach helps hone poems, lyrics for songs and fiction/non-fiction I’m working on. It’s more of a calling than a career — that kind of gnawing feeling that compels you to make stuff.”
Well, Daily’s never stopped making stuff. From his novels and zines to his complete rebuild of his original CW California Freestyle bike, he’s stayed on the make. His latest missive is a new issue of Aggro Rag, the premiere BMX zine’s first appearance since 1989. Each of the 500 copies is signed by original Plywood Hoods Brett Downs, Mark Eaton, Kevin Jones, Jamie McKulik, Dale Mitzel and Daily himself. Contributors include Mark Lewman, Spike Jonze, Peter Relic, Drob Meyer, and Pecos B., among many others. There are interviews with flatland undergrounders like Mark McKee, Aaron Dull, Gary Pollak, Chris Day, Jim Johnson, Derek Schott, Gerry Smith, Dave Nourie, and several others, as well as Hip-hop undergrounders like Dark Time Sunshine and Sole. You can snag a copy right now, and I suggest you do so.
As for me, Daily asked me to interview my dude Aesop Rock, which I did gladly. It’s an honor to be a part of the zine I read so avidly in my youth. Here are two of my friends and heroes celebrating the release of Aggro Rag #13 at Portland’s Wonder Ballroom on July 19th, 2012:
If the return of the zine weren’t enough, this issue precedes the forthcoming 443-page book, Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection, coming out January 1, 2013.
It’s going to be so dope, but as Daily always said, “Ride First, Read Later.”
Aesop Rock posted the flatland compilation video I did during my comprehensive exams. So, if you haven’t seen it, head over there and check it out, along with other fun stuff from Hail Mary Mallon, Jeremy Fish, Kimya Dawson, Rob Sonic, Aesop, and friends.
Mad thanks to Aesop Rock for supporting my silliness.
Whilst I was completing my comprehensive exams for my Ph.D. studies, I rode my flatland bike as much as possible in an attempt to keep my head straight. The video below is a compilation of some of those sessions. Some of the camera placement is pretty sketchy, and I’m basically just doing the same five tricks over and over, but here it is nonetheless [runtime: 2:41]:
I finally have a new piece up on the ESPN BMX site. This one is about the generational differences between first and second generations of riders. Heraclitus once wrote that generations turn over every thirty years. Well, it’s about that time.
You’re right, Roy, you’re hopeless. Hopelessly obsessed with a time in your sport that died a long time ago… — McGoo
Roy Christopher executes a Backwards Elbow Glide at a Jacksonville NBL contest circa 1990. (photo by Peter Cowley)
Here’s an excerpt:
The experience of a BMXer today is much more likely to be mediated by technology than it was in the ’80s. Given the proliferation of technology into every aspect of our lives, that’s not much of an insight, but hear me out. In addition to the lack of dope video games, the riders of thirty years ago were also missing out on the parks. There were like three ride-able skateparks in the whole country. Now there are at least that many in every city of any size whatsoever. Where the past was spent riding curb cuts, banks, walls, streets, and backyard ramps, today the terrain consists of those as well as many human-made options. It makes for different riding, different tricks, and different values.
The full piece is up today. As always, thanks to Brian Tunney for the opportunity and for coordinating these things.
In the June, 1987 issue of FREESTYLIN’ Magazine, underground BMX rider and zine-maker Carl Marquardt described a ramp trick he called a “flakie”: a backflip fakie air. His friend and fellow rider Paul Mackles had offered him $100 if he pulled it. Three years later, Mat Hoffman did the damn thing at a contest in Paris. In his usual methodical style, Mat worked on it in secret in Oklahoma for months beforehand. As he puts it in The Ride of My Life (Harper-Entertainment, 2002), “To make it, I needed at least six feet of air so my head would clear the coping. It was the kind of stunt that required 100 percent conviction each time. I practiced them every day until I had the flip fakie pretty wired, landing high on the transition rather than jarring into the flat bottom Then, I got invited to France.” The photos of Mat’s first public flip-fakie landed on several magazine covers, including the July, 1990 issue of Go: The Rider’s Manual (the publication that combined FREESTYLIN’ with its forebear, BMX Action).
Mat Hoffman burst into the BMX mass mind via the letters page of FREESTYLIN’. Masquerading as the then thirteen-year-old Mat, his mom sent in a picture of him blasting a nine-foot air on his driveway quarterpipe. In his response, editor Andy Jenkins’ described the air as “not normal,” and I think everyone — myself included — knew we were going to see a lot more of this high-flying kid in the coming years. Even so, little did we know…
More than once, Mat Hoffman has been called the “Michael Jordan of BMX.” As Tony Hawk — who could be considered Mat’s equivalent in skateboarding — puts it in The Birth of Big Air (Team Marketing, 2010), “If you know anything about BMX, you know who Mat Hoffman is. And maybe that’s all you know.” This movie illustrates why that’s the case. He’s paid the price for his place in BMX lore — with his body. “There’s not an extremity he hasn’t broken in a violent manner,” says Mat’s orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Carlan Yates. Mat’s basically dedicated his physical form to the advancement of BMX. There have been smoother riders, there have been people who’ve done it longer, there are people finishing things Mat only started, but no one — no one — has pushed the limits of vert riding on a BMX bike more than Mat Hoffman has. No one. Ever.
“Let’s just say it would’ve sucked to have been born a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now because I would’ve missed out on all of this.” — Dennis McCoy
If you have any doubts about the pedigree of BMX as a sport, Joe Kid on a Stingray (Bang Pictures, 2005) will put them to rest. Its twisted and dirty 1970s roots are exposed and explained. Watching grainy footage of Stu Thomson winning races on a Schwinn Stingray is as sketchy as it is sick. Any story of people sitting on the verge of something that has become as big as BMX has is inspiring, and Joe Kid… is no exception.
“Ask anyone, ‘who invented freestyle?’ Bob Haro!” — Ron Wilkerson
From imitating motocross riders to emulating skateboard tricks, BMX evolved from racing to freestyling (all of which is just called “BMX” these days). Bob Haro was bored with racing and started doing tricks between motos. Eventually, his wheelies, endos, and 180s lead to actual sanctioned freestyle shows at the races. Through touring and innovating, Haro, R.L. Osborn, Mike Buff, Pat Romano, and Ron Wilton made trick riding into something to be taken seriously.
“Maybe that’s our problem. Maybe we just never grew up.” — Bob Osborn
It would be remiss to document the history of BMX without mentioning Bob Osborn. Through BMX Action and FREESTYLIN’ (and their aforementioned combined form, Go), Osborn, his son R. L., and his daughter Windy created the look of BMX media and brought the sport to the world. They also acquainted the world with Andy Jenkins, Mark Lewman, and Spike Jones, who have all gone on to create other great things in art, movies, television, skateboarding, and advertising. Trusting the youth is often difficult for adults to do, but Bob did, and the world is much better for it.
In the late 1980s, I was street riding with some friends in Huntsville, Alabama. One of them, Dave Nash, was wearing these Airwalks held together with duct tape. Someone there asked him why he didn’t just get some new shoes, and he responded, “Because I don’t want to spend any more money on this sport.” It was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard anyone say. The initial decline of BMX was a scary, strange thing to witness as a kid, but it was actually a positive move. Just as skateboarding had done before it, BMX changed hands from the companies to the riders.
Speaking of, anyone know where Chris Moeller was during the making of this movie? In many ways, S&M Bicycles, along with the efforts of Hoffman, Wilkerson, and the Plywood Hoods, represents the largely unsung part of the bridge from what BMX was in the 1980s to what it is now.
Anyway, big props to Jeff Tremaine, Mark Lewman, Johnny Knoxville, and Mark Eaton for documenting the history of our sport. If you’re a hardcore BMXer of any era, these two movies are your history. If you are bike-curious but know nothing about the sport, these two movies will give you a pretty in-depth crash course.
I don’t know if Mat Hoffman ever collected Paul Mackles’ money for doing Carl Marquardt’s “flakie,” but he was in the same issue of FREESTYLIN’ Magazine, along with another youngster Scotty Freeman, in a piece called “Little Giants.” He was fifteen years old.
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Here’s the official teaser for Joe Kid on a Stingray [runtime: 3:25]:
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Special thanks to Brian Tunney for additional reporting and fact-checking.
When I was six years old, I propped a 2×4 up on a brick in our driveway and jumped my Evel Knievel Signature Schwinn Stingray a few inches less than a foot off the ground. My grandfather saw me trying to achieve escape velocity and told me to keep it up, that it would “earn me some money one day.” Well, I’m still pedaling toward inclined planes attempting to leave the earth’s surface, but I’ve never earned a dime doing it. The point is not my inability to parlay my propensity for doing dumb stuff on my bike into a career, but that the things we say to each other often have long-lasting impacts we could never anticipate. The smallest utterances can shape a person’s life.
Language leaves lips for lines and spins through circuits
We send and receive and talk in circles
When we leave and the circles are broken
What happens to all the words we’ve spoken?
Riding BMX got me into making zines. I saw an article on them in FREESTYLIN’ Magazine and decided I wanted to do one. When I wasn’t riding my bike, I’d be in my room with photos, Sharpies, and gluesticks, cutting and pasting my visions on half-folded eight and a half by eleven pieces of paper.* During one of those sessions, my dad told me I should work for a magazine. I ended up doing just that (and the web equivalent) for several years.
If I were forced to pick a single answer to the question “what do you do?” I would probably say I’m a writer, though I never did well on writing assignments in school. In spite of my placement in advanced classes, I scored poorly throughout high school on writing-related projects. Hell, I made C’s in both English 101 and 102, but In my second-to-last semester of undergrad, one of my instructors complimented my writing. We had done several in-class essays in her Abnormal Psychology class, and one day she pulled me aside and told me what a good writer I was. This came as a surprise, given my previous track record and the fact that I’d been an Art major for my first three years of college. Regardless, it stuck with me. I took a class on writing for social science research the next semester, and though I barely made a B, I felt more at home researching and writing than I ever had trying to do traditional art. I give the credit for my newfound confidence to my Abnormal Psychology teacher.
When I moved away from Seattle the first time, I used to keep in touch with local cable access celebrity the Reverend Bruce Howard (you can find clips of his ranting on YouTube). Once, during a long-distance phone conversation with him from Alabama, he interrupted himself and told me out of the blue that I had a great speaking voice and that I should use it. I’d never really thought about it because, as you know from hearing your own voice on recordings, I thought I sounded weird, but coming from such a dynamic speaker, it made me rethink it. I have since become an instructor and a regular public speaker. Part of my having the self-assurance to make this leap was Rev. Howard’s comment.
These are all positive examples, but it works both ways. In communication studies classes, we teach that communication is irreversible. Once you put something out there, you can’t take it back (I always think of the courtroom scenes where they strike something from the written record even though everyone in attendance already heard it). As the above examples illustrate, in butterfly effects of the word, even the smallest comment can leave a lasting impression. Be careful what you say to your friends, family, colleagues, coworkers, and others around you. Your words can have impacts you never imagined.
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* So fervent was my zine-making that I got a copy machine for my high school graduation present. I still have one, and I do still make zines once in a while.
My girlfriend doesn’t dig my Megadeth t-shirt. ‘You’re going to shave one side of your head? Holey Levi’s? Throw ’em away. Your hair’s too long. Your hair’s too short. Why does your hair look like a rainbow?’ Everyone feels the heat from friends, family, and whoever else about independent style, yet I can’t help feeling that sometimes envy is covered up with uncool remarks. Hey. let’s be straight about this, it’s your life, your feelings, and your own personal way of expressing yourself and showing the true you (p. 81).
Back patches are largely the domain of bikers or crust punks, the latter of whom fill this zine’s pages. Punk back patches are often cut from old screen-printed t-shirts and hand sewn onto denim or leather jackets or vests along with other patches. The hand-done aspect of them is rarely disguised and gives the look a D.I.Y., provisional feel, and their literal patchwork lends them to subversive bricolage (see Hebdige, 1979). By mixing patches as signs together, punks engage in what Eco (1972) calls “semiotic guerilla warfare.” They express their lack of desire to reunite with the parent culture and celebrate, even parody, the alienation that causes it so much concern (Hebdige, 1979). The crust-punk style takes this alienation to the extreme. Its a war is waged against the established look via its sardonic and scathing rejection thereof (Brummett, 2008; Hebdige, 1979).![Mike Daily [photo by Jared Souney]](http://roychristopher.com/wp-content/uploads/mike-daily-freestyle.jpg)
In the June, 1987 issue of FREESTYLIN’ Magazine, underground BMX rider and zine-maker Carl Marquardt described a ramp trick he called a “flakie”: a backflip fakie air. His friend and fellow rider Paul Mackles had offered him $100 if he pulled it. Three years later, Mat Hoffman did the damn thing at a contest in Paris. In his usual methodical style, Mat worked on it in secret in Oklahoma for months beforehand. As he puts it in 
If you have any doubts about the pedigree of BMX as a sport, Joe Kid on a Stingray (Bang Pictures, 2005) will put them to rest. Its twisted and dirty 1970s roots are exposed and explained. Watching grainy footage of Stu Thomson winning races on a Schwinn Stingray is as sketchy as it is sick. Any story of people sitting on the verge of something that has become as big as BMX has is inspiring, and Joe Kid… is no exception.
Riding BMX got me into making