For over 35 years, the China Banks have been skated up in San Francisco. It's a legendary spot, skaters around the world and across generations have seen photos and video from there. Here's the story of the China Banks, courtesy of Thrasher magazine. This 28 minute mini-doc speaks for himself.
Looking for a new project, as we were coming out of the Covid era in the last couple of months, I ran across this video. What struck me is that it's a short documentary about a skate spot, a location. There have been documentaries in skateboarding, with Stacy Peralta's 2001 Dogtown and Z-Boys leading the way, back in 2001. Mark Eaton's Joe Kid on a Stingraytold the story of BMX racing and freestyle. Steve Rocco's World Industries story was told in The Man Who Souled the World. Later Stacy Peralta did Bones Brigade: An Autobiography. But this China Banks video above, was the first solid documentary I've seen about a skate spot. Not only is this just a great video. but as a blogger, and video guy back in the day, I thought, "these sports are old enough now that spots, locations, have their own stories to tell now." That thought kind of stuck with me.
Anyone who skated or rode bikes, or any action sport, hears about, and sessions, different spots, some local, and some that are well known in that sport, that world. And some spots just take on a life of their own. Kenter School Banks. H.B. Pier Bank. Baldy Pipe. Camp 4 at Yosemite. Joshua Tree. Pipeline Skatepark. Kona Skatepark. Venice Beach. Embarcadero. Calabassas Jumps. Brooklyn Banks. The Spot in Redondo Beach. Posh. Hueco Tanks. Sheep Hills. Ocean Beach. Whistler. Mount Baker/Batchelor. Hollywood High Rail. El Toro. BMXer's skaters, snowboarders, climbers, and the rest, all have stories of their favorite spots. Many also have stories of a trek to some well known spot, like Baldy Pipe, or wherever.
This documentary about the China Banks made me think of all the other spots out there, and all the stories people have of all the spots. At the same time, I had just taken a break from 5 1/2 years of scraping by with my Sharpie Scribble Style, mostly while homeless, I've been looking for another way to make a living, using my weird collection of creative skills. I really suck at a lot of aspects of creative work, but I've become a good, if not profitable, blogger, and a few other things. I've been looking for a new direction.
As I said in the third post, a few days ago, I was sitting under a bridge, as a homeless guy, getting out of the heat, looking at this bank no one skates or rides, across the road. The pieces fell together in my head. Maybe it's time to cover the spots themselves. This video of the China Banks, above, was part of that equation, I've watched it 4 or 5 times now. It showed me that a spot, a location, can have a great story itself. So I'm getting this blog going with several of the documentaries that already exist, compiling them with some of my own thoughts here and there. I'll throw in a few streets spots I've stumbled across, as well as checking out skateparks and other riding spots.
There are websites that tell people where some of the street spots are in places, and there are guides to where the skateparks are located. I'm going to collect stories from spots in multiple sports, and throw some art spots and other stuff in here and there, and we'll see where this all goes. One thing us Old School Has Been/Never Was BMXers, skaters, snowboarders, and others know from experience, starting down a direction that you're stoked on can, and often does, lead to things you could never imagine at the start. So... Thanks for checking out this blog. Where is this leading? I don't know either, that's half the fun.
In her early days, while leading the way for women in street skating in the late 1990's and early 2000's, Elissa Steamer was a local at The Ashtray, and nearby Oceanview High School. The Ashtray is not in this clip of her, but there are a couple of shots from Oceanview, which is a block away.
First, a little skate history. There's no consensus on who invented the first skateboard, one prominent theory says it was a bored surfer in San Diego in about 1958. A 2 X 6, and some steel roller skate wheels, and he could go "sidewalk surfing" when the waves were flat. The "Devil's Toy" was born. The start of skateboarding was probably something like that. The first big wave of skate popularity was in 1965-1966, and skateboarding looked like this. The quick fad of corporate interest faded, and skateboarding went underground.
In the early 1970's, skating moved to downhill speed runs, wheelies, slaloms, and carving banks, led by guys like Bruce Logan, among many others. That led to the second big wave of popularity, around 1975-1980. Again, skateboarding became a fad to large toy companies, a way to make a quick buck for a couple of years. I was one of those 70's kids who started skating during that fad, in the tiny town of Willard, Ohio, in 1976, in my case.
Officially called the Murdy Park skatepark, this is the first public skatepark in California, built in 1993 or 1994. It quickly got dubbed "The Ashtray," because it was so small, and kind of looked like an ashtray from the 1970's. The bank was kinked, with a cracks right in front of it, but it still got skated... a lot. This little park had ot prove the concept that public skateparks were a good idea. No one died there, the idea worked, and this little skatepark made every other public skatepark in California possible. #steveemigphotos
But out in Southern California, where the sport was centered, a group called the Z-Boys, the Zephyr Surf Shop skate team out of Venice Beach, along with Duante Peters and a few others down in Orange County, discovered empty swimming pools were a great place to skate. This led to the first wave of skateboard parks in the mid 1970's, and a new aspect of skating, vertical walled pools, concrete waves that never moved, that could be "surfed" on skateboards, like Tony here in Marina Del Rey in 1978. Suddenly skateparks became a viable business in Southern California, and select places across the United States, and a few foreign countries. The boom surged for a while, but then began to fade in the early 1980's. One by one, the skateparks of the second wave of skateboarding closed down.
By the mid-1980's, only two were left in Southern California, Pipeline Skatepark in Upland, and Del Mar Skate Ranch in Del Mar (north of San Diego). In addition to skateparks pushing the evolution of skateboard vert riding, BMX bike riders in the mid-1970's realized skateparks were fun on bikes, as well. Bob Haro is credited with inventing BMX freestyle, about 1977, and by 1985, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, and a few others, took BMX vert riding to a new level in the skateparks.
Vert skating and bike riding both moved largely to halfpipes for contests and demos, because it's really hard to take a concrete skatepark on the road to do demos. First Del Mar closed, and then in late 1988, Pipeline Skatepark, the last California Skatepark closed, and a few months later, in 1989, was eaten by the excavator.
This curved ledge/wall has seen some serious use in the last 26-27 years. There are much better skateparks around, but sessions still happen at The Ashtray. It's just north of Warner, on Goldenwest, in Huntington Beach. #steveemigphotos
During that same period, in the third wave of skateboarding, in the late 1980's, Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guererro, and Natas Kaupas took skateboarding back to the streets in a new way, taking Rodney Mullen's flat ground ollie, kickflip, and other freestyle tricks, to new terrain. Street skating began growing as vert skating faded. Pool skating and BMX went underground, and was banished in California to empty backyard pools and the Nude Bowl, way out in the desert.
As luck would have it, I was working at Unreel Productions, the video company for Vision Skateboards, one of the "Big 5" skateboard companies of the late 1980's. A handful of then Old School skateboarders, including a few at Vision, had a plan. They wanted public skateparks to become a thing. The time had come for free, open all the time, public skateparks. They tried to talk the city of Costa Mesa, where Vision was located, into building one. But Costa Mesa, like all cities, was worried about liability. They didn't want to get sued for millions of dollars, because some skater fell and broke his arm.
So before public skateparks could happen, those Old School skaters had to get a state law passed so that cities couldn't be sued for liability at skateparks. That process took several years. Then they had to talk a city into building a skatepark. Then they had to talk the city into funding that skatepark, and actually get it built, and see if a public skatepark could work ( in the eyes of city leaders, we all knew it would work).
I think it was about 1993 by the time the first public skatepark in California was built. That was this skatepark, The Ashtray, in Murdy Park, officially at 7000 Norma drive in Huntington Beach, near the corner of Goldenwest and Warner. Without this sketchy little park paving the way (literally), none of the other public skateparks in all of California would have happened. So if you ever make it to Huntington Beach, go to The Ashtray, snap and ollie, and say thanks. We thought it was going to get turned into a duck pond by now. It's not great, but it's cool it still exists.
The most skatable part of The Ashtray, this bench been ground by a lot of legends of skating, from Ed Templeton and Elissa Steamer, to dozens of others. It's waiting for you. #steveemigphotos
What exactly did this little skatepark, The Ashtray, open the way for? All of this skating and riding at public California skateparks, and a lot more:
Boozer Jam 2022 at Sheep Hills, in Costa Mesa, California. Mike "Boozer" Brown was a lifelong BMX racer, jump builder, and local at Sheep Hills from the earliest days. He was paralyzed in a racing accident in 2011, and riders started doing an annual fundraiser to help Mike and his mom out evey year. Mike's health declined, and he died in 2019, and the annual Boozer Jam at Sheep Hills is now to honor Mike and the spirit of BMX trails riding.
A long time ago (OK, 30 years or so), in a place far, far away (Costa Mesa, California) a weird tribe of mound builders evolved (maybe DEvolved, but that's more fun anyhow). This crew began to build small earthen mounds in an obscure area of small brushy trees and oil wells, between Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa, California. These weren't the Adena people or some other culture like that, they didn't build Cahokia or the Great Serpent Mound of Ohio. Their mounds were not built to track the stars, they weren't built for religious ceremonies, or as a burial site for the dead. This group of small mounds, originally built mostly by guys then known as Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean, were built to jump BMX bikes, get air, learn tricks, and just plain have fun.
Jay told me he originally called the jumps Hollywood, after pro racer "Hollywood" Mike Miranda, who had built a few jumps further up the hill, where the condos, off of 19th street and Balboa boulevard in Costa Mesa, are now. But not long after riders started showing up, kids started calling the area Sheep Hills. So even Hippy Jay doesn't known where the name came from.
The Costa Mesa mesa itself was a place where shepherds raised sheep and goats in the 1800's, and maybe early 1900's, and the Goat Hill Tavern (141 beers on tap!),up in Costa Mesa, pays homage to that in its name. But in reality, no one really knows where the name Sheep Hills came from, even they guys building it in the beginning. There were no sheep in the area when they began building in 1990, but the name stuck.
An unknown rider boosts a clean X-up over the Boozer pack at Sheep Hills. I just asked on Facebook again, to try and identify this rider, a couple guys thought it was Jody Donnelly, but he said it's not him. Let me know if you know who this is, so I can name him here. #steveemigphotos
One big problem with BMX dirt jumps is that they usually get built on someone else's land, then the land owner gets pissed, or worried about liability issues, and the jumps get plowed. In most locations, that can happen in a few days or a few months. When Sheep Hills was built, it was deep in a chunk of unused oil company land, surrounded by small, brushy trees, in a hidden meadow area between the Santa Ana River and Costa Mesa. A few homes on the surrounding mesa could see the jumps, but most seemed to ignore them. At the time, dirt jumping was not really a sport itself, but usually an event held at some national BMX races to stoke the crowd. Riders jumped, as they had before BMX itself began, for fun.
The top jumpers at the time were led by Chris "Mad Dog" Moeller, and his roommates at a house in Westminster, called the P.O.W. House. That stood for Pro's Of Westminster. Chris, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, Alan Foster, Lawan Cunningham, Eric Millman, John Salamne, Jay Lonergan, and a few others, along with builders Jay, Sean, and Mike "Boozer" Brown, were the first guys to session Sheep Hills on a regular basis. The first set-up of jumps were three berms, one inside the other, each line with jumps in it. Transfers were possible between the lines in places. Sheep Hills was one of the jumping areas these guys rode often, along with Hidden Valley and Edison in Huntington Beach, and the jumps in the P.O.W. House backyard (seen at 33:50 in this video, followed by footage of the Edison High jumps).
Long time Sheep Hills local in the late 90's, Cory "Nasty" Nastazio, lays a flat tabletop 360 out at Sheep. 2020.#steveemigphotos
Before Sheep Hills came along, around 1987, teenage jumpers Chris Moeller and Greg Scott were frustrated by how many bikes they were bending and breaking while jumping. They found a welding shop, and had a couple of their own, custom designed frames made in 1987. That launched the garage company S&M Bikes, which has had strong ties to Sheep Hills ever since, sponsoring many of the local riders from the early 1990's on. S&M, and sister company, Fit Bikes, are still a major force among Sheep Hills riders.
When the trails were new,you had to cross the creek on rocks, then follow a rabbit-sized foot trail, to get back to the jumping area. A video cameraman I worked with at Unreel Productions, (which was up on the mesa above and west of Sheep) Pat Wallace, told me a four foot long alligator was once found in the creek there in the 1970's or early 1980's. I've never been able to verify that story, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Midget Cory Walters spins a flat 360 as Cody Brown bails in front of him. 2020. #steveemigphotos
In the first few seasons of Sheep Hills, the winter rainy season would flood the whole area, and the jumps would turn into thick, unrideable muck, from December into March. Every spring, they would be rebuilt. There was a natural bowl in the beginning, which had a jump into and a jump out of it. That was about where the trench leading into Titties (it's the name of the jump folks, don't get mad at me) is now. At one point, there was a line of doubles along the fence, up by the pond, which you can see in a couple shots in the 1995 Team Soil video, produced by Barspinner Ryan Brennan. There was a ten pack along the left side for years (as you walk in from the Hamilton side entrance), as well.
K.O. D. (King of Dirt) was the big jump in the mid 90's, built to practice for the "huge" jumps at jumping contests. It's a 7 foot tall big set of doubles, followed by a roller, and another big set of doubles. K.O.D. is still there, though Titties has taken over at the main style jump. U.K. BMXer transplant Stephen Murray built a four foot high, 27 foot gap set of doubles, called The English Channel, at one point, around 2000. That was the longest jump ever built at Sheep Hills.
The jumps at Sheep went largely unnoticed by neighbors and police, which is what BMXers like, until they accidentally drained the nearby pond with a pump, sucking it all out to water the jumps. I think that happened in 1993 or 1994. The trails into Sheep got widened out, so police cars could roll through, among other reasons.
A bunch of local kids started jumping there in the early 90's, and they evolved into the Sheep Hills Locals, aka SHL crew. Ryan "Barspinner" Brennan, Sean Butler, Josh Stricker, Freddy Chulo, Jason and Adam Pope, Marvin Loetterle, Mike "Boozer" Brown, Jason "Dogger" German, Ricky Ratt, and Mental Ian were the main guys in that posse. At the same time, Alan Foster's little brother, Brian Foster, moved to California from the East, and became another key member of both the P.O.W. House, and the SHL crew. "Religious Rich" is another long time local there, as well.
Mike 'Hucker" Clark flips hucks a flip. 2020. #steveemigphotos
This second wave of riders out of Sheep Hills came up the ranks, some as racers, and some as jumper/street riders, in the mid 1990's, just in time for ESPN's first forray in action sports, the X-Games. It was in that same era that dirt jumping morphed into it's own sport, along with other BMX genre's, flatland, vert, park, and street. Through the late 1990's, Sheep Hills was known as the home trails of many of the best BMX dirt jumpers in the world, and became a travel destination for riders from around the country, and around the world. In the late 1990's and early 2000's, it wasn't unusual to ride into Sheep and meet riders from the U.K. or Germany or Japan, just there to check it out and ride a little, while on vacation in the U.S..
Several other top riders made Sheep a daily riding spot in the late 90's. Cory "Nasty" Nastazio, Chris Duncan, Stephen Murray, and top racer Christophe Leveque ushered in a new era of Sheep locals. As the years passed, Sheep Hills became better and better known, and the area was eventually turned into Talbert Regional Park of Costa Mesa. Now there's a big "Sheep Hills" sign there, trash cans that actually get emptied, and wide trails around the whole area, for riding mountain bikes, jogging, big wheeled stroller pushing, and just walking.
The once sketchy, largely hidden BMX spot, is now a family area used daily by the neighbors living nearby, as well as many visitors. It's really unusual that a set of BMX trails can last 3 or 4 years without getting plowed and destroyed, but Sheep Hills has somehow managed to last over 30 years, and is going into it's fourth decade (damn we're old).
Ride like a girl? You wish you could ride like this young woman. Jesse Gregory lofts a one footed Hannah at height. 2019. #steveemigphotos.
Sheep Hills can be found on Google Maps, or look up "Balboa boulevard, Costa Mesa" on GPS, that's where many people park these days to go ride. Go down the hill, and follow the trails with the most bike tracks, and you'll find the jumps.
This post is dedicated to three Sheep Hills Locals. Mike "Boozer" Brown was paralyzed in a BMX crash several years ago, and died in 2019. Stephen Murray was also paralyzed several years ago on a double backflip attempt, and Bryant "Doc" Dubon was tragically lost to Covid-19 in 2020. Ride in Peace Mike and Bryant, and Stay Stong Stephen Murray (now back in the U.K.).
The pits area during a big jam. Good bikes, good friends, good fun. That's BMX. Sheep Hills 2020. #steveemigphotos
You can check out more of my photos of Sheep Hills on myPinterest page.(160 photos and counting...)
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You Tube tossed this video at me, first thing this morning. Great MTB freeride video featuring Ayato Kimura, from Japan, who I've never heard of, until now. It starts with some trails riding then jumps into urban free ride and trials riding. Tight and fast paced, good solid mountain bike video to get you amped to go ride. The spots are somewhere in Japan, ask Ayato if you're over there.
After seeing this video on YouTube, then putting out this blog post, first thing this morning, I went back to Ayato's YouTube channel, Ayato Kimura, and watched everything on his channel. There are a couple of shorts and five longer videos, from before the one above. This kid in Japan is only 17-years-old, he's a huge fan of Fabio Wibmer, and he has improved a lot in the past several months. His earlier videos are more of rough cuts, often with a few tries at a trick. He blends skills to ride trails at speed, jump big, and full blown MTB and 20 inch trials riding. He's also got some major huevos, and does a couple of amazing gap jumps in the earlier videos. This video above, "Keep it Wild," is his first professionally produced video, and, like I said above, it's incredible. It looks like he just got sponsored by Specialized Japan, in the past month or two, probably, while still in high school.
Ayato Kimura appears to be a young and hungry rider who will blow up in the next couple of years to a Danny Macaskill or Fabio Wibmer level. He's going big and doing tech already, and he's got some incredible terrain to practice on in his hometown area. Keep an eye on this kid.
This is a completely unknown spot, that I found and used to ride my bike on, in the early 1990's. Location is a secret. To the best of my knowledge, this wall has never been in a magazine photo or ANY action sports video. But I just wanted to let people know that there will be new, and virtually unknown, bike and skate spots on this blog, not just posts about classic old spots. This is the Monster Wall, it's at least 25 or 30 feet high, and pretty bumpy. But ridable. In the 90's, I could get about 6 1/2 high on the slightly undervert Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, at my peak. That wall is quite a bit steeper than this one. I don't think I ever got more than 4 feet up this thing, maybe 3 1/2. It's gnarlier than it looks. Stay tuned for more new and little known spots as this blog progresses...
Rick Thorne's Pool Seekers video by Old School BMXer, Rick Thorne, where he interviews Steve Alba. Also known as Salba, Steve is the pool skater's pool skater, he's been skating pools for over 40 years, and he still tears them up. I picked this video to get this blog going because he's talking about the roots of pool skateboarding, going all the way back to 1974, and the early days of skating at The Nude Bowl in the mid 1980's. Plus this is a clean, well made video from a couple of years ago, which is a bonus.
The Nude Bowl is a left hand kidney shaped swimming pool, high on a hill, out in the middle of the Southern California desert. I won't give the exact location away, but it's within 10 miles of Desert Hot Springs, that's all I'll say. In the 1970's, and possibly earlier, this location was a nudist resort. People drove out in the middle of nowhere to get naked and do naked things. It's such a remote location, that they could stand up there with a drink, let things dangle, and enjoy the epic view, without worrying about anyone getting upset.
There is the foundation from a building, part of the former resort, about 50 feet up the hill, above the pool, and another flat concrete area below. I don't know exactly when the nudists left, but skateboarders somehow found the place in the early 1980's. Salba, in the interview above, says that pro skater Eddie Elguera had been skating it since about 1982.
This video has photos of when the pool got filled up, because of violence during parties there
Being a BMX kid that moved to SoCal in 1986, I first heard of The Nude Bowl in either 1987 or 1988, from some of the skateboarders I knew. One perk of being the only BMX guy working at Unreel Productions in the late 80's, was that I dubbed copies of all the video footage shot for the Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear companies. I met several hardcore pool skaters while working there, like Marty "Jinx" Jiminez, Paul Schmitt, Mike Folmer, Jim Gray, and of course, Gator. The Vision Wood Shop crew then included Chicken, Kelly Belmar, and Chuck Hults, all hardcore pool skaters. So when anyone did a video shoot of skating at a new pool, I dubbed a VHS copy of the footage, just as part of my job. I wasn't good friends with any of those guys, but I knew them well enough to ask, "Hey, where's that pool at?" Sometimes they'd tell me, like the San Juan Pool, The Nude Bowl, and the Victoria Street pool, and sometimes they'd keep the location a secret.
My first trip to the Nude Bowl was in the Unreel Toyota van with a couple of skaters, kind of an unofficial video shoot, and excuse to borrow the van to go session in the middle of nowehere. I can't remember who exactly I drove up there with. I'd shoot some video of them skating, and then carve it up on my bike, then shoot some more video. That was either late 1988 or early 1989.
I learned where it was, and made 5 or 6 trips out there between 1989 and 1991 with BMX riders or skaters. Though I could never air worth a damn, I loved the Nude Bowl because it was so far away from anything, that nobody gave a fuck that we were riding and skating. It was the only pool to carve around in and not have to worry about the cops. You could just ride and hang out all day and night, people camped overnight sometimes. Pipeline Skatepark had closed down by then, Del Mar Skate Ranch closed before that, so for several years, the only pools to skate or ride in Southern California were empty backyard pools and the Nude Bowl. The current group of public skateparks didn't start getting built until about 1994-95, and none had decent sized pools for a couple of more years after that.
This is Salba's first session there, that he mentions in the video at the top
Every trip out the the Nude Bowl was a bit of a surprise. Obviously people painted graffiti in the bowl, and around the location, on a regular basis. It was a party spot for young desert kids, though you didn't want to try to drive out of there drunk at night, the Jeep trail was pretty gnarly, and at times it took a 4 wheel drive to get right up to the pool, depending on the ruts at the time.
A couple of trips out there no one else was there, just the small group of BMX freestylers I went with. One time there were a couple of local stoners just hanging out, and skating a little. One time we rolled up, and there was an old guy, probably around 60, sitting there in a lawn chair with a beer, and a couple of his young grandkids roaming around. He lived nearby, and said he liked to come up an watch the skateboarders every now and then.
On one trip out there, I saw what looked like a few pieces of newspaper under a big, football-sized rock, right next to the bowl. There were 6 or 8 copies of a newspaper styled zine called Attitude Problem. It was issue #4 or 5, I think. I grabbed a couple, and later contacted the publisher, a glass blowing, non-conformist minded artist, named Bandhu Scott Dunham, from Arizona. I wrote to him, and he sent me ten or so copies of the current issue of AP, and I put a few out in Huntington Beach, including at Vinyl Solution record shop. He kept sending me a few of every issue, and I kept putting them out in the H.B. area. I wrote a handful of articles for the zine, which was actually a small newspaper. A couple of issues later, I saw an article by pro skater Ed Templeton. He was an H.B. local, so I think he saw a copy at Vinyl Solution, or one of the other spots I dropped them. He wrote at least two or three articles, and I think contributed some art to it. Ed was just starting to get known as an artist at the time, so it was cool to see him contribute to Attitude Problem. I never met Bandhu, but we wrote back and forth several times, and he seemed like a really cool guy.
Haro pro vert rider, Brian Blyther, airing out of the Nude Bowl in 1990. This is a still from my bike video, The Ultimate Weekend. The Nude Bowl has freaky transitions, and big coping, so this is about as high as anyone could air out on a bike.
I was the first person to put video footage of the Nude Bowl in a BMX freestyle video, in The Ultimate Weekend, in 1990. Keith Treanor, John Povah, Mike Sarrail, and I headed out there to shoot video one weekend. I called up Brian Blyther, to see if I could get him to head out as well, being a pool riding legend. Brian was totally cool, and came out to the session, bringing along former Pipeline local, Xavier Mendez, as well. It got up to around 105 degrees that day, so we didn't hang out all day. But we got a good session in, and I got some great footage for the video project, which I put out that fall. I used a song called 'Pool Party," by an Ohio punk band called The Stain. We had used their music several times when I worked at Unreel.
Skateboarder Mark Gonzales bought an album by The Stain, ("I Know the Scam") just because he liked the cover art, when he saw it in a record shop, in about 1988. He brought it into Unreel one day, and one of our producers contacted the band. Jon Stainbrook, the guy behind the band, was super cool, and Unreel started using his music. a lot in videos. I called him when I started working on my own project, and my whole video is their music. But "Pool Party" is all about a skate session in a pool, so I made it a kind of little music video style montage in The Ultimate Weekend, just with bikes.
In the bike world, Mat Hoffman is the first BMXer to carve over the stairs at the Nude Bowl, as far as I know, in 1990 or early 1991, I think. A few months later, Alex Leech and his friend Rob, a skater, came to the U.S. from England, and spent a month long holiday riding all over. They borrowed the sketchiest old van I've ever seen, with something like 220,000 miles on it, and drove it to sessions all over. Keith Treanor, John Povah and I went out to the Nude Bowl with them, in that crazy van, which made it nearly to the top of the hill. We had a great session, it was not 105 degrees that day. Keith was on a mission to carve over the stairs, and he made it, and Alex did as well, going in the opposite direction. The next year, BMX pro racer, jumper, and street rider, Dave Clymer, got the February 1992 cover of Go Magazine, also carving the stairs at the Nude Bowl.
Keith Treanor, the second guy, after Mat Hoffman, to carve over the stairs at the Nude Bowl on a bike, in 1991. From my 2001 video, Animals.
There are a whole bunch of videos on YouTube, spanning the whole era of skating and BMX at the "secret" pool in the desert. There are videos of bands playing, skaters and BMXers of all levels, and other random nonsense at one of the weirdest, coolest spots ever in BMX and skate history. For any of you on Pinterest, I have a Pinterest board with 80 photos from the 80's to 2020's collected, from the Nude Bowl, showing both skating and BMX there, over the years.
I'm not going to tell you exactly how to get to the Nude Bowl, I need to leave a little bit of adventure for anyone who's never been there, but wants to go session it. If you really want to find it, you can find someone who knows the location. Here's one last video, a well made video from Odyssey, posted in 2021, with some serious BMX action in the old swimming pool in the desert, where nekkid people once swam and frolicked.
This is me, Steve Emig, carving tile in the Nude Bowl, in 1990. Still from my 1990, self-produced BMX freestyle video, The Ultimate Weekend. I couldn't air to save my live, but I loved carving around this pool.
Baldy Pipe. Kenter School Banks. Golden Gate Park. Pipeline Skatepark. Del Mar Skatepark. The Embarcadero. Angelo's Drive-in. The Dish. The China Banks. The Spot in Redondo Beach. The Huntington Beach Pier. The P.O. Curb. The Jinx Bank. Colossus. The "U." Hidden Valley. The Nude Bowl. Posh rails. Sheep Hills. The Towne Street Ramp. The Brooklyn Banks. Huntington Beach High School. Burnside. FDR. Love Park. El Toro. Whistler/Blackcomb. These are a just few of the BMX, skateboard spots, and one MTB/snowboard spot, that became known, many known worldwide, in the 1980's and 1990's. A few of them are still around today.
As BMX freestyle and skateboarding evolved in the 1980's and 1990's, and especially when street skating and street riding exploded, obscure places, where people rode and skated, started becoming famous in our weird little worlds, thanks to magazine photos, and later, videos. A curb. A banked piece of asphalt or concrete. A ledge. A set of stairs. An empty swimming pool. BMX jumps on an unused piece of somebody else's property. A parking lot. A brick area along the bike path by the beach. Some of these places, that were built for one purpose, but happened to be a cool place to ride or skate, started becoming famous. And not just famous in the neighborhood or town, but nationwide... worldwide.
Wall ride over my sister Cheri's head, the Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, 1990.
Action sports weren't really sports, much of the time. There were contests in all of them, but the contests were just a small part of these activities. As us 1970's, 1980's and 1990's kids got more and more into actions sports, we started looking at things differently. We started looking at our world differently. I remember one time in the 90's when I was riding in a car with Keith Treanor, John Povah, and John's girlfriend at the time. She was driving us somewhere, and suddenly one of us said, "Whoa, check out that bank!" The girlfriend flipped out, "Stop it!" she scramed, "I'm so fucking tired of hearing you guys get all excited about a curb or a bank or a ledge. It's a fucking bank! So what! So fucking what!" We all shut up and looked at each other, then started laughing, which made her even more pissed off. After of years of riding BMX, and a bit of skating, that's how we saw the world, potential places to ride or skate. Everywhere we went, everywhere we looked, were things we might be able to ride. Action sports change the way we looked at our environment.
Heavily skated bench at "The Ashtray," Murdy Park skatepark, in Huntington Beach, 2021. This was the first free public skatepark built in California in the 1990's, testing the idea to see if public skateparks were a good idea. Luckily for skaters, no one died here, and dozens more free skateparks have been built in California since. #steveemigphotos
The idea of spots started in the surfing world, where they scouted out the best breaks and which swells produced good waves at which places. Some days some breaks were good, other days other surf spots were pumping. That's why Surfline exists now. It was originally a 900 number, telling SoCal surfers where the good waves were. Technology evolved, and now Surfline tells the world where the great swells and waves are going to be. Then came skateboarding in the 1960's, Early skaters looked for smooth concrete or asphalt, and then good asphalt down a hill for slaloms. Then they found banks, ditches, and later empty swimming pools were great places to skate. Early BMXers looked for scraps of land to build jumps. Things just kept evolving. As riding and skating progressed, they looked for different types of places to session. As these sports that weren't really sports grew, surfing, BMX, skating and other spots began to get famous.
We would see a place in a photo that looked fun to ride, and we'd want to travel to go ride there. I rode in a freestyle contest in the town square in Whistler, British Columbia in 1986, when many mountain bike riders still rode single speed bikes. I rode at Golden Gate Park, The Embarcadero, The Spot in Redondo Beach, Pipeline Skatepark, the Huntington Beach Pier Bank and the flatland area under Maxwell's (now Duke's), Magnolia Jumps, The Brooklyn Banks, Sheep Hills when it was new, and The Nude Bowl. I not saying I rode these places well, but I got to ride them. I rode the original Combi Pool at Pipeline Skatepark, and a decade later, I rode the new Combi Pool at the Van's Skatepark in Orange, when bikes were still allowed. For just over 20 years, from 1982 to 2003, I rode my BMX bike for a couple hours or more, nearly every single day. I also got into bouldering, low altitude rock climbing, without ropes, in the 1990's, and spent many hours at Stony Point in Chatsworth, The Beach in Corona Del Mar, and the Anarchy Wall in Huntington Beach, as well. Then I became a taxi driver, got fat, and got sidetracked away from action sports.
Chris Lashua (back) and Eddie Fiola, practicing wedge ramps stalls in Whistler, British Columbia in 1986. They were doing shows in Vancouver, and heard there was a contest in Whistler, so they took a break, drove up, and hung out for a couple of days. This photo appeared in the December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine. What's the bike scene like in Whistler these days? Here's the Red Bull Joyride 2022, that happened there a month ago. #steveemigphotos
As those early years went by, I started to look at the action sports from a Big Picture viewpoint, being a geek, and I saw there were larger trends playing out. The action sports wasn't just a bunch of dirtbag kids jumping bikes or skateboarding in empty swimming pools. There were larger trends that we were all a part of. I began to see how groups of riders formed scenes, and some scenes evolved faster than others. Over the years, some of the scenes expanded. I also was fascinated by how a curb, like say, the P.O. Curb in Huntington Beach, became famous in the skate world. As time went on, some spots, like The Embarcadero in San Francisco, became world famous by one trick, like Mark Gonzales ollying the big gap that became The Gonz Channel. Cities around the world spend millions of dollars intentionally trying to create things that will attract thousands of tourists, and millions of dollars a year. Disneyland and other amusement parks are a great example.
Yet in the action sports world, in the early 90's, I started seeing guys flying over a fucking ocean, sleeping on our couches and floors to save money, and then wanting to ride the jumps at Sheep Hills, or The Nude Bowl, have a flatland session with us locals at the Huntington Beach Pier. That continued to blow my mind. Riders and skaters were traveling long distances to go to a curb, a bank to wall, a skatepark, a set of stairs. BMX, skate, and other spots became action sports tourist attractions, totally by accident.
And I've done it, too. I got sent to New York City in 1989 to shoot video of Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street comp at the Brooklyn Banks. Did I take my bike? Hell yeah, I did. I had the best BMX weekend of my life, and learned tailhip footplants on a wall on the Brooklyn Banks. In the 1980's, and even more in the 1990's, the guys I rode with, we'd pack up and go ride a ditch a hour away that wasn't much different than the ditches nearby. Or drive two hours to carve through a little full pipe somebody heard about. If you ride or skate seriously, you know what I'm talking about. Spots became known, then began to draw people from farther away to ride or skate them. There are BMX, skate, surf, rock climbing, mountain bike, and other spots that have their own stories now, because they've been around for so long. There are even a few documentaries about riding and skating spots.
For a bunch of reasons, I got pushed away from the action sports world for the last couple of decades. Life just got weird on several levels, and deported me to the Eastern Seaboard for a decade. I finally made it back to Sothern California in 2019. No one wants ot hire a former taxi driver, so getting back to making a good living has been hard. I've scraped by with my Sharpie Scribble Style artwork, but that's not enough to being me back to a functional working life.
As an old guy who is now fat, ugly, currently homeless, but a good blogger, I was thinking about how much BMX, skateboarding, and action sports have changed since my early days in 1982-83-84. When you're young, the point is to get better, get sponsored, and hopefully, invent some tricks or moves, maybe win some constests, and add to the progression of these sports. Maybe make some decent money, as well.
But when you're middle aged, like us 50-something Gen X types, these sports look different. You can start a bike or skate company, a website, a clothing company, a YouTube channel, or some other business. You can help get a local skatepark built, or put on contests. For me, from my first zine, through 7 magazines and a newsletter, 15 videos, and now over 25 blogs, I've been a media guy. Now I'm fat, have no work history, and a less than ideal living situation. A "real" job that pays enough to live on just isn't going to happen.
Tucker Smith blasting a double grab Superman at Boozer Jam 2022 at Sheep Hills, in Costa Mesa, California. #steveemigphotos
So that leaves some kind of media business, and my Sharpie artwork, as ways to make a living again. With this in mind, I started asking myself what I call the Two Great Questions. 1) What would be really fun to do?2) What needs done that nobody is doing? Then I added, 3) What can I do as an old guy, that will actually progress or add to these sports in some way? What's next? Where do these sports go from here? With 20 years of action sports experience, and 56 years of life experience, what can I add to the mix? Then I just went about my daily life for a few days, letting those questions percolate.
A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the shade, looking at a cool bank across the street that no one ever rides or skates. I thought of the other spots I know of in the San Fernando Valley, where I live now, that the BMX and skate worlds don't even know exist. The idea just popped in my head, like the ideas for tricks, zines, videos, and blogs have in years past. "Start a blog, and shoot photos and video of BMX and skate spots." The thought just popped into my head. "Tell the story of classic spots, share other people's videos of cool spots, and then go find new spots." The idea just began growing as I was sitting there. So here's The Spot Finder blog, the first step in this idea. We'll see where it goes from here. That's the story. Welcome to my next step in the action sports world. And a reason to start losing weight and get my fat ass back on a bike and skateboard again.
Big invert at the D.I.Y. World Championships 2018, put on by Steve Crandall of FBM Bikes and Chad at Powers Bikes in Richmond, Virginia. Rider unknown (sorry). #steveemigphotos
Colby Raha with a new edit of a crazy jump at an epic spot. 116 foot downhill dam gap jump. This boy is crazy... in a good way. Subscirbe to Colby's YouTube channel, "Raha." Do it right now, I'll wait.
I first heard of Colby Raha, not from the X-Games, but from a photo I shot at Sheep Hills. I had a pic of someone busting a big backflip on a BMX bike, and wasn't sure who it was. I'd been back east and out of the action sports world for over 10 years, and didn't know who all the younger riders were. I posted the photo on Facebook, and somebody said, "That's Colby Raha, the FSMX guy." So I looked up some of his videos, and his riding blew my mind. He wasn't just doing cool FSMX tricks, he was going BIG, and setting up weird and interesting street spot gaps, as well as free riding in the hills and tricking off ramps. Progression on multiple fronts, that's what I saw in his videos.
It's 6:32 am right now, the sun isn't even over the horizon this morning, and I came to McDonald's to start this new blog idea. I was going to write the first post explaining why me, as an old, fat, ugly, homeless guy, am doing a blog called The Spot Hunter. I opened up YouTube to find a song to wake me up, and this brand new video popped up of Colby. This new blog is all about spots, locations where people do cool stuff. Mostly it's going to be BMX, MTB, skateboard, and art spots, but any cool spot fits the bill. And this dam where Colby hucks over this crazy downhill gap is one of the most amazing "street" spots I've ever seen. So Colby Raha, you get post #1 on my new blog, well earned with an epic series of jumps at an amazing spot. I'll explain the thinking behind this blog in the next post.
For those of you who haven't heard of Colby Raha, here's a good video to see what he's all about.
Not the greatest photo, but here's the pic I shot of Colby Raha at Boozer Jam 2019, at Sheep Hills, that led to me learning who he was. BMX roots. #steveemigphotos
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