Monday, October 31, 2022
Steve Alba tells the story of Baldy Pipe- The original epic skateboard spot
The place where full pipe skating and bike riding was born. This almost certainly is the first world renowned skateboard spot. Baldy Pipe. In the foothills above the San Gabriel Valley, east of L.A..
East of Los Angeles, in the SAn Gabriel Valley, known for getting clogged full of smog, there's a small reservoir built for flood control Built in the mid 1950's, it wasn't until 1969 that a skateboarder known as Muck found a huge pipe going into the side of the mountain, part of a spillway for the dam. Located in the mountains below an L.A. landmark, Mount Baldy, the 14 1/2 foot diameter concrete tube became known as Baldy Pipe. In the video above, Steve Alba, Badlands local, and a guy who first skated Baldy Pipe around 1975, tells the tale of this skate spot. For you young guys and gals who don't know who Steve Alba is, watch this, and this, and this, and this. Known to many as Salba, he's the pool skater's pool skater. So he's the perfect person to tell the story of place where full pipe skating was born.
Why is that area called the Badlands? In the first BMX article I read about Pipeline Skatepark, from 1983, they wrote that a dead body was found there once. The article made it sound like the body was found in the skatepark. That may be an urban legend. If anyone who reads this knows if that's true or not, let me know.
In any case, as Steve Alba tells the story in the video above, the San Antonio Dam was built from about 1952 to 1955. The pipe has gates that allow water to flow through the pipe when the water is high, to prevent floods and landslides. But most of the time the gates are closed, which means the giant pipe is dry. A guy known as Muck (Pat Mullis) found the pipe in 1969, about 14 years after it was built. Wally Inouye and friends first skated Baldy Pipe in November of 1973. That's right, the roots of full pipe skateboarding go all they way back to 1973.
OK, let's talk about that year. 1973. That was the year the Roe versus Wade decision on abortion was ruled in the U.S. Supreme Court, the landmark case that just recently got overturned. Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" was one of the most popular songs of the year. It was also the year that Chinese martial artist and movie star Bruce Lee died. Skateboarding was mostly being done by a relatively small group of people, who kept skating after the original, mid-1960's skateboard boom. This film was made of skateboarding in 1973. Wheelies, 360's, downhill, and slalom were the main styles. Evel Knievel turned 35 that year, and was gearing up for his Snake River Canyon Jump, which he attempted a year later, in 1974. Steve Alba turned 10 that year. Rodney Mullen, BMXfreestyler Dennis McCoy, and me, all turned 8 that year. Tony Hawk turned 6, and BMX freestyle legend Mat Hoffman turned 1 year old in 1973. Way back then, almost 50 years ago, full pipe skateboarding was just being born at Baldy Pipe.
Wally Inouye told Waldo Autry where Baldy Pipe was, and Waldo became the first skater known for skating it, scoring film footage skating there in the the 1976 film, The Magic Rolling Board. Waldo was clocking in above 9:00 back then, and full pipe skating was beginning to evolve, as the 1970's skateboard boom raced across the U.S. and the world. Pipeline Skatepark in Upland, in the San Gabriel Valley, below Baldy Pipe, opened in 1977. It was the first skatepark in the U.S. to have vertical walled pools, and to have a full pipe, paying homage to the local Baldy Pipe. It became the home park of Steve and Micke Alba, and many others. Here's Micke Alba tearing up the Combi Pool and the Pipe Bowl in 1987. The Pipe Bowl at Pipeline was also frequented by BMX vert riders like Eddie Fiola, Mike Doninguez, and Brian Blyther, among others. Those guys not only shredded the full pipe on bikes, but took BMX vert airs from the 4 to5 foot range up to the 8-9 foot out range, in the mid 1980's. The Pipe Bowl at Pipeline Skatepark played a key role in the evolution of BMX vert riding.
So that's a look at Baldy Pipe, the undisputed start of full pipe skateboarding and BMX riding, and a quick look at Pipeline Skatepark, a direct descendant of Baldy Pipe. This was probably the first skate spot that became legendary in both skateboarding and later in BMX.
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Vox talks to Tony Hawk about legendary skateboard spots
Two years ago, Vox.com got Tony Hawk on Zoom, and made this video about legendary skateboard spots, asking for Tony's input on them.
For a group outside the skateboard industry, Vox produced a really cool look at many of the best known skate spots, and how obscure urban places become famous worldwide in skateboarding. I am, by no means, the first person to look at the history of action sports spots, and how obscure places like a ditch, a set of stairs, or some dirt jumps, become legendary worldwide, in one sport or another.
In this blog I want to not only dig into the history of legendary spots, but find some new ones, and also look at the effects these spots have on action sports culture, and even mainstream culture later on. That's a lot to dive into, but I'm now over 2,500 posts into my 14 year long blogging career, so I'm used to looking at subjects piece by piece, over a long period of time. I have no real idea where The Spot Finder blog/concept is headed, and that's half the fun. We'll find that out together. In the meantime, this 13 minute video is a good primer on spots made famous by skateboarding, and how skaters, and other action sports people look at the urban environment, and the whole world, differently from average people. Enjoy.
Skateboarding and the City: A complete history- by Iain Borden, the book mentioned in the video. Not a paid link.
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Tom Cardy at New Haven Pump Track in the U.K.
British mountain bike rider Tom Cardy lays down some smoking laps, and a few tricks, at the Newhaven pump track, in the U.K.
I just went looking for an amazing pump track to show in this blog, and this popped up at the top on YouTube search results. Tom calls Newhaven "the best pump track he has ever ridden." OK, I've never been to the U.K., but I looked it up, and Newhaven is on the coast, south of London, and east of Brighton. This video is from June 2020, so it's not brand new. But he's doing several lines and transfers, manuals, and this video shows what pump track riding is all about. With video and narration by what I assume is his girlfirend, Tom tears this track up, and even finds a place to backflip. The video is shot with a mix of single camera footage, GoPro POV, and some drone footage as well. Great video showing the potential of this well designed pump track. His YouTube channel is "Tom Cardy," so check it out. 
Here's a shot of the pump track and skatepark at Newhaven pulled of Google Maps, to show you the layout.
Friday, October 21, 2022
The Endless Halfpipe of Umea, Sweden
The Endless Halfpipe of Umea, Sweden.
I didn't know about this until I searched "amazing skate spots" YouTube. This appears to be an old logging flume, or possible just a aqueduct for spring floods, or something like that. What it reminds me of is The Gauntlet from American Gladiators, which I actually did ride my bike in, when I was a crew guy on the show in the early 90's. In any case, the "endless" halfpipe turned into a high banked metal ditch, then ends. So it's not endless, but prety freakin' long.
In any case, this looks like a fun place to skate or ride, if you make it to Umea, Sweden. Umea is on the east coast of Sweden, a couple of hundred miles (or a whole bunch of kilometers) north of Stockholm. The video is pretty funny. These guys skate for half the video, then the local guy guides the other around the weird spots of the town. Weird spots to ride and skate are all over the place. That's kind of the point of this blog.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Surfin' U.S.A- The original action sports song about surf spots
The 1963 song, "Surfin' U.S.A.," by The Beach Boys, is one of the classic songs of the surf music era of 1960's rock 'n roll. This video is from Gabrielle Marie channel, and features the Hawkeye Girls, according to the watermark.
The surf sound rock of the 1960's spread the California beach lifestyle idea around the world, with The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Dick Dale and the Deltones, and others, creating a soundtrack to make backyards and family rooms around the world feel like the beach. Or at least sound like it. The music, and the era's "beach blanket" movies, spread the idea of surfing around the world from California. The surf music was a part of the soundtrack of the later Baby Boomers teen years, and still played regularly on the radio for us Generation X kids coming up in the 1970's and early 1980's.
It wasn't until I landed in Southern California at age 20, and started meeting a bunch of actual surfers, that I realized the song listed many of the SoCal surf spots. Obviously, you get the idea in the song, but when you live in Southern California around surfers, it's different to hear people say, "I surfed Trestles this morning." Those lyrics are suddenly part of your landscape.
"You'd catch 'em surfin' at Del Mar, Ventura county line, Santa Cruz and Trestle, Australia's Narabine, All over Manhattan, and down Doheny Way...Everybody's gone surfin', surfin' U.S.A.." -"Surfin' U.S.A" lyrics
For all of you in the rest of the world, not from Southern California, Del Mar is a city in north San Diego county, and hour and a half south of L.A.. Ventura county is the county north and west of Los Angeles county, the beach at the county line, Leo Carillo State Beach, is just west of Malibu. Santa Cruz is a city in northen California, about 20 miles south of San Jose, and 50-60 miles south of San Francisco. Narabene is an area north of Sydney, on the Southeast coast of Australia. Manhattan is not the island in New York City, there's not a lot of surf there. This Manhattan is an L.A. county beach city, about three miles south of LAX airport, and just north of Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach. Doheny State Beach is on the south side of Dana Point, a city in southern Orange County, about 50 miles southeast of downtown L.A.. Doheny is a big long boarding beach, and also known for a blues and jazz festival held on the at the beach every year. Trestles, another surf spot mentioned in the song, is a few miles farther south.
If you grew up far inland, like me, and don't surf, also like me, you may wonder why they mention so many places in a surfing song. The waves you see surfers riding in videos or photos, don't look like that every day. Usually the waves are smaller at most breaks. At any given time, there are weather systems, storms, and even hurricanes, thousands of miles away, sending pulses of energy through the water of the ocean. These pulses are constantly changing, like ripples in a pond when you throw a few rocks in it. When they hit the shore, these swells push the waves up a little higher than the normal waves. Since these pulses, or swells, come from all kinds of different directions, they affect different beaches in different ways. A swell from the west will make good shaped surfing waves at one beach, a southwest swell will pump other beaches, and a north swell will be good at still others. So surfers in Southern California, or any coastal area, are constantly looking for info on where the swells are coming from, and which beaches will have the best waves on any given day.
There's a company out of Huntington Beach, California that leads in this information, Surfline that keeps tabs on swells around the world. When I first moved to H.B. in the 80's, Surfline was a 900 number that surfers would call to find where the surf was good in southern California, and it has evolved in to an amazing place for videos, info, and surf forecasting worldwide.
Since this website is about action sports spots, I had to pay homage to the song from nearly 60 years ago, that taught the world names of several popular surf breaks. Surfing is one of the original action sports, along with mountainering, snow and water skiing, and motocross. While I'm at it, I should mention that the Jan & Dean song, "Surf City," was written about Huntington Beach, my home for the better part of 20 years. This particular video also qualifies as one of the first times skateboarding was ever on TV, as they roll off camera at the end. 43 years later, skateboarding has evolved a bit, here are some highlights from the 2006 Soul Bowl event, built right on the sand in Huntington Beach, during the big surf contest.
What about the surfing? Here's Kelly Slater on one of the rare days in Huntington Beach when there were big waves for the annual U.S. Open of Surfing. Trestles, one of the spots mentioned in "Surfin' U.S.A.," has two areas, called Uppers and Lowers, by the surfers. Here's footage of an epic day at Lowers, while some of the world's best surfers were there. To fill this post out, here's some classic longboard surfing at Doheny Beach, this is the style of surfing made famous in Malibu and other spots in the 1960's. I'll wind up this post with the most epic surf guitar song of all time, Dick Dale's "Miserlou." Did you know this song inspired Quentin Tarantino to write the movie Pulp Fiction? Yep, it's true, so now you know.
For a ridiculous bonus beach song, here's Elvis Presley singing, "Do the Clam." Really.
Sunday, October 16, 2022
The Jinx Bank, Eddie Roman, and the birth of BMX wall rides
This is the first documented BMX street contest, Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street in Santee, California, in the spring of 1988. Curb Dog Dave Vanderspek actually held a street contest in NorCal earlier, that most of us SoCal riders never heard about. But Santee was the first BMX street event to show up in the magazines, and be documented on video. This is my edit of the contest, part of the 2-Hip BHIP video of the 1988 2-Hip contest season. This was the first contest where BMX wall rides happened. The first wall ride of the video is by Skyway rider Eddie Roman.
For the few months that I worked at Wizard Publications in 1986, I was roommates with two of my co-workers, Craig "Gork" Barrette, the editor of BMX Action, and Mark "Lew" Lewman, the assitant editor of FREESTYLIN'. I moved to Redondo Beach from San Jose, landing in LAX with my Skyway T/A bike, a suitcase, $80. At first I slept on the couch of their apartment, but after a couple of months, we got a three bedroom place , just across the city line in Hermosa Beach. In the late summer and fall of 1986, if there wasn't a contest to go to, my Saturdays and Sundays usually began by cooking a huge plate of pancakes, which I would eat while watching Lew's copy of Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade II video, Future Primitive. My favorite part was the Tommy Guerrero section, with that great Craig Stecyk quote at the beginning, "200 years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground. It took the minds of 12-year-olds to realize its potential." Street skating was just beginning to turn into a thing then, with photos, and the early video parts by Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, and Natas Kaupas, in particular.
At FREESTYLIN', editor Andy Jenkins was an artist who had raced BMX, and a skater, heavily influenced by skateboarding and punk culture, which he brought to the amazing style and art direction that set FREESTYLIN' magazine apart from the other BMX mags. So street skating was something we talked about at work on a regular basis. In addition, freestyle skater Rodney Mullen practiced at The Spot, where we rode every night, when he was in California. So as I rode and worked, despite being at a company publishing two BMX magazines, there was a big skateboard influence all around. So after my huge plate of pancakes while watching Future Primitive on the weekends, I would grab my bike, and go ride solo all morning, and usually much of the afternoon. I wandered around the Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Torrance area, just looking for cool stuff to ride, and sessioning alone. This was something I really started doing a year before, after I moved from Boise, to San Jose. Again I had a huge, unknown, urban area around me to explore on my bike. I ranged all over the region, even riding over ten miles up to Venice Beach two or three times.
On one photo shoot for the magazines, driving photographer Windy Osborn and pro freestyler Ron Wilkerson, I drove us to a bike shop on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), in Redondo. They had a quarterpipe out back, where Ron did a brand trick he invented, the abubaca. I took a wrong turn, trying to find the right alley, and caught a glimpse of this asphalt bank on the back of a store. The little parking lot sloped down, and the bank went from nothing, to a steep, six foot high bank on the far end. That logged into the back of my brain, and I drove on to find the bike shop. A couple of weeks later, I remembered that bank, and spent a Saturday morning looking for it. I forgot exactly where it was, but had a rough idea, wandered around, and finally found it.
Within minutes, I realized that the steep end of the bank was a great place to launch up, and do a topside footplant on the stucco wall above. After a half hour or so of sessioning, I snapped a pedal, and had to "scooter" my bike back home, pushing while standing on one pedal. I tweaked my ankle a bit as well. I told Gork and Lew about the bank, and they had both heard skaters talk of a cool bank in that area, but had never sought it out. The next trip to ride it, I cracked my fork drop out, and had to replace my forks. The third trip to it, Lew came along to see this spot I said was so amazing. We had a good little session, but Lew wound up tweaking his ankle, a pretty good sprain. He said something like, "Man, this bank is a jinx." With that, The Jinx Bank got its name.
I just found it on Google Maps, while writing this post, it's located on the back of the building at 1312 PCH in Redondo Beach, now a restaurant and bar. Many years ago, someone built an asphalt curb below the bank, making it pretty much unskatable and unrideable. You could throw a board over the curb, but it just wasn't the same. I last sessioned it in the 1990's, I think. So that's part one of this story, how The Jinx Bank was refound by me, and got its name from Lew. R.L. Osborn, who had his office Wizard, told me he'd heard of the bank from skaters, but Larry's Donuts Bank was a better place to ride at the time, when kickturns were the main trick that he, Bob Haro, and Mike Buff were working on.
Keith Treanor with a huge wall ride fakie, in 1990, in Garden Grove, California. There was a four foot high ramp below him.
I first saw a wall ride on a BMX bike in the fall of 1986. One of my jobs at Wizard Publications was to drive Windy, our photographer, to photo shoots. We did a shoot that fall with Dave Curry in Huntington Beach. Dave was a really innovative rider from the U.K., and directed us around to several spots in H.B.. As dusk was setting in, he directed me down an alley, not far from Huntington High school. There was a tiny bank, about a foot high, next to a wall. We got out, and Dave hit the bank like a little jump, and slapped both tires on the wall, about a foot up. It blew my mind, and I told Windy we needed to get photos of it. Being a veteran BMX photographer, she wasn't so impressed. While he did the first wall ride I had seen or heard of, it was only about a foot up, and more of a tire slide. Plus the light was terrible, and Windy had plans that evening, and we were already running pretty late. Looking back, while it was innovative, the photo wouldn't have been near as cool as the one Eddie Roman got months later. But I had to give Dave Curry props, because that was the first BMX wall ride I ever saw or heard of.
Being the uptight dork that I was, I got laid off from Wizard Publications at the end of 1986, and went on to work at the AFA, editing their newsletter and doing other work. Wizard hired a 17-year-old East Coast BMX/skater kid, Spike Jonze, which was a much better fit for the magazines. As everyone knows, that worked out well, and he's been ridiculously successful since.
Meanwhile, A couple of street riding articles in FREESTYLIN' got riders everywhere looking around at their urban environment, and riding what they found. The NorCal guys from San Francisco were always very street oriented riders, led by Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and the other Curb Dogs. Skater Tommy Guerrero, and his brother Tony, were members of the Curb Dogs, as well. So street riding and skating was always a thing in the Bay Area. At the other end of California, several San Diego riders were also really pushing street riding progression. The main riders in 1986-1987 street riding there were Eddie Roman, Pete Agustin, and the Dirt Brothers, like Vic Murphy, Brad Blanchard, Ronnie Farmer, along with GT all around rider Dave Voelker, among others.
Back then riders just went riding, shooting video wasn't a thing yet, though the rider-made video movement was just around the corner. So there isn't any good video of these guys readily available from 1985-1987. But you can see some of Eddie Roman's BMX freestyle innovation in this video from 1990, and in Ride On, starting at 3:47, a video Eddie produced in 1992. In the mid to late 1980's, footplants, sprocket grinds, and doing 180's to fakie on or off obstacles were key parts of street riding. Peg grinds had not been invented yet. While BMXers had been jumping curbs and bunnyhopping things since the early 1970's, BMX street began to evolve, with more elaborate tricks using urban obstacles being invented day after day. Riders looked at curbs, banks, ledges, and wondered, "What can I do with this urban object on my bike?"
This is my Sharpie Scribble Style drawing of Windy Osborn's photo of Eddie Roman, doing the first wall ride to appear in a BMX magazine, in 1987.
The photo of Eddie Roman doing the first wall ride was shot at the Jinx Bank, The story I heard years ago was that Eddie Roman was up in Torrance to do a photo shoot, and Lew suggested they go to the Jinx Bank, the best bank to wall in that area. The result was a great photo of Eddie taking off the middle part of the bank, and riding on the wall, over the sketchy pieces of rebar sticking out. Across the world, BMXers opened that issue of FREESTYLIN', and said, "Holy shit! He's riding on the wall!" Or something close to that. That photo changed bike riding forever, in an instant, suddenly walls were in play, and everyone started looking for banks to walls to learn wall rides.
When I first wrote this post, I skipped the wall ride fakie aspect. Months after the photo above of Eddie, Craig Grasso added to the progression with the first fakie wall ride post. He's in the video above of the Santee contest. In early 1989, the Godfather of BMX, Scot Breithaupt had sold a bicycle sports TV series to ESPN. In typical Scot fashion, he didn't have all the shows planned out, and he happened to be editing the shows at night at Unreel Productions, where I worked. I got paid to hang out and make sure he didn't "borrow" too much of our video footage, or anything else. One night he said he needed an idea for the next show. It took 20 minutes, but I talked him into doing a street riding show, which was the new thing then. We held the contest the next Saturday, and 9 days later the show was edited, and aired on ESPN. That's about 15 days from idea to finished TV show on TV. If you've ever worked in TV production, you knows that's a ridiculous time schedule. In that show, which became the first made-for-BMX street show ever, Craig Grasso and Pete Augustin were the only guys busting huge wall rides. You can see them at 8:30 in this show. This was about a year and a half after the Eddie Roman photo appeared, and six years before the X-Games debuted. This show got the best ratings, by far, of all of the bike shows in Scot's series. Kids across the country knew something cool when they saw it, and told their friends to tune in.
Eddie Roman had a huge innovative influence on BMX freestyle in the 1980's and early 1990's, both as a rider and as a video producer/editor. But this photo of the first wall ride in a magazine was one of his biggest contributions. That influence can easily be seen in the video embedded above, of the Santee contest in 1988, where nearly everyone was doing wall rides. In less than a year after that first wall ride photo, fakie wall rides were invented, but no photo in any magazine showed a wall ride more than two feet high. The 2-Hip Meet the Street at Santee in 1988 was the first time most of the top emerging street riders came together, at a street location with huge dirt banks to a wall and other obstacles, to see what everyone else could do. The Santee contest also changed BMX freestyle forever. Dave Voelker was doing 8-9 foot high wall rides at that spot, guys tried one footers and can-can's, and Todd Anderson did those cool fakie wall footplants. Then English rider Craig Campbell raised the bar even higher, doing the first wallride to 360., blowing everyone's mind. All that happened with in a year of the first wall ride photo. BMXers have continued to push the level of wall rides ever since, now 35 years out from the Eddie Roman photo at the Jinx Bank.
Here's a great compilation of BMX wall rides from the last 15-20 years, thank you Baskett Case, whoever you are, for taking the time to put all these into one video.
In the few years since this video was posted, there are even more huge and technical wall rides have happened. Two standouts in my mind are Dakota Roche, for both burly and technical wall rides in Native Land IV, and Sebastian Keep, going huge, with insane gaps to wall rides in Walls, and other videos.
I started this post with the story of me finding the Jinx Bank to remind all riders out there that you may not be the guy or gal who does 15 foot gaps to wall rides, but that anyone can find cool new spots to ride. I just happened to be the mediocre rider that rediscovered an old skaters bank in the BMX footplant era. Riding was evolving, and I had many great sessions, doing fooplants on the Jinx Bank wall. I moved on, but the bank was then in play, Lew, Gork, Craig Grasso, and other Redondo area locals knew it was there. That just happened to be the wall they took Eddie Roman to for the first wall ride photo. So even if you're not a Josh Stricker or Dakota Roche or a Sebastian Keep, you can still go exploring and find places that may wind up helping the sport evolve somewhere down the line. Most of the great street spots in all the videos we watch were not found by top pros. Regular riders are finding new spots to ride or skate all the time, and bringing them into play in the action sports world Anyone can help BMX freestyle, and other action sports evolve and progress. So that's my story behind the very first wall ride photo, a picture that changed bike riding forever, and continues to be built upon by today's riders.
Tuesday, October 11, 2022
Classic Skateboard Spots- The Chain Bank in San Diego
While I knew a few 90's skaters, being a Huntington Beach BMX local, I'd never heard of the Chain Bank until I ran across this video a few months ago. In this clip, Rob Dyrdek narrates as we see the day where the cat-like Tom Penny unloads trick after trick, and shuts the place down... in one session.
What Rob Dyrdek calls the Chain Bank in the video above, is also known as the Shelter Island Manny Pad, and is listed in this list of top San Diego skate spots, on The Swellbow website. Shelter Island is in the Point Loma area of San Diego, basically across the harbor from the Navy Base, or 3-4 miles straight south of Sea World San Diego, for us non-locals. Shelter Island comes up on Google Maps, and it looks like the bank is near the boat ramp, from the satellite view. One site says there is now a guard rail where the chain used to be, which would make it much harder, maybe nea rimpossible, to skate now.
From what I can gather, this was a mid1990's skate spot, and despite Tom Penny's epic session back in the day, this compilation video has several other really solid tricks on the bank, by skaters like Pat Duffy, Rob Dyrdek, Marc Johnson, Bastien Salabanzi, and more.
Nothing... at all, comes up for BMXers riding there, which surprises me, since there are plenty of BMXers, particularly older ones, who love banks. San Diego was a major force in early BMX street in the 1980's. But I've seen no sign of BMX riders sessioning this spot back in the day. If I run across any, I'll update this post.
Friday, October 7, 2022
Unknown spot: The Westminster Full Pipes-
There's one sound that totally sticks in my head from the few times I got to ride Pipeline skatepark. That sound was when I was sitting on my bike by the roll in to the full pipe, and Steve Alba would come up the the wall right there, doing a huge, wheel squawking frontside carve, over vert, in the full pipe. There's nothing like that sound. This video above is a hilarious history of full pipe skateboarding, with Jeff Grosso, Steve Alba, and Duane Peters. This is a must watch. RIP Jeff Grosso.
Being the homeless bum I am right now, I'm not going to make a trek to take a photo of these pipes, because I don't have a car. To the best of my knowledge, even Steve Alba doesn't know the Westminster full pipes exist. First of all, they're small, about 8 to 9 feet diameter. There are four full pipes, that I know of, in Westminster, California. You can see the ends of two of them from the corner of Westminster and Bolsa, right off the 405, by the Westminster Mall. Go out on the sidewalk, in front of Chase Bank, and you can look down into the ditch and see two small full pipes. But those aren't the ones I rode in the early 90's.
While living in the P.O.W. House, on Iroquois Street, in the early 1990's, I found two other full pipes, the same size, 8 to 9 feet in diameter. Those two had a much better access route. If you watch the video above, there's a tiny metal full pipe at the very end, just a little section of pipe, that's about the same size as these. So you can't carve high up the walls, like a 14, 16, or 20 foot diameter full pipe. But these are still fun if you sweep out any debris, and roll down the length of them, carving back and forth on the walls. You can air out the end, too. I rode these a handful of times in about 1992-1993, while living in the P.O.W. House (Pros Of Westminster). While I lived in a house with a bunch of top pro BMX riders at the time, nobody ever wanted to go ride these pipes. So I had a few solo sessions in them. I thought about putting a bunch of boxes in one, as crash pads, and trying to barrel roll it, like ride a corkscrew line through it. There are definitely riders today who could do that. But back then it seemed nuts. I never got motivated to find a bunch of cardboard boxes, drag them to this location, and try it. So that never happened.
Here's how you find two Westminster full pipes that I did ride. There are actually four pipes, all parallel to each other as they go underground. The two in the middle are circles, and the other two are about six foot high ovals. Those might be fun to skate. But they were too small to ride a BMX bike in. Using your GPS, find 13722 Hefley Street in Westminster, California. It's real close to Springdale and the 405, but back in the neighborhood. Head south to the big ditch. There is a fence to jump, so it's trespassing to go into these. Use your own discretion there. But in that ditch, you'll see the ends of the four pipes, two circles, two ovals. There's a truck ramp down into the ditch, so access is pretty easy.
These are not big like Baldy Pipe, at 14'5" according to the video above, or the old or new Pipeline skatepark pipes, at 20 feet in diameter. It's not the same kind of pipe skating or riding, with huge wall carves. But they are pretty fun, and they're a short drive from Huntington Beach skatepark, and the beach itself. So here's another one of my old spots that no one knows about. Like the Studio City Monter Wall that I showed you in a previous post, these pipes have never been in a bike or skate magazine photo or video, as far as I know. To get you amped to go skate or ride, here's a vintage Salba section from the Santa Cruz video, Wheels Of Fire, including him shredding Pipeline Skatepark.
Thursday, October 6, 2022
Classic Skate/Bike spots: The Embarcadero in San Francisco
In 1986, across this span, street skating pioneer Mark Gonzales did the "ollie heard 'round the world." He ollied the gap between the wall and block section at the Embarcadero. This video is from 1993, when he went back and became the first to kickflip over what became known as The Gonz Gap.
It became known as The Gonz channel, later The Gonz Gap, or just The Gonz. The story is that photographer MoFo told Mark some other kid had already ollied this gap, so Mark decided he needed to nail it and get the photo. Mark made it, and MoFo got the sequence. This video above, by longtime Thrasher magazine editor Jake Phelps, is Mark Gonzales back at it in 1993, landing the first kickflip over it. After that, this gap became a proving grounds for top skaters, each trying to take it to the next level with a bigger trick over the gap. You can read the history of The Gonz Gap here.
On a personal note, I moved from Boise, Idaho to San Jose, California in August of 1985, and lived there for about a year. I published my first BMX freestyle zine about the Bay Area pro and amateur riders, which led to a magazine job in Southern California in 1986. So I sessioned at Golden Gate Park with the BMX guys a dozen or so times over that year, and interviewed several for my zine. I watched Tommy Guerrero and friends blast off launch ramps there. And I rode at the Embarcadero with several of those BMX guys 4 or 5 times. I rode poorly, mostly did footplants, nothing too cool. I wasn't a local, but I did ride it a little, and saw what a cool spot it was, particularly for that era. This blog post is not meant to be the official history of the Embarcadero/EMB bike and skate scenes, just a good solid look at it, and how much influence that spot had on both BMX and skateboard street.
The Embarcadero area was a park area with big, concrete, block ledges and structures that drew in skateboarders and BMXers. It was located in San Francisco, in the 1980's and 1990's. It played a huge and influential role in the history or both BMX street and street skateboarding. But before I get to that, let's go back to the roots of street skating itself.
In the early 80's, there were two main forms of skateboarding, the cool guys who rode vert, skateparks and later halfpipes, and the dorky guys who made hardly any money and did freestyle skating. There's no consensus on exactly when modern street skating started. But there's a great line Thrasher's 25th anniversary book, something like, "In 1984, Mark Gonzales launched off the side of a ramp, and things got gnarbuckle." That's as close as you're going to get to the birth moment of street skating.
But many of the foundational tricks used in street skating, had already been invented by freestyle skater Rodney Mullen in 1984. Rodney was one of the "dorky" freestyle skaters then, but he was a 5 time world champion freestyle skater. Rodney invented the flat ground ollie, the ollie kickflip, the double kickflip, the 360 flip, the flat ground Caballerial (fakie 360 ollie), and the ollie impossible. That was all before street skating really got started. Don't believe me? Check out this Rodney Mullen video from Japan, shot in 1984. In the middle of his freestyle routine, you can see Rodney do a Caballerial, an ollie impossible (technically a pressure flip), and a double kickflip... in 1984.
In the earliest days of street skating, there were guys like John Lucero, Lance Mountain and others sessioning curbs. Then came the three musketeers, really pushing early street skating in the mid and late 1980's. Mark Gonzales (1987 video) down in Huntington Beach/Orange County. Tommy Guerrero (1985 video) in San Francisco. And Natas Kaupas (1988 video) in Santa Monica (west of Los Angeles). Their magazines photos, and later video parts, began to show the world street skating. The early magazine photos and video parts of these three inspired a whole legion of early street skaters, with Mike Vallely and others coming up right behind them, and sparking progression, and the street skating movement.
Of those early three, Tommy Guerrero, was skating San Francisco every day. The reason I wrote so much in this post about early street skating is because the first video I pulled up to work on this post was a great video, it's below, but it also says, "inventing street skating at EMB in the 1990's." No street skating was already a thing, and skaters were skating Embarcadero, and many other spots in San Francisco, before that. Here's Tommy Guerrero's Transworld Legend clip, to prove it. The classic era of EMB in the 1990's blasted the progression of street skating into hyperspace mode, but they didn't invent street skating.
The BMX side of the story begins with a group of freestylers, led by Dave Vanderspek, and his bike/skate team, the Curb Dogs. Here's Dave and some of the team on a local TV show in 1985. In the clip, they start with some flatland, followed by Dave and skater Joe Lopes riding Joe's halfpipe. Known as Vander by many, he was a great bike rider, a good skater, and an incredible promoter. Maurice Meyer was the other key BMX rider in the Curb Dogs, seen in this TV clip from 1986, riding the streets, and at Golden Gate Park, the weekend hangout for BMX freestylers from around the San Francisco Bay Area. You can learn the history of the Curb Dogs on this website Maurice created.
In those days, producing videos was still a job for professional crews, but Dave managed to get a full length Curb Dogs video produced in 1986. There are scenes at :40, 1:47, 3:07, 11:42, 20:00 that show some of the earliest riding, and skating, on video at the Embarcadero. At 20:05 in that video, Dave Vanderspek bunnyhops The Gonz Gap, and there's quite a bit of skating there afterwards. Dave died tragically in 1988, and the Curb Dogs II video came out after his death. There's quite a bit of footage from the Embarcadero in the tribute to Dave, in the first several minutes.
The Curb Dogs, and other Bay Area riders, were a huge part of the early street riding influence in BMX freestyle. This was before peg grinds, wall rides, and big gaps were a thing. Dave Vanderspek doing bar endos at the edge of a ledge, along with footplants, and tweaking tabletops off curb jumps, were some of the early street riding moves. In addition the famous San Francisco downhills, with their rhythm section like drops and banks, influenced their riding, and use of urban obstacles. Vander and the Curb Dogs brought both a skateboard and a punk rock influence to BMX freestyle, at a time when most riders were clean cut, and dressed in motocross style leathers for contests and shows. Dave and the Curb Dogs were ahead of their time, and set the stage for the street riding explosion of th elate 1980's and into the long recession years of the 1990's.
Here's some more Embarcadero BMX street footage, starting at 3:20 in this video, with Curb Dog Maurice Meyer (tie dye tank top), Eddie Roman, and another rider, from 1989 or early 1990.
Now if you ask the Old School street skaters about the Embarcadero, or EMB, they probably picture something a lot more like this:
This is Mike Carroll's part from the 1992 Plan B Questionable video. Mark Gonzales' gap ollie in 1986 put the Embarcadero on the map of the skateboard world. The early 1990's skaters and video sections made it legendary, and dramtically boosted the progression, and popularity of street skating worldwide.
Here's a 13 minute video, Skateboarding History at San Francisco's EMB, that I mentioned earlier. This is a great look at a bit of the history of San Francisco as a city, and how it influenced skateboarding, particularly Embarcadero/EMB. This video is worth checking out just to learn how "hubbas" got their name. That was new to me.
Here are some of the best clips on YouTube of skating at EMB during the 1990's.
In these clips, a few EMB skaters look back on those days of skating the Embarcadero.
So there's my look at one of the most influential street spots in the history of both BMX street riding, and street skating. In The City, where bombing hills, and alternative culture spawned many things, including Thrasher magazine, street skating progressed at light speed in the 1990's and 2000's. This spot, the Embarcadero, or EMB, was legendary, and I wish I wouldn't have sucked so bad when I got to ride there a bit. I'm still not sure where the term "hella" came from, but I want to add that when I moved to the Bay Area in 1985, the skateboard term "vollie" for vagrant ollie, or an ollie over a homeless person, already existed. But there was no similar term for a BMX bunnyhop over a bum. So I polled all the main riders for my zine, San Jose Stylin', in early 1986. The vote was close, but the locals decided "bummyhop" was the best official term for a bunnyhop over a homeless guy, and yes, I've done a few, long before I actually became a homeless guy myself.
Multi-flash manual sequence at the Embarcadero of Maurice "Drob" Meyer, taken by 19-year-old photographer Spike Jonze.
BMX street was just beginning to turn into its own thing in 1989, and this sequence combines several things happening at the time. First there's Maurice, who was riding the crazy streets of S.F. from his early riding days, a city full of big hills and amazing urban terrain. In my mind, NorCal riders pioneered street riding, followed closely by San Diego riders. Then there's the Embarcadero, this public park plaza that just looked like it was built to be ridden and skated, back in the 80's, when there were no real skateparks left from the old era, and before the later parks built in the 1990's and 2000's appeared. We rode the streets, wherever we were, because that's what we had.
Then there's young Spike Jonze, who shot this sequence. Spike was an East Coast BMXer/skater kid who hopped in the Haro Tour van in 1986, and became a roadie for Ron Wilkerson, Brian Blyther, and Dave Nourie. Spike landed at Ron's house in Leucadia, and soon landed a job at FREESTYLIN' magazine in early 1987, where he started shooting photos seriously, guided by veteran photographers Bob and Windy Osborn. For little added spice, there are the zine covers at the bottom, art direction by FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins, and his sister Janice, the magazine's art director/graphic designer at the time.
When this photo was published, the first wave of BMX freestyle popularity was just beginning to crash, major bike companies were starting to pull their money out of BMX racing and freestyle, and throw that money at mountain bikes, the new trendy thing at the time. All of us young people in our late teens and early 20's, who had become hardcore freestylers in the previous few years, were about to witness the "death" of BMX freestyle. That was the collapse of the age of wearing uniforms and helmets to ride flatland, and the rise of street riding in shorts and T-shirts, and rider-made zines, videos, and companies. This photo sequence encapsulates that time of the cusp of the transition from 1980's fad sport to hardcore lifestyle sport of the early 1990's. Thanks Maurice for reminding me of this photo, to flesh out this post about The Embarcadero's influence on both BMX and skateboarding.
So now you know some background of an epic spot from back in the day, and learned a few vocabulary words. Go ride or skate, and make the most of your local spots. 43.
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Disclaimer for The Spot Finder blog
BMX bike riding and freestyle, skateboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing, and other action sports, are all potentially dangerous. As publisher of this blog, I recomend you always wear appropriate safety gear when riding, skateboarding, or doing any of these activities. While the underlying reason for most of these sports is to have fun, progress, and improve your personal abilities, always use common sense, and do not try things far beyond your current skill level.
This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only. The spots and locations documented and written about here could be potentially dangerous, or in some cases illegal, to visit or do action sports at.
Trespassing is a crime, and can lead to legal consequences. The publisher of this blog does not encourage you to trespass, break the law, or otherwise endanger yourself. Many of the spots and locations in this blog will be public skateparks, bike parks, and other places that you can ride, skate, or do sports at perfectly legally. Any decision to break the law to visit other spots or locations that involve trespassing are yours and yours alone.
Be smart, have fun, and enjoy these sports in the most responsible way possible. Any time you spend injured or in jail is time away from riding, skating, climbing, and other fun activities. Keep that in mind.
Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Vintage 1970's pool and ditch skating
The YouTube algorithm tossed tis one at me. The title just says "L.A. 1970's skateboarding." I have no idea who these skaters are, what year, or where the pool and huge ditches are located. But they rip, for that era, and these are some cool spots. The channel has one 70's surf video, and a bunch of short films, so the guy looks like a filmaker. Good vintage sktaing, though. Enjoy.
Sunday, October 2, 2022
The Studio City Monster Wall
Way undervert, but huge and and burly as fuck. The Studio City Monster Wall. #steveemigphotos
I teased this one the other day, with a photo on Facebook, and quite a few people were trying to figure out where this wall is. This gigantic banked wall is one I actually rode fairly often, back in the early 1990's, when I worked on the American Gladiators crew, and lived in North Hollywood for part of a year. It's only a couple of blocks from the CBS Studio Center, where I worked as a crew guy. Yet this huge wall, at least 25-30 feet high, is totally hidden from view of the thousands of cars that drive by it every day.
It's probably only 60 degrees, but it rides like a much steeper, undervert wall. It's bumpy, textured concrete, with a really solid concrete driveway below. You could probably do a little on a skateboard there, but BMXers or mountain bikers are who can really have fun with this thing.
This is behind a shopping center, so there are delivery trucks rolling through now and then. It looks like you could just haul ass and go 12 feet up this thing, but it rides way different than it looks. I could get about 5 feet up the steeper Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, when I used ot ride this thing, 30 years ago. I never got more than 3 1/2 or 4 feet up this wall. It's a hard THUNK when you land. I'm sure some of today's BMXers and MTB riders could do much better. It would be a lot of fun with a small launch and landing ramp. As crazy and cool as this looks, to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a magazine photo or any video of anyone riding it... anywhere. It's literally 15 minutes from Hollywood Boulevard, but no other BMXers or MTBers ever found it, I guess. I forgot about it, when I went back down to Orange County. When it did pop up in my thoughts, I figured some other riders would find it some day.
The location is near Ventura Boulevard and Laurel Canyon, in Studio City, in the San Fernando Valley. There's a small shopping center on the Southeast corner of that intersection (towards the hills), and an older, larger shopping center, that wraps around the small one. The big shopping center is now anchored by Trader Joe's, their address is 11976 Ventura Boulevard. This gigantic wall is behind Trader Joe's and the other shops. As with all business area spots, if you go ride here, be respectful of business owners and employees. I had many solo sessions here back in the day, and never got asked to leave. It's a place to hit alone or with 1 or 2 people, get a little session in, and then move on. Don't bring a whole posse, make a mess, leave trash, or be destructive.
Here's a wider shot of the wall, with a car back there, for perspective. Yes, this thing is freakin' HUGE. #steveemigphotos
Other than a bunch of fun little solo BMX sessions here, in the early 1990's, I do have two stories about this spot. While one time in about 1997, I decided to get back into production work, after a couple of years as a furniture mover. I paid to go to a semiar on how to find work on movie crews. Halfway through the lecture, I realized I already knew how to find work, I'd already worked on 300 TV episodes. I just needed to do the same thing with film crews. The seminar was to make money off dumb college kids who graduated from film school. Four hundred people, at $40 a head, that's $16,000.
So I walked out, and drove to the McDonald's in Studio City, to have lunch, in the Monster Wall shopping center. I turned around after getting my food, and almost knocked over Charlton Heston, best known as the star of Planet of the Apes, and many other movies. He was having lunch with his grandkids. I also saw Geena Davis there once. The McDonald's is gone now, and a yuppie sandwich shop is there now.
Later, in the spring of 2000, I went to a book signing of The Legacy of Luna,* by Julia Butterfly Hill, the woman who lived in a redwood tree for about two years, so they wouldn't cut it down. After meeting her and reading her book, I dropped off my taxi for a week, and took a little solo road trip up to the see redwoods in northern California. That was one of the best weeks of my life.
I had been living in my taxi at the time, so when I got back, I was living in my Datsun 280Z, until I picked up a taxi again. I got back to Huntington Beach, after my trip, and went to Dennny's to eat. While I was eating, I heard a couple of guys talking about making some movie, and they needed skateboard ramps built. It was just a weird coincidence. So I introduced myself, said I was a BMXer and old skateboard industry guy. I walked away with a job two build two skateboard launch ramps in 48 hours, and try to find a rail, for $500.
I rented a Uhaul truck, bought the needed tools and plywood, and went to my old apartment on 15th street. My former roommates and neighbors let me borrow their driveway and electricity, to build the ramps. Both were 4 feet tall, one with a 6 foot, quick transition, and the other with a 9 foot, mellow tranny. The producers wanted a ramp skateboarders could "jump a bunch of barrels" off of. Apparently they had seen some old 70's skateboard video of Tom Sims or something. This was 2000, before YouTube and web video. I really didn't know what they wanted, but I knew skateboard and BMX ramps.
It was getting dark on the second day, and I still wasn't finished with the ramps. So I packed up the Uhaul, drove to Hollywood, then over the hill to this bank, which I happened to know was lit all night. I finished the ramps about 2:30 in the morning, then got a little sleep in the truck cab. In typical production crew fashion, I woke up after about 4 hours of sleep, and delivered the ramps to the location, a church in Hollywood. I offered to hang out and move the ramps around for them, which scored me two free meals with the crew, and access to the craftservice table all day.
Later that day, Powell Peralta skater Chet Thomas showed up, with a couple of other skaters. He ollied a dumpster, and the stars of the movie, sitting in their VW Thing, off my ramp (36:41 to 37:43). The movie was the absolutely horrible Christian movie, Extreme Days, which came out in 2001, and I managed to see in the theater. I'm pretty sure it's the only Christian movie with a three minute fart lighting scene in it. A producer kept the mellow ramp for his kids, and I donated the other one to a little skatepark in Seal Beach, as I recall. And I made $500, thanks to the Studio City Monster Wall's secluded location and lighting at night, which gave me a good place to finish building the ramps, close to the movie's shooting location.
For those of you wondering the other day, after 30 years, I'm letting the secret location out for this wall. It's big, it's burly, and it's never been in a video, The Studio City Monster Wall is waiting...
* Not a paid link.
The Mangey Moose Bank
The Mangey Moose Bank in Tarzana.
This is the bank I was staring at when the idea for this blog popped into my head last week. It's about a four foot high brick bank, about 30-35 degrees steep, maybe 20 feet long, then it wraps around the corner and mellows out. There's a chain link fence at the top, a fence ride on a bike is possible.This is at a bus stop I use from time to time. It's next to a sidewalk about six feet wide, and is plenty smooth enough to skate or hit on a bike. It's nothing amazing, just a cool bank that rarely, if ever gets sessioned. The location is Reseda Boulevard at the 101 freeway, in Tarzana. That's in the San Fernando Valley, north of L.A.. This bank is on the northwest side of the bridge, by the westbound on ramp to the 101.
These brick banks are by most of the on and off ramps of the 101, across The San Fernando Valley, but vary in size and shape. This is one of the best of the banks, by shape and size. Is the Mangey Moose Bank worth a long drive to ride and skate? No. But if you happen to find yourself west of the 405 in The Valley, and are up for a little bike or skate session, it's there. It gets shade much of the day, which is cool, literally.
It was about 100 degrees the other day, which is why I sat down under the bridge, to cool off, across the road, while in the area. I was thinking about ideas on how to jumpstart my life, and all the things I'd really like to do, while spacing off, staring at this bank. The thought popped out of that mysterious place thoughts come from, "I could make videos again, taking riders to new and little known spots, to see what they do could." Tricks have progressed for decades, but there are all kinds of new and unknown spots to ride and skate that are yet to be sessioned. Plus there are lots of classic and well known bike and skate spots that have stories to tell.
Then I thought it out, since I'm homeless and don't have a decent phone or video camera right now. How would I start this idea? A blog. So here it is, the blog looking at bike, skate, art, and other interesting spots. We'll see where this idea goes.
The Mangey Moose. It's pronounced "main-jy," with a "j" sound, since it looks like it has mange.
So where did the name for this bank come from? On the other side of the freeway, the south side, by the eastbound off ramp of the 101, there's this weird little lawn area behind a chain link fence. The whole thing is about the size of a living room, with a bunch of trees, well manicured lawn, a fountain, and this fucked up moose statue. No antlers, and it's worn and beat up. This little lawn area is an advertisement for a lawn and garden shop nearby. It's just weird. I don't know if this moose was one of those target moose for archery, or just a moose statue somebody didn't want any more. We don't even have moose in California. It makes no sense. I saw it from the bus riding by, time after time, and started calling it the Mangey Moose. It looks like is has mange. So even though the bank is on the other side of the freeway, I call it the Mangey Moose bank.
So here's the first bike/skate spot that you've never heard of in this blog, the Mangey Moose Bank. Nothing spectacular, but it's there, Reseda Blvd. and the 101, if you're nearby and up for a little bank session. There's parking on the streets nearby. This bank would look cool in photos, though backlighting might be an issue.
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Punk Rock Pinterest bitches... Yeah. PINTEREST
I'm a dude, And I love Pinterest. That's right bitches, I just said that out loud. OK, I typed it in a blog post caption, but I also said it out loud, which got some weird looks, since I'm at the library right now. Oh, and this video is pretty funny.
I haven't used Instagram in 8 months or so. Don't care. I'd rather spend time on Pinterest. It's a MONSTER for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is cool, since I'm a blogger. If you have a business, website, or blog to promote, Pinterest can totally help you do that online. It's its own search engine, focused on visuals, photos and now videos. I often chill out by just "collecting" pics to my Pinterest boards, while listening to cool music, a podcast, or the like. Just about everyone one of my #sharpiescribblestyle drawings, that I have a photo of, is on my Pinterest board, 183 of them right now. You know how all my main blogs are locked in the #1 spot on Google if you search the title of them? Yeah, I did that with Pinterest, and solid blogging. I don't have one cupcake board. No kittens. I have collections of BMX photos, skateboard photos, hundreds of punk rock flyers, and other shit like that. You don't have to be a dweeb on pinterest, like the guys in the video above. You can make boards, and collect photos, or create your own pins, about ANYTHING. Punk rock pinterest, bitches. DIY. Whatever you like, find pics to inspire you, except graphic nudity, they pretty much cut that out. But everything else.
Stats
Pinterest is the 14th largest social media network, beating out Twitter and Reddit, among others. It has 431 million active monthly users. Only 60% of Pinterest users are women now, down from about 80% pre-pandemic. A lot of guys started using Pinterest during the lockdowns and time since. People watch close to 1 billion videos a day on Pinterest. 85% of Pinners say they use Pinterest to plan new projects. These and other Pinterest stats here.
Why Pinterest?
On Pinterest you create "boards," like an old time cork or bulletin board on your wall. Then you collect photos or videos, and "pin" them to your boards. Anything (OK, almost anything) you want. Cool cars. Motorcycles. 80's BMX bikes. DIY projects. art/design ideas. Whatever. To see all my stuff, you have to join, which takes about three minutes. That's it. That's all the sales pitch you're going to get. Pinterest is the "bucket" for your bucket list. Here's my page.
Here are a few of my Pinterest boards. You can see the top 10-20 pics without joining.
The Spot Finder blog- 14 pins (brand new)
Freestyle BMX Tales- 625 pins
Epic Old School skate photos- 690 pins
Sheep Hills- My photos- 256 pins
The Nude Bowl- 80 pins
Punk rock flyers- 453 pins
I love street art and urban murals- 1,113 pins
The Big Freakin' Transition- 466 pins (My theory on why the 2020's are so crazy)
Cool Vintage Stuff- 541 pins
Funny signs- 480 pins
Cool looking cars- 345 pins
My Sharpie Scribble Style art- 183 pins
NSFW quotes- 248 pins
Bruce Lee- 132 pins
Because Pizza- 67 pins
Hollywood- My photos- 66 pins
Want to get started on Pinterest? Watch this video to learn the basics. If you want to start learning how to use Pinterest to promote your website, blog, or even your brick and mortar business, watch this video.
I started a new personal blog, check it out:
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