BMX stuff - old/mid/new school and beyond! (also skateboards because)

So I know Kru and I are both into old school BMX. How about you guys? Whatever era you're into, share your BMX history/stories/photos/videos/etc here! I'll kick it off!

I used to race a Team Murray when I was a kid, back in like 91-92. Looked a lot like this one but I don't think it was an XR4.
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I was sponsored by Pleasant Valley Bike Shop in NY. They hooked me up with tires and brakes, because the parts that came with my Murray didn't meet ABA (I think it was ABA back then?) standards. The stock brake pads were too hard and just squealed instead of stopping the bike, and the tires were too soft and the sidewalls collapsed when landing high jumps. I remember being stoked when they gave me my number plate, it had the bike shop's logo, which was a fancy dude on one those old-timey giant front wheel bikes, and my name and number. It was white, I remember the rules said it had to be but there was a kid who had a dayglo yellow plate and I was super jealous.

I broke two forks on tabletops, and it was a tabletop that ended my career (my grandmother's orders) in late 92. I was in the second row on the starting block, and when the gate went down my row was a little ahead of me to take off. We started on a steep hill, that rolled into a banked hairpin and then down a straight to a tabletop. We made it around the bend and I managed to gain some ground (my hi-ten Murray was pretty hefty compared to the aluminum Rippers and chromoly Pro Classes flanking me) and was alone in the middle of our pack at the base of the tabletop. I remember launching, and then feeling my back wheel stop spinning and a tug downward. The kid behind me hooked his grip between my spokes, and pulled me down. My fork bent (the second time) and we crashed down on the landing edge of the tabletop. The right side of my bars dug into the hard-packed dirt, and my left bar went straight into my ribs. Broke two, cracked a few others, and blacked out. I was wearing a full-face MX helmet and goggles, so I kept all my teeth, but they said the facebar of my helmet was buried in the dirt. Apparently two kids landed on me and one ran over my head and drove it into the dirt.

My grandmother saw the whole thing, scrapped my bike, and made me quit. I was like maybe 9 years old? Sucked.

In the mid 90s I traded my N64 and GoldenEye for an 86 Mongoose Californian. Best bike I ever owned. Taiwan-made Moor Park model, full 4130 frame, fork and bars. Sugino crank spider and chainring, 4130 175mm Pro Class three piece cranks and Dia-Compe everything. MX3 levers, MX1000 calipers, MX seatpost clamp, everything in survivor chrome or silver anodized. It looked identical to this bike: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Had it for like three years. Dirt jumped it for a long time and then took up an interest in flatland. Bought some pegs and longer axle bolts, as well as Tech7 locking levers. Mastered bar endos and foot-jam tailwhips and was working on my decades when it was stolen. Rode it to the mall to see a movie - came outside and it was stolen from the bike rack in plain sight. Vowed I'd rebuild it someday.

Me and a bunch of friends used to go to a local woods and and dirt jump our BMX's, I didn't have a proper BMX, but it was pretty light.
I've been to the skatepark a few times, stopped going because I was tired of hurting myself haha.

Back in my hoodland days about 2 years ago. I got my BMX. I don't trick or anything anymore but I cruise a lot. Had to stop at one point when I broke 2 ribs. (I feel your pain addie) and then later cracked them both playing rugby. I think it was my sister that took the photo of me getting a whole 1 inch off the ground !



From what I know, everything is GT except the fork. That's mongoose

Posted in the pic of the day thread where you guys were first talking about freestyling.

DIS OldManTiger wrote:

Oh shit, Kru & Addie, y'all just took a brother back. I used to freestyle all day err day. I used to rock Haro Masters, then GT Pro Tours, and my last bike was a Dyno Detour, superblacked. Black frame, black bars, black seat post, black mags, and black Odyssey footprint tires. That shit was my shit son!

I don't know a damn about BMX bikes, but I do happen to know of that bike shop (unsurprisingly, since I live there). :O
Edit: Although this thread is good incentive to not try x.x haha.

I rode a lot last year. I've always had some bike that always looked cool but I had no clue what i was buying when I got it. My current bike is a mirraco five star entry, which I'm pretty sure isn't BMX but it works. We have a place in the woods called Crazy-8s that some kids made a long time ago and we go down there If we are bored in the summer. I have 2 friends with street-tricky whatever haros and they are we break them every day we go there. At one point, one of my friends bikes had a fork from a Walmart bike called a "Dyno" and was missing 2 spokes in the rear because we couldn't afford or fit any new wheels. He's lucky that the only thing he's broke with it is his wrist. My other friend is really small (4'9, 13 years old) and just rockets off ramps. That bike actually gets maitnenced sometimes so it's better. My bike actually holds up pretty well, and the only thing we have had to fix was to hammer (was too big) a new seat into the frame cuz I bent the other one. I have hurt myself more on bikes than any other thing in my life. I have broken all but my ring finger on my left hand and pinky and middle fingers on my right. My nose makes a clicking noise (?) after a crash and I've scraped my ankle down to the bone on my bike and had to get 9 stitches. I also ripped my knee open on the chain and got only like 3 stitches. I'm actually banned from bikes at a summer camp I have gone to. I still bike tho. It's really fun

Never did BMX but 4cross is BMX without the training wheels right?



Downhill is good too, just painful xD

I used to do a bit when I was younger but when I was 12 or 13 it put me in hospital for a couple of days..

I was going home from a friends house when I was younger and met some other friends on the way back. It was about 10 at night so I thought I'd be kind and walk/ride with them home(they were 2 girls) since the area I lived in at the time wasn't the best of places to be out in at night. So anyway we ended up going past a shop and they decided to go in so I waited outside with my bike, whilst I was waiting some guy done a little bunny hop type of thing up onto a pavement so when the girls came out the shop I thought I would show off and do the same. I crossed over the road sped up and then pulled the front up and was told that my front wheel fell off... The next thing I know im lying on the ground covered in blood, in agony with the two girls and the staff from the shop behind me trying to see if I was alright. It turns out I had past out for a couple of minutes. I ended up with a broken arm, broken wrist, shattered all my knuckles and broke 4 out of 5 fingers I also but my teeth through my lips and broke my nose. About a month later I found out why my wheel had come off, an old "friend" loosened it after we had an argument about who had a better bike haha.

Old King wrote:

I don't know a damn about BMX bikes, but I do happen to know of that bike shop (unsurprisingly, since I live there). :O
Edit: Although this thread is good incentive to not try x.x haha.

Haha, you come to terms with the fear of hurting yourself when you nail your first bunnyhop or land your first dirt jump. If you're still scared after that, it may not be for you. And you're from Pleasant Valley? If so that's awesome! I lived in Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, both neighboring towns. The bike shop was only a five minute drive from anywhere I lived in the area, and was the only place to get a "real" BMX bike - one made with chromoly steel and decent components.

Michael - that Mirraco is actually a very nicely equipped entry-level BMX bike. Mirraco is owned by Dave Mirra, one of midschool's (90s to 2000's) most well-known and accomplished freestyle vert riders. Be careful with hammering a seatpost into a seattube if it won't fit. You'll crack the seat tube and that's a load-bearing part of the frame when landing. Oh yeah, he can also drift.

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Mong - 4 Cross is great, like you said it's BMX without boundaries. You race through it all - mud, dirt, streams, street, anything. A 4 Cross course is an absolute trial. Very rad.

BeeDee - Friends can be dicks like that. I had one friend volunteer to lay down and have me jump over him. He decided while I was in the air to chicken out, and got up and I slammed into him. I'd been in worse crashes, but he got absolutely destroyed, haha. Nothing broke, just a lot of bruising and pain. I managed to roll out of it with a few scrapes.

Tiger - I missed out on the 80's BMX boom. I was born in 83 but there were still riders and notable BMX support in my area. We had the Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, as well as some surrounding counties that had indoor and outdoor BMX tracks. I always wanted a Raleigh Burner, because they looked so bad ass in blue and yellow. I later found out they were just a very pretty but very heavy all-steel bike. I would still love one as a rider for cruising events, haha. We kept the sport alive in my hometown. I was racing into 92, but had to stop when I had my bad crash. It kept going, though, and it got even bigger in 94 when the X-Games hit and people like Dave Mirra and Matt Hoffman became household names. In 96 or 97 I got my Californian and eventually converted it to freestyle. The guys at the bike shop thought it was a trip. An 80s racing frame used for flatland tricks. They told me they had guys that would do that with PK Rippers and Pro Racers and stuff back in the 80s. Not everyone could afford a freestyle bike, with all the extra components like rotors and pegs and frame and fork standers, so they would buy the components and convert their race bikes.

This is a Raleigh Burner, by the way. Bad ass. I'm sure you old school guys know what I'm talking about.
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Stunner - if you're into it, keep at it. BMX is a great sport to take interest in, because there are so many ways to enjoy it. Freestyle, vert, flatland, racing, dirt jumping, anything. I attend a cruise now that's usually 300+ strong. All BMX bikes, lots of guys from the 80's era. We take over the streets of Los Angeles and are a sight to see. We even get on TV.

Check me out at 20 seconds in, in front of the red truck in the black hoodie and trucker hat. That's my Target-bought "Mongoose" (Pacific Cycle cheapo bike) that's getting torn down for components.
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Cougar - I've never ever been to a park. I would love to go to one, but I wanna build a more decent bike. Nothing like taking a spill off a quarter pipe on your WalMart bike and having it snap in half.

Thanks for the advice ad, and what I did was take a seat from a bad bike and pound that in to fit the seat hole so that might be better. I think I'm gonna go for a ride later

I still have a set of Peregrine 48's with the white rim and chrome spokes somewhere buried in my mom's garage, from a looooooooong time ago, lol, as I'm an old feller.

Peregrine 48s... it was those and Araya 7x and you were stylin'. Or Tuffs if you had the cash!

So here's what I've been rollin' on for the last month or so. Bought it for $100 bucks from Target. Pacific Cycle-made "Mongoose" - what we in the BMX world call a "Walgoose" (Walmart/other cheaply-made department store bike). Made for a great scoot but blasted out the rear unsealed bearing axle doing too many curb hops. Has some nice components, like lubricated brake cables and a knock-off Oryg gyro. Tore it down to build this up, which should be here tomorrow or Wednesday:



So stoked, as I always wanted a proper freestyle bike when I was a kid. I still need a seat post and a chain, but it'll be rideable almost immediately. Gonna give it a scrub and polish up the chrome that's left, then likely stickerbomb it and thrash the ever-lovin' shit out of it.

If anyone has any knee saver bars they'd let go on the cheap, please let me know.

By the way, if you still wanna build an old school BMX bike, Araya has brought back the 7x and Panaracer has re-released their freestyle tires from back in the day!

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These are definitely going on my next bike! Getting a set of Tuffs and rocking Kendas on the Vertigo as it's a budget/relearn flatland build.

ALSO ALSO ALSO these were my two favorite videos as a kid. I never had them but a friend did. He also had a sick Nyquist Backtrail that weighed ten million pounds even though it was 100% 4130 and one time he jumped it into a tree and he fell out but the bike didn't. I miss being a kid.

Ride On (1992)

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Head First - Matt Hoffman (1991)

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getting the bike outta the attic later today. Super stoked about getting gnarly again

I need to build a bike up again. No money to do so

Its impossibly and horribly corny, and yet its simultaneously AWESOME. Its the BMW/Freestyle movie from the 1980's called "RAD". Here it is gents, the whole movie:

And thats my friends............ is how i got my GT...although the white guy spells it Cru....LOL




I watch this just to see Eddie Fiola flatland tailwhippin that Gt in the end credits.......right after he pulls a hollywood...old skool BMxers know what im talkin about!

I love the opening sequence with all the greats of the era getting rad to John Farnham. Also Mike Miranda didn't help his career any with how much he sucked at Hell Track, haha.

Just hated how the "evil company" was Mongoose, and it was run by a real douchebag who only saw dollar signs. In real life, Skip Hess was an engineer and a genius, and he cared about BMX first and foremost, and would listen to his riders' every suggestion to know how he could make Mongoose frames stronger, lighter, and a better fit for different sized riders.

Still a better BMX movie than BMX Bandits, though. Ten minutes of BMX at the start, and then ten at the end - the middle was basically the Goonies and hardly any bikes.

Also if you can't see Tiger's video, here it is:

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Also ever since Tiger changed his avatar, all I can see is a freewheel cog.

Ahhhh BMX Bandits......wasn't Nicole Kidman in that one?

Yeah, her first movie.

Newer school rider here. :3 not much to say
I'll post a bike parts list
Frame- Stolen Cherry 20.8
Forks- Odyssey R25
Bars- Shadow Vultus 9.5
Rims- Shadow Stuns
Cranks- Premium 1948
The rest doesnt matter.

Anyways im a decent rider i suppose.
Learning flairs atm.

its rather disappointing to see dave mirra doing tuck no handers. hes old school. he should be doing suicides

Yeah, but he's also getting on in age. But he and Tony Hawk both said the same thing in interviews - if they're standing on their own two legs, they're still doing what they love.

I know I'm turning thirty this month, and it's definitely harder to bunny hop as high as I used to. I used to be able to put my Californian on a picnic table no problem. Now I struggle at times to hop up onto a six inch curb. I can only imagine how beat-up I'll feel at forty.

In other news, there was a typo in my address on the Vertigo frame, and it got sent back to the seller. He said he'll send it back when it gets to him, can't wait. Already tore down my department store bike to build it up, so now I'm bikeless, haha.