Posted by nathan on 7/21/2005, 4:51 pm PREFACE Paul Crow, VintageBMX.com website, February 2005: "As to the birth of freestyle, I'm bettin' it started about forty-five seconds after the birth of the bicycle." A FEW PRELIMINARY ODDS AND ENDS... The first bicycle, an awkward, bone-shaking, evil-handling thing, was built in the 1860s. A DEFINITION OF OUR SUBJECT... THE PRECURSORS AND PROGENITORS OF FREESTYLE... Thom Lund, 1974, no-hander wheelie. Kids doing basic tricks (i.e. wheelies, etc.) on bicycles since the 1920s or 1930s. ...the progenitors of freestyle were: THE FIRST BIKES ON BANKED AND VERT TERRAIN... Thom Lund, FAT BMX interview, 2002: "Paul Crow, like myself and JP, were BMX/skaters and were hip to the fact that BMXing went down back in the day side by side with skating in pools." Retrospective blurb in the February 1980 issue of SKATEBOARDER magazine: "Spring 1975, Escondido Reservoir, San Diego County; bikes are joining skaters, sometimes because the skaters have ridden bikes up the trail to get there...sometimes taking two-wheel passes at the walls." This amazing Wes Humpston quote was in the November/December 2002 issue of DIG, a U.K. magazine, in an article about the birth of vert: "We would ride [bikes] to the pool and skate all day and ride bikes home. One day JP said, I'm gonna rip this muther on my bike! We hooked the diving board up as a ramp and JP hit the bowl so fast he stuck on the wall like the carnival guys that ride motorcycles around and around in that tunnel thing! You could hear his knobbies going RIPPP RIPPP as he ripped by. It was so intense it still gets me amped...! JP RULED!" This quote stunned us. When we compared other documentation from this time-frame, we began to think this could have been the exact moment freestyle was born. But when we contacted Wes Humpston in June 2005, he could not remember the month in 1975 that it occurred. Below is a 1975 photograph of John Palfryman, carving the coping of the Keyhole pool in Beverly Hills, California, on one of the first Redline Looptail BMX bikes. The photo was taken during the first half of 1975 by Kevin Kaiser. Early 1975 Kevin Kaiser photograph of JP on the coping of the Keyhole pool. Another fascinating quote from Wes Humpston in the November/December 2002 issue of DIG: "I had one pic of JP popping...a wheelie out of the pool...hitting the coping with his back tire, then turning and dropping back in. UNREAL! But I can't find it." Damn! But think about it...that would be the link between carving coping and getting air! In 1975! 1975 Tim Eagle photograph of Thom Lund carving the light. Keyhole pool.
168.214.86.36
THE HISTORY OF FREESTYLE
VintageBMX.com is the cyber-home of BMXers and freestylers around the world. If it did not exist, the accuracy and detail in this research would not have been possible. Many, many thanks to Bill Curtin, Hal Marshman, and Rick Thomas, the guys responsible for this amazing website.
The level of knowledge of the golden days of BMX and freestyle among the members of VintageBMX.com is encyclopedic. This research into the history of freestyle began early in 2005 as a thread started on the VintageBMX.com website by BuffaloUK who, interestingly, posts from England. What follows is the result of the information gathered during that six-month project.
The following members of VintageBMX.com, each in his own way, contributed hugely to this treatise...no way would it have been possible without them.
Byron Friday)
Tim Hughes)
Brett Downs)
Johnny Johnson)
Thom Lund)
Maurice Meyer)
Paul Crow)
A special thanks to Daniel Winqvist, who posts on VintageBMX.com from Sweden, for his contributions and many, many hours of very picky editing.
And myself, Bob Osborn (OZ).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A DOCUMENTED AND ANNOTATED HISTORY OF FREESTYLE
Thom Lund, FAT BMX interview, 2002: "You keep mentioning freestyle (beep)...we didn't ride around doing hand stands in (beep) neon (beep) uniforms!"
A bicycle with pneumatic tires and better handling characteristics was built in the 1880s. This bicycle made possible 'artistic cycling' which quickly developed into circus and music hall acts.
These early bicycles were expensive and used primarily by adults.
Shortly after the First World War, Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck began marketing bicycles that looked much like today's beach cruisers. Being relatively inexpensive, these bikes put kids on two wheels. Soon, wheelies and riding backwards became normal neighborhood stuff.
Post World War I bicycle.
With the exception of the English 3-Speed which came along in the 1950s, nothing significant happened relative to kids' bicycles or riding styles until 1963, when Schwinn introduced the Sting Ray.
Then, six years after the introduction of the Sting Ray and one century after the invention of the bicycle, something very significant happened...BMX was created.
Through the entire first century of the bicycle, the term 'freestyle' had no application to any form of riding. However, with the occurrence of the events listed below, the term 'freestyle' came to define the discipline of riding that is the subject of this treatise.
In the later 1970s the sport of which we speak was called 'trick riding' in reference to the flatland tricks that were just starting to be invented, or 'stunting', or it fell under the general heading of 'gettin' rad'.
The earliest use of the term 'freestyle' that we've found was in the January 1981 issue of ACTION NOW magazine: "With only three percent of BMX bikes actually competing, there's [sic] a lot of riders who are going to take up freestyle trick riding." Gradually 'freestyle' became the generic term used to define flatland trick riding, ramp and half-pipe riding, and skatepark riding.
Here is a photograph of one of the true OGs of BMX and freestyle, Thom Lund, doing a no-hander wheelie. While this was a significant step up in difficulty over a standard wheelie, it is not enough of an evolutionary step to call it the first documented freestyle trick. But it certainly qualifies as a harbinger of things to come. Note that the environment was BMX.
The undated photograph of Lund was taken at Soledad Sands BMX track in Southern California. Soledad opened in early 1973 and judging by the bike frames in the picture (all Sting Rays, no straight-tube frames) and what appears to be a set of Redline forks (introduced in February of 1974) on the bike beyond Lund, the picture was almost certainly taken in the spring or early summer of 1974.
At the beginning of this article we mentioned artistic cycling. It would be easy to believe that artistic cycling must have eventually led to freestyle riding. This is not the case. We have found no evolutionary connection between the two.
The precursors of freestyle were:
The introduction of the Schwinn Sting Ray in 1963.
The creation of BMX racing in 1969.
It is important to understand that in the 1970s skateboarding was a parallel and more or less concurrently developing sport with BMX, because...
BMX racing.
Skateboarding.
In other words, freestyle was created by BMX racers with substantial influence (this will be made clear below) from skateboarders.
Skateboarding and 20-inch bicycle riding in abandoned swimming pools, empty reservoirs, and drainage ditches can be documented back to 1975. This was the de facto birth of bicycle freestyle. It seems to have happened concurrently in two cities in Southern California...San Diego and Santa Monica (Dogtown).
Bikers, however, were in the minority. The preponderance of skateboarders was due to the popularity of surfing and the large numbers of surfers who began riding skateboards on banked and paved terrain as a dry land substitute for carving waves.
Warren Bolster, SKATEBOARDER magazine, 1975: "It seemed that surfers were skating more than surfing."
We have located several telling quotes from Wes Humpston, one of the original Dogtown skaters and owner of Dogtown Skateboards and Bulldog Skateboards. This quote is from an interview with Ozzie Ausband in 2002: "JP would ride his bike in pools even then [1975]...He was the first guy we ever saw ripping on a bike in backyard [pools]."
The serial number of JP's Looptail was 149. As Redline's frame numbering system started at 100, and Redline began producing frames at the end of 1974, this lends credence to the early 1975 dating of the picture. Interestingly, John Palfryman's original Redline Looptail is now part of a BMX collection owned by Tim Cook (screen name of TIM on VintageBMX.com).
Below is a 1975 photograph of Thom Lund carving the light in the Keyhole pool in Beverly Hills on the same Redline Looptail as Palfryman. Photo taken by Tim Eagle, probably in May of 1975, turned in as a school project June 4, 1975. (Determination of the year explained above.)
Tim Eagle's report card for the above photo. Date circled.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread