Think freestyle riding on a 24″ BMX bike is a new phenomenon?
Think again.
Ted Emmer was rocking a 24″ at the Del Mar skatepark back in 1984!
He even managed to score some coverage in the first edition of Freestylin’ magazine. (Check out the wheels…custom 71 spoke Z-rims!)
Here’s classic video from the King of the SkateParks Del Mar Contest:
(Stoked that Ed Koenning had this video and was able to post it.)
Back in the 80s, freestyle-oriented 24″ bikes just weren’t available. The only 24″ cruisers on the market were pure race machines.
Fortunately, that didn’t stop the BMX Action test team of RL Osborn and Mike Buff from taking the race bikes they were testing, like the Robinson 24″ Pro Racer, out to the quarter-pipe to “get better idea of their handling characteristics.”
Check out this spread of Mike Buff from the November 1983 edition of BMX Action. Pure style!
It would be more than a decade after this magazine came out before freestyle/jumping oriented cruisers would make their entrance to the BMX world. Could pictures like this have played a part in planting the seed? Makes me wonder…
If you’re into this type of “back in the day” stuff, be sure to check out Ed Koenning’s excellent, When are you going to get a real bike? blog. A must read, especially if you were a typical BMX kid in the 80s and lived for the day each month when the new issues of BMX Action and BMX Plus! would hit the newstand.
I have been checking out Edward Koenning‘s blog, When are you going to get a real bike? for a little while now and I have to say I’m getting pretty hooked.
A big part of his blog is digging up vintage BMX magazine pictures/spreads and commenting on them. I often find myself tripping down memory lane when I read one of his posts. I start remembering where I was when I saw or read it, how I devoured every word of the mag (keep in mind this was before the Internet) and how much it had an influence on me.
I was pretty stoked to see him pull out this gem recently. An awesome berm slide by RL Osborn from BMX Action‘s “24 Wars” cruiser shootout article.
I was pretty stoked on this spread too. Eddie Fiola with a perfect table top air (on vert!) and “The Culligan Man” doing a big jump on a race cruiser to see how it would hold up.
If you’ve been into BMX for a while, When are you going to get a real bike? is definitely worth checking out.
cruiser revolution 