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The On Any Sunday “Wheelie Kid,” 50 years later

BY MITCH BOEHM

Ever wonder about the identity of the shirtless kid that wheelied his green Schwinn Sting Ray about a quarter mile up the hill in the beginning of Bruce Brown’s epic moto-documentary On Any Sunday? Probably a lot of you have.

Well, noted moto filmmaker Todd Huffman wondered, too, and to find out about the wheelier — and the rest of the “BMX Kids” showcased in OAS’s opening scenes — he created a Facebook page called On Any Sunday Film “BMX Kids” Search…which has, in just a handful of months, identified all of the kids involved — and even established contact with some of them.

And the Wheelie Kid? That’d be Mark Mandeville, who Huffman met with and interviewed for an upcoming feature on the nowlegendary Schwinn Kids. And where did Huffman meet with Mandeville? On that sacred wheelie street, of course, named Vista Del Mar in Dana Point, Calif., just north of Mandeville’s home base of San Clemente.

Interestingly, Mandeville — who owns a drywall company — was the first of the seven “BMX Kids” Huffman came into contact with, three of which are no longer with us, including Mandeville’s brother Mike. Huffman says Mandeville told him on the phone during their initial conversation that, until that day, no one had ever talked to him about On Any Sunday and that wheelie. “It was awesome to speak with him,” Huffman told me, “and when I told Mark he was like the ‘Lost Arc for BMX’ he just laughed!”

If you check out the Facebook page — and you should — you’ll see a pair of then-and-now photos of that famous street, both shot and explained by noted motorsports artist Tom Fritz. Although more than 50 years have gone by since Bruce Brown shot those scenes, you can still see a tree, fire hydrant and telephone pole that are in both images. Also, the vacant lot where the seven kids did the flagman start and jumped into the air, doing crossups for Brown’s camera at the start of the movie? It’s now a Trader Joe’s market. Trippy stuff.