GODDAMNED KIDS BIKES WRIT TEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY G R A D Y C O R B I T T
My initiation into the cycling world really started around 1993 via an Elf Doublecross combined with the similar interest of 20 or so pre-teens in my surrounding hometown area who shared the same spark. Prior to that time, I knew how to ride a bike and had a stealth-looking Schwinn Predator, but it was too big, so it never saw its just deserts. Right around 1992, BMX became cool again (not that it ever wasn’t, but it had hit its dark ages). All of the sudden, BMX and BMX bikes started to pop up everywhere—magazines on the racks at the grocery store, older kids ripping curb cuts, different bikes and parts in the various shops by my house—and I started to notice little tracks and jumps wherever I seemed to wander. Hook, line, and sinker, BMX was reeling me in. I hustled all summer long, mowing lawns, washing cars, selling lemonade, painting the fence, doing chores for my granny, whatever I could do—and, in September of 1993, I was dead set on getting a Robinson Pro. It didn’t work out that way, as Joe Ledesma, Schmitty, and the boys at California Bike and Snowboard didn’t have a Robinson Pro, just GT Mach Ones and the Elf Doublecross. There was no way in hell I was getting the GT like every other kid on the block, so I went with the Elf and chose the path I still voyage today. That path eventually led to the Sunol BMX track in Northern California, which happened to be dead set in the middle of a burgeoning Bay Area BMX racing scene where top amateurs and pros would come to practice and race. Wednesday nights at Sunol in the springtime, were packed with major talent and the attitudes to match. This place became my home track, and I made friends there that I still know today, some 22 years later. From Sunol, it turned to Santa Clara PAL (the old one), Stockton, Napa, and then nationals in Reno, Roseville, Bakersfield, Lemoore, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. I raced competitively until getting burned out and realizing it was a changing of the guards, holding on to golden era ideals, while trying to be in the mix was just not in the cards. I wasn’t fast enough. Racing was going the way of the road bike, and all the characters I knew and loved were either quitting or becoming full on kooks. Thing was, any downtime from actual racing that you couldn’t do every day was spent at the jumps, either making your own close to home, organizing rides, or bussing it to get there (pre-license). Co-existing alongside the racing scene in Nor Cal was an equal, if not bigger, freestyle and jumping scene that catered more towards the older teens and guys in their early 20s. Not being sexist, but at this time in the game, women/girls were rarely seen participating beyond the track. The various jump spots littered throughout the Bay Area provided a place to be free, hone your skills, talk shit, hear the latest gossip, and make friends, and it was in these places that I found myself never wanting to leave—a second home if you will. These dirt jumping spots and homemade tracks soon became known as trails, and, in 1995, ESPN started the X Games, which offered a dirt jumping competition. This gave guys that used to spend all their free time hanging out in the woods, vacant dirt lots, sandy flood zones, and open fields riding and building jumps the option to work their hobby. A new era was upon us. The corporate commercialization of our lifestyle by things like ESPN and Mt. Dew is a fuck all by any means but also a story and discussion for another time. For now, let’s get back to trail riding in places like The Creek in Livermore and Nor Cups in San Jose.
