Freestyle BMX boom of the 1980s

The freestyle boom of the 1980s was the decade in which trick riding separated from BMX racing and became its own sport, with its own contests, magazines, bikes and professional riders. It grew from a few racers doing tricks in car parks around 1980 into a mass-market craze by the middle of the decade, then collapsed at the end of it when the toy and bicycle industries moved on. The riders and companies that survived built the modern sport.

From racing to tricks: 1978 to 1982

By the late 1970s BMX racing was organised and growing, but between motos riders had time to kill. They did wheelies, endos, and bar tricks on flat ground, and rode the banks and bowls of the skateparks that had spread across California in the skateboarding boom of the same years.

Bob Haro, a racer who also drew illustrations for BMX Action magazine, was one of the first to make a name for tricks rather than racing. In 1979 and 1980 he and R.L. Osborn, son of BMX Action publisher Bob Osborn, performed trick demonstrations at races and shopping centres as the BMX Action Trick Team. Their shows, and the magazine's coverage of them, spread the idea that riding a BMX bike without racing it was a thing worth doing.

Haro had founded a company making number plates in the late 1970s. Around 1982 he designed and released the Haro Freestyler, a frame built for tricks: stronger than a race frame, with a platform behind the seat tube for standing, and a geometry suited to balance rather than speed. It is widely regarded as the first production freestyle frame, and Haro became the defining brand of the era.

Skateparks mattered as much as flat ground. Riders such as Eddie Fiola, who became known as the King of the Skateparks, rode the concrete pools and bowls built for skateboarders, and the first quarter pipes built for bikes appeared at this time.

The AFA and the contest circuit: 1982 to 1987

Freestyle needed contests to become a sport. Bob Morales founded the American Freestyle Association (AFA) in the early 1980s and built it into the main sanctioning body of the decade. The AFA ran a national series with classes for flatland and ramp riding, split by age and ability, and its Masters series events drew thousands of spectators and the entire industry.

Contest flatland in this period was a mix of balance tricks, rolling tricks and bar tricks, performed to music in a timed routine. Riders such as Martin Aparijo, Woody Itson and Dennis McCoy defined it. See flatland. Ramp riding took place on quarter pipes and, later, half pipes, with Mike Dominguez, Eddie Fiola and Brian Blyther among the leading riders. These ramps grew through the decade into the vert ramps described in vert.

The AFA was not the only organisation. The NBL and ABA, the racing bodies, ran freestyle events for a time, and other promoters ran contests. But the AFA Masters were the events that mattered, and winning one made a rider's career.

Magazines and media

Freestyle grew up with its own press. BMX Action, published by Wizard Publications, covered freestyle alongside racing from the start, and in 1984 Wizard launched Freestylin', the first magazine devoted to trick riding. Freestylin' documented the contests, the riders and the growing culture, and its photography and writing set a standard that BMX media followed for decades.

Mainstream media noticed. The 1986 film Rad, about a small-town BMX racer, included freestyle sequences and became a cult favourite. The Australian film BMX Bandits, released in 1983, used BMX riding as the basis for a children's adventure story. For a few years in the mid 1980s, BMX freestyle was visible everywhere.

Video was still new. A handful of instructional and contest tapes were released, but the video culture that would define the 1990s had not yet begun. The exception was the Plywood Hoods, a crew of flatland riders in York, Pennsylvania, including Kevin Jones, whose self-produced Dorkin' in York tapes from 1988 onward documented a style of rolling flatland that was years ahead of the contest scene.

The bikes

The boom created a generation of bikes that are now collected and restored. Haro led with the Freestyler and then the Master and Sport, which through the mid 1980s set the template: a chromoly frame with a standing platform, pegs on the axles, a rear brake routed to allow bar spinning, and a front brake with a cable routed through the stem.

GT Bicycles released the Performer in 1985, which became one of the best-selling freestyle bikes ever made. Hutch released the Trick Star, a high-end frame favoured by many professionals. Skyway, known for its Tuff Wheel plastic mag wheels, built the T/A. Redline, Mongoose, CW, Dyno and many others followed. Department stores filled with cheap copies, which fed the boom and later helped kill it.

The most important component of the era was the detangler. Spinning the bars with a rear brake attached twisted the cable. Several solutions were tried; the one that stuck was the Gyro, produced by Odyssey from the mid 1980s, which used a rotating bearing assembly at the headset to let the bars turn freely. See gyro detangler. The Gyro, along with pegs that riders stood on for flatland and used for stalls on ramps, made the freestyle bike distinct from a race bike.

Riders

The decade's professional riders were the first in BMX to be paid for tricks rather than results. Factory teams from Haro, GT, Hutch, Skyway and others toured shopping centres and bike shops performing demonstrations, and the top riders earned a living from salaries, contest winnings and shows.

Bob Haro retired from riding early in the decade to run his company. Eddie Fiola, Mike Dominguez, Martin Aparijo, R.L. Osborn, Woody Itson, Dennis McCoy, Brian Blyther and Ron Wilkerson were among the names that filled Freestylin'. Towards the end of the decade a teenager from Oklahoma named Mat Hoffman began competing on vert and quickly outpaced the established riders. He is widely credited with landing the first 900 in 1989 and would dominate the next decade.

The bust: 1988 to 1990

Freestyle had been sold to children as a craze, and crazes end. Sales of freestyle bikes peaked around 1986 and 1987 and fell sharply over the next two years. Several things happened at once: the children who had bought bikes grew up, the department store market was saturated with cheap bikes, skateboarding had its own second boom and took attention, and the bicycle industry turned towards mountain bikes.

Companies responded by cutting teams and dropping freestyle lines. Hutch collapsed. Haro, GT and others survived but shrank their freestyle programmes. Freestylin' merged with BMX Action in 1989 to form a single title, which itself did not last long. The AFA ran down and had effectively ended by about 1990.

For riders who stayed, the collapse was hard but clarifying. The ones who kept riding did so because they wanted to, not because it was fashionable. Many of them founded the rider-owned companies, videos and contests that rebuilt the sport in the following decade. See BMX in the 1990s.

Legacy

The 1980s established almost everything that defines freestyle BMX. The split from racing became permanent. The division into flatland and ramp riding, and later street, began here. The idea that a rider could be paid for tricks, that contests could be judged on style and difficulty, and that the sport had its own media separate from racing all date from this decade.

The bikes of the era defined freestyle geometry and components, and many remain in production in modern form, including the Gyro and axle pegs.

The bust left a lasting suspicion of mainstream attention in BMX culture. Riders who lived through 1989 learned that the industry would abandon the sport when it stopped selling, and the rider-owned ethic of the 1990s was a direct response.

Finally, the era is now the subject of a large collector and nostalgia scene. Old school freestyle bikes are restored and displayed, reunions are held and the riders of the boom remain well known within the sport.

Related

• Origins of BMX
• BMX in the 1990s
• Flatland
• Vert
• Bob Haro
• Haro
• Gyro detangler