BMX Video
Dorkin' in York
Dorkin' in York is a series of BMX flatland and street videos made by Mark Eaton in York, Pennsylvania, starting in 1988, documenting the Plywood Hoods crew.
Updated 4 min read822 words
Dorkin' in York is a series of BMX videos made by Mark Eaton in York, Pennsylvania, beginning in 1988 and running to a tenth instalment in 2000. The videos document the Plywood Hoods, a crew of riders centred on flatland but also riding street, along with the friends, spots and jokes that surrounded them. Shot on consumer camcorders and sold directly to riders, Dorkin' in York is one of the earliest examples of a rider-made BMX video series, and it is the main visual record of a period when flatland was changing faster than at any time before or since.
Background
In the late 1980s, BMX freestyle was still shaped by the boom years described in freestyle BMX in the 1980s. Brand videos existed, but they were produced by companies and showed sponsored riders doing polished routines. Flatland in particular was moving away from that: a new generation was inventing rolling tricks, link combinations and ways of moving around the bike that did not fit the contest-routine model.
York, Pennsylvania, was one of the centres of that change. The Plywood Hoods, including Kevin Jones and Mark Eaton, were riding car parks and tennis courts and inventing tricks weekly. Eaton owned a camcorder. Rather than wait for a magazine or a sponsor to notice, he filmed what the crew was doing and cut it together himself. The first Dorkin' in York came out in May 1988 in a run of 500 copies, sold through the Aggro Rag zine network, and the series ran to a tenth instalment in 2000 as the crew kept progressing.
Contents and sections
The videos are loose by design. Rather than formal rider sections, each tape is a collection of riding clips, sessions and off-bike footage, roughly in the order it was shot. Several things recur across the series.
- Flatland sessions. The core of every tape. Long takes of riders working on new tricks and links, often with the camera handheld and close. Many tricks appear here in rough form, then return in later tapes cleaned up and extended.
- Street riding. The Hoods rode street as well, and the tapes include curb, bank and wall riding from around York at a time when street riding was only beginning to be treated as a discipline of its own.
- Visiting riders. Flatlanders from elsewhere travelled to York to ride with the crew. Chase Gouin moved to York to ride with the crew and became a fixture of the later tapes, with a well known section in Dorkin' 10.
- Everything else. Driving, eating, local characters, home-made titles and jokes. The "dorkin'" of the title refers to this as much as to the riding.
Production quality is low by any later standard. That is part of the record: the tapes show what a camcorder, a VCR and a lot of patience could produce before desktop editing existed.
Standout parts
Kevin Jones is the reason most people seek out Dorkin' in York. Jones is widely credited with inventing a large share of the rolling flatland vocabulary that riders still use, and the tapes catch many of those tricks close to the moment they were created. Watching the series in order shows how quickly one rider's ideas spread through a crew and then, as the tapes circulated, through the whole discipline.
Chase Gouin's appearances in the later tapes are the other main draw. His riding, and his willingness to move to York to ride with the Hoods, shows how much pull the crew had within flatland at the time.
The series as a whole is a standout for its honesty. Riders fall, argue about tricks, repeat attempts and celebrate when something finally rolls out. It is closer to watching a session than to watching a video part.
Impact and legacy
Dorkin' in York showed that riders could document themselves. That idea runs directly through the 1990s video magazines such as Props, the brand videos of the 2000s and eventually the web edit. The series is often cited as the starting point for the "crew video": a tape made by friends, about friends, for whoever wanted to watch.
Within flatland, the influence is more specific. Tricks, links and even the look of riding that first appeared in York spread worldwide through these tapes. The tapes travelled well beyond Pennsylvania and spread York's tricks to flatlanders in other countries.
Mark Eaton kept making films. He later co-directed Joe Kid on a Stingray (2005), a documentary history of BMX, with John Swarr, which drew on the same instinct for recording the sport from the inside. The Dorkin' tapes themselves have been reissued and uploaded over the years, and they remain required viewing for anyone trying to understand where modern flatland came from. See BMX in the 1990s for the wider context.
Related
- Flatland
- Street and the rise of street riding
- Freestyle BMX boom of the 1980s
- BMX in the 1990s
- Props Video Magazine: the video magazine that followed
Frequently asked questions about Dorkin' in York
What is Dorkin' in York?
Dorkin' in York is a series of home-made BMX videos from York, Pennsylvania, filmed and edited by Mark Eaton from 1988 onwards. It documents the Plywood Hoods, a crew best known for flatland riding, along with their street riding and daily life.
Who were the Plywood Hoods?
The Plywood Hoods were a group of riders from York, Pennsylvania. Their best-known member, Kevin Jones, is credited with inventing a large number of flatland tricks, many of which first appeared on film in Dorkin' in York.
Why is Dorkin' in York important?
It was one of the first rider-made BMX video series, and it showed flatland progressing in near real time. It proved that a crew with a camcorder could reach riders worldwide without a magazine or a brand behind them.
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