Growing up as a skater in Wenty in the mid to late 80s didn't leave you with many options for skating buddies, I always had Bernie during the daylight hours, I remember him dialing nose blunts on the chairs at the Emma Cres shops, this was in about 86 on the big boat type boards, he also nailed handrails, no comply's and had the sweetest one footed ollies, Bernie oozed style and had beautiful fluidity to his skating (although I never told him), Bernie unforunately was a couple of years younger so would have to go home when darkness came and I would therefore be alone, which I didn't mind but it was always cooler to have a bud to push you, make you try stuff you wouldn't even think of.
Ed was in the same boat as me, except I don't think he even had a daytime bike buddy as he must have been the only Freestyle BMXer in whole Bay area (Toon Ga Bay), naturally our paths crossed through a one footed roller skater, by one footed I mean he only had one skate as his brother had the other.
So Ed and I would thrash around Toongabbie Public School, it eventually felt like flatground to me as we were there almost every night, well lit, lots of concrete, no cars, no people, it was perfect. Occassionally we'd travel down to McKay Pl and I'd try to Ollie over a ridiculous gap and land it to win $5 off Ed, I lost soooo much skin and bits of board over it that when I finally landed it some months later Ed bought me a new deck for my troubles.
They are amongst my fondest skate memories, up there with the Pendo ramp, jump ramps with Nik (he was insanely good), Fairfield and St Marys ramps, St Clair bowl, the 'shit ditch' on Chapel lane, Shopping centre carparks on Sundays and the gutter out the front of 16 Constitution, the Baulko ramp in the bushes was pretty damn sweet too.
Anyway, I digress. Anybody whom knows me knows that I am a HUGE Tony Hawk fan, not quite stalker level but I did name my son after him, well the only BMXer that Ed ever talked about was Mat Hoffman, whose nickname is the Condor, I'm assuming it's because he goes really high and sticks his arms out like a bird?
I never saw him until 2002 during the X Games, he was 30 years old then which is quite old for that sport, I'd heard all about him and thought it was all hype, surely this young Dave Mirra is better, I'd just seen Dave Mirra's run and thought that'd be pretty hard to top. Then came the Condor, he was all in black, with his sponsor (I think it was Target, yes the store like K-Mart) and he rolled in and about 5 walls into his run he pulled a no handed 900 like it was nothing! Apparently it was the first he'd ever done and nobody had even thought of attempting one, he completed his run and was swamped by the other Pro riders and the commentators were lost for words and if I remember rightly the commentator was Jamie Bestwick? Right then I understood why Ed thought so highly of him.
Well, the Condor turns 39 today, so Happy Birthday Mat Hoffman, you crazy bastard!
There's a documentary about Mat out there that I'll try to get my hands on for Ed, i was reading an interview with Johnny Knoxville and he was asked about the doco and this was his response
"It’s like my cousin Roger said after watching the documentary: This film’s about much more than an Oklahoma boy riding his bicycle – it’s about Icarus flipping off the sun."
that's too cool not to include.
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