Throwback Thursday
Posted by Prashant - 17/06/10 at 08:06:42 amThis week we have another installment of Throwback Thursday brought to you by Frank Krul. If you remember the last one he contributed, you’ll remember that Frank has a great collection of vintage BMX photos and history to the Ottawa area. Click below to check out some more photos and captions.
The interesting thing about this pic is the ACS Z-rims. They’re made of Dupont Zytel plastic, but are laced up like a normal wheel. You could bend the rims when landing sideways, and they would snap back into place. Bad for brakes though, and they could only hold around 40PSI, their use quickly faded in the BMX scene.
Real men rode pink bikes! This is one of the first and best vert riders Ottawa had ever seen: Nicolas Bedard. He rode on my Orleans Freestyle team with Mike Bennett, Tom Krul, Richard White and Pete Tessier (RIP). 7 feet out with no pads. Nick and another vert rider Kevin Capello from the “trick Wizards” team were the 2 guys to watch on vert in Ottawa. On this day, were were invited to ride Vanier’s BMX park. There was a lot of cliques going on at the time, and these guys had a “locals only” attitude, and supposedly had an insane vert rider that nobody ever saw ride. My team showed up, Nick went twice the height of anyone else, Mike Bennett did one handers and downside one footers and their vert guy was nowhere to be seen. We took it as seriously as a comp…freestyle jams were like breakdance battles in the 80s.
I like this pic (of me), since it’s during the time when freestyle was just being shown to the masses by Bob Haro. In fact this Torker bmx bike is the same Bob Haro rode before he built his first Haro master using the same twin top tube design. That’s Bob Haro’s first design he ever sold. Tricks back then were mostly static poses instead of the flowing rolling tricks you see now.
Mike Bennett ripping it up. He was THE bmx kid. Always rode…raced bmx, freestyle ground tricks, vert rider….he did it all, and was the first in Orleans to be a “BMXr”, everyone else followed. Riding the cleanest Hutch Trick Star BMX I had ever seen. In today’s bucks that bike was worth $2K easy.
My brother Tom Krul, doing a one-handed decade/walk over. Probably the last trick he learned before quitting bmx. Day Glo green Haro Master at Kona Skatepark in Florida.
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Awesome stuff. I think that no-handed posed trick was called a ‘cowboy’?
Comment by slamigo — June 17, 2010 #
man i love this shit. why doesn’t orleans have a vert ramp anymore??
Comment by Landozine — June 17, 2010 #
Great pics. Gotta love those ever useful mouth roost guards. WTF were people thinking?
Great stuff!
Comment by Rich Red — June 17, 2010 #
God damn I wish I could have been a part of this time.
Comment by leland — June 18, 2010 #
If I recall, those Z-rims were impossible to keep in true due to their lack of structural rigidity (got worse the warmer it got).
Unfortunately, Frank lent a big number of the best photos (and presumably their negative) to some BMX store about 10 years ago and we haven’t seen them since
Other memories from those days:
We used to transport our quarter pipe from Bennett’s house on a pallet made from skateboards. It was a pretty sketchy deal, constantly falling off.
From what I remember, that helmet Frank’s sporting in the Torker shot was an actual motorcycle helmet.
Those soft Haro elbow guards did exactly jack shit protecting your elbows.
Those Vanier guys were sketchy but fun to hang with (who else had girl groupies hanging out with them when they rode freestyle back in that day?)
With the possibility of the GT in the first photo, those are one-piece cranks those bikes are sporting. Does anybody remember how we got those things in the bottom bracket? Just strung them through?
Everyone totally overdressed for contests back in those days, like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flWfHjlKEJg&feature=fvw
I just remember freestyling just progressing like crazy in those days, from when an endo or rock walk was considered a full trick in itself to the end of the first generation of organized professional contests and the introduction of “soul riding” (street).
Comment by Thomas Krul — June 25, 2010 #
Cool to come across this. I rode with Frank and Tom and they were some of the coolest guys to ride with. I’ve been meaning to post some old school pics but have yet to find them I’m my basement. I have a ton of pics with locals and pros form the 80s. I’ll make a point to look for them soon. Man, I miss riding the ramp. I dream about it all the time.
Kev C. Tricks Unlimited. My ride was a Redline RL II with ACS rotor, Redline crank and 48 spoke alloys with a coaster hub.
Comment by Exbmxer — July 14, 2011 #