FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

Was it the bike you wanted, or the bike you could afford?
Jason Lunn: It was the only one available in the local bike shop. This was early days for bmx, this was one of the first in my area if not the first

Did you start out racing?
Jason Lunn: Yes, Adur Aces BMX Club in Shoreham my friend Michael from Cheam Surrey took me to my first race, I won so my parents took me again. I went back to the track 2 years ago and the track is gone but they had some trails, I just had a cruise about fliping the sets..

When did you discover that riding ramps was more your thing?
Jason Lunn: When BMX action Bike published an article "how to build a quarterpipe" Looking back, the specs were soo retarded it was seven foot high and only four feet wide. Me and my brother convinced my dad to build one. In hospital they said I had tried to do an aerial like Andy Ruffell and Bob Haro were doing in the magazines at the time. I just went up and off the side and headbutted the floor with my face. Next thing, I wake up in hospital having been knocked out for a long time. My front teeth were missing from the root and my chin and nose cut. When I asked what and why I was doing there, my mum said that I had fallen off my quarterpipe. I replied "Have we got a quaterpipe?" and started to get dressed and discharged myself immediately to go back and ride it. My Dad had made it 2ft wider by then so it was 6ft wide which was safer.. still too narrow, I think I was 12 or 13 but I've loved ramps ever since, The bigger, taller, higher wider the better

You were either tiny or young when you joined other riders to do demos. How did that feel?
Jason Lunn: I was young, podgy and a bit fat round the edges and the other riders and team commentators and even the magazines called me "fat lunn" "one ton lunn" "cabbage patch kid" and other stuff, Damn on one cover it said inside "Jason Lunn, the Fatman of Freestyle" which was not nice at the time but It was true and I was a chubster and I knew it so it made me check myself and my weight from an early age.. this was blessing because it made me ride harder. Also I had already learnt to deal with physical pain at an early age so I guess retrospectively this helped prepare me for emotional pain as well..

NB. Karma is a funny thing in life, I mean have you seen how fat Andy Ruffell and the rest of the crew from my era are, When he and the others were ripping the piss out of me he used to be able to bunny hop 20+ people, Now he couldn't bunny hop his own belly (eh Andy!) thanks to all their insults I am still the same size and weight as I was at 18 and maybe it's a bit of claim but I am confident, I reckon I could possibly bunny hop his belly and 20+ people!

As far as I remember from the 1986 demo at the race world's in Slough, you were not afraid to pedal fast towards a ramp. Were you young and reckless?
Jason Lunn: No because I never felt I was going fast enough or high enough, man I wanted to fly so much, gravity is a hard force to be up against, especially when you're a fat one! Danny Way's got it sussed with the Mega ramp, jost roll in and boom!

You rode for Raleigh for a while. Where did that take you?
Jason Lunn: Demos up and down UK, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and a trip to the Cannes Film festival to promote that film "RAD". Oh yes Bercy supercross in Paris and a few other spots,

How long did that sponsorship go for?
Jason Lunn: A few years until they said I could walk around the Raleigh factory in Nottingham and have whatever I wanted as they were pleased with my riding and promotion. They never paid me so I found a large grey Industrial dustbin on wheels in the carpark, I do not know if you've seen one before but they are about 6ft by 4ft by 4ft deep, I walked round and filled that thing to overflowing with tyres, brake cables, headsets, cranks, pedals, sticker packs, inner tubes and tyres etc. All the stuff I knew I could shift in the school playground easily over time, Payback I guess but that was pretty much the end of it around then..

Did you have anything else hooked up after that?
Jason Lunn: Yes Chuckie Burrows and his Dad Charlie from Mud Machine (then to be renamed M Zone) in Croydon, yes he helped me out with bits and pieces of hardware, Pink Mutant Stickers of monsters dribbling at the mouth, early Stussy Threads and whatever creative malarky and brightly coloured poofy surf clothes he was importing at the time

Were you into street riding at all when the London crew started experimenting with that?
Jason Lunn: Yes to and from train stations, tube stations, and different spots. I mean let's get real, a bmx is a bike, it's your wheels when you're a kid, it's how you roll. I used to ride it everywhere, it was my thing, too young to drive a car. I used to ride to school every day and had a whole video sections worth of shit I would do along the way every morning, there were driveways to jump, grass kickers to hit, traffic island to bunny hop, hills to wheelie down or sit on the handlebars coasting, there were tons of jumps, bank to walls, flower pots, tree roots and stuff all down the street, Everyday I just hit them all super fast on the way to school as I was always late for because I didn't like getting out of bed.. Just ride everything and anything wherever..

You've stayed involved with action sports ever since. Doing a bit of surfing, motocross, skateboarding, do you still ride BMX?
Jason Lunn: I hadn't ridden for about a year and Keith Easom from Faction Bikes asked me to test out his prototype 22 inch BMX deal, so I met him at a skatepark in Bristol just before I flew out here to Indonesia and had a few goes at Hengrove and St George in the wet, graffiti made the park real slippy though.

Who else do you know that has pulled a 540 on both a BMX bike and a skateboard on a halfpipe?
Jason Lunn: I don't know. I have to admit I haven't rode a mc twist on my skateboard up the other wall yet I've landed a bunch but came off the back on the flat bottom, so I guess no one, I'll give a £100 to the first person who sends me a video of them doing a proper Mctwist out the top on a board then popping out grabing a bmx roll in and do a flair or a 540 way out past the coping on a BMX... that shit is soo hard to do on a skateboard, BMX is way easier just huck and chuck and hold on, it's kind of something I always wanted to do but couldn't (yet)

You're currently living in Bali. Any BMX going on there?
Jason Lunn: I flipped a local kids bmx over an old jump box the other day just to see if I could..ramp was full of holes though, too dangerous, Bali for real is all about the waves, there are some good street skaters here though and the odd private concrete ramp and bowl

Have you stayed in touch with any of the BMX riders from the past?
Jason Lunn: Yes facebook helps me stay in touch with all the boys from my original crew that moved to LA, Tony Mckenzie, Damon Nichols, Steve Baldry etc. also I bump into a few riders at summer festivals.

Facebook and BMX, any views?
Jason Lunn: I must mention, Facebook seems to have pulled a whole bunch of the old riders out of the woodwork recently, reminiscing over their childhoods... that shit seems super sad to me, real sad, it's like they are at work or stayin in at home every evening on facebook posting 25 year old photos on their profiles and saying they were the good old days. So I check their photo albums to see if there are any recent pics of them riding. Instead I find that many of them are now have slammed on a few extra pounds laced with a mortgage a bunch of debt and a heap of responsibilities. They're posting wall comments about what they are going to eat or TV programmes they are watching.

My life is so different from this, when I felt I was heading down that route and spending too much time online I decided it was time to make myself uncomfortable again. So I sold my house, furniture, sold my bmx, nearly all my worldly possesions and purchased a surfboard and a plane ticket to Indonesia to keep hitting it up.

I really love dirt jumps, concrete parks and vert but my knees are soo sore now (my seventh surgery removed the last of my right meniscus so now it's all bone on bone) so I needed to transfer some skateboard skills and get a piece of large peeling barelling waves in warm water.

I've been surfing every day for 6 months now in Indo. Recently in Sumatra we had a powerful swell hit. So every day for a week I was dropping in on some double over head waves that were heavy as hell and barrelling their nuts off. Water is softer than concrete but moving water and heavy waves breaking on shallow ledges can smash you to pieces onto razor sharp coral reefs, then drag you accross like a human cheese grater. I thought surfing safely was about how long you could hold you breath whilst getting worked. I couldn't have been more wrong

The truth is on the way in you get the wind knocked out of you so it's about how long you can stay under with no breath. People have died surfing some of the breaks here but it is great fun. Damn I have never felt so alive as when I'm surfing heavy sets, with a good crowd at sunset with an orange glow across the whole horizon. The sea is a healer, most surfers are adults and/ or hotties in bikinis, not 14 year old kids on roller blades in a skatepark. I had to move on from that scene I'm forty years old in 2 years time.

I'm motivated to posting recent action shots, some people have said it's been inspiring for them and this motivates me more. As far as Facebook goes and the old crew of riders, for sure these are the best days of my life. Today, tomorrow... not some crappy rough old 70s skatepark or a shitty council run racetrack in the 80's with a bunch of weak gay jumps, crap equipment and poncy outfits.

I mean, now there are sick parks and trails everywhere and they've been getting better every year since the 80's. All the riders had reasons and weak excuses for stopping, if you cut a plants roots, it will wither and die, and I guess some have recently worked that out. It is really simple to me, if you don't stop, you won't stop and your body remains conditioned for the hell you give it. It's all about priorities and peoples value systems, for me, it was step up or step down, but only one takes me higher.

How much air could you get on a good ramp if you would have to enter a contest in July 2009?
Jason Lunn: On a bmx I am pretty confident that my 1st roll in on a decent vert ramp I would definitely hit 4-6ft first few walls, within an hour then maybe up to 8ft, if I rode a BMX again on vert regulary for a month or so I am sure I would probably go a lot higher again maybe 10ft+ dunno, my imagination runs away with me sometimes and I wake up on the flat bottom. I hit 9ft on a skateboard a few times on astd UK ramps, I always wanted a go on the mega ramp on a bmx and a skateboard as it looks soo much fun,.. My right knees blown out now so no vert skating anymore, Surfing and occasional Bmx is ok though.

Any shout outs to the riders in the BMX world?
Jason Lunn: No I've said more than enough,.. may your universe line up..  

For more info visit Jason's site.

Pics by Lunn archive and also:
-surf pics by: Carlo Monoghan www.thewaxer.com
-shoreham flip, photo by: Jacqui Clark www.jacquiclark.com
-my portrait in the sun, photo by: Johan Pomtell
-Chingford shot by: Tim Leighton Boyce
-Mark Mapstone photos: www.designdebris.co.uk

Hit this link to a Jason Lunn interview on FATBMX from November 2004.