FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

Name: Peter Ashby
Hometown: Hurstbridge, Victoria, Australia
Started riding BMX in: 1979
Number of bikes in the collection: 15 at the moment

Do you remember the moment that you decided to start collecting BMX memorabilia?
Peter Ashby: It was around 20 years ago. I saw an old 1980 Mongoose on a rubbish pile so I took it home because of the great memories I had as a kid with BMX's and hung it in my garage.

Has Torker always been THE brand for you?

Name: Steve Firestein
Hometown: Sepulveda Calif.
Started riding BMX in: 1969
Number of bikes in the collection: 12

What was the starting point of your BMX collecting madness?
Steve Firestein: 2008 or so. I came across a listing for a show at Peck park. That changed my focus on bikes.
 
Did you ever meet a pro and then rebuild his bike years later?

Best of 7. Going back in time with people who captured BMX in the early years. Without these images it would be harder for everyone to understand what was happening in the beginning. It fits the oldskool articles nicely. Episode 49 goes to Bill Batchelor who has been treating the BMX historians with some gold lately.

Photographer: Bill Batchelor

Photo 1
-Who: Bob Haro
-Where: Pipeline King of the Skateparks, Upland California
-When: 1985
-What Happened: In between the actual contest judging events I always took a lot of pictures of the people and the behind the scenes action. Bob was judging the contest so this photo was part of a series of the judges.
-Why this photo: As a BMX kid in the early 1980s, Bob Haro was an idol of mine. He started it all, and epitomized what was cool at the time. We’d stare at photos of his riding in the magazines and his Freestyle Tricks book and try to build his ramps. When I first got a real Haro number plate for my race

NAME: Ashley Little
HOME TOWN: Leicester, U.K
NUMBER OF BIKES IN COLLECTION: Currently have 21 complete bikes and approximately 20 frame sets. I’ve recently sold my unit where I had all my bikes, motorbikes, cars and other random stuff so everything BMX related is boxed up ready for the move.

What was the starting point of your BMX collecting madness?
Ashley Little: Completely random but the company I owned at the time had a job working near an old BMX track where I grew up. I had to sign the completed works off on a Saturday morning and there was an event at the track, I popped over for a quick look and it was a small dirt jump event, hanging around I saw a guy on a PK RIPPER and got chatting. Fortunately for me he had no desire to keep the bike and a short while later the bike was in my car and approximately $120 in his pocket. From then on my curiosity lead me to looking up old local bike shops and buying old stock.

Name: Alvin Mullins
Hometown: Bell Gardens, CA. USA.
Started riding BMX in: 1975
Number of bikes in the collection: 42 vintage bikes. Webco, Two Wheeler, JMC, Cook Bros, G-Boy, Dan Gurney, Matthews, Haro, Skyway. Race Inc, SE...

Is your BMX past more Racing or Freestyle?
Alvin Mullins: Freestyle. I rode skateparks and ramps.

Does that reflect on the bikes that you are collecting?
Alvin Mullins: Not really, I do have a couple Haro Freestylers but mostly collect '70s BMX bikes and a few late '70s early '80s racing bikes.

Do you try to track down bikes that you rode in the past?

Name: Mark McCorkle
Hometown: Beaverton, OR
Started riding BMX in: 1978 in Littleton, CO
Number of bikes in the collection: 14. 11 vintage/old-school.

Do you remember the moment that you decided to start collecting BMX memorabilia?
Mark McCorkle: It was 2008. I still had my original race bike from 1979. I had been hauling around, place to place for nearly 30 years. One day I just sort of realized I didn't feel I'd ever really use it. I figured if I could get $1000 for it, I'd let it go. After digging around on eBay, BMXMuseum and OS-BMX (now BMXSociety) websites, I generally found it was probably a $500-600 bike. So I decided not to part with it.

Name: Trevor Henry
Hometown: West London UK

What's your earliest memory of BMX?
Trevor Henry: Watching Craig Strong doing no handed wheelie’s on TV and then seeing my friends trying to the same on Grifters and Choppers, but complaining about how heavy they were. Then E.T. came out and everybody ditched their Choppers for Burners, PK Rippers, Ammaco’s and DP Firebirds. It’s like a wave hit the London overnight… one day it was Rubik’s cubes and monkey boots then the next day it was BMX’s Breakdancing and Electro Hop music.

Who were some of the BMX riders that you admired back in the day?

Old school BMX was a legendary era for the sport and the tricks and the riders that can do them are becoming rare to see and today awe are lucky enough to have @fishonabike here at our skatepark doing his top 10 favorite old school BMX tricks and they seem impossible!

Name: Frank Lukas
Hometown: Koblenz, Germany
Bike: Morales 2nd Generation

Home come you decided to build up a Morales bike from scratch?
Frank Lukas: I think this frame is the most iconic Flatland frame ever designed and produced. It changed everything. Don’t quote me here, but I think it was the very first “Flatland specific frame”. I also think that the riders who rode the frame had the biggest impact on Flatland besides Kevin and Chase. I was so into Westcoast Flatland- Richard, Jesse, Edgar and many more...

Name: William LaRoque aka Larock
Hometown: Long Beach, CA

What's your earliest memory of BMX?
Larock: Seeing On Any Sunday for the first time and wanting an MX kit for my hand me down Lime Green StingRay.

Who were some of the BMX riders that you admired back in the day?
Larock: That’s a tough one! I was kind of Partial to the SE Factory Boys because they had such close ties to Long Beach, BUMS track was less than a mile away from where I grew up. Scot, Thomsen & PK of course. But who could deny the Panther, Dain, Utterback, King, Atherton and all of the others that graced the pages of our favorite magazines.