This new idea is off to a good start, and the post about Sheep Hills (BMX jumps) in Costa Mesa is the runaway favorite post so far. Thanks for checking this blog out everyone! I'll try to keep it interesting.
Monday, May 31, 2021
1,000 page views in two months
This new idea is off to a good start, and the post about Sheep Hills (BMX jumps) in Costa Mesa is the runaway favorite post so far. Thanks for checking this blog out everyone! I'll try to keep it interesting.
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Classic BMX Spot: Sheep Hills
The Team Soil video from 1995, produced by "Barspinner" Ryan Brennan, featuring the main riders of the SHL (Sheep Hills Locals) posse from that era. There are several jumping spots in this video, Sheep Hills has the small, brushy trees all around the jumps.
A long time ago (OK, 30 years or so), in a place far, far away (Costa Mesa, California) a weird tribe of mound builders evolved (OK, probably DEvolved, but that's more fun). This crew began to build small earthen mounds in an obscure area of small brushy trees and oil wells between Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa, California. These weren't the Adena people or some other culture like that, they didn't build Cahokia or the Great Serpent Mound of Ohio. Their mounds were not built to track the stars, they weren't built for religious ceremonies, or as a burial site for the dead. This group of small mounds, originally built mostly by guys then known as Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean, built mounds to jump BMX bikes, get air, learn tricks, and just plain have fun.
Jay told me he originally called the jumps Hollywood, after pro racer "Hollywood" Mike Miranda, who had built a few jumps further up the hill, where the condos off of 19th street and Balboa boulevard in Costa Mesa are now. But not long after riders started showing up, kids started calling the area Sheep Hills. So even Hippy Jay doesn't known where the name came from.
The Costa Mesa mesa itself was a place where shepherds raised sheep and goats in the 1800's, and maybe early 1900's, and the Goat Hill Tavern (141 beers on tap!),up in Costa Mesa, pays homage to that. But in reality, no one knows where the name Sheep Hills came from, even they guys building it in the beginning. There were no sheep in the area when they began building in 1990, but the name stuck.
An unknown rider boosts a clean X-up over the Boozer pack at Sheep Hills. I just asked on Facebook again, to try and identify this rider, a couple guys thought it was Jody Donnelly, but it's not him. Let me know if you know who this is, so I can name him here. #steveemigphotos
One big problem with BMX dirt jumps is that they usually get built on someone else's land, then the land owner gets pissed, or worried about liability issues, and the jumps get plowed. When Sheep Hills was built, it was deep in a chunk of unused oil company land, surrounded by small, brushy trees, in a hidden meadow area between the Santa Ana River and Costa Mesa. A few homes on the surrounding mesa could see the jumps, but most seemed to ignore them. At the time, dirt jumping was not really a sport itself, but usually an event held at some national BMX races to stoke the crowd.
The top jumpers at the time were led by Chris "Mad Dog" Moeller, and his roommates at a house in Westminster, called the P.O.W. House. That stood for Pro's Of Westminster. Chris, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, Alan Foster, Lawan Cunningham, Eric Millman, John Salamne, Jay Lonergan, and a few others, along with builders Jay, Sean, and Mike "Boozer" Brown, were the first guys to session Sheep Hills on a regular basis. The first set-up of jumps were three berms, one inside the other, each line with jumps in it. Transfers were possible between the lines. Sheep Hills was one of the jumping areas these guys rode often, along with Hidden Valley and Edison in Huntington Beach, and the jumps in the P.O.W. House backyard (seen at 33:50 in this video, followed by footage of the Edison High jumps).
Long time Sheep Hills local in the late 90's, Cory "Nasty" Nastazio, lays a flat tabletop 360 out at Sheep. 2020.#steveemigphotos
Before Sheep Hills came along, teenage jumpers Chris Moeller and Greg Scott were frustrated by how many bikes they were bending and breaking while jumping. They found a welding shop, and had a couple of their own, custom designed frames made in 1987. That launched the garage company S&M Bikes, which has had strong ties to Sheep Hills since, sponsoring many of the local riders from the early 1990's on. S&M, and sister company Fit Bikes, are still a major force among Sheep Hills riders.
When the trails were new,you had to cross the creek on rocks, then follow a rabbit-sized foot trail back to the jumping area. A video cameraman I worked with at Unreel Productions, (which was up on the mesa above and west of Sheep) Pat Wallace, told me a four foot long alligator was once found in the creek there. I've never been able to prove that story, but it wouldn't surprise me.
In the first few seasons of Sheep Hills, the winter rainy season would flood the whole area, and the jumps would turn to unrideable muck, from December into March. Every spring, they would be rebuilt. There was a natural bowl in the beginning, which had a jump in and jump out. That was about where the trench leading into Titties (it's the name of the jump folks, don't get mad at me) is now. At one point, there was a line of doubles along the fence, up by the pond, which you can see in a couple shots in the Team Soil video above. There was a ten pack along the left side for years (as you walk in from the Hamilton side entrance).
K.O. D. (King of Dirt) was the big jump in the mid 90's, built to practice for the "huge" jumps at jumping contests. It's a 7 foot tall big set of doubles, followed by a roller, and another big set of doubles. K.O.D. is still there, though Titties has taken over at the main style jump. Stephen Murray built a four foot high, 27 foot gap et of doubles, called The English Channel, at one point.
The jumps at Sheep went largely unnoticed, which is what BMXers like, until they accidentally drained the nearby pond with a pump, sucking it out to water the jumps. I think that happened in 1993 or 1994. The trails into Sheep got widened out, so police cars could roll through, among other reasons.
A bunch of local kids started jumping there in the early 90's, and they evolved into the Sheep Hills Locals, aka SHL crew. Ryan "Barspinner" Brennan, Sean Butler, Josh Stricker, Freddy Chulo, Jason and Adam Pope, Marvin Loetterle, Mike "Boozer" Brown, Jason "Dogger" German, Ricky Ratt, and Mental Ian were the main guys in that posse. At the same time, Alan Foster's little brother, Brian Foster, moved to California from the East, and became another key member of both the P.O.W. House, and the SHL crew. "Religious Rich" is another long time local there, as well.
This second wave of riders out of Sheep Hills came up the ranks, some as racers, and some as jumper/street/riders, in the mid 1990's, just in time for the X-Games, the dirt jumping as it's own sport. Through the late 1990's, Sheep Hills was known as the home trails of many of the best BMX dirt jumpers in the world, and became a travel destination for riders from around the country, and around the world. In the late 1990's and early 2000's, it wasn't unusual to ride into Sheep and meet riders from the U.K. or Germany or Japan, just there to check it out and ride a little.
Several other top riders made Sheep a daily riding spot in the late 90's. Cory "Nasty" Nastazio, Chris Duncan, Stephen Murray, and top racer Christophe Leveque ushered in a new era of Sheep locals. As the years passed, Sheep Hills became better and better known, and the area was eventually turned into Talbert Regional Park of Costa Mesa. Now there's a sign there, trash cans that actually get emptied, and wide trails for riding mountain bikes, jogging, big wheeled stroller pushing, and just walking.
The once sketchy, largely hidden BMX spot, is now a family area used daily by the neighbors living nearby, as well as many visitors. It's really unusual that a set of BMX trails can last 3 or 4 years without getting plowed, but Sheep Hills has somehow managed to last 30, and is going into it's fourth decade (damn we're old).
Sheep Hills can be found on Google Maps, or look up "Balboa boulevard, Costa Mesa" on GPS, that's where many people park these days to go ride. Go down the hill, and follow the trails with the most bike tracks, and you'll find the jumps.
This post is dedicated to three Sheep Hills Locals. Mike "Boozer" Brown was paralyzed in a BMX crash several years ago, and died in 2019. Stephen Murray was also paralyzed several years ago on a double backflip try, and Bryant "Doc" Dubon was tragically lost to Covid-19 in 2020. Ride in Peace Mike and Bryant, and Stay Stong Stephen Murray (now back in the U.K.).
The pits area during a big jam. Good bikes, good friends, good fun. That's BMX. Sheep Hills 2020. #steveemigphotos
You can check out more of my photos of Sheep Hills on my Pinterest page. (160 photos and counting...)
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
The Rose Theater in NoHo Arts District: One of five indie theaters lost to the Covid pandemic shutdown
Close-up of one of the murals on the sides of The Rose Theater, on Magnolia, in North Hollywood's NoHo Arts District. The indie theater is one of five that have closed due to the loss of business during the Covid pandemic.
About three weeks ago, I picked up a copy of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, and it had an article about how hard the pandemic hit the NoHo Arts District. I lived up in this area for a year in 1991, when the arts district was just getting started. Seriously, the area was pretty ghetto. Now, 30 years later, the area is really vibrant. The Red Line train stop sits among hundreds of apartments, it's a largely young crowd, 20 and 30-somethings, many commuting to L.A. area to work on the train, pre-pandemic. There are a ton of cool restaurants on Lankershim and in the surrounding area.
But when you walk through the area, you don't see much of "the arts" in the typical, visual way. There are not rows of galleries, like say in Laguna Beach, down in Orange County. The arts in the NoHo arts district has been theater, 22 small, independent theaters. North Hollywood, according to the SFV Business Journal article, actually has, or had, the second highest concentration of theaters in the U.S., only the Broadway/off Broadway Theater District in New York City has more.
The front of The Rose theater in NoHo Arts District.
As the pandemic-induced business shutdown hit businesses at all levels, it was particularly devastating to the small theaters of the NoHo Arts District. They struggled, they got some help from the city of Los Angeles, and from patrons. But independent theaters operate on a very tight margin to start with, and rents were already becoming an issue for them before the pandemic.
The problem with arts districts everywhere is that artists move into a cheap, run down area, and they create art. That begins to attract other artists, and eventually a hip art scene evolves. In the scenes where it takes off, that attracts art enthusiasts, and eventually more business, and later apartments and restaurants and other retail stores. Rents go up, and eventually the artists that sparked new life in the area get priced out of the arts district. Covid put that into high gear. That leads us, as a society, to ask this question:
Do we want to have arts in our arts districts indefinitely?
Another mural from the walls of The Rose Theater.
Or do we want to let this 20-30 year cycle keep playing out over and over, in the cities and towns where solid art and creative scenes actually do build, and begin to flourish? That's a bigger issue to mull over as we head forward. For now, five of the 22 indie theaters that made the NoHo Arts District an arts district, are closed. That's a big hit to all the creative people, and jobs, that depended on those theaters attracting people to the area.
I'm not a huge theater fan, I've been to an indie theater once. But I'm creative guy, an artist and a writer/blogger, and I get that actors become good, and great actors... by acting in front of people. It's no accident that these 22 theaters were in North Hollywood, sandwiched between the TV and movie studios of Burbank and Studio City. The main studio owner interviewed in the SFV Business Journal article was the owner of the 68 Cent Theater Company, on Lankershim. That theater now has a For Lease sign on it.
Creative people create stuff. Good stuff. Bad Stuff. Weird stuff. Art, sculptures, music, plays, books, movies, TV shows, video games, and yes, even blog posts. This creation has re-vitalized many parts of many towns and cities in the U.S., and around the world. So this post is to shine a light on a theater in North Hollywood that has gone dark, and to get us all thinking about the huge role the arts, of all kinds, plays in our lives, our world, and the livelihood of our towns and cities.
After all, what did all of you do during the shutdown? You consumed a TON of other people's creative works, and you probably made a little of your own on social media. Artists are "Essential Workers," we kept you all from going bat shit crazy for the last year. Think about that as we open back up. What kind of town or city do you want to live in?
Don't let the heart of creativity stop beating. #steveemigphotos
Monday, May 24, 2021
Classic Skate Spots: The Huntington Beach Pier
This little known 1975 skateboarding movie shows skaters under the Huntington Beach Pier (1:44), skating the pier bank, which was on the north side of the pier, and the open area on the south side (now outside dining area).
Why was skateboarding invented? So surfers could "surf" sidewalks and streets when the waves were flat. Reportedly the first skateboard was made around 1958 in San Diego, some say other times and places. I'll leave that argument up to skate historians. The first big wave of skateboarding happened around 1965-66, and faded, leaving a few hardcore types skating during the down years. By 1975, the year of this film, the wave of popularity was building again. From 1:44 to about 3:00 in the video above, you can see skateboarders (including a couple Zephyer kids- the Z-Boys- in blue shirts), skating the pier bank, and Russ Howell and a couple others skating the south side area. For 30 years or more, the Huntington Beach Pier attracted skateboarders almost daily.
The 1970's skateboard wave lasted longer than the first wave, and led to quite a few skateparks being built in Southern California, and some other parts of the country. I caught that wave myself, as a little kid in Ohio, buying my first board in 1976, like tens of thousands of other kids nationwide. The handstands and 60's freestyle tricks gave way to the surf style of the Z-Boys, which led to backyard pools and vert skating. But the wave of popularity crashed, and a larger number of hardcore skaters went underground, and sessions kept happening at the H.B. Pier.
The pool skating of the late 70's led to the birth of quarterpipe and halfpipe ramps, which made vert skating demos and contests possible in places with no pools. Here's a Christian Hosoi in 1986, at a contest on a halfpipe right on the sand, with the H.B. Pier in the background.
This is Pierre Andre' Senizergues, French freestyle skating champion, and founder of Etnies (Sole Technology), skating at the Huntington Beach Pier in 1989.
Freestyle skateboarding made a comeback, and by the mid-1980's, freestyle skaters Pierre Andre' from France, Don Brown from England, and Hans Lingren from Sweden, and H.B. local Jeremy Ramey, were locals at the H.B. Pier. They all skated for one of the Vision Skateboards brands out of Costa Mesa, which included Sims and Schmitt Stix skateboards. Per Welinder, a freestyle skater from Germany came by on a regular basis, so did Bob Schmelzer, and Costa Mesa local Darryl Grogan could be seen skating at the pier from time to time. By that time, there were big posts in the pier bank, and a huge chain across the bank, blocking skating. That chain mysteriously vanished in 1989 (pretty sure aliens took it, ; ) ), and a lot of great sessions went down on the bank that year.
I was a BMX freestyler who rode with these guys on the weekends in that era, and pretty much anyone in skateboarding might show up in those days. Street skating was just morphing into its own genre' then, and Mark Gonzales and then up-and comer Ed Templeton cruised regularly. There was a whole posse of local H.B. street skaters, which included Jason Lee, now best known as an actor (My Name is Earl, The chipmunks movies, etc). I saw Natas Kaupas there once, Ray Barbee once or twice, and many others.
Ed Templeton on the cover of Thrasher magazine, ollying a trash can with the Huntington Beach Pier in the background in 1990.
Freestyle skating died out again in the late 80's, and street skating was the new wave building in the skateboard world. The freestyle skater locals still skated some by the pier, but Pierre and Don got busy running Etnies Shoes, which grew into Sole Technology, putting out Etnies, E's, Emerica, and Sheep shoes over the years, as well as 32 snowboard boots, and Altamont clothes. They are now located in Lake Forest, next to the huge Lake Forest skatepark the company built for the city.
Skateboarding in association with the annual U.S. Open of Surfing started happening in the 1990's, and continues. Pools and courses are built annually, right on the sand by the H.B. Pier. As I write this in May 2021, things were on hold with the Covid pandemic over the last year, but will resume again. Here's the last big on the sand skate event, the Van's Rebel Jam in 2019. While the history of skating at the Huntington Beach Pier doesn't go back as far as fishing or surfing, there have been skaters skating there over for over five decades now, and likely many more to come.
Classic Surf Spot: The Huntington Beach Pier
This is a great 8 minute look at the history of competitive surfing at the Huntington Beach Pier. But surfing in Huntington Beach actually goes back to 1914 with George Freeth, one of the Hawaiian surfers that brought back "The Sport of Kings."
Riding waves on wooden boards goes back hundreds of years in Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands, as they were called by haoles when first discovered. But when the white settlers started colonizing the islands, they didn't catch the surf stoke, and did what they could to ban the sport. Surfing was all but dead in the later half of the 1800's. A small group of watermen in Waikiki, around 1900, started bringing the ancient sport back. A half Irish, half Hawaiian named George Freeth was the leader of the crew, among them a young man a few years younger than George, Duke Kahahamoku.
In about 1907-08, writer Jack London, best known for his novels about the Klondike gold rush, like The Call of the Wild, and White Fang, traveled to Hawaii. Walking out on the beach in Waikiki, London saw some men who appeared to be "walking on water." He kept watching, and realized they were riding the waves on long boards. London was fascinated by this activity, and got to know them and learn about their life as surfers, swimmers, and divers. When he went back to the mainland, London wrote an article about surfing for a U.S. women's magazine.
That article was read by the wife of Southern Californian railroad magnate Henry Huntington, among many others. At the time, Huntington had run a railroad arm down to Redondo Beach from Los Angeles, and was having a pier built, and developing the land there. The Huntingtons traveled to Hawaii soon after, and met George Freeth and his crew of surfers in Waikiki. Henry Huntington hired Freeth to come to California to do diving and surfing demonstrations at the Redondo Beach Pier to help promote the development and sell houses there.
In the years that followed, George began to surf other breaks as well around southern California. Along the way, George invented the idea of lifeguards at beaches, and the lifeguard "can" or buoy, used to help bring tired swimmers to shore. He helped train the first lifeguards at SoCal beaches.
Meanwhile, farther south in Orange County, some developers had started a small community called Pacific City, which was supposed to be the Atlantic City of the West Coast. But they had trouble attracting people to the small town, surrounded by lima bean fields. The Pacific City developers decided to talk Henry Huntington into building a railroad trolley line from Long Beach to Pacific City, to make it much easier to visit. To seal the deal, they changed the name of Pacific City to Huntington Beach in the railroad man's honor. It worked. And in 1914, when a new pier was dedicated in Huntington Beach, George Freeth gave the very first surfing demo at the Huntington Beach Pier. The wave riding tradition that would turn Huntington Beach into "Surf City" had begun. Unfortunately, George Freeth died in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1917-1919, getting sick after a daring rescue.
Duke Kahanamoku, in the same time period, had become a champion Olympic swimmer, and began to promote surfing around California, and later all around the world. From the 1910's until his death in 1968, he promoted surfing, and spread the stoke worldwide, becoming the Father of Modern Surfing.
In 1920, oil was discovered in Huntington Beach, and it turned into a somewhat rowdy oil town. In a weird quirk of fate, as other cities around it got developed in the next few decades, including houses built right on the beach, Huntington Beach lagged behind. Because of this, it became the less expensive, more working class beach city in Orange County. The oil wells, crazy as it sounds, kept the 8.3 miles of beach from getting developed, leaving H.B. with the best beach for local beach goers in SoCal. The consistent, if not huge, beach break waves, and the less expensive rent, attracted plenty of surfers. When the surfing, surf music, and "beach blanket" surf movies exploded in popularity in the early 1960's, Huntington Beach became known worldwide as Surf City. That led to the explosion of surfing culture, and great competitions documented in the video above.
In August of each year, the U.S. Open of Surfing, the successor to the OP Pro contests of the 1980's-1990's, draws crowds of 100,000 or more people, and the best surfers on Earth. A statue of Duke Kahanamoku now stands in front of Huntington Surf & Sport, surrounded by hand prints and foot prints in cement of the top surfers of recent decades.
Sunday, May 23, 2021
The Capitol Records Building
The Capitol Records building, designed to look like a stack of vinyl records, with a turntable needle on top.. #steveemigphotos
Back to the Online Guide to Hollywood
Finished in 1956, this iconic building was built to house the Capitol Records west coast business operations, and recording studios. It's located on Vine street in Hollywood, just north of Hollywood boulevard. The 13 story building was the first circular office building, and the first record recorded there was one of Frank Sinatra reading tone poems. The needle on the roof has blinking light that blinks "Hollywood" in Morse code. The building has been blown up and attacked by aliens in several movies, and appears in two Grand Theft Auto video games, and Tony Hawk Wasteland. There's a long mural by Richard Wyatt, Jr., on a wall just south of it (towards Hollywood blvd.) that pays homage to American jazz music. Capitol Records was founded in 1942, bought by EMI in 1955, and became part of the Universal Music Group in 2012.
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Classic Skate Spots: The Sheep Hills Ditch
At 1:11 in this video, you see three skaters carving through the Sheep Hills Ditch in Costa Mesa, California. I think it's Marty "Jinx" Jiminez, Tom Groholski, and Mark Gonzales, but I'm not sure. Vision Psycho Skate came out in 1988, and I worked as a PA in their video company, Unreel Productions, at the time. I didn't have any input on the video, Brian Gillogly directed that one.
While not much different than hundreds of other ditches across the American West, this ditch just happened to be a few blocks from the cluster of buildings that housed Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear clothes, in the mid and late 1980's. It was not a place that got sessioned daily, but a lot of skating went down there over the years, and it appeared in Psycho Skates in 1998, and also in the intro of Vision's Barge at Will in 1989, at 1:59. You can see the brushy trees of the area that later became known as Sheep Hills (BMX jumping trails) in the background.
While not crazy skating trick-wise, these two clips, and the really cool longer segment of the Poway ditches at 2:59 in Barge at Will, got skaters everywhere looking for local ditches to carve at speed. There are all kinds of ways to have fun on a skateboard, and ditch skating drew in both the vert skaters that were the most respected genre of skating then, as well as the street skaters, which was a new and emerging aspect of skateboarding, at the time.
As a BMX freestyle guy working at a skateboard video company then, I made VHS copies of all the raw skateboard footage coming in from Vision video shoots. So I got to watch skate footage at work, before anyone else saw it, which is pretty cool. Even better, I found out where a lot of cool spots and some empty pools were from all the skaters. Someone in Vision, I can't remember who now, told me there was a mini-ramp hidden somewhere in the brushy trees and bushes "down 19th street" in Costa Mesa. So I started heading down there after work, wandering around, looking for this ramp. A lot of skaters still hated BMXers then, so the person didn't tell me the exact spot. That was probably mid 1998.
One of the first things I found down there was this long ditch, with the round elbow you see in the clips above. While not a great bike jump, the inside hip was fun to bunnyhop air after carving along the ditch, and I started hitting this ditch on my ride home from work now and then. I never did find the hidden mini-ramp, it was somewhere else, I guess. But I did some wandering around that area of empty, oil farm land. There were a couple small jumps down there, next to the creek some BMXer had made. Our cameraman, Pat Wallace, said someone found a 4 foot long alligator in the creek there once, but I could never find a news report to back that up.
In late 1990, a couple of local BMX guys, known as Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean then, found an open meadow in the middle of the trees, and began to build the jumps soon known as Sheep Hills. The area is now officially Talbert Regional Park, and much to everyone's surprise from the early days, the Sheep Hills jumps are now not only still there, but famous worldwide due to so many famous jumpers riding there in the 1990's. The S&M Bikes riders/P.O.W. House (Pros of Westminster) guys, led by Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, and several others, sessioned Sheep Hills regularly in the early 1990's. Those guys inspired the next generation, the Sheep Hills Locals crew of Sean Butler, "Barspinner" Ryan Brennan, Freddy Chulo, Josh Stricker, Marvin Loetterle, Jason and Adam Pope, and several more. In the years after, Cory Nastazio, Chris Duncan, Christophe Leveque, Stephen Murray, and many more honed their skills at Sheep.
I did not. as a freestyler who sucked at jumping doubles, after the days of the 3 berms, Sheep was beyond my skill level. So I wandered around doing really dumb street shit like BMX nollies, 6-7 foot half Cabs, and stuff. Like those tricks would ever be popular. Silly me.
By the time the X-Games came along in 1995, the SHL posse riders, who included Alan and Brian Foster by then, were some of the leading BMX dirt jumpers in the world. Sheep Hills became known in the BMX world as one of the spots where a whole slew of great jumpers rode daily. Once in a while a couple might hit the ditch for a little session, but it was mostly a skate spot hit randomly. Vision Skateboards moved its headquarters to Santa Ana in 1990, to the old OP building on Lyon Street, and this ditch has sat there, largely ignored ever since, I imagine.
These days, mountain bikers and parents with strollers wander the trails around the area, and BMXers and mountain bikers jump at Sheep Hills, and the ditch still sits there, draining water in the winter like it's supposed to, largely forgotten by everyone. Like every ditch, officially, you're not supposed to skate there. It's pretty rough concrete, so if you do go check it out, safety gear, especially knee pads, is a real good idea. There are a lot of flat trails around there for mountain biking as well, great beginner level or recreational riding.
My photo of one end of the Sheep Hills Ditch, you can see the elbow part that's in the skate videos at the very end. The Talbert Regional Park, is located off Balboa Street in Costa Mesa, at the bottom of the hill at the very west end of 19th Street. The Sheep Hills jumps are about 100 yards away. #steveemigphoto
Friday, May 21, 2021
The Newport Beach Civic Center Art Park
Yesterday's post was about Bunnyhenge, which is one of the art installments at the Newport Beach Art Park. I had ridden by this many times on the bus, and finally decided to walk around it one day last year. Once I started walking through it, there were just a bunch of things that would make cool photos, so I started snapping pics. Here are a few of them.
At the top of this park, near the big bus stop,there are two dog parks, one for big and one for small dogs. There are several parking places along Avocado Avenue, by the dog park. When you head down hill on the side walk, there are some small sculptures and art pieces. The trail swerves up to the left. One part swirls in a loop uphill, with more art pieces along it. The other part head over a walk bridge over San Miguel Drive. There's a cool lookout spot at the end, where the top photo was taken from. From the lookout spot,you can head down the steps or the elevator to the lower section of the park, that reaches from San Miguel down to the Civic Center parking lot.
The path goes two different ways. There's a statue of President Ronald Reagan, and then Bunnyhenge just past him, and a picnic table, and three multi-colored arches. If you head the other way, the path winds through the lower part of the park. There are a whole bunch of various sculptures, as well as flower and some native plants. It smells really good through that area, from the aromatic plants there. As I walked around, shooting photos, I saw a couple real rabbits in the bushes, and a couple of lizards on the edge of the path.
If you're a parent with small kids, say 3-4-5 year olds, Bunnyhenge will almost certainly be a hit with the kids. If you're an adult in that part of Newport, this is a great little place to talk a walk and clear away the day's stress for a bit. It you like shooting photos, or are a YouTuber or big on social media, this art park has a ton of cool backgrounds and places that look great in photos of video. In addition to Bunnyhenge (see previous post), there's the big bunny further down, in this photo above. This one's about 7 feet tall. So for a wide variety of people, art lovers to little kids, this is a great art park to visit for a while when you're in the Newport Beach/Fashion Island Mall area.
These are a few of about 20 photos I shot on my walk through this park, a few months ago. I'll put the rest on Pinterest at some point, on my Steve Emig's Crazy California page. Like I've said a couple other times, this blog is about physical locations, some of which are just cool looking, like this one, some which may be historical, some which maybe be tourist spots (like my posts about Hollywood earlier in this blog), and I'll check out a bunch of action sports related places, too, since I'm a Has Been, Old School BMX freestyle and skateboard industry guy. So if the Newport Beach art park looks fun to you, go check it out, I had a fun time wandering through it, and snapping these photos.
#steveemigphotos
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Bunnyhenge
When I first landed back in Orange County about a year and a half ago, I was riding the buses a lot, and going through the Newport Transportation Center, an OCTA bus hub near Fashion Island Mall. The strip of weed covered land between the bus stop and the Newport Beach City Hall and library, had been transformed into a park area while I was back east for a decade. There are big and small dog bark parks near the top end. And the rest is a big art park full of sculptures. One day, I decided to walk down the path through the park. One of the many sculptures is this circle of 13 white concrete rabbits. I later found out it's called Bunnyhenge. Then I looked it up, and found Bunnyhenge comes up on Google Maps. That just made me laugh.
With art parks, you usually get two main reactions, the crusty old people who say, "Why did the city waste a bunch a money on this crap!" I guess there was actually a small crusade against Bunnyhenge after it was built (there's a YouTube video about it). The other reaction is, "Hey, this park is pretty cool," which comes from a much larger group of people, generally.
One of the many reasons to create art is to evoke a response out of people. Sometimes you want to get people to think, sometimes, to be drawn to a cause, and sometimes it's just to make people smile, maybe laugh, and wonder, "Why the hell did somebody build this?" My reaction to Bunnyhenge was to just laugh, and it reminded me of going to the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas, while driving cross country with my sister many years ago. We were tired, kind of cranky from a couple long days of driving, and I saw the Cadillac Ranch, and said, "We have to stop, I've been wanting to see this thing for years." We got out, walked up to it, and started taking photos near the cars. You just couldn't help but to smile and laugh at the absurdity of it. We met a couple from Germany there, they had the same reaction. You just walk away smiling, and feeling a little bit better about the world, without really knowing why. For me, Bunnyhenge is a lot like that. But hey, I'm weird.
It's by the corner of Avocado and San Miguel in Newport Beach, just south of Fashion Island Mall. you can look it up on Google Maps, or GPS the Newport Civic Center, (100 Civic Center Drive, Newport Beach. CA) which is located at the bottom of the art park. More pics from the rest of the art park in a coming post.
Sunday, May 16, 2021
Classic BMX spots: Huntington Beach Surf Theater parking lot
The Huntington Beach Street Scene happened about a year after Ron Wilkerson's first 2-Hip Meet the Street in Santee, California. The announcers are the late Scot Beithaupt, the Godfather of BMX and founder of SE Racing, and Dave Stanfield, who announced a lot of surf and motocross events then. In the intro you see myself (Steve Emig- blue shirt), Randy Lawrence (white shirt), and Andy Mulcahy and the Huntington Beach local flatland crew. The intro takes place at the Taco Bell at Bolsa Chica and Heil in Huntington Beach, and the actual Huntington Beach Street Scene takes place in the old Surf Theater parking lot. It was located on 5th street,just off PCH right behind Wimpi's Burgers drive-thru.
To BMX freestylers, parking lots have a special kind of significance. All of us flatland riders in the 1980's had our favorite local parking lots that we would practice in. When local promoters held contests, they were almost always in a parking lot that could be borrowed, or rented cheap. When the pro teams went on tour, they usually performed in the parking lots of the bike shops that hired them to do shows. As weird as it sounds, parking lots are a big part of early BMX freestyle culture.
One of those parking lots held two of the first flatland and quarterpipe contests put on by Bob Morales and his American Freestyle Association. That was the old Surf Theater parking lot in Huntington Beach, California. The first of these contests was in 1984 and the second was in 1985. Unlike most sports, BMX freestyle started as riders putting on demos or shows. Early riders like Bob Haro, Bob Morales, R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and Woody Itson were performers. A few hundred of us began to follow their lead in our own areas of the U.S. or Europe in the early 1980's. We would practice our tricks for hours, work out little routines with our teammates, and do shows for whatever group or event we could find.
So when Bob Morales began to put on flatland and quarterpipe contests, competition for those aspects of BMX freestyle was all new. Some riders didn't think freestyle should even have contests at first. Nobody knew how long a rider's run should be. One minute? Two? Four? Who would judge? How many judges? Everyone had different styles and tricks? Was a boomerang harder than a tailwhip? How should the point system work? If you have the pro riders judge the amateurs, who judges the pros? All of those seemingly small details had to be figured out, tried, worked out, and some overall system developed. While Bob Morales was great at putting on events as a 22 or 23-year-old rider/promoter/entrepreneur, details weren't his strong suit. Bob's a great guy, but a lot of things just got decided on the spot. The important thing was to get all the best riders together and make a competition happen. Rider's always complain, but that's a given with subjective judging in any sport. Even in the Olympics, sports like figure skating, now 100 years old or so, still have people complaining about the judging every contest.
The old Surf Theater parking lot held two of those early AFA contests that helped flatland and quarterpipe BMX freestyle turn into an actual sport. I don't know who Jeffco is, but here are more videos from those first two AFA contests held at the Surf Theater parking lot, that he posted online.
R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff- The BMX Action Trick Team, doing a demo in 1984 instead of competing.
Eddie Fiola in 1984- The original King of the Skateparks from the ASPA takes it to ramps and flat.
I was up in Idaho and then San Jose when these contests happen, I didn't get to either one, I one of those kids who read about it in the magazines, and heard some of the stories from other riders later on. Rick Allison and a friend rode their bikes from San Francisco to Huntington Beach, over 400 miles, in1984. Ron Wilkerson was riding around H.B. the day before one of these contests, and wound up getting chased by the police for quite a while. Word was they were trying to find him at the contest, and he showed up low key, in a hoodie, and they didn't recognize him, but he didn't get busted. They called him The Outlaw in the magazines.
After the first AFA contest in Venice Beach in 1984, riders got an idea of what BMX freestyle competition would be like, and the sport continued to evolve rapidly, contest after contest. Riders from farther and farther away began to travel to the AFA contests as the first wave of BMX freestyle grew and expanded in little scenes, around the U.S., Canada, and Europe. These first two H.B. AFA contests were a big part of that early growth of BMX freestyle as it morphed into a competitive sport, as well as a demo activity and just free riding for fun.
Three and a half years later, Scot Breithaupt, the Old Man of BMX racing, sold ESPN on the idea of a series of bike competition shows. Scot was making it up as he went, and editing the TV shows at night at Unreel Productions, where I worked. He did shows about road racing, bike trials, and GPV racing, among others. After about the third show, he asked me if I had ideas for another bike show one night, because I was the Unreel employee who stayed there at night, while Scot and his editor worked on the shows. I told him "street riding." It took me about 20 minutes to sell Scot on the idea that street riding was actually becoming a thing, but after seeing clips from Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in 1988, Scot thought it was a good idea.
Scot rented the Surf Theater parking lot, borrowed the Stonehenge 4-way box jump ramp from GT Bikes, got an old junk car to ride on for the next weekend. I called around to all the riders, and got word out there was a street contest in H.B. the next weekend. A couple groups of riders brought some wall ride ramps, and we held the first made-for-TV BMX street contest in that same parking lot. It was early 1989. Scot and his editor edited the show that next week, and it aired on ESPN two weeks and one day after the initial idea. That's how Scot worked, and his production company wasn't called L.M. Productions (for Last Minute) for nothing. So the first time millions of kids saw BMX street riding on TV, it was in the H.B. Surf theater parking lot, about six years before the X-Games.
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
500 page views in less than 6 weeks
The ideas that led to this blog have been blossoming for a couple of months now. And the nature of this blog lets me put a lot of what I've learned about blogging over the past 12 years into action on this one. A little under six weeks in, and it has passed 500 page views. That's great for a totally new blog idea that didn't have an audience already. I'm stoked. OK, back to figuring out what to blog about next...
Classic Skateboard and BMX Spots: The Gonz Channel at the old Embarcadero in San Francisco
The late Jake Phelps narrating his footage of Mark Gonzales going back and kickflipping The Gonz Channel in 1993. I called it The Gonz Gap when I posted it this morning. Thank you to Maurice Meyer, for letting me know this was called The Gonz Channel back in the day. I totally forgot the word "gap" didn't really come into use until the 90's, I think. This gap at the Embarcadero got its name in 1986, when Mark first ollied it.
This Crazy California 43 blog started when a few ideas bouncing around my head began to merge. Since I've been back in Southern California, I've had the urge to get out and go see some old bike and skate spots, and maybe shoot photos or video of them, and tell their story. I've kind of been held down by outside forces for 20 years now, and I just want to jump in a car and go wander, explore, check out random parts of California, and see what cool stuff I can find. Then the thought came that I could blend these basic ideas, and throw in some mainstream and tourist spots that are interesting, and dig into the stories of those places as well, all in one blog.
Over the last month, the idea blossomed, and morphed into an idea about physical locations, places, and the stories behind them that made them noteworthy. Then there are other places that are just cool to go see in general, like the redwoods, or San Diego Zoo, stuff like that. Places that are fun to just wander around, see what they have to offer, and shoot some photos and/or video.
Digging into these general ideas in my journal, the concept of how an obscure urban location becomes a world famous skate or bike (or other action sport) spot kept popping up. In the world of skates and BMX, there are curbs, banks, sets of stairs, walls, and other urban locations that become famous worldwide. They were built just as utilitarian things, like an asphalt embankment next to a wall when a building is on a hill, or r a set of stairs at a school or park. But when a top BMXers of skater does a trick on them, or over them, and it's captured in photos of video, that utilitarian object can become famous in our subcultures around the world. And people will travel, sometimes from other countries, to ride that wall, or ollie down those stairs.
Thinking about this weird concept, The Gonz Gap at the old Embarcadero in San Francisco was the first street spot to pop into my head. I looked up the story yesterday, and then found the clip above of several skaters at EMB, and then Mark Gonzales nailing the kickflip over the gap. This ESPN article tells the history.
In 1986, when street skating, as a "thing" was about two years old, Thrasher photographer MoFo went to the Embarcadero with Mark Gonzales, one of the main men (along with Natas Kaupas and Tommy Guerrero) pushing street skating early on. Gonz does some cool stuff, then MoFo points to this big gap, "Hey, how bout's trying that?" Mark said it was too crazy. Then Mofo lied and said some other kid had already ollied it, and maybe he should go shoot photos of that kid. Mark takes up the challenge, ollying a big, gnarly, technical gap far beyond anything done at the time. On the third try, he landed it. I heard it called "the ollie heard 'round the world" back then. Suddenly this weird urban park, with all these blocky, concrete ledges, becomes famous around the world to skateboarders, because of MoFo's photo sequence of Mark's ollie.
So we have an obscure urban park, designed for the people of S.F. by an architect. It turns out to be a fun place to skate, and ride bikes. I went there with the NorCal guys a few times myself when I lived up there. The Curb Dogs rode the Embarcadero a lot. Then we have Mark Gonzales, amazing and innovative skater. And we have MoFo lying to him to get a great sequence, a little human drama. When those things, and that published sequence of photos came together, this obscure place became legendary in the skate and BMX subcultures.
Then, people from all over start traveling to that spot, it became a skate and bike tourist attraction. After Mark kickflipped it in 1993, it became a proving ground for top skaters through the 1990's. If you could land a trick at The Gonz, you gained serious credibility in the street skating world. Us Old School guys have seen this happen over and over in 35 years since Mark Gonzales olllied this gap. The Embarcadero got torn down and rebuilt around 2000, but the story, photos, and video live on, and became part of the history of our subcultures. This whole idea intrigues me, and I'll be checking out, and writing about a lot more bike and skate spots, and other, much different places, as this blog continues. Enjoy.
The Gonz- Gonz kickflips it, Gino Ianucci backside flips it.
Curb Dog Dave Vanderspek with a 1-footed bunnyhop over The Gonz in 1987. (at 20:03)
Saturday, May 8, 2021
Classic BMX Spots: The Blues Brothers Wall
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first over/under, double wall ride in BMX history. Randy Lawrence takes the high road while I (Steve Emig) wall bounce below him. The craziest part is that Randy's going opposite. Randy was a bike shop mechanic when this video was shot. A few years later he was best known as Jeremy McGrath's mechanic. These days he's probably best known ad Ryder Lawrence's dad. In this photo you can see why it got dubbed the Blues Brothers Wall, with the mural of them on the left, and the Three Stooges in the middle of the wall. Video still from my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend.
For those of you who have read my other BMX blogs over the years, you know I did a short stint BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, that happened in 1986, and got me started in the BMX industry. I got laid off at the end of 1986, mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. They hired East Coast BMX/skater Spike Jonze to replace me, and he was the perfect fit for the Wizard Publications posse.
I moved down to Huntington Beach to become editor/photographer for the American Freestyle Association newsletter, working with serial BMX entrepreneur Bob Morales. I found a room to rent near Springdale and Warner, and by mid February 1987, I was spending my weekends sessioning below the Huntington Beach Pier. Mike Sarrail was the main BMX freestyler there as a local, though he lived far inland. Freestyle skateboarders Pierre Andre' (Senizergues), Don Brown, Hans Lingren, and Jeremy Ramey were the local skaters at the pier every weekend. The Lakewood BMX freestylers, Jeff Cotter, Ron Camero, Nathan Shimizu, Ron McCoy, and Derek Oriee came down often. Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson came by now and then, as did many other SoCal freestylers.
The H.B. Pier was a known spot for more than a decade to both skaters and BMXers, plus it was the beach, so anyone could show up on any given Saturday or Sunday. Street skating was just evolving into its own genre when I moved there in 1987, and Ed Templton and Mark Gonzales came by often, as did Bob Schemlzer, Per Welinder, and Darryl Grogan later on. Natas came by once when I was there, Ray Barbee as well, and many more. Jason Lee was one of the up-and-coming local skaters then, I didn't even know who he was, he was part of the local kids group.
Us BMX freestylers, and the freestyle skaters, got crowds of 75 to 100 people hour after hour, sometimes 500 people watching us at once. The crowds would always wind up blocking the bike path, even though we tried to tell them to keep it open. The the police would roll up on their quads, shut down the crowd, and we'd take a breather. Then five minutes later we'd start riding or skating again, and the next crowd would form. We did that every weekend there wasn't a competition somewhere. I once figured out that from 1987 to about 1992, I rode in front of at least 140,000 people at the H.B. Pier, 100 or 200 at a time. We all worked out and polished our tricks there, and got to gauge the crowd response on them from the people watching.
One day in the summer of 1988, I think, GT pro freestyler Josh White rode up. I was the only BMX guy there, and I knew Josh by then, so we sat there talking for a few minutes. He said some other rider told him there were some cool walls to do wall rides on, somewhere north of the pier. I told him, quite confidently, that there weren't any walls by the beach in that area. I rode down Goldenwest from my apartment to the beach bike path every weekend, for over a year at that point, and then rode down the bike path to the pier, over a mile. I'd never seen any rideable walls.
At that time, the wall ride was still a really new trick in BMX. The BMX world changing photo of Eddie Roman in FREESTYLIN', doing a wall ride on the Jinx Bank wall in Redondo Beach the year before, changed riding forever . As soon as that photo hit, we were all trying wall rides. Anyhow, intrigued by Josh's info, we rode north on the bike path, looking for the mysterious walls he'd heard of. Just past the one condo complex that's on the ocean side of PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), the bike path headed up hill. A lower path that was really sandy headed off just above the sand, but I always rode the upper, paved, bike path. We decided to follow the sandy path. Like in the poem, "the road not taken" taking the less traveled path paid off. To our left, as we headed north, a retaining wall dropped down to the wide sandy beach H.B, is famous for. But to our right, totally unknown to me, there was a series of slightly undervert banked walls, 10 to 12 feet high. Most of the walls had old murals on them, that looked like they dated from the early 1980's, maybe late 1970's. The walls looked completely fun to ride, but the first two or three had five or six inches of sand in front of them.
Then we rolled up on a wall that had murals of The Three Stooges and the Blues Brothers. There was hardly any sand in front of the left side of that wall. And by the bottom left corner of the wall, there was a mound of dirt, a lip someone had built to do wall rides. Josh hit it, and went maybe five feet up the wall. That was INSANE to watch, because at that time, we'd only seen a couple photos of wall rides in the magazines (no internet or YouTube back then), and guys were doing wall rides about two feet up the wall. Josh kept hitting the lip, going higher and higher. I wall ride to the left, so the lip didn't work for me. But I started hitting the wall a bit to the left, coming off flat ground, and was getting two feet or so up the wall.
Me wall riding over my sister Cheri's head on the Blues Brothers Wall, still from The Ultimate Weekend video, 1990.
Josh tried a fakie on the wall, and the little lip made a perfect roll-up. In about four tries, Josh was getting his front tire about 2 1/2 feet from the top of the wall, pulling off, and doing a full turndowns coming out of the fakie. I did my first wall ride fakies that day as well. After a good half hour session, Josh was doing wall rides with his tires up at the Blues Brothers necktie knots, about seven feet up. I was getting about 2-3 feet up the banked wall, which is probably about 75 to 80 degrees steep. The Blues Brothers Wall instantly became a favorite place ride. Us H.B. Pier locals started hitting the wall on a regular basis, maybe once or twice a month, after that.
When I was shooting video for my first self-produced video in 1990, the local posse of Randy Lawrence, Keith Treanor, Alan Valek, and me went there one day with my video camera. You can see that section in The Ultimate Weekend video starting at 10:41, and that's where these still shots come from.
The Blues Brothers Wall was pretty well known already in the SoCal BMX scene by that time, but my video showed the wall to the nation and worldwide BMX community. Foreigners who trekked to Huntington Beach on holiday to ride, usually got a session in at the wall in the years after. I rode it once in a while in the early 90's, and quite a bit in 95-99. I lived a few blocks away, on 15th Street, from '97-'99, and had a bunch of solo sessions there. At my best, I could get my wheels about 6 feet up the wall, a little over halfway up the 11 feet high wall. Randy Lawrence, going opposite in the top photo, by the way, got about 9 feet up. There was a Club Homeboy ad featuring Dave Clymer had a tiny photo of him wall riding less than a foot from the top of the wall, and that was in 1991 or 1992. Even today, that would be pretty impressive. Dave even rolled in from the top once or twice, Hell Track style, and that's the gmarliest thing ever done on the Blues Brothers Wall that I know of.
Keith Treanor with a stretched, no-handed fakie on the Blues Brothers Wall, still from The Ultimate Weekend, 1990.
Why did we ride the Blues Brothers Wall, off all the walls along that path? Generally it was the wall that had the least sand in front of it, that's the main reason. I usually had to make a little path to hit it to the left, there was a little lip about 50 feet to the right of the bigger lip. Also, Skater Ed Templeton did a mural on the wall in the late 90's. There was a time when a painter could apply to the city and paint a mural on one of the walls. Several of the older murals got painted over, and new ones put up. But then graffiti writers started showing up, and adding some unofficial art to the walls. Eventually the walls were repainted the ugly tan color they are today. Ed Templton's mural was a long, digestive track looking painting that said, "Consume waste."
If you want to go check out the wall for the first time, park your car or ride to 14th Street and PCH in Huntington Beach, which is about a half mile north of the pier. There's actually parking on PCH if your come from the north, and can find a spot. Go down the big set of steps across from 14th Street, and the Blues Brothers wall, now with no murals, is the wall to your left, as you walk down towards the beach. I went and checked it out yesterday, here's what it looks like now.
The Blues Brothers Wall,, minus the Blues Brothers and the Three Stooges, May 2021, #steveemigphoto
Thirty two years after I first heard of it, it's still much the same. There's a paved bike path running in front of it now, and actual restrooms nearby, and a telephone type pole about where we used to rollback from fakies. And there are A LOT more people riding and walking by. Huntington Beach is a much more popular place these days. So that's my take on the story of the Blues Brothers Wall, one of my favorite places ever to ride a bike. Also, the lip at the bottom left corner is gone, that area now seems to belong to this guy.
Sunday, May 2, 2021
The Brady Bunch house
My photo of the Brady Bunch House, when I visited it a couple weeks ago. How many of you can hear that bit of music that played while they showed the front of this house, before each scene started? Me too. #steveemigphoto
Back to the Hollywood Guide post
If you grew up in the late part of the Baby Boom generation, or most of Generation X, like myself, this house is etched in your mind forever. The Brady Bunch was the background soundtrack to much of our childhood. Day after day, every afternoon, we watched Brady Bunch reruns. We watched them while we were supposed to be doing our homework. We half watched them while actually doing our homework. It was on in the background as we played with our G.I. Joe's or Barbie dolls, and as we saw how far we could get our crank up our Evel Knievel toy motorcycle to jump, and as we laid out Hot Wheel tracks across the whole family room. It was on in the background during fights with brothers and sisters, and during games of spin the bottle or truth or dare. It was on damn near every household TV nearly every day in the 1970's, there just weren't many other options.
Kids today, with millions of different media sources and shows to choose from, will never understand how a whole generation watched every episode of this TV show, 19 times each. The three TV channel, non-video game world of the late 1960's and early 1970's is as remote as the caveman days now.
Myself, I grew up moving from one small town and rural area to another, in Ohio. I was a shy, dorky Midwest kid who loved wandering around the local woods, and drawing pictures, when not laying on my stomach, three feet from the TV, watching the after school shows. Like you, many of the best known Brady Bunch moments are etched into my brain, whether I like it or not. "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," "pork chops and applesauce," the tarantula in the suitcase in the Hawaii episode, and the jump the shark moment of the Brady Bunch, cousin Oliver (which happened years before Fonzie actually jumped the shark on Happy Days). Yep, some crusty part of my brain still holds all those files, just like yours does.
So when I heard that the Brady Bunch house was here in Studio City, where I'm now living, I thought, "I'll have to go check it out someday." That was about six months ago. Then the ideas that morphed into this Crazy California blog, about specific places in Cali, came together. One night something about the Brady Bunch popped up on You Tube, and I thought, "I could go check out the Brady Bunch house right now." It was a totally random, spur of the moment idea. I looked it up, and saw it was a few blocks from a bus stop on Ventura Boulevard. That's good, since I'm operating without a car right now. So I took a bus, walked a few blocks, and tried to find the house by memory. As a former taxi driver who never uses my phone for directions, I memorized how to get there from a quick glance on Google maps.
The Brady Bunch house is located at 11222 Dilling Street, in Studio City, CA. Google Maps puts it at 4.8 miles from the TCL (Grauman's) Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, the heart of the Hollywood tourist area. For you tourists interested in getting a selfie there, Google says it's a ten minute drive away (today's a Sunday morning). I'd give it 15 to 20 minutes or so, more at rush hour. But it's just over the hills from the tourist district in Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley.
The Brady Bunch house was up for sale in 2018, here's a local news report about it then, with several familiar views of it.
From the bus stop, I walked down Tujunga, over the L.A. River, (a big concrete ditch), and took a right on Dilling. From my quick glance at Google Maps, it looked like I needed to turn right on the 4th street, and it would be right on the corner. I didn't bother to get the address, you know, 'cause I'm a guy. I passed the third street, walked a bit more, and realized there was no 4th street to the right, and Dilling ended at a curve in the L.A. River. I saw a couple guys on the sidewalk in front 75 feet in front of me, but didn't want to ask them directions, you know, 'cause I'm a guy.
So I walked back to the previous side street. It's a really quiet, very Americana looking neighborhood, there are a couple white picket fences, and people were out walking their dogs as dusk approached. Back at the third street, none of the houses looked like the Brady Bunch House I remembered. So I walked back out to Dilling, and asked a couple walking their dog where the Brady Bunch House was. They pointed at the two guys I didn't ask earlier, "Where those two guys are, that's it." I walked up, and saw one of the guys had a black hoodie on that said "security." That was the house, and there was a security guy out front.
But the house looked wrong. I thought of the iconic staircase in the living room, going up to the right, to the second floor, as you walked in the door, but this house rose up to the left. Yes, I've worked in TV, and I know the outside and inside of a TV house don't have to match, and I know the show was shot in a sound stage at one of the studios. But I figured that they would have designed the inside of the house to look somewhat like it should fit into the outside view of the house. I thought maybe they flipped the shot, so the house going up to the left looked like it went up to the right. But as I got closer, it looked familiar. I asked the guys if I could take a photo, and the security guy was totally cool. He pointed at an orange cone on the sidewalk up to the front door and said, "Just don't walk past that cone." Fair enough. So I snapped the photo above, and took a selfie in front of the house I'd seen literally hundreds of times on TV, in those quick shots, on the Brady Bunch TV episodes 40-some years ago.
I walked back to the bus stop with a weird smile on my face. It shouldn't be that big of a deal to snap a photo in front of a house I'd seen on TV as a kid. But it just felt like I'd ticked off a bucket list item that I didn't know was on my bucket list. I laughed, "I just took a selfie in front of the fucking Brady Bunch house." As a kid growing up in Ohio, I never even imagined ever seeing that house in real life, it just never occurred to me as a possibility. The TV show world was a totally different dimension from my world as a kid. In the many years since, I wound up living in California, and working on a bunch of TV shows, including four seasons on the stage crew of American Gladiators. I don't get star struck much at all these days. I knew that they didn't shoot much, if any, of the actual show at the house, the scenes were shot in a sound stage somewhere nearby. But walking over and snapping a couple photos in front of the Brady Bunch house just gave me a funny, goofy, cool feeling. That show it just so embedded in the consciousness of people around my age.
I first heard of burritos on the The Brady bunch, as weird as that sounds. We had tacos in Ohio, but I never heard of a burrito until Greg Brady ordered one at a taco truck at the beach in one episode. I first heard the term "caveat emptor," Latin for "let the buyer beware," on the show where Greg bought his first car. Then there are the classic lines and scenes we all remember:
Marcia hit in the nose by the football
For 40-some years, I thought Marcia Brady was spelled Marsha Brady. I had to look it up on IMDB while writing this blog post, since I saw it spelled both ways on YouTube. Kids in my era thought the Brady Bunch was goofy and unrealistic, like all of TV was back then, you know. Let's face it, no one in the 1970's on TV ever went to the bathroom. I don't think any of them even farted until the 80's. But still, The Brady Bunch was on in the background of our lives to such an extent, along with actually sitting there watching so many episodes, that no matter how weird, punk, odd, creative or cynical we may have become in the many years since, there's some Bradyness ingrained in each of us. That was the power of hit TV shows in the three channel era. Damn you Sherwood Schwartz! It's like that damn Nippersinkers McDonald's commercial from 1975 (or so), you can just never get it totally out of your head. I guess that's why it felt weirdly cool to just stand there in front of the Brady Bunch house for a few minutes, and snap a couple of photos. I put the selfie on Facebook, and much to my surprise, it got over 85 likes in 24 hours. And my Facebook friends are mainly crusty, Old School BMX guys. We weren't the cool kids in school, we're a weird bunch. Seriously, the Brady Bunch is in us all.
As this blog began to evolve over the last month, I knew I'd write a post about the house, after all, it's an iconic TV location, even if the show was rarely, if ever shot there. Then someone clued me in on the more recent history of the Brady Bunch house itself. The Property Brothers remodeled the house in 2019 to have all the same sets as those shown in the TV show (shot on a sound stage). What?
So there it is. The Brady Bunch house, that few seconds of that outdoor shot of this house, which made the segway with"nah nah naaah naaaaaah,,, nuh nuh nah naaah naaaaaaaah" that we can all hear in our heads when seeing this house.
Here's the A Very Brady Remodel finale clip, and I just learned that HGTV bought the house when it was up for sale. This clip just informed my that HGTV bought the house when it was for sale, and then did a 7 months, multi-team, multi-show remodel on it, and the three "Brady girls" all helped in that process. This clip shows the kids rooms, and rooms not shown in the clip right above. I'm not sure who owns the house now, only that there's a cool security guy out front.
So there it is, the Brady Bunch House is a real house, and now the inside actually looks like that set we all remember from the TV show growing up. And now you know where it is, if you want to take your own selfies there some day. Just be cool and respectful to the neighbors.
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