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.
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