The Oceanview flyout BMX jump

This is my 1990 self-produced bike video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Go to 23:21 in this video for the segment at the Oceanview jump.  

In 1990, BMX was in a crazy period.  The sport had "died" in 1989, as major corporations pulled out of the 1980's "fad" of BMX racing, and the new trick riding thing called BMX freestyle.  The bike industry itself decided in 1989 that BMX was "over" and pulled their support away from all things BMX, and plunged their money into mountain bikes, which are, of course, adult sized BMX bikes.  Nearly all freestylers in the 80's raced for a while, before getting into freestyle.  But BMX racing was racing, and most racers did some dirt jumping.  Freestyle, the trick riding aspect of the sport, had evolved a separate type of bikes, heavier, with framestanders and axle pegs.  By late 1990, when this video came out, flatland and quarterpipe contests had existed for six years, halfpipe contests for 3 years, and street contests for only 2 years.  Wall rides had only been a thing for 3 1/2 years.  Flatland riding evolved into scuffing then into forward rolling tricks, led by Kevin Jones and the Plywood Hoods.  It was fading in popularity, but more difficult than ever.

Vert riding was going from quarterpipes to halfpipes.  There were no concrete skateparks... ANYWHERE... in California.  I think Kona in Florida was the only one left.  This video was the first to have mini-ramps in it, they were a brand new thing that skaters had started making.  Street riding was the new trend, and most BMX videos by bike companies still had riders wearing leathers.  The sport of BMX freestyle had gone underground, the posers were gone, and the progression of the sport was happening at a fast pace.  Guys like Mat Hoffman and Dennis McCoy didn't even have factory sponsors at times in 1989.  The world had left BMX for dead, the money was gone from the sport.  But we kept riding... and progressing.

Jumping had been a part of BMX riding since the very beginning, starting with kids on Schwinn Stingrays in the early 1970's. But by 1990, there were two schools of jumping.  Racer/jumpers preferred double jumps,with some distance involved, and their tricks were mostly one handers, and one hand one footers, things like that.  Hardly any racers could do 360's.  The exception were the crazy young guys on the S&M Bikes team, a garage company at the time, led by Chris Moeller.  They were pushing the level of jumping to new highs, and crazier tricks.  

The other kind of jumping at the time was freestyler jumping, usually on flyout jumps.  Some were ditch jumps where you rolled in one side, and out the other.  Some flyout jumps were where you pedaled to a tall jump, 6-7 feet high, and popped straight up.  Freestyle jumpers didn't go far, or very high, but these jumps gave you hang time over a flat landing, time to try really weird new tricks.  So while the racers were jumping farther and higher, freestylers were jumping smaller, but working more on weird new tricks.  In time, the two types of jumping blended, and the trails riders that emerged in the early 1990's took the freestylers' crazy tricks, like 360's, one hander no footers, nothings, and tailwhips, and soon after backflips, and did them bigger, over doubles.  

Throughout 1990, the Oceanview flyout jump in Huntington Beach was one of the places a bunch of the Orange County based riders would show up and push the limits of new tricks.  This jump was in the front yard of Oceanview High School in Huntington Beach, at the corner of Warner and Gothard streets.  I'm not sure who built it, but it was the perfect place.  We had a concrete runway to a 6 1/2 high jump to flat, under the shade of this huge tree.  The recent new Jersey immigrant, and hungry and then unknown rider, Keith Treanor, flat out ruled Oceanview at the time.  That's why a silhouette of Keith jumping over John's upstretched arm was on the cover of this video.  

The riders in this segment are Keith Treanor (23:32), John Povah (23:36), GT vert pro Josh White (23:49), recently retired pro Woody Itson (23: 51), and H.B. local flatlander Andy Mulcahy (24: 03).  As small as this jumping seems in today's world, this was cutting edge freestyle jumping for its day.  No handers, one hand no footers, and nothings were all pretty new tricks, very few people were trying them.  When this footage was shot, decade jumps had not been invented yet, and no one had done a tailwhip on dirt, as far as we knew.  The tailwhip attempt that Josh White runs away from in this clip he followed by landing his first tailwhip on dirt ever.  My camera battery died, and it shut off, while he was in the air.  I missed the shot of Josh White's first tailwhip.  Right about the same time, the Spring of 1990, Mike Krnaich landed a tailwhip on a tiny box jump, and that became the first tailwhip jump ever in a video, when the Bully Bikes video came out.  Josh wanted to kill me for missing the shot of his first tailwhip, and I never saw him out jumping again, so I never got that shot.  

So, as small as this jumping seems in today's world, the sessions that happened almost every night at the Oceanview High flyout jump in 1990, were really pushing the new tricks in jumping at the time. The four or five sessions I shot video of, combined in this clip, recorded those tricks, and motivated riders of the day to push the limits of jumping even farther.  In the P.O.W. House and Edison section inthis video, you can see the racer/jumpers like Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer and Mike " Crazy Red" Carlson.  Right around that time, jumping contests at some BMX races were starting to happen, which began to turn dirt jumping into its won genre' of BMX.  

And just for the record right before this clip, at 23:17, you see a guy doing a double peg grind on a ledge.  That's me, and that shot, to the best of my knowledge, it the 2nd double peg street grind ever in a BMX video, and the first on a ledge.  In Ride Like a Man, produced by Eddie Roman for 2-Hip, which came out a couple months before my video, Dennis McCoy does a double peg grind on a rail next to a walkway.  My grind here is the second double peg grind in a video.  And later in this video, Keith Treanor does the first double peg grind down a rail over a small set of stairs, and John Povah does the first ice pick grind on a rail.  That's how new street riding was then, fundamental tricks were being invented all over in that era of 1989-1991, and every video had some "first ever" tricks back then.  

In the many years since 1990, Oceanview High School became a big skating spot in the 1990's, and "The Ashtray," the first public skatepark in California, was built a couple hundred yards away in Murdy Park.  Later on, the high school did a major expansion, and built over the area where the flyout jump used to be.  But this spot was one that helped pushed new tricks in BMX in the late 1980's and early 1990's, adding to the evolution of BMX during the "dead" years of the early 1990's.

If you look through this gate, there's a window back there, about five feet off the ground.  That's about where the Oceanview flyout jump used to be.  This is the 20,000 or so square foot addition to the front of Oceanview High School. #steveemigphotos

This is the front of Oceanview High School now, looking from the corner of Warner and Gothard.  The big tree next to the jump was about where the building is now, about the center of this photo.  #steveemigphotos.

So 

The Alley Studios building

At 5066 Vineland in North Hollywood, there's a boarded up storefront.  For 43 years, that building was home to The Alley rehearsal and recording studios.  Bands rented it by the week.  Kind of like Fight Club, the first rule was not to tell anyone about it.  The next rules were no photos, no film, no videos inside... ever.  From 1973 to 2016, bands rehearsed there, and recorded albums there.  It was called The Alley, studio and rehearsal hall.  

It doesn't look like much from the outside.  Musicians entered from the alley in the back, hence the name, The Alley.  Michael Jackson recorded four albums here.  Prince recorded two.  Jackson Browne told owner Shiloh he wrote her favorite song, "For Everyman," in this building.  The Alley was there and in operation long before the area became North Hollywood's NoHo Arts District.  #steveemigphotos

 Don Henley once said that the epic Eagles song, "Hotel California," was about the transition from innocence to experience."  The Alley was a place for artists to hide out, and be artists.  Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, and all that it meant to be a big band in the 1970's, and beyond, happened inside this building.  Legend has it that the scene at the Alley was the initial inspiration for the Eagles writing "Hotel California."  As best anyone can tell, over 1,800 hits were written or recorded in the non-descript building.  The piano that was in the rehearsal studio until 2020 is said to have belonged to Gram Parsons.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers auditioned 3,000 guitar players there in the 1990's, before going with Dave Navarro, who they'd pretty much already settled on anyway. 

Three Dog Night.  Paul McCartney.  Bob Marley. Tom Petty,  Motorhead, Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Fleetwood Mac.  Little Feat.  Warren Zevon.  Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.  Deep Purple. Jackson Browne.  The Eagles.  Black Sabbath.  Santana.  Stevie Wonder.  Roy Orbison.  K.D. Lang.  Bonnie Raitt.  Sheryl Crow.  Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins.  The Interrupters, Lucinda Williams, and on and on.  Hundreds, probably thousands, of the greatest musicians of the last 50 years practiced, wrote, hung out, jammed, and recorded music in this building.  Even in Hollywood, The Alley studios were legendary, but a secret at the same time.  The Alley was a place where musicians could be musicians, close off from the outside world, and let the magic happen.

To top it off, there are even ghost hunters who have put the building on TV.  At least one man died there, in a fall down the spiral staircase.  Supposedly there are ghost cats roaming the building as well.  

The brick walls with the musician and band signatures would probably go for tens of thousands of dollars to rich collectors if pulled out and sold.  Sometimes the great places in history are hiding right in plain sight.  Like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, you had to be one of the chosen, the hardcore musicians, to enter this building between 1973 and 2016.  

It started in 1965, and a biker named Bill Elkins came there to shoot photos of Three Dog Night in 1972.  All of his friends were musicians and Harley type bikers.  He just had to own the place, and waited for it to go up for sale.  When it finally did, he tore down the For Sale sign so no one else would see it, and called the owner.  Bill bought the building, and started using scrap lumber he scrounged to build it into a rehearsal hall and recording studio in 1973.  He met Shiloh in the 70's, they married, and lived in the small apartment at the back of the property.  He built the business with word of mouth from band to band, musician to musician.  That kept the place busy for 43 years, from 1973 to 2016.  Bill died in 2015, and Shiloh died in 2017.  The Alley closed in 2016.  They had no children, so there were no heirs to pass it on to.  

One time Alley technician, John Strand, tried to get The Alley going again, but had financial and other issues, and had to sell it.  Here are a couple of the better videos that do exist from The Alley Studios.

2015 interview with Shiloh Elkins by a young woman from Ghost Cult Magazine -22 minutes

Spectrum News 1 (L.A.) News report from 2020- 4 1/2 minutes

Recording "Crying" with Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang at The Alley 

The music video: "Crying" Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang ( music/vocals partially recorded at The Alley)

Save The Alley video- 2019

Little Feat playing "Long Distance Love," believed to be in The Alley in the 1970's.

Red Hot Chili Peppers jamming in The Alley in 1990 

Ghost Adventures promo in The Alley- 2019