I had never seen much of society outside of the metro-suburban areas in and around New York City, where I lived most of my young life, and now as a seventh-grade kid in upstate New York, I was in a whole new world. The fringe was filled with rednecks, hippies, young punks and more rednecks. The middle was typical. There were jocks, hoods, the upper class. And I was what I would always end up being—an outsider.
Out of boredom and creative restlessness, I discovered the excitement in a world I had no idea existed. As a 12-year-old kid, I caught a glimpse of the California dream as seen in ’80s BMX magazines, and I heard the first sounds of the underground, after noticing Dead Kennedys patches and D.R.I. logos drawn on Trapper Keepers, while I circled stickers in the Stick ’Em Up ads and pieced together traded parts to make a bike.
I met Mike in seventh-grade Spanish class and met Gilly soon after, two of the few BMX kids in town who would become my lifelong friends. Around that time I would get mixtapes from kids with older brothers who knew about music. Written on the cassette case would be bands like PiL, Bad Brains, the Misfits, and I had no way to know which bands were which when I played them in a Walkman I had hijacked from my teenage sister.
I started building makeshift ramps out of random supplies in the yard or the garage, and even parts of my father’s toolshed he had built to roll the lawnmower into. I was eager to learn more about the music that I had heard on these cassette tape bootlegs, but had no clue where to look, so I would play a W.A.S.P. tape I had on my player at the same time as a Tesla record my sister had on opposing sides of my bedroom. It was absurd, and I imagined the racket it caused would create some of the same rebellious trance that “Rock for Light” put me into. I was wrong, and I have always been too embarrassed to mention it until now.
Soon after, my friends and I started exploring the outskirts of our small town, like an Indiana Jones movie, or “Goonies,” looking for jumps, skateboard ramps we had heard of, and even an abandoned motocross track just a short five-mile bike ride away.
[continued...]
From Dirt Rag Mag
Dirt Rag is a mountain biking lifestyle magazine. Original art, passionate stories, investigative articles, honest product reviews, and a realistic attitude are what we're all about. Whether you are a timid beginner or a seasoned race junkie, Dirt Rag speaks to you.
