Wow, fairly thoughtful and reasoned post by Elvis there. Ben too. Hope you two guys are at the Rock this year, so we can all compare notes on the world according to bmx fans. I think I may be the only UC team member at the Rock maybe this year.

Hi, my name is Cash Matthews and I relate to the current scene. It evolves in certain ways, some good, some bad sort of like my girth.

Regardless of the drama, I am present, and will be always. Sometimes in life, drama presents itself in a way that allows great things to grow up from the ashes. BMX is young, Vintage is young, and the best is still in front of us. Those of us who believe that the best is in the past will wake up one day and realize they missed the best part. Many of us enjoyed the early fruit of bmx. It was fresh and deliscious. We ate heartily. It is our turn now to make a difference.

Like Dr. Hann Del Barr of the International BMX Society once said, "If you spend all your time looking backwards, you might bump into something".

Pat - A few things:

1). Elvis posted long ago before the drama party. If you liked him then, you might like him now.
2). I just want us all to get along. For craps sakes, we are all a bunch of dorks that dig BMX bikes. Enough other people will poke us in the eye. Why do it to each other?
3). No Rock for me. The drama burned me out. Coupled with heavily travel, and I just want to be home with my family. I am tired of hotels.

From Taiwan,

ben

[ May 23, 2007, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: BenOr ]

Ben, I wanted to hang out at rockford and have meaningful discussions, no poking in the eye. At least I was not planning on it. I am planning on partying up there, basically.

btw, Ben, you got that photo of me on the pitbike where I flipped it off the jump and ripped one of my fingernails off in the parking lot, at like 4 am then had to race the next day? good stuff. that photo would be cool unless -it was too dark outside.

Pat, you better be nice to Elvis. I noticed some of his rodeo pics that connected to his for sale posting awhile back. Looks like he could whoop your arse if you don't show some respect!

and if he can't do it, i'm sure that ferocious cat could.

I still like every one of you guys (Past and Present). Life is serious, VintageBMX.com has always been a break from that serious life. This will always be home and this will always be the best rendition of a virtual neighborhood BMX sports pub on the Internet........ Period

Some of you may think I abandoned my friends (Bill, etc.) when there was drama going on. Let me remind you that nothing could be further from the truth. There are tons of things that go on behind the scenes that many of us try to shield the general public from. The majority of members here continue to take the high road.

We've never discussed a mission statement for this community so I'll offer one up right now:

VintageBMX.com: Honoring the past, Living in the Present and helping to Shape the Future of Bicycle Motocross.

Enjoy your day guys!

Ken,
I like your idea for a mission statement. I think that everyone of us care deeply about BMX, and we all should be able to get along. This site has brought a lot of us together so we can share our love of BMX. How many of us would even know one another if not for this site? I hope that things settle down and get back to normal soon.
Some people are doing different things now, and that is probably good for everybody. We should never forget what has brought us here in the first place...we enjoy BMX.
Thank you to everyone who posts here on Vintage.
Bryan Franklin

ben...dork? i resemble that remark.
ken...well put...should be on a t-shirt.
mike

I'm glad someone brought this post back up... it gave me the opportunity as a relative newbie to read it. Randy, if you're still reading this, I do understand where you're coming from.

But, if you look around, those relationships are still there. There's just a bunch of little groups instead of just one. Someone a few pages back mentioned that it's probably about 10% of the members making 90% of the posts... If that's the case, there's still about 900 people actively posting.

It's hard for a group of 900 or so people to be "close-knit". But within those 900 and somewhat outside that 900, there's literally dozens of little groups that still have those same relationships.

I also found something interesting in the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) someone posted a coupld pages back to oldschoolbmx.com:

We have over 200 registered members and have probably another 200 who stop by regularly but haven't registered. Not a huge number but a long way from the dozen or so of a couple of years ago. With millions of kids involved in BMX from the 70s up through today the new members are out there, they just haven't found us yet. .......................RandyS 11/19/00

Guess what, we're finding vintagebmx.com now, and there's a lot more where I came from. I'm here every day and I love it. Will I still love it when I become a vet? I hope so. Even if I don't know the people, it's the stories and incredible historical and technical information that I find here every day that keep me coming back.

Lee

Glad to see that the drama didn's scare you away, Cash....I miss the legends and Icons posting.

Cash is a legend and icon.

Changstar

Hola!

My brother just called me to ask if that was me in the cruiser pic on the 1st page of this thread and told me to join the site! yes the #11 Pro Neck rider is me. I dont recognize the track? I toured in 1982 with Steve Shobert and Mike ???? who rode for CW at the time?

Have not had a chance to check out the site all the way yet but it looks cool!

BR, your post is a perfect addition to this thread.

Welcome aboard.

BR-I guess he must be B.A.'s brother? Anyway, I am still at a loss to figure out why me saying I want to hang out and "compare notes" is like threatening to do some kind of drama infusion in some way? I dunno, maybe I should not have said, "compare notes". Maybe I should have said light hearted discussion and beverage drinking? Is this site still on edge that much? I figured it had been a few weeks and things calmed down by now, I guess not. Jeez, walking around on freakin' glass around here.

Pat,

My intent was to reinforce Elvis makes good points and not to poke you in the eye. I typed with some lingering drama clutering my thoughts. Being 15 hours into a different timezone and sleep deprived often leaves you less than clear headed.

God bless the internets because I can still goof off even when overseas.

Ben

ohhhh I see. Yeah, Elvis need not poke me in the eye. I need to go up there and get my drink on and will have enough vision problems already, hee hee

With all this talk about member numbers, or is it the number of my member? Either way, I had to post to see what mine was? I think it is #984

Sweet! I guess right. I have to give myself a prize.

Welcome BR!

It was nice to read through this thread again. Very cool of Rod to bring it back up.

Welcome BR, that race was in Charlotte N.C., 1982 ABA national, Sunday, mains...

Randy

Randy, I guess you swooped me in the next corner?
I can barely remember that race! All I remember that summer is racing literally every day of the week for about 7 weeks straight starting out in amarillo, heading to michigan, illinois, new jersey? ohio, north carolina and leaving there to go to california to finish off with a national at the orange county track and an nbl national somewhere in so cal!

Long Summer but a memeroable one!

So, are you older or younger than BA?

BA is my younger brother by 5 years.

I remember a Randy from the austin area with the last name of neuman / neimeyer??? Something like that? Also guys such as Kent Snead and Kevin Hull.

Are you from that era of Austin BMX? The old Capitol City BMX on 35 north of Austin?

The real question is: If we put you and BA side-by-side on a track, who's faster?

Lets just say he had more earlier success than I did. But, when I turned 16 I started winning and never looked back! And when cruisers came along is when i really took off. he was more in to football than racing when he got older. i raced well into my 20's and he was doing football and other stuff! I ended up running pro and pro cruiser I dont think he ever ran pro? would have to ask him but pretty sure he did not?

No, BR, I am from the Kar City and Mark Driscoll on Schwinn era of Iowa bmx and moved to Austin in 1990. But, Randy was of course one of the first bmx guys I met here, he is famous. I have since met a lot of old timers. I met BA a few times. And your father. You need to go out to Lone Star if you get a chance, an old timer from the Blazer days is running the track now.

Funny story about Randy: a few years ago we had an old man classic cruiser race, but he had a street bike single speed with like real narrow ten speed wheels and low bars. He raced at Cap City and was almost eating it over the bars on that squirrely street. bike, but still fast. That guy can still ride. He is a madman on a bike.

[ May 26, 2007, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: pquinnbmx ]

Good to hear from you BR. Hope all is well with you. I used to chat with your brother from time to time when I was taking photographs for a while with Photos Plus! I can't remember the last time I saw and/or spoke with you.

It was always a blast at your dad's San Antonio track. He always did (and does) things first class!

-Mark

I have no idea why I looked for this today...ah, the good ole' days...

Thanks for pulling this up, Randy. It was nice to read through it once again.

Whoa. Old thread edit.

My member # doesn't totally reflect it, because when the board changed I didn't register for a while for some reason, but I remember those old days. I remember the board one or two boards before this one, where it was basically just a white background with blue links for the thread subjects, or something like that.
I still have a folder of my money order receipts & envelope copies from all the stuff I bought back then from the likes of Richie Haney, Doug Carter, Darren Chen, etc...
Back when you could get a set of NOS camo Se pads for $30.
Although I read more than posted back then, I miss those times too.

WOW, some names I have not seen in a LONG time! 2 Year racer, 9 year Ramp rider. 18 year industry employee, 14 or so year collector. I met the early on collectors via phone prior to even having a computer. Yes, phone calls and regular mail with photographs to show your stuff.
For me , I was so heavy into collecting/hoarding even prior to computers. I was buying everything I could find but I found out that having a career the same as my hobby burned me out badly.
The computer/Menotomy/Vintage made it easier and faster to keep in touch and share the scores etc and save on phone time. I miss the days of it being smaller but I think all us old timers knew this thing would explode. We collect/ed things we knew and rode. Now what was mid school to us is collectible to the next generation. It's cool to see things I sold as a shop guy being collected. I just don't have the LOVE I had before.
About 3 years ago I located the very last Haro Team Sport-(1987) I rode before quitting and had sold to a sponsor. This is was and always will be My Holy Grail so I figured I'd leave things as they are, the stuff I have is my current collection and will stay this way.
Lately I find it more relaxing to just go through all my BMXA's one a day just for hell of it. We all prob. spend too much time on the computer anyways with work and all.
I still poke around here and find it interesting to see the new progression.
I have the zine mentioned a few pages back and every time I see it about 4-6 names come to mind. Great memories. I will prob. always be in touch with a few but it's nice to have this place to once in a while "re-find" fellow old fart collectors.
Collect on newer guys and in my opionion: It's not bad to be a hoarder but you better hide your stash and keep it on the down low or you may get called one!!!!!

I don't understand the motivation to keep collections quiet but I do know 3 or 4 guys that have more cool stuff than anyone around here would believe...interesting actually, I guess there is a difference between a hobbyist/collector and a full blown hoarder!

I'm still here too boys! hahahahaha....

Some people read the morning paper, or watch CNN with their morning coffee. I can usually be found drinking my first cup in front of vintagebmx.com and bmxnews.com. I spend equal time in the vintage and racing sections.

I have noticed that in the last few years there is a lot less action from the original group from oldschoolbmx.com and roostbmx.com, but its been ten years or more since we first found an old school bmx message board. We're all busy with family, jobs, etc.

Bill C., Hal M., Randy S., Kevin O. and Jason L. deserve a lot of credit for getting the original sites up and running. Possibly some day there will be room in the H.O.F. for the people who paved the way for BMX web sites.

Mike, you have a done an excellent job in taking these sites to a new level of professionalism. I can understand the amount of time and expense it takes to do it right. Thanks for doing such a great job.

Have a good weekend y'all, (I'm adding the y'all for my old pal BR who I noticed was on here a couple of years ago! And another y'all is added for Gonzo)

Cheers,

Tim

I guess this is as good a time as any to admit I don't know how to balance on a bicycle.

But that's ok since you have a low number...

Buncha old bike nerds.

Im still around here too...I read and lurk more than anything. Life got busier for me here over the last few years.

Im still here too...................Why, I have no idea

Because of me...

I-have-an-old-Beacon-King-Cobra-know-how-i-cn-find-out-what-year-it-is-or-it's-value?

Dave, I-have-an-old-school-bmx-Beacon-King-Cobra. Do-you-know-how-I-can-find-what-year-it-is-and-it's-value? brettbaugh@cox.net

8-years-ago-I -would have had-fun-with-this.

you all suck

Actually, thats pretty accurate

Ha!!!!

It depends on the result of said sucking. NOS Bottema's? Probably. Oliver's Scott Clark X-20C ? There's a good chance. Haney's Phaze 1 cruiser ? Sure, why not. That pic of Muxter passed out on the floor ? Damned straight. I'm not here to judge.

Joined: 19-May 04

This is the site that got me hooked again.