To continue from my other post (about the early 85 Master’s chainstays)....

If you follow the history of BMX in general you will see that its growth as an industry was very fast and furious from its early days in the 70’s. We’ve all watched Joe Kid on a Stingray enough to understand just how furious the growth-stage was. Hey, we lived it as well – we were all at that age where our bicycles were are main mode of transportation at that time. So in addition to recreation, our bikes were utilitarian and necessities as a mode of “transpo” before we turned 16 and began to drive.

In the extra footage in the movie JKOAS, Bob Osborne actually mentions the moment in time when he realized that the Nintendo NES system began killing our industry. Well, as it turns out it wasn’t just BMX. It was a wholesale change in interest for ALL recreational sporting equipment – road bikes, big wheels, footballs, swing sets, etc. I’m not going to digress from BMX at this point but it really was a turning point for our country in retrospect.

For kids in the 10 to 12-year old range the rise of interest in the NES system by their peers stymied interest in other ways to spend their time out of school. There is always a competition of products and industries looking to steal consumer’s interest and ultimately their dollars. Although the two products are very dissimilar, they both compete for kid’s leisure time (and parent’s money by default).

I’m surprised that there isn’t more attention paid to the fact that this interest in video games has a very sharp and long-lasting affect on our nation’s decline in overall health – particularly in children. Is it a coincidence that in the last 15 years we have witnessed an epidemic of childhood obesity?

Kids play outside less now, more than ever and video games seems to be a common thread that has evolved along the way. Rather than riding their bikes, kids play Dave Mirra’s Freestyle (I have no idea what the titles are) on their XBOX.

I think Skateboarding had more to do with the down turn than Nintendo. I know I started skating more and riding less in about 85-86. I quit purchasing bike related stuff and started buying skate related stuff. The kids younger than me were all skaters and these were probably the kind of guys that would have been bmxers 3 years before. How many LBS' started carrying skate stuff in that time? I know by the time I graduated in 1990 you never saw any kids on bikes just skateboards. I was from a small town and that was the way it seemed there.

I wonder what the comparison of sales of skateboards stuff to bmx stuff stuff would look like form that era. How many people quit subscribing to BMXA and started subscribing to Thrasher?

*raises hand*

Thrasher subscriber...... I let my TA sit, while my Vision Mark Gonzales was ridden almost everday. And then I received my Drivers licence. That was it for the both of them, Banished to the garage.

1982 Escorts rock.

If you comment in this thread, please post your age in 1986. The NES debuted in December 85, but i think i had mine in like late 86 and it really took off in 1987 fueled by Zelda sales and its momentum from 86. Lets see in 86 i'd have been 14. I was still really actively riding through the end of 88...car time really killed it for me i think. I think i only had like 15 games for my NES. I did however subsequently own a Sega Genesis and really got into playing Doom on PC in 1991, etc...i once had a 600 dollar phone bill for playing on a chicago playnet BBS before we got a doom bbs locally. Good times.

<----------- 15 in 1986.

16 in 86

14 in 86.

16 in 86 but lets not forget the predecessors of the NES like activision, atari, colecovision, commodore 6000 etc. you cant blame the extinction of the dinosaurs "freestyle" on the big bang theroy "NES" alone.

I was 16 in 86. I was pretty much out of freestyle by 88. For me, it was going off to college and needing money. I sold my Dyno for a Cannondale mountain bike (gasp!) b/c A.) I needed transportation at school (couldn't afford car insurance), and B.) It seemed more "grown up". Whatever. Wish I woulda never sold my BMX... But I never had much to do with video games, or skating...

I was 15 in '86. I both rode and skated, and got all the mags at the same time. I got a NES but really, didn't get too into it. Still rode and skated. Many kids didn't though.

I was out of it around my senior year. Started getting into MTB, and traded my Trick Star in for one. Then got the bug around '93 again and bought an ELF which I took to school with me. Then dropped out for a bit again, and got back in around 3 years ago or so.

As a 15-year-old kid in 1985, video games made me ride my bike more, not less. I never had a 2600 or an NES, so if I wanted to play Pac-Man, or Donkey Kong Jr., or Moon Patrol, or Excitebike, or Super Mario Bros., or any other game, I'd ride around town, find some bottles to turn in for a few quarters, then pedal to the pizza place or laundromat where the arcade machines were!

Yup...the '80s were AWESOME.

I was 12 in 1986.
And I do remember it being a dividing point in after-school activities for all the kids my age.

Many of my friends really became A.D.D. couch potatoes back then.. obsessed with winning endless games of Tecmo Bowl and getting through that last board of Super Mario Bros.

Don't get me wrong.... I liked NES and it's nostialgic for me.... and I always enjoyed watching them play - BUT i never really dove into Gaming like they did..

For me it (that year) was a defining point... I'd sit there looking through Freestylin;' Mag and BMX Plus while they were tossing their controlers at the TV and having Potato Chip fits over losing their last life in Contra (remember this is pre-"Up Up Down Down" era)....

I was always badgering them to go outside and ride or skate... mostly ride.....
that's where a few of us really took off and became a group of riders / freestylers. It became our culture at this point..

and I do partially thank NES for weeding out the riff raff .

same here. i used to ride three miles with a pocket full of quarters to plat galaga. i was 16 in 86 and just got my license to drive. i think i rode more after i got my license.

I didn't get into riding till 86 when I was 13. I had some friends that were NES Slugs but my best friends all rode and about 3 neighborhood kids got new Bikes for Christmas that year. The first time I rode my friends Blue 86 Sport I was hooked. I saved up enough to a 85 Windstyler on Clearance at a local shop in the spring of 87.

Skating wasn't that big around here. There were some guys who skated but alot more Couldn't get enough of Metroid, Contra, Zelda and whatever other game was out next.

I got out of riding a little around 90 when I got my first car(72 Camaro) and started getting in the whole Muscle Car thing. But I never gave it up completely till I was in the Military(USMC) in 93.

These days I ride as often as possible and only allow my kids minimal time on our PSII. Even if the ground is covered in snow they are only allowed about 1hr a day on the games.

Reading here & other places, it always seems cars is what drove people away from BMX. As such it could be a combo of cars & videogames. Cars drove the riders away & video games perhaps kept the next batch of kids from picking up the slack.
I was 16 in 86, but due to a medical condition couldn't get my licsense until I was 18. As such I feel I kept on the bikes through that 'dangerous' year of being 16 when the car lures a young man away. When I got my first car, it didn't take me away from bikes.
That came later in college.

I recently read an article that more & more the youth of today have less interest in outdoor activities. This was attributed to video games as well. Perhaps the rest of socitey is beginning to observe what we've long been observing w/ BMX.
-Bill

I was 16/17 in '86. Nintendo wasn't all that big a deal to me and my friends, but I can see how there were fewer younger guys riding at that time.

I got my bike stolen in the summer of '84 when I was 15. I had a choice of spending another 500.00 plus on a bike, or putting that toward a car. I chose a car. And as much as I loved BMX, I would do it again if I could go back and do it over. The car opened up a whole new realm of activities for me and my friends. Not necessarily better, but different.

"Cars drove the riders away & video games perhaps kept the next batch of kids from picking up the slack."

Maybe that is the whole thing right there. I just went on what me and my friends were doing. Chromey at age 12 at this time would be more in the know than us who were in high school. Twelve is about the age where you start finding what is going to occupy your free time until the first time you get...

14 in 86 and nintendo did nothing for me. all we did was ride..

when did the trend shirts come out? i got a bunch of looks from wearing those. "video games are for fags."
was that the '90s?

I was 13 in 1986, and that's when I first got in to freestyle. Up to that point, I enjoyed riding my bike and jumping and riding on trails and just riding around, but I was never into the BMX/freestyle scene until the fall of 1986. In fact, I didn't even have a good bike until then. I first started on a Huffy Thunder Road that I got for my birthday when I was 8 or 9. I put some Odyssey frame standers and GT fork standers on the thing, and even had my grandfather drill holes in the forks so I could have a front brake. The bike was obviously a pile, so I bought a Trick Star frame in November of 86 and slowly built it up.

Anyway, bottom line is, I didn't even get into it until I was 13 in 1986. Nintendo never held much sway. I don't know what got me out of it. I think it's because all my friends kinda quit riding or only rode sporadically around 1990. My one friend started hanging out more and more with his gangsta buddies (his choice of friends got a .44 revolver pulled on us once while riding). My other friend got a job and a girl. I also got a job beginning in the summer of 89, and while I would ride my bike to work, that kind of killed the endless summers of practicing flatland. Byt the end of my senior year (1991), I had a car and a girl, and I pretty much just stopped riding. I didn't hang much with my old riding friends -- we all seemed to just go separate ways. I brought my bike with me my sophomore year of college and tried to do flatland sometimes, but the bike pretty much stayed in my room for the most part.

Anyway, we're relating a bunch of personal stories, and while I think it explains why we all got out of it for a bunch of individual reasons, it doesn't explain why freestyle and BMX kind of died off. And it did die off. When I went to the Haro Rampage Tour in 87, there were so many riders there to watch, we were lined up elbow to elbow, all cheering like crazy. Two years later, the same shop hosted the Schwinn team with Robert Peterson, and hardly anyone was there. And of those who did turn out, my friends and I were the only ones to really "get it." The rest were just curious little kids and customers.

I think sometimes fads just die. We all kind of got out of it because we outgrew it, and no one was there to fill in our ranks when we left. Why? Anyone's guess. One theory could be that it was hard at that point for young kids to break into. We got into it, grew with the sport, and maybe that left some of the younger kids on the outside looking in. When you're 15 or 16, do you really want to hang out with a bunch of 11-12 yeard olds? No. We might not have been an accessible group as a whole to draw in new blood. Also, the tricks had become really hard at that point. When we all got in it, you could learn some basic tricks and progress. By the time it was 1990, tricks were hard, and I imagine you would have looked really lame starting out with an endo or bouncing on your back pegs or doing a lawnmower, despite the fact you needed these fundamentals to move on to the advanced stuff.

Just some theories, though I agree that it's not just BMX that has suffered over the past few years. Kids for some reason are less active as a whole. I don't know if I would rule out video games completely.

same for me and most everybody i knew.

around here i don't think video games took many people out of BMX/skating, but it prevented younger kids from getting into it in the first place. it seems to me it took a couple extra years here, though. maybe '88/89ish.

'85-87 i worked at a shop that sold both BMX and skateboards, so i got to see both sides for awhile. we didn't loose any customers that had been into it already, but i noticed a point where less new people (younger kids) were coming in (both bike and skate).

then, that shop decided to focus on skate for several reasons including not many other sk8 shops and too many bike shops around here ...and limited space. BMX was phased out.

so i moved to a large bike shop with - at the time - the biggest BMX dept in town. 1987 and 88 were huge for freestyle, enough so that it supported the whole shop in winter. after that is when i really noticed the decline start. again, a lot of guy who were already into it were still there (many who were now past the "1st car" thing and into/past college) and buying the "new stuff", but the flow of kids just getting into it pretty much shut off, for the most part. skating tanked a bit then, too...around here. not as much, though.

i think part of skating staying stronger - and i say this from discussions with parent/customers - was monetary. if you get an "x-hundred dollar" video game you're not getting an "x-hundred dollar" bike, too. maybe a $100-120 skateboard, though.

I was 16/17 in '86. I had just got my new Day-Glo Orange Pro Performer F/F, White Tuff 2's, Purple GT Tires......

A friend of a friend asked me why I spent so much money on a bike and not a car?
Now granted, my dad bought me my first car, a green '71 Pontiac Ventura, with green interior, bench seat, inline 6, 2 speed auto, no power brakes on that baby.
He spent all of $250. Back then I didn't need to have a fast car, just one to get me back and forth from school and my job at McD's.

I didn't quit riding until the summer of '91. Full time job cut into riding time. Had a couple of girlfriends thru those years that wanted me to make a choice, them or my friends/riding....

I went riding.

I didn't get into video games since my eye hand cordination is just good enough to get a fork to my mouth and not take an eye out while doing it.
My brother, who was 11/12 in '86, was great at video games, and riding, as a matter of fact, he was good at everything, the twerp.
He progressed along with the sport so it never got boring to him. He quit riding about '93, college, jobs, etc.

I think video games had the biggest impact, also like The R stated, riding was so advanced that newbs might have felt embarassed or gave up to easily trying to learn.

Edit, dreaded double post.....

I was 12 in 1986. I was riding too, my Huffy's, etc. We had the Atari 2600 and that was it for Video systems.

I had my Texas Instruments TI-99/4A that I wrote little short Basic Programs too. Then I got my Apple //C.

I was 10/11 in 1986. I rode my buddy's Master after church and sporting events, and my Huffy at home until 1987, when I got my Kuwahara. He and I were the only guys who did any type of BMX around home---no racers, no other freestylers. I never got into the video game thing too big--obviously, I spent my money on the bike.

I got out of it in about 1992. The main reasons were:

a. 6' and 200lbs

b. High School extracurricular activities

c. Jumping ATVs and snowmobiles was easier than jumping a short 20" bike--and on a farm there were a lot more places to do it.

Oh man this is lame, I was 21 in 86 and had already found cars and girls. I do believe it (Nintendo) had an effect but I think there is more to it.
I can't remember riding my bike or my roadbike until 88 when I lost my license.

My best friend and I used to have 99/4A's. We used to make up programs to mess with my little brother and his friends. That's when 'War Games' came out on HBO. LOL, 'Want to play a game?' LOL
they would type in 'yes' and the screen would flash colors and then display 'Too Bad'.

We ended up getting an Apple IIe, my friend got an IBM PC. Whats really funny, is how I thought his IBM couldn't hold a candle to our Apple IIe back then.

When we got our Apple, that's all that the computer store (InaComp) was pushing. I remember them saying something along the lines of 'Apple and IBM are like VHS and Beta video tapes, only Apple is the VHS.'

The point I was trying to make was that video games (most significantly the Nintendo NES system) killed ALL recreational sports at that time - which INCLUDED BMX.

Sure, girls and cars were an integral part of the 16-ish to get away from riding their bikes - that was my reason too. BUT, something changed universally how kids spent their money (or in most cases) their parent's money at this time. It went away from things associated with outdoor activities to video games.

Again, I know there was the Atari 2600, pong, etc. BUT, the NES system blew the doors wide open in 1986 selling record numbers of units to ALL ages.

Watch JKOS and listen to how Bob credits BMX demise to this little-talked about fact.

This is an interesting thread, but I'm wondering just how much of BMX's decline we can directly blame on video games, per se.

I was 17 in 1986, and still riding, but it's not as if home video units hadn't been around for a while. I remember my brothers and I needing, begging, pleading for an Atari unit (which launched and hit shelves in the late '70s) and yet BMX - and my interest in it - continued to grow for years after the arrival of "Space Invaders". Never did I ever prefer to sit inside and blast asteroids to riding my bike and blasting a curb.

So what changed? The technology certainly improved, but keep in mind that in 1979 Atari was cutting edge (so the attraction and "newness factor" was equally compelling to kids then, as NES would have been 10 years on). If you look at the timelines, the birth of BMX and in-home video gaming units almost coincide.

I wondering aloud what collectively could have changed? What other factors could have contributed to such a dramatic change in the relationship between children and technology? I'm going to say it had something to do with how parents began to manage their children's time differently, and the place television had in that equation overall...

The success of the NES system was attributed to it being more attractive to young adults and adults alike, IN ADDITION to the obvious teenagers.

They don't really know why it sparked so much attention but some think that Duck Hunt (of all things) was one of the reasons. It's funny but the Nintendo WII is replicating this exact same thing in adults again with Bowling.

Strange but true facts.

1986 was the beginning of the end for BMX - until it was revived in the mid-90s thanks to X-Games, Hoffman, Mirra, Miron, etc.

It really is an interesting phenomenon. This thread has me thinking about how television and technology has really changed the face of daily life - for young and old alike - and I'm wondering if there isn't a certain amount of screen "conditioning" that is taking place w/o us even realizing it. So much of our waking life is spent in front of some sort of screen these days....even how we consume BMX. When I was younger you either looked at a magazine or rode. Now it's videos, ESPN, dvds, the web - lots of ways of getting that "fix" w/o actually swinging a leg over a bike.

I was 15 in '86 and I remember getting my first "real" bmx bike from a house that was having a garage sale. It was a Schwinn Scrambler with red tuff 1's

Broke it years ago and a guy talked me into buying a repainted mongoose that I rode until it was stolen. I bought a ton of parts for it.. Upgrading from the snowflake to a proper set of chainring/power disk type drive. Then I had bike after bike until my dad took a buy out from Southern pacific R.R. and I got an '85 mach one.

I was driven towards the computer tech at the time although I did get a NES with the paperboy money. I now work in the video game industry and I see how much they affect my 7 yr old. It's what kids do, but he has a bike and I am encouraging him each year a bit more to get in the groove of having that freedom.. Like many things, he'll find what works for him

But back to the games.. games at our place a re a treat... Not a given. Lots of other things to do for sure.

If he had the choice though.. he'd play for a bit, then go out and play.. he still has enough of that in him which is great.

Hopefully with sumer on the horizon, we'll get some really good riding in.

And speaking about games and the bridge.. Paperboy, the game was the easy way to get out of all of it.. get to ride and not really ride..Same with 720.. and Skate or Die..

Loved 'em.

Video games definitely hurt but even in the "Action Sports" realm there was a sudden jump in people riding mountain bikes and roller blades in the late 80's. At least in my unscientific sampling of the crowd at GG Park every Sunday. It seems like the Action Sports options diversified a lot probably a little after 1986. On the flip side, somewhere around the same time and maybe with MTB, it became a lot more acceptable to be older and thrashing on a bike. I was 19 for most of 1986 and BMX was on like Donkey Kong that year. Yeah, my impression is that video games were one of the bigger contributors.

Ah 720...not to digress but that was the best game ever. Nothing at the time let you develop and show a sense of style and gave you a similar sense of freedom. I can remember circling around before he start of the slalom courses to pick up speed and then doing a 180 ollie in and hitting the first few flags in reverse just to show off. Or doing the downhill runs backwards for kicks. Hitting 1000's out in the parks, taking it to the kids on the bigwheels....hitting a 360 off the shape shifting cars.

BEES.

Kind of interesting that technology (Nintendo) contributed to us losing interest and that technology (the Internet) has now contributed to us reviving interest.

I'll still bet 90 percent of us spend more time on the net than we do on a bike....

You're probably very right. I'm guilty of it. Which is somewhat my point about conditioning and what we now gravitate towards recreationally - it's cold but sunny here in NYC on a Saturday afternoon, and I'm at my desk, not in the saddle...