1990: The summer BMX double peg grinds happened on street and in videos...

How I learned double peg grinds on a ledge, and how they went from an obscure little tech trick to a major foundational trick in BMX street

This is a sketchy video still is me doing a double peg grind, on a ledge, in Huntington Beach, from my 1990 self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend. This quick shot, wound up being the third shot of a double peg grind in a BMX video, the first two were both Karlo Wikk, on the same ledge, in the Dirt Bros. video and Bully Slow Ride, which came out in the 2-3 months before my video came out.

In January of 1990, we had a big meeting at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, where I worked, in Costa Mesa, California. The 80’s skateboarding boom had peaked in late 1988 or early 1989, and things had been unraveling afterwards. BMX had “died” at the January 1989 bike trade show, in Long Beach. At that show, I literally heard people all day saying, “BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing,” in booth after booth. The outside money, from major corporations, was draining out of these action sports, and bike/skate sponsorships and money was drying up for riders. In early 1990, the actual economic recession was setting in as well. So in that January meeting in Unreel, we were told Unreel was being dissolved. Myself and a woman named Laura, would be kept on, and we’d move to the Vision main building in Santa Ana. Laura found a “real TV job,” up in Hollywood, in about a month. After that, I got paid to sit in an office with a bunch of video equipment, with nothing to do, for about six months. The boredom drove me nuts. Finally, I put my two weeks notice in.

On my last day working at Vision, which I think was late June of 1990, one of the women in the promotions department asked if I had any plans after I left. I said, “Not really.” She told me they needed somebody to drive the Vision mini-ramp rig to Atlanta, Georgia, to do some skateboard demos for a week. She asked if I wanted to do it. They would set up some more demos for the trip back, while we were out on the road. I thought, “OK, it’s 2-3 weeks, and I get to drive cross country and hang with some skaters, and get paid for the trip. Cool.” It sounded kind like fun. I told her I’d do it.

The next morning I showed up, and met a skater who had just moved to California from Hawaii, named Mark Oblow. I was the manager for the little tour, and the only guy insured to drive the rig. But that was cool, I liked driving, and had pulled the 30 foot AFA trailer around years earlier, so I had some experience pulling a big trailer. We’d drive east, pick up two young amateur skaters in Texas, that Vision had recently sponsored, and then drive on to Atlanta. Another pro skater would meet us in Atlanta, and we’d do demos for a week. In the meantime, the women in promotions would try to set up a few more demos for the trip back, to stretch it into a little tour.

After 8 years of dreaming of becoming a pro BMX freestyler, and going on tour some day, I finally was going on tour, just with four skateboarders instead of BMX freestylers. Mark and I hopped in the big blue, dually pick-up, after hooking up the mini-ramp trailer. The ramp itself had become famous in Tom Petty’s “Freefallin’” music video, and we headed east out of Santa Ana. Odd as it sounds, that was the first major music video, in heavy rotation, to show skateboarding on MTV.

Before we made it to the Arizona border, it was over 100 degrees out, and would be over 100 degrees every day of the tour, wherever we were. Lucky us. We also quickly learned that the truck was specifically geared to pull a trailer, but topped out at 55, maybe 60 miles per hour, on a downhill stretch. I would have to drive long hours every day to get to Atlanta by Friday evening, and set-up, to start demos on Saturday morning. That first day I drove for about 14 hours, and we made it to southeastern Arizona. Mark and I got talking, getting to know each other stories, and we watched the desert go slowly by out the window.

The next morning, we had breakfast, and hit the road around 11 am or so, on day two, planning to drive across the southern part of New Mexico, then deep into Texas. On the way, we figured out that that the people who planned the trip thought we’d be able to average 70 or 75 miles an hour, or so, not realizing how slow the truck was. We figured out it was going to be a hard push to make it to Atlanta by Friday evening. Also, because of the heat, I decided to drive later into the night, and then get a room, to not push the air conditioning too hard, and then start driving later in the morning.

That’s how Mark Oblow and I found ourselves stopping for gas, about 2 am, at some little crossroads, about 200 miles west of San Antonio, at the end of day two. As I grabbed something to drink, and paid for gas, Mark hit the restroom, then wandered around the back of the station. As tired as we were, it was good just to stretch our legs, after a long, hot day of driving through the desert. As I was pumping gas, Mark came back kind of excited, “Hey, there’s a cool ledge out back, you need to check it out.” He grabbed his board, and headed back around the building. I finished pumping gas, pulled my bike out of the bed of the truck, and rode around back of the little gas station, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Texas. I was definitely up for a little session.

The ledge was part of an old gas pump island, I think, from decades before, and was maybe eight feet long, and 18 or 20 inches high. I think it was painted, too, making it slipperier than just dry concrete. Mark was doing some kind of tricks on it. I think I did a couple of footplants on it, or something, and tried to figure what else I could do.

This is where the ongoing evolution of both street skateboarding and BMX street came into play. In the skate world, vert was still king, and it had transitioned from the old skateparks, gone in California by early 1989, to halfpipes. Freestyle skating, the 80’s version of early 1960’s and 1970’s flat ground skating, was still around, with Rodney Mullen leading that genre’. But from about 1984 on, street skating had been growing quickly, led by guys like Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, Natas Kaupas, and Mike Vallely, among others.

The big videos the year before, Powell-Peralta’s Bones 5, Ban This, and Vision’s Barge at Will, which I had worked on at Unreel, had more street skating than earlier videos did. They had a little bit of boardslides, a couple of rails and some ledges, and other street skating in them. But there was another video that had also come out in 1989. It was a sketchy-ass, no budget video by Steve Rocco’s crazy, new, little company with the big name, World Industries. That video, mostly shot, and edited by a BMX/skate kid named Spike Jonze, was pretty much all street skating. That video, sketchy as it was, was called Rubbish Heap, and it was influencing a whole new crop of young skateboarders in the U.S., and around the world. To be clear, in the skateboard industry, Steve Rocco and World Industries were both considered jokes in 1990. The Big 5 skateboarding companies laughed at Rocco… for a couple of years. But that’s another story. Watch The Man Who Souled the World documentary to see that story.

There was a big posse of street skaters in Huntington Beach, where I lived, and some of them usually came by the H.B. Pier, where I rode every weekend. Among them were Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton, Jason Lee, and about 30 or 40 others. For about three years, at that point, I had spent more time riding my bike with skaters than with bikers. I would actually play SKATE with them, doing skate tricks on my freestyle bike. So I could already to BMX nollies, no-complys (footplant to 180), and half-Cabs, backside bonelesses, among other things. We were always bouncing ideas back and forth.

For 2 or 3 years, BMX vert riders had been doing 50/50’s on vert, double peg grinds, and sometimes feeble grinds- front wheel/back peg or bashguard grinds. Both were skate tricks taken to bikes. As us BMX freestylers saw more skaters boardsliding rails or ledges, either in real life or in videos, we were wondering how to do the bike version of that. As crazy as it sounds now, double peg grinds on street hadn’t been invented yet. There’s a first time for everything. Back then most riders either rode alone, or in small groups, on street. The only BMX media was the monthly magazines, and two or three videos a year, which were usually pretty dorky still. Us riders were just beginning to make our own, self-produced videos, and there were only a few. The real BMX media was still the magazines, that’s what counted. There was no way to share ideas on video or in photos, like everyone does now on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or elsewhere on the internet. We didn’t take photos or video when we went out riding, we just rode. When I started bringing my S-VHS video camera to document some of our riding in 1990, a lot of riders thought it was creepy at first. “What are you shooting video for? You’re not a company,” they’d say. That’s how different the mindset was back then.

In the early months of 1990, a few riders were thinking about how to slide ledges and rails, like skateboarders did. A few guys had done feeble grinds with front wheel with bashguards grinding on ledges. In 1987, Ron Wilkerson did a photo sequence in Super BMX magazine, doing a front wheel/back peg grind on a tiny ledge, next to a set of 3 or 4 stairs. But hardly anybody read Super BMX. The idea hadn’t really caught on. So the general idea of figuring out some way to slide on ledges and rails was out there, but it wasn’t a major goal yet. Going into the summer of 1990, when almost no one had sponsorships, street riding was mostly jumping, wall rides, bank tricks, fakie wall rides, and things like that. Gaps weren’t a thing. Feeble grinds were new, nobody did rail grinds yet. When we went wandering around, we mostly looked for banks to ride.

We wondered how to grind a rail, like skaters. Did we tweak our front wheel over a rail, and try to slide on the bashguard or sprocket a little bit, like a skateboard boardslide? Or did we actually try to bunnyhop, point the front wheel down, and land both axle pegs on a rail? That seemed nuts at the time, and a good way to really wreck yourself. No one had been serious enough to go past basic feeble grinds on little ledges at that point. The NorCal guys led street riding in the early and mid 80’s, but the San Diego guys were leading the charge in the late 80’s, guys like Dave Voelker, Eddie Roman, Pete Augustin, Vic Murphy, and Brad Blanchard, among others.

I was thinking about peg grinds before the skate tour. And had tried to get on small ledges a couple of times, heading at a ledge at a 90 degree angle, doing a little bunnyhop 90, then trying to land on the ledge. It never worked. I had tiny, knurled, screw on, GT pegs then, less than 3 inches long, I think. So there wasn’t much peg to land on. Pegs were still really small, at that point, used only for flatland tricks, or for grinds on vert ramps. Pegs were still evolving.

As you’ve figured out by now, I tried to axle stall on that ledge, at 2 am or so, behind the gas station, in the middle of nowhere in Texas. I rode straight at the ledge, head on, did a 90 bunnyhop, and came close to getting my pegs on the ledge. After a handful of sketchy tries, Mark said, “Why don’t you ride along side of it, and then hop up on it?” I didn’t have a good answer. It seemed like cheating, which was stupid, but that’s how it felt. Vert riders rode up the transition, then turned 90 degrees, to slide on coping, so I was doing the same thing, because that seemed to be the way it “should be done.”

I took Mark’s advice, and rode up parallel to the ledge, hopped up, and touched both pegs to the ledge, but didn’t stay up. I didn’t grind, but I instantly knew it was possible. The little light in my brain flicked on, “This is totally possible!” I’m pretty sure I made a funny face. I did one or two more, and managed to grind both pegs on the ledge for a couple of inches. I got that giddy feeling of stoke, and Mark tripped out, he’d never seen a BMXer grind a ledge before. No one had, that I knew of, I’d never seen or heard of anybody doing a 50/50 on a BMX bike on a ledge. And I was suddenly doing it. We sessioned that little ledge for maybe half an hour, I think, and I was doing double peg grinds for maybe 6 or 8 inches by the time we left the gas station.

About another 30 miles east on I-10 we got a room for the night. The next morning, we went and checked out a big ditch area under the freeway overpass, near our hotel. In it were some banks, and also some old, rusted, gigantic steel I-beams. I was able to do double peg grinds on them as well, but only for two or three inches, without any wax. They were really dry. After a quick little session, Mark and I hopped into the blue dually, and headed on East.

That afternoon, in Houston, we picked up the two, young, amateur vert skaters, kids named Mike Crum and Chris Gentry. That “day” turned into a 30 hour straight drive, of which I drove 27 hours. We hit Atlanta during the Friday afternoon rush hour, and I was so tired I was doing head nods in traffic. But we made it to Stone Mountain, Georgia, and set up the ramp as it was getting dark. At Stone Mountain we met the 5th member of our team, Florida pro skater Buck Smith. After a really good night’s sleep, we headed to Stone Mountain, where the skaters did a week of skate demos, 4 or 5 shows a day, on the mini ramp. I think it was over 4th of July weekend. But that’s a story for another day.

We did find an indoor skatepark, skateboards only, and I took the guys to session there a couple of nights. One night, just as they were closing, they let me hit it with my bike. Mark had been telling them I could do 50-50’s on a bike, which was, of course, impossible then. I found a little hubba going up the side of a mellow bank, and did about 4 or 5 double peg grinds, which tripped out Mike and Chris, since they hadn’t seen me do them yet, and the Atlanta local skaters. But that was the only time they let me ride there.

When I got back to Huntington Beach, in late July, I found the red ledge in the shot above, and set up my video camera to get the shot, just to see what the peg grinds looked like. I shot the side view above, and a head on shots as well, and used both in The Ultimate Weekend, when I edited the video, and put it out in October of 1990. I think I shot the video above in early August of 1990. I honestly didn’t think much of it. I thought I completely sucked at that point, and I knew double peg grinds couldn’t be too hard if I could do them. I just happened to learn them before they got popular.

About a month later, I got video of John Povah doing the first ice pick grind I’d ever seen, on a little rail into a pool. In a recent podcast, John said Keith Treanor did it first, but they day I saw it, it was John pulling it, so I got video of him. Not long after, I got a shot of Keith Treanor doing a double peg grind down a small handrail down 5 steps, the first double peg grind on a rail, down steps, in a video.

As it turned out, the summer of 1990 was the year of double peg grinds being taken to BMX street, on ledges and rails. Here are the double peg street grinds that spread the idea to the rest of the BMX world over the summer and fall of 1990. That was the summer that double peg grinds on ledges and rails were captured on video, and shown to other BMXers. In 1991, Eddie Roman put out the video Headfirst, with Mat Hoffman, and Mat did this gigantic rail, about 20 steps long, in a big double peg grind, and took the idea to a whole ‘nother level. It was that shot that put rails into play in BMX street, and the trick escalated from there.

Dennis McCoy, in the Eddie Roman produced 2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man, at 5:40, does the first double peg street grind, on a rail, on video, next to a walkway. He even does a can-can. Kaarlo Wik, at 1:53 in this segment of The Dirt Bros. video, does a long double peg grind on a ledge. He also does the same the same trick, on the same ledge, in Bully’s Slow Ride video. Those three videos came out in the summer of 1990, to the best of my knowledge.

In mid October of 1990, I put out my first self-produced BMX freestyle video, The Ultimate Weekend. That had the other three double peg tricks I mentioned. First there was my double peg on the ledge, at 23:10, which I now know is the 3rd double peg on a ledge in a video. I really wasn’t sure when I started this blog post. Then came John Povah doing the first ice pick grind on a rail, in a video, at 32:43, at the Regional Pool in Cerritos. Then Keith Treanor with the first double peg rail grind down steps in a video, at 33:11, at the Santa Ana Civic Center. So that’s the double peg grinds in videos, from the summer and fall of 1990, the summer this foundational trick first appeared in BMX videos. Even then, double peg grinds on street were still a weird, technical, outlier trick. Riders who saw these videos knew they were possible, but they didn’t get popular… yet.

It would take one more double peg grind down a rail, a BIG mother fuckin’ rail, to make the trick explode. In the spring or early summer of 1991, Eddie Roman put out Heaadfirst, the single most influential BMX video EVER produced. No other video has, or can come close, to the influence Headfirst had. In that video, Mat Hoffman did a few rail grinds, down bigger rails, beginning at 7:36. Later, at 36:40 he does a flat to kinked rail, then at 37:20 Mat does a double peg grind down a 19 or 20 step rail, you can see his forks bend form the force, and he rides away from it. While Headfirst is mainly remembered at the video where Mat basically showed the world the next 20 years of BMX vert riding, the rail grinds he did also said, “OK boys, handrails are now in play. Go get ‘em.” BMX rail grinds on street exploded in the years after Headfirst, and they have been a staple street trick ever since, as progression continued.

I started doing research on this post after listening to the recent Unclicked podcast with John Povah, where they dug into John getting the first on video for an ice pick grind. Thirty three years after producing that video, I realized the little double peg grind I did on a ledge, was one of the first 2 or three on video, and I basically watched several videos to see who else had done double peg grinds in 1990. Like many of the posts I’ve written over the years, this one grew as I started writing it, so I tried to focus just on double peg or 50/50 grinds, in BMX street. I learned some from writing this post, and I hope some of you get something out of reading it. Thanks for checking out my Substack, where I will be writing on many subjects form now on, including Old School BMX freestyle topics. If you subscribe (it’s free), these posts will come to your email, where you can delete the dumb ones, and check out any that sound interesting.