BMX, Where it all Began

I have a special place in my heart for BMX bikes, even though I haven’t ridden one since I was a kid. Lots of adults do, as proved by our recent X-games, but for some reason I’m stuck on big bikes now. I imagine a lot of us still remember BMXs fondly though. My first bike was a Huffy “banana bike” - bless my mom and dad - but I wanted a BMX so bad I could taste it. They came though before long and got me an awesome chrome one with pads, hand brakes, knobbies, the whole package. I loved that bike. Blue tires to match the seat, grips and pads. I don’t know why they were so color coordinated, but it was bliss.

Back then I never even knew what “BMX” meant - I bet a lot of people still don’t. I’ve looked into. It stands for Bicycle Motocross, which seems dumb, when you think about it - one kind of bike pretending to be another. The fact is that these early off-road bikes were designed to fill a need, which was kids riding their bannana bikes off road to emulate their favorite Motocross heros. When you’re a kid who wants to be a motorcyclist, I guess you get on a bike and make engine sounds. I know I did. Rumor has it (Wikipedia has it) that the trend blew up because of one particular scene in one particular movie: The kids racing bikes in On Any Sunday. Given our movie and TV worshipping culture, I don’t doubt it. And one look at this video and you can see why. This is the clip. Awesome! Keep in mind that this is 1971, and these kids aren’t riding BMX bikes, because they have not yet been invented. It was the effect of this clip that spurred the modifications of the banana seat bikes to create the BMX.

I can remember riding my BMX through home-made trails in the woods all the time, bucking roots and logs and ripping down loose-dirt descents, just like I do now on a mountain bike. I’m thinking of 1984 or so, just when the first mountain bikes were coming to the US market. For a great history of the mountain bike get KLUNKERS.