From the file of Things You Didn't Know About Jim Boswell and
Probably Wouldn't Believe Anyway: I was born in Brooklyn, New
York, New York. Used to live on Flatbush Avenue, as a matter of
fact. Luckily for me, however, my parents saw the wisdom in nearly
immediately removing me to the suburbs, thus saving me from a
lifetime of being beaten up by genuinely tough children.
I don't remember very much about those Flatbush days, but I do
clearly recall the day Mom and Dad took me to the New York Museum
of Natural History. I was toddling down the great entrance hall
when I chanced to look up at the ceiling. Doing so nearly frightened
me to death right then and there. Dangling on improbably skinny
wire, right above my head, was a blue whale. It stretched the
entire length of the hall, larger than a herd of elephants, weighing
probably a couple hundred tons. Running down the hall, screaming,
hoping I would make it out before the beast fell on me, I slammed
right into the plaque describing the blue whale. "The blue
whale," it said, "the largest animal on earth, subsists
entirely on microscopic plankton."
What the heck? How can the largest mammal on earth keep from starving when all it has to eat is some stuff so tiny it can't be seen without a microscope? Well, it's got to eat a lot of it. It was apparent to me, even in my infancy, that this was a concept I would see again and again. The next exhibit I saw was a giant squid choking the life out of a different kind of whale. The strength and grace of the squid mesmerized me, and I vowed that one day, the power of the giant squid would be mine. But that's another story. (And it's an inside joke for the readers who knew that I was Jack Baruth, former owner of "Squidco" and writer of the Squid fiction---JB)
BMX racing as we know it today is a lot like the blue whale. The
National scene is an impossibly complex and exciting circus, full
of big-name sponsorship and cable-TV roads to glory, but it needs
to eat to live. In fact, there's a kind of "food chain"
in BMX, and it works like this: Imagine a big pyramid. At the
top is the NBL #1 Pro. Right below him are all the pros who didn't
make it to #1. Those pros are necessary, because you need a lot
of pros in order for "#1 Pro" to mean anything. Below
them are even more Superclass and Expert racers who will never
turn Pro. The next level down is made up of all the Rookie and
Novice riders who don't have the skills to turn Expert. Finally,
at the bottom of the pyramid, you have an enormous number of kids
who don't race. These kids are the most important part of the
food chain, because they buy all the bikes and parts that let
the big BMX companies make enough money to sponsor a #1 Pro. If
John Purse is the blue whale of BMX, then all the kids who buy
Redlines but never take them to a track are the plankton.
Happily for Mr. Purse, and for us, the numbers of plankton riders
are growing. More and more kids are choosing BMX-style bikes to
ride around the neighborhood. Some of them will end up racing.
Some of them won't. We need them all. I like talking to, and riding
with, new riders. When I meet kids who are just getting into BMX
and are absolutely thrilled with it, I feel like a Wall Street
investor watching the Dow hit another thousand-point mark. All
the years I spent riding a BMX bike when it seemed our sport was
on its way to oblivion, the sad summers of five-moto local races,
the bike shops who shoved twenty-one-speed junk down the throats
of kids who just wanted something to ride to the park---all of
that is paid back, with interest, when I see new riders enjoying
the wonders of BMX for the first time. There are times when my
reconstituted knee doesn't want to go riding, and times when I
frankly don't feel equal to going out and risking my neck on local
jumps made of crooked logs and plywood, but I feel that if I can
just get this generation of riders involved in our sport I can
sit down and relax. I'll replace myself with hundreds of Matt
Pohlkamps, thousands of young riders who want to make BMX their
own.
You can imagine, then, how I felt when I heard that a group of
young riders in Westerville, Ohio, had persuaded their city fathers
to build a small set of "trails" in a local park. I
couldn't get over there fast enough. What I saw upon arriving
was a scene right out of "Rad": somewhere between ten
and fifteen kids, ages six to sixteen, throwing themselves with
abandon at log-filled dirt jumps. I figured that they'd resent
having some old guy barging in on their riding, but in actuality
they were pleased to see me and couldn't stop talking about what
a great "scene" they'd come up with. They'd been calling
all the right people, and making all the right promises, and as
a result had a safe place to get together and ride. None of these
kids were racers, although several of them clearly had the talent
to race if they wanted to. Nobody had an aluminum frame, or SPD,
or a suspension fork. The jumps and the variations were familiar
to anyone who has spent any time at a set of small trails: one-footers,
nac-nacs, one-handers. The jumps were set close together and weren't
designed to be taken at speed. For me, the atmosphere of nostalgia
was nearly stifling. I pictured myself, not as Jim Boswell, but
as I was ten years ago, riding one-piece cranks and willing to
try anything on a bike.
I had my second-generation bunnyhop stand with me, so I broke
it out and encouraged them to try it. Even though I was the only
rider present who had ever seen a bunnyhop stand, most of the
kids could do ten or twelve inches on it. The best of the bunch
cleared twenty-four-inches without too much effort. One of the
older guys had a wooden ramp, so we dragged that out as well.
Night fell, but these kids kept riding, hitting their ramp flawlessly,
like bats flying through a twisting cave.
I drove home that night in the highest of spirits.
After all, if these kids were making it happen, didn't that mean
that it was happening all through America? Was there an army of
ready-to-race BMX fanatics, just waiting for a local track and
a chance to race? I fervently hoped that the answer was yes.
I returned to the "spot" the following week, this time
bringing along my brother to videotape the events. I had been
afraid that I would arrive and see a bulldozed patch of ground,
but if anything the scene was more vibrant than before. This time,
more than twenty kids were filtering in and out of the jumping
area. The jumps had grown, and the riders were flying. It seemed
that nothing could go wrong. I hadn't even really noticed the
boom box sitting at the base of a nearby tree.
The local kids, like most BMX riders, wanted to hear their tunes when they rode, so someone had brought a CD boombox along. The featured CD was by some guys called the Insane Clown Posse. I'll be honest. I don't like that kind of music. If I want to get hyped up, I'll listen to the Pat Metheny Group play a live version of "Last Train Home". I wouldn't own the kind of music these young riders liked to hear. But I fully respected their right to play it, just like I never complain at Nationals when they play country music during practice. The sport is more important than a disagreement about tunes.
I looked up from tightening some kid's headset to see a couple
of tackily-dressed adults chewing out an older rider. "Turn
than music down!" one of them screamed at him. I figured
this rider would haul off and hit the intruding square, but instead
he agreed and turned the boom box off, apologizing for the noise
in a way that would have done Neville Chamberlain proud. It wasn't
enough. You see, these nice folks didn't want BMX kids in their
local park. They couldn't give us any solid reason---we just weren't
welcome. I explained that the city had given the kids the land
to build jumps on. "Are you an adult?" one of these
dimwits asked.
"No," I replied.
"How old are you?" she snarled.
"Twenty-five," said I.
"So you're an adult."
"As I said before, NO. I'm a BMX rider. I'm here to ride
with these kids on the property the city has allocated them. We
won't play any more music. Please let us be." But that wasn't
going to happen. Before too long, there was a group of chattering
suburbanites blocking the entrance to our spot, using their size
and "adult authority" to bravely intimidate the eleven-year-old
kids who wanted to ride. They moved aside for crazy Jim Boswell
and his Land Rover, but the minute I turned the corner they were
back in business, yelling at kids, causing trouble, acting like
the delinquents they accused us of being.
Thus the stage is set for battle. Determined young kids, doing
everything right, being a lot more polite and decent than I would
have been at their age, against some local homeowners who just
don't like kids having fun. It sounds like the plot for a Disney
live-action movie, but in Westerville, Ohio, it is reality, fought
out against a backdrop of city councils and physical intimidation
of
children.
Who will succeed? I don't know, but I do know that if that "scene"
and others like it are shut down, the number of young riders who
want to race BMX and buy BMX products will sink like the Bismarck.
And when that link in the food chain is broken? I'd guess that,
at that point, the National scene will stop resembling the blue
whale and take on an uncanny
resemblance to the dinosaurs. Soon to be extinct.
The Westerville story has had some odd twists and turns since I wrote this. The city closed that particular area, much to the joy of the local old folks; however, they did build a series of jumps behind the local fire station. Those have now been torn down. The most bizarre thing about all this was the feedback I got from some of the Webpage readers. They told me that the young Westerville riders "sucked" because they weren't riding the super-size trails down the street. Another example of how some people in our sport spend most of their time trying to discourage others from riding. Unfortunately, in the long run, they have succeeded, and grassroots BMX in Westerville is on the respirator---JB