My Parents' Basement

Being somewhat of a fossil in BMX years, I've gotten to experience the evolution of BMX bike parts that's taken place due to a combination of the needs of the riders and the improvement of technology over the last 15 years.  Today products are light, strong and innovative.  Companies have began stepping outside of the box and implementing ideas that now seem like common sense(smaller sprockets, removable brake mounts, etc).  In the mid 90s, manufacturers responded to the riders going higher and landing harder by welding steel everywhere they found space to avoid frames and parts cracking and failing.

While I was at my parents' house recently I took home a few of my old parts from a corner of their messy basement to photograph them as an homage to an age of BMX that was mostly large, heavy and shiny.

Peregrine Super Pro wheels dominated the market in the early-mid 90s.  They offered one of the first reliable(relatively speaking) sealed bearing hubs on the market.  Getting a new set of Super Pros meant that you'd be the envy of everyone you rode with.  Most other wheel manufacturers spent their time trying to mimic Peregrine's Super Pro wheels(think current cell phone makers vs. the iPhone).

Although they were the best that the market offered, Peregrine Super Pros would be considered terrible by today's standards.  First, they were heavy - unnecessarily large flanged hubs that were almost always coupled with triple walled rims.  Titanium spokes were a myth that everyone had heard about but never seen.  Before 14mm axles came along, Standard Byke Company had the market cornered with their 3/8" axles that would last months doing grinds compared to other axles that had an average life span of about an hour and a half.  Riders were constantly breaking, bending and stripping axles which in turn broke bearings and ruined the inside of hubs.  Finding this wheel again brought back fond memories and white-hot rage all at the same time.

This is a sprocket that has 44 teeth.  Many have seen pictures,  heard tales and even doubted it's existence.  Like a pterodactyl.  Today's equivalent of the the ol' 44 only has 25 teeth and is almost half of the size and less than half of the weight.  If your 44 tooth sprocket was less than 1/4" thick than you may as well have been turning your chain with a paper plate.  The leverage of these large sprockets made them easy to bend and made dropping in on any quarter pipe over five feet a challenge because you often neglected the fact that the satellite dish between your feet was going to flip you over the bars when it caught the coping on the way in.

It took BMX ten years to realize that relatively decreasing the number of teeth on both the rear hub and the sprocket made pedaling the bike feel exactly the same without the weight and problems of their heavier counterparts.

Another revolutionary product of BMX in the 90s was the bashguard.  Groups of riders could be seen jumping and slamming their sprockets onto any inanimate object they could find with no worries of snapping their chains.  Street sign?  Sprocket stall.  Picnic table?  Sprocket stall.  Loading dock?  Sprocket to 50/50 stall.  If I'm not mistaken, this particular bashguard was made by Haro and weighs approximately 75lbs.

I'd also like to draw attention to my choice of stickers that adorn this gigantic slab of aluminum.  S&M was and still is one of the best selling, most well respected companies in BMX.  No embarrassment there.  Same goes for Hoffman.  UGP was wildly popular in the 90s as a BMX clothing and softgoods company that still sponsors some riders today.  Fishbone does not merit the same level of brand loyalty.  I remember receiving that sticker with the purchase of Fishbone's UFO - an anodized aluminum soup can that served to route your brake cables so that your handlebars could spin freely ala Odyssey's Gyro.  It was terribly clunky and problematic and as an added bonus it looked ridiculous.


Shaun "Goldie" Butler was one of the top dirt riders in the 90s.  My memory of him consists of dyed blond hair, an S&M jersey, Sheep Hills and double barspins.  These were his signature handlebars that have since been slightly modified and had their named changed to the "Medium" bars.  As a testament to S&M, I'm pretty sure these bars still have a couple of years left in them.  $25 shipped.

BMX forks have made some of the biggest advancements in the last fifteen years.  The pair on the bottom of the pile shown here was a set of secondhand Hutch Racing forks that were bent before I got them.  In the mid nineties it was still acceptable to ride street and trails using racing parts.  BMX freestyle hadn't completely separated itself from racing like it is now, so there was still a lot of overlap with the parts that people rode. 

I believe the pair in the middle are from a Hoffman Condor circa 1996-97ish.  Internal machining be damned.  They were much stronger than a pair of race forks at about twice the weight.  And at the time they were worth that weight in gold.  Finally, on top is a pair of Hoffman Taj forks.  I had 2-3 pairs of them and two Taj frames that together would allow you to ride directly through a concrete wall completely unscathed.  On the bottom of the fork legs behind the dropouts are what was known as "peg bosses".  These were basically solid steel cylinders with a hole in the center that you would put a bolt through to attach your pegs to instead of putting them on your axles.  Rather than improving the hubs, this was the solution to crushed bearings and broken axles.  The industry didn't have the Dew Tour and beef jerky money then, so at the time this was the most cost effective solution.  An extra $10 for peg bosses meant not spending $25 every few weeks for a new axle.

I hope for some this was a short walk down memory lane and for others it makes you appreciate the products that BMX companies are producing today.  For years mountain and road bike companies have had the resources and the mindset to take innovative risks that had the potential to fail or completely change the way parts functioned and looked.  Pivotal seats, removable gyro tabs, mid style bottom brackets and cassette hubs are a blessing.