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Five years ago, the land where the riders now maintain a complex course of dirt trails and sculpted jumps was an overgrown, trash-ridden field inhabited by street people. Without any strictly organized effort among themselves, the BMX scenesters slowly cleared the weeds off the halfacre of land and landscaped a circular system of jumps with a basketball court in the center. They have never asked for help from the city to build the park; furthermore, they don’t want it. “If we asked for people like that to get involved, there’d be too much red tape. It’s like art. We shouldn’t be talking about it in some hall,” says James [who due to the nature of his squatting activities wishes to use his first name only, along with his comrades]. The riders say they have had numerous landscaping tools stolen from the park and now keep them safely hidden, though they won’t say how. “Tools appear,” Mike mysteriously explains, adding that many riders will do their jump-sculpting by the moonlight. “Yeah, digging in the night is bad,” Ed enthusiastically agrees. Though the park is completely free of trash and obviously cared for, the cyclists say they have never assigned jobs or set rules about its maintenance. “The most organized we get is when we play basketball,” says Mike.
One thing they can all agree on, though, is that BMX trail riding is not like any other sport, especially not other types of cycling. “This type of riding came about from seeing people ride motorcycles,” says Mike. “It’s Evil Knievel-type stuff.” According to the guys at Ninth Street, BMX racing is apparently completely different from BMX trail riding. “It’s silly,” says Mike of his one trip to the local Capitol City BMX racetrack. “Those people wouldn’t even get this because this is so bike-oriented. People who race don’t ride trails, they spend all their time [working out] in the gym,” adds Ed. This us-versus-them theme extends mainly, however, to mountain bike riders. “This scene is the polar opposite of the mountain bike scene. It’s a real yin & yang,” says James. “People here will ride a bike until it doesn’t work anymore. The people who buy $7,000 bikes buy them because they cost $7,000.”
The do-it-yourself spirit of the Ninth Street riders carries over to their approach to the sport. “Riding out here is about trying to get a style. You can be muscling your bike or you can go through smoothly,” says Troy. “Yeah, it’s all about the way you flow,” agrees Ed. “It’s more along the lines of surfing or skateboarding,” explains Mike. The skateboarding and BMX cliques used to be at odds, but James points out that they now have a common enemy. “We’re both completely annoyed at the rollerbladers,” he says, explaining that in the professional circuit most bladers are prepubescent. “To be a pro at anything should not take less than four months. The guys who ride pro have seriously paid their dues,” he complains. BMXers themselves are not free from scrutiny either. “The BMX stuff that’s on ESPN right now has the whole scene in a frenzy. It’s selling out,” says James.
Although the Ninth Street riders are only squatters in their little park, they seem comfortable that they have struck an unspoken agreement with the city to leave them alone. “You don’t have to be a genius to look around and see that this is a lot of work,” says James. “They’re very don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The riders have every reason to take pride in their efforts, too. Austin is one of the few towns in the U.S. with an active BMX trail park, and several of the Ninth Street crew moved to town from points as distant as Vancouver to be a part of it. Dave, a Phoenix transplant more accustomed to bone-dry soil, points out that Austin has the perfect mix of rain and sunshine for sculpting BMX jumps. “I have to move again,” he says with a sigh, “but I’ll miss Ninth Street more than anything else in Texas.” – K.V.
This article appears in May 23 • 1997 and May 23 • 1997 (Cover).