FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

You know what I like about all these FAT-'zines? it gives me a nice timeline of things that happened years ago. I couldn't really remember when we started putting on the extra FAT-JAM to start off the season. Now I know. 22 April 1990. This means we've done a "Mini-FAT-JAM" for 22 years now.

It was dubbed Mini-FAT-JAM as it was a smaller version of the actual FAT-JAM. Mario Schepers seriously messed up his ankle by going Sky Hi after being towed by a moped to get some extra speed.

It was nuts and the pictures show it. We still talk about it every time we hang out at OJA and the pics help remember. What else did we have in this issue?

6 airs by Mat Hoffman on that Coca Cola quarterpipe in Bercy and boy did he go high.

Frans Swinkels got an interview, and we made a photo trip around the world starting in the USA and ending in France.

We went to Nantes, France for a contest, and the Pingel-Maier duo took care of the Tropica Contest #2. The poster was a fold out promotional piece to wear a helmet. Zonder Helm, Kop Kapot.  Some Germans still remember that one as their favorite Dutch.

Lee Reynolds and Dirtbro Jimmy Arrington have an interview, Matt Pingel took care of some pages, we had crosswords again, the Rad vs Lame list and the Believe it, or Not!?-news section.

The free stickers came from RAP X and a NO SMOKING campaign. Flip through it, you'll find a photo and will say: "No shit!"

With 92 pages we were allowed to call this a double issue. Most 'zines at that time did not have more than 48 pages and FAT was establishing a name for itself in the underground BMX media world.

Mat Hoffman made the cover and rightfully so. He had just performed a trick in Bercy that noone had seen before. A backflip on a quarterpipe! And not a low one either. Way out of the top of the Coca Cola quarter pipes. Sick!

We're getting more American stuff in the 'zine so from now on the FAT issues should become more interesting for our American visitors.

Ralf Maier and Frank Schnuetgen did a Cali trip in the winter of '89/'90 and showed what it was like down there (page28 - p33).

Vic Murphy wrote a story about the 2-HIp comp at Trend. Mark and Chris Noble sent some Cali stuff from their trip and we also had an interview with 2 Hip announcer Kevin Martin.

The other interviews in the double issue are with Klaus Dyba, Thomas Fritscher and Patrick van Wolferen. We sat on our asses too long and had collected lots of material for this one. 

Divorze posse live, Lageja '90 contest report, a Life's a Beach, Ack 'zine and SKY HI sticker, contest info, 'zine reviews, Stokebros, Mookhoek mini, rad-lame list, Tropica DM, Skatehouse visit, Zoetermeer spot, BMX crosswords, ......

Cover boy Ralf Maier is designing skateparks for a living now. I did a lot of trips with Ralf, some of them are covered in the issues of FAT-'zine. Ralf got an interview in issue 16 and so did Vic Murphy, Mike Golden, Sander Cornelissen and Gerrit Koornwinder.

Back in 1990 you sent a letter to the other side of the world with the questions you had. You were hoping in a few weeks you would see a reply. Vic came through with the answers and I typed them out. He even put some pics in the envelop so I xeroxed them and then sent the pics back to him. Gotta love the e-mail of present time.

Matt Pingel contributed a lot of pages and went sandboarding. We had reports on a skate comp in Valkenswaard, a freestyle contest in Leiden, the Wath Jam, Spanjer's skate comp in Hengelo, and a concert report about the Digital Underground.

The free sticker came from Invert magazine (UK, now RIDE). We checked "The U" which was a crazy dirt spot where you rolled down a huge hill and did a fly-out at the end. We reviewed the following 'zines in issue #16: UHS, RIDE -'zine, RADAzine, Albert 'zine and Mental Chaos. Remember those?

Pages 51-63 show a review of places we visited in 1989. Looks like we were nomads back then already.