FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

Name: Jonathan Sherwood
Hometown: Durban (South Africa), now living Durham (UK).
Started riding BMX in: Had a BMX from a very young age but only properly discovered BMX in 1992.
Number of BMX bikes in your collection: 35 completes, 14 frames, and a whole lot of random parts and race gear.

Being from South Africa originally, what were popular BMX brands when you started?
Jonathan Sherwood: BMX was huge in SA in the 80's, so all of the major brands from that era were popular (GT, Mongoose, Kuwahara, Hutch, Patterson, etc). In the 90's however there were absolutely no BMX bikes for sale in SA, so you could only get bikes from mail order stores like Dans Comp, ACE, and

Name: Jason Teraoka
Hometown: Kapaa, Hawaii
Started riding BMX in: 1976
Number of bikes in the collection: 7

Do you remember the moment that you decided to start collecting BMX memorabilia?
Jason Teraoka: The seed was definitey planted around 2006 when I pulled a complete 1978 Motomag JAG from a bulk trash pile at the curb. I had that bike stashed for years. It wasn’t until 2015 that I finally gave it a soft restoration and got it into rideable shape and because of that, acquiring parts and collecting sparked. Soon after, a friend gave me two of his childhood bikes (1978 LRV and Team Mongoose) and another bike was pulled from a bulk trash pile (another 1978 Team Mongoose). It was then that the bug fully bit. Collecting went into hyperspace once I moved to California from Hawaii and started going to swaps and shows and meeting some great people in the community here.

At this moment, do you wish you had started collecting earlier?
Jason Teraoka:For sure! I’ve heard so many stories about the glory days from the established collecting

Name: Johan Janssens
Hometown: Boechout, Belgium
Started riding BMX in: 1982 my first season in competition racing.
Website: www.jjrbmx.com (Hutch BMX, JJR BMX, old school Pro Winner and more)
Bike: Quiet Resistant/JJR, Denver Special 24”

What's your earliest memory of BMX?
Johan Janssens: Around 1981 when I saw a kid riding his BMX bike on the other side of the street and wished I had one too. Later I got a Raleigh Ultra Burner.

Name: William LaRoque aka Larock
Hometown: Long Beach, CA

What's your earliest memory of BMX?
Larock: Seeing On Any Sunday for the first time and wanting an MX kit for my hand me down Lime Green StingRay.

Who were some of the BMX riders that you admired back in the day?
Larock: That’s a tough one! I was kind of Partial to the SE Factory Boys because they had such close ties to Long Beach, BUMS track was less than a mile away from where I grew up. Scot, Thomsen & PK of course. But who could deny the Panther, Dain, Utterback, King, Atherton and all of the others that graced the pages of our favorite magazines.

Name: Brian Gutierrez
Hometown: Venice, California born and raised but migrated to Orange County in the late 80's.
Started riding BMX in: Friends of mine I rode with and me started calling it BMX in 1972. Prior to that point we just rode our Sting Rays. We were emulating Evel Knievel whenever possible. Starting with use of a small wooden car ramp we would attempt new records over an ever longer, ever taller stack of old banana boxes. When that lost its sparkle we went to the dirt! At first it was just to find bigger stuff to jump off of or over the top of.

Then we discovered we liked the dirt. The trails that went along with the jumping spots were just as fun

Name: Pat A Lar
Hometown: Brighton, UK
Started riding BMX in: 1990
Number of bikes in the collection: I’ve 2 & 3/4 complete and a couple of framesets at the moment but that is always changing. I’ve downsized a bit as I prefer Quality over Quantity.

What was the first project bike that got you into collecting BMX bikes?
Pat A Lar: First Old School bike I built was a 1983 Torker Magnum. I bought it locally and did the usual newbie mistakes by having it rechromed, covering it in reissue parts and it was all over in a couple of weeks. This was a significant point for me as I soon realised that there was so much more to the history

EVENT BMX CROSS ACEH TAMIANG

Name: Woody Itson
Hometown: Keller, TX
Started riding BMX in: The 70’s
Number of bikes in the collection: I have 15 complete bikes and some frames and parts that may or may not ever turn into anything

Do you remember the moment that you decided to start collecting BMX memorabilia?
Woody Itson: I didn’t actually decide to collect any BMX stuff to be honest.  In fact there was one point where all I had was the one bike that I was riding and some miscellaneous parts and uniforms in a box. 

Name: Grant Stone
Hometown: Newbury, Berkshire, U.K.
Started riding BMX in: 1980
Number of bikes in the collection: 8

Do you remember the moment that you decided to start collecting BMX memorabilia?
Grant Stone: I’ve never really stopped riding BMX, so I have always had a current BMX in my possession. But I guess I started buying old school stuff about 9 years ago when I had the idea of replicating my Skyway TA that I sold in 1988 and regretted ever since.

At this moment, do you wish you had started collecting earlier?

Name: Michael Gamstetter
Hometown: Dayton, Ohio, USA
Started riding BMX in: 1978
Number of bikes in the collection: Currently, 5. At one time, 20+.

Do you remember the moment that you decided to start collecting BMX memorabilia?
Michael Gamstetter: Yes, it was around 1996 or 1997. It was a random thought that popped into my head while I was working. I thought it would be cool to find an old JMC or Torker, a pair of Oakley II grips in the box and a set of Reedy pedals (I eventually had all those.)