Klunking - Mountain Bike Racing - 1979 - Steve Fox
Vložit
- čas přidán 13. 01. 2021
- Thank you to the Marin Museum of Bicycling in Fairfax, California. It 2014 it was with their assistance that we were able to reconstruct this important piece of history: mmbhof.org
------------
This segment, hosted by Steve Fox and showcasing the founders of mountain bike racing, comes from the Paul Colardo collection in the William French Archive. Paul was one of 'Evening's' cameramen and producers.
Steve Kotton, cameraman on this shoot, had to testify in court over a lawsuit brought against KPIX by one of the riders. They claimed Steve was in the middle of the road on a turn, thus causing the rider to crash. The rider lost since video tape does not lie and Steve was on the side (you can see it in this segment).
It is believed this segment was edited by Jim Farney.
------------
If you like our videos please subscribe and consider joining our Patreon: / finding
You can find us on Facebook at: / eveningremembered
------------
Launched in 1976, the original 'Evening Magazine' ran for 14 years and was co-hosted by distinguish Japanese American journalist Jan Yanehiro for it's entire run on KPIX in San Francisco. For 10 of those years she was joined by Emmy and Grammy winning journalist Richard Hart. Other co-hosts included Emmy winning journalist Steve Fox, Erik Smith, and Mike Jerrick.
------------
'Evening Magazine' is owned by CBS. Our intention is to honor the history of this groundbreaking series and the people that made it possible.
------------
Finding ... is a project of television historian and archivist William French. From 2009 to 2016 William had the honor of working for Jan Yanehiro, Richard Hart, and 'Evening' producer Steve Kotton as their archivist at Academy of Art University. William now owns the archive they co-created. - Zábava
Gary Fisher on modifying bikes: “it’s come a long way and it’s going to go a long ways” boy was he right.
Before "OK Boomer" it was; OK guys now this is what we are going to do next.
Incredible foresight
Went from a dirty hippy sport to fancy rich posers sport...
amazing they had an interview with him that long ago. Prophetic!
@@hughdunbar9823 such a great video!
It's a good thing they insisted on proper safety gear: blue jeans, flannel shirt, shop goggles. That's what we wore riding dirt bikes too back in the day. Lolll. What an awesome video and solid background music!
"We don't need no stinkin' helmets."
Downhill jeans, of course!
Elbow and knee pads, but no helmets?
Don't forget a head bandana and work gloves.
That "I'd rather be KLUNKING" t-shirt is fire. I need one.
yeah, I was thinking of having one made up
I'm sold
Some younger kid would be like “ whats KLUNKING?” ,Well go ask your mom lol haha mom would explain down hill biking to their son. when the kid is thinking it’s something fucked up haha
It’s how I met your father hahah
Biking...
Downhill?
That is fucked up.
Strange how every sport has humble beginnings, and ends up overpriced and over competitive.
This crowd I could hang with, modern days, not so much..
I love the vibe here, everyone's encouraging and the innovation is widespread.
Have you mountain biked lately? In my outdoorsy town, it is a bunch of people having fun and almost everyone will give an encouraging word or lend you a tool, give directions, or anything you need.
A few observations: The wide handlebars, Gary Fisher being his visionary self, and a news reporter who displays a sense of innocent wonder instead of the current trend of cynical know-it-all-ism.
Yessss
The wonder is absolutely refreshing.
Incredible, isn't it? No mentioning of how dangerous, mad or illegal it is, what about women's racing and black awareness. No, just a bunch of people enjoying life with very simple means. How much they would HATE that nowadays.
Yeah isn't it lovely.
Miss those days. Although I wasn’t even born yet
praise the holy algorithm for it has shown us origins of the blessed MTB
I would have never found this gem. Algorithm was right this time!
It's like endless summer for MTB
I'm a little rusty on the timeline but some say it was jim thorpe ( the man and the town, Pa.) that started it.
The Google is all-knowing
All hail the algorithm
There is literally no telling how much pot has been smoked on that mountain ! Would have loved to have been there!
I was gonna say the same
Bet u the guy that clocked 4:22 as the fastest time was riding ripped haha
Tons, and tons, grown and smoked on Mt. Tamalpais . The Grateful Dead lived on the lower slope of Mt Tamalpais. A lot of pot grown in Mill Valley over the decades!! Back during this time a lot of LSD made in Marin County, a lot.
It's muddy in the winter, and dusty in the summer ;)
@@astrofive620 you got that right ;)
I see a bunch of guys having fun on their bikes the way that I think a lot of us did as kids. The bikes are nothing ground-breaking, there's no lust for super low weight or state-of-the-art materials. Just pure skill and fun on rust-bucket bikes. Seems like a better time in many ways.
I sill do this. I use a rigid frame when rolling down trails. No shocks or any fancy gear
You said it...everything is hyper accessorized ad nauseum these days.. not sure many younger people can even relate to valuing the experience over the possession.
so fucking cringe oh my god
I ride my road bike on trails sometimes. Totally fun but my wrists would definitely get bad arthritis if I did this consistently. Suspension is noice.
Yeah, everything these, days are so damn competetive
Imagine going back in time meeting these guys on a modern full-on enduro from 2021
No problem, Gary "The Fish" Fisher would say: "Yeah.. Yeah! See that's what I mean, man. It's gonna go a long way!"
😎
They would probably say
"Damn son where'd you find these?"
They’ll be like shit that’s way too expensive, I’ll keep my $15 bike, if I break it I’ll just buy another one
@@vipergts109 then you proceed to destroy them on their on tracks
That was my first thought too. Imagine showing up with a 12 inch suspension dh rig.
This should be played in all shops and bike forums where people claim that carbon lycra, droppers and bikes expensive more than car is a absolute necessity for enjoying the ride 😁
To be fair these guys are basically blasting down service roads
I recon droppers is a must tho. And disk brakes🤣 Apart from that, any bike would do
5:04
Yea, people need to make the most of whatever ride they got and just get out there. Price of top end bikes- over 10 k + ? It's not in there, they are still 2 wheels on a frame "without an engine".
Great piece of history. We used to put suspension forks from mopeds in our bicycles in the late 70's early 80's, here in Belgium.
That’s just Awesome
Genuis!
Yeah seen it done in uk in late 80s
Why?
Because we were young and having fun.
CZcams recommends so much bizarre shit and weird memes and it's great. But this is one of those really awesome vids that you don't forget. Great piece of history and so gnarly. These guys are OGs. Makes me appreciate my modern geometry and suspension on my bike a lot more
Great comment!
This video is the original memes, only difference is that it's on film, and these guys are serious !
Most importantly, AFIC, hydraulic disc brakes front& rear, front suspension and 29’er wheels. In the best physical condition of my life, I think i could have kicked ass climbing on a modern 29’er hard tail. Put a Tomac or an Overend on such a bike back then, they would have been untouchable DH, or XC. They were dominant on the bikes of their generation anyway.
respect your roots!! even with 6 inches of travel, dropper posts, hydraulic discs and electric motors, its still all about the fun and the speed and shredding w the homies, just like back then
Yeah , the technology sure has changed , but it's good to see , the crowds remain the same .
Yeah and fuck a helmet too! Fucking old school right there brother haha
@@yodog4313 fuck rules, wear what you want
@@yodog4313 i didn't even notice the lack of helmets, i was more alarmed they were doing all this wearing jeans lol
Intriguing connection you're making between mountain biking and electrically assisted mountain biking, I guess you're halfway right, even though ebiking does not provide the "being able to go wherever you want using your own power" that was mentioned here. But yes, I guess there will always be some connection between mtb and ebiking.
as someone who just got into mountain biking last year it is awesome to see where it all started, good stuff
Same!
Me too, always good to know your history and respect your elders!
Let this go to show you don't need the shiniest most expensive dual suspension mountain bike you can get just go out and ride and most importantly have fun.
Welcome to the best sport there is. Enjoy the ride!
expert tip!
take an old tire, cut out a 1.5 x3" section of the side wall. Make it two. put those in your repair kit.
If your out on the trail and a rock rips a hole in the sidewall of your tire, no matter how many tubes you have the tube will bulge out. So, take your handy sidewall patch, put it on the INSIDE of your tire. The tube psi should hold in place until you get home.
Expert bonus tip!
wrap electical tape around your handle bars. neve know when you need to tape a piece of tire boot in place.
Or other means. Myself I had it on my bar ends for cheap no slip in wet weather grip ( like 6-8 layers) that i could unravel if needed.
I gots tons of snake racers tips lol
It seems they are having more thrills and fun than todays mountain bikers.
The psychic phenomenon is called nostalgia (or "how to ruin the present moment" ;_). The core message: "Everything was better back in the old days...".
At the very least they weren’t having any less fun, that’s for sure! So cool to see.
Your right! Peoples generally suck today…
I like how it looks like they were not taking it too seriously and felt like silly chill fun
6:06 ..woah
I was a HUGE mountain bike fan in the mid 90s. I grew up in Wisconsin and toured the Trek factory around 1994, just before they bought out Kieth Bontrager, Gary Klein, Gary Fisher, etc. During the tour, I even met Wes Wilcox, the guy that originally designed the Trek 9000, 9200, 9500, etc T4C swingarm bikes back in the day. I met Gary Fisher at Penn Street Trek or whatever that bike shop was called in MSP during some event promoting the new GF Genesis geometry. Ill never forget him because he was wearing like this plaid 3 piece suit, a beret hat, and had a skinny goatee on his chin. Really nice guy, and he signed my GF Catalogue that day. I later bought a Cannondale Super V Raven frame and transferred my built Super V700 components onto the Raven (1st gen). Funny enough, I was made fun of back then (97-99 ish) when I used to race XC (I sucked... LOL) for having just a single cog front and the SRAM 8 speed rear cassette. My Raven weighed in just less than 24 lbs back then.
This brought back a LOT of memories of riding in the 90s. Good times!
"And if you fall down you don't get snow in your boots."
Absolute legend. 🤙
My goodness, I wasn’t aware how rock n roll these guys really were. That’s the spirit of mountainbiking right there! And it’s alive and kickin today!
Also, I didn’t know that the first mountain bike races were literally the same format as downhill races today.
Bingo. I'm 49 and outpacing younger riders on their expensive mountain bikes.
Yep they were rockers back then, I was writing AC/DC and Metallica with my thick black felt pen on the tree's yesterday by the big dirt jumps (which I jump at age 49 with my cheap hardtail and heavy metal t shirt on).
It's pure rock and roll.
Bless you.
1:24 woah 3:45
And I bet these guys were as competitive as hell , as well as hard as nails too, got to love the safety gear - getting through scrutineers must have been tough !
priceless blast from the past. arms and legs of steel, mustache, no helmet... perfect
You can say that again!!!!🙂
Part of what makes this best is that these guys were making these Frankenstein bikes at home.
The pioneers of mountain biking. Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchey, Gary Fischer, Charlie Kelly, John Frey.
& Jackie Phaelan
and every other kid who ever rode a bike, we were doing it in the 60's, they just went after the money
In the 70s in London we did something called Cycle Speedway. It wasn't the same as klunking of course, but we did modifications to our standard bikes: removed brakes, fitted cow-horn handlebars with rubber grips, fitted nobbly tyres on the wheels, single speed (no gears) low ratio for mad accelaration, cut-filed-capped any exposed threads.
The circuit was usually an oval dirt patch in the local woods of a large park area. The starting gate was made with two sticks in the ground and an old inner-tube stretched between them that could be released quickly. First to finish line in 4 laps, 4 bikes per race, teams of 4 or 2 riders competing with other teams. Lots of low angle sliding and push'n'shove through the two bends.
We had to use our feet as brakes on the ride to and from the "track". I remember we used the same bikes for smaller scale "downhill bombing", but these had brakes fitted.
This was all before any BMX or MTB. There was a more limited choice of bikes in those days: drop-handlebar racing bikes with various gear set ups, straight handlebar basic gears only or single speed or fixed wheel (now know as "fixie"), commuter bikes with panniers and Sturmy Archer hub gears or girl bikes without a high crossbar. If you had a bit of money, most of us didn't, then you could buy a new bike, but the vast majority of us had second-hand bikes or we built them ourselves from scraps of other bikes we would find at the local dump. The odd kid with money to burn might have bought a Raleigh Chopper bike to show off.
My dad used to ride down the mountains in California back in the 80's. Never used to understand why he enjoyed it so much besides the adrenaline rush. The sights you see. The dangerous paths where one wrong turn you'll die if you fall. Dad was living life to the fullest he could. I mean, if you were 15 years old and got told by a doctor that you were gonna die of skin cancer by the age of 21, what would you? My dad chose to do as much crazy shit he could while living in Los Angeles as a teen. He's 55 now. Crazy fucker still hasn't croked.
No fancy gear, big name sponsors, or purpose built stock bikes.
Just ingenuity, balls of a steel and the love of the game!
It’s June 5 2015, I’m traveling with a fellow mountain biker thru Fairfax in Marin county Ca. That morning we had helped a homeless teenager girl , bought her some shoe and clothing, and dropped her off at a women shelter. We stopped at a ice cream shop to enjoy , I spotted a huge bicycle across the street, turn out to be mountain bike museum. Turns out to be the a ceremony induction of all guys who started MTB , Gary Fischer, etc…they let us participate , even though is was open to the public the next day.
Good on ya to help out the las like that,.....and cool memories to boot.
I never thought I'd hear myself say this but; "....those were the days!"
can't go wrong with some Steve Miller Band riffs! These guys were the real deal. What days we've had!
This is a time when northern Californians were the type of people you wanted to hang out with… man, I miss those days
There’s still a couple out here. I swear it was the out of towners that moved here that gave it a different vibe.
i like how these 70s cruiser bikes are closer to modern mtb than they are to late 80s mtb. Just crazy how much tip-toeing around there was before settling on what already worked.
@@alias8125 The frame dimensions and angles of the cruiser bikes they're using in the video is identical to the dimensions that they've been using for the passed 10 years in MTB, with the frame running from the front down directly to meet the chassis where it back tire forks start.
Back then you rode what ya could afford and the huge selection that's almost endless wasn't there yet. It's really hard to make a decision when you have 99999999 choices lol
It’s because these guys rode downhill and downhill didn’t become a common thing until the 90’s. Bikes are for kids and in the 80’s most kids had never even seen a mountain. It was all about cross country then. The prosperity of the 90’s and the internet changed all that.
Lol even as a kid I used to be angry at the fact mtbs had unnecessary high straight top tubes when they should be slacker finally we have the common sense geometry
I remember being at the Mountain Bike World cup in the late 80s at Mount Snow Vermont, everyone all decked out in their expensive bikes and cycling gear and pushing their bikes up the first steep climb, all of a sudden i see this guy with a long beard and cheap kids helmet wearing cut off jeans pass everyone on a bike like this smiling the whole way up...👍 to that guy
Yes sir it’s about the Rider,I went to a mountain bike park with my hard tail $600 specialized pitch i can tell people where looking at my bike like omg. But I started busting big airs and bombing everything. When I came back up the lift operators where telling me I was ripping shit up.I look like a gangster some what but give me a SK8,Bodyboard,bike it’s on like Donkey Kong!!🤙🏽
Probably The Fish!
He clearly was an OG
My friend was on the cover of a bike magazine in the 80s they did a story about the reporter testing the latest bike on a mountain ride. He was enjoying the gears and working his way up the mountain when he gets passed by the mountain man of Pasadena (I just remembered the name) he was on a 20 inch schwinn girls frame all customized. No that I remember the name him going to search for it
@@scootersonlyrepair6773 Could be him,one thing for sure he made a mockery out of all the guys dressed like the Pros 👍
As a downhill rider for almost 10 years now, this is the best thing ever
Better than a cure for kids with cancer?
@@greg0uk sure not mate
Get yo Klunk awwwwn!
Dangling modifier.
My mountains is the best think ever
CZcams suggested this so I'm like "ehh only 7 minutes, I'll give ita go" was surprised on the quality & music was perfect. Good stuff & history 👏
This better be on the Voyager 1 Gold record. This is humanity at its purest. There's are hills on every planet, this relates to someone or something out there!
I was 11 or 12 when I built my first Klunker. I used a Huffy frame set and worked the hills over on the east side of the bay. Getting over to the Repack hill was an all day trek. The BART to San Francisco hadn't been finished yet. I would pedal to the shore and fish until the time for the busses to start there morning routes. Good times, good memories.
1975 I was 10. Had a ten speed with motorcycle motorcross handle bars I'd cut down 2" off the ends! Went through a ton of rims. This was Arkansas. Mountain bike was birthing all over.
Use to do the same with an old sears 10 speed
This was a influential thing that lead to the production of the Mountain Bike!
Absolutely love it, some good wholesome fun. Takes me back to my own childhood stripping down Bikes, swapping and experimenting with different parts, hours on end hand sanding and painting frames just to make a bike that worked for me. Great old days but unfortunately it's hard pressed to find a 10 year old willing to get there hands dirty or even willing to learn to use them ! A different generation. Gary could see the future stating it would go a long way, have a look at the Bikes now ! Still can't justify the cost of a decent pair of forks for a modern MTB though ! as a Motorcross Rider they are not that high Tech or expensive to manufacture especialy in mass production- that would be a nice thing for us to see a change in within the industry, to move forward in a better direction. This clip just shows how far a simple idea can go when we think outside the box, you can open a whole new world with one crazy idea ! Great stuff 😎
2022. It has gone a long way Gary. Thanks for getting us started.
Add Charlie Cunningham, Joe Breeze, Steve Potts, Mark Slate, Tom Fisher, Keith Bontrager, and others who made custom frames and evolved the sport. Jackie Phelan was more a badass racer than the guys, and she is super cool still today.
I lived in Larkspur back in the seventies. I did repack a few times. We caused lots of furor in the editorial section of the Marin IJ (the local news) because we terrorized the dog walkers and old folks by blasting around corners and scaring everyone. Now I’m that old guy in Placerville bombing the El Dorado trail……time flies……
I have to admit this made me tear up a bit thinking of my childhood doing the same thing here in Australia 🦘 best day's ever and so exciting as kids ❤️
I still have my 88 Cannondale Red Shred. I take it out on the trails every now and then. Whilie it's not quite klunking it does give a true appreciation for the full sus bikes of today, that's for sure.
Anyone else get this recommended glad i did. What gold!!
_"It's come a long way, and it's going to go a long way."_ ~ Gary Fisher
Little did he know at the time that he would go on to start one of the largest mountain bike brands in the world.
Yup. And that he and his buddies laid down the foundation of an industry now worth 1,5 billion annually
What brand is it?
It was Fisher, later Gary Fisher. Trek bought the brand around 2010.
@@Dreiviertel wow that's crazy!
@@Dreiviertel But Trek still offers a "Gary Fisher" model in their lineup.
Weird maybe, but for me, the news reporter is the man of this video. No exaggeration, no excessive emphasis like we are experiencing some epic events, no theatrical poses. Well, ok, he plays with the audience a bit, but not trying to be a star, letting the actual story to be in the foreground. A curious man talking natural yet explanatory. Not trying to be the host of the show, not fighting for viewers attencion. He is just there, walking, talking, observing and telling the story.
in '77, I had a Roll-fast 'cruiser' from the late 1950's.My Dad welded-in braces to the frame, and I took the Sears -2-speed hub/rim from another bike, and ditched the fenders, fitted an Italian Touring seat, and IRC tires to it. By early '78, I had a decent 'Most-of-the-Terrain' Bike. Fast Fowards 7 years, and I had a Ross, MT Hood ATB. This EVOLVED, Quickly!
I had a pre ww2 commuter type road bike I put wide handle bars on in the 70's.. we called them cow horn handle bars, fitted smaller mud guards and took of the chain cover..still only a single speed and we used to ride on disused dirt roads and trails in the Scottish borders ..great fun 😁 ..great video thanks for the upload..
The fact that this video started with an interview with some dude named Charlie Kelly just made my whole day. All hail the rat king (not Theo Von though but gang gang anyway and RIP Billy Conforto)!
#onward✊
Gang gang baby
I'M UPSTAAAAIIIRRRRRSS
“it’s going to go a long way” is an understatement
Thank you for this old vidéo !
I'm living in France, and I saw the first MTB in the start of 80's when I was a child. As I was riding BMX, I thought it looked strange but funny. Some times later, I bought my first MTB and I never stopped !!!
I'm riding a FAT Bike now !✌️🍻😁
I used to do this in the mid 80's, I was a kid trying to get around & kept modifying bikes to gain my freedom
One of my fav's was a beach cruiser I made into a mountain bike with drop handle bars, freaking miss the 80's & 90's, so much better times...
Used to do this in around '85 and on, LA, San Fernado Valley, up in the hills above Ventura Blvd, a friend of mine bought a Huffy - it was a 10 speed built on a cruiser frame, but we all had to mix & match parts that would work. yeah those were some great times. You learned how to true wheels really well!! cant believe im 50 now.
i love how the late 70`s and early 80's were the age of any and all extreme sports we know and love today. its so refreshing to see, this was recorded the year i was born (1979) boy, what i would give to have experienced this first hand or at least to have 4k quaity footage of it =(
So cool to see the origins of MTB. Rigid steel frame and coaster breaks, I feel kind of spoiled now havin a full squish with disk breaks.
Yeah. Looking back on technology of old is always kind of fun. How primitive the bikes were etc. I am old enough to remember when this new biking style emerged, but it wasn't until several years later when the real purpose-built bikes started coming out that I got into it.
never could get into full suspension they just never rode right for me do not like the squishy backend. disc brakes and front suspension fork though such a great thing.
A lot of modified Huffy, Schwinn beach cruisers, etc. For a while only coaster brakes, maybe five speed if you were lucky, single speed otherwise . Finding knobby tires was a challenge in the mid 70s.
Gary Fisher (and a few others) was a genius with developing the better frame geometry pretty early on.
A lot of people were in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills, Southern California, the Laguna Hills, Hollywood Hills (hence the Laguna Rads) ,and Colorado were riding Klunkers in the early 70s.
Buffalo Soldiers rode modified for dirt, gravel rigid frames in Montana in the late 1890s. At this time frame in Europe no matter what you rode it was a cobble/gravel bike because that's all there was to ride on.
I have ridden Repack going back to '85 in the August heat and January with snow on the road and frozen ponds. We would bury our beer in the sand of the creek at the bottom of the hill so we would not have to carry up and down or go back to the car to get it. Back in '79 you could ride in the back of a truck in California, you can't now and, by the looks of it drive up Repack.
Later we incorporated Whites Hill into what we called the 'Repack Loop' If you live in Norcal it's a must ride.
Smoking coaster brakes, Gary Fisher, and the Steve Miller band, the 70's news was way better than today!
As someone who lived in Marin County for eleven years, it's great to see this footage.
The birthplace of mountain biking. Racing down Mt.Tamalpaias.
The mountain bike scene in Marin is incredible. So many trails, so many legendary bike builders and parts inventors. Marin County is a magical place for so many outdoor activities and creative minds. It's a wonderland of beauty where giant redwoods, the North Bay of San Francisco, Muir Woods, Mt. Tam., the Dipsea Trail, Stinson Beach, Tamales Bay, Point Reyes, The Mountain House, Wishing Rock, Fairfax, San Rafael, San Anselmo, Mill Valley, and so many more.
It is so damn awesome that the general mentality of our pioneering forefathers is still what ties us together to this day!
getting high?
america hur durhh
Seems I need to clarify:
Goofing around with little regard for safety and enjoying nature. Away from the noise of civilization.
Forefathers not "for-fathers"
I am a comment section editor.
@@theymademepickaname1248 aight thanks. Not my native tounge ;-).
What an amazing historical window on the sport of mountain biking .... flares, no lids, no gloves, no glasses, no lycra, no Camelpaks because you'll dehydrate in 15 minutes, no suspension, no computers .... a simpler time when companies didn't reinvent the wheel every year, with a new selection of four letter acronyms to mug the punters off ... 'fitted with 2021 ASCS' ... Advanced Synchronicity Carbon Symmetry' or some other marketing bollocks .... they just got on their bikes and had fun :)
And no; 'Triple Triangle Technology' quite yet!🤘😉🤙
Am I witnessing the birth of some early mountaining biking here! WOW amazing! This is a buried treasure no doubt!
one man, one bike, no special forks and that's it. Thanks for this video.
Fantastic video. I love this pure joy of riding mountain bikes ❤️. No carbon, no expensive bike parts. Just fun
Cool man I remember back in 1973 where we had a simultaneous bicycle evolution happening up here on Vancouver Island just outside Victoria at the old motorcycle club there was an old from the logging days that we could clunk down on her modified bikes. The rear suspension consisted of four inches of foam on a banana seat upholstered was an old blue jean leg and the worst sewing job underneath that has ever been not seen. I still have a patent on that LOL. The roads are paved but I still mountain bike. Way back in the day like the 1920s mountain biking was called screaming. So there is a lot unsung heroes out who had a lot of fun.
That's what I am thinking. The guys above made it maybe more popular, but it always has been around in one way or another.
My father (born 1943) had a 12 speed in late 50's already, but in a different way than you might expect:
3-gear internal hub shifter, added 2-speed rear shifter and a 2-speed front shifter (you had to reach down to a lever to actually shift the front, was more like a lower ring for uphill and larger ring for flat and downhill, not used that often.
He had to drive close to 100km to work on that thing, stayed there during work days, and he had to be home every weekend to assist in his fathers business.
He told me about some shortcuts he used to take, all unpaved ways or even across fields.
I guess you could call that mountain biking already :-)
Who would have ever thought of riding a bike downhill, thanks for creating a new phenomenon guys.
The Originators. If it wasn't for the Klunkers we wouldn't have MTBing as we know it. We owe the OG Klunkers for starting the MTB craze. All you needed was Jeans, Flanno & saftey goggles. Gloves maybe. Gary Fisher = The Godfather.👍👍👍👏👏👏 . Being a old school BMXer. I love the DVD Joe Kid on a Stingray.
and now I'm going full circle and building a Klunker to ride downhill. this video is epic. Thanks!!
czcams.com/video/TqFh24LHQhc/video.html
1:24
Probably said this a few times before, but my mates and I were doing just this in woods at Pangbourne, UK in 1970. Bikes cobbled together from bits 'borrowed', never had brakes, sometimes no saddle, sometimes no chain - we were only 15 with no money. Built us some tiny jumps, used to hurt a bit on wheels with no tyres... But even we weren't the first, coz I think guys in NZ were racing each other downhill before that. Very happy days.
No brakes. No seats. No tires. No chains. No modifications, just gravity and garbage bikes. Yeah, no. That’s not what these people are doing; they’re actually developing, building and riding mountain bikes. With gears. With non-coaster brakes. With wide tires. That ride well on trails. So no. You can stop saying your 15 year old self invented mountain biking.
Unrelated, I slid down a hill on a piece of cardboard and was the first bobsledder.
Funny.....he never once said he was the first to invent mountain biking in his comment.
Yet here you are Rick Roll....not only being a right prick but making a clown out of yourself in the bargain.
@@rickroll9086 ouch!
Yep. We just added cowhorn handlebars back in the 1970s. Great days.
@@halidehelux5221 ‘Doing just this’. No. No they weren’t. Sorry you don’t know, understand or appreciate Garry Fisher or the rest of the biking innovators. The whole clip is about how people adapt and invent. It’s not about who was the first idiot to careen downhill. That’s not developing the sport of bicycling. If you can’t tell the difference , then not sure why you watched the clip.
It’s cool to see all the people back then driving vintage vehicles.
I rode the repack a few years ago on a pretty good (for the time) mountain bike. I'm not going to say what my time was but let me just say I came away with an even greater respect for these pioneers. Truly inspirational,thanks for posting.
What was your time?
What was your time?
What was your time?
What was your time?
What was your time?
I literally got goosebumps when he said _"Actually began it seems up in Marin County"_
So much to see here! home made protections, just wearing normal clothing...most of the clan are well over 40's and no helmets. Nevertheless I still can sense exactly the same vibe of current downhill MTB crowd. Just awesome.
Yuppies before they were lame
I retract my statement as it is an insult to the mtb community compromised mostly of yuppoes
@@jokes881 Eeeasy Champ. That is my perspective. You can have yours and also you can keep it to yourself.
He LOOKS, and SPEAK, like a Fish.
Thanks, for uploading this stuff!
In 1980, i do the same, in Germany.
Die ersten Tage des Mountain Bike 😮 26 zoll
Supertolle interessante Bilder ❤ Danke
The early days of “YEWW” this put a smile on my face .. cool footage 👍🏻
Jeff Hoover at the Bicycle Inn added a derailleur, six speed cluster and wheels, a straight fork and cantilever brakes to my Schwinn paper boy bike in 1982 and I was into dirt for life.
those are the pioneers! Thanks to them we have DH today, I salute you all!
I love how recognizable the sport and spirit of DH was in 1979! I would have been 5 years old, and about 4 years away from doing my first dirt jumps on a rusty old BMX.
I love to see people not taking selfies of themselves and simply doing something with others.
look how they cheer each other and how nice they are!
no bragging about better bike and no ridiculing
Thats normal. We are not :)
It's because they didn't have smartphones or other cellphones back then
@@onevision2203 Friggin' pot-smoking hippies who cooperated with each other. Thank Lord Jesus that era is over and we graduated to hating each other and 'owning the libs' is more important than maintaining a healthy democracy.
Finally seen Gary Fisher without a stash...I believe Keith Bontrager is in there somewhere racing too.
Yeah he was there around 2:13
Also I saw Larry Look and Greg Lemond standing close to Tony Trek.
Tony Trek and Keith Bontrager were NOT getting along. One of them is gonna get hurt.
Thank God Giuseppe Giro was there to smooth things over, along with Samuel Specialized.
I was excited to see Tyler Topeak there pumping up tires.
👍😉🤣
@@endokrin7897 What about Kelly, Shimano, Merida, Scott?
@@endokrin7897 3:52 Gary Fisher being interview at the race...
I'm from Nor Cal. Mountain Goat bikes, no bike shocks hard frames flying down trails. No helmet no gear yeah we wore blue jeans and tshirts too. Late 80's. I saved up to buy my first Huffy mountain bike which was total crap compared to stuff today. Great memories that are priceless. Steve Miller was a nice touch.
I remember this. I grew up in Marin, so it was just normal to see Mountain Bikes in the 80's everywhere here. It was graduating from BMX to bigger and older kids.
Also check out the film "Klunkers." Great historic footage and commentary from Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelly, amongst others. Great narration on how our beloved craze started and progressed through the years.
If you claim to be a mountain biker then you need a copy of Charlie Kelly's book Fat Tire Flyer. Beautiful book and an excellent read. I rode repack earlier this year and stopped by the Mountain Bike Museum and Kelly was there telling his stories to anyone who would listen. Great stuff.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Charlie originally published the Fat Tire Flyer as a zene, then compiled it into a book. Got to ride with him over Pearl Pass at the 86 fat tire festival in Crested Butte.
California man, home to mountain biking, BMX, and skateboarding!
What a treat to watch> they were haulin'. Cool to see these soul surfers-athletes as our earliest mountain bikers.
I got into mountain bikes in about 1987, and looking back at those bikes from then I thought they were old until you see these old Schwinn's coming down fire roads.
How far we have come in these short years is crazy, definitely want a klunkers t-shirt
This looks more fun than the intense sport we call downhill today
This looks like a lot of fun! This sort of thing could catch on.
Loved being a kid in the 80's!
3:19, when the difference between winning and losing was down to properly trimmed finger nails...hence the term, he nailed him on that last ride. Seriously though, i started riding in the late 80's...it was fun to trick out our bikes and totally customise them, borrowing from road bikes, whatever, to create your own version of how you felt the bike should perform. It was so much fun being apart of the burgeoning sport, where any joe could create something that may or may not catch on. Not to mention where every bike was different to the extreme.
Started in 86 on a Jamis Dakota, still riding here in Moab every day at 74 years old.
As a kid we loved getting off road with our bikes. But our 20 inch wheel bikes sucked . BMX bikes were rare and expensive for my family just for fun. So we made our own with ten speed bike parts. longer cranks and smaller front sprockets for more peddle torque . To get the ground clearance for the longer crank on a ten speed that we had put our 20 in. rims on, we would take a ten speed frame and cut about 6 inches of that center bar out and bend the bottom up to the top and get someone to weld it. drilling holes for just nuts and bolts didn't work well. but those , peddle backwards" brakes were dangerous as "F" jumping through trails. send you flying right over the handle bars if you came down on the peddles wrong. Free wheel 20 inch hub,[ like a ten speed], was practically unheard of. So I made my own. holy crap what a job. I had to collect all kinds of rims and sprockets ,to get things to match up to get a single sprocket on the the hub from the ones that have five, and find the right length spokes and number of holes for hub and rim. I spent weeks on it. I had no idea how hard it would be to spoke that rim and get that hub centered and the rim spinning true. by hand , never thought to make some kind of jig, to hold it. holy crap. tighten -loosen, loosen -tighten. But I did it and had one of the only BMX bikes around. that winter I put screws out through the tires and road it down at the skating pond. Everyone tried it. It was cool. lol . the things we did before the internet. real fun.
love the music, love the vibe
And 42 years later the price of mountain bikes has skyrocketed out of control.
We just take these cheap bikes out and have fun, feels like maybe that was some time ago. "we just take these carbon fibre bikes with motors out to the hiking trails and head up them at 30kph, 13k is the minimum you need to spend..."
I just spent 5k on a trek dually, it creaks and the 1x12 shimano is absolute trash, it jumps gears anytime you put power in it. My 2013 giant hardtail is way better. Only thing the new one does better is go over rocks, but it almost takes the fun out of it because you just fly over the technical stuff. Big regrets! Ride what you have!
Every mtn biker needs to watch this! I got into mtn biking in the mid 80s with a Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo. That was a great bike. Amazing to see where the sport is now. Even more amazing to see the sport in utero! Thanks for sharing this.
Yeah that's right...
Same, my first mountain bike was a mid-80s Specialized Rockhopper because I couldn't afford a Stumpjumper. But in a few years I upgraded to a Fisher Paragon. Pretty cool to see Gary Fisher in this video!
Was that the one with those strange elevated chain stays?
I still own my 1987 Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo :)
Love it. The only safety equipment I saw was one pair of ski goggles and one pair of what appeared to be ski gloves. I’m a firm believer in “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”.
i lived in that area , in the late 1950s .we rode our schwinns off road and invented dry grass tobogganing . we got cardboard boxes from refrigerators and washing machines from the new houses that were being built down the street and folded up one end of the box so it resembled a toboggan .we claimed to the top of the steep hills and got going so fast that we became airborne for a few seconds . the landing really hurt , but we were laughing our asses off. many decades later in 1980 i tried Repack . my time was possibly the slowest in recorded history 😂
wow, they gots some properly wide bars!
Everything about this is incredible. So glad I just stumbled onto this.
There is something so pure about this. I love it!
Legend has it that some of the awards were given out by Karl Spackler. He donated lids of his custom putting green grass :-). Seriously, check out the movie (dvd) called Klunkers. It's great! It gives the entire story of the birth of mountain biking and it all started with Klunkers!!
Jeez, I was two and a half years old in summer ‘79. Much respect to the people who pioneered a sport that I love! If only they could be around to see how the sport that they started has evolved 42 years later. 🚵🏼🍻
Haha......Gary (the fish) Fisher is still making great bikes....I ride one!!! They're still around!!!LOL
@@robertmuckle2985 Yeah, I realized the instant that I pressed ‘send’ on that post yesterday that a lot of those guys are in fact still with us. I just thought it would take longer for someone to mention it🤣🤣
Cheers buddy, happy trails🍻
@@norcodaev 😁😁😁 this comment and responses made me laugh. Thanks, guys 😆
They're mostly still around. I had an email conversation with Charlie Kelly a few years ago when I bought his coffee table book on klunkers.
Gary Fischer was right, the sport and the gear have come a very long way.
Yep. Now the "Wall-e" generation doesnt even want to pedal
@@3mtech são uma preguiçosos, sedentários
@@3mtech it's creeping into the cycling communities!!
Somehow, the algorithm knows like cycling of all kinds. So I'm bombarded with articles about the latest e-bikes.
Some of those things go 30 mph!
If you get a normal e-bike, you can get a hack to override the limiter (limiter keeps it legal and the speed down)
Why don't those people just ride a motorcycle??
If you are disabled or elderly, sure, get an e-bike to ASSIST on the hills or help you stay with the group on that 50 mile ride.
But how many people REALLY need a bike that has a 100 mile range and goes 22mph on its own???🤔
@@endokrin7897 imho it's still good. Better that they're on ebikes instead of dirtbikes.