Abigail Geiger

ageiger@ydr.com

It's 1984. The new movie "The Karate Kid" is inspiring young grasshoppers everywhere. Madonna's edgy "Like a Virgin" is taking over the radio. VCRs are starting to pop up.

And, under the sun in the Thunderdohm skatepark near Triangle Printing in York, a group of kids is about to flip the freestyle BMX industry on its head.

These teenagers were thousands of miles away from the BMX mecca that ran the California coast from Redondo Beach to Corona to Orange and beyond, where cameras flashed, bikes swiveled and superstar riders flourished.

The group made a name for itself and, by the '90s, most people in the BMX world had heard of the Plywood Hoods. They didn't want fame or glory. All they wanted to do was ride. And by doing that, they showed the industry that BMX wasn't just a lifestyle that parents or society didn't approve of— it could be a rider's future.

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But the Hoods never had such grand ambitions. What became a BMX household name started out in Red Lion Area High School cafeteria and led to the skatepark and streets of York.

Brett Downs, Mike Daily and Brian Peters started out doing tricks and aiming for competitions. They jokingly called their gang the Plywood Hoods because the name sounded similar to the Cardboard Lords, a breakdancing crew that had started attracting attention around the same time in York. Soon, the parties met and joined forces.

"After a while, my group ended up meeting Mike and his group," Lords member Mark Eaton said of himself and the other breakdancers Kevin Jones, Dale Mitzel and Jamie McKulik. "Mike had pegs on his bike, which was a brand-new thing in BMX. And we said, 'Let's do this.' We thought that BMX was similar in how you move around and how you can be creative."

And the many visits to the Thunderdohm and the streets began.

"In a way, the Thunderdohm was sort of a training ground for us," said Eaton, whose early BMX recordings led him to a career in film and video.

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The group started developing tricks thousands of miles from California, where a magazine media-saturated BMX scene was slowly overtaking the waning empire of skateboarding, Eaton said. Despite the distance, and after many hours of practice, the Hoods' tricks started to revolutionize the new "flatland" style of freestyle BMX, where riders do twisting, complex tricks on flat surfaces.

"Being in York actually made us great riders because we didn't know better," Downs said. "We were so far removed and isolated from the BMX community, we could come up with our own style and our own way of doing things."

It took a deafening crowd in Austin, Texas, in 1987 for the BMX community to turn its head toward the Hoods. Jones, whom Eaton and others claim as one of the best in freestyle BMX history, shocked the crowd with his "Locomotive," "Trolley" and "Standing Room Only" tricks.

(Below is a video of Jones performing the next year in Austin.)

"Jones is this kid who comes out of nowhere with these insane tricks, no one knows him, no one knows what's going on," Eaton said. "They loved it. I can remember how loud it was. It was insane."

With Jones' talent, Eaton's camera skills, Daily's "Aggro Rag" 'zine and the group's general showmanship, this group of East coast riders had made their presence known.

As the '90s replaced the '80s, The Hoods continued to impress with the moves in their "Dorkin' in York" videos, some of the earliest homemade freestyle BMX videos that would feature Dave Mirra, a young rider who would later became a BMX legend.

More than 30 years later, the Plywood Hoods still have BMX in their blood. Downs and Jones still meet to twist into their old tricks in secret spots around the city. Eaton has continued his love of BMX through film and video production. The long-running York Jam, where riders come to York to show off tricks, has picked back up, Downs said.

"We've made money, we've made a living at it, gotten paychecks, but that's not ever why we did it," Downs said. "And it's nice, because, when you don't get the paychecks, you still do it 'cause it's fun."

The BMX scene has changed a lot since the days of VCRs and mail-in magazine orders. But the Hoods' do-it-yourself attitude predates the internet, which allows anyone to be, well, anything.

"What the Hoods did was show the world that you could do whatever you want on a BMX bike," said Brian Tunney, former BMX pro and director of digital content for Xgames.com, said in an email. "That they did it in York — so far from the established BMX industry — made it even better. And that they did it with their own tricks is remarkable."

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The Thunderdohm was razed about 10 years after its late '70s inception. Now skaters and riders head to Reid Menzer Memorial Skatepark, where Downs went to practice one April morning.

As Downs packed up his two bikes in his silver Subaru to leave, a sedan pulled up and parked nearby. Two teenagers popped out of the car, pulled two worn BMX bikes from the trunk and headed to the park.