American BMXer — The ABA's Member Magazine (1978 to Today)

A Legend Bike Co. BMX history chapter

Before the internet, if you raced ABA, you found out who won the same way everybody did. You waited for the mail. Once a month a magazine showed up with your name on the membership rolls, your class results buried somewhere in the back, the national points standings printed in tiny type, and a cover shot of somebody you'd seen at the Grands. That magazine had a few names over the years. The one most people remember is American BMXer. Here's the whole run of it.

Where it started — ABA Action, March 1978

The American Bicycle Association got going in late 1977. A sanction needs a way to talk to its members — to print the points, list the tracks, run the schedule, tell everybody where the next national is. So in March 1978 the ABA put out its first member publication. They called it ABA Action. Volume one, issue one.

That first run moved fast. Issue three, May 1978, covered the ABA's very first Winternationals — held in Azusa, sponsored by Torker, run in the pouring rain. By issue seven the magazine was already doing a Girls of BMX cover. By the December 1978 issue it was building up the very first ABA Grands in Las Vegas, where the sanction would crown its first No.1 Pro and first No.1 Amateur. You can watch the sport grow issue to issue. The list of tracks gets longer. The points pages get thicker. Real time, in print.

The name everybody remembers — American BMX'er, September 1984

September 1984 is when ABA Action became American BMX'er. They reset the count — that September 1984 issue is labeled volume one, number one of the new name. Apostrophe in there too, back then: BMX'er. The look tightened up over the years to just BMXer, no apostrophe, but the magazine underneath was the same animal. The ABA's member book.

That first American BMX'er had a piece of history in it most people miss. It carried the first published photos of Jose Yanez doing a backflip on a bike. Think about that. The trick that defines half of modern BMX, and the earliest shots of it ran in a race sanction's membership magazine.

What was actually in it

This wasn't a newsstand glamour magazine. It was a working tool for racers, and that's the point of it. Open any issue and you'd get the ABA national points standings, the race schedule, a track directory so you could find a track wherever you traveled, reader mail, product reviews, No.1 rider interviews, racer profiles, and deep race coverage from the nationals. The ABA's own pitch on it later put it plain: no other BMX magazine covered every single ABA national. The BMXer was there every month, at least two big races an issue, amateurs of every age, girls, cruiser classes, the whole program.

The production told you what it was. Glossy full-color cover. Newsprint inside — the kind that left ink on your fingers. By the mid-2000s a single issue could run over 150 pages of race reports, results, schedules and ads. It came monthly, every month but February. A membership got it to your door, or you could subscribe.

The people behind it became names too. Tim Lillethorup edited the ABA's publications in the early '80s, ABA Action and the short-lived newsstand title Bicycles and Dirt, and tested bikes on the side. Years later a staffer named gOrk covered races and put the BMXer together through the late '90s, right up to October 1999 when he left to go work for a parts distributor up in Seattle.

Why the member magazine mattered

It's easy to look back and call it just a results sheet. It was more than that. For a kid racing in 1982, the magazine was the only place the whole sport lived in one spot. You'd see your points next to riders three states over. You'd read an interview with the pro whose number you were chasing. You'd find out a new track opened a tank of gas away. That's how a national sport holds together before everybody's got a phone. The sanction prints a book, mails it to every member, and suddenly a track in Florida and a track in Oregon are part of the same thing.

From BMXer to PULL — the rebrand and the merger

In 2011 the ABA went through a full rebrand. As part of that, the member magazine — by then known simply as BMXer — got a new name: PULL. Same magazine, new cover, new badge. Around the same window the ABA picked up the assets of its old rival, the National Bicycle League, and the two longtime rival sanctions came together as USA BMX. PULL carried right on as the member magazine of the new outfit.

So the line runs clean, even with all the name changes. ABA Action in 1978. American BMX'er in 1984. BMXer through the '90s and 2000s. PULL from 2011. One continuous member magazine, published the whole way by the same sanction, which is USA BMX today. PULL still ships to members now, bimonthly, in print and digital.

What we don't know

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

• ABA — American Bicycle Association: The Sanction History
• USA BMX — The Sanction Born from the ABA / NBL Merger
• The History of BMX

Sources

23mag.com BMX archive — ABA Action issue listing (volume 1 issue 1, March 1978 onward) and BMXer / American BMX'er issue listing (volume 1 no.1, September 1984 name change; editor and coverage notes; Bart de Jong / fatbmx.com issue description, 2005). Issuu — USA BMX / PULL magazine publisher stack, including the note on the 2011 rebrand of the BMXer to PULL and the formation of USA BMX. USA BMX (usabmx.com) — PULL magazine member benefit pages. Wikipedia: American Bicycle Association. oldschoolmags.com — period BMX magazine references to ABA membership and American BMX'er. Cross-referenced against the Legend Bike Co. ABA and USA BMX history chapters.