Blacklight Bikes — Or Rather Black Lite: The San Antonio Shop That Built Two-Pound Minis and Then Built Titan (1982 to 1985)

A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

Start with the name, because it matters. If you came here looking for Blacklight, you are in the right place and the brand was called something slightly different. Its own advertising reads BLACK-LITE. But the Blacklight spelling is not a modern invention — a racer who watched video of the 1982 Winternationals recalls the announcer calling out a rider on a Blacklight and adding that he had never heard of them. The name got misheard the first time around and it has been getting misheard ever since.

Two other things also answer to Blacklight in BMX, and neither is a company. GT ran a Blacklight paint scheme on the Performer and Vertigo in 1994 and 1995 — a blue-and-black splatter fade into purple, still chased by collectors. And a modern frame builder offers a semi-matte ceramic finish it calls Blacklight. Neither is a brand. The brand is the one from Texas.

A shop by a drainage ditch

Black Lite operated at 12515 O'Connor Road, San Antonio, Texas 78233, phone (512) 653-4688. That comes off the company's own advertisement and it is the single most solid fact in this chapter.

The people are on softer ground. Collectors and locals who were there put the shop off Old O'Connor Road, next to a drainage ditch under the O'Connor Road bridge, and name two men: Ken Burleson and a partner remembered only as Gus. Burleson's surname is spelled at least three ways across the sources — Burleson on the collector sites, Burelson in Legend Bike Co.'s own Titan chapter, and a 2014 sale listing gives a first name of Kendall. Nothing resolves it. We are flagging the discrepancy rather than picking a winner.

The origin, as locals tell it, is the oldest one in frame building: Burleson made frames for his own son to race, other parents wanted them, and it turned into a business. They sold locally, through Cibolo Valley BMX and River City BMX. One person who raced them estimates roughly ninety percent of everything Black Lite ever produced came out of that one shop on O'Connor Road.

The Litest Frame In The World

That was the slogan, and the September 1982 advertisement in Bicycles and Dirt backs it with numbers. It is the only period specification sheet that survives for this brand, so it is worth setting out in full:

  • Frame weight — 2 lbs.
  • Material — chrome-plated aluminum.
  • Supplied with — a Texas sealed bottom bracket and crank spindle, 8 oz.
  • Forks — 4130 chromoly, 1 lb 3 oz.
  • Design — low profile, compatible with any rear wheel or fork.
  • Sizing — riders up to 80 lbs, boys and girls ages four to eight.
  • Warranty — 100 percent lifetime against breaking.
  • Trade — co-sponsorships available through your bike shop.

Minis only. No full-size race frames, no cruisers, no complete bikes, and no components. Black Lite built framesets and sold them to families with fast small kids.

Three material generations are visible across surviving frames. First the chrome-plated aluminum with chromoly forks. Then chromoly frames, including a looptail version collectors consider the rarest. Then, from around mid-1983, titanium — frames and forks both, putting Black Lite among the earliest titanium builders in BMX.

The chrome-over-aluminum idea did not work. Welds were ground smooth to take the plating, and the chrome cracked and flaked the moment the frame flexed. That is a single account, but it is a technically credible one and it fits the fact that Black Lite moved off aluminum quickly.

No two are the same. Surviving frames show different bottom bracket shell sizes, different dropouts, some with flat-plate gussets. There are no serial numbers and no build-date stamps. Owner-measured top tubes come in at 16.25 inches and 17.5 inches, on 20 inch wheels with a one inch head tube.

The riders, and the frames that survived

There was no factory team in any organized sense. The names that come up all come from one San Antonio local's memory, and none of them are backed by results or photographs we could verify: Scott Rickets, said to have taken the first titanium Black Lite frameset in mid-1983; Ricky Davis; James Foreman, whose father later helped finance Titan; Eben Krackau, who took the second titanium set and who later rode for Haro; and Keith Smith. One period action photograph of a Black Lite is sourced to the 1984 ABA photo archive.

Because Black Lite sold frames only, the component specifications on surviving bikes are owner choices rather than factory specification — but they are a useful window into what a serious Texas mini looked like in 1983. Across four documented survivors: Ukai rims, SunTour VX cranks and SunTour sealed hubs, Bottema M2 forks, ProNeck Bulldog and Tuf Neck stems, Powerlite Powerbend bars, Race Inc. alloy bars, Hutch hubs, Sun rims, Tioga Comp III tires, and on one micro mini a Cook Bros pressed-in bottom bracket. That same micro mini carries a head tube decal reading WRP Racing, San Jose, CA, which nobody has been able to explain.

In 1984 Bicycles and Dirt ran a lightest-mini feature built around a titanium Black-Lite frame and fork, as part of a series with a lightweight-bike specialist who used Black Lite material in his own builds. Collectors refer to that article constantly. We were not able to view it, so we are citing it as referenced rather than as read. One person recalls the Black Lite mini in that piece being priced at over $1,000 — which, if right, was extraordinary money for a four-year-old's bike in 1984.

The split, and Titan

Black Lite ended in an argument. Ken Burleson and Gus fell out, Burleson left, and he went on to co-found Titan with Bert Foreman. Three independent collector accounts — on two different sites — place Burleson's departure in mid-to-late 1983 and the Titan start in late 1983 or early 1984.

⚑ That conflicts with Legend Bike Co.'s existing Titan chapter, which dates Titan to 1982. Both cannot be right, and we are not quietly overwriting one with the other. It is flagged here and in the box below, and it is answerable — the families involved are reachable.

Two other threads run out of the same shop. Burleson built one-off titanium minis for Rebel Racing. And a local welder who may have picked up Black Lite fabrication after Burleson left went on to Titan, then to other Texas brands, and later built a 20 inch frame for Free Agent. Both are single-source and should be read that way.

Gus, by the accounts, moved to Portland, Oregon around late 1984 or early 1985, built a handful of frames there, and then left bicycles altogether for other fabrication work — race boats, by one telling. Two Texas frame companies, and both of their stories end up in Oregon.

Where the record runs thin

This is a short chapter because the record is short. Here is exactly what is missing:

  • A founding date more precise than by September 1982. The advertisement is the earliest hard evidence of anything.
  • Gus's surname. Never given in any source.
  • Ken Burleson's name, spelled with confidence. Burleson, Burelson, and Kendall Burleson all appear. Unresolved.
  • The Titan founding date. Legend Bike Co.'s Titan chapter says 1982; three Black Lite sources say late 1983 or early 1984. Flagged, not fixed.
  • Any catalog, price list, or dealer list. None exists that we could find.
  • Any magazine bike test. oldschoolmags.com's test index contains no Black Lite entry, and 23mag.com carries nothing on the brand at all.
  • Frame geometry beyond the top tube lengths owners measured themselves.
  • Race results for any named rider, and any production numbers. Neither exists in a source we can cite.
  • Source access. bmxsociety.com's live site was unreachable throughout this research; its Black Lite material was read through the Internet Archive instead, and that is disclosed here rather than passed off as a live read.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

Sources

Black-Lite advertisement, Bicycles and Dirt, September 1982, page 18 — scan archived on bmxmuseum.com, page footer legible, carrying the full specification, the O'Connor Road address, and the phone number. A second undated Black Lite advertisement with the same copy, also archived on bmxmuseum.com. bmxmuseum.com — the Black Lite brand gallery of seven bikes, individual bike entries with owner-supplied component lists and top tube measurements, forum threads dated 2013 through 2020 including the earliest-titanium-in-BMX discussion, and a 2014 sale listing giving the Kendall Burleson spelling. bmxsociety.com — the Blacklite thread opened August 2016, the Blacklite survivor thread of 2013, and the thread on the connections between Titan, ESP, Quikline, Blacklite, Ultracraft, and Gunn; all read via Internet Archive captures because the live site was unreachable. Bicycles and Dirt, 1984 — lightest mini feature built around a titanium Black-Lite frame and fork; referenced repeatedly by collectors but not viewed directly for this chapter. oldschoolmags.com — tests and reviews index searched; no Black Lite entry archived. 23mag.com — searched; no Black Lite coverage. Legend Bike Co. — Titan chapter, cross-referenced and found to conflict on the founding date and the surname spelling; conflict flagged, not resolved. Bill Ryan, 2026 — named the subject for the library.