Bob Osborn
Founder and publisher of BMX Action magazine. Founder of Wizard Publications. USA BMX Hall of Fame, Industry, 1988.
A Legend Bike Co. founder history page. Sourced from the USA BMX Hall of Fame entry, the BMX Action Symposium pages, the 23mag.com magazine indexes, oldschoolmags.com PDF archive, bmxsociety.com community threads, and Bob's own first-person quotes captured in the period record.
The man who put BMX on a magazine cover
Bob Osborn started BMX Action magazine out of his family's house on Arvada Street in Redondo Beach, California. The first issue was dated December 1976. Forty-eight pages, a dollar cover price, 10,000 copies on the first run, and a Brian Lewis shot at Corona BMX on the front, taken by his daughter Windy. He was working part-time as a firefighter to pay for the thing. He raised $30,000 to get it off the ground by selling his house, taking a loan from his sister, and bringing in a third investor, and he set up a publishing company called Wizard Publications to print it. His son R.L. and his daughter Windy were on the masthead from day one. Bob ran that magazine for 13 years. For a whole generation, it was what BMX looked like in print.
Before the magazine — building the Redondo Beach track
Osborn's own account of the years before the magazine survives in the foreword he wrote for BMX Freestylin' — Featuring the BMX Action Trick Team (Mike Buff, Bob Osborn, R.L. Osborn, and Len Weed; Wizard Publications, 1982). Writing in his own voice, he places the effort "ten years ago," describing how he and R.L. helped build one of the nation's first BMX tracks at Redondo Beach alongside the "neighborhood kids" after the city put out a call for volunteers — a father-son project years before the Trick Team, BMX Action, or any of it existed.
1974 — the LA Coliseum Yamaha Gold Cup
Osborn was already inside the sport before any of the magazine work started. On September 14, 1974, at the LA Coliseum final of the Yamaha Bicycle Gold Cup series, Bob was the flag man — the guy who dropped the flag to start the first major BMX event anybody ever put on. More than 5,000 people sat in those stands and watched BMX for the first time. Bob looked at that and saw where the whole thing could go. Two years later he started the magazine.
Issue 1 — December 1976
The debut issue of Bicycle Motocross Action — that was the original masthead title — hit newsstands in December 1976. Forty-eight pages. A dollar. A 10,000-copy first run. Brian Lewis at Corona on the cover. The Pit, the test track Bob built in Torrance, was already up and running. In the summer of 1977 he brought Bob Haro on as staff artist. Haro had been mailing cartoons in on spec, and Bob made it official. The Pit became where the magazine tested product, and the crew running it was Bob, his son R.L. as a test rider, and his daughter Windy, who was one of the first great BMX photographers, shooting for the magazine while she was still a teenager.
The Pit and the test program
BMX Action's test-track operation was called the Pit, and it ran out of a yard in Torrance. The test riders — guys like the Emrich brothers and Donny Jones — rode every new frame, fork, crank, and accessory until something gave, then wrote up what broke and what held. The Pit became the yardstick BMX Action measured product against, and every BMX magazine that came after it copied the format. For a good stretch in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, a Pit-tested checkmark in BMX Action could be the difference between a product moving off the shelf and sitting there.
1984 — FREESTYLIN' launches
By 1984 freestyle had grown into its own thing. That summer Bob launched FREESTYLIN' under Wizard Publications, the first magazine built entirely around BMX freestyle. The two titles ran side by side through the rest of the decade. FREESTYLIN' took the trick side, BMX Action held the race side. FREESTYLIN' is where Mike Dominguez, Eddie Fiola, R.L. Osborn, Bob Haro, Martin Aparijo, and Mat Hoffman became names everybody knew.
1989 — BMX Action ends, GO begins
BMX Action ran its last issue in September 1989, just short of 13 straight years of monthly publication. Wizard Publications didn't go away, though. In November 1989 Bob folded BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' together into one new title — GO: The Rider's Manual — and GO carried on into the early 1990s.
1988 — USA BMX Hall of Fame
The American Bicycle Association put Bob Osborn into the National BMX Hall of Fame, now USA BMX, in 1988, in the Industry category. The citation runs through Wizard Publications, BMX Action, FREESTYLIN', the Pit, and Bob's part in getting BMX onto the magazine rack at every grocery store in America.
2020+ — the BMX Action Symposium era
BMX Action still lives on as a heritage event. The BMX Action Symposium is a multi-day reunion of the magazine's old contributors, riders, and photographers, and the BMX Society has hosted it since the late 2010s. Bob was Guest of Honor at the 2020 Symposium, and at the 2022 Symposium he was given the BMX Society Lifetime Achievement Award. The old BMX Action team, the Pit crew, the riders who came up through Wizard — they all still call him "Oz." The man who saw what BMX was and built the platform that proved it.
What Bob Osborn actually built
Just about everybody in the BMX Hall of Fame is there in part because Bob Osborn put their face on a cover. Bob Haro got his start as Wizard's staff artist before he ever founded Haro. R.L. Osborn became one of the founding freestylers because his father ran the magazine and let him test ride. The Trick Team, the Pit, the cover shots, the rider profiles, the bike tests, the ad contracts that built the brands — all of it ran through the building Bob set up in Torrance.
If you grew up reading BMX magazines between 1976 and 1989, you were reading Bob's. The covers you cut out and taped to your wall were Wizard Publications covers. The bike tests that told you what to buy were Pit tests. The freestyle riders you knew by name were FREESTYLIN' cover riders. Bob Osborn is the BMX media of that era. There's no other way to say it.
Sources
USA BMX Hall of Fame — Bob Osborn (1988, Industry) at usabmx.com/about/hall-of-fame/1420. bmxaction.org/pages/bob-osborn-symposium — the BMX Action Symposium pages tracking Bob's 2020 Guest of Honor + 2022 Lifetime Achievement events. 23mag.com — BMX Action master index (issue-by-issue, December 1976 through September 1989), FREESTYLIN' index, GO: The Rider's Manual index. oldschoolmags.com — PDF archive of BMX Action, FREESTYLIN', and GO. bmxsociety.com community forum threads on the 2020 + 2022 Symposiums. USPTO trademark filings for Wizard Publications. Wikipedia — R.L. Osborn, Bob Haro, BMX Action, Wizard Publications. Steve Emig blog — first-hand account of the 3162 Kashiwa Street, Torrance Wizard offices. Mike Buff, Bob Osborn, R.L. Osborn, and Len Weed, BMX Freestylin' — Featuring the BMX Action Trick Team (Wizard Publications, 1982) — Bob Osborn's own foreword, for the Redondo Beach track story.
Bob Osborn and Legend Bike Co.
Bob Osborn isn't a Legend Bike Co. founder, but everyone on this site grew up with his magazines. Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, and the founding generation of BMX freestyle all came up through Wizard. The Stu Thomsen / Greg Hill / Mike Miranda cover era that defined BMX racing in the late 1970s was Wizard's lineup. I started at SE Racing in 1981, 12 years old, and I learned what BMX looked like from BMX Action.
Related pages
Core: History of BMX · Bob Haro (Wizard staff artist 1977) · R.L. Osborn (son, Trick Team co-founder) · SE Racing · Haro
Peer founders + builders: Skip Hess · Linn Kastan · Scot Breithaupt · Jim Melton · Ernie Alexander
Riders + writers: Stu Thomsen · Greg Hill · Mike Miranda · Perry Kramer · Pete Loncarevich · Eddie Fiola · Martin Aparijo · Scot Breithaupt · Tommy Brackens · Clint Miller · Denny Davidow · Jeff Bottema · Damian Fulton · Billy Griggs · Darwin Griffin · Brian Bogi Givens · Todd Steen · Matt Hadan · Eddy King · Byron Friday · Frank Post · Kevin McNeal · Brian Hernandez · Eric Rupe
Brands: CW Racing · Diamond Back · Centurion Cycles · GT · Haro · Hoffman Bikes · Hutch · JMC · Mongoose · Redline · Schwinn · Skyway · S&M Bikes · Torker · Webco · TW BMX · California Racing Designs · Bottema Forks · Hustler Bikes · Voris Dixon Bikes · Hyper Bikes · Hi-Tech BMX · Panda Racing Products · Robinson Racing · Free Agent · White Bear · Rebel Racing · Titan BMX · Brian Scura / BS Bikeworks · LRV · S&S Performance · Bassett Bikes