I was a 12-year-old kid stickering frames at the back of the SE Racing building on Paramount Boulevard, and Byron Friday was already a guy people knew. He came in and out of the sales room while I worked. That is where I first put a face to the name.
Byron Friday
"TGI" · started riding in 1969 · National BMX Hall of Famer · one of the original pro members of the sport
At a glance
Started riding: 1969, Southern California.
Nicknames: "TGI" — Thank God It's Friday.
Known for: One of the original pro members of BMX · Factory Kawasaki rider in 1974 · Co-developer of the Redline ProLine series — V bars, stem, frame, fork, and the first Flight Cranks — with Linn Kastan · Designer of the DG ZF-1 (Zuener / Friday) · Sales-room presence inside the SE Racing building at 6801 Paramount Boulevard · BMX Action cover, January 1980, on his DG at Corona · Founded the Scorpion "Pro School of BMX" clinic tours through the U.S. and Europe · One of the original Mountain Bike Action test riders · Product manager at Diamond Back's mountain bike division 1988-1990.
Teams and brands: Kawasaki (1974) · Shimano America (1975-1978) · Redline Bicycles (1978-1980) · DG Racing · SE Racing Paramount Boulevard crew (early 1980s) · Scorpion Bicycles (1982 onward) · Mountain Bike Action (1988) · Diamond Back / WSI mountain bike division (1988-1990) · Tioga · Mongoose BMX clinics.
Hall of Fame: National BMX Hall of Fame inductee.
Byron Friday is one of those names that shows up in almost every first-wave BMX biography but rarely gets a page of his own. He was on the gate at the downhill tracks before anybody had drawn up a national circuit. When Linn Kastan needed a rider to hand prototypes to at Redline, before there was a ProLine, that rider was Byron. January 1980, he is on the cover of BMX Action on a DG. The same year, he was working out of the SE Racing sales room on Paramount Boulevard while I was a 12-year-old stickering frames at the back of that same building. A few years later he helped launch Mountain Bike Action, back when mountain biking had not yet decided what it wanted to be. He is in the National BMX Hall of Fame for the whole run.
1974 — Kawasaki, breaking frames
His first BMX bike was a cheap department-store 20-inch. Then a Schwinn Stingray. Then, in 1974, Kawasaki Motors Corporation USA picked him up as a factory rider for their new BMX program. Triple A built the bikes — the same Southern California outfit that would later build the Triple A Mono shock full-suspension downhill bike. Byron has put what factory riding meant in 1974 into one line: "Our job was to break frames."
"Dave Clinton and I pushed way past the existing boundaries at the gnarly Saddleback MX park and NBA's Randall Ranch downhill tracks. We would send-it at 30+ mph to flat. NO landing ramp."
— Byron Friday, FatBMX "Preserving BMX History" interview, March 2024
1975-1978 — Shimano, Jim Emerson, and the Japanese connection
Shimano America sat up the street from Jim Emerson's Peddlers West bike shop and EFF BMX distribution operation in Sun Valley, north of Los Angeles. Bob Hansing, who ran Shimano America at the time, also owned a Pro bike shop in Montrose. Linn Kastan was building Redline motorcycle racing parts a few miles up the road. The whole regional setup was an industry node, and Byron landed right in the middle of it.
From 1975 through 1978 he rode for Shimano America. He was one of the riders Jim Emerson backed with parts, transportation, and access. That arrangement is what let the Japanese component side of BMX — Shimano, Tange, KKT, Araya — plug into a small American market and start engineering for it on purpose.
1978-1980 — Redline, the ProLine, and the Flight Cranks
Jim Emerson connected Byron straight to Linn Kastan at Redline. The Redline shop was in Northridge, not far from Byron's school. He started working there around 1975 or 1976, then went full factory in 1978.
Byron was in Kastan's ear constantly. He wanted a lighter, stronger, more durable bike, and he would not let it go. Out of that came the Redline V bars first, then the ProLine stem, then the ProLine frame and fork. Then the Flight Cranks. The first prototypes failed almost the moment he rode them. He broke two or three sets in a single afternoon of testing. The last failure broke his foot and put him in a cast. That crank design got reworked and went on to become one of the most-licensed BMX crank platforms in the sport — Supercross BMX holds the current Redline Flight Cranks license from Regent.
The Redline period ended badly. Byron has been open about hard drugs being available at school and around his neighborhood. His high school girlfriend was Cherie Currie, who would go on to front The Runaways with Joan Jett and Lita Ford. The lifestyle cost him his Redline job.
Redline's own house history remembers exactly how young he was when it started: "Redline's first product tester is one of their employees; a 15-year-old punk from the Valley named Byron Friday" (23mag.com, Redline brand history). Period race coverage backs up how fast he made a name once he was on the bike — BMX Action's February 1978 report on a Los Angeles Coliseum race put it plainly: "Byron Friday (Red Line) had 50,000 people jumping up and down" (oldschoolmags.com, BMX Action, February 1978).
DG, the BMX Action cover, and the ZF-1
A phone call from DG Racing brought him back. DG was the freshest BMX brand to come out of the motocross world in that stretch. BMX Action magazine put Byron on the cover of its January 1980 issue, racing his DG at Corona Raceway in Southern California. The same issue ran a "Hot Shots" pictorial featuring Byron, Frank Post, Greg Hill, and PK among others.
The frame Byron designed at DG is the one that leaves him a permanent footprint in DG history. The DG ZF-1 — "ZF" for Zuener / Friday — was named for DG's two main pro racers at the time: Sal Zuener and Byron. Byron drew it, the factory built it, and it shipped before DG closed its BMX operation in 1982.
He was not carrying the DG banner alone. A BMX Action feature from February/March 1979 has Byron riding for DG alongside teammate Jeff Bottema, part of the factory roster DG was building before the ZF-1 and the January 1980 cover (oldschoolmags.com, BMX Action, Feb/Mar 1979).
The SE Racing building on Paramount Boulevard
The early 1980s put Byron inside the SE Racing building at 6801 Paramount Boulevard. He was not on the SE factory race team. He was on the industry side — in and out of the sales room at the back of the building, around the production crew, around the factory riders.
I started at SE in 1981, at age 12, and Byron was part of the Paramount crew I worked alongside. The full list: Scot Breithaupt, Mike Devitt, Perry Kramer, Byron, Rod Beckering, and Kendal Crabtree, with Jeff Utterback, Fred Blood, and Toby Henderson coming through regularly.
One story from that stretch belongs to Perry Kramer as much as it does to Byron. When Perry named his own SE signature bike, he said exactly where the name came from in BMX Action's June 1981 feature on the new P.K. Ripper: he was "partial to the Ripper tag that Byron Friday had hung on him." Byron coined the nickname first. Perry built a bike around it. The name on one of SE's most recognized frames traces straight back to a joke Byron made in that Paramount Boulevard building (oldschoolmags.com, BMX Action, June 1981).
1982 — Scorpion and the Pro School of BMX
After DG, Byron was briefly out of the bike industry. The call back came from Paul Hinkston, a former Shimano America executive. Hinkston had launched Sentinel Cycle and rebranded the BMX line as Scorpion. He asked Byron to help build the Scorpion BMX program.
Working with Perry Kramer at BMX Plus!, Byron put a spring and summer tour on the road — Pro-level BMX clinics at tracks across the country. The Scorpion clinic tour eventually went international: Holland, Belgium, and the U.K. Byron stayed with Gerrit Does, the godfather of European BMX, in Holland. He ran training schools in Ipswich and elsewhere in England. He spent the majority of 1986 in Europe.
1987-1990 — Mountain Bike Action and Diamond Back
The 1980s wound down with Byron pivoting into mountain biking. In 1987 he was promoting mountain bike races — his most-noted demo was a halftime mountain bike exhibition during a Supercross at the Los Angeles Coliseum. In 1988, Mountain Bike Action brought him in as test consultant and then advertising manager.
Bill Ryan's own account draws a straighter line from SE Racing into that mountain bike chapter: Byron left the Paramount Boulevard circle specifically to go help High Torque Publishing get Mountain Bike Action off the ground (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). The magazine's own house history credits founding editor Dean Bradley with pitching the title to Hi-Torque in December 1985 and doesn't separately name Byron among the founders — but the debut issue, cover-dated July 1986, already features Byron racing a mountain bike against John Tomac in a "Mountain Bikes vs. BMX" feature, a full season earlier than the 1988 test-consultant date usually attached to his name. Both accounts are on the record here. We haven't been able to fully reconcile the exact sequence, and we're not going to force one over the other. Worth noting too: Byron's own "teams represented" list, given directly in his 2024 FatBMX interview, runs Kawasaki, Shimano America, and Redline — and leaves SE Racing off entirely, which lines up with the sales-room-not-factory-team framing above.
Diamond Back hired him into the mountain bike division as product manager from 1988 to 1990, under WSI corporate ownership. He went on to do product development for Tioga in the early 1990s and raced NORBA's Pro Class on Tioga in both downhill and slalom.
Back to BMX
Byron's last formal BMX chapter brought him back for a couple of seasons of ABA Vet Pro / Masters racing, then into a working role with Mongoose, running BMX clinics around the U.S. as team mechanic and manager. Community BMX records also place him managing the Trek BMX team around 1997 (23mag.com; the date is approximate and not independently confirmed elsewhere).
What we don't know
The exact sequence connecting Byron's SE Racing years to the founding of Mountain Bike Action isn't fully pinned down — see the note above. The precise circumstances of his exit from Redline beyond "the lifestyle cost him his Redline job" aren't spelled out in any source we found. His Trek BMX team management is dated only to "around 1997" by a single supporting-tier source. None of that changes the shape of the record above; it's just where the record runs thin.
Legacy
The Redline ProLine series Byron co-developed with Linn Kastan in 1977-1978 is one of the cornerstones of BMX product history. The DG ZF-1 carries his name into every BMX collector show that has a DG bike on the floor. The Scorpion clinic tour through Europe in 1986 is part of why BMX took hold the way it did in Holland, Belgium, and the U.K. The Mountain Bike Action launch crew he was part of helped turn mountain biking from a Marin County experiment into a national magazine-backed sport.
The Redline Flight Crank platform he broke prototypes of in 1978 is licensed to Supercross BMX today. The PK Ripper he stood next to inside the SE building is in continuous production almost fifty years later. The mountain bike division he managed at Diamond Back still ships product.
Sources
USA BMX Hall of Fame directory profile, Byron Friday entry (usabmx.com/site/postings/142). FatBMX, "Re-Up; Preserving BMX History. Episode 61: Byron 'TGI' Friday (USA)" — long-form first-person interview by Bart de Jong, March 5, 2024. 23mag.com BMX Action 1980 cover index (23mag.com/mags/ba/ba80.htm). BMX Weekly podcast, "Byron Friday" episode, April 23, 2023 (bmxweekly.com/2023/04/podcast-byron-friday). BMX Society community forum threads. oldschoolmags.com magazine archive (oldschoolmags.com/bmx_action.htm). Legend Bike Co. SE Racing chapter for the Paramount Boulevard placement. Personal correspondence with Bill Ryan for the first-hand placement of Byron inside the SE Racing building. oldschoolmags.com period scans consulted for this update: BMX Action December 1977 (Redline ProLine feature), BMX Action February 1978 (Los Angeles Coliseum race report), BMX Action February/March 1979 (DG team feature with Jeff Bottema), BMX Action June 1981 (SE P.K. Ripper feature carrying the Byron Friday nickname quote), BMX Action April 1989 (Diamond Back/WSI mountain bike division corroboration). 23mag.com Redline brand history (the "15-year-old punk" product-tester quote) and 23mag.com Trek/Mongoose team-management entries. bmxsociety.com was checked and returned no independent public thread on Byron Friday beyond what's already cited above; the domain now runs primarily as a members-only forum.
Byron Friday and Legend Bike Co.
Byron is on this page because three of the brand stories Legend tells run directly through him. First is the Redline Flight Crank — the crank platform Byron broke the first prototypes of in 1978 is the same Redline Flight Crank line Supercross BMX now holds the license to from Regent. Second is the SE Racing Paramount Boulevard era — my first BMX-industry job, at age 12, was at the same SE building Byron was working out of in the early 1980s. Third is the line that runs from 1970s BMX racing into the rest of the bike industry. Not many people from the 1974 generation of BMX pros are still in the industry today. Byron is one of them.
Read more on Legend Bike Co.
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