A Legend Bike Co. rider history page. Anchored on Byron Friday's own first-person account in the FatBMX "Preserving BMX History" interview series and on Bill Ryan's first-hand placement of Byron inside the SE Racing building on Paramount Boulevard.

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 the names that shows up in almost every first-wave BMX biography but rarely gets his own page. He was on the gate at the downhill tracks before there was a national circuit. He was the test rider Linn Kastan handed prototypes to at Redline before the ProLine existed. He was on the cover of BMX Action in January 1980 on a DG. He was inside the SE Racing sales room on Paramount Boulevard the same year a 12-year-old Bill Ryan was stickering frames at the back of the building. He helped launch Mountain Bike Action when mountain biking was still figuring out what it wanted to be. He is in the National BMX Hall of Fame for all of it.

1974 — Kawasaki, breaking frames

Byron's 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. The bikes were built by Triple A — the same Southern California outfit that would later build the Triple A Mono shock full-suspension downhill bike. Byron has summarized what factory riding meant in 1974 in 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 was 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, the president of 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 in the middle of it.

From 1975 through 1978 he rode for Shimano America. He was one of the riders Jim Emerson supported with parts, transportation, and access. The arrangement is what made it possible for the Japanese component side of BMX — Shimano, Tange, KKT, Araya — to plug into the small American BMX market and start engineering for it specifically.

1978-1980 — Redline, the ProLine, and the Flight Cranks

Jim Emerson connected Byron directly to Linn Kastan at Redline. The Redline shop was in Northridge, not far from Byron's school. He started working at Redline around 1975 or 1976 and went full factory in 1978.

Byron was in Kastan's ear constantly for a lighter, stronger, more durable bike. The result was the Redline V bars first, then the ProLine stem, then the ProLine frame and fork. Next came the Flight Cranks. The first prototypes failed almost immediately. Byron broke two or three sets in a single afternoon of testing. The final failure broke his foot and put him in a cast. The Flight Crank design eventually 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 the fact that hard drugs were available at school and in 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.

DG, the BMX Action cover, and the ZF-1

A phone call from DG Racing brought him back in. 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 gives 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.

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.

Bill Ryan, who started at SE in 1981 at age 12, has named Byron specifically as part of the Paramount crew he 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.

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.

Together 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.

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.

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.

Byron Friday and Legend Bike Co.

Byron is on this page because three of the brand stories Legend tells run directly through him. The 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. The second is the SE Racing Paramount Boulevard era — Bill Ryan's first BMX-industry job at age 12 was at the same SE building Byron was working out of in the early 1980s. The third is the line that runs from 1970s BMX racing into the rest of the bike industry. There are not many people from the 1974 generation of BMX pros who are still in the industry today. Byron is one of them.

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Brands and shops: SE Racing · CW Racing · Diamond Back · Centurion Cycles · GT · Haro · Redline · Torker · Webco · Mongoose · Skyway · Schwinn · JMC · Hutch · S&M Bikes · TW BMX · CRD · Bottema Forks · Voris Dixon 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

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Overview: The History of BMX