Where It All Started

Before any of this — before GT, before Supercross, before Legend — there was a place called the Pit in Torrance. That's where BMX Action magazine was based, and that's where Bill Ryan spent his time. He was a latch-key kid who needed somewhere to be. The Pit was it.

That's where he got to know Scot Breithaupt, the man who founded SE Racing and who most people in this sport call the godfather of BMX. They called Scot the OM — Old Man. Not because he was old. Because he was doing things way beyond his age while everyone around him was still a teenager. He put on the first BMX race ever, 1970 in Long Beach, thirteen years old. By the time Bill was coming up, Scot had already built something real.

Bill knew the Emrich brothers at the Pit too — test riders for BMX Action — and Donny Jones, another BMX Action test rider who was a name back then. Scot could see Bill loved the sport and needed a place to put it. So he gave him a job at the SE building on Paramount Boulevard in Paramount, CA. After school Bill would come in and sweep the floors, pack orders, sticker frames. That's how he got his start in the industry.

I grew up in Lakewood, not far away. Had a ramp out in front of my house and rode it every chance I got. I got my start doing freestyle at the Lakewood skatepark on an SE Quad. Spring of 1981, I got my first Hot Shot in BMX Action Magazine — shot on that SE Quad with Webco Mags. Bill was already at SE by then and he'd see me at the shop, or out at the ramp in front of the house. Two kids from the same corner of Southern California, living for bikes. That friendship never went away.

Bill's roots go back even further than SE. He'd known Turnell Henry — Tuni — since he was ten years old. Tuni ran BMX clinics at Harbor BMX Track in San Pedro and later owned La Palma Cycle Center. Bill was one of his clinic kids from way back. A lot of what came later started right there.

Gary Turner, Rich Long, and the Performer

Before GT I'd been on Kuwahara, then a Torker. Almost ended up on Haro — Bob Haro called me up, gave me the full kit, I did a six-page shoot with John Ker at BMX Plus. Next day he called and said he needed the bike back. So I ended up on the cover of BMX Action in full Haro gear riding a Torker. That's just how it went back then.

Then GT came to me. Gary Turner and Rich Long could see where freestyle was heading before most people did. They wanted a real freestyle frame, not a race bike with stickers on it. The GT Performer was built from scratch for freestyle — shorter chainstays, geometry made to spin and rotate, chromoly when most brands were still running cheaper tubing. You'd throw a tailwhip and the frame was already halfway through it for you.

Best thing about riding for GT back then? Nothing was calculated. You needed something, you got it. Gary and Rich took care of their riders. I'd back my camo lifted Toyota pickup up to the warehouse and Bill — over at GT doing customer service and sales — would come out and help me load that truck up. Rich Long would come out shaking his head. "How many bikes did he take? What the hell?" That was the culture. It was a family. That was the GT I loved.

Bill's Road from GT to Supercross

When GT went corporate the whole culture changed. Bill and Tommy Brackens left at the same time. Bill helped Tommy get Brackens Bikes going at La Palma Cycle Center — Tuni's shop, where Bill had been a kid coming up. That's where Bill got to know Brian "Bogi" Givens too. Tommy landed an investor from Germany named Hartwig, the business had its footing, and Bill moved on.

He opened Power Plus Cycles in Stanton, CA. Not far from me in Lakewood, not far from where GT was in Huntington Beach. He was making TECH racing pants out of that shop — Redline, Haro, S&M, Cyclecraft, they were all running his gear. He was also managing the Vans Freestyle Promotion Team: me, Todd Anderson who happened to be Bill's own roommate, and Danny Hubbard. The ramp and truck for that team lived at Bill's house and stayed parked out front of Power Plus Cycles.

The TECH Team needed bikes and couldn't get a sponsor. So in 1989, Bill started Supercross BMX to put his own riders on something worth riding. That first roster tells you everything about who Bill is and where he came from.

I stayed at GT for several more years after Bill left. We stayed friends the whole time. That never changed.

Pro Former, Former Pro, Same Thing

GT stopped making the Performer. Nothing they were building even looked like it anymore. So I went to Bill — by then he'd been running Supercross BMX for over twenty years — and told him I wanted to build a frame like the Performer. Call it the Pro Former. Change the name just enough. Bill said two weeks. Two weeks turned into six months with nothing. So I went somewhere else.

I found Johnny at True Torch down in Santa Ana, right where GT first started. Johnny had actually welded Performers together back when he was at GT. My bike was more GT than anything GT was producing at that point. We did 250 frames. Johnny did great work early on, but the second I pushed on schedules the quality started slipping. My name was going on these frames. That wasn't going to work. That run ended.

Right about then, Bill's Supercross prototype showed up on my doorstep. Unbelievable. Now we were doing this together, the right way.

Then I got a cease and desist from GT. Pro Former sounds too much like Performer. The bike looks too much like the one they don't even make anymore. Bill called them and told them where to go. Then we cut it and swapped the sides. Pro Former became Former Pro. They couldn't do a thing about it — because I am a former pro. Means exactly the same thing.

Chromoly. Quality welds. Geometry that goes straight back to what Gary Turner and I were thinking about in 1984. The Former Pro isn't a throwback product. It's a bike built by two people who have been doing this since the early 1980s and won't put their names on anything that isn't right.

If you rode a GT Performer, you know exactly what this is. If you didn't, you're about to find out what you missed.

The Timeline