Joe Johnson

The Massachusetts vert rider who landed the first tailwhip air

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Which Joe Johnson

Joe Johnson is about as common a name as America produces, and a search on it turns up athletes in several sports who have nothing to do with any of this. So, plainly: this page is about the freestyle BMX rider from Mansfield, Massachusetts, who rode vert for Haro and then GT between roughly 1986 and 1991, won the pro ramp world title at Manchester in 1988, and is credited with the first tailwhip air. He is the only BMX figure of that name who turned up in the archives checked for this page. If a second one exists in the sport's record, we have not found him, and this chapter should not be read as covering anyone else.

A Quarterpipe Against Two Trees

Johnson started the way most of his generation did — racing first, then drifting toward freestyle around 1981. There was a track near his house in Mansfield, and he has described watching one or two riders doing rock walks there in 1981 or 1982 and thinking it made no sense at all. Then he tried it.

The first quarterpipe he rode was, in his words, a giant kickturn ramp. A couple of days later he and a friend built their own. They had no plans, only a rough idea of what one looked like, so they built it against two trees and it came out better than it had any right to. A year or two on he met T.J. Fallon, who had a yard full of ramps. Eventually he talked his mother into letting him fill the backyard with plywood. Looking back years later, he laughed at how enormous that ramp had felt at the time — eight feet, and it might as well have been a mountain.

That backyard is the whole origin story. No skatepark, no coach, no camp. Plywood, two trees, and a New England winter to think about it.

Haro, 1986

By 1986 he was on Haro, the team every ramp rider wanted. That year he took fifth in the 16-and-over expert class at the AFA Masters finals at the Velodrome in California. Period coverage described a rider with something to prove — he was the man with nothing listed under his name in the Haro ad — riding to the same Run-DMC track everybody else used that day, blasting a one-footed invert about seven feet out, a lookback, a vertical lookdown, a no-hander, a fakie air, and squeaking out a 540 by the narrowest margin.

1987 put him on the Haro freestyle tour, where he says he picked up a lot of flatland riding alongside Dennis McCoy and Rick Moliterno, though he was quick to point out that tour life leaves almost no time to actually practice. That October he took second in expert ramp at the 2-Hip King of Vert round in Washington, D.C., and BMX Action ran an interview with him that December.

1988: World Champion

1988 was his year. He opened it with second in pro ramp at the 2-Hip King of Vert round in California in March, then third at the Megafree contest in Paris later the same month, where French coverage singled out his one-handed turndowns, his no-footed candy bar, and a no-hander alley-oop over the canyon. In July he went to Manchester, England, and came home pro ramp world champion.

British riders who watched him there still talk about the technique. He stretched every trick further than seemed reasonable and then landed clean at the top of the ramp, over and over, as if the transition had been built to his measurements. It looked like a different method than everyone else was using, because it was.

That was also the year of the tailwhip air. Johnson never claimed to have dreamed it up on his own. He pointed to a fly-out tailwhip Mike Dominguez did back in 1984, and said riders had been talking about an aerial version for ages. He worked at it for about six months, quit, went back to it, and then got it. Once the single was there, the double followed quickly. He tried the triple in 1989 and never landed it — something he later said he wished he had chased a little harder, since the bikes of that era were light enough to make it plausible.

He closed the year with an interview in FAT zine and a turndown on the October cover of Freestyle BMX UK.

GT, and the Double

1989 brought an interview in Freestylin' in March and a move to GT. In February he won pro ramp at the 2-Hip King of Vert round at Megafree 2 in Paris on clean, high, varied runs, closing his last run with an attempt at the double tailwhip air. He got it in October at the King of Vert round in Washington, D.C., where he finished second — and where the report noted that if anyone was going to beat Brian Blyther at a 2-Hip, it would most likely be Joe. He also took fourth in the Great class at the 1989 2-Hip Meet the Street finals.

His turndown at the 1989 Woodward King of Vert ended up on the cover of GT's 1990 catalog. In January 1990 he took second in pro ramp at the King of Vert finals at Newport, closing out with the double whiplash air.

The Style, and Where the Turndown Came From

Dennis McCoy wrote the most useful description of what made Johnson different, in Transworld BMX in 2003. To McCoy, the name was simply a synonym for style. He carried a mental image of Johnson at an AFA contest in New York around 1986 — completely upside down, fully stretched, one-handed invert, on a Haro with plastic mag wheels. This was years before riders started consciously working on how their riding looked. Johnson did not rehearse it. He just had it. Perfect no-handers fully stretched. No-footed can-cans held far longer than made sense.

McCoy also credits him with the trick's name-behind-the-name. Street riding one night in Florida, McCoy watched Johnson bend his bike into a shape he did not recognize and asked what it was. Johnson explained that he liked to kick his Learys out the opposite way and drop the back end. That, McCoy wrote, is the move now called the turndown.

When halfpipe contests became the standard format, that ability to link the hardest variations back to back at full height is what set him apart. Difficulty without any visible strain.

California, Then Home

In the late 1980s Johnson packed his Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, left Massachusetts, and moved into Ron Wilkerson's old house in California with half a dozen other riders. He rode the Enchanted Ramp regularly and worked out the trick we now call the toothpick, gripping his peg for traction — peg grinds had not been invented yet. Sunshine, roommates who rode, magazines and sponsors down the road. On paper it was everything a pro could want.

It did not hold him. By McCoy's account, Johnson watched Cheers religiously and it kept reminding him of home. He moved back to Boston, went back to clam chowder, and enrolled in mechanical engineering classes back East. Contests were thinning out. Then he tore his ACL, and GT's team manager gave him a choice: move back to California or come off the team. He chose home.

After the Bike

Johnson left BMX in 1991, at a moment when a lot of riders did. He has been straightforward about why the timing made sense — by the mid-1990s the magazines were thin and the sponsors were gone, and the sport stalled for a while.

He became a mechanical engineer at a cryogenics company in Massachusetts, designing and building vacuum pumps. In December 1997 he turned up riding shows with Dennis McCoy on the Mongoose ramp at the Anaheim bike show and, by the report at the time, was pulling tailwhips and putting up respectable air after years of not riding seriously. By 2003 he was married, working as an engineer in New England, and still riding, though less after blowing out his knee at a skatepark.

He never really left the events, either. He worked as head staff at the contests McCoy ran, including the Gravity Games and the Vans Triple Crown, and by 2006 he was living outside Boston and helping organize the BMX side of the Dew Tour — as he put it, keeping his foot in the door. More recently he sat down for a long-form interview on The Union Tapes podcast, walking back through the whole arc.

Living or gone

No source consulted for this page reports Joe Johnson's death, and this library does not print a claim like that without a hard source. The most recent traces in the record are his event-organizing work and his podcast interview, both of which show him alive and talking about riding. Anything beyond that, the record here is silent on.

Timeline

• c. 1981Starts racing at a track near his house in Mansfield, Massachusetts, then moves toward freestyle after watching riders do rock walks.
• 1982 – 1983Builds a quarterpipe against two trees with a friend, no plans. Later fills the family backyard with plywood for an eight-foot ramp.
• 1986Joins the Haro team. Fifth place, 16-and-over expert, AFA Masters finals at the Velodrome, California.
• 1987Rides the Haro freestyle tour with Dennis McCoy and Rick Moliterno. Second in expert ramp, 2-Hip King of Vert round 4, Washington, D.C., October. Interviewed in BMX Action, December.
• March 1988Second in pro ramp, 2-Hip King of Vert round 1, California. Third in pro ramp at Megafree 1, Paris.
• July 1988Pro ramp world champion, Worlds, Manchester, England.
• 1988Lands the first tailwhip air. Interviewed in FAT zine issue 8. Turndown on the October cover of Freestyle BMX UK.
• February 1989First place pro ramp, 2-Hip King of Vert round 1, Megafree 2, Paris. Interviewed in Freestylin' issue 46 in March.
• 1989Picked up by GT. Fourth in the Great class at the 2-Hip Meet the Street finals.
• October 1989Pulls the first double tailwhip air at the 2-Hip King of Vert round in Washington, D.C. Finishes second.
• January 1990Second in pro ramp at the 2-Hip King of Vert finals, Newport. His 1989 Woodward turndown runs on the cover of GT's 1990 catalog.
• 1991Leaves BMX. Tears his ACL and turns down a move back to California, ending his time on GT.
• 1997Rides shows with Dennis McCoy at the Anaheim bike show, still pulling tailwhips. Working as a cryogenics engineer.
• 2003Married, engineering in New England, head staff at the Gravity Games and Vans Triple Crown contests.
• 2006Living outside Boston, organizing the BMX side of the Dew Tour alongside Dennis McCoy.
• Recent yearsLong-form interview on The Union Tapes podcast, episode 32.

Where Joe Johnson fits in the bigger story

Riders of the vert era: Brian Blyther, Mat Hoffman, Ron Wilkerson, Fred Blood, Billy Harrison. Brands: Haro, GT Bicycles, Hutch, SE Racing, Mongoose, Redline, Torker, Powerlite, Schwinn, Vans. The press: Freestylin', BMX Action, Wizard Publications, Spike Jonze, Craig "gOrk" Barrette. The full arc lives in our History of BMX series.

Sources

23mag.com rider file on Joe Johnson — the year-by-year contest ledger, magazine appearances and quotes used here, compiled from BMX Action, Transworld BMX, Ride BMX UK, lat34.com and vintagebmx.com. Dennis McCoy, writing in Transworld BMX, June 2003 — the account of Johnson's style, the origin of the turndown, the move into Ron Wilkerson's old house, the Enchanted Ramp and the toothpick, the knee injury, and his later engineering and event work. Joe Johnson interviewed by lat34.com, August 2006 — his own words on the Mansfield track, the backyard ramp, the tailwhip air and giving partial credit to Mike Dominguez, leaving the sport in 1991, and his Dew Tour role. Ride BMX UK, December 1997 — the Anaheim bike show appearance. The Union Tapes podcast, episode 32, via fatbmx.com — a long-form interview with Johnson and confirmation that he joined Haro in 1986. Period video of the 1985 AFA Masters expert ramps class at Manchester, New Hampshire. Not reachable during research: bmxsociety.com was down throughout, and bmxmuseum.com blocks automated access, so its Joe Johnson reference entry could not be read.