Josh White

The Oregon Kid Who Landed BMX's First 540

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · sources: 23mag.com's period-sourced rider archive, DIG BMX, and Legend Bike Co.'s own Freestylin' Magazine and Mark Lewman pages

At a glance

Born April 23, 1967, Fullerton, California
Raised Ashland / Medford, Oregon
Teams Dyno (reported, fall 1985) · GT Bicycles (1986–1989, three-year contract signed 1987)
Known for Landing BMX's first recorded 540 aerial, late 1984 · going from unknown to a Freestylin' cover star within about a year · inventing the "Griz-air"

Josh White's rise is one of the fastest in BMX freestyle history: a kid on a backyard ramp in southern Oregon in 1984, a GT factory pro and magazine cover star by the second half of 1986. In between, he landed a trick nobody had landed before, on a ramp built out of masonite and painted lavender, in front of an audience that mostly consisted of his own friends.

Ashland, a Quarterpipe, and the First 540

White grew up riding around Ashland and Medford, Oregon, part of a small local crew that included David Griswold, Scott Shafer and Drew Lamb. Griswold, who first met White at the Medford BMX track in 1981 as White was finishing up his racing career and getting into the new thing called freestyle, remembers him from the start as a fun guy and a serious jumper, riding a candy-apple-red PK Ripper.

At the end of 1984, White read about racer Andy Patterson working on 360s on a quarterpipe and decided to try a 540 instead — reasoning that landing forward would be easier than landing backward out of a 360. It took him about five attempts to land it. Griswold remembers watching it happen: White wasn't yet clearing the coping, but everyone there knew they'd seen something nobody had done before. Drew Lamb, who rode with White in a loose group they called the Concrete Commandos through 1985, remembers White dialing in 540s on his own quarterpipe, and White himself put people at Venice Beach on notice not long after — an unknown kid from Ashland landing 540 airs, riding under the name Josh Eisenhauer at the time, by Lamb's recollection.

Concrete Commandos and Getting Discovered

The Concrete Commandos put on informal shows at local schools and businesses — including one crammed inside a Chuck E. Cheese in Medford, where White was reportedly scraping the ceiling on a masonite ramp painted lavender, sliding out on the tile floor and sticking his 540s anyway. A Medford Mail Tribune photographer caught White riding one day when he'd told his mother and school he was out sick; the resulting front-page photo got him grounded for weeks. By fall 1985, White told a new Ashland college student named Steve that he'd just been picked up by Dyno. Steve, by his own later account, didn't believe a kid from Ashland could really be riding for a factory team — and was wrong. Within a year, White was on the cover of Freestylin'.

"Unknown to Famous Overnight"

By 1986, White had relocated to Huntington Beach, California, and was riding for GT Bicycles on the GT/Brittania Tour. At the 1986 AFA Masters rounds 2 and 3, he took first place in the 16-and-over expert ramp class both times and placed in flatland as well, narrowly losing second in ground competition to Karl Rothe on a tiebreaker at round 3 before winning the ramp overall. Freestylin's August 1986 issue put him on the cover with a full interview — the same magazine Mark Lewman, Andy Jenkins and Spike Jonze were running at the time — and BMX Plus! named him, alongside Rick Moliterno and Karl Rothe, one of freestyle's hottest up-and-comers that October. It's the same story that led one of the book-mining sources behind this page to sum up his 1986 chapter in three words: unknown to famous, overnight.

The run continued through 1987 and 1988: a Freestyle Spectacular cover in February 1987, a Bicross Magazine cover out of France in March, a Super BMX & Freestyle cover in May, a first-place pro finish at the 1987 2-Hip King of Vert round in Flint, Michigan, an inverted no-footed one-hander on the cover of FAT magazine's very first issue, and a three-year GT contract signed that year. Super BMX & Freestyle called him, flatly, "the boss right now in the pro ramp class." He kept placing through 1988's AFA Masters circuit and a Megafree event at Paris Bercy in France, and went into the November 1988 AFA Masters finals in Wichita, Kansas, in contention for the year's Pro Ramp title before finishing fifth.

The Griz-air, and Freestylin' II's Most Photographed Rider

White is credited as the inventor of the "Griz-air," a trick named after his friend Matt Griswald, and he's one of the most photographed riders in Freestylin' II: The Book — the 1987 Wizard Publications trick manual co-authored by Mark Lewman and Craig "Gork" Barrette. The book shows him demonstrating a one-footed invert "getting way outta band" and a flat, controlled helicopter, and features a large photo of him jumping over a giant Coors bottle prop at the LA Memorial Coliseum, captioned "pushing it BEYOND the limit."

A Cracked Vertebra, Then a Step Away

The touring years took a physical toll. During a 12-foot air on the GT/Brittania Tour in 1986, White slammed and cracked a vertebra in his neck. He kept riding and competing through 1988, but by 1990 the period record shows him moving into kickboxing instead, and in 1991 his Huntington Beach roommate Scott Freeman recalled that one day White was simply gone — no dramatic exit documented, just a rider stepping away from the sport that had made him famous almost overnight five years earlier.

Back on a Bike

Josh White did not disappear for good, and he has not passed away. In March 2020, he sat down with Shad Johnson for the DIG BMX Podcast — a wide-ranging conversation about his fast rise, his GT touring years, why he stepped away from BMX, and what got him back on a bike. A photo from that interview shows him riding in Portland in 2020. As of the sources checked for this page, Josh White is alive and has returned to riding.

Where the public record runs thin

Some sources give his name as Joshua Elijah White; a teammate's recollection also has him riding under the name "Josh Eisenhauer" in his earliest Oregon years, before he was known publicly as Josh White. Neither the reason for that name nor which is his birth surname is documented in the sources checked for this page, and it's flagged here rather than resolved. His life and any BMX activity between 1991 and the 2020 DIG BMX Podcast interview are not documented in the sources checked for this page.

Where Josh White fits in the bigger story

Magazines: Freestylin' Magazine. People: Mark Lewman, whose Freestylin' newsroom put White on the cover during his own tenure there. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

23mag.com, "Joshua Elijah White," 23mag.com/gens/white.htm — period-sourced rider archive drawing on Freestylin', Bicross Magazine, Super BMX & Freestyle, FAT, vintagebmx.com and contest results, including first-person recollections from David Griswold, Drew Lamb and White himself. DIG BMX, "The Josh White Podcast," digbmx.com, interview by Shad Johnson, March 30, 2020 — confirms White is alive and riding as of 2020, and covers his career and time away from BMX. Legend Bike Co.'s own Mark Lewman, Andy Jenkins, and Spike Jonze pages, checked for cross-consistency on the Freestylin' newsroom timeline. Book-mining notes on Freestylin': Generation F, 1984–1989 and Freestylin' II: The Book (Wizard Publications, 1987) — the Griz-air credit, the Coors-bottle Coliseum photo, and his cover-story profile. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked directly and returned general period BMX archive material consistent with the above rather than additional primary facts.