Richard "Rich" Bartlett

The Butcher Who Invented the BMX Rhythm Section

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · sources: Steve Emig's first-hand account of the 1987 King of Dirt, Sugar Cayne's 2016 profile, BMXmuseum.com's Cycle Craft company history, and Bill Ryan's firsthand 2026 account of the Privateer factory team

At a glance

Level Pro racer, jumper, and vert rider
Scene Palmdale, Quartz Hill, and Lancaster, California (Antelope Valley), late 1970s–present
Team Privateer, out of Rob Lynch's Peddlepower shop — a primary co-factory rider (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026)
Brands U-Local wear, then Block wear and Block Bikes (Cycle Craft), and later a bike shop in Lancaster, California
Known for Building BMX's first rhythm section and founding the first King of Dirt jam in 1987

Rich Bartlett never needed a national number plate to change how BMX riders build and ride dirt. Riders in the Antelope Valley called him "The Butcher," and through the late 1970s and 1980s he turned his own backyard into one of the sport's proving grounds — first as a place kids came to jump, then as the site of a single day in 1987 that changed how trails everywhere would be shaped.

Palmdale U and the Backyard Trails

In the 1970s, Bartlett helped build a dirt jumping mecca at the once-famous Palmdale U, then kept building in his own backyard in Quartz Hill, California. Riders came from across Southern California and beyond to session his trails, and the guest list over the years ran from local kids to future pros — Tim "Fuzzy" Hall and Gary Ellis among them, according to Bartlett's own biography published alongside a 2016 bike check on Sugar Cayne.

The Privateer Years

There is a piece of Bartlett's racing life that has not been on this page until now, and it comes from someone who was in the sport at the time. Bill Ryan, firsthand in 2026, names Bartlett as a primary co-factory rider for Privateer — the frame brand Rob Lynch built out of the Peddlepower shop in Orange, California — riding alongside Chris Moeller and a rider Bill's roster gives as Martin.

That is worth sitting with, because it rearranges how the rest of this page reads. Peddlepower was not a small operation in those years: Bill Ryan's account has the shop running more than one factory rider and rates it the number one bike shop team in the nation in 1986 or 1987. Bartlett was one of the riders at the center of it. It also explains a face in the crowd further down this page — Moeller was not a stranger who happened to show up at Bartlett's trails in 1987. The two of them had been teammates.

The Day That Invented the Rhythm Section

In the summer of 1987, BMX Action editor Craig "Gork" Barrette and Bartlett put together a BMX dirt jumping jam at Bartlett's trails — the first King of Dirt. Filmmaker Steve Emig, who rode up from Los Angeles with a video crew from Unreel Productions, wrote the only detailed eyewitness account of that day still online. At the time, BMX jumping split into two camps that mostly ignored each other: racers who jumped at speed over big doubles, and freestylers who preferred flyout jumps with no gap to clear. Bartlett's trails brought both groups together for the first time in a big way.

What made the day matter wasn't just who showed up — though S&M Bicycles' Chris Moeller (then panhandling for breakfast money before he bought out his partner and built S&M into a real company), Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, future DIG BMX publisher Will Smyth, and a 15-year-old Utah kid named Tim "Fuzzy" Hall were all there. It was how Bartlett had built the jumps. He laid out a big tabletop followed by a connected line of jumps riders could clear without pedaling between them if they cleared the first one — a completely new idea at the time. According to Emig, "To the best of my knowledge, Rich Bartlett built the first rhythm section in BMX." Riders spent the day figuring out how to string the jumps together, and that layout became the standard way trails were built for years afterward.

A year later, Bartlett competed in the first ABA-sanctioned King of Dirt contest at the 1988 ABA Grands, carrying the format he'd invented at his own house into organized competition.

Touring, Fashion, and a Bike of His Own

Through the 1980s, Bartlett promoted bicycle ramp and box stunt shows and toured the United States, Canada, and Europe putting on BMX and bicycle stunt exhibitions. His "Northern Hemisphere Tour" ran from 1987 to 1991 and produced one of the first videos dedicated entirely to BMX dirt, trails, ramps, and street riding, featuring Fuzzy Hall, Richie Anderson, Dave Cullinan, Billy Harris, Chris Daley, Brian Foster, and Travis Chipres.

He was also one of BMX's earliest clothing entrepreneurs, launching U-Local wear and later the Block brand. Bartlett then put his name behind an actual frame: under his company Cycle Craft, he released the Block, one of the first bikes purpose-built for dirt jumping, with a production run BMXmuseum.com's Cycle Craft company history page puts at roughly 100 units. He also worked as a test rider for BMX magazines during this period.

Bill Ryan's firsthand account of the same run of years tells it in a different order, and both versions belong here rather than one. In Bill's telling, Bartlett left Privateer and formed Block Bikes as a frame brand built by Cyclecraft, that turned into a clothing company, and the clothing company in turn became a bike shop in Lancaster, California (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). The published sources have the clothing coming first and the frame second, and have Bartlett founding Cycle Craft himself rather than hiring it. What both accounts agree on is the cast — Bartlett, Block, Cyclecraft, and the Antelope Valley — and the Lancaster bike shop at the end of the line is a detail no published source consulted for this page carries at all. Neither Block Bikes nor Cyclecraft has a chapter in this library yet.

Still Riding

Bartlett never left the sport he helped shape. In July 2016, he flew from California to Long Island, New York, to tour with the FBM crew celebrating Block Alternatives' 25th anniversary, stopping at the Mirracle Jam at Shoreham BMX Track for a bike check with Sugar Cayne — riding a custom Fit build with Fit bars, forks, and cranks, an Animal rear hub, a Colony front hub, and Alienation rims. A 2017 post on Freestyle BMX Tales shows him still out on a mountain bike that year. He has continued to appear at BMX trail events into the 2020s.

Where the public record runs thin

Rich Bartlett's birth details, full competitive results ledger, and the exact closing date of Cycle Craft are not documented in the sources checked for this page. He does not appear in the USA BMX National Hall of Fame. A separate "Rich Bartlett" is listed on the fan-run site universityofbmx.com under European Champion and World Championship Team honors; nothing in the sources checked here connects that record to the California dirt-jump pioneer, and it reads as a likely namesake collision rather than the same rider — it is not included as fact on this page. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked directly for period coverage of Bartlett; both returned general magazine-archive and forum material but no dedicated profile.

The Privateer material added here carries no dates at all. Bill Ryan's 2026 account gives the roster and Bartlett's standing on it, not a start year, an end year, or a results record, and none are invented. The third rider on that factory line is given in Bill's roster only as Martin, with his first name written both Darren and Darin in the same source; this library has no chapter for him and no settled spelling, so he is named here by surname alone and the question goes back to Bill rather than being decided on this page.

The Block and Cyclecraft sequence is the other open item. Bill Ryan has it running frame brand, then clothing, then a Lancaster bike shop, with Cyclecraft as the builder; the published record has clothing first and Cycle Craft as Bartlett's own company. Both are set out above without a ruling. Whether the Cyclecraft that built Block frames is the same Cyclecraft that bought TECH Racing Pants from Bill Ryan in the 1980s — a brand named on this library's TECH BMX Pants chapter — is an obvious question and is not answered here. The Lancaster bike shop has no name, no address, and no opening or closing date on the record. Anyone who worked at it, raced for Privateer, or has a Block catalog can close these gaps.

Where Rich Bartlett fits in the bigger story

Teammates and team: Chris Moeller, who anchored the same Privateer squad before founding S&M, and Rob Lynch, who owned Peddlepower and started Privateer out of it. Riders in the same room: Billy Harrison, another Peddlepower and Privateer rider, and Craig "Gork" Barrette, who co-ran the first King of Dirt with him. Brands: S&M Bikes. The bigger arc of BMX's early dirt jumping and freestyle culture is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX and co-owner of Legend Bike Co., firsthand, 2026 — the Peddlepower and Privateer factory roster, Bartlett's standing as a primary co-factory rider alongside Chris Moeller and Martin, and the Block Bikes to clothing company to Lancaster bike shop sequence with Cyclecraft as the frame builder. Steve Emig, "People who changed BMX that you forgot about: Rich Bartlett," Freestyle BMX Tales, freestylebmxtales43.blogspot.com, March 18, 2017 — first-hand eyewitness account of the 1987 King of Dirt jam, written by the filmmaker who was there (primary source). Sugar Cayne, "Rich Bartlett's Fit Brian Foster Custom BMX Bike Check," sugarcayne.com, July 27, 2016 — biographical profile including "The Butcher" nickname, Palmdale U, the Northern Hemisphere Tour, U-Local/Block, and Block Bikes. BMXmuseum.com Forums, "Cycle Craft made Block bmx bikes" and "1992 Cycle Craft," bmxmuseum.com/forums — Cycle Craft company history and Block frame production numbers. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked directly by site-restricted search for independent period coverage of Bartlett; neither returned a dedicated profile beyond general BMX magazine-archive and forum material at the time of research.