BMX Racing History · Chapter 11 · Legend Bike Co

The Bike Shops That Made BMX

I've spent this series on the riders, the brands, and the tracks. All of it matters. But I worked every side of a bike shop counter for most of my life, and I'll tell you straight: none of it happens without the shops. The shop is where a kid bought his first race plate. Where he got a bent rim trued before Saturday motos. Where he joined his first team and talked his way into the industry. There were thousands of them, in every town in America. This chapter belongs to them.

The King: Ralph's Bicycles

Out West, the king was Ralph Mundia. Ralph's Bicycles sat on Paramount Boulevard in Downey, and Ralph figured out something nobody else had: take the shop to the track. His was the first fully mobile BMX bike shop. You broke a part at the races, Ralph had it — right there, trackside, while everybody else was packing up to drive home for the spare. The shop became a fixture at the nationals and sponsored a long line of pros across the decades. Toby Henderson rode for Ralph's as an amateur in 1976–77, and an AXO/Ralph's pro team was still going at the end of the 80s. Ralph's even had its own house frame, the Hustler, built for the shop by Cook Bros.

Ralph ran the shop with his wife, Karen, at his side. Bill Ryan, who knew them firsthand, puts it simply: "Big Daddy Ralph was truly one of a kind." Ralph's reach went past Downey too — the shop was known to the local scene around the Azusa track as well, part of the same San Gabriel Valley shop network covered below.

The Thousands

For every famous shop there were a thousand neighborhood ones, and they carried just as much weight. Beavers Bikes in Tarzana. Dad's Bike Barn. The Bicycle Source in Lomita, owned by Steve Potts — Mike Buff's older half-brother — where R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff hung out — their stickers ended up on half the bikes in Orange County. Potts built the ACS Rotor right there at the shop, for Mike's own bar-spinning riding, and licensed it to ACS — one shop counter, one invention that changed freestyle for good. Steve Blackey, who had worked for Potts at the original shop, reopened Bicycle Source in Anaheim in the early 2010s with Danny Hubbard as a partner — it ran about two years before closing again (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). Baron's Bikes, whose shop team gave a young Bob Morales his start in 1977–78. Take away shops like these, and the thousands more like them, and there's nowhere for a kid to buy a part. No part, no sport. Simple as that.

Out in the San Gabriel Valley, the shop scene around the Azusa track ran just as deep. Norm's Bicycle, run by Norm Massey, and El Monte Cycle, run by Dennis, both kept the local racers outfitted. And S&K, run by Ratcliffe, fielded the shop team the Azusa locals actually rode for — S&K's race team and its co-factory sponsorship from Free Agent are covered on the Azusa BMX page.

Hutch — from East Coast mail order

Rich Hutchins ran a bike store in Pasadena, Maryland, where East Coast kids couldn't get their hands on the West Coast parts the magazines kept showing them. So in 1979 he started a mail-order operation out of his own house. It grew until the mail order WAS the business. The first Hutch Pro Racer frames showed up in 1981, and that mail-order house turned into one of the most loved brands of the 80s. "The Most Beautiful Bike in the World."

Custom Wheels — the shop behind CW

The CW brand came out of Roger Worsham's wheel shop on the Placentia/Yorba Linda line. I remember it as Custom Wheels in Placentia. The surviving online record calls it Coast Wheels over in Yorba Linda and says the initials stood for "Custom Works." Where the record and my memory don't line up, I'll say so plainly — and if you bought wheels off Worsham's counter, settle it for me. Either way, the race brand launched around 1980, and CW's run in the sport — including the team that signed Pistol Pete — is its own chapter.

RRS — the Schwinn stores that went racing

Riverside and Redlands Schwinn was the Kundig family's pair of Schwinn shops — Joe Kundig had turned Redlands' old Griswold's Sporting Goods into a Schwinn franchise back in 1969. The stores started the RRS Racing brand, whose 1980–81 frames ran a signature eccentric bottom bracket, and whose 24-inch UNCruiser is remembered as the bike that changed cruiser racing. Lee Medlin — the Corona kid — rode for RRS in 1982, including the NBL's Ascot national.

Peddlepower — one shop, three brands

No single counter put more history into this sport than Peddlepower in Orange. Steve Rink ran it — the same Steve Rink who helped build the first Torker prototype — and out of that shop came the SR frame in 1977, which became Powerlite by 1979. When Powerlite outgrew the shop, the family sold Peddlepower. It passed to Jeff Bottema of the Bottema fork family, then to Rob Lynch around 1983, and Lynch started the Privateer brand out of the same four walls. (Steve Rink's son Mark also remembers a brief Bob Osborn ownership in between — one more detail we'd love a second source on.) Powerlite itself sold to GT at the end of the 80s. One neighborhood bike shop. Three brands and change.

JMC — Jim Melton Cyclery

Jim Melton started fixing up bikes at home in 1969 and opened JM Cyclery in Azusa in 1974 — the same town where Rich Long's track would host the ABA's first national. The shop team formed in 1975, the first JMC prototypes appeared in 1976, and frame production began in March 1977. By 1979 Melton sold the shop to build JMC frames full time. The team won the IBMXF World Team title in 1982 with riders like Harry Leary and Clint Miller before the brand closed in July 1985. Melton went into the ABA Hall of Fame in 1989.

Power Plus Cycles — where Supercross started

And then there's mine. I opened Power Plus Cycles, a little shop in Stanton, in the late 80s. When my shop team couldn't land a bike sponsor, I built them one. Supercross BMX came out of that shop in 1989 — the exact same way Powerlite came out of Peddlepower and CW came out of a wheel shop. A counter, a team, and a problem worth solving. It's the same pattern that built GT, whose frames first sold through the Pedals Ready shop at Western Sports-A-Rama and Richard Long's Anaheim Cycles.

The Team Builders

Shops didn't just sell the sport. They staffed it. Sandy Finkelman ran Wheels N' Things in San Diego, built the NBA's first San Diego track at the Velodrome, and became the great team manager of the Torker factory team in 1979. In 1980 he took over the Diamond Back program for Western States Imports — stepping in after Dennis at Europa Bikes in Van Nuys stopped working with the importer — and became Diamond Back's original team manager and head of product development. A shop guy, twice over, building two of the sport's great teams.

That pattern never stopped, and I'm proof of it. Tuni Henry — the Hall of Famer — taught me to ride at Harbor BMX and ran La Palma Cycle Center, where I later worked and became his partner. Ruben Sanchez of Bike Alley in Orange managed the Orange Y for its final sixteen years. Behind almost every track, team, and brand in this series, there's a shop counter. I was standing at one.