BMX Racing History · Chapter 11 · Legend Bike Co

The Bike Shops That Made BMX

This series has covered the riders, the brands, and the tracks — and all of them are super important. But here's the truth from someone who lived it from every side of the counter: the sport would not exist without the shops. The shops are where a kid bought his first race plate, got his bent rim trued before Saturday motos, joined his first team, and talked his way into the industry. Thousands of them, in every town. This chapter is theirs.

The King: Ralph's Bicycles

On the West Coast, the king of BMX shops was Ralph Mundia of Ralph's Bicycles on Paramount Boulevard in Downey. Ralph's edge was simple and ahead of its time: he took the shop to the track. Ralph's was the first fully mobile BMX bike shop — if you broke something at the races, Ralph had the part, right there, trackside. The shop became a fixture of the nationals, sponsored a long line of pros and factory riders across the decades — Toby Henderson rode for Ralph's as an amateur in 1976–77, and an AXO/Ralph's pro team was still running at the end of the 80s — and even had its own house frame brand, the Hustler, built for the shop by Cook Bros.

The Thousands

For every famous shop there were a thousand neighborhood ones, and they mattered just as much: Beavers Bikes in Tarzana. Dad's Bike Barn. The Bicycle Source in Anaheim — where R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff hung out, and whose stickers ended up on half the bikes in Orange County. Baron's Bikes, whose shop team gave a young Bob Morales his start in 1977–78. Without shops like these — and thousands of others across the country — there would have been no place for the kids to buy their BMX parts, and no sport.

The Shops That Became Brands

Hutch — from East Coast mail order

Rich Hutchins ran a bike store in Pasadena, Maryland, where East Coast kids couldn't get the West Coast parts the magazines showed them. In 1979 he started a mail-order operation out of his home, and it grew until the mail order WAS the business. By 1981 the first Hutch Pro Racer frames appeared, and the mail-order house became one of the most loved bike 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. Bill Ryan remembers it as Custom Wheels in Placentia; the surviving online record calls it Coast Wheels in neighboring Yorba Linda and claims the brand initials stood for "Custom Works." Where the record is contested, we say so — if you bought wheels from Worsham's counter, settle it for us. Either way, the shop's race brand launched around 1980, and CW's place 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 converted Redlands' old Griswold's Sporting Goods into a Schwinn franchise in 1969. The stores started the RRS Racing brand, whose 1980–81 frames carried 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 at the NBL's Ascot national.

Peddlepower — one shop, three brands

No single counter produced more BMX history than Peddlepower in Orange. Steve Rink ran it — the same Steve Rink who helped build the first Torker prototype — and out of the shop came the SR frame in 1977, which became Powerlite by 1979. When Powerlite got too big for the shop, the family sold Peddlepower, and 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 shop. (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 was 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 brand's team won the IBMXF World Team title in 1982 with riders like Harry Leary and Clint Miller before closing in July 1985. Melton entered the ABA Hall of Fame in 1989.

Power Plus Cycles — where Supercross started

And it's our story too. Bill Ryan opened Power Plus Cycles, a little shop in Stanton, in the late 80s — and when his shop team couldn't get a bike sponsor, he built them one. Supercross BMX came out of that shop in 1989, the same way Powerlite came out of Peddlepower and CW came out of a wheel shop: a counter, a team, and a problem worth solving. The same pattern 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.

The pattern never stopped. Tuni Henry — the Hall of Famer who taught Bill Ryan to ride at Harbor BMX — ran La Palma Cycle Center, where Bill 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.