White Bear Racing Products

A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

The Northern California Frame Brand Behind the T-Bone — 1987 to 1999

Here is a brand that bet the whole company on one rider, named the bike after him, and then watched him go to jail. Within months the lights were off. That is the short version of White Bear, and honestly it is most of what we can prove. The paper trail is thin — a handful of BMXmuseum.com galleries, some forum threads, one magazine test. So I will keep it honest and tell you what is solid and what isn't.

What White Bear actually was

White Bear Racing Products was a Northern California frame brand. It ran from roughly 1987 through 1999. The brand history at the top of the BMXmuseum.com White Bear gallery names three people who started it — Lonnie Means, a partner everybody just called "Bear," and factory rider Ronnie Anderson. The first frames got welded up in a shop in Merced, California. The thing collapsed once, then came back. When it came back, the base moved to the San Francisco area, and the money for that restart came from the parents of a junior factory rider.

The frame line

White Bear ran a five-frame race line, sized clear across the BMX classes:

  • Micro
  • Mini
  • Expert
  • Pro
  • Pro XXL

The Pro is the one anybody remembers. Once Shawn "Big" Texas signed with the factory team, they renamed it the T-Bone — his signature frame, matching fork, the whole deal. What made the T-Bone the T-Bone was a small extra stay welded in between the seat pillar and the gusset that sat between the chainstays. Little detail. It is the thing collectors point to.

It did not get built for long. Texas rode the White Bear factory team from May 1988 to March 1989. Then Texas went to jail, the frame got dropped, and the way the BMXmuseum.com brand notes put it, "within months White Bear went by the way side."

The factory team

  • Ronnie Anderson — co-founder and a factory pro. The BMXmuseum.com forum accounts put his sponsorship from November 1987 through mid-1988. He had a hand in a custom fork design for the brand too.
  • Richie Anderson — Ronnie's brother, factory rider in that same stretch.
  • Shawn "Big" Texas — factory pro from May 1988 to March 1989. His signature T-Bone Pro frame and fork is what the brand is known for, full stop.
  • Darwin Griffin — signed July 1988, turned pro on White Bear December 28, 1988 with his own signature Shredder frame and fork.

There was a White Bear factory team running in Australia over the same period, too.

The magazine record

The oldschoolmags.com tests-and-reviews index lists a White Bear Pro test in Super BMX from 1988. Now, Super BMX was a Challenge Publications title, and it ran from 1980 to 1988 — so that White Bear Pro test landed in one of the very last issues the magazine ever printed. Right at the end.

Where White Bear sits in the BMX picture

White Bear was a second-wave brand. By that I mean it came up in the late 1980s, after the first-wave names had already written the rulebook — SE Racing, Redline, JMC, Mongoose, Diamond Back, Torker, CW, Hutch, GT. All of that was already set.

What made White Bear stand out, in the window we can actually document, is where it came from. Merced, then the Bay Area. Northern California. And at that point pretty much every frame brand that mattered was packed into Southern California. White Bear was the odd one out, geographically, and that is part of what makes it worth remembering.

What we still don't know

  • The exact month and year the brand was founded, and the exact date it wound down for good.
  • The full identity of the partner known as "Bear."
  • The name of the junior factory rider whose parents funded the restart.
  • The full White Bear Australia team roster.
  • The exact Super BMX issue that carried the 1988 White Bear Pro test.

Sources

BMXmuseum.com White Bear Racing Products brand gallery and brand-history. 1988 White Bear Pro entry. BMXmuseum.com forum threads on the White Bear T-Bone and Shawn Texas sponsorship. Wikipedia entries on Shawn Texas and Richie Anderson. oldschoolmags.com tests and reviews index. Steve Emig blog on the birth of the BMX nollie. SugarCayne Truth Shawn Texas T-Bone tribute frame.

About this page

This is a chapter of the forthcoming BMXRacingHistory.com, hosted on Legend Bike Co. as a placeholder. See also: History of BMX, SE Racing, Darwin Griffin, all sanctions (ABA, NBL, USA BMX, IBMXF).