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

We are telling this story the same way we tell the others: neutrally. The published record on White Bear is thin and mostly held in BMXmuseum.com galleries, forum threads, and one magazine test reference.

What White Bear actually was

White Bear Racing Products was a Northern California BMX frame brand that ran from roughly 1987 through 1999. Per the brand history posted at the top of the BMXmuseum.com White Bear gallery, the company was started by Lonnie Means, a partner known by the name "Bear," and factory rider Ronnie Anderson. The first frames were welded in a shop in Merced, California. The brand later relocated its operating base to the San Francisco area when it was restarted after an initial collapse — that restart was funded by the parents of a junior factory rider.

The frame line

White Bear offered a five-frame race line, sized through the full BMX class range:

• Micro
• Mini
• Expert
• Pro
• Pro XXL

The Pro frame is the one the brand is remembered for. After Shawn "Big" Texas signed with the factory team, the Pro was renamed the T-Bone — a signature frame and matching fork built for him. The T-Bone's defining structural detail was a small extra stay welded between the seat pillar and the gusset between the chainstays.

The T-Bone's production window was short. Texas was on the White Bear factory team from May 1988 to March 1989. After Texas went to jail, the frame was dropped, and the BMXmuseum.com brand notes record that "within months White Bear went by the way side."

The factory team

• Ronnie Anderson — co-founder and factory pro. BMXmuseum.com forum accounts place his sponsorship from November 1987 through mid-1988. Anderson was involved in a custom fork design for the brand.
• Richie Anderson — Ronnie's brother and a factory rider in the same window.
• Shawn "Big" Texas — factory pro from May 1988 to March 1989. His signature T-Bone Pro frame and fork is the brand's best-known product.
• Darwin Griffin — signed July 1988, turned pro on White Bear December 28, 1988 with his own signature Shredder frame and fork.

A White Bear factory team also operated in Australia in the same period.

The magazine record

The oldschoolmags.com tests-and-reviews index lists a White Bear Pro test in Super BMX magazine from 1988. Super BMX was published by Challenge Publications and ran from 1980 through 1988, so the White Bear Pro test would have appeared in one of the magazine's final issues.

Where White Bear sits in the BMX picture

White Bear belongs to the second wave of dedicated BMX frame brands — the late-1980s companies that came up after the first-wave names like SE Racing, Redline, JMC, Mongoose, Diamond Back, Torker, CW, Hutch, and GT had already set the template.

What set White Bear apart, in the window we can document, was the Northern California base — Merced, then the Bay Area — at a time when the dominant BMX frame brands were almost all clustered in Southern California.

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).