Freestyle Nation

Scott Caraboolad of Akron, Ohio's Starboyz stunt team remembers exactly the day he knew he had hit the big time. It wasn't after he and fellow Starboyz Joe Frazier and Kevin Marino sold the 50,000th copy of their homemade stunt tapes. It also wasn't when he lost count of the dozens and dozens of stunt-riding crews that appeared out of nowhere imitating the Starboyz' signature 100-mph wheelies and rolling burnouts.

Instead, Caraboolad knew he had arrived when he woke up one morning and found an Ohio state trooper parked at the end of his driveway--a sight he found both thrilling and disturbing. "I called Kevin and Joe, and they each had one, too," he remembers, his voice still reflecting the day's excitement. "I knew then and there [that we were big-time]; it was time to take it off the streets."

For local law-enforcement authorities, it was high time for the Starboyz to stop making impromptu stunt arenas out of Akron's streets and freeways. Since forming during the summer of 1996, the Starboyz--so named for the Vanson Star-pattern jackets they liked to wear--gained notoriety and more than a few all-points bulletins in Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley for their habit of performing (and videotaping) all manner of two-wheeled mayhem on public roads.

But the days of the Starboyz and other streetbike extreme riders plying their trade on busy boulevards and crowded rush-hour interstates is slowly drawing to a close. Weekend extreme riding festivals, like Florida street freestyle legend Todd Colbert's Stunt Wars competitions and the Starboyz' own Stunt Fests, are taking the place of public displays. Detractors, most of whom peg the freestyle streetbike movement somewhere just below al Qaida on the antisocial activity scale, say it's about time.

For serious stunt riders, performing off-road is cool as long as it keeps the bucks coming in and the cameras rolling.

"Maybe it's not considered as hardcore as performing on the street, but I haven't had a traffic citation in years since I started riding stunts at airstrips and shows," boasts Colbert. At 35, the lanky, affable Colbert is streetbike extreme's elder statesman. His ability to acrobatically invert big-bore streetbikes has put Colbert on the covers of enthusiast magazines in both the U.S. and Europe, and his professional attitude--Colbert is an unapologetic proponent of stunting in full protective gear--has made him the Tony Hawk of streetbike freestyle.

Colbert may ride the respectable path these days, but while honing his craft in the late '90s he was a hardcore street rider. Frankly, he says, most stunt riders started out on the streets because there was nowhere else to practice their moves. "It wasn't like a racetrack was going to open its doors and let people just start coming in and doing potentially dangerous stunts," Colbert says. The Starboyz, and later Newark, New Jersey's Ruthless Tactics, frequently entered drag races at area quarter-mile strips. But when the green light dropped, instead of going for the holeshot, they'd clutch it up and practice wheelies a quarter mile at a time.It was expensive, sure, but the drag races provided a rare legal outlet for learning the ropes.

Former Las Vegas Extremes rider (and firefighter) Derrick "D-Mann" Daigle, known for balancing seal-like on his chin atop the gas tank of a speeding GSX-R, competed in personal watercraft races before taking up asphalt surfing. Daigle says he learned stunt riding on the streets by default.

"We didn't set out to break the law when we started, but there's a lot of long, straight roads out here [in Nevada]," Daigle says. "It was pretty boring just riding around looking for curves all day. We figured we'd either learn to do stunts, and maybe make some money from it, or stop riding all together," Daigle says.

Raised on the X Games and other adrenalized pastimes, these guys bore easily. What better way to cut boredom than to crank up the old adrenal glands on a motorcycle? On one wheel. Maybe backward. If traffic adds an extra element of danger, then all the better, say some.

Fans who fork over dough for street-bike extreme videos, Colbert admits, get a perverse joy out of seeing their heroes bust a nac-nac or stoppie in front of Ms. Soccer Mom's SUV. No matter how entertaining these antisocial antics are to fans, Colbert says, this trend will likely soon come to an end--a casualty of the sport's growing popularity.

"Most of the established riders and crews now have corporate sponsors and paid shows to do," Colbert notes. "Nobody in their right mind is going to risk all that just to show off on the streets for their buddies."

Showing off, of course, is what street-bike freestyle is all about. Like its close cousin, freestyle motocross, streetbike freestyle was born out of a need to act out. Ironically, this new popularity, which some purists claim is ruining the sport, is also bringing exposure, the two-buck word for showing off--to levels that the sport's pioneers could never have anticipated. When given the choice between "showing off" for a gaggle of 6-year-olds in the back seat of a passing minivan--or a handful of friends clutched on the sidewalk in a deserted industrial park--or a crowd numbering in the high five figures at a national motorcycle road-race event, the choice for most of the extreme extroverts is a pretty easy one. And if there's a paycheck delivered at the end of these off-street exhibitions, then it's a no-brainer.

This is what is really driving the transition of the street freestyle sport and the new legitimacy of the crews and their activities--bigger, more appreciative crowds and more money. There are unmistakable signs that the winds are now blowing in streetbike extreme's favor. After years of failed auditions, the Starboyz, Colbert's Team X-treem, and others are now regular halftime attractions at AMA Superbike races around the country.

Moneymaking opportunities abound as well--several well-known stunt riders, including Jason Britton, Jon-Jon Buccheri from New York's Wheelie Boyz, and former Universal Studios stuntman J.T. Holt appeared in the feature film Biker Boyz. Underground wheelie legend "Wink 1100" served as that film's technical consultant. Big Dave Sonsky, a sometimes-Starboy, parlayed his street skills into a job as a road tester and journalist for England's Superbike magazine.

Another sign of change came in 2001 when professional roadracing organization Formula USA launched the X-Treme Sport Bike Association (XSBA), the world's first official sanctioning body for street freestyle riders. Operating under the Clear Channel Media umbrella, the XSBA's shows provide a safe, controlled forum for freestyle motorcycle stunting that even its harshest critics can find little fault with. Riders wear full protective gear, perform exclusively on closed courses and are judged on style, content and professionalism.

Some hardcore street riding crews have refused to play ball with the XSBA, though last year's half-dozen events drew an increasing number of teams and riders. During the '03 season, expect that even more riders will forgo the hassles of traffic stops and police chases in exchange for the chance at prize money, applause and national media exposure as freestyle street biking comes of age.

Just don't expect the freestyle movement to become all warm and cuddly. This isn't figure skating, after all. If everybody's mother appreciated the wheelie aesthetic, the sport would no longer be "extreme." Chauncey Vierra, a wildly talented young rider with Boston's Driving to Endanger, anticipates a day when the sight of a big Gixxer or a Honda CBR900RR standing on its tail section will be routine on The X-Games--but he admits that this reality might be some time in the making.

"There's still a certain outlaw element associated with this sport because it got started on the street and because doing stunts is considered illegal," Vierra says. "But the same could be said of skateboarding, street luge and most of the stuff now on TV. You used to get arrested for skate-boarding--now it's a billion dollar industry."

True dat. As unlikely as it might sound to some, popular freestyle motocross stars like Brian Deegan and Mike Metzger have shown that bad-boy attitudes and physical daring can easily be converted into big bucks--ESPN's X Games are a top-rated draw twice yearly. The key is holding onto much of that outlaw attitude but expressing it in a forum and method that is still safe enough for the average Joe to identify with and embrace. Stunter purists might cringe and chide their straight-leaning colleagues for selling out or forfeiting hard-won "street cred." So what? Let those haters rant from the back seats of squad cars while their bikes rot in the impound lot. D-Mann, Colbert, and everyone else just might get the last laugh, surveying the sights from the winner's podium, the television screen or maybe even the movie marque.

Stunt Metal
If it didn't happen so often, he might still be surprised by it, but Starboy Kevin Marino says that one of the most common requests he hears at stunt shows is for him to pull some stunts on someone else's bike. Marino usually brushes off such requests, and for good reason. "Our bikes are pieces of sh*t, basically," Marino says. "I always tell kids, 'you don't want us riding your bikes because we will turn them to crap in an hour.'"

Marino isn't just bragging, either: Any rider who has ever been caught behind a stunt bike knows to expect a fine mist of oil to collect across his or her helmet visor. The constant pounding of wheelies and stoppies can bash steering head bearings and rupture fork seals in less time than it takes to call your insurance agent. Rolling burnouts can easily fry a stock clutch, and you will never, ever see a pristine set of fairings grace any amateur stunt rider's motorcycle.

As a result, most stunt riders view their bikes as disposable goods, kind of like butane lighters. To call most stuntaz' bikes "rats" would be a charitable description. Expensive modifications to stuntbikes are few and far between. In fact, most mods are of the low-buck variety and intended only to limit or minimize damage to the machine in the event of a crash. The Starboyz and Miami's Zoo Crew, for example, often envelop their stunt bikes in fake fur to protect fairing panels from frequent crash damage. Some stunt crews like Driving To Endanger and Michigan's 1096 opt for full race plastics, which are less fragile than stock plastics. Many are ridden unpainted and adorned with nylon crash bobbins to protect engine cases in the event of a drop. Another common modification is the 12 o'clock bar--a rugged steel T-bar welded to a rear subframe, allowing riders to pull vertical wheelies without fear of the bike tipping over.

Next Stop: Hollywood
It's almost impossible to discuss the streetbike stunt movement without talking about stunt videos--the celluloid touchstones for the entire underground stunt culture. Pete Marmorato, a rider with the crew New York's Finest, says homemade stunt videos are essential to the sport's existence. With little in the way of recognition from mainstream motorcycle magazines or TV, such videos provide stunt crews with their own version of CNN.

"You can see what the other guys are up to, what kind of bikes they're riding and how the sport is progressing," Marmorato says. "You can see who's got the hot moves and who's going to be hard to beat."

Early examples of stunt videos were almost laughably bad in execution, which is understandable. Those tapes were never meant to be art; they were instead made originally just to pass around to friends or, as Starboy Joe Frazier puts it, "for something goofy to watch at parties."

Originally intended as a novelty, the videos became an under-ground phenomenon, selling well enough, in the instance of the Starboyz, to support the team and a small administrative staff for the past six years. As the image of street stunt riders continues to be buffed and moved ever upward on the scale of social respectability, these videos--the scene's main marketing and money-making tools--are making radical improvements in form and quality.

While most stunt videos grow repetitive fairly quickly--too many contain little more than repeated shots of riders pulling wheelies and stoppies along deserted roads in suburban industrial parks--some crews have stepped up to produce striking and innovative films capable of holding their own against any documentary shown on The Discovery Channel. 12 O'Clock, a lushly photographed documentary on New York's burgeoning stunt scene, and Urban Assault, starring Colbert and Daigle, are two such films. With stunt riders making an entry into mainstream, big-budget Hollywood feature films (see recent releases like Biker Boyz and Torque), can the stunter's equivalent of Citizen Kane be far behind? Here's hoping it isn't.