I moved to California in 1999, and four years later I still didn’t care about surfing. Having never stepped foot in the waters around Huntington Beach, I moved back east, ending up in State College, PA for the next four years. On the way across the country, we stopped in Oklahoma City for a break, and to visit friends, one of them being a rather underground fellow by the name of Mat Hoffman.

Luckily, I rolled through town on one of the rare occasions over the last ten years that Mat’s body has been cooperating. They had the warehouse skatepark in back of Hoffman Bikes, still (not the original Secret Ninja Warehouse, but the revised version 2.0), and with Mat being on it I wanted to get a few photos before I left town. One of them ran in BMX Plus, though at this point I can’t remember which one. I think it might have been an invert. This can-can look back stuck out to me when I found it, since I just shot a can-can lookback with Mat at Woodward West, fresh back on his bike after three years trying to heal from a serious shoulder injury (injuries). It appears to also be the same bike that he did the infamous no-handed 900 on at X Games late in 2002.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to watch The Birth of Big Air, a recently released film about Mat, created by Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, Spike Jonze and a host of others with early BMX ties. Comcast and Time Warner cable both have it On Demand last I heard, and it premiers on ESPN for free July 29th (assuming you have ESPN of course).