The day the cruisers died.

Another Father's Day has come and gone, and with it came yet another opportunity for me to ponder the mystery of genetics, the odd process by which we become different from each other. A casual observer, looking at the photos of my recent family reunion, would no doubt peg me as someone who had married into the family, or a friend, or perhaps someone hired for the occasion to cater or clean up; in this group of thin, aristocratic-looking men, all under six feet tall, most of whom have completed multiple marathons, my 6'2", 250-pound frame and perpetually frowning visage stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. I am the non-drinker in a family of bon vivants, the programmer and network designer among lawyers, publishers, and M&A specialists, toiling in obscurity somewhere in Ohio (okay, I admit it, it's one of the Wall Street Journal's "Top Twenty White-Collar Communities", but you get the point) while my relatives luxuriate on the East Coast and in Colorado. I could blame fate, inattentive hospital personnel, the (non-existent) adventurous nature of my mother, but the truth is this and nothing more: comparatively speaking, I was born to suffer.

At least I inherited a small part of the family preoccupation with fashion, and here's the proof: I'm building a 20" bike and intend to return to riding 20" near-exclusively for the first time in five years. For reasons I shall detail below, I think 24" bikes are on their way to the sport's scrap heap, and I don't want to be left behind. Sure, making predictions about relative popularity of wheel size in BMX isn't the same as having thirty Armani suits and an equal helping of Hugo Boss, but in my own plodding, unadventurous way I am paying homage to the ever-changing dictates of style. Cough. Ack. Enough of that. The cruiser class is dying, and I'm here to tell you why.

As usual, I can hear you now. "Boswell, you tweed-wearing turkey, you wouldn't be able to predict a trend if you were mugged and beaten by one. The cruiser classes at Nationals are huge. More older riders are entering the sport now than ever before. Heck, you can find cruisers at most bike shops. This is the Golden Age of the cruiser." Hmm... sounds compelling, but all of the above arguments are irrelevant. Stick with me for but a moment more, dear reader, and I will prove it to you.

Let's start by addressing the reason cruiser classes are so large right now - the unprecedented influx of older riders into the sport. Right now, the 31-35 cruiser class is one of the most competitive in the sport, perhaps the most competitive amateur class going - and more riders are pouring in. The National cruiser classes are swelled with former Pros, people who quit when they turned 16 (back in 1984) but who couldn't quite get the sport out of their system, and riders who have been honing their skills at the National level for two decades or longer. They are some of the NBL's, and the industry's, best customers, uncritically paying $80 to race four motos a weekend and spending the rest of their track weekends at the Dan's tent looking for plastic/magnesium-combo suspension forks with secret compartments to store their extra SPD cleats. No track is too bizarre, no gimmick too ridiculous, no sanctioning body action too nakedly greedy for these folks. More power to 'em, but let's face it, they (really meaning "we", since I'm 29 years old) are the past, not the future, of our sport.

Let's step into history for a moment to look at where cruisers came from. Once upon a time, BMX was a kids-only activity. The Old Man of the sport, Scot Breithaupt, was fourteen years old. Most of the Pro riders were under eighteen. BMX was like the world of "Logan's Run" - old people were not welcome.

Naturally, it didn't stay that way forever, and before you knew it, people in their early twenties (oh! the horror!) were racing. Since the average top tube length of a BMX bike back then was under sixteen inches, these old people found racing 20" to be a downright dangerous pastime. So they built bigger bikes, and they built 'em with bigger wheels, because that was the way bikes were sized and sold in America. (See my "gold standard" column for details.) Most early cruisers were 26" bikes because 26" wheels and tires were readily available.

There was an additional benefit to racing on 26" bikes; they were more stable. You see, the larger a wheel is, and the heavier it is, the more gyroscopic stability it has. To test this for yourself, hold a wheel by the axles and spin it. Try to tilt it to either side while it's spinning. If you do this with a variety of wheels, you will see that 24" and 26" wheels are far more stable than 20" wheels. This effect is also one of the main reasons why countersteering is sometimes necessary... but that's a topic for another column.

Most of the older riders who entered the sport were parents who were not "serious" about their racing. I remember watching our local "30 & Over" Cruiser class as a kid - it was more or less a "sit-down" race which began with a full gate of fathers and shed one or two of them over each obstacle, the survivors coasting across the finish line in more or less random fashion. I also remember thinking, "When I'm 30, I'm going to kill those guys," not realizing that all the other young riders were thinking the same thing, and that I would have to race my current competition, not those newbie fathers, when I turned thirty.

As cruisers appeared at more and more tracks, younger riders began having an interest in riding them. 24" cruisers became the norm, because it was easier to make a "BMX-sized" frame for 24" wheels. Once the sanctioning bodies started running cruiser classes for every age group, parents realized in a hurry that riding cruiser meant more racing, and more points, and more experience, for their kids - and the cruiser explosion began.

Seemingly overnight, Cruiser racing was divided into two groups - the old men wandering around the track, and the Expert-level racing that just happened to be on larger-wheeled bikes. "Junior cruisers" appeared, using European wheels of approximately 22.5" diameter - don't forget that traditional "mini" wheels are actually closer to 21" - and the youth of BMX began learning what it feels like to race three classes per day at locals - Expert, Cruiser, and Open.

Helping to fuel the cruiser explosion on the "old man" side was the fact that the sanctioning bodies had, as their "oldest" Expert class, 17 & Over (18 & over in ABA, I think). Racers who entered their twenties and wanted to race against people their own age were more or less forced into Cruiser, which had 18-24, 25-29, and 30-34 classes. This forced migration helped spread the idea that older amateurs should move to Cruiser.

The Eighties were really the Golden Age of Cruisers. Most riders had both 20" and 24" rides, assuming their parents could afford them, and they raced both classes everywhere they went. Both sanctioning bodies bowed to the pressure and made Cruiser memberships cheaper to existing holders of 20" licenses. Then, of course, everyone quit the sport in 1989 - an exaggeration, but not by much.

The riders who remained, the "grunge" riders, didn't much care for 24" racing. They thought it represented everything that was wrong with BMX - neon colors, factory teams, multiple race classes in the same day. Seemingly overnight, cruiser classes shrank. S&M, the bellwether of riders' fashion in the early Nineties, more or less refused to make a cruiser, producing limited quantities of the "Delta 88" to people who either physically threatened Chris Moeller or seemed likely to do so, and even then making would-be S&M cruiser riders wait six months to get their frames. Cruiser racing was, once more, an old guy's activity, and it was stereotyped as such. Tall riders who once would have been forced into cruiser racing were well-served by an ever-expanding array of XL, XXL, and "Longfella" 20" frames, depriving the Cruiser ranks of still more would-be contenders. By the time BMX regained steam in the late Nineties, cruisers were just about dead - but wait!

The riders who have returned to the sport in the last five years left believing that cruiser racing was for old men, and being old men themselves now, relatively speaking, have embraced it. Even the sanctioning bodies' reluctant adoption of "cruiser-style" age classes for Rookie, Novice, and Expert didn't change the fact that 9 of 10 "born-again" racers chose 24" bikes to make their returns on. "Old man" cruiser racing has become the NBL's lifeblood at the National level. It's not unusual to see the number of 31-35 Cruiser outnumber 14 Rookie/Novice riders at a local track. The "baby boomers" of BMX have taken their sport back, and Cruiser racing will dominate the sport for years to come.

Or will it? Although cruisers are safer and easier to ride, they are also not all that great for street riding, trail jumping, and many of the other BMX pastimes that occupy the spare time of older racers. Nor are they available in as many exciting color combinations, gimmick metals, and sizes as 20" bikes. Many older Cruiser riders are thinking about re-entering the A Pro ranks, trying Vet Pro, or just seeing if they still have their "old skills" - all of which are activities which require a twenty.

I get a LOT of email from riders who are returning to the sport. Four years ago, everyone asked me "what's the best cruiser?" Today, the returning riders seem about evenly divided between 20" and 24". I corresponded with nine riders last month who all asked me exactly the same question - "Should I get a cruiser or a twenty for my return to BMX?" In the Nineties, "Cruiser" would have been the automatic answer. Today, I tell them to look at their local track and see what their peers are riding - and as often as not those peers are on 20" bikes. Many riders who returned on cruisers two or three years ago are now looking at Expert as a "second class" to race at Nationals, in an ironic reversal of what they probably did as kids.

My decision to build a 20" actually has very little to do with racing. Although I enjoy riding my Backtrail x24 at skateparks, the darn thing is too heavy, and too hard to turn in the air, for me to feel totally confident going above the coping with it. I'm building a 20" to ride parks and street - and I'll probably race it as well, since I'll be spending most of my off-track bike time on it. It's a perfect time for me to do so - my local track's older Expert classes are now as large as the older Cruiser classes. I predict that the Expert classes for 30-and-over will continue to gain on Cruiser in the next few years.

What about the future of the sport, the young riders? They are seeing many "old men" race twenty-inch bikes well into their forties, and they probably expect to do the same. When they return to the sport in 2016, a 20" bike will be their natural choice. They don't have any preconceptions about being "forced" to ride cruisers in their twenties and thirties, so they won't bother.

The bottom line in all this? Slowly but surely, cruisers are going the way of the sidehack - off the track, and into the history books. It won't happen this year, or in this decade, but it will happen. It's already not all that unusual for kids at skateparks to be completely confused by my Backtrail, and for kids who don't race to be confused by my PL24. What's that for? It looks like a BMX bike, but it isn't!

Is this worth getting worried about? Nope. If you are returning to BMX, it doesn't matter whether you get a 20" or 24". Get what you like, have a good time, ride to the best of your ability. As I have said before, too many times to count, BMX has very little to do with bikes, but quite a bit to do with riders. It is whatever we make of it. I suppose you could say that, in some strange way, we're all some kind of family. It's an odd family, almost certainly a dysfunctional one, but it has room for all of us, in the same way that each of our families has room for us, no matter how different we are. I have made such a wide circle of acquaintance during my years in racing (and writing) BMX that my racing "family" is many, many times larger than my real one. Perhaps each column is a reunion - and with that in mind, I hope to see you at the next one.- Name witheld upon request.