Vic Murphy was born and raised in Kenai Alaska.
Vic Murphy, freedombmx.de: I grew up in Alaska and being up there in the snow and the winter and stuff, even when I was 8 years old my dad got me into motorcycle racing, he wanted me to be a motorcycle racer but I would come home from the motorcycle track and I just put my motorcycle away and ride my bike and I never even cared about motorcycles, I wanted to ride my bicycle. That was like in 1978-''79. It's strange because it's opposite to most kids, they ride a bicycle but they want a motorcycle. I never cared about motorcycles. It's even funny because in 1980 when I was 10 or 11 years old, just from riding bicycles all the time, I would jump, I had a Yamaha YZ 80 and I could do no-footers, no-handers and cancans and I could do fastplants on motorcycles, like Voelker plants when I was 11. All that freestyle motocross stuff that these guys are doing now I did when I was 11 years old. I traded my YZ 80 for a complete Kuwahara race bike. I had always seen California in the magazines and I would be practicing flatland all winter in my garage doing Miami hoppers and cherry pickers and when summer would come I had ramps in my yard and I would ride all the time.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: I moved to San Diego and met Jamy Arrington and Brad Blanchard, who I skated with. We started applying 'skate style' to our riding.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: In early '88, Ron Wilkerson held the first street contest in San Diego. I got 1st in expert and picked up sponsors and thought it was cool.
Vic Murphy, freedombmx.de: Within 6 months of living there that's when they had that first street contest and I got first place in expert. Then I got in all the magazines right there and I got sponsored. RL Osborn, everybody's hero at the time, came up to me in his Porsche after the contest and he rolls up and said: "Hey, how would you like to ride for Hammer?" and I was like; "What?" I was so stoked because it was some kind of superstar thing with his Porsche, you know Mr. Cool. Then I got hooked up with Vision Street Wear so I was getting sponsors and stuff.
Street riding.
Vic Murphy, freedombmx.de: At that time I was skateboarding a lot and I was doing wallrides and a lot of fast plants on skateboards and I hung out with a lot of pro skater guys and I just got on my bike and applied that stuff instantly to bike riding. Eddie Roman was one of the first people I met in California and he just blew my mind. Seeing only the magazines I didn't know that street had already progressed that much. I'd see Eddie Roman and he would do 540-s off of launch ramps and stuff, just big and onto flat, it blew my mind, and wall rides. I knew that this was definitely what I was all about. I would just go out all night. It's interesting. Like now I don't have that much time to go riding by myself but all the tricks that I invented in street like tailwhip footplants and fakie wallrides and all the no-footed footplants and stuff was all done riding by myself. I would go out at night. I knew bikes were going to go in that direction and I was excited about it, I was stoked.
Vic Murphy, freedombmx.de: I got 5th place in Pro. That's basically where I got in the magazines and the retarded scene of BMX.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: I soon realized the bike industry sucked and the people running the companies did not have a clue.
Dirt Bros.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: In early '89. I met Ronnie Farmer and he changed the way we all looked at street riding, it was his life, not just his hobby. His ghetto attitude and aggression changed everything! Ronnie, Brad, Jimmy, and I went to Oregon, and after a 20-hour trip in the bed of a pickup, Nick Phillip (a rider from England) called us the Dirt Brothers, and the name stuck. The magazines came out covering that contest, and the Dirt Bros. name was all over the place.
9th place Great @ 2-Hip Meet The Street finals.
Airs off the triangular ramp as high you'd care to look at. For his bravery he was rewarded with a full on Bully Factory ride immediately following the finals.
Aggroman video.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: In late '89, Bully ran an ad using the name Dirt Bros. with me, and because I did not like the way the company was being run, I used the opportunity to buy bikes from Skyway and start my own thing, Hopefully, to change the industry into something to be proud of, rather than embarrassed of. At the same time, I was in Los Angeles working, and I met up with Pete Augustin. He helped form DBI into what it is today. His riding was fast and street and very burly! We picked up a lot of pros and started travelling and promoting the dirtbag lifestyle, and it grew from there.
Brad Blanchard shows op in an inset shot on the June 1990 cover of Go. The Rider's Manual. "We ran an ad In Go in August and it was on. The ad listed team riders as Vic, Brad, Ronnie, Pete, Brian Blyther, Steve Swope, Chris Day, Craig Campbell, Eddie Roman, Chris Potts, and Mike Golden. They advertised the Dirt Bros. frame and fork (with free Havok Sprocket Pocket) for $135.
Vic Murphy, freedombmx.de, 2003: I thought that Bully with RL was going to be the beginning of that, people putting faith in street, but RL still had that eighties mentality. He had a little bit of vision but not enough for me. He sent me a letter at the time explaining to me what kind of T-shirt I needed to wear and what color of pants I needed to wear for a photo shoot and I would go to a contest and he hands me a pack of clothes and tells me to put it on and I was not down with that. We were doing that video, the Bully Slowride video which is the "greatest" video ever made and I spray painted my Bully mat black and I put DirtBros stickers on it and RL showed up at the trails and he looked at it and said: "What did you do to the bike?" and I was all: "It's DirtBros, it's cool!" He was all mad and I was all;"It's hardcore, it's cool". His bikes were always shiny and had neato stickers on it so he was all angry seeing the mat black bike. It was the straw that broke the camel's back seeing his true motivations for marketing. It's not bad to use people for marketing because that's what sponsorships are all about but he had a different vision of what I thought the direction would be where bike riding was going. RL had ran some full page ads with us and set the name DirtBros and I just figured that why not use his money in advertising for our own good. That's when I started DirtBrothers and bought the frames and put DirtBros stickers on them and we ran an ad in the magazine and picked up a lot of riders like Brian Blyther who ran our stickers and was down with our video and stuff, Eddie Roman was riding our bike and we had serious riders on our team and everyone was supportive of it because that was the beginning of what people actually wanted. The riders wanted to have control of the sport. I was just making a statement. I wasn't doing it to make any money. I was out to say, if you put faith in bikes, it will work, you just have to have the faith to put your money out there and at the time I didn't have much money. It cost me like $ 5,000.= USD which is a lot of money, I was like 20 years old at the time and BMX was pretty dead. I spent a lot of money, 5 grand in one shot to do it and it fully worked. The way I did it where people really took notice was when anybody of the magazines would ask me how many frames I sold I would say: "We're doing REAL good" so the facade, world wide people would think we were selling a ton of stuff and we got tons of pictures in the magazines and all in reality we only sold 50 frames but to the world it seemed like we sold 50.000 frames. Even today, 15 years later I still have people come up to me saying that they have their first DirtBros frame. I still have one, they were good frames, they were made in America, they were awesome bikes. It was just a statement, it wasn't to make any money and that's why we got out of it. Three years went by and I just got frustrated with the industry that they weren't seeing the potential and I just wanted to ride for fun and didn't want to deal with it any more. I do care about bikes and the industry wasn't and that frustrated me.
Vic Murphy, Fat zine, september 1990: I ride to get better. Not to get money. Not to impress anyone. Not to improve the envirenment. But just to see how good I can get riding from one place to another. Some people don't understand me. Well, I don't understand them. Ride to death.
Dirt Bros "Hicks in Action" video.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: We made Hicks in Action and did what I felt we had to do to jumpstart other people to start rider-owned companies.
Vic, Ronnie, Jimmy Arrington, Jim Sibley, and Kaarlo Wik reside in the Dirt House from '90-93. Mark Gonzales and Lee Sultimeier log extended stays, and all the big pros of the day are in and out of it.
Cover: FAT zine #21
Homeless III Highway to Hell video.
An highlight in the pro division was the return of "the" Dirt Brother himself, Vic Murphy. Everyone went nuts during Vic's runs.
Vic Murphy, Transworld BMX march 2003: Fourteen members of the Dirt Bros. posse fly to Florida and descend upon Roots Jam 2000.
Vic Murphy, freedombmx.de, 2003: Alliant made some of our bikes at first, then Solid built them but it just took too long for them to get us frames so we got into it a year ago. We can make 200 frames a month now ourselves and we don't have to wait any more. It took us 6 months to get 100 bikes before. Solid did a little bit better job but we just needed to be in control and now we can have like 5 different models fairly easy. The reason why we got back into it was that me and my partner Jim Sibley, we were working across the street from this machine shop that made bike parts and we'd say hey, let's make some DirtBros sprockets and as soon as I made them the response was huge. People were down for it.
Hicks iIn Action is re-released with new music, and additional footage of the modern-day team.
10 th place Pro Street @ Vans Triple Crown round 1, Salt Lake City, Utah, june 2001.
Vic gets the cover of the august 2001 issue of Ride BMX US along with an interview.
Interview: Ride BMX UK #56 december 2001.
Vic is off of Vans and onto Adidas.
Vic goes on Road Fools 10 and scores the cover of the December issue of Transworld BMX.
