I try and have fun and cruise around, but in the end I start pushing myself to relearn tricks that I lost over the years
Eben Krackau
Age?
46 and some change
Location?
San Antonio Texas
Bike?
2020 Haro Lineage Sport, with a freecoaster, four pegs and a front brake
Where do you ride?
Mainly my house, and a few local parks on occasion.
Whats the scene like there?
I’m guessing its somewhat decent, I see kids at the parks here, but honestly I ride with like two or three other guys and that’s pretty much it.
Tell us little about how you got into bmx?
Long story short, my dads best friend was Kent Howerton (motorcross superstar in the late 70’s thru mid 80’s). There were plenty of times that there were Suzuki mini bikes waiting for me to test ride, but due to a brain tumor that I had removed when I was approximately four or five years old, the dirt bike dream never really happened, other than me having a dirtbike to actually go and ride.
My parents wanted me to do something safer than moto, but that had a similar excitement factor, and at Kent’s suggestion we went out and took a look at the local bmx track. Needless to say I was sold and started racing within a few months.
You rode many of the AFA comps. How did you start competing and what were the comps like to ride in?
Sometime around late 84 I was really burned out on racing and ended up getting a friends old six foot metal quarterpipe. I started riding that a decent amount and in early 86 went to check out a local AFA comp in Austin.
It was pretty huge and Eddie and Martin did a GT show with some crazy laser light show going on during the demo. The contest arena was pretty packed and it looked like it could be really fun, so I entered the next comp which was a few months later. I had a blast, and met a handful of other kids my age at the time, which was cool for me because I was twelve and the youngest guy that I rode with was between sixteen and seventeen.
Over the next few years I spent travelling all over the state as well as country competing in local as well as national contests. They were always fun and it was rad seeing guys that I would only see a few times a year at these contests, as well as getting to hang out with some of the guys that I idolized. Those years definitely molded me into who I am today, that’s for sure.
You got sponsored by Haro in your early years, tell us about your time with Haro?
I was picked up in November of 87, it was honestly a dream come true. At that time you were pretty much a GT or a Haro guy, and from day 1 I always loved Haro stuff. After winning a few 13 and under AFA Masters comps, Bill Hawkins and Jim Ford approached me after my run at the Masters finals at the Olympic Velodrome and asked if I would be interested in riding for Haro Designs.
It was obviously a no brainer and I agreed on the spot, well after my father spoke to Bill so that he could accept for me since I was a minor at the time. A few weeks later my contract showed up and it was a done deal. Its still crazy to me thinking that I was a young kid a year before yelling on the side of a quarter pipe at a bike shop for Tony Murray to go higher during the a-haro summer tour and then actually being offered a deal to ride for the brand.
It was always a blast traveling with the team to contests, be it no holds barred dinners on the corporate AMEX, or to Bill throwing me the keys to a brand new Cadillac rental car as well as a credit card and telling me that I could go and celebrate my win wherever I wanted since the team dinner was at a steakhouse and I hated steak .haha. Just thinking that I was fourteen and in a town I’d never been to before, much less being way underage and not even knowing how to drive yet, its still funny to this day.
Or maybe the time that Ron Haro picked me and my dad up at a contest and there were condoms hanging from the mirrors, door handles, and the radio antenna. Seriously some funny stuff happened in that period of my life.
Have you had input into the new products for Haro? If so what has your role been?
I assisted John with the design of the bashguard plate on the Lineage bashguard bikes. He and I have become really great friends over the past few years and we had a lot of discussions over those bikes since we both seem to have such an obsession with bashguard bikes.
We pretty much had the same idea going on, so I decided to make a handful of metal guards with the lip that surrounds the tire so that he could mess around with them on his old 89 bike that he had set up as well . That’s pretty much it, but he has sent me a handful of things that he was working on and asked my opinion on how I felt it was or should be.
I initially remember you as a vert rider but then you became a mini killer! What made you get into mini ramp riding?
Wow, thanks. Honestly a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that in the lean years of bmx there really weren’t many vert ramps around and I mainly rode with skateboarders since there really were not many bmx guys to ride ramps with.
That led to me riding a lot more mini ramp than anything and trying to figure out how to emulate the tricks that my favorite skaters were doing. Still to this day I try and do things that Neil Blender did on a skateboard and figure it out on a bike.
There is some amazing footage of you doing 540’s on vert at one of the MTV music festivals, when was the last time you rode vert and have you any desire to ride it again?
The last time I actually rode vert was summer of 06, I did shows at a Six Flags park here and was hired to ride vert. So, fourteen years? I would honestly love to ride vert again, just not those huge fourteen footers, maybe something in the 9-10ft range would be fun for me. I go back and forth with possibly adding a vert section to my ramp, but time will tell with that since I’m still trying to finish relayering the main ramp.
What led you riding for SBC?
After a failed attempt of starting Halfway House with Rooftop after Homeless ended, I wanted a bike that I would be stoked on and try and figure things out from there. Around that time I was working at a shop and we carried Standard stuff, and after saving up for a bit I decided to let Rick Wagner have Waterford build me a frame.
After a few months he called and said that my frame would be going out, and I asked how much I needed to send him a check for, he responded that Moliterno said don’t worry about it, and if I wanted to ride for Standard the offer was there. Mind you Rick and I were on Haro at the same time and if my dad couldn’t travel to a contest with me, Rick always made sure to look over my bike and make sure it was dialed.
Honestly dude was like a big brother to me when I was on Haro and always looked after me, which to this day I will never be able to repay him for. I obviously took him up on the deal and was fortunate enough to join what was without a doubt the super am team of the 90’s.
You were part of one of the all time great rider teams at Standard. Did being part of such a strong team create pressure on your riding?
The team when I got on was definitely intimidating to a point, the mini/street guys were Joe, Luc, Friemuth, Kimler,Hurlburt, Mel, Hallman and a handful of others, not to mention Chad, Paul, Bobby, and Kerry as flat guys and then you had Rick and Krt who were without a doubt the best mini ramp riders ever.
I really don’t feel it created pressure, it was getting to go to Rampage a few times a year and feeding off those guys riding and energy that made progressing a lot easier in my opinion. I look back on that era and think about how many things I learned from watching those guys ride as well as riding that street spine and tight quarter setup for hours upon hours and figuring out all sorts of crazy things.
Riding was progressing at an amazing speed during this period and you were at the forefront. What are some of your tricks that you are most proud of?
Honestly it’s really hard to say. I feel that trying to learn all the fakie stuff that Rick and Krt were doing as well as watching Dave doing all this crazy tech stuff made me want to learn all of that and more.
I think theres a handful of things that I did, things like fakie over tooth to fakie back over, 360 airs out of a vert quarter, 270 crooked grind to fakie over a spine, hard feeble 270 over a spine were probably some of the things that I would probably be most proud of during that era.
How and why did your pro career come to an end?
Theres actually a few things that led to it ending. I had a severe case of GT burnout, which was touring way too much and riding a lot, but not really enjoying it because I was technically having to ride. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that I had that kind of opportunity, but it honestly wasn’t my thing. I started riding because I loved it, not for a paycheck and the days that I didn’t ride because I didn’t feel like it sometimes gave me a decent amount of guilt considering I felt that I was getting paid to ride my bike not mess around with my friends.
The second part is that I was doing an internship while attending college, and while heading in to work, the elevator in our parking garage decided to give out and freefall eight floors which resulted in a broken L5 vertebrae and ruptured L3, L4 and L5 discs. Needless to say that ended things for the next five years of my life and by the time I was released to ride again, there was no way to possibly play catch up for what my riding had missed, much less the desire to compete was gone as well.
Looks like you have an amazing mini ramp set up?
I’m very fortunate to have a supportive wife that told me three years ago that we needed to find a new house so that I could build a ramp in the back yard. We found the perfect house on a large plot and it basically started with a five foot tall twenty foot wide mini with a constantly changing extension.
After a few months I added a tight Rampagesque quarter off the flat, then a mellow quarter on the facing side. This setup lasted just shy of a year and I added a four foot mini for my daughter as her Christmas gift this past year because she wanted a little kid mini ramp to learn on, plus it gave me a mini to skate as well. In the end it created a small hip which is super fun. Now I’m currently in the middle of revamping the main mini, and fixing the issues that we really didn’t tend to when we reassembled it at my house after it lived its first two years in North Carolina. Once we finish the relayer, there may be a few other additions as well. Time as well as money will be the key players in that though.
What are the parks like in your area?
Theres a few decent parks that are somewhat close to me. Personally I have fun at this one park about half an hour from my house which has a fun double coping spine and a few other fun things. I probably like that park the most since its generally dead and its typically me and my friends there. It’s in Pleasanton Texas, which is a small town about thirty miles south of San Antonio.
Who do you ride with the days?
I really only ride with three other guys, mainly my buddy Fields and my other friend Ryan, those two join me for our typical Thursday and prior to Covid 19, Sunday morning sessions as well. Hopefully we can get back on the twice a week deal soon. The other person I ride with is old school vert rider Chris Saldivar, he and I ride maybe once a month, and generally have our good old day chats as well.
How often do you ride?
I try and squeeze in twice a week, but as crazy as work has been and with us having to homeschool our kids currently, it makes it a bit tough. But hopefully better days are ahead and we can get back to that again.
How do you approach riding? Are you always looking to progress or are you happy with the trick bag you have?
I feel that I flip flop back and forth with this way too much. I try and have fun and cruise around, but in the end I start pushing myself to relearn tricks that I lost over the years. After having the roughest time relearning them, I’m slowly getting tailwhip nosepicks back again. It took way too long, but I feel like I actually do them better now. Theres definitely a handful of things that I would like to learn/relearn, so I guess its probably best to admit that I’m not completely satisfied with the tricks that I currently do all the time.
Whats the story for you and injuries now that you’re an older dude?
I’m pretty fortunate to not have had that many injuries over my almost forty years of bmx. But I do play a bit of mind games with myself and if I don’t feel I can do something, I wont even mess around and try it, because I really don’t want to have any more pain than I currently have to live with everyday due to my back.
But I’ve also learned to fall certain ways out of tricks which definitely helps with not having any type of significant injuries. Both ACL’s in my knees are gone so running out of things is a bit of a headache, so I try and do my best not to do anything that may lead to that.
Do you do any exercise or stretching to help with BMX fitness and/or injury prevention?
Not really anything other than ride my 24” bike around the neighborhood with my wife and kids. I’ve never really stretched unless I start riding and feel way too tight, so I end up stretching a bit on the deck of the ramp, but I highly doubt that anyone would call it stretching by any means. Haha.
Over the years you always had a big bag of tricks, what ones are on the top of your list to get back?
I’d love to dial in tailwhip nosepicks every try again, as well as 360 nosepick to fakie. Those two seem to be the biggest thorn in my side out of all of them. I’d love to do full cab to icepick to fakie again, but that one is going to be the hardest by far, but I’m not ruling it out.
Any new moves that you want to get?
Theres a handful of fakie tricks that I have running around in my head that I’d like to do some day. I have a list of around thirty tricks that I’d like to do written down at my house, that I’d love to have them become a reality. Time will tell I guess.
What do you miss about the BMX scene of times gone by?
Its hard to say, maybe people having different styles, I feel like so many of the younger generation find a rider and do their best to emulate that riders riding style as well as try and be a carbon copy.
I feel we had influences in our day, but there was rarely a day that you saw anyone ride the same way as the top pros of that era, because we all know the theres only one Wilkerson, Blyther, Dominguez and Hoffman, and no one will ever ride anywhere near the way these guys did.
What’s next for you?
Hopefully finish this edit that I set out to film completed by late summer. Its been an uphill battle, and with my OCD on how I want to pull things definitely slows things down a bit. But currently that’s the main thing that I have my mind set on bmxwise.
Any last words?
Thanks to you Neil for letting me ramble on and tell some things about myself, my wife and kids for being stoked on bmx and allowing me to ride my bike and enjoying the fact that we have a mini ramp complex in the backyard. Thanks to John Buultjens for not only friendship but also making sure that I have an amazing bike to ride around on, as well as Ronnie Bonner for the Shadow Conspiracy parts on said bike.
Theres so many people that could be thanked for all the amazing things I’ve received from bmx, Rick Moliterno for always looking out for me when I needed it, Shad Johnson for all the fun bashguard and bmx talks, my friends Ryan and Fields for always being down for a fun session, Dave Parrick for making some of the greatest bmx videos ever and for constantly reminding me of how salty we both are in our old age, Neil Blender for the influence but for the awesome skateboards and cool bmx pics he sends me on occasion, and lastly Rooftop and Enns for doing bmx their way and keeping it fun no matter how outdated our bikes all look.