PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Unnamed Announcer: So fire it up. The miracle man dropping in for his first run of the finals
Anisa Khalifa: in the summer of 2000. Dave Mira was at the top of his game.
Unnamed Announcer: Everyone, and I do mean everyone in this crowd has heard about the double loop and they're all waiting for it. Yeah.
Anisa Khalifa: As one of the best bike riders in BMX freestyle, Mira was looking to take home the gold in action sports' biggest competition, the X Games.
And with one trick, he blew the competition away
Unnamed Announcer: to the box there. It's
Anisa Khalifa: for the first time in X Games history, he landed a double back flip, man.
Unnamed Announcer: That's what we call the miracle Man. I never ceases to amaze me. I tell you what,
Anisa Khalifa: the landmark trick secured another X Games gold medal for Mira. After it was all said and done, he packed up his bike and took his prize back home. Not to Southern California, not to New York, but to a town in eastern North Carolina
Austin Hardee: of all places in Greenville, North Carolina.
Anisa Khalifa: It turns out Mira wasn't the only professional rider who called this place home.
Steve Nowak: You'd look at the contest series and at that point it would be outta those top 10 guys in the finals. Eight of 'em lived in Greenville.
Anisa Khalifa: At first glance, Greenville is an unlikely place to be the epicenter of a sport like BMX surrounded by farmland in the heart of Eastern North Carolina, it doesn't even crack a list of the state's top 10 biggest cities.
But in the early two thousands, Greenville was home to more professional BMX Rider than anywhere else.
Mike Laird: Small time Greenville, North Carolina was the biggest freestyle. Mecca in the
Austin Hardee: world. BMX has the biggest history here.
Anisa Khalifa: I'm Anisa Khalifa. This is the broadside where we tell stories from our home at the crossroads of the South.
This week, producer Charlie Shelton Ormond explores how a southern town became home to a community of BMX superstars that changed extreme sports forever.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: As a former pro BMX writer, Steve Nwe has seen a lot of competitions.
Steve Nowak: We were going to New York, California, Arizona, all these places,
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: but there's one event he told me about that stands out. It was the late nineties. Steve was an amateur rider at the time, and he was on his way from Greenville, North Carolina to Los Angeles,
Steve Nowak: and we had our flight and we were supposed to land on Thursday and ride on Friday.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Steve was traveling with his buddy, Mike Laird, another rider who was set to compete in la
Steve Nowak: and Laird and I were contenders in both Park and Vert.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Park and vert are two different types of competition. Park is a freestyle event in a more traditional skate park. Invert short for vertical is on a halfpipe ramp with riders soaring back and forth, pulling out some of their biggest tricks.
The two guys were excited to compete, but the night before the flight, they got a phone call.
Steve Nowak: Hey, they changed the schedule and verts tomorrow. Well, we didn't land at LAX until 11:00 AM and the contest was at 1130.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: It was a long shot, but Steve and Mike were still determined to compete. They told the organizers to hold off on starting as long as possible,
Steve Nowak: so we landed LAX, grab our stuff, get a rental car.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: They weaved through LA traffic and got to the skate park, but the event was already underway.
Steve Nowak: Laird and I show up. These guys had already done their first runs and they're waiting on us. Put our bikes together, jump up on deck, rode the contest. Laird got first and I got second from LAX to the winner's podium.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: In just over an hour after the competition, a journalist came up to Steve with one question.
Steve Nowak: He goes, what is going on that you can come fly across country, throw your bikes together and you win? He goes, what are you guys doing in Greenville?
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: What they were doing in Greenville was something never seen before in BMX. Steve and Mike were just two of the riders who hailed from this North Carolina town at its height. Greenville was home to more than two dozen professional BMX Freestylers.
Steve Nowak: There wasn't any other place in the world that had that many riders concentrated in a small area.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So how'd Greenville in Eastern North Carolina become this hotspot for an extreme sport? The story starts at a small skate park sandwiched in between a local library and an elementary school.
Steve Nowak: That was Jaycee Park? Yeah, it was the scene.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Today. Jaycee Park's reputation in the world of BMX is legendary. But when Steve moved to Greenville as a teenager in the late eighties, the park was brand new and pretty bare bones.
Steve Nowak: And it was just a, a mini ramp at the time.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So one ramp,
Steve Nowak: just one ramp under, just a little under six foot.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: The city added some more ramps here and there, but park maintenance wasn't exactly a top priority.
Steve Nowak: By the time I started going around and competing, all that was left was the mini ramp because everything else.
Would get rot to it. And instead of the city doing repairs, they just came in with a forklift, picked the ramp up and threw it in the trash.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Now, in all fairness, at the time, BMX wasn't the international phenomenon. It is today. BMX freestyle is now a part of the Olympics, but this was decades before all that.
So it makes sense. Greenville's Parks and Rec Department wouldn't exactly pump money into repairs.
Steve Nowak: BMX was actually dying off in the early eighties, mid eighties. BMX was huge in California and the movie Rad had come out and you know, all that stuff was happening. in 88. BMX as a whole was kind of dying down and it got down to the guys that really wanted to ride. It wasn't a flashy thing anymore. It was actually guys that were riding
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: serious riders, only people like Steve.
Steve Nowak: I was like, well, if I'm gonna continue to compete, I've gotta have ramps to do it on.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So Steve and a friend came up with a DIY solution
Steve Nowak: we assembled a, a ramp in the shop and I hauled it in sections out to Jaycee, no permission, and I literally just put this ramp in the middle of the open area there, assembled it together, and uh, I had this ramp.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: The new setup at Jaycee started to attract more local riders.
And in the summer of 1994, Steve met somebody who coincidentally lived right across the street from the park
Steve Nowak: and this guy shows up and he says, uh, you into BMX? I said, yeah. I said, oh, yeah. Um, maybe you heard of my brother, uh, Dave Mira
Unnamed Announcer: Miracle Man once again, game face on and he's on fire.
Steve Nowak: Yeah. At that time, like Seven Pros Worldwide, and Dave was one of'em. So said, you know, Dave might come down to visit and I was like, oh man. So Dave Mira's coming. We gotta have more ramps
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: with this young superstar on his way from upstate New York. Steve hatched a plan. Maybe just, maybe Jaycee Park could lure Mira to move down south. So he decided to give it the old Field of Dreams treatment.
Bite from Field of Dreams: If you build it, he will come.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So back to the workshop, he went, now remember, this was technically city park turf, but that didn't stop Steve and his friends who built more and more unofficial ramps. By the time Mira arrived, the park had gotten its glow up. It was ready for one of the sport's top riders.
Steve Nowak: First time I got somebody at the park that's doing back flips and tail whips and all this stuff, and I'm just like, whoa, man, this, you know, to ride with him at that point was like another level. It was like, cool, I'm in the basketball and Michael Jordan just showed up at my, my court, you know, and I'm riding with Michael Jordan.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: The plan worked. Steve and his buddies showed Mira around Greenville and soon enough he was packing his bags for North Carolina.
Dave Mirra: It was a small scene, but you gotta understand, I went, I came from Syracuse where we didn't have any place to ride.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: This is Dave Mira in a documentary about BMX in Greenville,
Dave Mirra: and then come down here and I could ride every single day.
It was like, wow. It it, it changed me. It changed me as a rider and I say the whole move to Greenville for me was a, was a career saver, you know, without a doubt. And
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Mira's migration to Greenville couldn't have come at a better time for BMX. Just a few months after he relocated, the sport was catapulted into the spotlight, thanks to a big new competition.
Unnamed Announcer: From this day forward, the world and sports will never be the same. These are the extreme games.
Steve Nowak: 95 hits, and that's when the first X Games happens. And that was kind of like BMX, all of a sudden is now on a national spotlight. It's on ESPN, and people are like, oh, look at this.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Dave Mira dominated the X Games by 1999.
He had already racked up 10 medals and each time he stepped up to the podium next to his name, folks watching on TV would see his hometown. Greenville NC Mira's success started to make waves back at Jaycee Park. The
Mike Laird: BMX scene exploded 'cause people come to visit and they decided this is where they needed to be.
'cause the riding was just so intense.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: This is Mike Laird, Steve Nowak's buddy and one of the early riders who relocated to Greenville in the late nineties. At the time he was living in Virginia Beach and looking to go pro
Mike Laird: and being a Dave was here. It was just a no brainer 'cause he was in the top five guys in the world at the time.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Mike says, more and more riders began to follow the same pattern. They'd hear about this BMX scene, come visit and get hooked.
Mike Laird: I'm like, why Greenville? It's small town. Cost of living's cheap. 'cause BMX probe, BMX didn't make a lot of money. We had a public park that was free and the ramps were at high level
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: and there was one more thing going for it. Greenville's a big college town home to East Carolina University. And most of these guys were in their early twenties.
Mike Laird: So when you got a a healthy night scene on top of the riding, it was just a perfect storm of everything.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: By the early two thousands, a new era was underway. Many of the top riders in the world had settled in Greenville, and a new nickname solidified its reputation, pro town, USA.
Steve Nowak: it was that. As far as a concentration of the top competing pros, it hasn't ever been like that before. Before or after.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: And this is where I come into the story. I moved to Greenville in 2001, right around the time when Pro Town was really taking. And like a lot of kids in the early OTTs, I too had an action sports phase. Mostly stuck to skateboarding, though I did. However, chip my first tooth at Jaycee Park called Skating quits soon after that.
But these BMX guys were like local celebrities names like Mira Laird and Ryan Nyquist had a lot of clout around town and watching them ride was like seeing fireworks on wheels. I saw people do stuff on bikes that blew my mind. Mike Laird says, this environment bred a kind of competitive comradery
Mike Laird: because it's either you ride at the same level with everybody else, or you just get left behind, and it's very infectious when you're practicing at the park. And then other riders are pushing themselves. They don't necessarily even have to do the hardest tricks. They just have to do what's hard for them. And so when you see somebody really pushing themselves trying something new. It gets everybody excited. And then next thing you know, the, uh, casual practice session has turned into like a miniature competition.
Steve Nowak: There was no pressure, no bullying, nothing like that. It was all right, everybody's off work. At five, six o'clock we meet at Jaycee and we ride. We didn't realize what was actually happening of, we're training. We were training, but we weren't, you know, we were having fun.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: And that thriving local scene at Jaycee became a BMX hotbed.
That trickled out into the rest of the sport.
Mike Laird: Oh, he most definitely would set a standard.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: These guys would ride together day in, day out, then go unleash a new set of skills at the next competition. Tricks tested out on ramps in Greenville, would end up in California or even another country just a few weeks later.
And Steve Nowak says nobody was driving things forward more than Dave Mirra
Steve Nowak: wasn't. Oh, we're in our contest. It was, we're competing for second. As Dave was taking it that high level and everybody was playing catch up, but he was flawless and that was what changed the actual scene of the competitions back then was Dave was not only progressing, but he was riding so good that everybody had to like try and step up to his game.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: In the following years, pro town experienced some growing pains, many riders moved outta the sport and on to life's next chapter. And the infrastructure took on a different shape. Some of the top guys built their own private warehouses with skate parks inside, drawing away some of that attention from Jaycee. But the BMX scene kept rolling on. Dave Mira and other top riders remained household names even as they competed less. But then
Austin Hardee: I think I saw something pop up on social media and I was like, that's, that can't be true.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Pro town was hit with a tragedy.
Austin Hardee: So then I start making phone calls around town and it was,
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: that's coming up after short break.
As a kid growing up in Greenville, Austin Hardee figured something was. Special about his neighbor.
Austin Hardee: He had this massive vert ramp in his backyard. I still had no clue what that was. I still had no clue who he was,
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: but one day Austin was watching the X Games and it clicked.
Austin Hardee: It was Summer X Games of the year 2000.
It's when he pulled the first double back flip in X Games competition. And I'm like putting two and two together. It's like. That's the guy that lives like right there.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: His neighbor, the miracle man himself. Dave Mirra.
Austin Hardee: got the courage to go up to his house, and I remember saying something stupid like, I saw those two flips. You did? That was really cool. It was like two flips. Looking back, it's like he did a double flip, but he was like, thanks man. He was super nice.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: From that point on, Austin was all about BMX.
Austin Hardee: Just all just happened so quick. I was like, that's that's what I want to do.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: And Dave Mira quickly became his mentor.
Austin Hardee: I was shy and quiet and he took me under his wing and it just escalated from there on out.
Dave Mirra: Hey, I'm Dave. Welcome to my hometown, Greenville, North Carolina. I've been riding a bike pretty much all of my life. I've been pro for 10 years. It's a lot of fun, but it takes a lot of practice.
Austin Hardee: 2001 is when. It really started for me and that summer he asked me, he says, Hey, I'm gonna be doing this trick tips video.
Would you like to be in it
Dave Mirra: before we get started with the basics of jumping the pyramid, I'd like you to meet my friend Austin. What's going on Austin? Cool. One of the most important
Austin Hardee: parts. And so that summer out at Jaycee, I filmed a video with him and. Did several tricks that I had actually just learned and uh, I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Dave Mirra: Take your butt and put your butt over the transition lead with your front wheel. Steer right in. Yeah. Now you can see where Austin,
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Austin was just a kid, 11, 12 years old when he started riding with the pros at Jaycee, but by this point, Dave Mirra was a megastar in BMX. So just showing up in this video made Austin something of a celebrity too.
Austin Hardee: That following summer of 2002, they had a booth set up edX games for that video. And mom said, Hey, in the video. And they're like, you can't leave. Stay right here. All of a sudden there's just this line that starts for me and 12 years old, and I'm sitting there, I gotta learn how to have a, a signature. I'm just learning cursive, right? And I, I signed autographs for like an hour and a half.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Austin kept writing and eventually went pro. And at competitions, people could tell he came from pro town.
Austin Hardee: Certain people would see me in different parts of the country and just see my style and they're like, we can see where you got that from.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Nice. There's a Greenville style, right? Yeah. You know, Dave always had this style of where once he got upside down, he would kind of like do this pumping motion and would come back in and land so smooth and I'll look back. I got chills thinking about this right now. I'll look back and see clips of me doing it and I'm like. I see him in, in that. I see where I got that from. Special little things, you know, like that.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Austin's relationship with Dave Mira speaks to his influence overall on BMX. In Greenville. It echoes what many riders experienced. For a lot of folks. Mira was part mentor, part friend, and always a competitor. He was the heart and soul of Pro town, and that's why in February of 2016, the community he helped build was devastated.
Unidentified Anchor: We were first to report to you that Pro BMXA biker Dave Mira is dead at the age of 41. I agree.
Unidentified Anchor: Greenville Police responded to the 200 block of Pinewood Road for an apparent suicide. When officers arrived, they found Mr. Mira sitting in a truck with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had been visiting friends in the area a short time before the incident.
Unidentified Anchor: New reports show BMX legend Dave Mira was diagnosed with CTE after his death. Mira like many NFL players, diagnosed with a condition committed suicide. Mirra was a textbook case of CTE. He reportedly suffered countless concussions during his career and friends and relatives. Said he was behaving strangely just before he died.
Steve Nowak: It kind of just put me in this like haze. I just didn't really know what to do, what to think, and that really just hit me hard.
Mike Laird: When you're at a high, high level and your whole life is just devoted to one thing, and that's all you know when it's gone, the
Austin Hardee: hard thing to deal with, I mean, there's really not a day that goes by that just something won't pop up. Like I always think of Dave, you know, he mentored me on the bike. Just things I've learned from him just about life in general. You just couldn't ask for anything better. Him sitting up there on the deck with you on your bike was just you felt at home.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: After Mirra's death, the world of BMX mourned his loss, and many of the riders who were close to him looked for ways to honor his legacy. Austin got into restoring old bikes and gave some of his mentor's personal rides, a new life. This
Austin Hardee: one right here is a replica of Dave's 1999 bike that he, uh, he rode. It was actually the first bike
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Mike Laird also worked with some metal to honor Mira. Today. He has his own welding business and makes a lot of custom BMX bike frames. And recently he made a special statue honoring his friend. It was unveiled in the summer of 2024 at a memorial service for Mira. At Jaycee Park,
Dave Mirra's daughter: my dad inspired a generation of professional BMX riders Move to Greenville, and the resulting sessions here at Jaycee Park were legendary. This memorial is meant to inspire everyone to push their limits every day, just like my dad did.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: today. Jaycee Park doesn't see as many top pros ride through, but what Pro Town started a strong community powered by a love for BMX is still there. And it was in full force when I returned to Jaycee on a Sunday in July. Yeah,
Dylan Potter: Greenville, North Carolina man. That's where it kind of all started.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: About a year ago, Dylan Potter was at Jaycee for the Mirra Memorial and saw firsthand how strong Greenville's BMX community once was.
Dylan Potter: I wanted to replicate that same vibe, that same energy, and really just give back what I got outta BMX
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: and Jaycee Jams was born. Since then, Dylan has organized a session every month for folks to link up and ride together.
Dylan Potter: So little that got we started and now, now it's a thing.
Unidentified Speaker: Mid air. Oh my god. I do six
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: On an extremely hot summer day, about 15 to 20 riders from across Eastern North Carolina came out for Jaycee Jams, and they were all ages from 10 years old to self-proclaimed old heads in their thirties
Unidentified Biker: since 1995.
Yeah, I've, I've been here since the beginning, essentially. I mean, I could ride a bike
Unidentified Biker: before I could walk, but heavily BMX, probably two years.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Cool. Nice. How old are you?
Unidentified Biker: Uh, I'm 14.
Dylan Potter: If I could inspire somebody to try something or push themselves to the, to the best of their ability, then awesome. It doesn't matter what level you're at, man.
We're all here for each other at the end of the day
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: and above anything else, more than all the medals and the money. That is the legacy of Pro Town. The Stars aligned just right for this group of riders to come together and elevate the whole sport. But the culture they created at this skate park flying high in between a local library and an elementary school, has taken on a life of its own.
There's room for only one person on top of a bike, but when you're at Jaycee, you never ride alone.
Steve Nowak: It's a cool feeling to know that it's been there that long and there's still guys riding and it's, uh. This is BMX Brotherhood,
Austin Hardee: I, I just don't see how anything like that can ever compare again. It's just special.
Anisa Khalifa: This episode of the Broadside was produced by Charlie Shelton-Ormond. It was edited by Jared Walker. Our executive producer is Wilson Sere. Special thanks to Mark Loey. You can check out his documentary Pro Town for more about the BMX scene in Greenville. The Broadside is a production of WUNC North Carolina Public Radio and is part of the NPR network.
If you have feedback or a story idea, you can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend. I'm Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week.