ROOST BMX began sometime around the late summer of 1998, when Midwest old school BMXers thought it might be kind of cool to form a "club" with "members" and have a sort of "Dead Poets Society" cohesiveness. Jason Leikam, Kevin O'Donnell, Paul Smith and Scott Towne were key members of this original group. They were all talking already on an internet message board and decided to get together and think up a name for the group. After long deliberation they decided upon the name ROOST. ROOST stands for "Revival Of Old School Technology." Scott told me that one of the original concept names was "Revival Of Old School Trickery." I think that's cool too!

About the same time as ROOST was forming, I started an Old School BMX section on a web site I had developed called BicycleChannel.com. Bicycle Channel was meant to encompass the entire cycling world, but it was obviously 90% Old School BMX due to my BMX roots. By clicking through to each other's web sites, Jason and I formed a friendship and I agreed to take on the webmaster duties of ROOST and developed the site as it looks today. I took over ownership of ROOST BMX, and the ROOSTBMX.com web site in the fall of 2000. I want to emphasize the importance of Jason Leikam's role in getting ROOST started, and in encouraging the Old School BMX movement. All of the original members of ROOST are still very active in Old School BMX, are frequent visitors to the ROOST Forum and play vital roles in the organizing and staging of ROOST Old School Events.

Since the inception of ROOST in that summer of 1998, we have grown beyond the Midwest and now have members around the world including the USA, Canada, U.K., Australia, Scotland and more. More members are joining all the time as the ROOST name continues to become synonymous with Old School BMX. We plan to have more ROOST events at selected venues, and as we grow we hope to have members that will host events in other regions of the U.S.A. and beyond.

So that's what we are and where we came from, and we hope to keep growing in the future. Membership in ROOST is free…if you would like to become part of the ROOST, just visit the Join ROOST section of the web site. We'd be happy to have you!

Tim Lillethorup
ROOST BMX