Garage Finds | Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg Jersey
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Garage Finds | Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg Jersey
Presented by Backyard Design
When Garth Milan and I launched TransWorld Motocross in 2000, we were the only major publication that gave a regular amount of coverage to freestyle motocross. In fact, our strategy to include something for everyone was written the top of every cover: Racing / Stars / Freestyle / Bikes/ Products. Carey Hart pulled off the first-ever backflip at the Gravity Games just as we were going to press, and we paid an arm and a leg to purchase photos of it from photographer Derrick Swinfard. We included an inset of Hart on the cover, and on the free pull-out poster inside.
I’ll admit that Garth was much more in touch with the freestyle guys than I. In fact, we wrote a couple of books on freestyle motocross and the techniques required to pull off each type of trick. Still, I had a pretty good finger on the pulse of the sport. I was already good friends with Mike Metzger from his days as “Boy Wonder” on a Suzuki RM80, and I was actually on hand at one of the first-ever FMX contests several years earlier when I still worked for Cycle News. I believe it was in Arizona, but that was well over two decades ago so I can’t be sure, but I do remember that a teenaged, baby faced Travis Pastrana won. Another thing that I do remember from that trip was meeting Jeremy Stenberg. Twitch was still a grom back then and wasn’t actually part of the contest. He was on a two-stroke 125 and he wore purple LBZ baggies, and I don’t remember him being very good.
After that, I bumped into him again at Barona Oaks MX in San Diego County. Decked out in his LBZ baggies, he would cut the track repeatedly just to hit the biggest jump over and over.
By the time Garth and I were together at TWMX, Twitch was a rising star in FMX and I wondered if he would remember me. One of the Metal Mulisha guys, he certainly acted hard but he was always super friendly and approachable. Since then, we’ve spent many days in the hills shooting and filming together, and Twitch has become one of my favorite guys to talk shit to. It goes both ways, obviously, as the insults that he fires my way would probably catch a more sensitive person off guard. Haha!
I tried researching on Google what year this jersey is from, and the closest I can narrow it down to is 2007 or ’08. Twitch was still in the Metal Mulisha, and he hadn’t yet switched to Shift. The Toyota of Escondido branding on the jersey makes me chuckle, as I remember a story I heard from the guys about a bunch of unpaid parking tickets that Twitch accumulated on the loader Tundra that he refused to pay. Haha!
I filmed with Twitch and Maddo for one of the Kickstart DVD movies the year after he gave me this jersey. He had switched to a Fox helmet and with Maddo’s help, I swapped the liner in Twitch’s helmet just before we started to film. The night before, I soaked the pads from my helmet in blue food coloring, and swapped them with the pads in his helmet while Maddo distracted him. Once he broke a sweat in the helmet, the dried food coloring was re-activated and dyed Twitch’s bald head completely blue. He looked like one of the performers from the Las Vegan Blue Man Group! Haha!
Looking at this jersey in my garage this morning brought back a lot of memories about Twitch, but that one of my hands-down favorite. “To my slant eyed warrior Donn, thanks 4 all the shots bud! – Twitch” I love it.
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