My dad, Jesus “Chuy” Reyes Herrera, was a local legend, a celebrity of sorts, a Santa Barbara icon. His identity was built on his professional bike riding and wheelie tricks that he mastered as an original S.B. cruiser. In fact, there is now a professional category for competition based on the wheelie tricks my dad originated.
Today, kids all over town and in other places throughout the world are replicating the cruiser lifestyle that he and other locals created dating back to the 1980s. But back then, my dad and his cruiser family used single-gear bikes that weighed 50 pounds and had only a foot brake for safety. From that time up to today, my dad’s legendary cruising was admired, despised, and remembered from Butterfly Beach to Ortega Park, East Beach to Leadbetter Beach, and from the Mesa to the Pit. However, he is most remembered for holding a wheelie for multiple blocks on State Street, and he always created a stir during Fiesta and Summer Solstice parades. He is also known as an original of the annual Fiesta Cruiser Run from Stearns Wharf to Goleta Beach. My dad was an outlaw on his bike, and he once paid dearly for it after being severely beaten by law enforcement due to his defiant behavior.
My dad was an Eastside kid who grew to help represent the real Santa Barbara cruiser legends. He became the face for a movement that has now made our city the cruiser capital of the world. The image of my dad’s small but muscular frame on his custom bike, with his white T-shirt folded around his waist, is embedded in my mind. As a little girl, I remember seeing this bronze blur of a handsome man cruising up and down State Street. “There goes my dad,” I would say to myself. As I was growing up, I never understood my dad’s passion for riding and carrying on with his cruiser family. But over the years, I came to understand that his love for cruising was his therapy. It was his escape to tap into his natural talent and ability as the legendary face of Santa Barbara’s cruiser community.
