Must do for 2018: See Cirque du Soleil Volta

There a few things that go back a long ways for me.  I got into BMX in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho, in 1982.  That changed the course of my life.  Just over a decade later, I was living in the infamous P.O.W. House in Westminster, CA, and I saw job ad for a circus coming to town.  I wound up working in the box office of Saltimbanco, the first Cirque du Soleil show that appeared in Orange County, California.  Working at Cirque changed what I thought was possible in life.  There is nobody I've seen that work harder AND smarter than circus people.  At that time, Cirque was just a single traveling show, a nine-year-old project that started with a group of street performers in Montreal.  I could relate to that.  As a BMX freestyler at the Huntington Beach Pier, I was a street performer who did tricks for around 140,000 people over a few years time.

Cirque du Soleil now has around 20 different shows, including several of the top permanent shows in Las Vegas.  In the early tours, it was the best run company I've ever seen.  I went on to work on four more tours that came to Orange County, mostly because it was just a fun place to go to work.  Well, and I got to see the show for free several times. 

The Cirque du Soleil box offices are built in a semi trailer.  I spent many, many hours on the phone or at the window there day dreaming of someday performing in a BMX or rock climbing act in Cirque.  That never happened for me.  But now the insanely amazing organization of Cirque has put together a show around the energy and lifestyle of the action sports world.  I DEFINITELY want to see this in 2018.  If you get the chance, you should to.

The story behind Cirque du Soleil's Volta

The creation of Cirque du Soleil Volta

The BMX Finale of Cirque du Soleil's Volta

East Coast BMX freestyler from the 80's, Chris Lashua in Cirque's Quidam  

Check the schedule and buy tickets for Volta 

 With a bit of looking on Facebook, you can find Daniel Dher's thoughts on seeing Volta for the first time.  Happy New Year's everyone!

2017: My Goals for a CRAZY year

 My life has been tumultuous, to say the least, for about 15 years now.  It's a really long story, and there are parts of my own story that I can't even tell.  I'm not sure when this photo was taken, but that's about what I looked like a year ago.  Only my four legged niece Willow was brave enough to be in a photo with me.  Living with my mom for five years, my weight crept back up to near the highest it's ever been.  In 2007, as a taxi driver in California, I bulked up to 374 pounds.  I managed to lose much of that, getting down to 245 in 2011.  Then I started driving a taxi here in Winston-Salem, and gained much of it back. 

In any case, a year ago I had two choices: become a Sumo wrestler or start losing weight again.  After some soul searching, I realized I'd never make Yokozuna.  There ain't nothing good about being fat.  OK, being super fat DID actually save my life once as a taxi driver, but that's the only time it helped. 

Around May 1st, 2017, I weighed in at 368.8 pounds.  In the situation I was in then, It was really tough to lose weight.  But I wound up having it out with my mom, and heading here to Winston-Salem, living homeless, and focusing on getting my art going as a business.  I had two main goals this year:

1) Lose weight and get below 300 pounds.
2) Start making a living from my art and writing.

I "failed" at both.  That's how most people would categorize it.  I didn't make either goal. But I come from the BMX and action sports world where "failure" is simply seen as a necessary part of life.  I weighed myself today at the mall for a quarter, and came in at 317 pounds.  And that was all bundled up for the cold weather.  So I'll call it 315 pounds.  While I didn't achieve my goal, I DID manage to lose about 54 pounds in the last eight months.  I'll take it. 

As for making a living from my art and writing...  I have eight drawings up at Earshot Music here in Winston-Salem, my first solo art show.  Four have sold, and that show helped me sell a couple more.  I'm staying busy as an artist.  I'm not making a living, but I'm making about 1/3 of a living doing what I love to do.  Like with my weight, it's not exactly where I wanted to be, but it IS progress. 

That's the point of goals.  Even if you don't achieve the goal exactly, just working towards a goal gets you heading in the right direction. 

Here are my two main goals for the first six months of 2018:

1) Lose 50 more pounds, and weigh in at under 265 by July 1st, 2018.
2) Get to the point where I'm making $1200 a month or more from my art and writing by July 1st, 2018, and have my own place to live. 

Those are the two big things I'm working towards.  What are you working towards in this New Year of 2018?

Latest drawings: Jerry Garcia, and Miranda Lambert & Carrie Underwood

 I've been drawing away for the last few weeks.  Jerry Garcia is sold, the first drawing I sold on Craigslist.  He should be traveling to his new home tomorrow.  Sharpies on paper, my unique scribble style,  18" X 24".

This one of Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood is for my friend Ben, who's been helping me out big time for the last several months.  I've totally lagged on getting this one done.  Sorry Ben.  It should be in his hands tomorrow.  Sharpies on paper, my unique scribble style, 18" X 24".  I've got a good feeling something bad's about to happen.

December 28, 2017: How to get mugged and cold weather

I knew it was pretty chilly when I poked my head out of my blankets in my tent this morning.  I got to McDonald's, and looked up the temperature on the local news website.  "18 degrees, feels like 8 degrees," it said.  Yeah... pretty chilly.  All the NC locals here in McD's are complaining about the cold.  They all slept in nice warm houses last night.  Camp fires are not an option where I'm camped out.  Lots of blankets have to suffice.

My main focus these days is turning my art and writing into a viable business.  Why don't I "just get a job?"  Haven't been able to find one in North Carolina since I drove a taxi over five years ago.  If you read the article linked in that last post, you know that I'm not alone.  After three serious attempts at job hunting a couple years back, 150 online applications turned up one response, at a fast food place.  When I met the manager, she saw my overweight, middle-aged self, and changed her mind.

Here in central North Carolina, the only directive people give is "just keep looking for a job."  But the Californian in me, the entrepreneurial side, realizes there are other options.  I decided to create my own job.  I started in November 2015 with an old, battered laptop running Windows XP, some art supplies, ambition, and not a dime to my name.  I was living for free with my mom, but it was far from an ideal environment.  Two weeks into my attempts to sell artwork, my computer died.  I sold a couple of drawings to buy another cheap, refurbished laptop.  I managed to sell my unique Sharpie marker drawings cheap, but on a halfway consistent basis, ever since.  Even now, I average only $2 to $4 an hour for the work I do.  Not much, but it's something.

But where I was living was an apartment in continual financial crisis.  So I was never able to re-invest the little bit of money I made.  My mom and I didn't get along when I was young, and we still don't.  Long story, lots of back story, but the end result is that I came back to Winston-Salem from Kernersville with about $20 a couple of weeks ago.  I choose to live in a tent rather than go to a homeless shelter for a few reasons.  1) I have a laptop that I use to blog and sell my artwork.  It WOULD get stolen or destroyed at a shelter.  100% chance, no question.  2) No bed bugs in my tent.  3) I can work as much as I want, which is every waking hour.  I love what I do, and get up psyched to get to work.  I don't have to go to bed a 9 pm and have to wake up at 5:30 am for no reason, like I would in a shelter.  4) Shelters suck.  50-60-70 guys snoring, yelling, talking shit, and stealing your socks (and anything else they can nab).  5) Homeless shelters ARE NOT geared to help people actually trying to get back to work.  They are geared to funnel you into programs for either mental health or addiction (whether those apply to you or not), and then scamming Social Security disability to get a check from the government.  There are no entrepreneurial homeless shelters.  But there should be.

Last night, I left the library, planning to buy a ten-ride bus pass at the station.  I had less than $20 in my checking account, so I couldn't pull cash out.  The only store nearby wouldn't let me get $5 cash back on a purchase.  But I had I gift card from Christmas I planned to buy the bus pass with, because I had no cash or change for the bus.  But the machines only take cash.  I went to the window, and couldn't buy a bus pass there either, I needed cash.

Since I have some community service to do, and need to stay out of trouble, I chose not to panhandle a dollar for the bus.  Instead, I walked the 3-4 miles from the bus station to my campsite.  Walking under a bridge near Baptist Hospital, I saw a guy in the shadows walking towards me.  I noticed him put his right hand in his pocket and appear to pull something out.  After years of taxi driving and homelessness, my radar went off.  As we got close to each other, he opened his arms up wide and said "Merry Christmas, man!" And tried to give me a big hug.  It was December 27th.  Christmas is over.  I didn't recognize the guy.  He was a black guy, late 20's maybe, a skinny dude.  I had to literally put my hand on his chest and firmly, but not aggressively, push him away.  "I don't do hugs, man," I told him.  His expression changed.  Whatever he had in mind, he realized he had picked the wrong guy.  He stepped away and we continued going our different directions.  He acted like it was a mistake, and I didn't press the issue or get aggressive.  That's the way to handle a mugger, I guess.  I weighed about twice what he did, and there was concrete in every direction.  If it had turned into a pushing and shoving match, he would have wound up in the hospital, and I might have, too.  Or jail.  But we both treated it like a simple misunderstanding, and that was that.  After about 20 feet, I looked back.  He put his right hand back in his pocket, apparently putting whatever it was back in his coat pocket.  I shuffled on "home," and spent an hour under my covers trying to warm up.  I've never been mugged before.  I wasn't last night either.  Life goes on.  I've got drawings to do.

Why Millennials are Screwed (and how that affects the rest of us)

In this incredible article (that's incredibly long) from Huff Post/Highline, Michael Hobbes goes into great detail to explain the structural problems in our world that are making life so difficult for Millennials, (and some of us middle aged Gen Xers).  The stereotypes are misleading, as usual, and our current American way of doing things is stacked against most of the people in the country.  It's in your best interest to READ THIS ARTICLE.  I know most of you won't.  And then you'll be baffled and whiny when more epic social changes start happening. 

What will we do with all those empty buildings?

This still of the thrashed escalator area at Rolling Acres Mall is iconic to many now.  This 2014 clip was an early look at what's now called the Retail Apocalypse.  A quick online search will show a consensus of articles and videos listing thousands of stores that have closed and people expecting about 400 entire shopping malls to close within the next five years.  That's if we DON'T have a recession anytime soon.  On a timeline basis alone, we're due for a recession any time now. 

While thousands of new stores have opened, more than 6,700 retail chain stores have closed in 2017 alone.  There were thousands more in the past few years.  There are a bunch of different reasons for this.  This Bloomberg News article (Nov. 2017) adds crazy amounts of debt to the picture of retail stores losing ground to online sales, and the millennials' penchant for seeking experiences over piles of material goods.  Any way we look at it, there are tens of millions of square feet under roof becoming empty.  That's in addition to all the old factories and warehouses from decades of manufacturing decline. It looks like that this year's closing stores are just the beginning.

I happened to be born just a few miles from Rolling Acres Mall, the one in the clip above, in Akron, Ohio.  I followed my parents around that mall, and many others, as a kid.  This mall has been demolished.  But hundreds more are still standing, and the term "dead mall" is part of our vernacular now.  There's a dead mall, completely empty, fifteen miles from me right now.  I'm sitting in the McDonald's in the parking lot of another mall that's packed right now with Christmas shoppers.  But it's definitely not packed the rest of the year.  The mall behind me is doing better than most.  But two of its anchor department stores are Sears and J.C. Penney's, which are both struggling.  For now, though, it's still alive and kicking. 

My point here is that we have a HUGE amount of buildings of all kinds standing empty in this country.  We have a lot more buildings that will become empty in the coming years.  So...

What are we going to do with all that space?

Here are some of my favorite ideas:

Indoor Skatepark- Van's store/skatepark- Orange, CA- large, two story mall store
Indoor Skatepark with Amazing Art- Iianera, Spain- old church
Art Colony- Santa Fe Art Colony- Los Angeles, CA- old industrial buildings
Indoor Mountain Bike/BMX Park- Ray's MTB- Cleveland, Ohio- 100,000+ sq.ft. factory
Indoor Dirt BMX Park- Burlington Bike Park- Burlington, Washington- warehouse
Indoor (underground) Mountain Bike Park- Louisville Mega Cavern, Louisville, KY- old mine
Indoor Ropes Course/Zip Lines- Lousiville Mega Cavern
Indoor Wood BMX Park- Daniel Dhers Action Sports Complex- Holly Springs, NC- warehouse
BMX/Skateboard/Gymnastics Summer Camp- Woodward East, Woodward, PA- warehouses
Indoor Climbing Gym- Allez Up- Montreal, Quebec, Canada- old sugar silos
Martial Arts Tricking Practice Gym- Various dojos/gyms- warehouse/industrial spaces
Indoor Parkour/Freerunning Course- Unknown location, warehouse
Indoor Slack Line- Somewhere in Canada, eh- dining room
Indoor Snowboard Park- Montana Snow Center- Westerhoven, Netherlands- warehouse
Indie Art Gallery/Performance space- AAA Electra 99- Anaheim, CA- industrial space
Independent Theater- Center Stage Theater- Naperville, IL- warehouse
Public Library- McAllen, TX- old Walmart store
$1000 Movie Stage- Unknown- old barn
Privately Owned Movie Studio- Tyler Perry Studios- Atlanta, GA- decommissioned Army base

How the Homeless Relocation in the U.S. (doesn't) work(s)

I just saw a short clip of this on MSNBC online.  Thousands of homeless people every year are given bus tickets to get them away from some cities.  In this article, The Guardian (UK) looks at the effectiveness of these programs. 

Alternative Christmas Carols

Just watch this one.  I mean it.  The Dickies, "Silent Night."

Need a break from the holiday madness about now?  Thought so.  Here ya go:

"Little Drummer Boy" - Joan Jett
"Oi to the World" - No Doubt
"Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight)" - The Ramones
"The Season's Upon Us" - Dropkick Murphy's
"Merry Xmas" - Face to Face
"White Christmas" - Johnny Cash
"The Chanukah Song" - Adam Sandler
"Oh Come All Ye Faithful" - Twisted Sister
"Carol of the Bells" - Trans Siberian Orchestra
"Father Christmas" - The Kinks
"Christmas Wrapping" - The Waitresses
"Christmas in Hollis" - Run DMC
"Twas the Night Before Christmas" - Snoop Dogg
"Christmas Hell's Bells" - AC/DC
"White Christmas" - Guns & Roses
"Smells Like Christmas Spirit" - Not Nirvana
"Christmas Wrapping (Jewish version)" - Save Ferris
"Merry Muthafuckin' Christmas"- Eazy-E
"12 J's of Christmas" - Afroman
"Happy Skaladays" - Reel Big Fish
"Jingle Bells" - Eminem
"Blue Christmas" - The Partridge Family
"Little Drummer Boy" (Peace on Earth)" - David Bowie and Bing Crosby

Mind baffling TED Talk by Skateboarder Rodney Mullen

It just occurred to me that I might be the only homeless person who's had a published interview with a person who's done a TED Talk years later.  My life is filled with obscure things like that.  Actually, Rodney has done several TED Talks.  Groups of super intelligent, high achieving techies, scientists, business people and others show up in rooms like this and willingly spend 18 minutes of their precious time to listen to a skateboarder.  Why?  Because Rodney is well known as one of the most innovative people in action sports, not to mention the whole world.

Yes, I know Rodney kind of jumps around in this talk, and comes across like a somewhat scatter-brained genius.  That's because he is a somewhat scatter-brained genius.  It's a little hard to follow.  But he brakes down skateboard tricks into little groups of movements.  Once you learn a basic group of movements, a trick, then you can either add variations to that trick, or take that trick to an entirely new type of terrain.  In doing this, skaters (and other action sports people) continually innovate, and add to the collective base of tricks.  The community respects these contributions (mostly), and those contributions then live on long past the time you came up with them, and continue to evolve.

I first met Rodney in August of 1986, at a place we called The Spot, just north of the Redondo Beach Pier in California.  I had just started a new job at Wizard Publications, a BMX magazine publisher, and my new co-worker and roommate Lew said, "You gotta meet this skateboarder Rodney, he's amazing."  Lew and I went to The Spot to practice our flatland BMX freestyle tricks on a good sized brick area.  After we'd been there for a couple hours, Rodney rode up on this rickety, old, black beach cruiser bike he called Agnes.  Where we would just start practicing our tricks, Rodney prepared to skate.  He taped his fingers, checked over his board, and stretched.  It was the first time I met a skateboarder who actually trained.  Then he did some basic, but still hard, tricks to warm up.  Then he skated, alone, for two or three hours.

At one point, he stopped to take a break, and Lew and I rode over to say "hi."  Rodney was staying with then washed up skater Steve Rocco for a few weeks.  Lew introduced me, and we talked for a few minutes.  Rodney was kind of quiet, really down to Earth, and obviously really smart.  After meeting him that first night, I started hanging out after I was done sessioning, and watch Rodney skate.  We started talking, and hit it off.  So I got to know him over those three weeks or so, and then later that fall when stayed at Rocco's for another month.

FREESTYLIN' magazine, where Lew and I worked, was covering skateboarding at the time, as well as BMX freestyle.  So I got the chance to do a short interview with Rodney, and he even got a photo on the cover of that issue (below).  BMX freestyle and skateboarding drew a weird crowd of people who generally felt like outsiders to "normal" life.  Some of those guys were the total crazy daredevil types.  But hanging out with Rodney, I found it was possible to read big books, be smart, and still be part of the BMX/skate world.  The more introverted, intellectual skaters and bikes often invented technically hard tricks.  Those tricks were often taken to bigger and crazier version by other riders and skaters.  That's where the community aspect of action sports, which Rodney speaks of at the end of this talk, comes into play.  No one person in these "sports" is "The Best," and everyone can contribute to the scene.  You can read my 1986 interview with Rodney Mullen.  I couldn't get that to load today.  If you can, it's in the skate section of the magazine near the middle.

The Difference a Good Scene Can Make

The Boise BMX track around the time I started racing.  We called it Fort Boise then, because it was in a drained sewer pond behind the old Fort Boise site.  This little place changed the course of my life. 

I got into BMX in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho in 1982.  There were about 12 junior high and high school guys there, not many girls, and not much to do.  We watched bad TV re-runs all afternoon in the summer, then came out as it cooled off in the early evening.  When I first moved there, we'd get games of wiffle ball, football, or basketball going against each other every evening.  And we'd ride our BMX bikes on some little jumps and berms a forgotten motorcycle rider had made a couple years before.  It was just something for us bored teenagers to do. That's how it started.

As the summer of 1982 progressed, we rode our bikes more, and played traditional games less.  We were just a bunch of punk kids trying to learn a new trick on our bikes and out-do each other.  Our little rivalries grew and faded, and we all started breaking parts on our cheap bikes.  And we started getting better.  BMX became our thing.  I didn't realize it then, but we organically formed a little scene, pushing each other to improve.

We started buying magazines with money made babysitting or mowing lawns.  When one kid bought a magazine, he'd hide it and read the whole thing in one night, sometimes twice.  Then,  he'd bring it out the next day and we'd all flip through it, learning the names of top riders and looking at the tricks in the photos.  As our cheap bikes broke, we bought (some kids stole) better parts.  We all tried to learn a new trick without the others seeing it, we were hyper-competitive with each other, always trying to be the first to pull off a trick or move we saw in a magazine.  Because of that, we progressed fairly quickly.

In those pre-internet days, news traveled at a snails pace, and it took us several months to learn that there was a BMX race track in Boise.  For those of you not familiar, "BMX" is a short version of "bicycle motocross."  One Saturday in October, four of us and three bikes piled into Scott's mom's Ford Pinto.  It wasn't a hatchback, so it was a tight fit.  I left my bike at home, because I was the worst rider in the trailer park at that point.

We went to the track, tried it out, and coached each other on the best lines to take and where to pass other riders.  The three guys who rode, Scott, Brian, and James, all won trophies.  We were hooked.  We headed back to the trailer park like we'd just conquered a foreign land or something.  When the other kids saw our trophies and heard our stories, the plan immediately began for the next race.  Unfortunately, that was the last race of the year.

Early that next Saturday, we piled in my dad's Ford Van, about nine of us, all with bikes, and unleashed our low-budget, but high energy crew on the local BMX scene.  Most of us had "K-Mart Special" bikes with a few upgraded components.  Most of the local kids had bikes that ranged in price from $350 to $600 each.  They had full motocross style leathers as uniforms, we had shabby Levi's and T-shirts.  They had custom number plates, we had paper plates with numbers hand written by the officials taped to our handlebars.  That day, I first saw the difference a tight scene can make.

All day long we heard one phrase over and over from kids and parents; "Where did all these fast kids on piece-of-shit bikes come from?"  It was the first race for most of us, the second race for  those three.  We were not only competitive, but we all went home with trophies, mostly first and second place.  We had everything going against us... except the thing that mattered most that day.  Hunger.  We lived BMX.  That's all we had to cram our teenage anger, frustration, and energy into.  Even before that first race, BMX was our life.  We had something to prove to the world.  We came from a bunch of families that were more dysfunctional than most, and we all had issues.  BMX gave us something to focus on, to be good at, and to begin to progress as a human being, not just a bike rider.

That desire for personal progression shaped the whole course of my life.  I went on to take chances, on my bike and off, that I never dreamed of early on, and that many wouldn't want to try.  I learned, first on a physical level, then on a life level, to get back up every time I fell down.  Or was pushed down.  Or punched in the head (that's for you Scott).   I'm still trying new things and progressing today.  And even now, at 51 years old and really overweight, I still have the urge to ride a bike and keep progressing.

Financially, my life's a mess.  Like many, I got stuck in an industry that  changed drastically due to new technology.  But I'm still going, still at it, and my artwork is starting to open some doors.  Now, 35 years after that summer in Blue Valley Trailer Park, I look at scene of people pushing each other in a totally different way.  Over those three and a half decades, I've learned that much of the progress in the world comes from small groups of people pushing each other to get better.  Scenes.  Art scenes. Music Scenes.  BMX, skateboard, and other action sports scenes.  Entrepreneurial scenes.  High Tech scenes.  These are all loosely connected.  My work I'm doing these days is trying to share the importance of these small scenes, especially creative scenes, how they grow, and to help build better ones. 

A $4 Billion Dollar Reason Why Your City's Innovation District Needs a Skate (and Bike) Park

Does your city have an Innovation District, a place where high tech start-ups and a hip urban lifestyle come together?   Dozens of cities around the U.S. and the world have built them, including the city I'm now living in.  But I bet none of them look like the place above.  In this clip you see my long time friend Pierre, skating below the Huntington Beach Pier in Southern California in 1989.  This is what the area looked like on weekdays and during the winter then.  On summer weekends it was packed with people.  Surfers came every morning to surf by the pier.  Skateboarders and BMX freestylers, like myself, hung out and drew crowds every weekend in this spot.  The police didn't like us there, and told us to stop skating and riding every time our crowds blocked the walk/bike path.  It was a good place to practice, hang out, meet girls, and grab a slice of pizza at Papa Joe's or a burger at Wimpi's afterwards. 

So what does a skate and bike spot from the 1980's and 1990's have to do with the rise of  "Innovation Districts" around the world.  To most people, there appears to be no economic development happening at this spot in the video above.  But an article I just read in Transworld Skateboarding brought the two together, in my mind, at least. 

First, let me tell you that I got into the sport of BMX racing, and then the emerging sport of BMX freestyle in high school.  It was the early 1980's, and I lived in Boise, Idaho.  I graduated high school and couldn't afford college.  Much to EVERYONE's dismay, I kept learning tricks on my little bike, and my life took a far different path than anyone imagined.  I met a lot of weird young people, and wound up working  in the BMX, and then the skateboard industry. 

One day, in the fall of 1986, while working at the offices of FREESTYLIN' magazine,  four of us were standing outside on break when pro freestyle Ron Wilkerson rode up on his motorcycle.  On the back, he had a young blond kid.  It was the first time any of us met that kid.  When I got laid off a few months later (mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy), that kid was hired for my old job.  He wound up fitting in well there.

In January of 1987, I took a job in Huntington Beach, and I started hanging out at the H.B. Pier every weekend, and I met a bunch of local skaters and BMXers, as well as others who stopped by while in the area.  I was at the pier nearly every weekend for several years.  Pierre, the skater above, was one of the first people I met, along with a skater named Don and many others.  One of those kids, one I don't specifically remember, but know was part of the local scene, is mentioned in the Transworld article I just read.  He was just one of the kids that skated by the pier now and then, and sessioned Huntington High and other places I often rode my bike.

Years later, in about 1997 or so, local BMXer John Paul Rogers invited me to his "Loser Christmas" at his house in H.B.  There were a bunch of  BMX industry guys from other parts of the country who didn't have family in the area.  So we all got together, drank a few beers, played pool, rode the mini ramp, and watched really crazy videos.  I wound up spending much of the day on the backyard trampoline doing some tramp boarding.  That's where you have a skateboard deck (no trucks or wheels) and jump on it on the trampoline and try to do tricks.  There was another bike/skate industry guy there who I'd heard of, but never met before.  We took turns on the board on the trampoline much of the day.  He was trying to pull a solid method air, and I was working on a 720 shove-it.  We both landed our tricks that day, and got to know each other. 

Hang in there, I'm pulling it all together.  I met those guys because I did what everyone in my life thought was crazy, and focused on learning tricks on "a little kids bike."  If I had gone to college, it wouldn't have happened.  If I had spent my time learning computer coding, it wouldn't have happened.  If I had moved to a 1980's version of today's "innovation districts," it never would have happened. 

The guy I met on the back of the motorcycle in 1986 was a 17-year-old named Spike Jonze.  The kid I don't specifically remember from the H.B. street skating scene was Jason Lee.  The guy I hung out with on the trampoline at the Loser Christmas was Jeff Tremaine.  The article I just read in Transworld Skateboarding figured up the box office revenues of the movies those three guys have either directed or starred in.  The total comes to $3,692,000,000.  That's not a typo.  Yes, those three guys have gone on from skateboarding and helped bring in nearly 3.7 BILLION DOLLARS in worldwide box office revenues.  Really.

Wait, you want to call me out for round that number up to $4 billion, right?  I mean, rounding up $300 million dollars is a big jump.  That's not pocket change, unless you're Bill Gates, maybe.  Remember Pierre, the skater in the video above?  Pierre Andre Senizergues is now best know as the founder of Sole Technologies, the parent company of Etnies and E's shoes, 32 snowboard boots, and Altamont clothing.  Our mutal good friend from the pier, Don Brown, is the vice-president of marketing there.  While I don't know exactly how much Sole Tech has grossed over the years, I know it's way over the $300 million needed to bring the total up to a nice round $4 billion. 

If you build a skate and bike park in your city's Innovation District, it's unlikely that those skaters will create billions in sales over the years.  But, then again, it was really unlikely in 1986 that Spike, Jason, and Jeff would either. 

The Innovation District in the city I now live in outlawed skateboarding in that area.  I love irony.  Maybe they should read this article in Transworld.

10,000 Page views... Heck yeah

To celebrate hitting the 10,000 page view milestone on this blog, here's the remaining version of a 7 minute promo video I did for the short-lived Christian Hosoi/Vision Skateboards collaboration Tuff Skts in 1990.

Last summer I decided to bring all my assorted blogs together, not sure how it would work.  But I wanted get away from telling old school BMX stories on one blog, sharing my artwork on another, and talking about the future, economics, and other stuff I'm interested in on other blogs.  Yesterday this new blog crossed the first big milestone, 10,000 total page views.  That may not mean anything to you, but I'm stoked on it.  Thanks for checking it out.

White Bear Creations has moved

This is the second version of Winston-Salem's tree mural, now on Liberty Street.  The original was on Trade Street, on the front of the building where The Sweet Potato restaurant now resides.  I have absolutely nothing to do with this mural, but it's a landmark in the W-S art scene, centered around Trade Street downtown.  I'm finally getting into that scene after years in this area.

To those of you in the know, White Bear Creations, the likely future name for my Sharpie art/writing business, has moved back to Winston-Salem, NC, and now resides in a less than lovely tent in the woods.  In other words, I'm homeless again.  But I've got a bunch of unique, "scribble style" Sharpie drawings to do, and I've been working on them all day.

Last night, after a friend helped me move my tent to a more secluded location, and went beyond the call of friendship helping me struggle to put it back up, I cleaned out the tent.  As a rule, I don't have food in my camping area when homeless.  But I had some pudding cups left in the tent when I got arrested for buying donuts, and spent three days in jail, a couple months ago.  Something (animals?  kids?) got in there and spilled pudding all over the floor of the tent.  That may not sound like a big deal, but a tent smelling like vanilla pudding is way to attractive to local critters.

When I got settled in last night, I thought sleeping in a tent on a night the temperature was going to drop to 26 degrees  (F) would be the biggest thing to deal with.  I had enough covers to stay plenty warm, much to my surprise.  But the four different critters scratching at the outside of my tent, trying to find that damn pudding, turned out to be the biggest issue last night.  What can I say... neighbors be buggin'.

I spent the day today working on my Sharpie drawings indoors and getting grilled by a local snitch.  As homelessness goes, that's more exciting than I like my days to be.  Got a bunch of drawing done, though, far more than when I was sleeping on a couch in a nice warm, but drama-filled, apartment recently.

Things that are worse than homelessness #1

Dealing on a day to day basis with a person who exhibits most or all of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder is worse than being homeless.

Blues Brothers drawing up at Earshot Music

This is my latest drawing for the show at Earshot Music in Winston-Salem.  It's up on the wall now, and selling for $120.  If anyone here on the interwebs is interested, I can facilitate the sale, and I'll pay shipping (USPS 1st class in continental U.S.).  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".

Earshot Music is at 3254 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem, NC.  It's in the shopping center across Hanes Mall Blvd. from Hanes Mall.  It's the place with Marshall's, Toys-R-Us, and A.C. Moore, next to Marshall's.  Stop by and check out my work and all their music.

The F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality despite 22 MILLION Americans petitioning for it

In a 3-2 vote today, the Federal Communications Commission repealed the rules known as "Net Neutrality."  At least 22 million Americans signed petitions to keep the rules in place. In yet another Republican-backed handout to large corporations, Internet Service Providers will now be able to charge various websites, and perhaps even blocking popular sites that don't want to pay up.  There will be all kinds of lawsuits over this, but for now the new rules are supposed to go into effect in a couple of months. 

The video above, posted 11/30/2017, gives a quick but good view of the kinds of changes we're likely to see. 

A a small time, but serious blogger, I'm one of the tens of millions of people likely to get seriously reamed by this rule change.  So I'm going to do my best to keep up on this issue, and share what I learn.

Here are articles about this:

The New York Times

Net Neutrality Explained- 2015 Wall Street Journal video 

The FCC laughing at the millions of "save Net Neutrality" comments it receivied

Wikipedia page on Ajit Pai, who was appointed chairman of the FCC by President Trump in March 2017 

Ride In Peace: A Tribute to Kevin Robinson

"That's what bike riding's about, that's why I ride a bike, that right there... We sit at home, we think up stuff, we try it, and it works... we just keep progressing."
-Kevin Robinson,  after landing the first double flair at the 2006 X-Games

Kevin Robinson, one of the most progressive BMX riders ever, died suddenly of a stroke, this past Saturday, December 9th, 2017.  He was 45 years old and left behind a wife and three children.

My blogs about BMX have been my own personal take on the BMX freestyle world that I was a part of in the 1980's and 1990's.  Kevin Robinson is one of the riders I never met.  I know him, like most of you, from seeing video clips of him pulling one seemingly impossible trick after another.  He pushed the progression of BMX more than most, if not all, of the the amazing riders in the 21st century.  He inspired thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of riders to push their own limits.  More important, everyone I've heard who knows him says he was a cool human being, not just an amazing rider.  That is something that can't be said for a lot of pro athletes.

Rather than write a big post about someone I never knew personally, I'm going to put a bunch of links of his riding and interviews to check out.  RIP K ROB, and empathy, best wishes, and condolences to his family and all his friends.

World Record 27 foot quarterpipe air
Alli Sports Interview 
27 foot high World Record quarterpipe air
Vert session at Woodward East
No handed flair on Mega Ramp
Riding a Big Wheel
Double flair attempt on Mega Ramp
Kevin's Woodward Experience 
Kevin on The Late Show with David Letterman
Talking about his foundation
K-Rob BMX school assembly programs
84 foot ramp to ramp back flip


And here's a TED Talk Kevin gave. 

Happy Birthday Bob Morales!

Happy birthday to Bob Morales.  Not only did he turn BMX freestyle into a sport by founding the ASPA and then the AFA, but he added the word "gription" to the English language. 

I was the only BMXer who rode this halfpipe

The Gauntlet on American Gladiators.  I was not only the first guy to run through the gauntlet in the testing phase, I was the only BMXer ti ride this halfpipe.  It was all about 2 inch thick foam, not good to ride.  A lot of fun to run through though.  On camera blocking day, Siren (Shelly Beattie) and I got into a full on wrestling match.  She kicked my ass, but I was able to reach across the finish line.  I also had lunch with Dean Cain one day on the set.  Cool guy and really good athlete.

Canyon Lands...the atrocities continue...

When I hear the name "Canyon Lands," I think of adventures like this.  President Trump just stripped away the "National Monument" status of a huge chunk of these lands by presidential proclamation.  Bummer.  There's a reason we have national monuments.  It's because we live in a kickass country with lots of great wild areas worth protecting for future generations.  The inevitable impeachment can not some soon enough.

Why are you here?

I recently ran across Simon Sinek's videos online.  That's kind of weird, because the last 40 of my 51 years of life have been trying to find out the "why?" of life.  Like many, my childhood was one of daily pain, misery, and simply trying to survive.  At age eleven, I really began wondering what the point was.  What is the point of life itself?  Why are we here on this planet with so much struggle and pain and corruption and just plain mean people.  What could possibly be the purpose to it all?

While others focused on creating lives and careers and family as we grew up, I wandered through a series of weird jobs.  I found early success, but it didn't bring happiness.  I've been through some pretty tough trials.  I kept plugging away, even though there seemed to be no point to life much of the time.

Early on in my search, I heard this ridiculous idea that we are spiritual beings of some sort, and that we venture into these physical bodies on planet Earth to learn what we can in this realm.  OK, every tribe around the world, every religion believes in some sort of soul or spirit that is more than just our physical bodies.  That's not what seemed crazy to me.  What seemed crazy was that some people think we "signed up" for the particular lives we are born into.  Some people believe that our souls actually pick our parents in a way, to push us to learn particular lessons that can only be learned by coming into this crazy world.

When I first heard that idea in my early 20's, it seemed absurd.  "I picked my parents and my extended family?  On purpose?  Have you met these people?"  I dismissed that crazy idea and went on reading books, answering lists of questions, fasting, meditating, and sessioning on my bike and sometimes on my skateboard.  I kept searching.

Little by little, bits of insight and understanding came to me.  Through crazy times and fun times, I struggled and occasionally soared.  Bit by bit, a bigger picture was revealed.  Now, at age 51, weighing in at 315 pounds and with few teeth left after my crazy journey, I've realized that small group of people I heard in my early 20's were right.  Our souls, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them, they pick the situation we're born into.  We did it to ourselves.

In a sense, life is the ultimate thrill ride, the toughest adventure race.  We "sign up" for our crazy adventures here on Earth.  But here's the kicker.  As soon as we enter these human bodies, we forget what we signed up for.  We not only have to try to survive this crazy world, we have to try and figure out why we're here in the first place.  All along the way we complain about the adventure, and most people get overwhelmed by it.

But think of it this way.  If you signed up for a Spartan race or a mud run, the point is to see if you can make it through the challenge.  It'd be pretty stupid to stop in the middle and say, "Why are you people torturing me like this?"  If you pay money to go to a haunted house at Halloween time, you don't fight the people in the house that jump out and scare you.  You paid money to have them jump out and scare you.  That's the whole point.

But in this adventure of life on Earth, we have the added challenge of amnesia.  We paid to enter this fun house, we signed up for this adventure, but part of the adventure is forgetting that we actually did come into these lives on purpose.  We bought a ticket to the "Human Being" adventure, and are then given amnesia, so a big part of the adventure is figuring out that it actually IS AN ADVENTURE.

From this point of view, everything changes.  So... why are you here?  What adventure did you sign up for?