Fabio Wibmer in the snow

Ninja drop from a helicopter onto a snowy mountain... and that's just the start.  I saw this on YouTube a couple days ago, and was blown away.  Then it came across Facebook, and I shared it.  But that's just a really short clip.  Here's the full thing.  A little goofy with the snow cops, but freakin' amazing.

All us BMXers from northern places, Boise, Idaho, in my case, spent the winters jonesin' to ride.  I once had pictures of me doing kicked out cross ups off a two foot high jump made of snow in sub zero weather.  We also used to clear off a patch of ice on the Blue Valley trailer park pond, then ride across the snow, and do flat track-style, one foot down slides across the shear ice.  It was a blast.

Mountain bike visionary Fabio Wibmer takes snow riding to an ridiculous level in this video.  Enjoy.

Check out my art in person, or do a project of your own here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

A video for businesses and civic leaders who hate the internet, social media, and obscure bloggers who have more pageviews than their websites

If you have a business, you're in competition with every other business AND media company.  If you have a city and want to create jobs or new businesses, you are in competition with every city and town around the world.  That's the nature of our connected 21st century world.  Here's something else you may not think of, YOU are a media company.  Your business IS a media company.  Everyone can connect to most of the world with your smart phone, tablet, or laptop.  That has changed the game in a big way.

If you don't learn to make use of your "media company," your business, town, or city will suffer.  If you don't actively "create content" (text, audio, video), on a regular basis, and distribute in multiple channels, then you're already losing.  If you don't purposely connect with people; your co-workers, customers, perspective residents, and others, on a continual basis, then your are setting the stage for your own demise, and that of your business or city.  This is one huge reason why much of rural and small town America is struggling and having a hard time finding the numbers of well paying jobs they need. They simply haven't been properly introduced to these ideas.

This interview is about four years old, which is fairly ancient in a tech enabled age.  But, as I've learned in a big way this past week, there are a lot of people who are operating on older concepts and ideas, leftovers from the Industrial Age, and haven't dived into this world yet.  This video is a great introduction to the ideas of how today's world actually works.  If you want to be successful at anything in the next 20 years, you need to learn this stuff.  It's as simple as that.

Seth Godin has one of the oldest and best known blogs in the world.  He's also an entrepreneur and author of many books about internet marketing and how today's technology changes the business and social world.

Mitch Joel was a co-founder of a digital marketing agency (new form of old school ad agencies), and has a background in the rock music and music magazine industries.  He also is a longtime podcaster.

These guys get  how business actually works after all this technology has changed the underlying way we connect with other people, who we can connect with, and who we can earn money working for.  The game has changed.  It's as simple as that.  That's why a person like me, currently living in a tent, can walk to a place with wifi, buy a drink, and write a blog that gets more views than most any website in my city.  You don't learn this stuff in college.  You learn it by self-educating, reading, listening, and watching the things online that talk about the technical aspects, and the strategy behind these technologies and techniques.  Enjoy.

Check out my art in person, or do a creative project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

Damn camera guy in the way...

I'd like to thank Ken Paul for this photo he shot and apparently just found again.  That's Old School Canadian rider Rob Dodds in the air.  He says it probably a warm up air, maybe a 540.  Considering this is from 1989 at Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, that's a big 540, if that's what it is.  The reason I'm thanking them for finding this is because I'm the cameraman in the foreground.  I joke a lot these days about "my life in the background" in the 80's, because my assorted BMX/skate industry jobs landed me in the background of a bunch of photos.  Another funny thing is that when Windy Osborn shot the first few photos of me as a new editorial assistant at Wizard Publications, I was drinking a can of Coke, and she shot it with a fisheye lens, so the bottom of the can pretty much hid my face.  Other photos, taken soon after, were shot so my face always ended up being covered or hid because I was turned away.  It was a running joke at Wizard and then with other photographers for a while.  If you took a photo of me, you couldn't show my face.  So here's another photo like that. Too funny.  Just for the record, only one camera has broken when someone took a photo of my face.  Seriously, they were taking photos of the crew  for our security passes when I worked on a Cirque du Soleil tour.  After taking taking my photo, the camera broke, and they had to find another one.

On my end, I worked at Unreel Productions, the Vision video company, from December 1987  through 1988, and I was basically a a production assistant, what they call a PA in the TV industry.  My main job was dubbing copies of tapes of one thing or another for people throughout the Vision empire of companies.  But I did a little bit of everything, like running errands, picking up supplies, manning the phones at lunch, training the receptionists, and everything nobody else wanted to do.  I knew I had job security,though, because I was the only one who knew how to change the toilet paper roll in the front bathroom at the office.  So they couldn't fire me.

Sometime in late '88 or early '89, Pat Wallace, the staff cameraman, moved on to another job, and I became the new cameraman.  It sounds really cool, but mostly I did my same job, and then went out on video shoots once in a while.  The cool part was getting sent to every 2-Hip King of Vert and Meet the Street contest in 1989.  Since I was the token BMX guy in a crew of older surfer guys, it was great to travel to those on the Vision dime.  In those days, we used pro quality Sony Betacam video cameras that weighed 35 pounds and cost $50,000 each.  That's not a typo.  Broadcast quality cameras were crazy expensive in the late 80's.

The Kitchener contest was the first I traveled to as cameraman, and I had to rent an Ikegami Betacam, and then make sure I actually knew how to work it, once in Canada.  I traveled with a very attractive woman from the Vision promotions office, whose name I can't remember now.  That's probably good, because I was really a dork then, and probably made an ass out of myself around her. Like when we got to the hotel and I realized I hadn't booked a room.  I thought she handled that stuff as the promotions person.  I asked if I could crash on the floor of her room.  She was a seasoned traveler, a real road warrior who had worked for the NFL, and said something like, "No fucking way, you're sleeping the rental car if they're out of rooms."  I managed to luck out, there were empty rooms so I got one.  I guess March isn't a big tourist month in Ontario.

In typical BMX fashion, I ran into Rob Dodds while shooting the practice session that evening.  That's probably when the photo above was taken.

I met Rob and a whole host of other Canadianfreestylers when I went with my Idaho teammate Jay Bickel and family to a contest at Whistler, British Columbia 3 or 4 years earlier.  Since we were all there for a week in Whistler, we rode all day, sessioning with Eddie Fiola and Chris Lashua, who were taking a break from the GT Brittania Tour.  We all got to know each other pretty well during that week.  When I talked to Rob at this contest, he was looking for a room to crash in, having traveled from Western Canada.  I had a big couch in my room, and offered it up.

As luck would have it, the room beside us was the weekend home to Dennis McCoy, Steve Swope and Mat Hoffman.  Like every contest, we were wandering around talking and hanging out that night in different rooms.  The talk of the weekend was some Canadian guy named nicknamed the Terminator, and rumor was that he had learned some kind of backflip trick.  This was before the flip fakie and flair were even considered possible, even by Mat.  Some people said he was going to do an abubaca to backflip, some said a backflip fakie.  Sure, those don't seem so crazy today, but this was 1989, before all those young backflip triple whipper guys of today's scene were even born.  When it came to the am finals, the Terminator tried some kind of abubaca thing, leaned back, and just took a hard slam.  There was a big let down to the 300 or so of us in that gymnasium.  It was like the whole weekend of hype fizzled out like a dud bottle rocket.

Several of  the big name riders were trying to huck a 900.  Mike Dominguez had come agonizingly close at the final Enchanted Ramp contest in 1988, and he said held landed a couple on his own ramp, but never got video of them.  So the world hadn't seen one yet.  Several guys tried, and young Mat Hoffman hucked an attempt and, like Mike D., just barely missed landing it.

So he tried another one.  I was on the opposite deck, banging elbows with John Ker and the other photographers.  I had the only professional quality betacam in the room.  Mat's Skyway teammate, Eddie Roman, had his S-VHS camera on the ground.  Someone else had a camera on the deck where Mat was spinning.  This was the olden days kids, cell phones didn't exist (to poor people), and there were actually more bike riders there than cameras.  On the second attempt, Mat carved across the ramp and landed the first BMX 900 air in a contest.  And the first 900 air in ANY action sport in a contest.  We instantly forgot about the Terminator guy.

When we got back to the room, Rob and I cleaned up and were headed to the hotel diner to go eat, and ran into Dennis and Swope coming out their door.  They were also heading to eat.  We asked where Mat was.  Steve Swope said, "Look through the peephole."  Some how, the peephole in their hotel door got knocked out, so we could look in.  Mat was sitting there two feet from the TV, with a camera plugged into it.  He was watching the 900 over, and over, and over.  I guess he was analyzing it or figuring out just how he got it to work that time.  Dennis rolled is eyes, "He's been doing that for an hour, just watching it over and over."  So we all went in, watched it a few times, and then dragged Mat from the TV and we all went to eat.

On the walk there, Rob was talking to Mat about this crazy trick he'd been trying, a no-handed 540.  That was another impossible sounding trick at that time.  Rob said they would come around, but the bars would always drift away and he couldn't land one.  So Mat and Rob got into a serious vert rider discussion on how it might be possible to land a no-handed 540.

Guess what trick Mat debuted at the next contest at Woodward?

Thanks Ken for sharing the photo, and Rob for sharing it with me and adding to the legend that you can't show my face in a BMX photo.  Heh, heh, heh.

Here's the clip of Mat's 900 from Eddie Roman and another camera guy.  In the first shot, I'm on the opposite deck, just to the right of Mat during his warm-up air.  I was wearing the never fashionable Vision Street Wear black and white "cow pants that day.  Eddie Roman is the guy you hear doing commentary while shooting from the ground.

Below is what's available from my footage shot that day.  There was a lot of great riding going down.  This is from 2-Hip: Ride Like a Man, a video Eddie Roman edited.  That's Eddie and friends talking in the back ground.  Mat's 900 is at 14:43, at the end of this clip.  Epic weekend.



Check out my art in person, or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

Chicago is a dramatic example of what's happening everywhere

You hear it in this clip  at 2:14-
"They can't get no jobs."

What's happening in Chicago is what's happening in cities, large and small, across the United States.  I just ran across this article in The Atlantic, that explains the underlying issues of why people in depressed areas of Chicago can't get the good jobs there, in great depth.

I started this post quite a while ago, but didn't have the time to read the whole article.  I took the time this morning.  This article focuses on the Black communities in the low income parts of Chicago, known mostly for the crazy high murder and crime rates these days.  Meanwhile, downtown and upscale areas of Chicago are booming.  Here's a little background on issues I'm keeping an eye on related to this:

-In the U.S. today, most of the high tech jobs with high incomes are clustered in large, tech hub cities.  The main ones are: Silicon Valley(The San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area), New York City, Seattle, Boston, Austin, Los Angeles/SoCal, Washington D.C., and at a somewhat lower level, some other areas like the the Raleigh Research Triangle here in North Carolina.  Richard Florida's "Creative Class" concept explains this.  In short, "Creative people like to be around other creative people," to quote one big theme of his research.

People here in NC may not like that I put the Raleigh Triangle "at a lower level."  But according to the stats in Florida's latest book, The New Urban Crisis, an overwhelming proportion of the venture capital funding tech start-ups these days goes into downtown San Francisco (not "Silicon Valley" itself) and Manhattan in NYC.  Meanwhile, 1/2 of 1% of today's venture capital funds flows to the Raleigh Research Triangle.  Here's a good article/stats I just found on venture capital in The South.  A quick look for stats showed that roughly $148 billion in venture capital was invested in the U.S. in 2017, and the Raleigh area raised about $772 million in 2017 and 2018 ytd.

-When then professor Richard Florida published The Rise of the Creative Class in 2002, he hoped that his findings would help other large cities, and all the smaller cities, use the ideas to attract the Creative Class people, the highly creative and tech people, who, in turn, attract the major tech companies and start-ups.  In The New Urban Crisis, he writes that just the opposite happened, the high tech industry and other highly creative work has clustered even more.

-Because of this, the "best and brightest" people coming out of college, and the most creative people, have moved to the larger metros and concentrated there.  This has created a brain drain, with a huge chunk of the smartest and most creative people moving away from rural America, small towns, and small cities, to the big metros where most of the high paying jobs are.

-At the same time, in part because of Richard Florida's ideas and the "walkable city" concept popular with major architects and developers, downtowns all over have been redeveloped in the past 15-20 years.  By and large, that's a good thing.  It is attracting the better regional workers and businesses.  The downside is that if businesses and civic leaders focus most of their resources on just a downtown area, of any city, then other parts of the city may lack resources.

-But with that comes the continuing atrophy of rural America.  So we have tons of small towns and cities, and suburbs around many mid-sized cities, with huge heroin and opiate problems, more crime, and a lot of low paying and part time jobs, but relatively few high paying jobs.  Average people in rural and small town America are still struggling, already hit by the loss of good paying factory jobs 10-20-30-40 years ago.

-A lot of business people and civic leaders are well aware of this issue.  No one has figured out a good way to create HUGE numbers of solid, living wage paying jobs, in rural and small town America.  TENS of MILLIONS of living wage jobs are needed.  FAST.  Or, MILLIONS of new small businesses that can hire a few people each.

-What this article goes into, in great depth, is that the same thing is happening in the low income, largely black and minority areas of the large cities that are doing well.  We have tens of millions of young people, who grow up in rural America or in the hood, who are surrounded by few opportunities, and perhaps more importantly, few mentors on how to either find good paying work, or create small businesses of their own.

-At the same time, the vast majority of people (even homeless entrepreneurial goofballs, like me) have access to the internet, and with that, technologies, communications, and platforms that allow people nearly everywhere to interact, do work, and sell products to people across the U.S., and even around the world.  Yet there are no large scale programs teaching people to do this.

The more I watch all this unfolding, and learn new parts of the picture, like in this article, the more I think the only viable answer is turning Americans BACK into small business people and entrepreneurs.  150 years ago, most people were self-employed, we were a nation of farmers and shop keepers.  Our country was founded largely with that mentality.  I think we need to get back to that.  

Check out my art in person, or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines. 



 

The escape from homlessness... California Dreamin'?

In early 2008, singer/songwriter extraordinaire, Kerry Getz, managed to get three members of the legendary Wrecking Crew and some friends to perform in the Anaheim, Marriott lobby.  Why?  It was during the huge NAMM music trade show.  I was siting on a couch next to Jerry Cole's wife and her friend, watching this performance live, fifteen feet away.  That was an epic experience.  A decade later, I've been doing some California dreamin'.

About ten months ago, I came here to this city in Central North Carolina to focus on turning my artwork and writing into a small business.  It's been sketchy as hell, months in a tent, a colder winter than usual here, but I'm now making a little bit of money consistently.  It's time to start looking ahead to trying to get out of the tent and into a room of some sort.  In my situation, the next step is usually a "cheap" motel where I can rent a room by the month.  In reality, "cheap" motels are anything but cheap.  No deposits, no credit check, that part's good.  But the cheapest one here is $740 a month.  The cheapest with wifi is $800 a month.  I MIGHT be able to rent a room in a house for $450 to $600 a month.  But thee are very few of those.

Just on a lark, I pulled up Craigslist for Orange County, California.  There are a lot of rooms for $500 to $700 a month.  Not in the hood, either, I know that area, they're in decent locations.  I literally could put a roof over my head in Orange County, California for the same amount of money that I could here in the Triad area of NC.  Except, there is 1,000 times more opportunity to make money out there.

On the bus back to the area where I "live," it dawned on me that I don't have a fucking single reason to stay in North Carolina at this point.  OK, I have one good friend I hang out with.  My family is here, but I rarely see them.  There's a cool art scene here, but that's it.

I'm trapped here until mid June, when I have a court date from my trespassing arrest.  I could wind up with some other kind of punishment for my actions.  I'm not sure how things work here.  But after that, there's literally not a fucking reason to stay here.  Hmmmmmmm...

Decisions, decisions.  I'll think it over as I spend another night in a tent during another Carolina thunderstorm. 

Update:  I managed to get a room that night and miss that particular thunderstorm.  Still not sure about the future, though...

Check out my art in person or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

Kevin Smith: Reanimated (NSFW!!!)

I can't remember how I heard of the movie Clerks,  I was a clerk in a couple of downtown Huntington Beach videos stores around then, and I took home movies to watch almost every day.  That's probably when I found it.  I remember it seemed a little slow and boring in parts, but I loved the sarcastic dialogue and the roller hockey on the roof scene.  When I worked at the Boise Fun Spot right out of high school, I used to climb up on the roof and have my friends take pictures of me on my freestyle bike doing tricks up there, so I could relate to that.

My biggest takeaway from Clerks was, "Holy shit, you're allowed to make movies like this?"  I'd made a bunch of bike and skate videos at that point, but a movie?  I mean what would it take to make an actual movie that people watched?  A couple years later I found out what it took was being named Spike Jonze, one of the many super creative guys from the bike/skate world.

I was three movies into his work when I actually realized that Silent Bob was the writer, producer, director of the movies.  I've been a fan of Kevin Smith this whole time.  Yes, I may go to some form of Hell for watching his movies, or at least have to smoke a turd in purgatory or something, but I dig people who can make you laugh.  I think that's one of the best things humans can do for other humans.

A couple years ago, I stumbled across his talks or whatever you want to call them.  He's freakin' hilarious when he talks about his life and the crazy stuff he's seen happen.  So, like a whole bunch of weird people, I was really bummed to hear he had a massive heart attack recently, and was stoked to hear he pulled through it.  This is the first clip I've seen of him since.  He's lost 32 pounds, and looks a lot thinner.  Hey fucker, I've lost 60 on the homeless diet,* I'm kickin' your ass there buddy.  But I started a lot fatter than Kevin, so he's got me on the total weight thing. Great to see him in good spirits, probably baked, and funny as ever.  Hope this guy keep making weird people like me laugh for a long time.  Here's some of the funny clips of him you may not have seen before.

 Kevin on working with Bruce Wyllis

Kevin on Prince

Kevin on protesting his own movie

Kevin talks dirty to a hard of hearing, old dog with cancer.

An Evening With Kevin Smith with Spanish subtitles (por que'?)

Somebody tell Kevin that hemp seeds actually clean crap out of your arteries.  Really, scientific study from either USC or UCLA proved it about 15 years ago. 

Check out my art in person or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

Yes, most cities' panhandling ordinances are unconstitutional

In this news report from WFMY News 2 in Greensboro (NC), our local news anchors report that Greensboro is planning to change its panhandling ordinance put into effect about 6 or 7 years ago.  As a former (and at the moment, again a) homeless person, and the guy who published the world's premiere panhandling blog then (seriously), I knew these ordinances were unconstitutional.  Groups like the ACLU and homeless advocates all knew the ordinances, that were passed in the wave of a PR campaign across the country, were unconstitutional.  But they were passed because every city wants to get rid of its poor and homeless people, or at least keep them out of sight.  The ordinances lasted this long, because someone has to actually fight an ordinance, and have the resources and legal expertise to fight it to the Supreme Court.  Most  homeless and poor people, obviously, don't have the resources to do that.

I'll be the first to admit that panhandling is a big issue in pretty mush every city of size.  Homelessness and panhandling will continue to be an issue forever, these are inherent problems in a "civilized" society.  We simply don't have the social will to  truly address all of the underlying issues to solve these problems.  But,  we are totally capable of dramatically reducing poverty, homelessness, and panhandling until only a handful of people fall into those categories.

Creating good paying jobs, MILLIONS of them nationwide, is one of best ways to address the underlying issues.  It's also one of the biggest challenges the United States will face in the next 20 years or so.  This happens to be the big issue I'm focusing my reasonably smart brain on.  I believe that if we can make a huge number of good, truly living wage jobs and businesses happen, that it will help solve a whole range of other social and economic issues as well.

Keep checking this blog for more of my thoughts and ideas on this subject.

Here's a good article on why court decisions back in 2015, ARE FINALLY being heeded in this area and others.  The reality is, a large number of city leaders simply don't believe in the rule of law being fairly applied to all people.  We all have our biases and prejudices.  Freedom of speech is a foundation of our Bill of Rights, but some people, for a whole host of reasons, continually want to limit or even eliminate it.  When the freedom of speech goes, so does the United States of America. 

Check out my art in person, or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

Road trip to Switzerland?

Watching random sports videos the other day, I saw this video for "The World's Biggest Pump Track."  As a fat, old, Has Been BMX guy, pump tracks look really fun, and a good way to get myself riding again when I get another bike and lose a few more pounds.  But this place in Zurich Switzerland is downright amazing.  Pump lines, jump lines, and all kinds of berms to rail and tranfers to try.

Like I said, I'm old.  I was alive when BMX and later mountain biking were invented, both in California.  I remember when all the best riders were from the U.S. of A.  But the shit's gone worldwide now, and there are people ripping all over the place.  I've known for years that Vancouver, for example, has great outdoor skateparks, insane MTB trails at Whistler, and really cool pump tracks built more recently.  But Switzerland as a world leader in great places to ride?  That's a new one on me.  So here are a few videos of this place.  Enjoy.  The grab a shovel and get to work.

Sam Pilgrim and friends session Zurich bike park.

"Crazy Jump Session" at Zurich bike park.

Gstaad SCOTT Tour de Pump.

Drone footage of Zurich pump track

Sunny day Funny day at Zurich

Indoor bike park in Zurich

Road Trip to Zurich Pump Track

Check out my art in person, or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

How little Creative Scenes can turn into something BIG

I was a four-year-old kid, in Ohio, in 1970, when a young guy named Scot Breithaupt in California helped invent the sport of Bicycle Motocross Racing, or BMX.  I didn't get into the sport for another 12 years.  But like millions of kids around the world, BMX was a big part of my youth.  BMX riding changed the course of my life, and yet, it didn't even exist when I was born.  How many kids being born today, when technology and life are moving much faster, will spend their lives doing things that don't exist now?

How did a young motocross rider and entrepreneur and a few younger guys start not only a sport, but a lifestyle, that traveled around the globe?  My answer is what I call "Creative Scenes."  What is a creative scene?  It's a group of two or more people, doing something, pretty much anything, creative and encouraging and continually pushing each other to improve.  We're all familiar with the idea of city having a music scene or an art scene.  But every town or city has dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds of creative scenes.  As I learned in BMX freestyle, the trick riding side of BMX, creative sports, like skateboarding, snowboarding, free skiing and other action sports are creative scenes as well.  The older guys getting together with the classic cars they built, and the younger people in the rusty, home-built, rat rods are also creative scenes.  So are the kids drawing comics during math class in school, and the ladies knitting and gossiping in the fellowship hall at church on a Saturday.  The kids hacking their own versions of video games or creating their own old-style board games (that's a thing now) are also creative scenes.

Every village, town, or city of any size has a bunch of these creative scenes in it.  Some of these scenes, like the 70-something ladies knitting, may never get any bigger than when they start.  That's just fine.  Other groups, like Scot Breithaupt and those first few BMX riders in Long Beach, California, in 1970, grow in popularity and spread rapidly across the world.  What's the difference?

I first noticed this idea when I loaded up my dad's Ford van with all the neighborhood kids and their bikes, in October of 1982, and drove us all to a BMX race.  We were a bunch of grungy kids from a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, outside Boise, Idaho.  We'd been riding our piece of crap bikes and pushing each other all summer long.  When we went to our first race as a group, looking like Factory Team White Trash, we all kicked butt and won trohpies.  Had we been an official team, we would have beat 6 of the 7 established BMX teams that day... in our first race.

How could that happen?  It took me years to answer that question.  The answer is that, in our isolated trailer park in the Idaho desert, we got into BMX, had nothing better to do, so we just naturally pushed and competed with each other.  In doing that, we improved much faster than the riders who were riding just for trophies or points.  We were hungry to be good at something, anything, and to be better than each other.  We had something to prove.

In the 26 years since that first BMX race, I've been a part of many BMX freestyle scenes, skateboard scenes, a few art scenes, magazine staffs, TV production crews, and worked at one of the greatest creative scenes of all time, Cirque Du Soleil.  For those who don't know, Cirque du Soleil started as a group of Montreal street performers.  They now have 21 shows, some permanent, some traveling the globe.  In fact, Guy Laliberte' co-founder of Cirque, has even traveled into space as a tourist.

Scenes very widely, and some perform more social-type functions locally, like a kid's art program, for example.  Some scenes turn into sports or movements, some turn into businesses or entire industries.  Some do all of the above.

What makes a scene grow?  Visionary leaders are a huge part of the picture.  Cheap space to create (art, music, a business) also plays a huge part of the picture.  It's no coincidence that artists and musicians were the first to take over abandoned and empty lofts and factory buildings in the last 30 to 40 years.  It's also no coincidence that the thousands of empty retail buildings and warehouses in today's world will spawn new forms of art, music, sport, technology and business in the next 20 years.

As a guy who's been in dozens of different creative scenes, and also reads thick books on economic development and futurist thinking, I think our future as a country rests to a great degree on the creative scenes forming now and in coming years.

The high tech world, which holds a huge chunk of the high paying jobs in modern society, has clustered in about ten big metro areas in the United States.  Meanwhile, the hundreds of small towns and cities outside those tech hubs are largely struggling.  If we head into another recession soon, which I and several others expect, all those small cities, towns, and rural areas will really be struggling.  I think one of the best things Americans can do is to find those local creative scenes, no matter how weird they seem at the moment, and let them have some cheap space to work, innovate, and build new ideas, sports, games, products, technologies, and industries.

Can this make a difference?  Did you know Fargo, North Dakota is establishing itself as a drone hot spot?  There are a lot of great new ideas for re-energizing lagging areas on the internet these days, this is one of my favorites:


Check out my art in person, or create a project of your own while here in Winston-Salem at Designs, Vines, and Wines.

Art business: stage two

This rocket is what my little business feels like right now.  Like all rockets, it takes a tremendous amount of thrust (effort) to get things off the ground.  Once you get moving, there comes a point where you have some momentum, but you need to ignite the second stage, like this rocket does at 1:00, 1:19, and 1:40.  That's where I'm at.

All last year, after coming to Winston-Salem with art supplies, about $15, and no place to live, I've been focused on selling my original drawings on a continual basis, and turning my art and writing into a business that will support me.  Like I've said many times before, I'm creating my own job.  At this point, I've done that.  It just doesn't pay very well yet.

After a rough winter, I got to the point where my original Sharpie "scribble style" drawings are selling for a halfway decent amount, and I have orders heading into the next few weeks.  I'm making about $450 to $600 a month at the moment.  But I'm still homeless, living in a tent in the woods.  While I like camping, this is not the way I want to live for much longer.  And I'm pretty sure the neighbors and local authorities aren't too happy with it either.

So, like this pretty amazing rocket in the video clip does at about 3:20, I need to kick off the booster stage and light stage 2.  I've got some momentum, I'm moving in a good direction, but I need to make about $600 to $800 more a month to support myself. For me, that means drawing things I can make copies, art prints, or posters of, and opening an online store to sell my stuff, as well as continuing to sell original drawings.

I got paid for my latest drawing yesterday, a picture of Bob Dylan (sorry, didn't get a photo of it), and I'm working on the last in a series for the couple who ordered that one.  I have about 4 more original drawings lined up, mostly large ones, so that's a month of work.  I'm also doing blogging and soon social media for Rachel at Designs, Vines, and Wines, in a trade for some wall space in her studio/gallery.  So I need to spend a bit less time each day on the original drawings, and more time on creating items for, and actually building my online store.  And, I have to get myself turned into an actual business, gets the books up to date, and handle all the legal responsibilities.

I'd like to shout out all the people who have bought drawings from me over the last couple of years as I got this idea going from a piece of crap old laptop, no money at all, and a bunch of Sharpie markers.  A huge shout out goes to Alma Jo Barrera, Scotty Zabielski, My sister Cheri Durham, and Catherine and Ian Holbrook, who've all bought multiple drawings from me.  Also, huge thanks go to Phred and Jane from Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, and Rachel at Designs, Vines, and Wines for putting my work up walls to get seen, hyping my drawings, and actually helping me sell a bunch of them.  Thanks to all of you!

Hopefully, like the the rocket in the video above, the second stage of this thing of mine will light up and launch fairly smoothly.  And that, FINALLY, will get me a decent place to live and work, soon.  Onward!

I'm finally learning 2003 computer skills

OK, I'm finally learning how to play with photos in a computer.  Just having a little fun with that amazing pic of Ron Wilkerson blasting the Mega Ramp at Woodward West at this year's Old School BMX reunion.  How many people do you know that can do this... and then buy a senior coffee at McDonald's an hour later? 

94 million square feet of retail space already closing in 2018

According to this fresh article from CNBC, the large stores already announced to close in 2018 total 94 MILLION square feet.  The article says we're well on track to beat the all time record, set last year, of 105 million square feet of retail space closing.  And we're still (officially) in a growth period.  We're not in a recession. 

OK, I'm pegging the start of the recession as April 4th, 2018, but that's just my educated guess.  Recessions always begin with the government, mainstream news, and financial news telling everyone that we're not in a recession for the first six months or so of actual recession.  If we officially go into a recession, the number above will SOAR. 

All that speculation aside, just how much space is 94 million square feet?

Since there's 43,560 square feet in an acre, that's 2,157.943 acres. 

When I was a kid in Ohio, 2,000 acres was a big family farm.

That's enough empty stores to cover New York City's Central Park... 2 1/2 times.

That's enough empty stores to cover the New Orleans Superdome (aka Mercedes Benz Superdome)... 166 times.

That's enough empty stores to cover 14 large, modern golf courses (150 acres), or 28 average American golf courses (74 acres). 

My question, and the reason I'm fascinated by the Retail Apocalypse, is: What are we going to do with all that empty space under roof? 

Nobody knows.  Some small dead malls and retail space have been turned into upscale apartments, medical offices, a city library, schools, and other businesses.  But this is an absurd amount of empty store space. 

We blew it with all the houses that got abandoned in the 2008 Great Recession real estate collapse.  We, as a society, could have done a lot better things with all those empty houses.  I'm looking for ways to use all this empty retail (and office, and house) space in really smart ways. 

Wanna build a skatepark in your region?  Here's a map linked in the bottom of that article that shows the location of the big stores closing this year.  This doesn't include the thousands of smaller stores closing.

 

The Retail Apocalypse is gaining steam according to Bloomberg

If you've followed this blog for long, you know what the Retail Apocalypse is.  Thousands and thousands of major chain stores are closing for a variety of reasons.  Many of these major store chains are going out of business, some are going into bankruptcy, and shutting down poor performing stores to try to downsize their way back to profitability.

I just came across the clip above, which goes through this article from Bloomberg (Nov. 2017) really we written and with great graphics to explain why the Retail Apocalypse is happening, and that it's probably just getting started.  Check it out if you're interested.

Starting a blog for your business or creative work

Here's one of many videos on YouTube that will take you step by step through how to actually start a blog.  I'm going to write about why you should start a blog, not how to actually do it.  To learn any technical aspect of using a blog, social media or other modern technology, go to either YouTube or Google (or Bing if you're a Bingster) and search for a video or article to show you how to do it.  People all over the world make these videos for every type of tech, they usually do it for free, and it's available to anyone online.  This is how you learn new technology.  Self-education.  If this is a new idea to you, get used to it, this is an integral part of promotion or business these days.

Nobody knows how many blogs there are in the world, the highest number I've heard is over 440 million.  Blogs have been around since about 2000, and come in all kinds of varieties.  But basically it's a website the you add a new post two every so often.  

Why should you start a blog for you business or creative work?  A blog does a number of things.  First, it gives you a web presence, it's something that people can find when they search the internet for your business or creative work.  Second, a blog is a way to put out "content" to the world.  People now expect to find most anything they need or want to know with a quick search or by asking friends for links.  If you continually put out useful content (words, audio, and/or video) that's helpful, entertaining, or informative, you attract potential customers.  Blogs can also direct online traffic to your website or brick and mortar business.

Do blogs make money?  Some do, but not very many.  ProBlogger is a great place to learn how blogs make money, both directly and indirectly.  There's a big lesson about blogging in that last sentence.  I just gave all of you a link that will take you away from my blog.  Why would I do that?  Because if you find my blog helpful, you'll most likely come back to it.  So by sharing links that actually take you away from my blog, I'm adding value to my blog, and , hopefully, your life.  That helps me in the long term.  It's a kind of paying it forward in the online world.

Blogs can make money directly in some instances, and business owners, large and small, tend to think in terms of Return on Investment (ROI).  If a business person invests $100 in advertising and then has $200 more sales, it's easy to measure the ROI.  But the online world of blogs, vlogs (video blogs), social media, YouTube and other platforms don't work that way.  These operate an entirely different way than traditional advertising, and that drives traditional business people crazy.  If you're blogging for your own small business, big business, or building a small business like I am, I suggest you think of your blog as a gift to your customers and potential customers, not something that makes money directly.  What can you give your potential customers, for free, that would be of value to them?

If my blog is not going to make money, then what's the point?  The point is to provide free entertainment, tips, or helpful information to make a direct connection with people.  Some of those people will become customers.  Some of those people may refer you to other potential customers.  Some of those people will take your information, move on, and never buy anything from you.  That's the game these days.  Almost every kind of information is available for free today.  Like it or not, that's the way things are.  If you want to be a player in business in today's world, you need to freely give everything you can to your community.

What do I mean by "community"?
 As we transition into the Information Age, "community" doesn't just mean your neighborhood or city.  For a creative person or business today, your community is everyone, everywhere who is interested in what you do.  It's not just your customers, your community or "tribe" as Seth Godin calls it, is all the people out there, who know you exist wherever they may live, and interact with you in some way.  For example, I don't like the drink Red Bull, but I watch the action sports videos they produce all the time.  I'm part of the Red Bull community, though I never drink the stuff.  I actually wish they would make a product I could buy.

As a business or creative person, your job these days is to serve your community(ies), and make some money along the way.  There are two basic ways to find a tribe to serve.  Either you find one that already exists, and start adding your ideas and value to it, or you create your own community.  Or both.  In my case as I'm building my art and writing business, I'm doing both.  I was an active blogger in the Old School BMX bike community as a result of my blogging about the old days for the past decade.  So when I initially started trying to sell my drawings, the old BMX guys I was Facebook friends with were the tribe I tapped into.  Now I'm working on building a new community, starting with people in the local art scene here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and others I connect with online interested in art, business, and the combination of the two.

A blog is a great way to help build a community.
With a blog, I set up the initial blog, figure out the design, and then I create a post.  Posts start with a title, then usually include either an embedded video clip or photo, which makes a huge difference, and then text.  The point of a blog, as I said, is to serve your community, not pummel them with advertising, old TV commercials, or other crap.  CREATE GOOD CONTENT.

The best questions to ask before a blog post are: 1) What blog post would I like to check out?  2) Who are the people in my tribe? And 3) What can I give to these people that will be helpful, entertaining, and worth taking the time to check out?

Be yourself in your blog.
This is absolutely crucial, and really hard for many people.  Most people, especially sales people and managers, continuously put on a front or a facade they use to talk people into buying something or adapting their ideas.  As a blogger, you want to do the opposite.  A direct sales pitch is the death nail of a blog (or social media post).  Blog about what really matters to you, and, by extension, to the people who follow your blog.  Authenticity is a word you hear all the time in blogging and social media marketing.  If you come across as fake, you may be able to con people... for a while.  But YOU WILL be found out before long.  Remember, this is the Information Age we are heading into.  The information about you will be available to lots and lots of people.  If you're shady or screw people or pretend to be someone else, you'll get called out.  Then you lose trust. Trust is one of the most important things in the Information Age.  Once you lose a community's trust, it's real hard to get it back.

Here's an example.  This is the new blog I just started for Rachel, who owns Designs, Vines, and Wines here in Winston-Salem.  Rachel likes my drawings, thinks they'll be worth millions of $ some day (OK, hundreds of $) and hangs some in her studio space.  But, after years in the tech world, she hates sitting there working on a computer doing social media and marketing.  She'd rather be painting or helping other people create fun projects. 

So we're doing a trade where I'll do some blogging and social media to promote her business, and she'll hang my drawings to promote my work.  Here's the thing about authenticity.  Rachel and I come from different backgrounds, have different interests (outside art) and use different words, phrases, and speech patterns.  So if I pretend to be Rachel when I'm writing, her friends and community will know something just doesn't sound right.  So I write for her business, but I write, as myself, and put a "-Steve" at the end of each post to be honest with her readers.  I'll do a post on her blog introducing myself, and talking about our trade out.  Then there's no deception, her community knows, "Oh yeah, Steve blogs for Rachel, and does some art she has up."  When Rachel writes posts, she can add "-Rachel" at the end, and people will know it's her speaking in her own way.  It seems like a little thing, but we're all bombarded by media from all directions these days.  And if something feels fake to our way of thinking, we drop it and move on to something else.  In today's media saturated world, people crave something "real."  If you want your blog to stand out among the 440 million other blogs out there, you HAVE to be real.

There's a lot more to come on this subject in future posts here, so stay tuned.  And if you're in the Triad/Winston area, check out Rachel's blog and come down, check out her work, and do a project and sip some wine.  It's always a fun time in her studio.

Guess who's cashing in on the big tax cuts?

The title of this CNBC story sums it up:  Tax cut riches have gone to execs and investors over workers by a nearly 3 to 1 margin.

Anybody surprised?  I'm not.  Several people actually said it ahead of time.  The huge tax cuts for large corporations, real estate investors, and the super wealthy 1% types were the reason the put up with President Trump.  He's done his job, now they'll people behind the scenes will let him tweet himself into impeachment, and our economy will collapse under the $1.5 Trillion in student loan debt that has been turned into investments called SLABS.  Those SLABS are weighing down our economy, making our financial house of cards teeter.  We'll see how long it takes before it starts really tumbling.

The 2018 Tax Plan was, as I've said before, an attempt to further rig the business game to help old, Industrial Age corporations that simply aren't smart enough to compete in today's Information Age, connected world.  That tax plan was the probably the biggest entitlement program the world's ever seen, and it was a welfare plan for the super rich.  "Pass the the Cognac and caviar Muffy, I just got our billion dollars worth of food stamps for the month."

Blogging and social media for your business

This is a 5 or 6 year old keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuk on his concept of The "Thank you" Economy.  Gary was an entrepreneur from childhood who later used email and YouTube to build his dad's New Jersey liquor store from a $3 million to $60+ million business in about five or six years.  Then he took off on his own and started VaynerMedia, a digital marketing agency that focuses on Fortune 100 companies.  Gary knows his stuff, he cusses like a sailor (from Jersey), and he has this crazy idea that businesses should actually give a damn about their customers.  He's been throwing these ideas out for years, and most businesses still don't get it.  So if you own a business, or are working on building one (like me), you should listen to this.

Officially, I've never owned an actual business, though taxi driving operates like a small business.  I did that for 6 1/2 years.  Back in the 80's and 90's, I worked for several entrepreneurs in the BMX and skateboard world, including Bob Osborn at Wizard Publications, Bob Morales at the AFA, Brad Dorfman and Don Hoffman at Vision/Unreel Productions, Scot Breithaupt at Last Minute Productions (very well named), and Chris Moeller at S&M Bikes when it was actually run out of a garage.  I wanted to own my own business, but I was super shy and didn't have the personality to sell stuff, so I became a kind of professional sidekick to young and motivated entrepreneurs.  It beat the hell out of going to college.  You can't get that kind of education in business school.

After spending two decades working all kinds of jobs and, more importantly, working through most of my personal issues, I landed in North Carolina in November, 2008, broke, as the Great Recession set in.  I had been in the taxi business as it went down the tubes due to new technology.  I was a serious Luddite in 2008.  I didn't know a damn thing about computers and technology.  But suddenly I was out of work, living with my parents in a small NC town, and unable to find any job.  I also had their computer in the room I stayed in.  So I started "surfing the web," as we used to call it.   I soon started blogging seriously about my adventures working at FREESTYLIN' and BMX Action magazines in 1986.  I had actually blogged a bit about taxi driving in 2007, but faded on it.  It seemed only my mom and the local police read my blog. 

I soon learned I had a knack for blogging.  I also soon learned that it's really easy to piss off your former co-workers with a blog.  I was super depressed back then, I'd just lost all my creative work on the move to NC.  All my bike and skate magazines, my DVD's, my master tapes of videos I'd produced, nearly 20 years worth of great raw footage of BMX and skating, and ten years worth of pretty good poetry that I'd written.  I blogged mostly just to vent.  I didn't think anyone would actually read it.  Seriously, I didn't.  I just wanted my stories of my BMX days recorded somewhere for future generations.  And, let's face it, you can't watch porn all the time. 

About a month after I started blogging, I wrote a post about a certain female photographers boobs.  It really wasn't pervy, it was about me turning into a mute idiot when she started talking about a female issue one day.  Something weird happened.  That post went viral in the old school BMX online community.  I didn't know there was an old school BMX community online.  I kept blogging and started reconnecting with old friends from the BMX and skate worlds I hadn't talked to in many years.

I began to realize that the internet thing was actually good for something.  I also realized that I needed to understand this new world of tech if I was ever going to make a living as a writer again.  Now, in 2018, I've been blogging consistently for the 10 years since.  I've written probably 3,000 to 4,000 blog posts across several blogs.  Most blogs I took down in a real dark time after my dad's death in 2012.  After about a year of blogging about BMX and still not finding a job, someone emailed me and said, "You know people make money with blogs... right?"  I didn't know.

So I intuitively started learning about how people used blogs to make money.  And I soon learned many of them seemed to be scammers and spammers.  But not all of them.  The job hunt never got much better.  I drove a taxi for a year here, but that doesn't pay worth crap.  And I get fat sitting in a taxi all day, sleeping in parking lots at night, and eating fast food.  I couldn't afford an apartment when I drove a cab here.

A little over two years ago, I made the decision to focus on my weird Sharpie artwork as a way to build a small business which would eventually let me get back to writing as well.  I blogged and used social media to promote my artwork.  I started with a bedroom "studio" (a card table) in the apartment I shared with my mom.  I didn't have a dime to my name.  Seriously, not a freakin' dime on day one.  I had a cheap tablet of sketching paper and a bunch of Sharpie markers.  I had a piece-of-crap, old, refurbished laptop running Windows XP (in 2015).  It crashed two weeks later.  I bought a new one with money from artwork.

A little over two years later, I'm homeless, I have my art hanging on walls for sale in two businesses here in Winston-Salem, and I have a 4 or 5 week backlog on drawings to do.  I'm making about a third of a living right now.  Not enough to rent a place to live full time... yet.  But my artwork is taking off, I'm making money from it, and I'm starting to get to a place where I can charge a decent amount for the original drawings.  I still haven't had the money to make prints or posters to sell yet.  That and other ideas are coming soon.

What I have done fairly well, though, is use what I've learned about blogging and social media to promote what I'm doing.  For free.  And now I'm going to do a whole series of blog posts to share that with all of you.  I've just been asked to blog and do some social media promotion for a local art studio, and I'm going to explain what I'm doing in this blog as I do it.  Hopefully it will be helpful to some of you out there.  As Gary Vaynerchuk has often said, "The internet is fucking amazing."  People don't get just how big this period of change is.  So watch that video above if possible.  That will help set the stage, because the mindset Gary talks about is so freaking important.

OK, more tomorrow.    

It's not just black guys... I got arrested for tresspassing, too

This doesn't just happen to black guys.  I was arrested for trespassing 30 seconds after BUYING a pack of donuts at the Adli grocery store on Peter's Creek here in Winston-Salem last fall.  I was asked to leave the property because I used to go there and ask people to push their shopping carts back in exchange for the quarter.  At Aldi's you have to put a quarter in your cart to release it, and you get the quarter back when you lock your cart to the others.  Most people were happy to let me return their cart.  I also gave quarters to elderly and disabled people and took their carts back for free.  

After I left the property, I went back in, during business hours, bought and paid for a pack of donuts with the off duty police officer working security watching me.  I was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest.  I haven't blogged about this because my court is not over yet concerning this.

Unlike the guys above, my charges weren't dropped.  I spent three days in jail, 23 hours in a cell, 1 hour out, without my depression meds all three days.  On the third night, a federal prison inmate, headed back to fed prison, was put in my cell.  Luckily we got along, and nothing bad happened.  I had never been arrested and done time in jail in my 51 year life.

My charges were not dropped, but because it was my first offense, I qualified for some program where I have to do 50 hours of community service, pay a $250 fine, and keep out of trouble until early June, and the charge will be wiped from my record.  I didn't finish my community service by the initial deadline, but got 19 hours done.  I am banned from the property of every Aldi store (which I was a regular customer of) in the state of North Carolina.  I may face some other punishment when I go in front of the judge for the final time, I don't know.  Why did all this happen?  Because I'm currently homeless.  Because I'm in North Carolina, the officer's body cam footage is not available to anyone but the police and lawyers.

I'll finish my community service and pay the fine.  I'll deal with whatever other punishment may come from missing the deadline, or, more likely, from writing this blog post and telling my story.  Personally, I think this whole thing is ridiculous.  But I'll deal with the consequences.  I never got to eat the damn donuts, either.  Bummer.

Not everyone arrested for trespassing gets in the national news, or gets their charges dropped.  Most don't.

Update- 4/19/2018- "This is not a black people thing, this is a people thing."  That, from one of the guys arrested in Philly.  Here's the link to the CNBC article.

I'm busy drawing... so here's hot chicks playing bagpipes

I've been busy drawing all day, trying to catch up on projects.  So here's the Goddesses of Bagpipes.  I love the crazy stuff You Tube throws up on the side of the page.

4/12/ 2018: Balancing entrepreneurship with homelessness

I know being a "homeless entrepreneur" seems like an oxymoron.  On one hand, my original drawings of rock stars are gaining in popularity, and keeping me busy.  But they're not popular enough for me to charge a ton of money for them.  I'm making $4 to $5 an hour for the drawing work I do.  That doesn't count the hours spent on blogging and social media promotion, or the hours spent learning new technology.   But that's the game, and I keep at it.

When you're starting a business, which is what I'm doing, though very slowly, you do a lot of work that you don't get paid for.  That's just the nature of things.  If you do a good job, get a solid business up and running, then there comes a time later on where you get paid for a lot of work you're not doing.  I know that, which helps me plug along day after day.

At the same time, I still can't afford a place to live.  I have a little bit of money coming in on a steady basis, FINALLY, which is something I really struggled with the whole decade I've lived in North Carolina.  This just isn't a highly entrepreneurial culture, like Southern California is.  So people around me just don't get what I'm doing.  Most people here don't know a single person who has started and built a good sized business.  I know many.  I know dozens of people who have started successful smaller businesses.  I've worked at some of those businesses in my younger years.  I understand the basic process.  I've seen it happen.  But most people here haven't, so they just don't have a frame of reference for what I'm doing.  They just look at me, see that I'm sketchy looking and drawing pictures all day, and say (or at least think), "Go get a job."  If I could have done that here, I would have done that years ago.  But I couldn't get hired for anything.  So I created my own job.  In the coming years, millions of Americans will have to do the same thing. 

At the same time, I still wander into the woods and sleep in a broken down tent every night.  The temperature has warmed some, which helps in the mornings.  Waking up in a tent in the woods isn't bad.  People go camping for fun all the time.  But waking up in a tent when it's 40 degrees and raining, that sucks.  We've been doing Spring on the installment plan this year here in Central North Carolina.  It would warm up to the high 50's or 60's for a day or two, then drop back down into the 40's and 30's for a few days.

The biggest thing I've learned about building a business from my friends' companies is this:  Get up every day, make a list of what needs to be done, and do it.  Day after day, just put your nose to the grindstone and do the work.  So that's what I'm doing. 

I've been working on turning my drawings into a business for about 2 1/2 years now, and I started, literally, without a dime.  So I've been plugging away for a long time, and now it's just finally getting to the point where other people are starting to believe that what I'm doing may actually work.  Another 6 or 8 months and I should have a legitimate business, a halfway decent place to live, and be on my way to a reasonable level of financial success.  But for now... back to work.

Larry Kudlow during the 2008 collapse

President Trump named former CNBC host and news anchor Larry Kudlow as his Economic Advisor about a week ago.  Here's Larry Kudlow (clip above) during the 2008 crash saying that Congress forced banks to make the risky subprime loans to poor people.  Those loans were then sold, bundled into big investments called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) and sold to investors all over the world.  Most of the investors didn't really understand what they were buying.  But CDO's made a buttload of money for big banks and financiers.  So those big banks needed more and more loans to keep making CDO's to sell.  So they started buying sketchier and sketchier home loans.  So local banks made sketchier and sketchier loans, because they, too were making tons of money selling those loans.  Greed fed the whole thing, which turned into a crazy feedback loop.  Larry Kudlow knew this damn well, but his job, in the height (or depth, more precisely) of the 2008 economic collapse, was to shift blame away from Wall Street and the big banks, and blame Congress and poor people who got home loans they couldn't really afford.

Over the last ten years, there have been a relatively small number of subprime mortgage loans made.  That's because laws were passed to prevent this from happening again.  But, what has been happening is that $1.3 to $1.5 TRILLION in student loans have been made to students, many of whom can't pay those loans back.  Those student loans have been sold, bundled into investments called SLABS (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities, just like the CDO's of a decade ago), and a whole new financial house of cards has been built.  And it will collapse soon.  It could happen any time.  Maybe tomorrow.  More likely a week, a month, or maybe 3 or 4 months from now.  But it's getting close to that point.  And when it happens, Larry Kudlow, now Trump's Chief Economic Advisor, will blame Congress and average college students for this collapse.  Just watch. He's basically got the same job to do a decade later.

Meanwhile, big banks, student loan lenders, and colleges and universities themselves have made huge fortunes from all these student loans that never should have been made.  When it collapses, it will be 2008 all over again, and likely even worse.  And all of us average people will get screwed again.  Hard.  And they're not even going to spit first.  It will be tough economic times coming at a time when many parts of the U.S. have never rebuilt from the last collapse.

Confused?  Good.  You're supposed to be confused.  So here's Margot Robbie in the bubble bath scene from The Big Short movie to help explain it.  (NSFW)  Just replace the word "subprime" with "student loans," and you've got the idea of what's about to happen to our economy.  Except this time, there are a whole bunch of us who've seen this show before, and know what's about to happen.  And now you know.

"How Wall Street profits from student loan debt"  - Rolling Stone article from April 2016

Dr. Maya Angelou's 90th Birthday Garden Party in Winston-Salem

I'm a bit behind on posting this, here are some photos from the Garden Party and Poetry Jam held to honor Dr. Maya Angelou, on what would have been her 90th birthday.  The event was held at Bailey Park, a new little park in the middle of Winston-Salem's $100 million Innovation Quarter, the high tech incubator area built in and around the old Reynold's cigarette factory in downtown.  The event was put on by a group from Wake Forest University, a driving force behind the Innovation Quarter, and the college where Dr. Angelou taught for many years.  Dr. Angelou died in 2014, and lived here in Winston-Salem during the later years of her life.  Thanks to Rachel White for the photos.

Here's the Winston-Salem Journal online article about the event.  In the video, you can see my drawing on stage near the end when the poet is speaking.  My drawing and I got a mention in the written article.  Pretty cool stuff.

 The woman on the right is Rosa Johnson, Dr Angelou's only niece and her archivist.  I was introduced to her and she was given a small copy of the drawing of Maya Angelou that I drew and that was on stage during the poetry jam.  When I referred to "Maya" while talking to Ms. Johnson, she politely but firmly told me that her aunt preferred to be called "Dr. Angelou."  She said that because so many people could relate to Dr. Angelou's poetry, people who didn't actually know her would come up and say "Maya" and want to hug her.  So she asked those who didn't know her personally to call her Dr. Angelou.  I'm pretty sure Oprah could call her Maya.  Uh... I mean, Ms. Winfrey. 

 Here's a look at the 100 or so people at the event, taken from near the stage.

 The Wake Forest students wrote a few quotes and thoughts about Dr. Angelou with sidewalk chalk, and left the chalk out for the kids to draw with.  I decided to add my shortest poem to the mix on the sidewalk.  "Play:  It's one great play, go find your part, some day you'll realize the world is art."

Here I am on stage next to the drawing I did of Dr. Maya Angelou back in February.  The drawing sold at the Gallery Hop last Friday night, but hasn't been picked up by the new owner yet.  Rachel White, who had the drawing in her studio space, arranged for the drawing to be on stage, and found me at the last minute and talked me into going down to the event.  Glad I did.  The first poem read at the poetry jam was my poem "Become," read by Rachel.

Dr. Maya Angelou's 90th Birthday Poetry Jam

People my age and younger usually remember Dr. Maya Angelou as a distinguished older woman who was a great poet, writer, activist and many more things.  April 4th would have been Dr. Angelou's 90th birthday.  Rather than show a clip of the woman us younger generations remember, here's 29-year-old Maya singing.

Through a weird bit of synchronicity, I wound up hanging out at theMaya Angelou 90th Birthday Poetry Jam in Bailey Park here in Winston-Salem, the city where Dr. Angelou lived in the later years of her life.  I never met her, but I would have liked to.

Several years ago, when I first came to Winston-Salem to look for work in 2009, I stayed in a homeless shelter and wandered around every day trying to see who had jobs available.  On Sunday mornings, I took going to a McDonald's on the East side of town, near the Cleveland projects, in the hood.  They would play gospel music on over the PA, and I would use eat a sausage biscuit and hang out and either draw or read.

There was a church across the street from McDonald's.  I had no idea then, but those same Sundays I sat there in McDonald's, Dr. Angelou was across the street in that church.

I met her only niece today, who told us everyone always wanted to call her "Maya", but she insisted on "Dr. Angelou" to those who didn't actually know her.  It was a cool afternoon, literally, and a great time listening to the area's poets read their own words, as well as those of Dr. Angelou.  Happy 90th!

Big thanks to Rachel White (of Designs, Vines, and Wines at Studios at 625 on Trade Street) for finding me and talking me into heading over there to hang out.  Good time.  More on it tomorrow.

A dog that can jump doubles and do wall rides

This clip just popped up.  It's just cool on so many levels, from a BMXer's perspective to a dog lover's.  Enjoy.

Most Recent Sharpie Art drawings: April 2018 Winston-Salem Gallery Hop

 My sister asked me to do this one for her husband, they're both REM fans going back to high school.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24", sold.

 James Brown - "It's a Man's World"  Just finished this one last night, and the couple who ordered it picked it up today.  Thanks again C&I!  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24", sold.

I love this song.  I did Lana Del Rey - "Old Money" as a request for a young lady's 16th birthday.  Her mom said she was, "over the moon," when she opened it.  That probably stokes me out more than her.  I love to give people a great and original version of their favorite artists or athletes that they love.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24". 

Recent Sharpie Art drawings: April 2018

 Michael Jackson drawing.  This one is currently in the "Creatures of Fortune" Show at Delurk Gallery, 6th at Trade, downtown, Winston-Salem.  Done in my unique Sharpie "scribble style," Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".   Check it out at tonight's Gallery Hop.

 Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, this one is now available at Studios at 625, at 625 Trade in Winston-Salem.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".  Check it out at tonight's Gallery Hop.

Tedeschi Trucks Band (great band), Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24", Sold.

How Rhiannon started making money with her art

For anyone with ambitions in creative work, this is a great video full of legit information.  It's a little over 20 minutes long, but well worth the watch.  You can check out her Etsy shop: Giggle Goddess Create

As many of you know, I started focusing on building my art and writing into a small business a little over two years ago.  I started without a dime, and I mean that literally, not a dime.  I had a cheap tablet of sketch paper, a bunch of Sharpie markers, and a crappy old $60 refurbished laptop still running Windows XP in late 2015.   I was 49, and living with my mom in a small apartment in Kernersville, North Carolina, and unable to find any job.  What I did have was a weird (and completely unique, I later realized) way of coloring and shading drawings with Sharpies that I call "scribble style."  I'd been drawing in that style for ten years, but I didn't really like the drawing styles I was doing with it. So I spent a couple of hours looking at all kinds of art online, asking myself, "What would I want to put on my wall?"

I found a stencil picture of Bruce Lee, who was my first hero as a kid.  I printed it out, transferred the basic image, and did it in my style.  I liked it, I actually did tape it up on my wall (no money for a frame).  After that, I was off to the races.  I've been drawing for money ever since.  I've improved a heck of a lot.  But I'm still not a business, and I make enough money to scrape by.  But don't make very much money at it... yet.

As I type this, I'm nursing a senior Diet Coke at McDonald's, which seems to be the best thing about hitting 50 years old.  I finished a commission drawing last night, dropped it off where the people pick it up, and I don't have food money until I get paid.  I know that's not the fault of the people who ordered the drawing.  I could have skipped that (delicious) sandwich at Jimmy John's the other day.  Or saved a couple of bucks elsewhere.

I'm living homeless right now, sleeping in a tent in the woods, and working at the local library or fast food joints.  But I am working consistently.  I'm working non-stop right now.  The homeless thing sucks, but it was the step I had to take to keep going with my art.  I want to get past this phase, but I know that will happen as I am able to start selling work besides the original drawings I'm doing for people.

But I've been at this long enough, and intense enough, to know that the advice Rhiannon shares in this video is REALLY GOOD ADVICE.  OK, I've got some drawing and other work to do, and you have a video to watch.  Talk at ya later.

While I was writing this post, my last drawing got picked up.  I love it when a plan comes together.

James Bond and other famous homeless people

One of the many things I'm dealing with now are the North Carolina stereotypes about homeless people.  Around here, there are several weird, cultural beliefs about homeless people.  First, there's the age old stereotype that all homeless people are lazy drunks or addicts.  There was a time, 50 or 60 years ago, when the majority of homeless probably were.  Jobs were plentiful and paid well back then, and it took a lot more of a screw up to wind up without a place to live.

Another crazy idea about homeless people here is that people are homeless because God is punishing them.  This belief, which I've only run into in the American South, aka The Bible Belt, gives people an excuse to not help homeless people.  So we wind up with Christians who go to church every Sunday, devoted to a religion following the teachings of Jesus, who told his followers to "Love your neighbor as yourself."  But this concept that God is punishing homeless people instructs Christians to actually go out of their way to not help people who are down and out.  Whomever first pushed this an idea was an asshole, and will likely get a Gorilla Pimp Slap upside the head from Jesus in the afterlife.

Another common belief about homeless people here is that "they lost."  I've heard several people share the idea that people are homeless because they took the "wrong path in life," and can never, EVER, under any circumstances, come back into society and get back to a "normal" life.  This is ridiculous on so many levels, I don't even know where to start.

The reality is that there are 2 1/2 to 3 MILLION people in the United States who are homeless each year.  But only about 800,000 are homeless at any given time.  The majority of people are only homeless for a few weeks.  Most people who become homeless wind up there because of some kind of tragedy.  It could be a job loss, a bad divorce, catastrophic medical bills, a house fire, or loss of their home to a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane.  Most of these people have either the financial resources or a support system of family and friends that help them through this rough period.  They a technically homeless for a while, and then they get an apartment or house, and get back into society and a traditional life.

Some people fall further through the cracks, most often because of a lack of social support system.  These are the long term and chronic homeless.  I'm one of those right now.  Like the people in the clip above, I have a talent that should make me a decent living at some point in the future.  In my case, I have developed an style of artwork with Sharpie markers that is totally original, and is interesting to a large number of people.  I'm working 7 days a week to both draw and promote my work.  I'm now making consistent money at it, just not enough money to rent an apartment or "cheap" motel room on a permanent basis... yet.  But I'll get there.  I know this because I've done it before, at times when I didn't have the creative body of work I have now. 

I woke up in a tent in  the woods on this chilly morning.  But I woke up STOKED about what I was going to do today.  I already won.  The room or apartment or house will come.  The money will come.  I've already won, because I'm doing what I love, and I have a whole bunch of other stuff I want to do in the future.  I'd much rather be in my position then to be a well-to-do but miserable, bitter person waking up in a big bed, in a big house, under high thread count sheets made from expensive Egyptian cotton.  The chances of me making the money and getting a decent place to live are much higher than the chances of a middle aged, bitter person breaking through their personal denial and actually confronting their personal issues. 

I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but I'm sure some of the people I've met in recent months hear things like this from their friends and relatives they tell about me.  Haters gonna hate.  Let 'em hate.  I got drawings to do.

Here are three more famous people who were once homeless:

This painter slept on park benches in California on his first nights in the U.S..

This guy and his wife lived in their car for three weeks once, and then lived in another couple's basement for several months while creating a business plan that later made them very wealthy.  They now of thousands of rental properties and several businesses.

This former street performer slept on a park bench when first traveling in Europe as a young man.  The performance business he helped found not only helped him travel around the world, it enabled him to travel into space.

I've personally met two of these last three people.  I know what's possible.  The haters don't.

Great Recession II: The Sequel - Trump's Dump...Has begun

You know this feeling?  So does the stock market.  That damn huge recession I've been rambling on about in this blog... it started Monday.  Enjoy. 

Big, 700 point bounce back in the Dow 30 today, but it's going to be a roller coaster.  The reason roller coasters don't have engines is because they're powered by gravity, and gravity eventually brings them down.  The same will happen to the stock market in the coming weeks or months.  Then all hell will break loose and the recession will be obvious.  The first six months or so of every recession start with the financial media telling everybody that nothing is wrong, until they can't hide it anymore.

Remember this:

A RECESSION is when the whole world goes on sale, and nobody wants to shop.

Keep that in mind.