The way things have worked out, I'm now spending most of my time doing my personal take on classic music photos in my unique Sharpie scribble style. The latest major drawing is this one of the Beatles, in what I think is a promo photo for the Sgt Pepper's album. Usually I look for photos with hard shadows, most often live singing or performance pics, because those work best with my particular style. This photo was just the opposite, being well lit, with no serious shadows, and lots of color. This photo was requested, and it came out pretty well.
As the artist, I always see a bunch of little things I'd like to better in every drawing. Like most artists, I'm hyper critical of my own work, that's how I improve. But I'm stoked on this one because it wasn't the optimal photo to do in my style, and it came out well anyhow.
All self-critique aside, it's a cool, highly colorful, contrast to the drawings I usually do, and most important, the buyer was really stoked on it, and that's what's most important when doing paid pieces. This drawing is Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24". These drawings take me 30 to 40 hours to do, on average, and I'm now charging $175 for new requests. If you do the math, you realize that I'm still doing these for well under minimum wage. It's a long slow grind to build my name and awareness of my work, but it's happening. I have a continuous 6 to 8 week backlog of work to do, which is a good place to be. If you're interested in having my do a drawing for you, you can email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com .
I played Charlie Brown over the weekend. But instead of yelling "Aaaauuuuggh!" I was mostly throwing out cuss words, largely those beginning with an "F". Or "curse" words as they're quaintly called around here.
So, a month ago, my mom suddenly decided to move back up to Ohio, where she grew up and where several family members still live. I'm here in Winston-Salem (NC), my sister lives in Greensboro, 20 miles away, and my mom lives right in the middle. But my sister and I are super busy, and we don't make it to see mom very often. The same issue moms everywhere complain about. The kids grow up, and you never see them.
Anyhow, after several days of communication issues, I made it over to her house to help with the moving sale, after which we were supposed to pack up what she had left, rent a car, and drive her up to Ohio. But as things turned out, no one showed up for the moving sale, her car hadn't been sold yet, and there were about a million other things that needed to happen still. That fact ratcheted up both of our stress levels, and it was a crazy weekend. A few people wandered through the sale yesterday, but nothing sold. Not a thing. When the dust settled, it was apparent that my mom's not moving up there this week.
While there this weekend, I missed the Wine & Rhymes event here, where I usually wind up as "live art," doing my Sharpie thing while the poetry gets spit, and having a good ol' time. So I missed that. Also, the new (and awesome) Central library was accepting artwork for their next show here Saturday, one where anyone could bring a piece or two, and I just didn't get anything in that, either.
Plus I got distracted from my main focus right now, which is trying to scrape up enough money to pay my $700+ court fine, and then I have to put in my community service time to deal with the continuing repercussions from my arrest for buying donuts last fall. I'm making some money and keeping busy with my artwork, but I don't make very much money at all yet, and my fine is more than I make in a month right now, and I use every bit of what I make just to keep going at this point.
So that's where my little wannabe art business stands right now. Oh, and my bank account decided to cancel my account randomly, and give me some new kind of account, so I can't access the money I have in paypal at the moment. Frustration. Or, Aaaaauuuggghhh!"
So I've been feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football the last few days. OK, enough whining, back to work.
I'm helping my mom sell her stuff this weekend, in advance of moving. So I don't have time to write a decent post right now. So here's Peter Dinklage with one of the only things I actually consider a "motivational speech" these days. And I don't even watch that dungeons and dragon show he's in. But I do listen to this clip on a regular basis. Enjoy. Then go do something awesome.
In this CNBC article today, they're talking how the big hit Facebook's stock took yesterday could very well be a sign that the "Trump Rally" is close to cracking. For those not up on the acronym, FAANG is the vicious sounding word for the big tech blockbuster stocks, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Google's holding company in now named Alphabet, but FAAAN doesn't have a good ring to it, so FAANG is still the name people use to refer to these stocks.
Here's the problem, stock indexes have been rising steadily since early 2009. People like to forget that, but the charts tell the tale. They rose through the most of the Obama presidency, and then accelerated after the 2016 election. Donald Trump took credit for steepening rise in the stock markets, which was stupid. The reason it's stupid is because if a president takes credit for stocks rising, he's going to get the blame when they fall, which they inevitably do.
The real reason the stock markets rose quicker after Trump got elected is because with Republican control of the presidency, House, and Senate, they knew they would be able to pass the massive "tax reform" bill. That bill was a huge giveaway to major corporations and ultra-wealthy people with lots of investments. Quite literally, it was welfare for the super-rich and for major Industrial Age corporations who are having a lot of trouble adapting and competing in the 21st century information age. For the highly profitable tech companies, it was a huge bonus, unneeded, but helpful.
It's kind of like people getting a winning lottery ticket and then going on a shopping spree, because they know that huge check is coming soon.
But since the stock market had been rising for 7 years straight before Trump got elected, and then rising a bit faster for 2 years since, prices are high, and things are running out of steam. Once the "tax reform" bill passed in January, there wasn't a big reason for stocks to keep rising. The major companies got their "lottery check," so to speak, and the anticipation period was over. Where did they spend most of the money? On buying back their own stocks, so they own a bigger share of themselves. Most of that huge amount of money saved, and brought back to the U.S. from overseas, has NOT gone into the real economy of everyday Americans. It wasn't invested in new infrastructure, creating new jobs, funding small businesses, getting broadband to rural America, or any of the other things useful and helpful to the majority of people.
The FAANG stocks, which have been the rising more than any other group of stocks, have attracted more money, because they just kept going up more than everything else. So now, as the long up trend in stocks is running out of steam, EVERYBODY owns the FAANG stocks. And there's not just many more reasons for them to keep going up. So when these few stocks do peak and head down, it's going to leave very few really good places for large amounts of money to go. When the FAANG stocks start to head south, the whole stock market will most likely follow, and that, combined with huge amounts of debt, ultra low interest rates, other factors, will almost certainly send us into the next recession. And that recession is looking like it will be a gnarly one, much like 2008, and maybe even worse.
Facebook took a big hit on its stock price, and other things look pretty good... for now. But the big hit FB took is a sign that the gravity of reality is being felt in the overinflated financial world, and a correction is coming.
When I brought all of my blogs together into this single blog, in late June of 2017, I had no idea how it would work. My top blogs have been my old school BMX story blogs over the past decade. For a while, I was averaging about 3,000-3,500 page views a month, though 1,500 to 2,500 a month was normal. That's not 3,000 different people, but it let me know that several hundred people were reading my stuff consistently. That surprised the hell out of me. At times, I'd have a couple of big posts, and I might get over 4,000 page views in a 30 day period.
But this blog is all over the place. I tell some old school BMX stories still. I show my Sharpie drawings and write about art and creativity. I write about economics, the future, big picture thinking, social dynamics, and then write about my struggles with homelessness a couple of days later. My life's a weird one, and what I'm thinking about most of the time, which is how to get our country back on track financially and spiritually, is far different that what my day to day life and appearance would suggest.
Whatever is going on, a lot of you are checking out this blog. The big posts are still the BMX story posts, but some of my other, more random posts, get checked out a fair amount, too. The number of people checking out my blog amazes me, and I just want to thank all of you who think my writing and drawings are worth a bit of your time. Because none of us seems to have enough time these days.
I never would have imagined this blog getting 7,000 views in a month when I started it last year. Thanks again everyone, and I'll try to keep it worth your while to keep checking it out and reading my stories.
This is Steve Crandall, mid school BMX rider going back to the early '90's, owner of FBM Bikes, guy who lives in an old school bus, and artist who paints coffee cups. And an old friend of mine going back to about 1994, I think. If you're choosing between reading this post and watching the video above, watch the video. I just did, and it's a great piece about stripping life down to the the things that mean the most to you. That's not for everyone, but there are great rewards in certain aspects of life for those who do it.
I first met Steve in 1994, I think. I walked downstairs to the kitchen of the apartment in Huntington Beach that I shared with Chris Moeller and Timmy Ball. As was often the case in those days, several people I didn't know were sleeping on our floor. They got in late the night before, when I was already asleep. When you have Chris Moeller, owner of the hardcore, fledgling, punk rock, BMX company, S&M Bikes, as a roommate, your apartment becomes a magnet for wayward BMXers from across the country and around the globe. So heading downstairs to breakfast and finding the couches and floor space taken by a bunch of sleeping strangers was a pretty normal thing. They were all BMXers, and usually pretty respectful of our place. We all slept on each others couches, and living room and motel floors when traveling in those days, to keep costs down.
I think Chris was making tea, and I asked who the guys were. He told me the first three or four guys, and then pointed to the corner below the "L" in the couches. "Those are the FBM guys, Steve Crandall and his guys." Before long, the whole group was up, and the day's riding commenced. I'd heard of the FBM guys, and may have seen them at a contest, but that weekend was when I got to really know them. Nothing in particular stands out in my mind, it was a typical weekend hanging out, having fun, and riding with some BMXers, in this case from New York.
From then on, Steve and the FBM guys were a group I'd see at contests, session with on occasion, and party with now and then. That was the early 90's. I kept riding, but largely faded from the SoCal scene after I moved out of Moeller's condo in 1995.
More than a decade later, as a fat, HAS BEEN BMX guy, I wound up in North Carolina, lost all my video footage, and started blogging about things I experienced in the 1980's and 1990's in the BMX/freestyle and skateboard worlds. I started reconnecting with old friends here on the interwebs. Steve was one of those I've been reading posts from, commenting on, and keeping up with since.
In his video above, I realized we've had some similarities over the last year or so, besides being named Steve (which means, "crown" or "crowned one" and the pinnacle of human achievement, or something like that). We've both stripped our lifestyles down. He lives in a bus, roaming the country. I left where I was living last year, and because of lack of money, lived in a tent as a homeless guy for 9 1/2 months to get my art career going. We've both taken to doing a lot of artwork in the last year or two. We both had our first art show over this past year. We both do blogs. We are both largely stoked, though sometimes frustrated, with our stripped down lifestyles, and the things that allows us to do. Like, more art.
The weird little bit for me was the coffee thing. I don't drink coffee. I like coffee flavored candy and coffee flavored ice cream, but I just don't like coffee flavored coffee. And I don't like crazy, expensive latte's and stuff. I wake up with a cold Diet Coke. Which is dumb, I know, but that's the way it is for right now. The coffee connection comes from the Winston-Salem Journal artist profile of me that promoted my first show, at an old school music shop called Earshot Music. I met Lisa, the journalist, and the photographer in the cafe area of the new W-S library. As it turned out, the photo that wound up in the paper had the morning barista here, best known locally as L.B. the Poet, in the background of the picture.
He's not just a guy that writes a poem now and then and reads it at an open mike event. L.B. LIVES poetry. He performs incredible spoken word pieces, he does workshops for all ages, and he promotes and hosts poetry-centric events all over central NC. He's a force of nature. There's a really cool poetry scene here in Winston-Salem right now, and that's the group I've most clicked with in the creative scenes here. In some weird synchronicity (I don't believe in coincidence), I met L.B. the day after my artist profile came out, when I bought a Diet Coke and told him he wound up in the background of my photo in the paper. I told Lisa, the journalist about him a few weeks ago, and he just landed an artist profile in the W-S Journal as well.
One day, while drawing next to the coffee bar, I heard L.B. tell a woman, "I don't just serve coffee, this is a cup of love." He wasn't flirting, he's a happily married husband and dad, he's just one of those people who goes way beyond at his day job, to make people get their day off right.
As synchronicity played out, I wound up hiding in a corner drawing, as the "live artist" at an event called Wine and Rhymes at the Designs, Vines, and Wines studio here. I didn't realize that L.B. was hosting the event, and he noticed I was hiding in a corner drawing right after performing one of his pieces. Inspiration took over, and I did a quick drawing of a coffee cup, and wrote "L.B.'s Cup of Love" on it, harking back to the lady at the coffee bar earlier that day. Then I got the idea for a poem, and literally drew the picture and wrote a short poem, while, L.B., my new roommate Reece (promoter of Wine & Rhymes/poet) were performing. When I finished the picture, my first thought was, "Man, I owe Steve Crandall a royalty for drawing a coffee cup." I've been seeing his coffee cup paintings on Facebook for a year or so. I gave the drawing to L.B., and he was way more stoked on it than I expected.
So as us two Steve's head into new aspects of our life and creativity, the lowly coffee cup created a weird little full circle. Funny how life works. And how art and BMX bring all kinds of people together.
A couple years ago, when I was just beginning to focus on my artwork as a way to start making a living again, I drew a pic of Steve Crandall and sent it to him. It looks pretty rough now, after drawing dozens more picture since. And when I made up all kinds of sayings for "FBM" in the background, I didn't realize he'd quite drinking, so I wrote a few beer related sayings. Sorry about the Steve. When you roam through central NC the next time, I'll buy you a cup of coffee... and me a Diet Coke.
The skateboard sidewalk crack nollie. This is where the BMX nollie began. And why the hell do they call them "Chinese Nollies" now? I learned this trick when it was brand new, on a skateboard, BEFORE snapped nollies were invented. It was just the "nollie." Damn skateboard revisionist history. The Chinese people had nothing to do with this. They're taking over the world, do we have to give them nollie street cred, too?
Watching the X-Games BMX street last night, I was amazed at the technical grinds and combos all the riders were doing. Garrett Byrnes was the favorite, as usual, and tore it up. But he got edged out for the gold medal. But really caught my attention were guys doing "nollies." Nollies to grinds, nollies to barspins. A nollie tailwhip is amazing on a bike, but watching them last night, I kept saying, "That's not a nollie." I have a reason for saying this. Here's a little BMX/skate tale from 1988, two years before Garrett Byrnes was born.
If you've read this blog before, you probably know that my BMX freestyle zine in NorCal landed me a job at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines. That put me into the mix as an industry guy in the Southern California BMX and freestyle industries in August of 1986. But I was an uptight dork, and while I got along with c-workers and roommates, Gork and Lew, and boss and Andy generally, I just wasn't the guy they really needed for that job. I just didn't really click with them. And I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. So I got laid off at the end of December 1986, and they soon hired Spike Jonze. He did click.
I found a much better fit, work wise and life wise, at the American Freestyle Association. For $5 an hour, I was hired to be the newsletter editor and photographer for the AFA. Bob Morales, the owner of the AFA, was the consummate entrepreneur. He designed magazine ads for several BMX companies, he ran the AFA, he was part owner of Mor Distributing, a BMX distribution business with Todd Huffman, and they put out the first Auburn bikes, while I worked there. Bob's the guy who started Dyno bikes two or three years earlier, then sold it to GT. Bob's the guy who made BMX freestyle a sport by promoting the first skatepark, and then flatland and quarterpipe contests. He always had a million things going on, and on any given day, I had no idea what I'd be doing at work that day. The pay sucked, but it was always an adventure working with Bob, and his sister Riki, the second funniest woman I've ever met.
That job took me to Huntington Beach, a dirty, oil well infested, surf town on the north side of Orange County, California. In 1987, the four block section of downtown H.B. was run down, sketchy, and fairly scary at night. H.B. was the rowdy, crazy surf town where the huge "surf riot" happened at the OP Pro surf contest the year before. To quote a well known surf shop owner (from Dogtown), "It was dirty, it was filthy... it was paradise."
I spent my weekends, when not helping Bob put on a local AFA contest, at the Huntington Beach Pier, where I hung out with freestyler skaters Pierre Andre, Don Brown, BMX freestyler Mike Sarrail, and whoever else showed up to ride and skate. IN those days, ANYBODY might show up, ranging from Woody Itson or Martin Aparijo, to Natas Kapas. While H.B. was only about 15 miles from Wizard Publications, it was a whole different world. It was a true surf town with a whole slew of great young skaters as locals, Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton and 40 more rippers schralping the streets every night. At a time when most skaters hated BMXers as a matter of principle, I was a BMX freestyler who hung out and rode with skaters more than bikers. That influenced my riding a lot.
I soon found that doing a backside boneless on a launch ramp on my bike, or a sketchy wall ride, could break down the biker/skater barrier, and open up "skate only" spots to ride. It was inevitable that I would start trying to do skate tricks on my bike. And that's where the nollie came from.
Sometime in 1988, the local street skater posse rolled up to our spot at the pier, this place, the asphalt area below the pier, along the walk/bike path. On that particular Saturday, all of them were learning a new trick called the nollie. The idea was to do a nosewheelie on the board into a normal sidewalk crack, and right when you hit the crack, you unweight your front foot and the board pops up half an inch or so, giving you a half a second of levitation. I can't remember if I had my board (one of Pierre's old freestyle boards he gave me), or if I borrowed a board, but I learned how to do nollies with the skaters that day. The trick was called the nollie, because no one was doing nollies where you actually snap the nose of the board then. The ollie, most of you know, is where you snap the tail of the board, and pop the skateboard off the ground. The original nollie, the sidewalk crack variation, was a way of doing an ollie on the nose, or Nose OLLIE, hence the name.
While we were hanging out and sessioning, it was pretty typical of me to try any new skate trick to see if it was possible on my bike. So I started looking for things to do a nosewheelie into a bump. After going over the bars a few times, I realized a standard curb was to high. There were a couple smaller curbs 2" to 3" high, and much to my own, and the skaters, amazement, I could do nollies on them on my bike. I would nosewheelie into into the curb, unweight the front end a little as my front tire bashed into the small curb, and pop up into the air,. The bike would level out, and I landed on my back wheel most of the time. That was the first, and only, trick I learned on a skateboard and then took it to my bike.
Here's how anal I got trying to figure out exactly what the best nollie bump was. I actually measured sidewalk cracks and skateboard wheels, to figure out the ratio of crack height to wheel height, and then I figured out that ratio to a 20 inch bike tire. It came out to 3 1/4" or something. as I developed the nollie, I soon figured out that a burly speed bump was the ideal nollie bump, though small, rounded curbs and big, tree root sidewalk cracks or similar bumps would work as well. I started doing nollies faster and faster, and it became a favorite street move of mine.
Here's the thing. No one else did it. I was a mediocre flatland rider in those days when street riding was just forming into an actual genre. I was an industry guy, I knew all the top riders then, and rode with them at contest jam circles and stuff, like all of us did. While I invented a handful of little tricks, I was not known as a great rider by any means. And the weird little tricks I was learning, weren't even considered "tricks," largely because I was the guy doing them, and the top riders were doing completely different things. Flatland turned into a Kevin Jones look-alike contest around that time, focused on variations and combos rolling on one wheel. Meanwhile, I was riding with skaters and doing a bunch of bunnyhop type tricks. By late 1988, I was doing half Cab's, clearing 8 feet or more, (freewheels give you pop), roll back bunnyhops for 6 to 8 feet, lookback half Cab's, footplant tailwhips, and trying bunnyhop tailwhips. But I never could land a bunnyhop tailwhip clean, and Bill Nitschke made that one happen and named it the Whopper a couple of years later. But all of these weird little things I was coming up with were so far outside what most riders were doing, that they were just little "moves," not even considered "tricks" back then. That's why I didn't put any of those tricks into my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend. If I was doing them, then they couldn't be that hard, because I was the guy doing them, and everybody knew I sucked. That was my mentality back then. Did I mention I had some self-esteem issues?
Now, 30 years later, half Cab's (rollback to 180 bunnyhop), bunnyhop tailwhips, and nollies are foundational tricks for today's street riders, including the top contest riders in the X-Games last night. But for a good 20 years, they were done only by a few people, but weren't even "tricks" at all.
The reason I decided to write this post, is because I'm the guy who invented the bike nollie, on that day in 1988. And to me, a nollie is a nosewheelie into some kind of bump. Otherwise, it's just a nosewheelie. What I saw last night in the X-Games street event were nosewheelies off banks and nosewheelie tailwhips off a bank. Not nollie tailwhips, in my way of thinking. They're still insanely hard and amazing. Just not nollies in the that I classify a nollie.
A nollie tailwhip was my big dream for the nollie back in the late 80's and early 90's. I started trying nollie tailwhips, doing a nosewheelie into a speed bump and then doing a tailwhip out of the bonk, in late 1988 or 1989... before Bill Nitschke landed the Whopper. I always ended up slamming my shins into the bike as it swung in front of me, and faceplanting. I could never get nollie tailwhips either. I did get nollie 180's down in about 2003, though. That's a fun little trick.
Now I know, as a crusty, salty, old, HAS BEEN industry guy and NEVER WAS rider, I'm not going to get today's street rippers to stop calling nosewheelie tricks nollies. It's their sport now. The names change over time, just like the original skateboard nollie, the sidewalk crack version in the clip above, is now a "Chinese nollie" for some damn reason. I also realize that BMX riders were doing nosewheelies, and nose bonks before I did my first bike nollie. But the BMX street nollie is one trick I'm confident in calling my own. I was doing them years before I saw anyone else do one.
In the 1980's, nearly every rider was inventing new tricks and variations. Sometimes foundational tricks came from obscure riders. Skyway pro and NorCal mad BMX scientist Oleg Konings invented the first scuff trick, which even most 1980's riders don't remember. Me, I added nollies into the BMX street riding lexicon. I think Keith Treanor will back me up on that one, even though I was doing them two full years before I met Keith. I also invented the nollie hardflip on a skateboard, much to Hans Lingren's dismay, but that's another story for another day.
Before I go, I saw that stomped 900 that Dennis McCoy pulled at the X-Games yesterday. Damn Dennis! Aren't you a little bit old to be riding a little kid's bike? I mean, are you just that desperate to avoid getting a real job? You'll be 52 in a couple of months. Did you go out and get a senior coffee at McDonald's afterwards to celebrate? Are you going to make me write another Woody Vs. Dennis zine, 32 years after the first one, where where I said you should have beat Woody at the AFA finals? WTF Dennis? You've achieved BMX freestyle superhero legend status, you can stop making all of us old, fat, HAS BEEN's feel even worse about life now. Dang.
My second Sharpie drawing of my first hero, Bruce Lee. This drawing is now living in California with an old friend from the BMX world. I wanted to show an older drawing or two today, and I needed to put this one on my blog to use it on Pinterest. Yeah, there are dudes on Pinterest. Check out my boards.
Two cool happenings in my life today. One person told me they want me to draw the cover art for an upcoming children's book. Way cool. More details on that when the project gets underway.
I also got my first drawing order for Christmas time this year. That one came out of nowhere. But that's how things are happening now. Word of mouth and people who've seen my drawings up close are finding me and asking me to do projects. It you think you want something for the holiday season, or between now and then, email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com .
My 18" X 24" drawings are now $175 each. They take me 30-40 hours or so to do, a full week's work. So that's not a lot of money for both the time involved and for an original drawing that's pretty dang sweet. I know that's a lot of money to most people. With that in mind, I'll be doing more smaller drawings and making both color copies and signed and numbered prints at prices ranging from dirt cheap to quite reasonable. Stay tuned for more info on those.
Here's another drawing that's been really popular here in the Winston-Salem area, longtime resident here and America's late Poet Laureate, Dr. Maya Angelou.
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, the summer of 1986. This is the BMX/skate scene where I really started notice how important the actual scene it self was. Led by visionary BMXer/skater/promoter Dave Vanderspek, he and the other pro riders, like Maurice Meyer, featured here, spent a lot of time helping us up-and-coming riders build our skills. Thanks to their leadership, we had a place to try new things, invent tricks, and be a part of a group of similar weirdos. This little clip includes a future BMX Plus magazine editor, Karl Rothe at 4:23, the future graphic artist who changed the entire skateboard industry, Mark McKee at 4:43, and me, a future magazine/newsletter writer and video producer, at 5:07. Legendary street skating pioneer and Bones Brigade member Tommy Guerrero was also part of this scene.
What is a Creative Scene?
It's any group of two or more people who get together, throw ideas around, and actually do something creative. Art scenes. Music scenes. BMX scenes. Skate scenes. Entrepreneurial scenes. Tech scenes. Gaming/coding scenes. Web design scenes. Blog/zine scenes. Craft scenes. Food truck and local restaurant scenes. You get the idea.
Why do we need Creative Scenes?
Here's why: Most of small town/rural America is dying economically. Here's a great Wall Street Journal article on this issue. Even in the larger cities that do have high paying tech jobs,the majority of jobs are low paying service industry jobs. People across the country need tens of MILLIONS of good paying jobs. There are no large numbers of major companies to create all these jobs today. The days of the huge factories in every town are gone. Many of you will have to create your own jobs in many cases. Creative scenes can turn into small, and sometimes big, businesses. They can even become entire new industries.
We are in a decades-long transition between the Industrial Age and the Information Age. The late futurist Alvin Toffler and his wife Heidi called this Information-based Age The Third Wave. That was the title of their 1980 book on the subject. As we go through this transition, Industrial Age institutions and systems of all kinds are fading, or often just collapsing, and being replaced by entirely new institutions, systems, and infrastructure. Websites, blogs, and ebooks have largely replaced books, magazines, and newspapers. Shopping centers and malls are closing down, and being replaced by Amazon, online shops, and UPS trucks delivering goods. Records and CD's have been replaced by Mp3's and now streaming. TV is all but dead, and Netflix, You Tube, Roku and live streaming are taking its place. But schools and colleges are still largely the same. Our legal system is still largely the same. Our health care system is still largely the same. These and other aspects of the Industrial Age will flounder at some point, and be replaced by a new model.
Today's technology and connectivity mean that individuals, almost anywhere, can create all kinds of small businesses and ways to earn a living in this new and ever-changing world. But tens of millions of people have been left behind, and local Creative Scenes can help bring new skills and ideas and money into areas that are struggling now. They can also help teach new skills to older workers.
There are 7 million or more "prime working age men" out of work, and not looking for work. Here's Nicolas Eberstadt, the main researcher into this issue. This huge group is in addition to the officially unemployed people. This group rivals the percentage of unemployed people in the Great Depression of the 1930's. Because our population is much larger now, the actual number is much greater than in the Great Depression.
There are also over 20 million people, not currently incarcerated, who have a felony on their record, which makes finding a high paying, traditional job much harder. Straight up, if we get most of these people in these two groups doing some kind of legit work, our country becomes much, MUCH stronger in nearly every way. To do this, we need new ideas, people, and Creative Scenes, to implement these new ideas. This can and should happen in arts, business, and through new non-profit groups.
The Federal Reserve, and other Central Banks, have complete screwed our financial system worldwide. Here's former Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs "quant" (super math geek) Nomi Prins explaining this mess. We're in for another big ass financial collapse like 2008, but probably worse. So all of the things above will soon have the added pressure of a serious recession weighing them down, as well.
Wahsington D.C. is not going to fix this. They're somewhere between impotent and just plain retarded at this point. It's up to us. Welcome to the DIY economy. I think small groups of creative people are one of the best ways we can start working on these, and all the other big issues, we have to deal with. I think Creative Scenes is a big part of the solution to these problems.
But can a handful of artsy fartsy people in some random town REALLY make a difference?
Yes.
I've seen it happen, over and over. Here are a few examples.
In 1984, a group of Montreal street performers decided to buy a tent and create their own circus. Things were dicey for several years. But now, Cirque du Soleil has over 20 permanent and touring shows, a huge facility in Montreal, employs over 4,000 creative people, and brings in around $800 million a year. Oh, and they put the Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey circus out of business.
This is Jason Lee's video part from the 1991 skate video, Blind's Video Days. The part was directed by a young guy named Spike Jonze, his directorial debut. The first song in the video ("The Knife Song" by Milk) was sung by Jeff Tremaine. Spike and Jeff are film directors now, and Jason's an actor. The gross income of the movies they've all worked on since this video part comes to $3.693 billion.
In 2005, three creative people got together and built a website to give artists and crafters a place to sell their works online. They gave is a nonsense word as a name, "Etsy." It was quite literally a small Creative Scene bent on helping people everywhere legitimize and monetize their creative works. As of the end of 2014, Etsy had 685 employees, 54 million registered users, nearly 20 million of those active, and gross sales on the platform was $1.93 billion.
My point? Little groups of creative people, morphing into small Creative Scenes, can have big impacts. In some cases, that includes big businesses and incomes. These three examples of small Creative Scenes spawning people doing big things and making big bucks, don't even include all the tech company successes we all know that started from a handful of creative people.
This Creative Scenes idea is my main focus these days. I've been a part of many different Creative Scenes in my life, and I have a lot of experience, thoughts, and ideas on how to enable, nurture, improve, and build Creative Scenes. Stay tuned here on this blog for a lot more on this subject.
A couple weeks ago, I put myself through a workshop I developed about 25 years ago, to figure out what's most important in life at the moment. My sister had a big decision to make in college back then, and I came up with a series of questions to help her decide what to do. I've refined the workshop since then, and take myself through at least once or twice a year. One of the things I decided to do after my last self-workshop was to write more about my day-to-day life as I build a living as a writer/artist. So this is one of those posts.
I finished a zine, a little, self-published booklet, kinda like those in the clip above, and made the first couple of copies yesterday. It's Club White Bear Zine #1, a membership club I'm starting where I'll write a bunch of my crazy stories, things I'm thinking about, and I'll add in some stickers, small copies of my artwork, and other random stuff.
After a morning session working on my latest drawing, one of The Beatles, I grabbed a bite at King's Mini mart by the Winston-Salem bus station, and sat on the blocks, big concrete ledges, to eat. As I was doing that a white guy with a straight cut, untucked, blue, button-up shirt strolled slowly by among the normal crowd. After my Monday morning rant calling out the local good ol' boys, I've been waiting for repercussions. This guy reminded me of the hundreds of operatives I had to deal with in California in the early 2000's. He carried himself like an undercover cop who thought he was blending in to the crowd, but might as well have been wearing a clown suit. He stuck out that bad. I watched him walk by as I ate my decidedly unhealthy pack of powdered sugar donuts. I commented out loud, after he walked by, "Man you really look like a cop." I wasn't sure if he heard me.
Then I head a block up the street to the UPS store to make the master copy of my zine. I had 12 pages, both sides, covered with stories, photos, and background textures. Those pages turn into a 48 page, 5 1/2" X 8 1/2" zine. That's hefty by zine standards. To make the duplication master, I photocopy one side of a page, then I take that copy, put it back in the machine's paper tray, and flip my master, and try to get it to line up so I wind up with a 2-sided copy, with both sides going the right directions. It's a hit or miss process where I need to concentrate.
As I was trying to figure out which way to put the copies to get things to turn out right, the guy in the blue shirt walked by, looking at me intently through the big windows. I really didn't want to talk to anyone at that point, I just wanted to make my zine master without screwing up a bunch of times. So, of course, the guy walked in and came up to me. He asked what I was doing. I glanced up, and told him I'm was making a zine. I went back to my work, and he kept annoying me as I tried to keep my attention on figuring out how to get the copies to come out right. After I explained what a zine was, and that I made them to share my ideas, he asked what my ideas were.
Now, I've had literally several hundred, probably well over a thousand, people like this pop into my life over the years. In the post-9/11 era of the 2000's, they ranged from local undercover cops checking out the taxi drivers for drug dealers and pimps, to off duty soldiers looking for potential terrorists, to full on high caliber federal agents. There was an incident with another taxi driver getting into trouble that got me on their radar in March of 2000. Or at least that's what I was thinking at the time. Plus I was a taxi driver, listened to KPFK, L.A.'s public radio, all day, and talked way to much about conspiracy stuff back then. So I got all kinds of random people coming into my life to ask me questions for a variety or reasons.
I figured the guy yesterday was one of those, local P.D. most likely, doing a little "we've got our eye on you after that damn blog post" intimidation detail. When I told him that I think a lot about the future, and future trends, and write about that. he asked "Have you read the scriptures?" I didn't want to deal with him at the moment to start with, but after that comment, I really wanted this stalker to leave me alone. You see, there's another category of undercover operative I've run into many times, undercover evangelicals. In addition to traditional coercion, there are actually people in the evangelical community who have been trained in psy-ops by actual intelligence agency operatives, and trained in techniques to intimidate, investigate, and coerce people into their way of thinking. Or just destroy people's lives, they're really good at that, too. When you hear about gang stalking and that kind of stuff, and yes, it happens, that's usually who's behind it, in my personal experience. Much like annoying drunk panhandlers, Jehovah's witnesses, or athletes foot, these people are hard to get rid of.
I told this guy, "Yes, actually I have read the "scriptures,"* and I said I probably have a somewhat different take on it than you." He asked if I knew what the scriptures said about the future. I told him I didn't buy "all that." Hey, you can believe whatever you want to people. But the whole "Book of Revelation/we're in the end times" thing is just a misreading of that book. The entire book of Revelation is a dream or vision, it says so ("...in the spirit" Revelations 1:10 KJV). It's not supposed to be taken literally. It's either metaphorical, or in the case of Revelation, more likely allegorical. There's probably an allegorical key to the book of Revelation that's been lost to history. I don't believe the "end times" concept for the same reason I don't believe in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. It's simply wrong. As the late comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell put it, people are reading it for the denotation, not the connotation. It's simply a grammatical problem.
The whole time I was trying not get into a long conversation with this "Christian" stalker, I was screwing up my zine master copies, and wasting a little money I didn't want to waste. Anyhow, eventually he left, and I got the duplication master and the first couple copies of my zine made.
As he was leaving, the stalker said, "Well, I hope you find what you're looking for." I replied, "I already have." Life makes sense to me now. But, working to actually put into practice everything I've learned is another issue, and I get really frustrated a times. But that's the game of life. As Joseph Campbell summed it up once, "It (life) is a wonderful, wonderful opera... but it hurts."
Then I dropped one copy of my zine off to Rachel at Designs, Vines, and Wines (625 Trade Street), where several of my drawings are hanging. Random people are always wandering in and out of there. I wound up in a long and very interesting conversation with a guy totally into crypto ("don't call it crypto currency, those are two different things"). I've done a little bit of research, just to learn the basics (blackchain technology is gonna change EVERYTHING), but it was cool to get a deeper perspective on the whole crypto world.
All in all, halfway decent day yesterday. Man, I ramble too much in these posts.
* In my 20's, when trying to make sense of the Bible, religion, and life itself, I read the New Testament, start to finish, at least four times. I've read about 2/3 of the books in the old testament, start to finish, I read all the Gnostic gospels available, and much later read Edgar's Cayce's "Life of Jesus" book. I've also read the Tao Te Ching, Marcus Arelius, various other philosophies, and listened to the six hour, Bill Moyer interview with comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth series, well over 100 times. That's all in addition to going to Lutheran churches as a kid, and Methodist more recently, and other religious education. All of that means nothing compared to actually spending most of my life seeking answers to the basic question, "What the point of life?" That led me on a spiritual journey of trials, tribulations, and insights for most of my life.
If you want deeper background into why the entire financial system is screwed, here's Nomi Prins, a former quant (super math geek) at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, explaining it fairly quickly. As a rule, I don't embed RT (Russian Television) clips, and with today's Trump/Putin fiasco, I hate to use it. But all of her other talks are really long. She explains this better than anyone right now, and this is the shorted version I could find.
Two things have been holding the stock market up from a major collapse after the DOW's January peak this year: The "FANG" stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google- officially called Alphabet now), and corporations buying back their own stocks with money they got largely form the Trump "tax cut" (corporate welfare). Basically, things should have gone into a really big downturn back in early February in the stock market. But these few tech stocks, nearly all by themselves, kept going up, and made the stock markets look much better than they actually were.
But in this CNBC article today, Facebook, Alphabet (Google), and Netflix had big issues today, which is the F, A, and G in FAANG stocks, and shares headed lower. Now, if these few stocks that have been going up big this year peak and turn down, major investors don't have very many other good options of where to put lots of money. And that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back that so many of us have predicted. It could finally send tech stocks quite a bit lower, and that will likely further reduce major investor confidence in the stock markets in general, which could send it into a serious bear market, and send us into the long overdue Next Great Recession, which is primed to happen. We'll see what happens tomorrow.
Watch Germany's Deutsche Bank as well, it's floundering and will likely be a domino in the financial crash we've been teetering on the brink of for more than a year now.
Listen to this cool performance of Amanda Palmer singing "Ukulele Anthem" at the Sydney Opera House, and then go kick some fuckin' ass at something creative today.
The crazy weather in this video got me thinking about the evening of May 7th, 2018, when I went out to my tent in the woods behind Bolton Park here in Winston-Salem, where I lived for 9 1/2 months or so, with a six week hiatus after I went to jail for buying donuts as Aldi's on Peter's Creek last fall. Long story... ask me sometime in person. Or you could ask officer Dime. And look at his bodycam footage. Oh wait, the public and press are not allowed to see bodycam footage here.
Anyhow, I soon had a bunch of Southern good ol 'boys stomping around outside my tent, a couple mentioned having baseball bats, and talking about beating the fuck out of me to "teach me a lesson." Months of various forms of intimidation didn't work to get me to go stay in the homeless shelter with all the lazy-ass drunk and crackhead motherfuckers who are getting Disability checks, paid for by YOUR tax dollars, every month. I came to Winston-Salem to turn my art into a business. It's as simple as that.
But the good ol' boys ran me through the police database, and found that I tested as having one of the highest I.Q.'s in the country when I joined the Marines in late 1984. I was dropped from the delayed entry program, and told that the Commandant of the Marine Corps himself, personally, made that decision. What I wasn't told was how high I scored on the I.Q. test. With that on my record, I apparently came to the attention of all kinds of people at various government and law enforcement agencies. Without realizing it, I became an "asset," for several of them. I had a roommate in 1995, Chris Moeller's cousin, who claimed to be a CIA agent. Chris called him "Operation Rick, the paramilitary Mod", because all he talked about was being a spy, but he wore Creepers and rode a scooter. Hence the Mod part. Things got crazier later on, especially after 9/11. I can't go into all the details of what actually happened to me in all those years I was homeless, a taxi driver, and a homeless taxi driver. The reason is because of who was fucking with me. But it was just ridiculous. And your taxi dollars paid for it... lots of your tax dollars.
Now, I just want to make a living as an artist and writer, but the bullshit has ramped up again. And that led to the good 'ol boys stomping around outside my tent on the night of May 7th, as a storm approached. I just laid there, waiting for them to do something, and throwing out the occasional sarcastic comment like, "Shit, if I knew all you guys were coming, I would have got snacks."
The American South was built on slavery, we all know that. And slavery, at its core, is intimidation and terrorism. Humans are terrorized on a personal level to the point where they believe they HAVE to remain slaves. And that long honored tradition of intimidation continues to this day in places, and at times.
But those good ol' boys, stomping around outside my tent on the night of May 7th, didn't know what to do with someone who simply wouldn't cower and be intimidated. And someone who happened to be homeless at the time, and yet have a blog with 30,000 page views in a year. A blog that got more web traffic than most official sites in this area. Hey, it ain't my fault if your social media game sucks. Learn. Do the work. You can't buy popularity anymore, you have to get on the phone or computer and actually put out GOOD CONTENT. You know, like this post about you dumbass motherfuckers threatening to beat the fuck out of a homeless guy, who you KNEW was unarmed, in a tent, ALONE, in the woods. I actually heard one guy say, "If we beat the fuck out of him, he'll just blog about it when he gets out of the hospital." Yep. Welcome to the 21st Century. Cowards intimidating other people by brute force doesn't play well in a world where nearly everyone has a video camera. But, I wasn't going to blog about that night at all. I was going to just keep plugging away at my artwork and blogging and keep building the start of a little business.
But then I got hit with your $632 fine and fees for my donut BUYING arrest, and another 50 hours of community service, AND a 30 day jail sentence, suspended for one year. Did I mention that the guards threw a federal prison inmate in my cell the last of my three nights in county jail here? Remind me, I'll tell you the story sometime. He and I started talking art, and got along well. I'm pretty sure that's not how things were supposed to play out.
But then, my checking account wasn't supposed to get closed, which keeps me from starting an online store at the moment. And my new bank card, was supposed to ACTUALLY SHOW UP in the mail a week ago. Apparently it's "lost." And the studio owner with much of my artwork on her walls is supposed sell my stuff when people want to buy it, but she's been told not to give me a dime that I earn, because drawing pictures isn't a "legitimate" way to make money to pay my FUCKING RIDICULOUS FINE, which has somehow jumped to $732.
I make about $500 a month from my art right now. That's not a lot. But I came to Winston-Salem in June 2017, with $15, a little backpack with some clothes, and my art supplies. I didn't know ANYONE in the art scene here. From that humble beginning, I now make a small, but steady income, built entirely on drawing pictures that average people REALLY FUCKING LIKE to hang on their walls. I know a lot of people in this city now. And yet, the good 'ol boys keep trying to stamp me out like a termite. Or a nigger, back in the day when they could still use that word openly. Blacks aren't the only minority that gets fucked with a lot here. Homeless people are a minority as well, as are others.
Times have changed. And you guys haven't.
You want a war mother fuckers? OK you got one. But this isn't a war with tanks and bombs and guns and baseballs bats. OK, IT IS a war with guns baseball bats, on your side, at least on the night of May 7th it was. You know, the night when you guys couldn't figure me out, why I wasn't intimidated, and when I said the words, "Hoka Hey," from inside my tent. One of the guys asked what that meant. I replied, "Google it." Much to my surprise, one of them did. I honestly didn't think they were stupid enough to bring their phones with them to beat the fuck out of a homeless guy in the woods. When he Googled "Hoka Hey," his phone pinpointed his location, which is now on record. Not smart. And then, he saw where those words came from. If those of you reading this want to know, Google it.
Apparently, you good ol' boys want a war with a artist, a "worthless piece of shit," asswipe, artist who was homeless for years. OK. You got it.
But this is a war of ideas. A war for the hearts and minds of the people of this area. Guns don't mean shit in a war of ideas. You can only terrorize a coward, and I'm not one. Bring it on motherfuckers. Let's play.
I just finished this drawing the other day. It was ordered by a woman I know here in Winston for her husband's birthday. I know there's a bunch of Metallica fans out there who follow my blog and Facebook, so now you can all get jealous that this baby is not on your wall.
My own knowledge of Metallica goes back to a little music article about them by Gork, then editor in BMX Action magazine, in 1986. Within months, I wound up working with, and as a roommate of Gork and Lew, where we were 3/4 of the Wizard Publications editorial team. We rode our BMX bikes to work much of the time, but when we rode in Gork's van to and from work, it was pretty much blasting Metallica's Master of Puppets at all times. There was a bit of Saxon and other metal, but mostly Metallica. So it was good to crank up the up the volume, and rock out for a few days while drawing this one. It's all done with Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24," in my unique "scribble style."
On summer days, these metal bands provide a bit of shade to sit in. Some nights, they form a stage area for bands. In a heavy wind, these super thick steel bands actually sway back and forth. That's really freaky when you're sitting there leaning against one.
The big red square pipes are meant to hark back to the days of the Reynolds Tobacco and furniture factory smokestacks soaring above town. Steam comes out of the top of these pipes at time to complete the factory illusion.
A rat rod in front of the Art Park during the Heavy Rebel Weekender music festival/car show in July 2018.
A different angle, with a rat rod truck in front of the Art Park during Heavy Rebel Weekender 2018.
Looking across the street from the art park at a Cadillac which is the same year as the blue Caddy my Grandpa Mayer in Ohio had when I was a kid. Grandpa's Caddy wasn't lowered and flat black, but this Caddy didn't smell like nasty cigars.
View from the sidewalk inside the park, with Red Dawg Gallery in the background.
Officially called, Artivity on the Green, but know simply as the "Art Park" to most, this place comes alive on the weekends with people taking selfies in front of murals, local bands performing under the big white metals band thingies, and nude forklift driving contests. OK, the last one isn't real, I just wanted to see if anyone actually reads these things.
Reflection of the red poles in the Red Dawg/AFAS building windows. AFAS stands for Art For Arts Sake, and is a big force in promoting art in downtown W-S.
On a big wall on Liberty Street now, this is the second incarnation of the big tree, one of the first murals done by the old school Winston-Salem art scene posse. The original was on the big barn-looking building on Trade Street, which is now remodeled into the Sweet Potato and Miss Ora's restaurants. This version has much more roots (literally and figuratively) than leaves or than the original. There are a whole bunch of things hidden in the mural to be found using the small key below it.
The mural on the side of The Chronicle building, before they moved to a new location. The Chronicle is Winston-Salem's long time African-American newspaper.
Closer view of the protesters in the mural above.
This mural on Liberty was done in 2012, when I was driving a taxi here. I can't tell you how many times I drove by and thought those silhouettes were actually women there painting the mural. Since I remember them actually out there painting it, I guess that's part of the reason.
These are a couple more of the new murals on the art park mural wall.
All of these murals are freshly done, and on the back wall of the art park on Liberty, next to the Red Dawg/AFAS Gallery. When they were being painted, everyone kept telling me, "You have to check out the dog. They were right, this chihuahua mural was airbrushed, and it's just plain off the chain.
The eyes have it.
Insert spooky music here.
These 'shrooms probably look better if you're on 'shrooms. But I don't do that stuff, and they still look pretty dang cool.
More Shelob than Charlotte.
I don't know who Dumptruck is either. Photos by me (Steve Emig)
This monolith of art stands at 6th and Trade, and the pieces change once or twice a year, I think.
It's easy to walk right by this critter without noticing. Art's everywhere around Trade and Liberty Streets in Winston-Salem, so stop looking at your damn phone.
Here's the other steampunkish mechanical insect thingamajig. You may not notice it, but it sees you.
A little lower on the art monolith.
This is one of the oldest murals in the Winston-Salem art district, and is at 6th and Trade, right by the art monolith thingy.
When not blogging, I'm Winston-Salem's premiere (and pretty much only) Sharpie marker artist. You can check out several of my pieces at Designs, Vines, and Wines, which is located in Studios at 625 on Trade. There are eight different artists that have studios there, plus a few featured artists, like myself. Rachel at D,V,&W paints and does a bit of everything. She also does create and sip projects ($25 to make your own art; supplies, laughs, and wine included). Tammy Ballard does these amazing ink pieces. That sounds lame, but they're really cool, just hard to describe. Donell is a painter and muralist, and is there often. There a couple more painters, an amazing fine art photographer, a travel photographer, and also a bunch of jewelry in there. 625 is also open more than many of the shops on Trade, which are closed a lot for some reason. Check it out.
These pieces are up and down Trade Street in the Winston-Salem (NC) Art District. The chalk board at what used to be outside cafe seats, is now a Do-It-Yourself mural spot.
I'm gonna count to a million, you go run and hide...
Since I come from Southern California, which has a deep sticker culture, it's always cool to see a band sticker slapping spot.
Say aaaaaaah.
This little painting is the most obvious, but many people walk by and don't notice it.
All of these murals are visible or adjacent to Winston-Salem's Trade Street art district. But they're not all immediately visible. Again, I won't tell you exactly where to find each one, wandering around and discovering them is half the fun. But if you find the one above, you'll see the murals and graffiti in the last post.
Loosing your marbles, or gumballs? Yeah, I've been there. You probably have, too.
This bird is a little bit hidden. If you enjoy a drink on a high patio with a view, you'll find it.
