Rocky's theme song... latest drawing is done

 Many months ago, I saw a cool photo of a tiger's face, and thought, "Man, I really need to draw that."  But I was busy with other stuff then.  I finally got around to doing a tiger drawing.  I found a cool pic of a Sumatran tiger to work from.  Here are some close-ups.  You can see the full drawing tomorrow.  This took 40+ hours to do.  18" X 24", Sharpies on paper.  It's available, but it ain't cheap.  My prices have risen permanently.  A whole bunch of you have bought drawings from me that I made $2 to $4 an hour for the time I put into them.  It's time for me to start making a decent amount for the artwork I do.  My work has risen to a point for me to make a reasonable amount for the hours I put into these.

Famous People who were once Homeless

As he says in this interview, Guy Laliberte' spent his first night in London years ago on a park bench.  He traveled through Europe street performing.  He's been a street performing accordion player and fire breather, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, the 7th tourist astronaut, billionaire, high stakes poker player, and now is mostly a philanthropist.

On May 14th of this year, as a dozen or more North Carolina men stomped outside my tent in the woods, claiming to be armed with baseball bats and threatening to beat the fuck out of me, one of them said, "Everybody knows that every homeless person is a worthless piece of shit."  Hmmmmm.  Really? 

Jay Leno lived in his car for a couple of years in his early days as a comedian.  He made it as a stand-up comic, became a longtime host of The Tonight Show, and now has a decent sized car collection, and a TV show where he gets to do things like you see in that clip.

Steve Harvey, who also lived in his car for about three years as a young comedian, interviews social media star, musician, and athlete Destorm Power, who got started as a homeless subway singer.

In this video, we hear about formerly homeless people turned successful Dr. Phil, Steve Harvey, Daniel Craig, Carmen Electra, Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Pratt, Jim Carrey, James Cameron, and Steve Jobs.
My favorite modern painter, surrealist Vladimir Kush, slept on park benches in Santa Monica, California when he first came to America.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad author, highly successful real estate investor, and investment teacher Robert Kiyosaki, and his wife Kim, lived in their car for three weeks at one point, and then another nine months in some friends' basement, while building a business plan that went on to be highly successful and lucrative for them.

In this video, in addition to some of the people above, we hear about the homelessness of one form or another of Ben Franklin, Col. Harlan Sanders (founded KFC), Sylvester Stallone, Kelly Clarkson, Tyler Perry, Jim Cramer, Shania Twain, Hilary Swank, William Shatner, Sam Worthington, Sean Parker, Jewel, Drew Carey, Cary Grant, Kurt Cobain, Suze Orman, and Heather Mills.

Well, you're thinking, those are just a handful of crazy actors and comedians, it's not like A LOT of prominent people were ever homeless at some point, right?  No.  Wrong.  Here's a list of 200 prominent people who made it through homelessness and went on to some serious level of success later on.  

You know what they say about judging a book by its cover...

 

The Ultimate Weekend Story 2: the Intro

The Intro starts at :55 in this video, and ends at 2:00, that's the segment this post is about.

I started shooting footage for this video in about late February or March of 1990, as my employer, Unreel Productions was being shut down by parent company Vision Skateboards.  Vision blew up to huge size in 1988 as vert skateboarding, BMX, and the emerging sport of snowboarding hit peaks.

Then Vision Street Wear clothes, the logo that pretty much identifies the 1980's in action sports, caught the attention of the real, New York City fashion world.  After the preppie, big name brand, snobby 1980's lagged on and got even more boring, shit was happening in the urban environment.  Hip hop music was breaking through to the mainstream world with the Aerosmith/RUN DMC collaboration, LL Cool J,  Salt-N-Pepa, Kid N' Play, D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince,  Tone Loc, The Fat Boys, Public Enemy, N.W.A. and, of course, The Beastie Boys.  New wave had faded, metal had spawned the glam hairbands, and the weird people were looking for something fresh.  And the urban world was just that.  Rap and Hip Hop had grown out of the tough streets of New York City, and it couldn't be held to the black community anymore.  The hyper trendy fashion world looked to these scenes for inspiration, and along with hip hop, skateboarding was starting to take to the streets in a big way thanks to guys like Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, and Natas Kaupas.  Then Vision made clothes, and just put that feel in words in a simple, yet powerful logo: Vision Street Wear.

As over-hyped as it seems to us old schoolers looking back.  When it broke, the Vision Street Wear logo was fresh.  The fashion world loved it, it got some mainstream TV hype, helped by then Vision skater, The Gonz himself.  Vision grew to $50 million in sales in 1988, I think.  They bought the huge, 100,000 square foot, former Ocean Pacific (Op) building in Santa Ana (a block from where S&M Bikes is now), and planned to do $100 million in sales in 1989.  Vision Street Wear didn't realize how trendy the fashion world is, and didn't have a whole new line of "street wear" coming out in 1989.  So the big time fashion world moved on.  Vision geared up and spent big, banking on that $100 million in sales year.  But they only made $60 million or so.  Good, but not enough to keep the gravy train rolling.  The skateboard industry started to tank in its 10 year cycle.  The mainstream bike world gave up on BMX and freestyle, and put their money into mountain bikes.  And the long contract with Snowboard pioneer Tom Sims ended, so Tom and Vision fought over who owned the name Sims Snowboards.

Unreel Productions, the video arm of  Vision that never had to actually make money, became a big expense to cut.  So the building was closed down, a woman named Laura and I were kept, and all the producers were let go.  Don Hoffman, the who started Unreel with Vision owner Brad Dorfman, went to freelance status.  I got the job of taking inventory of the entire building, and getting it ready to move out.  In that process I found about $10,000 worth of video equipment that wasn't listed on the previous inventory.  I didn't sell any to pocket the money.  Being the dork that I am, I dutifully listed every piece.

Laura and I moved into a single office in the Vision main building, and in a month or so, she found a job in the real TV world, just over the hill from Hollywood.  Then it was just me.  Sitting in a big office with the leftover equipment, and almost nothing to do.  That's when I started really planning my own video.  I started shooting video on the weekends, not every one, but when I found a cool session somewhere.  Mike Sarrail went along most of the time, shooting photos and riding.

I shot sporadically until September, never really sure if I could actually make a video all by myself, start to finish.  I'd never done a big project like that all by myself.  Most riders thought the video footage  I was shooting would never show up anywhere at first.

I edited it in late September or early October of 1990.  I picked the best shots to make a fast paced and intense, grab you by the shirt collar and wake you up, intro.

When I finished the video, Keith Treanor came over to my apartment, and I showed the video to him alone.  That was the "premiere," I guess you could say.  After the intro, he turned around and said something like, "Holy shit, I didn't think your video was actually going to be good."  I just started laughing.

So as the flatland, quarterpipe, leathers-and-helmet-wearing era of the 1980's was fading, and the halfpipe, dirt jump and street-inspired, shorts and T-shirts, no-sponsors-left, 1990's were just starting, I got a wide range of riders in front of my camera.

Here's the guys in the intro:

Close-up backflip- Jeff Cotter- SoCal local flatlander to most people at the time
Close-up backyard to switch-up- Unknown flatlander at a Rose Bowl AFA contest
Rock-n-roll sprocket fakie on over-vert tombstone- Chris Day- young flatland wonder kid
Wall ride over my sister's head- Me (Steve Emig)- industry guy, cameraman, and mediocre rider at best, to most people.  My sister Cheri, then in college, is now a very experienced 4th grade teacher who's earned her Masters and National Boards.  Thanks for sitting there, sis!
Leary in the P.O.W. House backyard- John Paul Rogers- P.O.W. resident, S&M racer and jumper
Barspin tailtap on a quarterpipe- Todd Anderson- Camarillo ramp legend and 80's vert pro
1 hand 1 foot flyout jump- Keith Treanor- then unknown rager who just moved from New Jersey to Huntington Beach.
Rope-a roni (?)- Joe "Red" Goodfellow- H.B. local flatlander
Can-can on dirt at Mission Trails- Gary Laurent- Vert pro and Vegas show rider
High tailwhip to feet flyout on quarterpipe (a show trick)- Dan Hubbard- SoCal local rider and trick team owner
Front wheel 540 (with Stacy Peralta-esque hair flying)- Jeff Cotter
1 hand no footer at Mission Trails- Randy Lawrence- Desert rat turned H. B. local and bike shop mechanic
1 footed turndown over doubles- Josh White- legendary 80's vert rider who considered himself a ground rider
Nosepick to rockwalk drop-in over mini-spine- Unknown rider, 2-Hip show, I think.
1 hand no footed seat grab over long set of doubles- Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson- jumping nutcase
Tailwhip footplant on mini-ramp- Gary Laurent
Poorly timed double wall ride- Randy Lawrence (going opposite!) over me
Huge fakie wall ride- Keith Treanor
Lookback table thing off the tombstone- Jess Dyrenforth- GT rider turned inline stud
360 flyout- Keith Treanor
Chicken butt air at the Nude Bowl- 1980's skatepark and vert pioneer and legend Brian Blyther
Rockwalk drop into the Nude Bowl- Keith Treanor
Rock n' roll wall fakie- Keith Treanor
360 over mini-spine- unknown rider at 2-Hip show
High 1 hand no footer on halfpipe- John Peacy- Newcomer on the vert scene
No hander flyout- John Povah- former U.K. vert rider turned Orange County local
No footed X-up over doubles- Josh White
Street abubaca- Alan Valek- H.B. area local ripper
Nac-Nac over doubles- Alan Foster- AA pro racer, P.O.W. House resident (now known mostly as Brian Foster's older brother)
1 foot tabletop over doubles- Josh White
Bank hip 270- Alan Valek
Booster footplant on bench- Keith Treanor
Big 360 over doubles- Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson
Long sprocket grind on ledge- Eddie Roman- Skyway pro, street legend, and guy who made "Aggroman"
Jump over John Povah's head to flat- Keith Treanor.  That became the logo of the video in high contrast white on black, from Mike Sarrail's photo.  I've seen Keith get a full two feet higher on that jump than he did in this shot.

Oh, and the guy who's screaming "Are you ready?!" at the beginning- John Stainbrook- Toledo, Ohio punk rocker, lead guy of The Stain, and motel to traveling punk bands in the 1980's and 1990's.  Now he's a top Republican Toledo politics.

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...

Latest Sharpie drawings of mine- 9/26/2018

 This is my take on a photo Barspinner Ryan Brennan, now an accomplished free diver, snapped.  It was just a cool pic, and I like drawing animals, so I wanted to give it a try.  It's 11" x 14," and with Ryan's OK, I'd like to sell some copies of this one.  I definitely need to do more water oriented drawings like surfing, diving, sea animals, and all that.  They work good with my Sharpie style.  Sharpies on paper, #sharpiescribblestyle

 The top of these two pics is a small Bob Marley drawing I did.  It's 8 1/2" X 11," and there may be some copies available around if you dig it.  The bottom pic is a close-up of the drawing of Mike Ness of Social Distortion drawing that was in the last post.  This drawing is in th epossession of Social Distortion themselves, now.  In nearly all of my musician drawings, I put lyrics, song titles, and album titles in that background.  Up close you can read them, but from 10 feet away or so, they blend into a cool background texture.  Both are Sharpies on paper, in my unique scribble style.  #sharpiescribblestyle

I had been drawing different things in my scribble style with Sharpies for years before I got around to looking up Sharpie art online.  The coolest stuff I found then was black and white "doodle art" by artist Jessie Armand.  I've been trying to do similar stuff, just for the heck of it, ever since.  My doodle drawings aren't as cool as Jessie's, but I like doing this type of drawing when my brain is tired from my more tedious scribble style work.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".

The Social Distortion show in Richmond... not so Bad Luck...

Social Distortion singing "Prison Bound" about five years ago.  Brent Harding, the bass player and band member I gave my drawing to, is on the far left.  There's a close-up of him at 1:23.

In my ten years of being more-or-less trapped in central North Carolina, Social Distortion, and most of the bands I'd like to see live, never came close to where I was.  I realized one of the things I missed most about Southern California was the incredible amount of live music available to see there.

About a week and a half ago, walking down super trendy Cary Street here in Richmond, I saw a Social Distortion poster in a window.  My favorite band for about 30 years was coming here, and I was broke, homeless, and struggling to re-establish myself and get the Sharpie art making money in a new city.  Bad luck due to bad timing. 

I had started a drawing of Mike Ness/Social Distortion for myself many months ago, and it was in the back of my big sketch pad that I carry everywhere these days.  I took the opportunity to finish the drawing.  But I couldn't find the original photo I worked from online, and I couldn't get the tattoos on Mike's arms, or his right hand, to look just right.  I improvised, and to be honest, I wasn't totally happy with how the drawing ended up.  But I loved the background to it, it's the favorite of the 70-80 drawings I've done over the last couple of years.  I thought I could give the drawing to the band, but that sounded cheesy for a 52-year-old guy to do.  Here's the finished drawing.

I've been in a lull of drawing work.  I have one drawing scheduled to start tonight, the guy's getting paid and will have a deposit, and just got another pic to draw yesterday, but I've been out of cash for a week.  In fact, I had to go back to panhandling a bit for food money.  So the $43 ticket price was way out of my reach.  I've been trying to get enough to get a cheap motel room for a night, but that hasn't happened in a couple of weeks. A local gallery owner here, who's bought three of my drawings (at real good prices) said he might want it, but decided against it.  He's not a punk guy, much more into hip hop, R&B and the like.

So I decided to take the drawing down to the National Theater before the show and see if I could find a hardcore Social Distortion fan who wanted to buy it.  Then I could get a room and a decent, non-McDonald's meal, take a long ass hot shower, and chill for a day and get a decent night's sleep.  I know that selling a drawing of a band in front of the show is lame.  But living on the streets is more lame.  So I posted myself in front of the small, early crowd, right in front of the box office, and held the drawing up.  I didn't say a word, just waited for someone to comment on it. 

What blew me away was that not a single person did.  I could see a couple of crew people eyeing it from a distance.  Eventually, a man came out from the venue, and said I needed to leave the "line of site," I couldn't be selling knockoff band posters in front of the venue.   Fair enough.  I told him it was an original drawing, which he didn't realize. 

So I walked around the corner, past the tour buses and band equipment truck, down to the next corner by the parking garage.  There was a bus bench there, so I sat down, wondering what to do.  I could try to find a buyer coming out of the parking garage, but I generally sell my drawings for $120 to $160, which is a lot, but not when you know they take 30-40+ hours each to draw.  No one would have that much cash on them, and I can't do Paypal or VenMo at the moment.  Hmmmmm.

As I was pondering what to do, a guy walked around the corner closest to me.  I instantly recognized him as the bass player of Social Distortion, though I didn't know his name.  I held up the drawing as he walked towards me and asked, "Could you give this to Mike (Ness)?"  He was cool, and replied, "I can put it on the bus."  Perfect.  It was totally random, so I figured giving the drawing to the band was meant to be.  I realized I never signed the back, like I normally do, because I originally planned to keep it for myself.  I turned around, wrote my name, signed, and dated it, and handed it to him. 

I told him I didn't now his name, he said, "Brent," and we shook hands.  He was totally cool.  As he walked towards the tour bus, another guy talked to him for a minute, a guy who I think knew I'd been trying to sell the drawing out front.  Brent told him I gave him the drawing.  The guy walked over and offered me a ticket to the show.  That hadn't even occurred to me.  Seriously, it didn't.  I told him I totally wanted to go, but I pointed to the bags I carry everywhere and my sketch pad, "I don't know where to put my stuff.  He didn't either.  So I thanked him for the offer, and he walked off. I'm homeless, and everything I own is in those bags, my "office" (laptop), and my "art studio," my sketch pad and box of Sharpies and art supplies.  I can't lose that stuff.

I didn't know what else to do, so I pulled my journal notebook out of my pack, and wrote about what just happened.  I first saw Social Distortion at Scream in L.A., in 1988, when BMX freestyle friend, and punk rock walking encyclopedia, Mike Sarrail, took me to the show.  He was trying to introduce me to the alternative/punk music world.  When I heard Social Distortion play Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," I thought "Hell yeah, I dig these guys." I grew up with my mom playing 70's country on the radio, all day, every day, and Johnny Cash was always a favorite of mine.  I've been a fan of Social Distortion ever since.  But I never met any of them.  Until last night. 

So I didn't make it into the show, but I met Brent the bass player, and gave them a drawing of mine.  I may have pissed off my favorite band by trying to sell the drawing out front, or maybe they'll actually dig it.  Who knows.  Anyhow, it was a cool night either way. 

As I put my notebook back into my pack, I realized I had a couple of the small Johnny Cash drawing prints I did.  So I left one on the ground, outside the tour bus, with a note on the back thanking the band for their music helping me through a lot of tough times in 30 years.  I don't know if they found it. 

OK, back to the BMX blog about my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, tonight or tomorrow.  Now, play some Social Distortion on your computer and get back to pretending like you're working readers. 

Bum to Bankroll: Building a small business starting with no money in 2018

Here's Gary Vaynerchuk, real life successful entrepreneur, online marketing legend, and the first guy to call you out on your bullshit excuses about not making money.  He's got a huge following online and social media, and yet he still goes garage sale shopping... for fun.  Why?  Because his family immigrated here when he was three, and he grew up buying and selling stuff to make money.  He came from the world where buying and selling stuff had to make money.  He came out with this challenge last year for his followers who were starting with little or no money. What's hot on Ebay has changed in a year, but the game of "flipping", as people call it today, has not changed.

So what does this have to do with me and you?

If you're in a career you're fairly stoked on, and life and money are good for you, then this post isn't for you.  But if you're struggling with 1, 2, or 3 low paying jobs, or you have no job and can't find one, or you just need extra income, this may be for you.

As for me...  I landed here in Richmond, Virginia, completely randomly, with $3 in my pocket, less than two months ago.  I'll get into that story in another post.  If you follow this blog, you know I've been working to build my Sharpie artwork into a business for a couple of years now.  And it's still not a legit business, but it is income.  I make money selling my drawings on a regular basis.  That's awesome.  But, I'm still homeless at the moment, and and as cool as "Street Life" sounds in hip hop videos, it largely sucks in reality.  I mean, I'm a dirtbag by nature, but I do like taking showers on a regular basis.  And that's not happening at the moment.  Besides the smell (peroxide helps with that), the sketchy sleep, lack of sleep, crappy fast food-based diet, and hauling 30 pounds of junk everywhere, really take a toll on the body.  On the plus side, I've lost 14 pounds since I got to Richmond.  But I'm still well over 300 pounds at the moment.

Since I use Facebook, this blog, and other platforms to promote my artwork, I listen to a ton of videos to educate myself on ideas, techniques, and nuances of social media promotion, marketing, and business.  In today's world, that's called "self-educating."  I stumbled across Seth Godin's videos and then books about 6 years ago, and he really understands how the internet has changed the business world.  Then I found Mitch Joel's book, CTRL ALT Delete, at the library, and learned a lot from him about business in the high tech, communication-rich age.  In an interview with Mitch online, I heard him mention Gary Vaynerchuk, a competitor of his in the digital marketing agency world.  Gary puts out an absurd amount of content about making money in today's world of smart phones, social media, the internet, and our hyper-connected world. 

His "day job," is trying to help huge corporations and brands sell shit in today's world.  But most of those companies are still run by old guys still thinking with a largely Industrial Age mentality.  Those huge companies spend $80 BILLION a year on TV ads, but don't stop to think that hardly anybody even sees, let alone watches, TV commercials in today's world.  So Gary's media company tries to shepherd them into getting their message out in relevant ways in today's fast changing, media soaked world.

The cool thing is that Gary, for his own reasons, gives you, me, and the world, pretty much the same advice for free.  The sales and marketing world is changing fast, and he's telling all of us who listen how to adapt and make use of it.  So I listen to Gary's stuff a lot.

Since I'm homeless since landing in Richmond, I have to literally carry everything I own around with me all the time.  I have a small, bookbag-sized backpack, a larger dufffle bag over my shoulder, and my big 18" X 24" sketchpad wrapped in trash bags to keep it dry from the rain.  I had this amazing backpack for ten years, that I bought in a California swap meet for $4.  But it finally died right before I came here from North Carolina.  So I had a cheap ass little backpack that was already wearing out last week.  I needed a new one.

I know that Goodwill is a great place to get backpacks cheap, especially Goodwill outlet stores.  Why?  Because at the outlet stores, you pay for stuff by the pound.  And little backpacks are really light.  So I Googled it, and found the Goodwill outlet here in Richmond.  It was a long bus ride, and a bit of a walk, but I got there, put my own bags next to the register so I could go shop, and I went treasure hunting.

Here's the thing about Goodwill outlet stores, everything is put into big bins, kind of separated by category (clothes, shoes, books, random stuff), and you have to dig through the bins to see if there's anything you want.  I had two goals that day, and less than $10 to spend.  I needed a hoodie (or sweatshirt, or maybe a sweater) that would fit my 320 pound self.  That's a tough one.  Big guy clothes don't last at thrift stores.  But it's starting to get chilly, and it was a necessity.  I also needed a new small backpack, preferably one that would last more than two months.

The outlet was smaller than I imagined for a big city, and it was crowded.  Personally, I hate shopping for clothes.  I'm a shorts and T-shirts guy, and rarely buy clothes.  But it's been getting cold, and I needed some kind of sweatshirt.  I dug for maybe fifteen minutes through bins of mostly women's clothes of all kinds.  I was getting a little bummed that I might not find anything my size.  Then BAM, under skirts and jeans and tops I found a 4XL, light blue sweater.  SCORE.

Now I've always been a bit of a flipper, a wheeler/dealer as we called it when I was a kid.  I went with my dad to gun shows and garage sales as a kid, learning the basics of bartering as he bought and sold things, and nearly always made a little money.  It was a hobby for him, a kind of treasure hunt, and I caught that bug.  Years later, I back in 2003 or so, I stumbled across storage unit auctions, before the TV shows about them came out.  I bought units and sold the stuff on the side while working as a taxi driver.

Wandering around the Goodwill Outlet Store, I got the itch to find stuff to flip again.  I love the treasure hunt part of it.  I did find a backpack, a really good quality, High Sierra one, and a good messenger bag, too.  But at this store, they weren't sold by the pound.  I paid $2.99 for my backpack, and left the messenger bag they wanted $3.99 for. I almost felt I was being ripped off, getting a $20 back pack for $3, rather than the $1.75 it would have cost by the pound.  So I found both things I needed, and a still wrapped Harley Quinn poster, for $5.77.  Not bad.

Since then, I've been watching flipping videos quite a bit on You Tube.  As I thought about it, and listened to GaryVee's hype on flipping as the best way to make money with a small dollar starting point, I started thinking about flipping stuff in addition to selling my art.

So that's where I'm at.  I might sell a drawing today, which would give me some money to go hit Goodwill again.  I also have a drawing to start tomorrow, and will be getting a deposit for that one to get started.  So even though I don't have a place to live, an activated phone, or have Ebay as a viable selling option, I'm going to try to make a few extra bucks flipping stuff, as I work on my art as well.

I have to start making a fair amount of money soon to get a roof over my head, and start rebuilding my life.  And I'm going to spend more time blogging about my journey from "Bum to Bankroll" (that's actually a blog title I started once, then decided against).  Whatever your situation is, you're probably a bit better off to start with than I am.  If you're willing to read these long posts, hopefully you'll learn from my dealings and that will help you not only get motivated, but make some side money as well.

The story behind The Ultimate Weekend 1: It's time to make my own video

Then unknown Keith Treanor, with a crazy high fakie wall ride for 1990.

In 1990, the BMX freestyle world was in turmoil.  Let me set the scene.  BMX trick riding started the 1980's with Bob Haro and a handful of other young guys doing tricks on bikes.  Haro formed a team with friend Bob Morales, and they toured around and did some shows, letting BMX racers know there was more to be done on  BMX bike than just race and jump.  Racing itself was only a decade old then.  R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff formed the BMX Action Trick Team, and toured more extensively around the U.S., and BMX freestyle found a handful of followers across the U.S. and in Europe as magazines printed photos of tricks.  The weird little activity grew slowly.

 Bob Morales put on skatepark contests in 1983, Bob Haro created the Haro Freestyler, the first bike designed for trick riding, about the same time.  In 1984 Morales started the American Freestyle Association, and the first flatland and ramps competitions took place.  BMX freestyle became a sport.  Bob Osborn, publisher of BMX Action magazine, saw this new thing growing, and started FREESTYLIN' magazine to cover it.  Bob Haro, Bob Morales, Bob Osborn.  If it wasn't for guys named Bob, freestyle wouldn't exist, I guess.  I never thought about that until now.

Around the U.S. and U.K., little scenes sprang up, local trick teams were formed everywhere, and competitions and magazine coverage spread the weird little sport.  BMX freestyle grew exponentially in the mid-1980's.  A few videos were made, the most popular being the BMX Plus! videos: riders in leathers and helmets flatlanding in miniature gold courses and at the beach while McGoo added colorful commentary.  But the sport really got out to the world in print magazines.  By 1988, there were 400 or more riders entered at AFA Masters contests, which was a lot, considering almost all of them rode flatland, and many ramps as well.  Haro, GT, CW, Kuwahara, and other factory teams crisscrossed the country spreading the word about this new sport, and showing it to kids in person.

And then, in January of 1989, something happened at the main bicycle industry trade show in Long Beach, California.  I was there walking around, and I heard major bike business guys, in booth after booth, saying the same thing, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing."  Just like that, corporate money fled from the BMX racing and especially the freestyle world.  As far as the big time bike industry was concerned, BMX freestyle was dead.

But nobody told us riders.  We kept riding.  It was our life.  The lack of money in the sport got so bad that I showed up at the 2-Hip Meet the Street in New York City, at the already famous Brooklyn Banks.  I had a room in midtown Manhattan with Rich Bartlett, paid for by Vision Street Wear.  I was the Vision cameraman, Rich was the Vision street rider and vert rider.  We rode to the contest site, and sessioned with everyone.  As we were heading back, Rich told me, "Hey Dennis, Mat and some guys need a place to stay, I said they could crash in our room."  I said, "Cool."  Next thing I knew, Dennis McCoy, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, Rick Thorne, and a couple other Kansas City guys were sleeping on our floor for the weekend.  Why?  They didn't have sponsors.  Dennis McCoy was the top overall rider in the world for two years straight.  Mat was the top ramp rider pushing the sport, and a new pro.  THEY didn't have sponsors.  That's how much things had changed in a year.  So things went ghetto.  Ron Wilkerson put on the contest, low budget style, and it was the best weekend of my freestyle life.

A few months later, Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear, decided to shut down Unreel Productions, Vision's video company, which was where I worked.  They kept me, laid off all the higher paid producers, and I sat in a office with almost nothing to do for six months.  I realized it was time to try and make my own freestyle video.  I didn't know if I could actually do it by myself.  But I knew I needed to try.

I rode after work around Huntington Beach, and I rode at the H.B. pier on the weekends, doing flatland for beach crowds with Mike Sarrail, freestyle skateboarders Pierre Andre, Don Brown, and a few others.   Sometimes I'd go ride with other people.  I wanted to make a video that showed the world of riding I knew.  No uniforms, no helmets when riding flatland.  All kinds of riding: flatland, ramps, street, dirt jumping, and pools if we could find them. The big money may have left the sport, but bike riding, and skateboarding, which the bike world followed in ways, were changing dramatically.  Things were going more to the streets, and the whole idea that we ride mostly to progress, not to compete, was just starting to really settle into our consciousness.  Contests were cool, but we rode because we loved to ride, and we wanted to learn and invent new stuff.  Things were changing really fast in 1990, and I wanted to show it in a video, since I just spent 2 1/2 years at Unreel learning about how to make videos.

As crazy as it sounds now, the idea that every rider gets their own section in a video wasn't the standard yet.  Nobody went out to "shoot a part."  We just went out riding, and a few of us had video cameras.  Pretty much all riders had "real jobs" then.  So my basic idea for the video was the same idea I pitched to Andy Jenkins, Gork and Lew in 1986, in the Wizard Publications parking lot.  Andy was toying with the idea of a FREESTYLIN' magazine video then.  My video idea was simple:  Get off work on Friday afternoon,  ride all weekend with as many different people, in as many different places, as possible.  End it as an exhausted rider on Sunday night.  For a rider, it would be The Ultimate Weekend.  That was the idea.

So I just started taking my $1100, full size S-VHS, RCA camera out every weekend and riding with everyone, and everywhere I could.  We packed up the little blue Datsun pick-up I bought off Mike Sarrail, and went out to session.  Flatland.  Street.  Flyout dirt jumps.  Racer-made double jump trails.  Freestyle shows.  Ramps.  Pools.  Even a skatepark in Tijuana , Mexico.  I shot video, (and rode) with legendary freestylers from the 1980's, up-and-coming riders, H.B. locals, racers, and met a few new friends who went on to legendary status in the 1990's.  Because things in riding were changing so fast, my video wound up having a lot of firsts in it.  It was a struggle to finish it, it took about 8 months, but I managed to shoot, log, edit, and put out a full length video, which cost me $5,000 out of my pocket.  Mike Sarrail came through with a last minute loan to help me get it done.  I dropped The Ultimate Weekend with little fanfare in October of 1990.  Since rider-made videos, and videos in general, were few and far between then, so there was no premiere party.  During the process, I quit at Vision, and started working freelance for a surf video distributor called NSI.  It was a sketchy, but fun place to work, and he sold about 500 copies of my video in the U.S., and bought the foreign rights.  I have a feeling he sold a bunch more videos that I got paid for.  I was super shy, and a horrible salesman then, so I let NSI handle it.  For an independently made video, it sold fairly well.  But I only maid about $2,500 back, so I lost about $2,500 producing the video.  I had bad and expensive habits from working at Unreel, where money never mattered.  I didn't know how to make a good video cheap then. 

Eighteen years later, in 2008, after over five years struggling as a taxi driver, and a year living on the streets of Southern California, I moved to North Carolina to live with my family and regroup.  In a 5 foot by 5 foot storage unit in Huntington Beach was all my raw footage, my master tapes for The Ultimate Weekend and other videos I'd made, my magazine collection (including a complete FREESTYLIN' magazine collection), and my other stuff.  I arranged for some friends in Cali to pay the late fee on my storage unit and ship all the good stuff to me.  But I needed to borrow $150 from my parents.  My mom said she could loan it to me before I flew to NC.  Two weeks after I got to NC, things changed, as they often do with her.  She said, "Oh, I can't afford to help you with that."  And that's how I lost all my BMX stuff, including one of the best BMX freestyle video footage collections, ranging from 1989 to 2007.  Poof.  It was all gone.  It probably got sold to one of the people now on Storage Wars, most likely, since it was sold in a storage unit auction.

I went into a deep depression, and then I started blogging about my memories of my days in the BMX freestyle world.  Memories were all I had left.  Ten years later, I'm still telling some of those stories.  This is my main tie to the BMX freestyle world, now.  In the next few weeks, I'll tell the stories behind The Ultimate Weekend, section by section. It was a crazy time, and I recently realized that I never told any of those tales.  Hopefully it will be (mostly) worth reading. 

An Engineer's Son: Why I'm always looking to the future

This locomotive, to pull trains in mines, was made by Plymouth Locomotive Works, where my dad, Tom Emig, worked in the late 1970's.  The company went under in about 1983, but decades later, Plymouth locomotives are still working around the world.  That's what they were known for, incredible reliability.

I write about a bunch of totally different things on this blog, from old school BMX freestyle stories to  economics and our future.  Quite a few people wonder why I keep writing about the recessions, the economics of the United States, and things I never went to school for.  These are the blog posts that I've actually had my life and well being threatened over several times.  Some people think I have no business writing about these subjects.  Sorry.  This is a huge area of interest for me, and I'm always looking to the future and where we're headed as a society.  Why?  Because I'm an engineer's son.

And that's where Plymouth Locomotives, like the one above, come in.  I was about ages 10 to 13 when my dad worked at Plymouth Locomotive Works, in Plymouth, Ohio.  The Industrial Age was still roaring, most people worked in factories, or in the office next to the factory, like my dad.  This was the first plant I remember my dad taking me to as a kid, walking me through on a Saturday morning, as he went to check on something being built on overtime hours by the shop guys.  It was in this factory that he taught me to always look away and shield my eyes when I saw someone welding, since that super bright glare can damage unshielded eyes.

It was around this time that my dad first explained how he designed things.  I can't remember the actual situation, but I remember his outlook on how something should be designed.  First, he had to design a machine.  So, like this mining locomotive above, He had to make a machine a certain size, to fit certain sized rails, with all the parts needed to pull mine trains through tunnels in mines around the world.  So he had a certain size locomotive, and he and the other engineers had to make the engine, drive train, hydraulics, and all the mechanical pieces fit into that machine.  But that was only the start.  My dad knew that people had to work on and inspect his machines, so he thought about how that would happen, and in the case of this locomotive, they painted the whole thing white, inside and out, to help inspectors and mechanics who would be working on these in low light years later.  My dad would call the customer, and ask what the weather was like where the machine would be used.  Did it have to deal with 120 degree heat or 40 below zero cold?  That was taken into account.

My dad thought about how the machine, like this locomotive, would be shipped to the job site.  Would it be partially taken apart, ride on a train, a ship, a truck, and then have to be reassembled?  How could he design it to make that reassembly process happen better and without damage to the machine?  Would the machine operate in a place with lots of dust?  That was taken into account.  Would the machine operate in high humidity where rust and mud and sludge would be an issue? He took that into account.

Then, once all those factors were thought out, my dad would go out into the shop floor, and he'd sit down on a pallet, over lunch, with the welders and machinists and assembly guys, he'd tell them what he was working on, and ask how he could design it to make the actual assembly process easier, more efficient, and smarter.  My dad actually used to get in trouble at Plymouth because he would go out and have lunch with the shop guys, and sketch out a part on a napkin and give it to the machinists.  Then he'd give the official design to the lower level draftsmen, who would make the actual drawing for a part (they actually drew on paper then).  By the time the draftsmen took the official drawing out to the shop to have it built, the part was already sitting there, built perfectly, made from my dad's napkin sketch.  That drove one of his bosses nuts.

At one point, my dad told me his process.  He said he tried to sit there and envision the part he needed to design, how it interacted as a part of the larger machine.  Then he pictured the entire life of that machine, going decades into the future, and he tried to design in every little thing he could to make that part or machine do its job properly, and last as long, and be as reliable as possible.  He tried to anticipate every problem that might occur, and design the solution into the part.  He knew there would always be things he wouldn't think of, or crazy circumstances that may happen.  But he tried to design every machine in a way to alleviate nearly all possible problems that the machine would encounter in its whole working life.

Being my dad's son, I simply thought this was how everything was designed.  I also looked far into the future at what was likely to happen.  But I didn't, and still don't, have the mechanical genius my dad did.  He truly was a genius at what he did.  My area of interest is human society, and projecting what we're doing into the future, looking for the problems that will definitely occur, the problems that will likely occur, and other things that may happen.  Then, like my dad and his locomotives and other machines, I look for the solutions that that will keep most of those problems from happening, or will lessen the bad effects.

We can't predict the future absolutely.  But we can project what we're doing, and look at other major factors, prominent people, and forces in society, and get a good idea of possible problems.  Once we do that, we can, if we truly desire, take actions that will head things in a better, all around more positive, direction.  We can design our world to alleviate or lessen some of the problems will will undoubtedly face.

That's why I write about the next recession, future trends, and social issues.  I'm thinking ahead, finding inevitable issues, and looking for ways to get a head start on dealing with those issues.

Now, there are a lot of powerful people and organizations and informal groups who have their own agendas, many of those agendas are not so good for the whole population.  People with agendas, particularly devious ones, usually have to get a bit delusional to justify their acts.  When you look at these agendas from a more objective point of view, you see they're full of problems and will result in bad consequences.  In the intelligence community world, they even have a name for this, "blowback."  I heard about that when a book of that title came out years ago.

Groups of people are continually making plans, and even conspiring to work their way into power by taking actions that do harm to lots of other people.  Yet they almost always imagine their crazy plans will work, and there will be no reaction.  As an example, since the Reagan era, there have been all kinds of political actions taken to allow certain groups of people to amass huge amounts of money, and the power that went with that money.  Our American society has become horribly corrupt over these past 30-40 years, with CEO's getting $100 million incomes and huge golden parachutes, while the vast majority of people have seen their standard of living drop year after year for decades.  The inevitable consequence of this long term corruption, and manipulation of the financial world, is that the majority of people are really pissed off.  We have huge populist movements rising up, both on the political Right and the political Left.  Yet the people who planned for years to transfer most of our country's wealth from the old American Middle Class to a small financial and political elite, seem completely surprised by the rise of Donald Trump and of Bernie Sanders in the last election.

This was inevitable.  When you take money from 250 to 300 million people for 30-40 years, eventually they wise up and get pissed.  These same people who engineered the American wealth transfer of the last 40 years also didn't see high tech changing the social and business world the way it has.  They definitely didn't have Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Google duo in their master plan.

I try to look at as many major societal forces as possible, try to imagine how they will interact with each other, and then explain what the INEVITABLE consequences will be.  I'm imagining the future of society at large the way my dad imagined the future of the locomotives he designed, some of which are still working decades after the company went out of business.

Maybe this will help some of you understand why I think about these big picture, long term, issues, and why I write about them.  Because we don't HAVE to deal with all the consequences of the less honest people working in our world.  We can do things today to build a better overall future.  I just point out some of the areas we should take a more serious look at.  

My dad, the engineering genius, a couple of years before his death in 2012.

Wrong Direction

I got a message a couple of days ago from North Carolina, telling me someone might want to have me do a drawing of the band One Direction.  That didn't sound interesting, but the money was good.  Since I'm currently homeless, that would mean getting a cheap motel room for a night, a nice hot shower, a few art supplies, and food and bus fare for a few days.  But I've had issues getting paid from the person who contacted me at times, and not getting paid from them when I really needed the money is a big part of why and when I left North Carolina when I did. 

After thinking it over, I decided I wasn't going to do the One Direction piece.  The person who contacted me is, right now, sitting on $1900 worth of my artwork (at their prices), of which $1005 would be my cut if it all sold.  Some of it may already be sold, I don't know.  Selling THAT artwork would seriously help my current situation.  If I actually got paid.  I haven't seen a dime from them since June, I think.  So I wrote back and said, "I'd rather die on the streets than waste a week of my life drawing a picture of One Direction."  OK, I don't plan to die on the streets.  But it is a possibility that I go to sleep knowing could happen every single night.  I left North Carolina, I'm not expecting to make another dime from there, and I'm building new strategies to make money with my artwork and writing.  Also, I get really into the music of the singers and bands I draw, and it takes 35-45 hours over a week to do one drawing.  I don't want to spend that much of my time drawing a pop boy band.  If one of my drawings took three hours to do and sold for $40, doing a drawing of One Direction wouldn't be a big deal.  But I'm not in to spending a week on them. 

A rather long and heated message came back, saying that the person who brought up this offer, among other things, will stop promoting me and will burn all the work they have of mine.  Good.  But I doubt it will be burned.  But if you're in Winston-Salem, and you like my stuff, it might be for sale at a discount right now.  Art is a weird world.  OK, on to my next drawing here in Richmond...

Why huge businesses (and towns and cities) die

I'm an artist who actually sells art on a regular basis.  I don't make a real living at it yet, but I'm getting there, and I literally started without a dime.  I'm also homeless at the moment.  The night before last I slept outside a few hours after 13 confirmed tornadoes, one fatal, blazed through this area.  Yet I spend time on this blog, Facebook, Pinterest, and not Instagram every day.  I "produce content."  For free.  For anyone interested.  Every day.  Why?  Because I realize that that's the game now.  I listen to Gary Vaynerchuk nearly every day as well.  Gary doesn't tell you what you want to hear.  He doesn't get you psyched to "Go for it!"  Gary has been working with the internet as a businessman since about 1997.  He's been using social media since it popped up.  He was on You Tube on day one.  He tells us all what's happening, where things are going, and why you have to simply accept it and deal with the change that's happening.

Toys-R-Us, the long time dominator in the toy sales world, is out of business because they didn't listen people like to Gary Vee.

Your world, no matter what you do, has been dramatically changed by new technology in the last 20 years.  It's happening faster and faster, and there's a lot more to come.  And there are a lot more old school companies that will collapse in the next few years.  Listen up.  Why?  Because your world will be rocked by what is happening.  You can learn the skills to take advantage of this change.  Or you can walk out of your job crying and surprised when they lay your ass off because they went out of business like Toy-R-Us, and Blockbuster, and all the other businesses dying off now. 

It's up to you.

Homeless Artist/blogger/entrepreneur life 9/17/18

The Synchronicity Trifecta

Last Saturday, after the incident below, I went to the library to work.  I'm writing a zine about a bunch of thoughts on creative work from the things I've done over the last 33 years.  I took a break, and grabbed the local entertainment weekly, called Style.  Flipping pages, I saw a little write-up for an event that was happening that day.  There was an art festival, at a place called 43rd Street Gallery, and, among other things, they were going to raise money for an organization that helps the homeless.  I thought, "Shit, that's the synchronicity trifecta for me right now.  I'm an artist, 43 is my lucky number (and the lucky number for the whole sport of BMX, that I come from), and I'm currently homeless."  So I knew I had to make it to that event.  That's just too much of a coincidence to ignore.

 So I looked up the location, then figured out what bus route would get me there, then picked up my stuff and headed out.  With Hurricane Florence wreaking havoc one state below us, I knew there was a good chance of rain.  But it was sporadic, and I figured I could dodge it.

It took the bus forever to get to the stop I waited at, it happened to be a route that ran every hour on the weekends.  As I got off at the stop at about 45th street, it was starting to rain.  I pulled the hidden hood out of my jacket, and headed up the sidewalk.  I walked under a magnolia tree about 50 feet from the front door of the gallery, and the rain just let loose.  With lots of those big leaves above me, I didn't get very wet, but I watched a few people dash in and out of their cars through it.  I also noticed that the street wasn't closed off, and there were no artist or vendor canopies.

The rain slowed down, and I headed in to a small, but very crowded gallery.  I asked one of the women if I could put my bags out of the way (I have to carry everything I have, everywhere I go, for the time being), and she led me into the pottery studio.  After that, I looked around at the art.  There were maybe 10 to 12 artists represented, and everyone's work was really high quality.  There were several different types of pottery, some paintings, and many other things.  After browsing it all, I waited for the line at the register to finish, and then I talked to two of the women from from the gallery.  Robin Cage, owner and the primary potter, was one, and I didn't catch the name of the other.  I told them about reading about the festival, and being an artist, 43 influenced, and homeless.

As it turned out, after Style wrote the promo piece, Hurricane Florence came along, and was headed straight for this area, before she decided to make that left turn and destroy South Carolina instead.  So the festival had been cancelled, but they were still having a "no hurricane" sale, and a raffle for the homeless-helping group.  So I got to talk to a couple professional, established artists, showed Robin my Sharpie work, and got some kind words, and a bit of help to continue on my weird, artistic journey.  So even though it wasn't the full festival, it was definitely worth going.  If you're here in the Richmond area, I definitely say you should check out 43rd Street Gallery.  It's small, but packed with great, local made, creative works.  Functional pieces of handmade pottery make really good gifts.  Just sayin'.

I'm Hatin' It

As a wandering artist/blogger guy in a new city, I've been spending a lot of time in McDonald's.  They have drink refills, dollar drinks, dollar-ish food items, and wifi.  It's funny, most actual McDonald's managers now don't realize that McDonald's made a brilliant move by going into the cheap side of the trendy coffee drinks, upscaling their restaurants, and adding wifi.  The whole point to doing that was to basically become a less expensive version of Starbuck's.  Another reason was to distance Mickey D's from Carl's Jr./Hardee's, Burger King, and the rest of the old school,"fast food" burger joints.

If you've ever been in a McD's in the morning, you know that they sell a ton of coffee drinks.  Sure, you don't have the too-cool-for-school hipster vibe, and $17 scones like a Starbucks or a trendy local coffee place, but it serves the same purpose for a lot of working class people, and a lot of small business people use Micky D's as a part time office.  That's what I've been doing.

I know the whole McDonald's coffee/wifi strategy because I had a regional manager explain it to me in Huntington Beach, CA many years ago.  I just happened to be eating breakfast there when they were measuring the place for the re-model, and he was explaining the concept to the store manager.  I know that having people hang out and work in McDonald's, and doing away with the babysitting aspect of the kiddie lands, was the whole point.  So I've been making good use of that idea, drawing and working on my laptop to promote my artwork.

But I happened to start hanging out in what is- honestly- the worst run McDonald's I've ever seen in my life.  On top of that, it was at a location where a bunch of homeless people congregated.  So they had the "30 minutes then leave" signs that some restaurants have.  I, of course, ignored those signs, as did everyone else, and made the best us of my wifi time that I could.

But since I was obviously homeless, the incredibly incompetent staff often gave me some attitude for sitting there morning and evening.  Unlike many of the bums hanging out there, I always bought something, I didn't bring used cups in for refills, I didn't trash the bathroom, I didn't complain that it took 10 to 15 minutes to get my order taken when there were only three people in line, and I didn't complain that the biscuits were always hard.  They didn't even taste like the amazing biscuits I love at McDonald's.

But some guy I didn't recognize walked into the back section last Saturday morning, where I was eating and another homeless couple was hanging out after buying drinks.  He yelled at us both and said we were staying to long, and we had to leave.  They weren't going to put up with our crap anymore.  The funny thing was, I looked at my receipt, I had my order taken 14 minutes earlier, and I had just got my food and sat down.  I had 16 minutes left.  The guy turned around and I said, "Fuck you."  He didn't hear me, I guess, and went back into the kitchen.

Another woman kicked the couple near me out a few minutes later, but not me.  But the point had been made.  In the time I sat there, I figured out that I had spent $200 to $225 in that McDonald's in that last five weeks, and I had been in the hospital one of those weeks.  So after getting yelled at by that asshole, I decided, "You know what, I will GLADLY take my $200 a month in business from your store, and go to another one.  Fuck you idiots.  Oh, and if anyone from McDonald's corporate wants to make a video of how NOT to run a McDonald's, store #21,666 in Richmond is your place.  There's a somewhat effeminate, dark skinned guy who works evenings as a assistant manager, I think, He kicks ass.  He's really good at his job.  Everyone else at that store, including the owner, who I have talked to, should be fired on the spot.

Tornadoes in Richmond today

This happened in the last couple of hours, about 9 miles from where I am.  There's one person confirmed dead, in this building you see getting destroyed.  I'm in the main Library in downtown Richmond. 

We were asked to go down into the basement a couple hours ago because of a tornado warning.  I've done that many times as a kid in Ohio, and sheltered in place (no basement) ready to go into the apartment bathroom in North Carolina.  One tornado touched down about 10-15 miles from us in Ohio once, and one about 20 miles away in North Carolina once.  I didn't expect much.  The library staff put the local news up on a big screen downstairs. 

Last I heard, 8 confirmed tornadoes in the Richmond area today, at least a dozen more radar indicated, possible tornadoes.  Three confirmed tornado touchdowns in Richmond area.  One known fatality.  One car on its roof.  At least three or four cases of serious roof/structure damage.  Crazy day.  Even crazier seeing as I'm homeless and sleeping outside tonight.  Homelessness, it's not just pathetic, it's an adventure. 

Oh, and the local news station, CBS News 6, got struck by lightning while I was watching a little while ago.  Crazy.  These storms are the remnants of Hurricane Florence.  Guess Richmond didn't totally escape he wrath.

Recent drawings 9/16, 2018

 Just did this one a week and a half ago, sold cheap to a gallery here in Richmond, VA.  This is the second Notorious B.I.G. drawing I've done.  The owner bought a couple other of the drawings I brought with me from NC.  I just got out of the hospital then, and I was hatin' it, and needed to get a room to recover.  So I sold a couple cheap, and then  did this one.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24

 This Robert Plant drawing is the first one I did when I first got to Richmond.  Some of my two month backlog of drawings to do bailed out when I left NC.  So this one was next on  the list.  I actually learned quite a bit about Led Zeppelin, listening to documentaries as I drew this one.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".

I decided to draw some smaller, 8 1/2" X 11" pictures, and make a few prints to sell.  I started with Johnny Cash, The Man in Black.  Then I just did the Bob Marley last week.  I haven't sold any of the prints yet, but several people commented that they like the Johnny Cash pic.  I'm not sure why Bob is sideways.  Maybe he's stoned and just fell over.  Sharpies on paper, 8 1/2" X 11".

Recessions are rehab for Wall Street

Amy Winehouse on Letterman singing "Rehab."  Just like Amy, at some point in the next year or so, the economy will be dead.

So... back in April, I called the beginning of the Next Great Recession.  I was wrong.  Truth is, we should have had a recession start back in about 2017.  It had been 9 years since the Great Recession of 2008 (which actually started in 2007).  The amount of student debt in the U.S. ($1.4-$1.5 trillion) is higher than the amount of subprime loans that triggered the 2008 collapse ($1.3 trillion).  The Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index peaked in late January, though it's trying to get back up there again lately.  The Federal Reserve said they were going to start raising interest rates back towards a more normal rate, which would slow down the sluggish economy.  Trump started prattling on about a trade war with China, then actually started signing off on tariffs. 

All of those things were signs that we're on the brink of a stock market slide and then the collapse into another "Great" recession, likely to be worse than 2008.  It was just a matter of what the trigger would be to set things off down the slope.

The stock market, as a whole, has been heading up since March 2009.  When Trump "won" the presidency, it immediately dropped 800 points the next morning, as the world freaked out.  But then it started heading up, and it went up at a steeper rate than it did during the Obama years.  Why?  Because the Republican establishment and the corporate world were sure that they could get the massive "tax cuts" package passed with Trump in the White House.  It took a year, while nearly all of Trump's other promises collapsed, but the tax cut bill got passed in January.  That tax cut package was basically welfare for major corporations and the super wealthy.  It didn't do much of anything for average Americans.  That's what "tax cut" plans are for.  And that bill passing, with nothing else big to look forward to, is another reason the Next Great Recession should have started. 

One possible trigger after another came and went, the Dow Jones index dropped, but there was no big collapse.  In fact, the Nasdaq, the tech centered stock index, kept going up.  It finally seems to have peaked about a month ago, when people ganged up on Facebook and their stock dropped about 20%.  But still, no recession.

It was obvious that there was an incredible upward pressure keeping the stock market, and our whole economy, afloat.  But I couldn't figure out exactly what it was.  Then I ran into a talk by former quant (Wall Street numbers super brainiac) Nomi Prins.  I think it was this speech.  She's a former Wall Street insider at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs.  Her new book, Collusion, (no relation to Trump/White House) explains why the inevitable recession hasn't started.  The Fed has basically been creating money out of nothing (they can actually do that, that's pretty much their whole schtick), and they've been pumping it back into the economy.  But instead of going into building new businesses, roads and bridges, or things that help average folk, it's been mostly just going into the hands of the wealthy and  into the stock market. 

Think of it this way.  A hardcore gambling addict goes to Las Vegas, and every time he runs out of money, somebody gives him a credit card with $100,000 cash advance on it... that he doesn't have to pay back.  He should be dragged out of the casinos and sent to rehab for his addiction, but new money keeps coming, and life seems good to him. 

Or a crack addict finds herself waking up one morning on the side of the 5 freeway, naked, and surrounded by mule hoof prints and chocolate sprinkles.*  It must have been quite an evening.  When shit gets that crazy, it's definitely time to head to rehab and get straightened out.  But a pimped out Escalade rolls up, gives her clothes to put on, a ride back to her house, and a bunch more crack.  No need for rehab when the crack just keeps flowing. 

That's a simple, but pretty realistic, way of looking at our economy right now.  Wall Street is on a neverending binder because they just keep getting more drugs (cheap money from The Fed.)  So the very necessary trip to rehab (the next recession), hasn't started yet. 

So that's where we are.  But the the game can't go on forever.  And the longer we are artificially kept from the recession that should have already happened, the worse the next recession will actually be.

At this point, I'm basically sure that this next recession, which could happen any time, but may be delayed for a year or so, will be worse than 2008.  It's gonna hurt, and it's gonna leave some marks.  If it doesn't end up happening until 2020, it probably won't be a recession at all, but will likely be a full blown Great Depression like in the 1930's.  Depressions aren't necessarily deeper economic pits than recessions, but they last longer. 

The reality is, we're in for a very serious, and very long economic downturn.  It could happen at any point, like tomorrow, or in a year.  All kinds of means, mostly The Fed pulling money out of its ass, is keeping it from happening at the moment.  But it will come, probably late this year or spring of next year, possibly later. 

At this point, taking into account Nomi Prins' research, and the Mueller investigation, I think President Donald Trump being taken into federal custody for a whole series of treasonous crimes will most likely be the trigger.  And yes, I think he actually will be the first president actually indicted, and even taken into custody, because the charges against him will be so serious.  The crazy part will be that the Republican/Religious Right Establishment will want Mike Pence, and their people, to take over.  But it seems very likely at this point that there will be legitimate proof that Trump's actions and the Russian interference in the 2016 election, was enough to sway the election away from Hillary Clinton. 

If that is how things turn out, then both Trump AND Pence were illegitimately in office, and Pence would not be the next in line as president.  Technically, Hillary would.  Maybe.  We'd be in brand new territory at that point.  Just for the record, I'm no Hillary fan at all.  She'd be better than Pence, but I don't want either of them in charge, personally. 

Personal thoughts aside, if things do turn out this way, or in some similar way, when Mueller's investigation is complete, it would create so much turmoil, that there's no way the stock market, and the economy as a whole, could be buoyed up much longer. 

In any case, the recession that doesn't want to be will eventually come.  The political turbulence from the Mueller investigation, and any similar investigations that start after November, will make things even crazier.  Like Amy Winehouse, Wall Street is doing everything they can to avoid going to rehab.  We know how that worked out for Amy.

Nutty time ahead people.  Not sure exactly when, but they're coming.  Plan accordingly. 

By the way, my interest in these things, and my thoughts and writings along these lines, are why some people within the political arm of the Religious Right and evangelical world have gone to great lengths to keep me from expressing my ideas, and from making a living for the last 17 years or so.  You didn't think I was homeless so much because I like sleeping under the stars, did you?   

My drawing of Brian Foster

Here's my first drawing of one of the most stylish and amazing riders of all time, a guy who got inducted into the BMX Hall of Fame a few days ago, and my one time roommate at the P.O.W. house in about 1993, Brian Foster.  He's blasting a one foot table 360 over some huge ass jumps, in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, I think.

I was asked to draw this by Chad, at Powers Bike Shop, who I met recently after landing here in Richmond, VA a few weeks ago.  Thanks Chad for the order, it totally helped me as I struggle first to survive at the moment, and then to turn my drawings into a legit little business.  I was also stoked to draw Brian, since he's been one of my favorite guys to watch ride since I met him at the P.O.W. House 25 years ago.  When Chad first mentioned Brian, the first thought in my mind was a weird little moment at the P.O.W. House.

The whole point of that house was to put a bunch of guys in a house, everybody sharing bedrooms, to make California rent as cheap as possible.  We were in the long recession of the early 1990's, and everyone in the bike and skate industry learned how to make about ten different meals out of of packet of ramen.  At any given time at the House, there were 3 or 4 guys totally scraping by money-wise, which we called the Roaches.  I was working as a furniture mover at the time, and we were moving government offices, but the government was two months behind paying the moving company, which couldn't pay us workers.  So I was in ramen mode one day when a few guys got back from a race.  They had made some money, so they ordered pizzas from What A Lot of Pizza, the original $5 pizza place in SoCal.  I sat there salivating, holding off on making the evening's double ramen pack dinner.  Brian ate his pizza, but left the crusts, and held the box up, "Who wants pizza bones?"  I jumped up, lept across the guys on the couch, and grabbed the box.  I was stoked to have some pizza crusts to take the depression out of a couple days of straight ramen.  That was life at the P.O.W. House, we all scraped by in our own way, some guys chowing pizza while other guys were condemned to ramen at times.

Brian Foster has been riding BMX bikes seriously for about 40 years.  And out of all the amazing riding he's done in all those years, my first memory when he was mentioned was the weird little pizza incident at the P.O.W. House.  Memory is a weird thing, which is probably why I'm the guy writing old school BMX stories these days.

Brian's older brother Alan was also a great rider, AA pro racer, and really good jumper.  In fact Alan was in my first self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend, in the first video coverage of the S&M Bikes posse and P.O.W. House.  You can see him in this clip, bailing 360 attempts, at :29 and :46.  Alan moved out to California from the East coast, to race, and younger brother Brian worked for the folks at Cyclecraft in Tennessee for a while, then followed big bro Alan out West to live in about '93. Although I was a year or two older, Alan was called "Dad" at the P.O.W. House, because he was the most responsible guy overall.  Dave Clymer was kind of the mascot, the guy everyone thought of first when the House was mentioned, but Alan was the guy making sure the rent actually got paid, utilities stayed on, and the guy who climbed up on the roof in the rain to tack up plastic sheeting when a roof leak led to a drywall ceiling collapse inside.  Our cheap rent was made possible by Alan keeping important details of our house under control, so the rest of us could be mindless BMX drunks most of the time.  Thank Alan.

In those days, Alan and Brian were just two of my roommates, and we'd all hop in a truck to go ride a ditch, or Sheep Hills, or the local street spots around Westminster, or just session the backyard ramps.  Everyone was a damn good rider, except me, I was the token goofy freestyler.  But where Brian did stand out back then was in style.  Brian's 1 hand 360 tables and other tricks were amazing things to watch, even back then.  The jumps weren't near as big then, but when it came to stylish 360's, only Shaun Butler could rival Brian's style at the time. 

In the BMX world  of the early 1990's, most AA pro racers were gym rats, training like crazy, and not spending much time at the trails, and definitely not doing much street riding.  But at the P.O.W. House, we had Dave Clymer, Todd Lyons, Alan Foster, and Brian Foster, all of which could hang in races, and shred on trails and street.  Brian fit right in to our weird group.  But his style, and soon his ability to hit REALLY BIG jumps of the day, started to build his rep as one of the best dirt jumpers out there.

The one absolutely INSANE jump where I shot footage of Brian was at the Dover Cliff Jump.  You can see Brian on the jump in 44 Something at 21:57 and 22:25.  (You can also see Alan Foster with a sweet one foot tabletop in the previous section at 21:07) This monstrosity at Dover was built by "jump builders to the stars," Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean, on the dirt bluffs over the harbor of super-rich Newport Beach, California.  There were several jumps up there, some doubles, and a couple cool flyout jumps.  But the Dover Cliff Jump, was a beast.  It started with a full on, first straight speed, racer sprint towards a big crevasse.  Then there was a near vertical drop in, at high speed, about 14 feet down, then right back up to a 7 foot high lip.  The gap was a huge, 35 foot deep ravine, filled with brush, maybe a few cacti, and probably a rattlesnake or two.  The landing was flat.  But the landing was 8 feet HIGHER than the lip.  People estimated the distance at 25 to 35 feet.  I stepped it off the day we shot the footage that's in 44 Something, and it was a solid 25 feet.  So, to recaptthat's a full sprint, gnarly ass vert drop in, down 14 feet then up a 7 foot lip, jumping 8 feet up while crossing a 25 foot gap.  Even in today's insane jumping world, the Dover Cliff jump would be a serious jump.  In 1993, it was like Evel Knievel's Snake River Canyon jump for BMX.  Only the craziest jumpers in the Huntington Beach/Sheep Hills scene even tried it.  Brian Foster lofted a stylish tabletop and a no footed can-can over it.  By the way, that's English bloke Paul Roberts who slammed his nose into his cross bar by casing the landing.  GNARLY.  This clip in 44 Something was short, but it was noticed around the BMX world for years, as 44 Something wound up one of, if not THE, top selling BMX video of the 1990's.  The Brian Foster legend of insane riding in videos began.

As for me these days, my drawings take around 35 to 45 hours each to draw.  They are 18" X 24".  Since my first art show was in a music shop, I've been asked to draw musicians and rap stars mostly, so I listen to their music, interviews, and documentaries about them while I draw.  I've learned a lot about these people, and I get a vibe about them that often gives me ideas as  I draw.  For this drawing of BF, I watched most of the video segments available, listened to a podcast of Brian from a few weeks ago.  I haven't seen Brian since, probably since one of the Core Tour events in the mid 2000's.  I had no idea he was going to medical school, and actually working towards a doctorate in physical therapy.  He's as low key as usual, but sounds like he's going to be a damn good therapist.  If you read this Brian, I'm proud of you once again surprising us with an cool new phase of life.  After 20-some years of surprising BMXers, mostly by finding...and landing...the craziest gap lines at events, now the Blue Falcon is going to be helping physically broken people recover and get back to life.  Never under-estimate the P.O.W. House guys.  Clymer's an iron worker now, Moeller, of course, owns S&M and Fit Bikes, Sal is a high school history teacher in a tough school in Philly, and Alan a Kris run a Day Care.  I guarantee that Miss Iroquois (P.O.W. House angry neighbor) never expected any of that from us drunk punks back in the day. 

For those of you reading this, I'm working on turning my art and riding into a business to support me.  Original drawings, like the one of Brian above, now cost $120, and take 35-45 hours.  Yeah, that's like  $4 an hour, and that's part of the reason I'm temporarily homeless (again.)  I started focusing on the drawing about 2 1/2 years ago,  when I was unable to find ANY  "real" job, and I've been selling drawings (fairly cheap) ever since.  I started without a dime, and I've survived, but haven't been able to get up to the level of becoming a legit business.  You can check out my body of work on Instagram now (Steve Emig 43), Pinterest (Steve Emig), Facebook (Steve Emig in Winston-Salem, NC).  I finally just got on Instagram, but I've loaded up photos of over 60 of my drawings.  Check 'em out and let me know what you think.

If you'd like one of my original drawings, email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com, or message me on Facebook. It's $120 for an 18" X 24" original right now.  The prices WILL rise before too long, and I had a 2 month backlog right before leaving NC.  Local drama and not getting paid, and the small size of the scene there, led me to move on.  I'm also starting to do some smaller drawings, I'm selling copies of those.  The drama in North Carolina jacked up my bank account, and I cannot take paypal at the moment.  I'm working on getting that issue fixed.  If you want something drawn, we'll work out the details.  Despite my sketchy lifestyle, I've built a reputation of getting drawings done and shipped promptly, and satisfaction is guaranteed.  So far that hasn't been an issue.  I'm always nervous when I show someone their drawing, but they've all been stoked, so far. 

I'll end up this post with one embedded clip and links to several great Brian Foster video segments and a podcast.  Also, Congratulations Brian on being inducted into the BMX Hall of Fame last week.   That's definitely well deserved, as was the induction of my former boss at the AFA, Bob Morales.

2018 BMX Hall of Fame induction video and Brian's speech.

The Blue Falcon - Go get'em BF!

Brian Foster at the Incline Club

Brian Foster BMX Dirt Session

Brian Foster- Winter Escape

Anthem II- Brian Foster: declassified

Stay Fit- Brian Foster

Merritt BMX- Brian Foster at Cranx

Fit: Brian Foster signature stem

Brian Foster Bike Check 

BF-it: The Story of Brian Foster

Brian Foster: The BMX in our Blood podcast (August 26th, 2018)