PIVOT to Small Business Supercharging

In 1987, I started a new job as the newsletter editor for the American Freestyle Association, and moved to Huntington Beach, California.  I didn't have a car, my life was all about BMX freestyle, and I soon found the place to be was on the pavement below the Huntington Beach Pier on the weekends.  There were a one or two other BMX freestylers there every weekend, and a handful of freestyle skateboarders.  I started hanging out, became a local, and that was my spot every weekend there wasn't a contest to go to.  It was a tall guy named Mike Sarrail, and me on bikes, and Pierre Andre', Don Brown, and Hans Lingren on skateboards most every weekend.  Since it was a well known bike and skate spot, there were lots of riders and skaters stopping by for sessions, as well. 

Freestyle skaters were the dorks of skateboarding then, doing tricks on flat ground with no ramps.  They didn't go big, it wasn't mind blowing, but they did the hard, technical tricks that took longer to learn than other aspects of skating.  The emerging genre of street skating built, almost entirely, upon the standard freestyle skating tricks.

One day Pierre Andre', who was French, said, "Hey, I found a company in France that wants to start making skate shoes."  He'd just come back from a trip home to France, and I didn't think much of it at the time.  Pierre, Don, and Hans were all sponsored by skateboard companies under the Vision umbrella, and Vision's new clothing company, Vision Street Wear, was making skateboard shoes they got free.  The shoes had a couple good ideas, like ollie guards on the side, but were pretty uncomfortable and didn't last all that long.  Since Vision sponsored the AFA contests, that I helped put on, I, too, got free Vision shoes.  Not great, but free was good in those low income days.

There was definitely a need for much better shoes, shoes specifically designed for skateboarding (and maybe even BMX riding).  A lot of BMXers and skaters wore Van's shoes then, which worked well, but they were not designed specifically for skateboarding at that point.  Pierre, the top freestyle skater in France, like all freestyle skaters, had a perfectionist side, and he went to town working with the French shoe company, Etnies.  The shoes they came up with were a huge leap forward in skate shoes.

The big initial blast for Etnies came with this classic skateboard video section, where pioneering street skater Natas Kapas wore some of the first Etnies.  The shoe company was off to the races.  Pierre soon bought them out, headquartered the new company in Costa Mesa, California, blocks from the former Vision main office we all frequented for years. 

He worked his ass off, and built a HUGE, amazing company.  The parent company, Sole Technology has had revenues as high as $200 million a year, before the Great Recession, and they built not only two huge buildings that you see in the video above, but they built one of the best skateparks in Southern Califrnia, for the city of Lake Forest, right down the hill from their HQ. 

We could never pronounce Pierre's last name correctly in the 80's, so he went by Pierre Andre'.  But now, Pierre Andre' Senizergues, my old buddy from years of weekends hanging at the H.B. pier, is a prominent entrepreneur and visionary in the highly entrepreneurial region of Orange County, California.  He's one of dozens of people I hung out with who started small businesses, most of which are still in business, and some of which are huge now, 30-some years later.  These are the people I was surrounded by in my 20's and 30's, all because I started doing tricks on a "little kid's bike" while in high school in Idaho.

My path has been a weird one.  I wanted to start my own business in the 80's, but I was super shy, and just couldn't do the salesman part.  If you don't sell stuff, you don't have a business.  It's as simple as that.  So I spent the last 33 years or so reading hundreds of books, a huge number of them about business and personal development.  I spent a decade as a sidekick to several young entrepreneurs in the actions sports world, working and brainstorming with them day after day.  Along the way, I worked on the crew of several TV shows, a different kind of entrepreneurship.  The whole time, I was also working on my personal issues, and eventually ended up a taxi driver in the early 2000's.  It's not a prestigious job, in fact, taxi driving operates as a small business, not a job at all.  It's in the gray area between a job and a business.  I learned to hustle my ass off, find business in weird places, pay $3600 in overhead a month, and I overcame my Rainman like shyness, as well.

But I didn't pay attention to emerging technology, and the taxi industry got disrupted by new tech, even before Uver and Lyft.  I wound up homeless.  The decade after has been a big struggle, where, among other things, I couldn't get hired for any "real" job anymore.  I started blogging in 2007, and a couple years later began to self-educate on how "this whole internet thing" works, and how it has completely changed the way business happens in the U.S. (and most everywhere else).

In late 2015, I was living with my mom after my dad's death, in a small North Carolina town, still unable to find a "real job." My mom is continually in fannacial crisis, so any money I made, was immediately needed for some "emergency."  Literally without a dime to my name, I started focusing on the Sharpie artwork I did to start earning money.  I've struggled for the three years since as a working artist.  But I did start selling artwork.  I've sold around 100 original drawings in the last three years, starting at about $20 each, and they sell for $150 or more now.  But they take me 35 or more hours to draw.  There's just not enough profit, or enough work to sell, to really get me going again financially, without a $10K loan to set up and really do it right.  So, as I struggled to survive this last winter, homeless and in a city I'd brand new to me, I started looking at my options.

While I haven't made a decent living selling my artwork, I did learn how to promote and use blogging, the internet, and social media well...for free.  When I look around at nearly all of the small businesses, here and elsewhere, hardly any of them are using today's new media and platforms at anywhere near full potential.  And that's what I'm pretty good at now.  Look up my hashtag, #sharpiescribblestyle on Instagram, Google images, or even Facebook.  My Sharpie art has a really solid web and social media presence, better than many mid-sized businesses.  Any business can do that, but most are too busy, with their day to day running of the business, to take the time to learn how to use all these tools more effectively.  So I'm going to start teaching them.

I'm writing a small book right now on how to use the internet and social media effectively for small business, and how to actually get more sales, not just media hype.  Hype is good, but it don't pay your rent or buy you food at the grocery store.

I'm also going to pivot this blog to focus much more on ideas for starting, building, promoting and marketing small businesses.  I'm still going to write and old school BMX story or two each week, and I'll still have my artwork on here when I do new stuff.  But I'm scaling that back.  Looking at my own current skills, drive, and ambition, and the Big Picture of the next decade or two, small businesses will be a huge, possible the deciding factor, in getting the American economy working well for average people again.  There won't be millions of factory jobs paying $32 an hour coming back.  We have to rebuild this economy ourselves, and small business is the best way to do that.

So that's where I'm at.  My book, in a self-published form, will be available soon.  I'll keep you all updated.  I don't know where all this will lead.  But then, I didn't know where it would lead when this guy below told me he found a shoe company in France that wanted to make skateboard shoes 32 years ago.  And that turned out pretty well.

Creative Life - 3/30/2019

43.  It started as some little inside joke thing among the Curbs Dogs bike/skate posse in 1986 in San Francisco.  It quickly spread to the rest of the Golden Gate Park BMX freestyle and skate scene.  33 years later, for me, it's kind of a little good luck thing when it pops up randomly.  Today started off pretty cool.  I kind of got off track much of the day, wandering half aimless a bit, but I did get some more writing done on the latest project.  I also found a couple of used books in the sale at the library, and for once, I could afford them.

One turned out to suck.  I tossed it at a bus stop.  It was called Tailspin by Steven Brill.  It's whiny, intellectual bullshit by a guy who thinks today's entrepreneurs "just got too good" for the good of society at large, as did other groups.  Waaaaaah.  No, entrepreneurs never get too good, too many things can go wrong at any time, and their reign can end quick, and they know that. Entrepreneurs continually progress and get better, so people who don't progress get left behind.  What that really means is that millions of people just need to step up their game.  That's all. Don't bother reading that book.

The other book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, by Chris Anderson (former editor at Wired) is a great read.  It's old, by today's fast-paced tech standards, it's from 2012.  It's all about the Maker's Movement, another D.I.Y. movement in this world, sparked in about 2005, and exploding since.  I've read Chris Anderson's previous books, The Long Tail, and Free, and both completely changed my way of thinking about business in today's world.  I think every business owner needs to read both, make that all three, of these books.

My last drawing, the second Maya Angelou drawing, is now living in Southern California, and waiting to be framed.  I started focusing on my Sharpie art to try and begin to make a living again back in late 2015.  t's become clear that, while I can actually sell drawings consistently, I can't sell them, yet, for enough to put a roof back over my head.  I've learned a lot in my three years as a working artist, but now I'm going to back off on how much I draw, and focus on some more profitable ideas to get myself back on track financially.

A little idea a couple of weeks ago has grown, and been the foundation of other ideas to use some of my other creative skills to work in a different way.  More on that soon.  I'll still doing drawings if anyone wants one, it will just take quite a bit longer, because I'm going to be spending a lot of my time working in other areas that have a better chance of helping me earn a real living- SOON- again. 

So that's it for now.  Thanks for reading.  Now go do something cool.

A few more random photos from recent days...

 Top photo, downtown Richmond, looking from the Mayo Bridge over part of the James River.  In the photo above, the little blotch near the top of the tree is an osprey.  They're big raptors, hawk-type birds, with wingspans of about 5 feet, that catch fish in the river. Ospreys carry those fish headfirst, aerodynamically.  No other bird got the aerodynamic memo.  I need a better zoom, (or a real camera), this is the best  I could do.  You can see ospreys in early mornings, flying over the river near the Mayo bridge, looking for a fish breakfast.  There's really cool bird watching there, which includes, cormorants, Canada geese, great blue herons, vultures, and a bald eagle or two, if you're lucky.  I'm surprised there aren't more wildlife photographers on the Mayo (and other) bridges catching the action in the mornings.

 As an old school, HAS BEEN BMX guy, "squirrely" is a term we used for people who don't pedal smoothly.  When sketchy BMX bike riders die, they probably go to the Squirrely Gates.  But people here can just go to a game at The Diamond, to go through them.

Also as an old BMX/skateboard guy, I'm always watching the local sticker culture.  It's a low key form of street art to people like me, and seldom noticed vandalism to most.  I've seen a few of these stickers around town, and I think it's funny AF.  Finally got a pic of one downtown.

Richmond's Shockhoe Bottom area in photos #5

 More from my photo taking hike around the Shockhoe Bottom area of downtown Richmond, Virginia last weekend.  The building in the center is the Main Street train station, one of Richmond's big redevelopment projects in recent years.  I liked the porcupine staple pole texture in the left side to frame it.  Main Street Station is really cool inside, check it out.  You can catch Amtrak there.  

 If you've read any of this blog, you know I landed in Richmond accidentally last August.  There's a HUGE mural scene here, they're everywhere.  As I was trying to just survive at first, there was no plan.  I spent the winter, as a homeless guy, selling one of my Sharpie art drawings for money when I could, and just in survival mode.  It was the murals everywhere that made me first think of maybe sticking around for a while.  Six months later, I'm still here.  Here's one of the many, many murals.

 Under freeway, hanging public art piece that somehow reminds me of early airplanes.  Across from Main Street Station. 

 I take the Pulse bus a lot, and this is the view from the Main Street Pulse station.  Sitting here several times is kind of what gave me the idea I should walk around this area and take photos someday.  Last weekend WAS someday.  Make it happen.  #RVA #RVAallday

Minimalist street art on the side of a strip club.  Stripped down street art?  Sorry, couldn't resist.

Richmond's Shockhoe Bottom are in photos #5

 Here's some art pieces I stumbled across on my little exploratory photo hike in the Shockhoe Bottom area of downtown Richmond, Virginia.  These are through the weird little portal doorways a couple of posts back.  Really cool looking in the early morning light.  #RVAallday

Richmond's Shockhoe Bottom in photos #4

More photos when form last weekend, when I walked around the "urban jungle" part of the Shockhoe Bottom section of downtown Richmond, Virginia.  I was walking to a bus stop around dawn, so some cool, backlit flowers, and just started taking pics.  I didn't have anywhere to be, so it turned into a fun hour exploring the crazy architecture of this area.

Richmond's Shockhoe Bottom in photos #3

 Here's some more photos from my photo taking hike around the Shockhoe Bottom area of downtown Richmond, Virginia, last weekend.  I started around dawn, and wandered around for an hour.  I started near 14th Street and the James River, along the canal.

Richmond's Shockhoe Bottom in photos #2

 Continuing on with my wandering photo hike through the "urban jungle" part of the Shockhoe Bottom area in downtown Richmond, Virginia.  It was about dawn when I started snapping pics, and I walked around shooting photos for about an hour.  It's a really cool area with all the overhead roads and train tracks.  It has a sort of dystopian movie set feel, while having this crazy cool mix of shapes and light and shadow.  I started all this near 14th Street by the James River.  #RVA all day.

Richmond's Shockhoe Bottom in photos #1

 Last weekend, heading to a bus stop one morning, I wandered through the Shockhoe Bottom area of Richmond, the urban jungle area where there are all these raised highway and railroads elevated up high.  Walking by, I saw these pink blossoms above, totally backlit by the dawn sun. It seemed like a cool photo, so a snapped a few. Since I wasn't in a hurry, I wandered around a while, shooting photo of the weird urban landscape, which is this brutal mixture of concrete, metal, shadows, light areas, and lines and angles.  Then there were some spring blossoms as a total juxtaposition in places.  So here are the better pic from that outing.

This is what the guy with the highest I.Q. in the country looks like... supposedly.

I mentioned this a while back, I don't really believe it, but I'm just going to throw it out there.  A sizeable group of people here in Richmond, Virginia have been told that this ugly homeless fucker, me, has the highest I.Q. score in the country.  Really.  This, apparently, is what "genius" looks like, when you try to live your own life in 21st century America, while you have the top I.Q. score.  That I.Q. score is supposedly 198. (Twice I overheard people say 216)

While no one has actually told me this face to face, for about three and a half months, while I slept homeless, in the little covered porch of an abandoned Barbecue restaurant, people walked up at night, and I'd wake up and I'd hear one tell the other(s), "That homeless guy there, he has the highest I.Q. score in the country, it's 198.  We're trying to figure out what to do with him."  Or a close variation of that.  It seems "they" never figured out what to do with me.  And why is it anyone else's problem to start with?  

This happened every night at times, but usually every 2 to 3 nights, basically, last September through December.  I woke up, time after time, unable to see these people because of the small wall by my head, but I'd hear them talking and walking around.  It was always late at night, 1:00 to 4:00am or so, I didn't have a watch or phone handy to check.  It seemed somebody had been told this a month or so after I wound up here in Richmond, accidentally, while escaping the nightmare that is North Carolina.  I was forced out of Southern California in 2008, after having all kinds of weird shit happen in my life, and I could no longer make any kind of living.

For about 18 years now, over ten of which I've been homeless, I've struggled to survive, but have been unable to make any kind well paying living.  I worked full time as a taxi driver for 6 of the 10 years of homelessness, living in my taxi while working 70-100 hours a week.  I applied for around 140 low end, entry level jobs, in North Carolina, in 2012 thru 2014,and only got 1 call back, from a fast food place that didn't hire me after seeing me.  OK, looking at the photo above, that's understandable.

So is this true?

Way back in December 1984, after graduating high school in Boise, Idaho, I signed up to join the Marine Reserves, to get money for college.  In early 1985, I took the whole battery of tests necessary to join, which apparently included an I.Q. test.  I spent about 2 1/2 months in the Delayed Entry Program, and things got weird when I was about to ship out.  My orders couldn't get to Boise two days in a row, for some reason.  On ship out day three, I told the recruiters about one stupid thing I did in high school, after they told me security clearances may mean Marines would go talk to my high school friends at some point.  The Corps thought about me for a week, and I was dropped for lying to them.  Fair enough.  I was told the CMC made the final call.  I didn't know what that was.  They told me, Commandant Marine Corps, THE top general of all.  I never could figure that out.

Looking back now, I think that's when I scored this crazy high I.Q. number.  It's the only I.Q. test I may have taken, after scoring a 132 in 7th grade (I didn't finish the test that time because I worked really slow).

So what's the deal?  Is it actually true that I scored a crazy high I.Q. score 34 years ago?  If so, why would ANYONE care in 2019?  I don't know.  Or is somebody playing a crazy practical joke on the fine people of Richmond, Virginia?  I honestly don't know.  If it is true, it would explain the incredible amount of crazy stuff that's happened in my life in the last 18 years or so.  If it's not true, then who's punking people around here and telling them this weird story about me?  And why?

The last option, of course, is that I'm completely and utterly insane.  That's possible, I always keep that option open.  But if this story is actually true, that's the story the spin doctors in the media would put out if this weird situation became well known and somebody wanted to cover up the truth.

Whatever the case, obviously, a higher than average I.Q. score (either 132 or 198) DOES NOT predict material success in life.  In my opinion, I.Q. scores are pretty meaningless.  It just means that on one day, on one particular test, a person solved a lot of intellectual problems that people who are borderline autistic tend to do well on.  That's about it.  The skills it takes to score high on this type of test have virtually nothing to do dealing with everyday life in an effective way.

With that in mind, I'm offering my alleged I.Q. score of 198 up for sale.  For $350 (bus fare back to Southern California and some food money), I'll sell you my score, and write it down and make it look official, then it's yours.  Obviously it's done nothing but fuck up my life, if it's actually true.  If you want to by my score, message me on Facebook.

In this post, I've told you why I don't put a lot of faith in this test score from 34 years ago.  Here' s a much more robust argument for why an I.Q. score doesn't mean much.

Blogger's later note:  In my world of weird, sarcastic friends, it's obvious that I'm joking about selling my (possible), crazy high IQ score.  But in the more general world, someone may think I'm serious.  I was just joking about selling the score.  Obviously, I can't do that.

There rest of this, however IS true.  I am homeless for the moment, the weird people at night did happen a couple dozen times or so, the Marine Corps part is true.  A whole lot of weird stuff has happened in my life over many years, and if I did score this high back in 1985, and if some group/company/agency wanted to recruit me for work for them because of that score, it would explain a lot of the crazy incidents in my life, over several years .  I don't know what the truth is.  The whole thing sounds ridiculous to me, but it's about the only way to actually explain a lot of weird incidents in my life.  So maybe I made the high score some like people think, and maybe I'm didn't.  It's still an open question.
 

Hmmmm... haven't I heard this somewhere?

In this CNBC article this afternoon, (March 25, 2019) it says the bond market is signaling a recession is coming.
Bond market says not only is a recession coming, but the Fed will cut interest rates to stop it

Here's my January 2018 blog post, "Larry Kudlow's Wishful Thinking," (unedited, of course) where I predicted the recession the bond market is now predicting.  Sorry I predicted it 17 months ago, I tend to be early on these things.  

"We're the hottest economy in the world."

-Larry Kudlow, President Trump's Economic Advisor, and former CNBC host

Here's the March 8th, 2019 CNBC news clip that quote above came from.  Two weeks ago.  Hmmmm... maybe Larry Kudlow is wrong.  You know, like he was in 2008 when he said the economy was fine.   

By the way, in May of 2018, I had a bunch of guys, in the city I lived in then, come out into the woods, stomp around the tent I lived in, and tell me they were going to beat the fuck out of me with baseball bats.  Why?  Partly because I was a homeless guy blogging about the idea that there was a serious recession coming.  Ultimately, they left and didn't beat me up, as a storm was rolling in.  Now the U.S. Bond Market agrees with me.  

Oh yeah, if I happened to own rental properties in a college town or city right now, I'd sell the sucker QUICK.  But that's just me, and should not be construed as financial advice.    

(BMX Freestyle White) Boys in the Hood

Car pulls up, who can it be, a Euro white Beemer rollin' kilo G...  Here's Bob Morales in 1985, in the red AFA T-shirt.  Yeah, it has "Alpine" A's.

After a my few months at Wizard Publications in 1986, I got hired by Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association to become editor of the AFA newsletter in January of 1987.  Anyone who knew Bob Morales in those days, knows he always had about 17 irons in the fire, he was full of ideas, willing to work long hours, and with a serious tendency to over-extend himself, and anyone around him.  In other words, Bob Morales was a true entrepreneur.  So I wound up doing a little bit of everything at the AFA, as well as writing, shooting photos, editing, and laying out the newsletter.

On one sunny Southern California weekday, I rode with Bob over to the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome, originally built for the1984 Olympics, and the site of so many classic freestyle contests in the 1980's.  It was the summer or fall of 1987, I think.  Things kinds of blend together after all these years.  We were checking on some things for the Guiness world records event there, that we were hired to help put on.  Or maybe it was in preparation for the AFA Masters Finals that fall.  One of those.  We met with a person from the velodrome, and I think another promoter.  Bob had bought a 30 foot long box trailer, the old dragster trailer owned by Gary Turner at GT, and we wanted to make sure it would fit down the access ramp, because that's how we carried all our equipment around.  After the meeting, taking some measurements with a tape measure, and figuring things out, we headed back to Huntington Beach.

At the time, Bob Morales was a 23-year-old entrepreneur, graphic designer, and contest promoter.  I was a 20-year-old freestyler/newsletter editor.  Bob liked to look the part of the successful entrepreneur, in a SoCal way, and he owned what appeared to be a red, 1984, Porsche 911, and a late model, white, BMW 630.  The Porsche, if I recall correctly, was a 1969 912 chassis, with a 1970-something 914 engine, and the 1984, red 911 body.  It looked really cool, but it didn't have the power or handling of a true 1984 911.

The BMW was actually a 633csi, a European only model, as I recall, that somehow made its way to America, and Bob had it painted "Euro style," white with black trim.  When they were going to paint it, Bob asked if the paint shop could make the paint "any more whiter."  I know, that kind of sounds like a line out of the Spinal Tap movie, but he wanted it to stand out.  As it turned out, the painters said they normally added a bit of blue to white paint jobs, to give it a deeper hue or whatever.  Bob told them to leave all the blue out.  So Bob ended up with an ultra white Beemer, that made any other white car look dirty when he pulled up next to it.  In addition, there was no chrome, everything on the trim was painted black.  It was a really sharp looking BMW, no doubt about it.

Bob, with his wheeling/dealing skills, claimed to only have about $6,000 into each car, yet they both looked like they were $30,000 cars in 1987, maybe $60,000 cars today.  So Bob was driving the BMW that day as we headed back to the office from the Velodrome.

Most of you reading this have been to one or more of the Velodrome contests back then, and you probably remember that the Cal State Dominguez campus, where the Velodrome is located, is kinda in the hood.  It's in Carson.  Instead of heading west, and catching the 110 freeway nearby, Bob headed east to catch the 710, through Compton.  Yeah, everyone knows about Compton, thanks to Ice Cube, Dr, Dre and NWA.

It was a beautiful day, we were cruising along at normal speed on a big surface street.  Like usual, Bob and I were throwing cool ideas back and forth about something or other.  We were both full of lots of ideas, and always talking about a cool contest or bike idea, a cool scene for a movie, or something else creative.  Just two young white boys, in a bitchin' 6-series BMW, rolling through Compton, completely engrossed in our conversation.  No big deal, right?

Suddenly Bob noticed flashing red lights behind us, and tried to figure out what he was doing wrong.  He wasn't speeding, and he hadn't blown through a light or anything.  We kept talking, and hoping he wouldn't get a ticket.  Bob turned off into a large, paved lot, which was overgrown with grass around the edges.  We were still rambling about some cool idea when the cop walked up, after taking a long time.  Bob looked into the rearview mirror and went, "Oh shit."  I looked around.  In addition to the cop who pulled us over, there were four or five other police cars in a half circle around us.  Every one of them had the driver's door open, and there was a police officer squatting behind each door, guns drawn and pointed at us.

Shit.

Bob talked to the officer that approached, and he had come to the conclusion that two young white guys, in a sweet 6-series Beemer, in Compton, must either be buying drugs, we just stole the car, or we were transporting a whole bunch of drugs.  Bob told him the story of why we were there, and, in typical police fashion, the cop didn't believe a word of it.  OK, I really can't blame him.  There were no cell phones then, but Bob had a car phone in the Beemer, and those were like $1,500 then, which didn't look good.  But he couldn't call one of the people we just met at the Velodrome, like you would today.  It took a good ten minutes, and either a newsletter or a magazine laying on the floor by me, to actually make the officer believe we really were BMX bike contest promoters, and we just had a meeting at the Velodrome, and Bob was a young entrepreneur and the car wasn't really as expensive as it looked.

The officer looked all around the car, checked the trunk, and I think he had someone at their station call the Velodrome and confirm that there was a BMX bike contest happening there in a week or two.  As the tension died, the other cops put their guns down, and a couple drove off.  Eventually, the officer let us go, and gave Bob a strong warning not to drive that car through Compton, because it would be a huge target for a carjacking by local thugs.

We continued on the same way, since we were already close to the 710 freeway.  I'm pretty sure we took the longer route, up the 110 from then on. 

Eddie Fiola at Pipeline

For an instant flashback of 1980's BMX freestyle, click here.

Now that you're feeling the 80's vibe, let's talk about Eddie Fiola.  I got into BMX in 1982, as a high school kid in Boise, Idaho.  There were about 400 kids in my high school graduation class, and I was the only BMXer.  That was BMX freestyle, outside of Southern California in the 1980's.  It wasn't even a new thing in 1983, not enough people had even heard of it to be new.  When it came to sports, kids at school were talking about Michael Jordan, I was reading magazines about Eddie Fiola, who was the biggest name in vert, and in probably in freestyle, at the time, from my magazine reading perspective.  Yes, R.L. Osborn was huge then, but BMX Action wasn't on the newsstands in Boise then, only BMX Plus! was in the 7-11's and grocery stores, where I bought my magazines.  I couldn't afford a subscription then, not until FREESTYLIN' came out in 1984.

It was in one of those 1983 magazines, that I first saw this place called Pipeline Skatepark, in some far off wonderland called Southern California.  That's how it seemed then.  I grew up in Ohio until 8th grade, moving from town to town, then we moved to New Mexico for a year, and then my dad got a job in Boise, Idaho.  In the world I grew up in, there were everyday people, kids and adults, that I saw in life.  Then there were these other people, a separate species, it seemed, that showed up in magazines and on TV.  I wasn't one of those people, I "knew" I never would be one of those people.  But I was fascinated by those "famous" people.  Even as a little kid, I would listen intently to interviews with people, athletes, actors, businessmen, musicians, politicians, and others.  I wanted to know what made those people different from us "normal" people.  So I got into this weird, new little sport of BMX freestyle with that mindset.  While I daydreamed of becoming a pro freestyler some day, there was a deeper part of me that truly believed that it could never happen.

Then I got deeper into freestyle.  I started racing, and managed to never make it out of 17 novice class... in Boise.  I never raced novices, that's part of the reason, because there were few kids my age beginning to get into BMX.  I was racing intermediates and experts much of the time.  Then I got more into freestyle, and joined the only local (or Idaho) trick team, with Jay Bickel, in 1984.  We reformed it into the Critical Condition Stunt Team, and started doing shows that his mom set up, and rode in every parade in the region.  Then, in the summer of 1985, the Bickels hauled my broke ass to the Venice Beach AFA Master comp, and then to a contest in Whistler, British Columbia, held in conjunction with the BMX Worlds.  As luck would have it, Eddie Fiola and Chris Lashua were on tour in Vancouver, and had a week to chill out, and drove up to Whistler.  Suddenly I was hanging out with 40 crazy Canadian riders, Jay Bickel, and GT pro riders Eddie and Chris.  The first day they showed up in Whistler, several of us were just kind of watching them ride at a bit of a distance.  By day three, it was like, "Yo Eddie, what's up?"  The line between "those magazine people" and us "normal people" began to blur.

Over the next year, my family moved to San Jose, and I became a part of the Golden Gate Park scene with Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, and all those guys.  Then I wound up working a Wizard Publications when Eddie Fiola was dating photographer Windy Osborn.  He became a friend, one of those people I saw nearly every day, and watched tear up the T.O.L. Ramp.

But the way things worked out, mostly because I didn't have a car, I never saw Eddie ride Pipeline.  Sometime in 1987, Mike Sarrail, my riding buddy from the Huntington Beach Pier, took me up to Pipeline one night.  Eddie was there riding that night.  The weird thing was, word in the industry was that Eddie was burned out and sick of riding then.  He was in year three of a three year GT contract, that had him touring endlessly.  Everyone in the biz kept saying Eddie was just riding out the contract, then he'd give up riding and go get into doing commercials or something in Hollywood.

Yet there was "burned out" Eddie Fiola, the guy I first saw riding Pipeline in photos, four years earlier.  He was in jeans a T-shirt, and a open face helmet, he was fucking tearing the place up.  He was having fun.  He did the classic tricks, 7 and 8 foot airs, or 2 to 3 feet "over fence," as Pipeline locals would say.  He didn't need to ride Pipeline then.  There were no more contests in skateparks to get ready for.  Eddie was laughing, joking, smiling, and blowing my fucking mind.  No sign of the burn out.  We all look at those old photos from Pipeline, and mentally compare them to quarterpipe photos of the era.  But the Pipe Bowl had four feet of vert, it was a whole different beast to ride.

Mike started calling out things to Eddie.  "Hey Eddie, can you get a foot out?"  Eddie carved into the pipe, came out at warp speed, carved the very top of the face wall, and took his top foot off and dragged it along the top of the pool.  A foot out.  A dork trick, but it looked freaking impossible to actually do.  Mike asked Eddie for a light, or something like that.  Eddie again carved the top of the pool, then popped his front wheel out, into a sprocket grind that sent up a shower of sparks.  They had several little inside jokes like that, things only the locals knew, and Eddie did one weird, but hard, trick after another.  Moves I never got a hint of in the magazines.  Then he went back to just plain shredding the park with his classic lines, but even smoother and with more style then in the skatepark contest days.

That night, I knew I had to do a an interview with Eddie, for the AFA newsletter.  So there I was, a week or two later, on a slow afternoon at Pipeline Skatepark, in Upland, shooting my own photos of Eddie Fiola shredding Pipeline.  Just like the photos I'd seen as a grommet kid in Idaho, four years earlier.  It's amazing where life can take you.

Alright, there's one post from a Never Was rider, Has Been industry guy, and ridiculously prolific blogger, to spark some memories for all of you at the Old School BMX Reunion at Woodward West this weekend.  Have fun, and I'll be posting more, and checking Instagram and Facebook for pics and videos.

Oh yeah, I know my reputation's gonna take a hit this weekend, because of the zines people have ordered from me that I never shipped out.  My East Coast banishment has made earning money damn near impossible at the moment.  If anyone wants a cool Sharpie drawing, I could use the cash to ship some of those orders out.   Email me if seriously interested in a drawing: stevenemig13@gmail.com .

Oh yeah, this blog hit 500 posts, 16 posts ago.  That's about how many Freestyle BMX Tales had.  Cool milestone.

I've got a new blog going, it's about building an art or creative business, or any small business.  You can check it out here:
WPOS Kreative Ideas

The Worst Rider in a Trailer Park in Idaho in 1982

 In the summer of 1982, my family moved to Blue Valley Trailer Park, outside of Boise, Idaho.  I just finished my sophomore year in high school, I was a runner, but a bad one.  It was hot as fuck during the days, and there wasn't much to do in trailer park, so the ten or so of us teenage guys, and a a couple girls, would emerge after supper, and ride our K-mart special BMX bikes on these little jumps and berms some motorcycle rider had built a couple years earlier.  I quickly realized I was the worst rider in the trailer park. 

We pushed each other every night, talking shit and trying to out jump the others.  Two foot high jumps to flat.  We got better.  We broke parts and bought better ones.  Our bikes improved.  That fall we found the Boise BMX track and started racing at the last race of the year.  We rode on the frozen pond that winter, doing flat track slides, and we made snow jumps.  In the spring, when the jumps were still muddy, we made ramp to ramp jumps with cinder blocks and plywood. 

BMX became our thing.  We started buying BMX magazines.  The first I bought was the December 1982 issue of BMX Plus! with Stu Thomsen on the cover.  The next summer my family moved back in town.  I raced all year in 1983, and into 1984, then focused on freestyle, and joined Idaho's only trick team.  I eventually got a Skyway T/A with red Z-Rims, like the one I'm posing with above (photo by Steve Crandall), which is from Chad Powers' future BMX museum collection.  The other guys in the trailer park all faded.  I kept riding.  Four years later, I landed a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  That's how it started for me.

 Wall ride over my sister's head, 1990.  Blues Brothers Wall, Huntington Beach, California.  Yeah, it's a bit undervert, but this wall is sooooooo fun.  I tried framestand wall rides on it, but could never let go of the bars.

 Double Wall ride, Randy Lawrence going opposite up top, me with a little wall bounce below.  Alan Valek chillin' on top of the wall.  Blues Brothers Wall, H.B., 1990.

 Carving tile in the Nude Bowl, on a 105 degree day, at a session that included Brian Blyther, Xavier Mendez, Keith Treanor, John Povah, and Mike Sarrail shooting pics.  I fucking loved the Nude Bowl in those days where no parks existed.  Middle of nowhere, SoCal desert, near Palm Desert. 1990.

 I never could do a proper fakie wall ride, except on the Blues Brothers Wall.  Josh White told me about some walls near the beach one day at the H.B. Pier, and we went looking for them.  I'd ridden the bike path above them for a year, never knew they were there.  We found this wall, and I sessioned there for the next 15 years on and off.  Josh, being Josh, was doing 7 foot high wall rides that first day, and wall fakies then popping off the wall and doing a lookdown out.  He rocked it.  1990.

I started trying tailwhips off small jumps in early 1987.  Believe it or not, I was the only guy trying tailwhips at the first King of Dirt at Rich Bartlett's trails in Palmdale in 1987.  Everyone else hadn't thought of it, and didn't think they were possible on dirt then.  I started trying bunnyhop tailwhips in the summer of 1987.  I never landed one off a jump.  I came close to bunnyhop tailwhips, landing a few with a foot on the frame, toedragging the other foot, in December 1989.  I never landed one clean.  Bill Nitschke, a WAY better rider than me, made those happen and The Whopper was born.  I did do some pretty cool tailwhip variations, though. 

Have fun at the Old School BMX Reunion this weekend guys.  Let's see some pics...

Our Economy is Powered by Unicorn Farts

Since buying a ounce of silver in 1980, when I was 14 and the price soared to about $50 an ounce, I've been interested in the economy.  I've been watching it seriously since a reading a book predicting a coming Great Depression in 1990.  We didn't have a depression, technically it was called a double dip" recession, but the economy sucked for a full six years, 1990 to 1996.  Most people forget that now.

At this point, I believe our economy is about as stable as a house of cards, resting on egg shells, sitting on the back of a unicorn that's standing on stilts.  In other words, the financial system we all rely on might as well be powered by unicorn farts.  It sounds funny, until you remember that unicorns don't really exist.  We're running on illusions (or delusions), at this point.  One little thing, the right thing at the wrong time, will bring it crumbling down into a pretty serious, and lengthy, economic downturn.  And that's gonna suck for most people.

Recession?  Depression?  It doesn't really matter.  What matters is that you can become aware that things will be financially sketchy, on a big scale, for quite a while.  Once that seeps into your brain, you can do things to cope with this downturn, or even work to take advantage of all the great opportunities that it will present.

Remember: A recession is when the whole world goes on sale, and almost no one wants to buy anything.

Why am I so focused on the next recession, and money and economics in general?  1) Unlike a big issue like global warming, this next economic downturn will affect people much sooner, in the next year or two, and it will affect EVERYONE.  Global warming is a huge and serious issue, but it will seriously affect a fairly small number of people in the early years, and won't be a serious issue for most people for 10-20 years or more.  A really bad economy could literally wipe us all out long before that happens.  2) It's always been something I find interesting, and have spent decades now learning about.  3) Because of the larger social changes we're in the middle of, this next economic downturn will destroy whole industries, iconic American institutions, and will probably provide the biggest opportunities most people will see in their lifetimes. 

Here's where we stand right now.  The United States has a recession, on average, every 4 to 10 years.  The last technical recession was in 2008, and the Federal Reserve started lowering interest rates, in response to growing worries, in October 2007.  So purely from a time standpoint, we're in year 10 or 11 of a 4-10 year cycle, depending how you figure.  Simply put, we're overdue for a recession (or depression), just on the timeline scale.

The U.S. National Debt, the amount of money our country owes people, is $21.974 Trillion.  That's 21, 974, 000, 000, 000 when written out.  That's a really big "credit card bill."  That's $2 Trillion more than when President Trump took office.  There are currently about 328.605 million people in the country so your personal share of the national debt is $66, 871.  Here's the U.S. National Debt clock.  Here's the U.S. population clock (.& the world, too)

U.S. corporate debt, what all businesses together owe, is now in the neighborhood of $9 Trillion.  CNBC 11/21/2018

U.S. personal debt, what individual people owe, is about $19.594 Trillion

U.S. mortgage debt is about $13.533 Trillion.  This is included in the number above.

U.S. student debt is about $1.587 Trillion.  This is included in personal debt above.

U.S. credit card debt is about $1.062 Trillion.  This is included in personal debt above.

The average American owes $59,624 in debt.  That share of the national debt I mentioned above, that's a whole different thing, and if it actually had to be paid by us, it would be added to this number.

A reminder.  A million is 1,000 thousands.  A Billion is 1,000 millions.  A Trillion is 1,000 billions.  A quadrillion is 1,000 trillions.

This is a shitload of debt we all owe.  Actually, it's a whole bunch of shitloads.  That's not good.  Basically, our entire economy right now is like letting your college student live off their credit cards, and not making them pay anything for three or four years.  By the time they had to deal with paying, the amount would be just plain ridiculous, and they wouldn't know how or deal with it.  That's the situation our country is in now.

Also, interest rates are super low right now, by historical standards.  When interest rates go up, and they will some day, all the payments on these incredible amounts of debt also go up.

In 2008, about $1.3 Trillion is "sub prime" mortgage loan debt began to collapse, because a lot of people simply couldn't pay those mortgages.  That was the main trigger of The Great Recession of 2007-2009.  Those loans were called "sub prime," because they were loans given to people who didn't have to have great credit, like people used have to, to get a home loan.  On top of that, those loans were sold to other businesses, then they were turned into weird, complicated, financial investments called CDO's, (collateralized debt options), and pieces of those were sold to all kinds of investors, most of whom had no idea how those CDO's really worked.  When a critical mass of people stopped paying their mortgages, the CDO's went down in value, and the whole system collapsed.

Confused?  Of course you are.  So here's model Margo Robbie, in a bubble bath, explaining sub prime mortgages in the movie The Big Short.  That movie was based on true stories from The Great Recession.  If you think "student loans" every time you hear her say "sub prime" you'll get the idea of what's happening now.  Oh yeah, when these crash, so do most colleges, college towns, and college sports, in the U.S..  Yeah, it's going to get pretty nutty in the next few years.

The gigantic rise in student debt since 2008 happened because student loans took the place of sub prime mortgages, were sold and repackaged into investments called SLABS (student loan asset backed securities), which are nearly identical to CDO's, and now more than a million college students are delinquent in paying their student loans.  Like I said above, the total mount of student loans is $1.587 Trillion, more than the total of sub prime mortgage debt, which crashed the economy in 2008.  In addition to that, most other forms of debt have reached levels we've never seen in all of human history.

Meanwhile, the stock market is high priced, has peaked twice and dropped back in the last year.  It peaked again, lower than the high of last year, and can't seem to get much higher.  Stocks are, by and large, priced really high right now.  The world's greatest investor, Warren Buffet, is sitting on $112 Billion in "cash" right now, and can't find any good deals to invest in.  Everything big enough for him to buy, is overpriced.  He said that in a CNBC interview last month.

These are some of the underlying factors of why I've been telling people to get ready for a serious recession for the last year or year and a half.  It's getting close.  Get ready.  Maybe next week.  Maybe next month.  Maybe in the next 6 to 12 months.  But, it'll happen.

Here's another scene from The Big Short that explains the mortgage loan market in more depth.



In my humble opinion, this, above, is what will happen to the student loan market in the next five years, and that will shut off a huge part of the money that now funds our nation's colleges.  And that's gonna be pretty ugly...

Another year, another tribute drawing of Dr. Maya Angelou

Here is my latest drawing, the second one I've drawn of the late Dr. Maya Angelou.  This one was ordered by friend, and Orange County singer/songwriter Kerry Getz.  Since I've been drawing people, primarily musicians, for nearly two years now, I always delve into their music and whatever documentaries and interviews I can find online while I draw them.  For this drawing, Kerry asked to have Maya's piece, "On the Pulse of Morning," in the background.   That's the piece, not really a poem, that she read at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, in January 1993.  It's a great piece.   It's also a long piece, and almost the entire background of this drawing is my handwritten text of the piece.

For years, I knew of Maya Angelou as "America's Poet Laureate."  The official poet of the United States, that's how I thought of her.  I knew she had written a book called I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and that was about it.  Actually, it's a book, as well as this poem.  In 2009 or so, when I wound up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, staying in a homeless shelter and looking for work, I ended up going the library every day.  Somewhere along the way, I learned Maya Angelou actually lived in Winston-Salem. I think the library had a display of her works.  She had lived in Winston-Salem for decades, and taught at Wake Forest University, and also had a library or wing named after her at the HBC, Winston-Salem State.  When it came to celebrities from Winston, it was Maya and pro basketball player and Wake Forest alum, Chris Paul.

So I picked up "Caged Bird" at the library to read it, thinking it was a book of her poetry.  It turned out to be an autobiography of Maya, from birth to age 17.  It's a damn good read.  She lived this incredibly varied and weird life (Hmmm, sounds familiar, maybe it's  writer thing). She was a little girl in L.A., then lived for years with her Grandma in the tiny town of Stamps, Arkansas, living the life of a black girl in the hyper racist and segregated old South.  Then she lived with her mom for a while in St.Louis, where her family comes across as... basically almost thugs.  At age seven, Maya was raped by her mother's boyfriend, and a few days later, told one person who did it.  A couple days later, the police found the rapist dead, apparently kicked and beaten to death.  Maya, as a severely traumatized 7-year-old girl in the 1930's, believed that her saying the man's name caused his death.  And she stopped talking.  She was a voluntary mute for over five years, and was sent back to Grandma's house in Stamps, Arkansas, where people thought she was dumb because she was a mute.

Yet this girl, who once was afraid to speak for years, went on to work as San Francisco's first female trolley car operator, to sing and dance professionally, to become a world acclaimed poet and author, she worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X, and even once brought Tupac Shakur to tears.  Really.  Tupac.  She was incredibly intelligent, but also street smart and wise, which is not true of most highly intelligent people.  She had a great sense of humor that comes through in many of her interviews available online.  She was a single mom at 17, and started self-educating around that time in order to prepare her son for life in this world as a young black man.

What I didn't realize until this past week, was that her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, was followed by six other autobiographies of other periods of her life.  She wrote something like 40 books all together.  She's definitely a person I would have liked to meet. 

Here's the funny thing, in 2009-2010, I used to walk from Samaritan homeless shelter on Patterson, to the McDonald's on the corner of M.L.K. and Cleveland streets, caddy corner to the Cleveland projects.  It was a newly rebuilt McDonald's, but in the hood, the East Side, in Winston-speak.  I would scrape up money to get a sausage biscuit and a Diet Coke, and I'd listen to the Black gospel music they'd play on Sunday mornings, and I'd hide in this high back booth off to the side and either read or draw.  That was my "church" during that period.  What I didn't know until a few years later was that the church across the street was Maya Angelou's church.  I spent dozens of Sundays 30 yards away, but didn't know to go in there and visit, and maybe meet this amazing woman.  So I never met Maya Angelou.




Personally, I think this interview of Dr. Maya Angelou should be required viewing for every high school and college student in our country.  But that's just me.  Turn this on while you're doing something else (I know you're busy), and see what she says that catches your attention.  I guarantee you'll hear something in this video that will be just the thing you needed to hear right now.

I drew my first picture of Maya Angelou in January of last year (2018), which seems like a million years ago now, since so much has happened in my life since.  Rachel White of Designs, Vines and Wines, in the Trade Street art scene of Winston-Salem, took a liking to my work last January.  She asked if I could draw something for February, Black History Month, although we were both white.  She wanted a drawing to help show that we're all one big human family, and we shouldn't be so prejudiced about skin tones or other things.  Maya Angelou was the first person who came to mind.

My drawing of Maya sat in the front window of Studios at 625, on Trade Street, for a month then hung inside for many more months.  Rachel later managed to get it on stage at the public garden party in Winston-Salem, to celebrate Maya's 90th birthday.  She had passed (nobody dies in North Carolina, they all "pass") four years earlier, but over 100 people showed up for the celebration.  For a couple of hours, poets from Winston-Salem, and around the region, stood on stage and read their own poems, and Maya's poems, all standing next to my drawing of Maya Angelou.

Me standing next to my first drawing of Maya Angelou, at her 90th birthday celebration in Winston-Salem.  That drawing has her poem, "Human Family," in it.  "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike."

The funny thing about that Garden Party was that it was held at Bailey Park, a brand new park, and a place where homeless people in Winston-Salem know they are not welcome.  Simply put, if you're homeless, you know to avoid that park.  It's part of the new, redeveloped, Innovation Quarter area, and homeless people are not welcome.  But I got a free pass that day, although police eyed me up a few times.  I also knew that the young Maya Angelou, the six foot tall black girl and young woman, wouldn't have been welcome there either.  Yet, the distinguished, older, late Dr. Maya Angelou had a party honoring her there.  That juxtaposition meandered around my head as I listened to poets for a couple hours.  I ended up writing a poem on the spot, literally grabbing my notebook out of my backpack, and wandering away from everyone, until I could finish it.  In my experience, poems come once, if you miss one, it's gone.  In that poem, I asked, at what age would Maya Angelou, herself, have been welcome in that particular park.  I let L.B. the Poet, Winston-Salem's current poetic force of nature, read the poem first.  He said I needed to perform it.  I never did.  Maybe... someday.

The other thing that happened that day, was that I was introduced to Ms. Rosa Johnson, who is Maya Angelou's only niece, and her archivist.  This is Ms. Johnson on the right, below, at the party.

 When Rachel White and I talked to Ms. Johnson, she said people always felt like they knew her aunt, and would just come up as strangers and say, "Oh Maya!"  She said that was why Maya Angelou always asked to be called "Dr. Angelou," by those she didn't know.  So now, in conversation, I often refer to her as Dr. Angelou.  But not always. 

Months later, Ms. Johnson happened to wander into Rachel's studio on Trade Street, and saw my drawing of Dr. Angelou.  Rachel said Ms. Johnson stopped and looked at it for a long minute, and started crying.  She'd seen it before, and had been given a tiny copy of it at the 90th Birthday Garden Party.  But she'd forgotten about the drawing.  Seeing it brought back memories of her aunt.  Rachel and Ms. Johnson sat and talked for over an hour, and Rachel gave her one of the full size prints of the drawing.  Since she's Dr. Angelou's archivist, that means a print of my drawing is now a part of the Maya Angelou collection of... whatever the collection is now.  So that's cool. 

From my point of view, I really enjoyed diving back into the life and work of Dr. Maya Angelou for the last ten days or so.  Her life was amazing, and her way of putting words together, to transport the reader to another level of thinking, is even more amazing.  For those of you who have read this far, here are some clips of Maya's work, as well as a couple of my favorite clips of Kerry Getz, who asked for this new drawing to be done, and will be it's owner.  Enjoy.

Oprah's big life lesson with Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou reads "Human Family"
Maya Angelou reads "Still I Rise"
Maya Angelou reads "Phenomenal Woman"
Maya Angelou Live and Unplugged
Maya Angelou "Rainbow in the Clouds" Speech 
Maya Angelou singing calypso, "Run Joe" in 1957 
And Still I Rise - Maya Angelou documentary trailer

Kerry Getz "Landslide" cover 
Kerry Getz "Walk Away Renee" cover
Kerry Getz "Beautiful to You" (her song)
Kerry Getz "This Thorny Rose" (my favorite of her songs)