550 blog posts? Whoa.

Quick celebration time.  I just noticed the last post was #550 for this blog, which means this blog now has more posts than the original Freestyle BMX Tales, my former biggest blog, did.  Also, this blog is creeping up on 68,000 page views, which means it has passed my #2 most read blog, Make Money Panhandling, which had somewhere just over 61,000 page views, I think.

Thanks for reading this blog everyone!

When I started this blog, I didn't know if anyone would read it at all.  I was, homeless, living in a tent, and blogging mostly to promote the Sharpie art I was trying to sell to start making a living again.  This one has amazed me, and I'm stoked you all keep checking it out.  I'll do my best to keep it worth reading/watching.

For any of you keeping score at home, or aliens who've just landed here and are doing research to see if I'm worth abducting, I've started somewhere around 40 to 50 blogs.  All blogs seem like good ideas at the time, and most turn into one night stands of writing.  The next morning, I go, "What the fuck was I thinking?"  In addition, and unfortunately, I took down all my blogs in a dark period for me after my dad died in 2012.  But here's a list of my top blogs, and rough stats (from memory) on them, since I've been blogging, for about 12 years now.

My main blogs:

Freestyle BMX Tales- (the original version) I wrote a little over 500 posts, all personal stories from BMX freestyle in the 1980's and a little in the 1990's.  This was my most read blog, with over 125,000 total page views in its run of about 2 1/2 years, from 2009 to 2012.  FBMXT followed my first old school freestyle blog, FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales.  Highlight:   Over125,000 pagviews on a blog about old school BMX.  Who knew people would read my crazy stories that much?

Make Money Panhandling- I started this blog as a joke, trying to learn about SEO (search engine optimization) in 2009 (I think).  I wanted to think up the dumbest name I could, one that had "make money" in the title, and then use SEO techniques I was learning, to get the blog to show up #1 in Google search results.  Once I started it, I realized I had a ton of things to say about homelessness and panhandling, since I'd struggled with it for so long.  The point was not to encourage panhandling, though it did that for some.  The point was to catch people's attention, and explain and shine a light on many aspects of the homelessness issue, and make people laugh, with photos of funny panhandling signs.  This blog had over 100 posts, as I recall, and got over 60,000 page views.  Highlight:  TV host John Stossel's producer contacted me, and used my thoughts and knowledge as research for John Stossel's one hour show: Freeloaders.  That's John panhandling at the very beginning of the show.  The biggest freeloader in the show was the corporation GE.  Yeah, as in General Electric.

FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales- I started this blog when I landed in Kernersville, North Carolina, in November 2008.  In that move, I lost everything I had from my life in BMX freestyle, and went into a deep, deep depression.  I lost my magazine collection, my videos and DVD's, and the master tapes of videos I produced, and over 40 hours of raw footage ranging from 1990 to 2007.  I had one of the four best collections of raw footage in the sport, and planned to make a documentary (or 2 or 3?) out of it all, chronicling parts of freestyle.  The other 3 video collections are owned by Vision/Unreel Productions, Eddie Roman, and Mark Eaton.  I also found out that Andy Jenkins, Lew, and Spike didn't mention me in the FREESTYLIN' book, in 2008, which came out earlier that year.  I wanted to write 20 or 30 posts, just to say, "Hey, I was there in those 80's days in the freestyle industry.  Here's a few things I remember."  Suddenly I started connecting with old school freestylers, and became somewhat less depressed.  I kept writing, and wound up writing about 212 posts, and getting a little over 25,000 page views in about a year.  All those posts were about the five months I worked at FREESTYLIN' and BMX Action magazines.  Highlight: People started quoting my stories as source material for Wikipedia BMX articles, and other web posts and articles.

Steve Emig: The White Bear- This blog had no underlying theme, except my interests, and to promote my Sharpie artwork (#sharpiescribblestyle).  My main themes are macro-economics and social dynamics, old school BMX freestyle stories, and to to promote my Sharpie art.  This blog will be two years old in late June, 2019.  It now has over 550 blog posts, and is has 67,882 page views, making it my most prolific posting blog, and 2nd in total page views.   

All together, these four blogs have had...

-Over 277,882 total page views

-Over 1,362 blog posts

-Over  812 posts about old school BMX stories

While this personal blog will continue, I've also just started doing promotion for Block Bikes Online BMX Store, which is the Block Bikes Blog, and will cover a lot of modern BMX, some old school stories, and all things bicycle.  Thanks again for checking out my stuff.  I'll work to keep it all interesting.