For nearly two decades, my life has been really weird. For a bunch of reasons, I couldn't make a decent living, and it's just been a long, long struggle to just get by. Taxi driving, 5 1/2 years, most living in my cab, led to full blown homelessness in 2007-2008 in Orange County, California, then my family flew me to North Carolina. In ten years in NC, I couldn't get hired for ANY job, except taxi driver for a year, and that didn't pay. Again, there was a bunch of weird shit going on behind the scenes, which I still can't fully explain. Last August, looking at 30 rough days in jail for my arrest for buying donuts at an Adli grocery store (really, buying donuts), I escaped North Carolina. But my limited money only got me to Richmond, Virginia, where I've been since. The charges were dropped months after I left NC, a place I have no desire to ever set foot in again (but my family lives there).
I got off a bus here in Richmond (50 shades of Greyhound), with about $3.50 in my pocket. I was in a city I'd never been to before, that I knew nothing about, and where I didn't know a single person. I had a typical, book bag sized backpack, a duffel bag with a few clothes, and art supplies for my Sharpie art.
After a couple weeks of mostly sleeping outside, simply laying down under the stars on loading docks and in parking lots, I got drenched in the rain one night, and wound up with a leg infection called cellulitis. It's something people with diabetes get a lot. Despite a family history full of it, I don't have diabetes. But my health got bad when I was a taxi driver, well over 350 pounds much of that time, and I started getting cellulitis, so I'm kind of prone to it.
In my first bout with it, back in early 2007, I didn't go to the hospital because I didn't have insurance. My left lower leg swelled up to 3 times its size and turned bright red with infection, and I just laid in my cab, outside Fashion Island mall, in Newport Beach, with a temperature of 102 to maybe 105 degrees, for five days. I finally went to the hospital, and spent three days getting pumped with medicine to kill the infection. How bad did it get? One doctor talked about possible amputation of my lower leg, at one point. Luckily, that didn't happen. I also learned that homeless people (I qualified as a taxi driver, living in my cab) are nearly always covered for medical, or by hospital's emergency funds.
So when I got the cellulitis here in Richmond last August, I went to VCU hospital, the local med student teaching hospital. They gave me three IV bags of medicine. Then I turned pink, and we realized I was seriously allergic to the medicine. So the medical team there spent the next 6 days trying to save me from the allergic reaction. I was damn close to dying.
I turned pink, then red, then dark red, then even kind of black in places. My body puffed up in random places. I couldn't even stand up for about a day. My face looked kind of like the elephant man at one point. Here's the weird thing. Well, it's all weird. But the weirdest thing. I had this deep sense, not really a dream, but kind of an inner knowing right as I began to turn the corner and get better. I had this sense that it would be an incredible struggle to simply survive the winter here in Richmond. I'd been homeless, in different ways, for about 9 years over the past 18 years. It was going to take everything I learned about survival to stay alive all winter. At the same time I turned the corner and I began to get better, this blog crossed the 43,000 page view threshold. 43 is everywhere, especially for old school BMXer Has Been's, like me.
But my inner sense was that IF I could survive the winter, Spring would bring a new beginning, in a big way. If I survived this test the Universe was throwing at me, I would see a turning of the tides this Spring, and would finally begin to rebuild my life into something cool again. There were several times over the winter when I just wanted to give up. Two or three times, I did give up... for 20 or 30 minutes. I screamed and cussed and stomped around, or just stood in the cold without my jacket, thinking. Then the frustration passed, and I kept trudging on.
I was outside during a ten inch snowstorm, all night, for 17 1/2 hours, in December. I slept outside on nights down to 12 or 13 degrees, with wind. Nearly everything I own got stolen. I lost two borrowed sleeping bags and a third one that I bought, along with three moving blankets that helped me keep warm. My bag with all my spare clothes was stolen in December. I've been living in the three layers of clothes on my back since. Yeah, I smell pretty bad most of the time. I clean up when and how I can. I've had my toes, and fingers and ears frostnipped more times than I can count, that's the beginning stage of serious frostbite.
There were three times this past winter, where, even after all the crazy years of adeventures I've been through, I thought, "That's it, I am not going to survive this." Make that four, counting the hospital stay. But I'm still here. And now it's Spring.
Sleeping outside is still not safe, but it doesn't have the every night, life or death consequences that a 20 to 25 degree night does. Through all of this, I've been blogging, and drawing my Sharpie pictures to sell, as I could. In addition, about a dozen people stepped up and gave me money to get a room for the night, or a few nights, and that was HUGE. I really appreciate it, and plan to pay all of you back as finances allow.
A couple of weeks ago, my plan was to write a zine about how to use blogging, the internet, and social media to help small businesses make more money. I got pretty good at this stuff in the three years of promoting my artwork, but the art just didn't have the profit potential to get me completely off the streets. As I started writing these ideas down, old BMX friend Rich Bartlett contacted me. We talked for quite a while, and I became the person starting a blog, and doing more social media promotion, for Rich's new project, the Block Bikes Online BMX store. He's had the Block Bikes shop in Lancaster, CA for 25 years or more now, and seeing where business is headed, decided last year it was time to take it online.
Though his shop is well known, Rich isn't a millionaire, and the work I'm doing didn't come with a big fat weekly check to start. We're working together, and the online store needs to start cranking in sales to be able to pay me well, as well as the other employees, and Rich, of course. This is the bike world, I need to get traffic heading to that online shop, to earn my keep. As we all know, there are no Angel Investors in the BMX world. It's not like high tech, where people have an idea, pitch it to a super rich person, and get $4 million to burn through, losing money every month, HOPING the idea will make a fortune some day.
In the BMX industry, we're real entrepreneurs, we have to actually make shit that sells, and keep innovating and selling, to make things work. So I started the Block Bikes Blog, and it's had nearly 1,000 page views in the first ten days, which is a great start.
So... I survived 8 1/2 months of homelessness, brutal and crazy the whole time. It felt like I was earning my PhD in street survival. Spring came, and so did a whole new start for me. Full circle, back into the BMX industry, 14 years after moving out of Chris Moeller's condo in 1995, and striking out on my own.
So that's where I'm at. Rich and I will be dropping the first Club White Bear T-shirt, probably tomorrow, available only through the Block Bikes Online Store. It's a way to help jump start the store, and raise money to help me stabilize my living situation. Rich bought my tiger drawing, and has helped me out as he could, and I've had a room a few days since we started working together. But I'm still homeless for the moment, and panhandling for food money and bus fare money when needed. But things are looking up.
Here's the T-shirt design. I can't float anyone free T-shirts right now, even the people who helped me out. I'll settle up with all of you, and send some gifts, once I get a stable roof over my head, and am making consistent cash. Let me know what you think of the T-shirt...
Here's another "new start" I made once. Back in August of 1986. It changed the entire course of my life. I had no idea the adventure that new start would lead to. Now 33 years later, I have no idea where this one will lead either, but I'm stoked to get going...
I have a couple of new blogs I'm getting off the ground. Check them out:
Why is the economy collapsing and the world going crazy? I wrote this online mash-up book/blog thing to give my thoughts on that question. Here it is...
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