There's a snake in my tent

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Yes, I know this is a lizard, not a snake, but I didn't have a photo of my own of a small snake.  The one I write about below was about the length of this lizard.

It was just about two years ago, in July of 2017, when I woke up in a tent.  I wasn't camping, I was living homeless in a patch of woods in a mid-sized North Carolina city.  For several years, I wasn't able to find any kind of job in that area, so in November of 2015 I went all in on turning my weird form of Sharpie artwork into a living.  Obviously, in July 2017, that hadn't happened yet.  It still hasn't.  But I've been making some money from selling my Sharpie drawings, consistently, for 3 1/2 years.  I've scraped by, with help from several friends along the way, homeless much of the time.  I've sold over 80 drawings, most of which took 35 to 45 hours each to draw.

On that July morning, in the humid Carolina woods, I got out from under the tarp I used to keep the rain off of me, and put my shoes and socks on.  I slept in my clothes, and wore the same ones for 3 or 4 days, because I couldn't afford to do laundry.  My plan for the day was to put on my small backpack with my art supplies in it, pick up my big sketch pad, double wrapped in trash bags, and hike out of the woods to the nearby McDonald's.  I would pay nearly half of the money in my wallet to buy a sausage biscuit and a Diet Coke.  Then I would spend a chunk of the day working on a big Sharpie scribble style drawing.  After that, I would take a bus to a library, and draw some more.

My whole goal was to keep drawing, promote my drawings with my blog and social media, and to sell them, until I could make an actual living again.  That was it, all or nothing.  Either I got to a point where I could make a living with my writing and artwork, or I would die.  Period.  Living in a tent was simply the place I was at in life.  It was a really slow, really long term grind, and I just kept at it.

As I packed up my stuff, my spare clothes, and everything, were in trash bags, to keep them dry in case of another afternoon thunderstorm.  My big, six person tent, didn't have a rain fly so rain would pool on the roof, then start dripping in.  As I was getting ready to head out, I grabbed a bag that was near an overhanging flap in the side of my tent.  A quick sound and  movement caught my attention.  Something, a mouse, I figured, had found it's way into my tent, and shot into the cover of the folded over part of the tent.

I got up to my knees, pinched the wall of the tent above the fold, and lifted it up slowly.  A small, fast squirming creature writhed around as its cover disappeared, scaring both of us.  It was a small snake, light brown in color, about as big around as a pencil, and probably ten inches or so long.  It was drawn up into a circular shape.  It squirmed around some more, then calmed down a bit.  It had no good place to go, and I had no idea how to get it out of the tent.  I also realized that I didn't know what a baby copperhead looked like.  It wasn't a rattlesnake, I could see that. I wasn't sure it it was poisonous or not.

But I didn't know it it was a rat snake, or if maybe copperheads, of which there were plenty in Central North Carolina, were born plain looking.  Did they have the pattern adults had?  I wasn't sure.  As I tried to figure out what to do, I realized that the snake could have been in my tent, crawling around me at night, for a week.  A week before, some kids found my tent, looked through it, threw a big stick through the side of it, and left the door completely unzipped.  I was gone every day, so it was open to checking out, and attack.

Finally, I remembered that I had an old recipe card box, which I kept my bar of soap in, in one of my bags.  I set the flap of tent down, giving the snake its hiding place again, and dug out the little box.  Then I lifted the tent flap back up, and managed to get the snake into the box without getting bit.  A lot of people may ask why I didn't stomp on it.  Snakes have their place in the woods, much more than I did.  I wanted to release it alive, if possible.

With the little snake in the box, I took it out by a fallen log, let it loose, and it scurried out of sight in a flash.  Problem solved.  I went back to the tent, got my backpack and sketchpad, made sure I zipped the tent door closed all the way, and hiked out of the woods, towards McDonald's.  That was the first half an hour of my 51st birthday. Later I looked it up, I'm pretty sure it was a harmless rat snake. 

The Story of My Keychain: part 2

Blog post: The story of my key chain: part 2- "My friends have a van"

Joe Johnson, while riding for GT, Candybar air at height, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, 1989.  Still from video I shot.

 
I got a call one day, about a month after the spring 1986 AFA Masters contest at the Cal State Dominguez Velodrome.  I was upstairs in my room, I still lived with my parents in San Jose then, but we had moved to a two story house, about a half mile from the first apartment.  I was 19, and still working nights at Pizza Hut.  I usually got off work between 11:00 pm to midnight, and often I'd ride my bike home.   When I got home, I'd work on my zine at night, or practice balance tricks in my bedroom, until about 3:00 am.  I usually woke up about 10:30 am ate some breakfast, ran some errands with my mom, and then went out riding solo in the afternoons.

On the day in March 1986, my mom called me from downstairs, and I picked up the upstairs phone, because that's how we did it back then, before cell phones.  Much to my surprise, it was Andy Jenkins, the editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine.  He said, "Hi," and asked me if I was planning on going to the upcoming AFA Masters contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I'd saved up my Pizza Hut money, and was planning to go to compete in flatland, and cover it for my zine.  Andy asked, "Do you want to write the article about the contest for FREESTYLIN?"  I was floored.

When I started doing my zine, there was an actual printed zine, a newsprint mini-magazine, published by this kid named Bill Batchelor in SoCal.  He was 13 or 14, and put out this really professional looking zine called Shreddin'.  That was about 20 large size pages.  I thought that maybe... someday, that kid with amazing publishing skills, might ask me to write a little piece for him.  That was as big as my ambitions would allow me to dream as a zine publisher.  Honestly, it never occurred to me that writing for a magazine was a possibility.  So when Andy Jenkins of FREESTYLIN' asked me to write an article for the magazine, a magazine I literally read every word of each month, including the ad copy, I had no context for it.  Writing for FREESTYLIN' magazine wasn't a dream, because I never thought it was even possible.  All I really remember was that I hung up the phone, and ran downstairs, I jumped down the stairs to the landing, halfway down, and the jumped down the rest.  I couldn't believe it.  But the freelance job was mine, and I was determined to do a good job.  I think I hopped on my bike and just rode around for an hour, trying to believe it.

So I flew solo for the first time about three weeks later.  I had a big box for my bike, but it was only about half the size of a typical bike box.  Tall and skinny, like a standard bike box, but only half as long.  If you looked at it, there didn't seem to be any way a bike could fit in it.  Before traveling, I asked Skyway pros Robert Peterson and Maurice Meyer, for tips on traveling cheap, and traveling with a bike.  I'd never flown with a bike, and I was operating on a Pizza Hut income, which I think was about $3.50 an hour then. So I needed to cut some corners.

Bert told me that I would get charged $30 or something, if I said I had a bike in the box.  So his tip was to tell the airlines my box had "camping  equipment" in it.  There was no fee for that.  When I went looking for a bike box, I got this half-sized one, with no writing on the outside.  Everyone thought of bikes as "ten speeds," the common name for road bikes then, since 20 inch bikes were "kid's bikes."  So my box didn't look like anything an adult-sized bike would fit in.

I took my handlebars off the of stem, took my wheels off, and pulled the seat and seat post out, and packed everything but my wheels in the box, packed my tools in it, and stuffed paper in it so it wouldn't rattle very much.  Then I used a big old suitcase, the old school style made of thick plastic, with a single handle, and no wheels.  I put my wheels in the suitcase, and packed clothes and stuff around them.  That suitcase and odd sized box saved me from paying the airlines bike fee for the trip, and several trips after that.  I used that same box for well over a year, it worked so well.

Obviously, I wasn't a seasoned traveler.  I was focused on trying to write a decent article that would actually be printed in a real magazine.  I thought a lot about who to talk to at the contest, what questions to ask, and all of that.  I didn't think much about the trip itself.  So I flew by myself from San Jose to a layover in Dallas/Fort Worth.  My dad flew occasionally for business, and warned me about how big DFW airport was, and to not waste time finding the next terminal.  He said that if you landed on one end, and flew out of the other, it could take half an hour figure out where your gate was, and to walk the distance.

I landed in DFW, no carry on, because I didn't think of one, everything was in the box and the suitcase, packed in the cargo.  I had my ticket, and found the gate I needed to get to, and hurried to it, a 15 minute walk or so.  I was nervous about everything back then, being the uptight, anal retentive dork that was, except about the things I should have been nervous about.  I didn't know the name of the venue where the contest was being held.  I wasn't old enough to rent a car, and couldn't afford one, anyhow.  I didn't know how far it was from the airport to the venue.  I didn't have hotel reservations.  I just figured there would be all kinds of guys with bike boxes at the airport, and I'd hitch a ride with one of those guys or groups, and find a hotel floor in someone's room to crash on. In other words, I was a typical low budget freestyler.  From the previous couple of contests, I knew anyone with a room usually let a few other guys crash on their floor to save money.

As I sat during my layover, about ten minutes before the flight was supposed to board, I saw a couple of familiar faces walk up and stand across the big airport walkway.  I recognized GT pro freestylers Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo.  Eddie was best known as the original King of the Skateparks, the biggest name in the sport at the time, judging by magazine coverage.  Martin was one of the two best flatland pros then, along with Woody Itson.  There was a blond guy, about my age, that I didn't recognize, with them.  I took a deep breath, and got my courage up.  I was deathly shy in those days, and introducing myself to anyone was hard for me.  Introducing myself to two of the top pros I'd been reading about in the magazines for a couple of years, was super scary.  But I walked over and did it.

Eddie and Martin were totally cool, and I told them I was hired by FREESTYLIN' to write an article for the contest.  They said, "Cool," or something like that, and introduced me to the blond guy with them.  "This is Josh White, " they said, "he's amazing on ramps.  He just did a big photo shoot for FREESTYLIN'."  That photo shoot not only change Josh's life, it changed vert riding.  Josh took high air variations, and extension to a new level.  But only Eddie and Martin and a couple others knew just how good Josh was then.  We talked for the next ten minutes, up until the final final boarding call.  I was totally nervous about missing the plane, but they were casual, so I hung out until we all walked over, and were the last ones to board the plane.

We sat quite a ways apart, and I didn't see them again until the Tulsa airport, claiming my luggage.  I asked if they could give me a ride to the venue, but Eddie and Martin said they had a mid-sized rental car, and with them and the three bike boxes, the car was filled up.  I said, "Cool, see you guys tomorrow."  I got one of those airport luggage carts, and waited for the next group of guys with bike boxes to show up, so I could asked them for a ride.  I waited... and waited, for about an hour, and I was getting really nervous by that time.  I realized that there were not hundreds of guys flying in for the contest, and that's when it finally occurred to me that I didn't even know where the contest was. 

Finally I saw a quite normal looking guy with dark hair, maybe a year or two younger than me, get a bike box from the conveyor belt.  I went over and introduced myself, and he said his name was Joe.  I asked if he was going to the contest.  He said he was, and I asked if I could catch a ride to the venue.  Joe said, "My friends are picking me up, they have a van, and they can probably give you a ride."  So Joe got a luggage cart, and we wheeled our stuff out through the airport, out the door, to the pick up area.

He said we had about an hour until they were supposed to show up.  Joe seemed pretty quiet, too, so the conversation was a bit slow at first.  Then we started goofing around, and doing tricks on our luggage cars, like infinity rolls.  The conversation flowed a bit smoother then, and Joe said he was from Massachusetts, and rode for Haro.  I figured he meant he had a co-sponsorship from Haro, and got a free bike and some stickers, and maybe a uniform to wear at local contests.  I'd never heard of Joe in the magazines, or from the zine publishers I traded with, so how good could he actually be? 

After over an hour of hanging out, the Haro factory team tour van pulled up.  My jaw dropped.  Legendary Haro pro Ron Wilkerson hopped out of the driver's seat, and shouted across the front of the van, "Hey Joe, what's up!"  I soon learned that the mild mannered Joe Johnson from the East Coast was a brand new, full factory Haro rider.  Like Josh White, he'd just been picked up, and no magazine photos of him had come out yet.  Joe asked if they could give me a ride, when the side door  of the van opened, and told them I was writing the contest article for FREESTYLIN'.  I saw about 7 or 8 people already in the van.

Ron said, "Sure, jam the bike boxes wherever you can.  There were 6 or 7 bikes in the very back, we jammed the bike boxes down one side above them, and I wound up sitting on top of the bike frames, my legs hanging over the mass of handlebars, crammed into the Haro tour van, with Ron Wilkerson, team manager Billy Hop (sitting shotgun), Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, assistant team manager Jon Peterson, Joe, and about three other guys.  The van smelled like a locker room, and nobody cared.  Ron jumped back in the driver's seat, and took off towards the hotel at speed.

At that point, I was 8 months out from being a dorky freestyle kid in Idaho, who only saw pro freestylers in the magazines.  Yeah, I had become friends with the Curb Dogs and Skyway team riders in the months since Boise, but the Haro and GT freestyle teams were the top pros of the sport then, and I'd never met any of them.  Somehow, on my first solo trip, I'd met most of those guys, before even getting to the hotel or the contest site.  On the rough ride to the hotel, Jon Peterson started talking to me, asking where I came from, and said he'd take me around to meet everyone I needed to, and help me however he could.  It didn't feel like I was a young guy with a cool side gig.  It suddenly felt like I had won a BMX freestyle lottery trip or something.  I had no idea how much fun that trip was going to wind up being, as I rode in the Haro team van to the Holiday Inn where most of the riders were staying.

I've got a new blog I'm doing, check it out:

Crazy California

The Two Year Anniversary of this blog: Keep eating the donuts...

At 20:16 in this Authors at Google talk, musician/writer Amanda Palmer shares a story from her book, The Art of Asking.  It's about how artists of all kinds struggle with making money, and how even 19th century author, Henry David Thoreau, actually had his mom and sister bring him homemade donuts every Sunday, out to his hand made cabin in Walden Woods.  As he lived off the land, and "sucked the marrow out of life," he had help.  Even the hardy Thoreau got quite a bit of help from friends and family, as he spent a couple of years living simply out by Walden pond.  With that help he went on to write the book Walden, one of the most classic American books of all time.  Since its publishing, that book has helped millions of people become more connected to the natural world around us all.  Without the help from friends and family, that epic book may never have happened.

This blog is 2 years old today

I started this blog two years ago today, three weeks into living in a tent, in the woods of Winston-Salem North Carolina.  I'm not a Thoreau, by any means.  I went to live in a patch of urban woods for financial reasons.  A friend hooked me up with enough money to get a week in a cheap motel right when I started this blog.  That help kept me out of a lot of rain storms, and Carolina's  lightning filled thunderstorms, for seven days, and made a huge difference.

In Steve Emig: The White Bear, I brought all my blogs and blog ideas into one, the old school BMX stories, the ideas about the future of our society, thoughts on the economy, and my Sharpie marker art.  While my two previous BMX blogs, and my blog about homelessness before that, had been successful as readership goes, I honestly had no idea if anyone would read this blog.  Not surprisingly, it started off slow.

This blog is mostly about three weird and different things, and my random thoughts and ideas.  Today this blog is two years old, and very much to my surprise, it has over 75,000 page views in those two years.  My first blog post, two years ago, was one where I talked about why I went to the woods, a much different reason that Thoreau's.  I started that post with the Amanda Palmer talk above.  I had to leave a really toxic place I was living in two years ago, to even have a chance, of ever making a decent living again.  Over 140 job applications I filled out in North Carolina back then didn't pan out and land a job.  My Sharpie art was the only thing making me any money, and that was my only hope of making a living again at the time.  So I headed out into the woods just over two years ago, with about $15 in my pocket, all or nothing. Either I started making money, or I died, basically.  I didn't die.  But I haven't thrived, either.

These past two years have been a wild ride I couldn't have imagined at the time, and I'd seen some pretty crazy stuff happen before that.  In the 3 1/2 years since I began focusing on on making a living with my art, starting in November 2015, I've sold over 80 major drawings, nearly all of which took 35-45 hours to draw.  That hasn't made me a decent living, but it has kept me alive through some really tough times, along with help from several friends.  I just want to thank all of you for the help you have given me.  In a couple of cases, I've taken more help than I probably should have, and those people may think I took advantage of them.  That was never my intention, shit just got crazy.  I have a list of people I want to send a cool drawing (or something like that) to, when things get stable enough foe me to do it. 

I've spent most of the last three years homeless.  People have a lot of ideas about being homeless, most of them wrong, or based on bad information and misunderstandings.  When it comes down to it, getting out of homelessness, and more importantly, knowing you're going to stay out of it, is mostly a matter of cash flow.  I need to build a decent and sizable income to finally leave homelessness permanently, and to be sure I'll have a place to live, barring really extreme circumstances, from then on.  When I can earn a decent living, I'll be able get a place to live, permanently, and rebuild my life in the material sense.

The main reason people become homeless is lack of a strong family and/or social network.  Few people really understand that.  The common misconception is that most people who are homeless are in that situation because they are alcoholics, addicts, mentally ill, or just plain lazy.  Yes, a large number of homeless people struggle with one or more of those issues, but usually the main reason they become homeless is some big personal crisis, AND a weak or on-existent family/social network.  MOST alcoholics have a nice place to live.  Hell, I was a taxi driver that drove a lot of drunk people home, many of them quite wealthy.  A huge percentage of wealthy people are hard drinkers, if not full blown alcoholics, but they have a great place to live.  If they get into trouble of some kind, financial or otherwise, they have a family and social network to help them through it, and never come close to being homeless.

Most addicts have a decent place to live.  Addiction often leads to alienating the people around you at some point, which collapses your family social network, and can possibly lead to homelessness.  But most addicts are not to that point, and have a place to live.  In the same way, MOST mentally ill people, and that includes me dealing with clinical depression for 3-4 years, have a place to live.  My focusing on my Sharpie art came at the end of that battle.  Mental illness can lead to homelessness, but most mentally ill people have a decent place to live.  It's the family and social networks that really make the big difference, in many, if not most, cases.  They help you through tough times without things getting to rock bottom.

I don't drink anymore, like I did when I was younger.  I didn't drink hard, but got buzzed, and occasionally hammered, in my 20's, and 30's.  Addiction wasn't an issue, I just don't really like drinking, and I just stopped when I was a taxi driver.  I don't do an recreational drugs, and I don't take psych or depression meds.  I lived mostly on my own for years, and made enough to live low budget, but well.  Then an injury in 1998 led to leaving the best paying job I've had, as a Hollywood-type lighting guy, and ultimately becoming a taxi driver.  That led to working homelessness, working 7 days a week while living in my cab.  I've been in and out of homelessness since, and I've been in some form of homelessness about 10 of the 20 years since.  About 6 1/2 of those ten years, I was working full time, mostly as a taxi driver, and sometimes with two jobs.  But I didn't have the income to fully rebuild and get completely stable for the long term.  So I kept in the danger zone, on the edge, and wound up homeless on and off.  I also got hit by the technological disruption in the taxi industry, which made making a good living driving a cab nearly impossible.

Along the way, I've learned who and what I really am.  I'm a writer, artist, and have an entrepreneurial spirit.  I've spent the last ten years blogging, and more importantly, learning how technology has changed the game in the media and business world.  Now I have a popular blog in its niche, I've started a second one in another niche (more on that soon), I do a unique form or artwork that actually sells, though usually at fairly low prices for the number of hours put in.  I've also learned quite a bit about internet marketing and promotion, and that's another skill needed by most businesses these days.

But I've been rebuilding from a super low level, a tent in the woods, and it's a long, tough road to get to a decent income level.  I keep plugging along on that road.   A couple days ago I left Block Bikes, and the blog I was doing to promote their online store.  While I got good SEO results, and some good numbers on page views and things like that, the whole point of an online store is sales.  Recently it became apparent that I wouldn't be able to really generate the business revenue needed to really get things going in the time frame needed.

At the same time, I was doing a big chunk of work for that, and also looking for other ways to help build my personal income to the point where I could actually rebuild my life.  In the the fairly small metro area of Lancaster and Palmdale, CA, it also became apparent that I would have trouble earning enough to really rebuild my life back. I'm incredibly grateful to Rich Bartlett at Block for giving me the opportunity, for getting me back out to Southern California, and I gave it my best shot with my particular skill set, to really get the Block Bikes Online BMX Store pumping.  I just don't have all the skills needed to help such a big project build so quick.  I wish them the best.  I left on very short notice, which was lame of me, but seemed the best idea at the time.

So I'm back in Orange County, California now, which is a much, much bigger metro area than Lancaster, and I believe it has far more potential for me to earn the kind of living I need, to get back on track once and for all.

Thanks everyone for checking out and reading this blog over the last two years, for buying and sharing my artwork, and the zines I've done (Yes, I still have some of The Spot zine packs to send out, I'm working to make that happen guys).  It's a new start, yet again, I'm living low, but I'm back in the place I call home, where I know a lot of people, and I think that will be the big difference in getting my life back on track.  Thanks again, I'll do my best to keep it all interesting and fun.  I'll get to work on Year 3 of this blog  tomorrow. 

The Story of my Keychain- part 1: The Zine

It started with the idea to make a zine.  At some point, in 1985, in Idaho, I read an article in FREESTYLIN' magazine about zines.  It was written by BMXer/art student turned FREESTYLIN' magazine editor, and zine lover, Andy Jenkins.  For some reason, the idea of making a zine appealed to me.

I'd always been a daydreamer as a kid, I'd get these really cool creative ideas, often I'd draw and plan them out, and then never follow through. Great ideas that never happened was a big theme of my childhood.  I guess, in a sense, I thought that was sort of the point of ideas.  I watched my parents think of big ideas, like the time my mom wanted to start a home cooking restaurant, called Kathy's Kountry Kitchen, in the farmhouse we lived in, or the time my dad and a friend, both engineers, spent a whole night planning ways to get revenge on the guy's crazy next door neighbor.  But they never took action on these ideas.  Where I grew up in the Midwest, coming up with big ideas, crazy brainstorming, often by adults after a few beers, followed by never taking action, was a normal thing.

So as a new BMX freestyler in Boise, Idaho, with a year and a half of BMX racing and freestyle under my belt, I read Andy's article about these little self-published booklets called zines, and I dreamed about making one called Idaho Stylin'.  But I never actually made it.  I sketched out the logo, designed layout ideas, and thought it out.  Then dropped the idea, and dreamed up something else.

As 1985 came in, my dad got a new job in San Jose, California, and my family moved there in the Spring.  I worked my summer job in Boise, then packed up my 1971 Pontiac Bonneville with the Oldsmobile 455 engine, and drove to San Jose to join them.  I sold my car shortly after getting to San Jose.  At that time, the most cohesive scene in BMX freestyle centered around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  Dave Vanderspek, of the Curb Dogs bike and skate team, was kind of the visionary leader of the group.  They'd get together on the weekends in a certain area of the park and have a big jam circle for the crowd all day.  The pros usually there, or at the Beach Park Ramp Jams, included Vander, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, Rick Allison, Oleg Konings, and ramp crazy man Hugo Gonzales.  There was a whole second layer of great riders, amateurs as well.

When I moved to San Jose, I wanted to find those guys, and become part of that scene.  I remembered the zine idea from Boise, and decided that if I started a zine, then I'd have an excuse to meet and hang out with those guys.  While I knew they rode at Golden Gate Park sometimes, I didn't know exactly when or where, and I didn't have a car to get from San Jose up to The City (as locals called San Francisco).  The thought of driving into a big city and trying to park, and maybe getting mugged or something, scared the crap out of me.

But I really wanted to meet those riders, so I actually followed through and published my first zine. Actually following through on ideas was something I'd been starting to do since I got into freestyle.  My self-esteem was low enough, that I thought I needed a reason to approach the guys, and to ride with them.  After, they were "famous guys from the magazines," and I was a goofball from Idaho.

So I bought a manual Royal typewriter (about 1940's era) from the San Jose Swap Meet, bought some Scotch tape from my Pizza Hut paychecks to tape the photos and copy to a sheet of paper, and dug out the photos I had from riding in Boise.  I changed the name of the zine to San Jose Stylin', and typed up three pages, both sides, of text and photos.  I didn't even know a zine was supposed to be 8 1/2" X 11" sheets folded in half, like a little book.  I figured that out on issue 3 or 4, I think.  My first two or three issues were two or three sheets, with black & white words and photos on both sides, with the pages just stapled in the top left hand corner, like a test at school.

I borrowed my mom's car, drove around to several bike shops, and dropped off copies for bike shop workers, and any freestylers who came by the shops.  Within a week, a San Jose local rider and underground legend, John Vaquez, called me up, and asked me to come ride with his friends, Vince Torres, and a couple others.  They told me about the Beach Park Ramp Jams (held by Robert Peterson at the shop he worked at), and that Sundays were the big day to session Golden Gate Park.  I made it up to a Beach Park Jam two or three weeks later, and handed out some zines there.  I met John Ficarra, who decided to be my assistant editor of the zine, and started riding up to Golden Gate Park with him and the Ground Control guys, which included Chris and Karl Rothe, Mike Perkins, Marc McKee, Tim Treacy, Darcy Langlois, and Mike Golden. I soon became the "zine guy" of the Bay Area BMX freestyle scene.


Here's a local TV segment from the summer of 1986, with a Golden Gate Park Jam circle, featuring Maurice Meyer.  Also in the segment are Mike Perkins at 3:48, Karl Rothe at 4:05, Darcy Langlois with the gut lever at 4:06, Tim Treacy's legs doing the backyard (which he invented, nearly a year before that trick went viral in the freestyle world), Chris Rothe at 4:34, Marc McKee in the yellow shirt at 4:43, and me, chasing my bike (an Idaho parade trick) at 5:07.

One of the better ideas, which to me just seemed like just the smart thing to do, was that I sent copies of San Jose Stylin' to each of the editors at FREESTYLIN' magazine, BMX Action, and BMX Plus!  Instead of sending one for the whole staff to share, I sent them each one, so they could check it out individually, and hopefully talk about it.  That turned out to be a smart move.

In the Spring of 1986, after about 5 monthly (almost) issues of my zine, a bunch of us NorCal guys piled into a van, and headed down to the AFA Masters contest, at the Velodrome, near L.A..  While I was down there, I saw Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN'.  I went over and introduced myself, thinking he'd just shake my hand and say "Hi."  When I told him I'd been sending zines to him, Lew, and Gork, he said something like, "Oh man, we love your zines."  That blew my mind.  And that's how I first met Andy Jenkins, which is the start of the story of my keychain.

I've got a new blog going, it's about building a creative business, and building small businesses in general.  You can check it out here:
WPOS Kreative Ideas 
And check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now

A Brian Foster video to suck you in so we can take your money

The guy who put Fit Bikes on the map, my roommate once upon a time at the P.O.W. (Pros Of Westminster) House, and one of the most stylish riders to ever ride on two wheels.  And now he's becoming a doctor, a physical therapist, to be exact.  Brian Foster, living the dream and riding beyond most of our dream levels.

When I first met Chad at Powers Bikes in Richmond, VA, shortly after landing there last August, we got talking about BMX, and eventually about Brian Foster, Chad's favorite rider.  He asked me to do a drawing of Brian.  Like most people, I imagine Chad was thinking of some time he'd seen Brian ride, the huge air, the smooth, effortless looking style, the epic table 3's.

But the first thing that popped into my mind, thinking about Brian, was sitting in the dingy P.O.W. House living room, where the drapes were always closed, with 7 or 8 other guys.  Dave Clymer, Alan Foster, Lawan Cunningham, Jay, Sales, Bill, Scotty, maybe Todd Lyons, and John Salami.  I don't remember exactly who was sitting on the 3 or 4 couches on that particular day.  Several guys had just come back from a national race, and Brian and a couple others had won some money.  That meant a lot of $5 pepperoni pizzas from What a Lotta Pizza down on Westminster Boulevard.  I was broke, so I didn't have a pizza that night.  In the P.O.W. House, we were all living cheap, so if you ranout of money, you learned to cook ramen.  Everyone one of us could make at least a few different meals out of a pack of ramen and random items laying around the kitchen.

At any given time in the P.O.W. there were a few guys who were doing alright money wise, and three or four who were scraping by.  I was scraping at that point.  I think it was the time I was working as a furniture mover, and the federal government was two months behind in paying Mayflower, so they were two months behind in paying me.  Whatever the case, food money was scarce.  I remember Brian finishing his own pizza, lifting up the box, and saying "Pizza bones."  That was the signal he left the crusts for someone else.  I launched off the couch about three people away, and snatched the box form Brian's hand.  And I was stoked.  After 2 or 3 days of straight ramen, pizza crusts were a delicacy.

Things changed regularly, and maybe a few days later, I'd be the guy with the pizza.  But I ate my crusts, when I had a pizza.  I would hook the roach d'jour up with a slice now and then.  There were 8 to 12 of us living in a 4 bedroom house for a reason, rent was $90 to $120 a month in Southern California.  That meant a lot less time spent working lame jobs in the tough recession years of the early 1990's.  One week one guy would be living high, eating $5 pizzas, and the next week that same guy might be waking up early, picking up all the beer bottles in the living room, and recycling them for ramen money.  And beer money, of course.  Gotta have a couple Mickey's Bigmouths when possible.

So while I've always been a fan of watching Brian Foster ride, my first memories aren't those of him doing a no-footed can-can over the huge Dover Cliff Jump, or a one handed table 360 at Sheep Hills.  When you wind up roommates with an amazing rider, it's the stupid shit that always seems to pop in your head first.

In any case, Brian put Fit Bikes on the map in its early days, when Chris Moeller and Rob-O got that idea going.  Who better to write about when I'm trying to suck you into checking out the discounted Fit Bikes in the Block Bikes Online BMX Store.  There's a lot more stuff for sale, but these are some good deals on new , but previous year, bikes.  If you or a friend are in the market, give them a look, and see if we got what you need right now..

 The new 2020 Fit Bikes are getting built right about now, and will be hitting the store soon, that means the Block Bikes Online BMX Store has some great deals on a few 2017 and 2018 models.  Prices are as of this writing on 6/19/2019, and subject to change.  For most of these, there's only one available, so hop on it fast if there's one you need.

2017 Fit Dugan 1 LSD - $320.95

2017 Fit Begin 1 FC - $352.95

2018 Fit Mac -$432.95

2018 Fit Spriet - $360.95

2018 Fit TRL - $342.95

2018 Fit STR - $342.95

2018 Fit PRK - $342.95

2018 Fit Nordstrom - $342.95

2018 Fit Long - $432.95

2018 Fit Hango - $360.95

2018 Fit Dugan - $360.95

2018 Fit Corriere FC - $486.95

2018 Fit Begin FC - $486.95 

I've got a new blog going, it's about building a art or creative business, or building small businesses in general.  You can check it out here:
WPOS Kreative Ideas
And check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now

Watching the GT-V video for the first time

Blog Post: Watching the GT-V video for the first time

 

East coast legend, and GT/Mountain Dew sponsored pro, Chris Lashua, hanging the back wheel out with a wedge ramp flipper in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.  Summer 1986.  I stayed with the Bickels in that hotel in the background that week. My photo.

 

After the first night in Whistler, we got to kind of know the other riders, and then next morning we were back out on our bikes wandering around, exploring the area, when much to everyone's surprise, the GT Brittania tour motorhome pulled up.  Somebody saw it coming up the road, and we all rode over to see it.  It came to a stop, and out popped GT pro riders, Eddie Fiola and Chris Lashua.

It turned out Eddie and Chris were doing demos at Expo 86, a sort of World's Fair, being held in Vancouver at at the time.  They had a few days off, heard about the freestyle contest in Whistler, and drove up to hang out for a few days.  So we had 30 or so freestylers from Canada, Jay and I from Idaho (OK, I lived in San Jose at the time), a handful more from Washington and Oregon, and vert legend Eddie Fiola and east coast pro rider/promoter Chris Lashua hanging out, and riding for about 4 days.  It was an epic time for freestyle that week in Whistler.

 

On their second day there, Eddie and Chris got a small package from GT Bikes headquarters in Huntington Beach, California.  It was late morning, and a few of us were hanging out in the town square area.  Eddie and Chris came up, said they just got the first copy of the first GT Bikes freestyle  video, GT-V, and asked if anyone had a VCR in their room.  It was on VHS, but their huge RV didn't have a VCR in it.  Hey, it was the 80's, no YouTube or smart phones back then.  A lot of people didn't even have VCR's yet in 1986.

Obviously, all of us unknown riders were psyched to see a new video, before its official release date, and riders took off (no cell phones then) to find anyone who might have a VCR.  No one did.  We went into the mountain bike shop, one of the few things open in Whistler during the summer months, and they didn't have a VCR.  I think it was the guy in the bike shop who suggested the bar next door.  We were all kind of frustrated, freestyle videos were few and far between then, and we were all amped to watch it.  Eddie and Chris were both excited to see it, to since they were GT riders, and Eddie was a star of the video.

Finally, Eddie went into the bar, and which was pretty dark and dingy, and had about five morning drinkers in it.  This wasn't some hip, ski area sports bar.  It was a dive bar in a tiny mountain ski town, in the off season.  Eddie got the OK from the bartender to play the video... if those of us watching it bought something to drink, at like 11:00 am.  There was one other rule, only guys of legal age, which I think was 19 years old in B.C. then, could come in the bar and watch it.  About 10 or 15 riders were sitting on their bikes, outside the bike shop next door, still thinking someone might have a VCR we could borrow, so we could all watch it in the bike shop.  Then Eddie Fiola and Chris Lashua came over, and told us the bar would show it.  But only three or four of us were legal age and able to go in and see it.

So we went into the bar, I was legal , but Jay, my old teammate, had to stay outside.  We wound up with Eddie, Chris, and 3 or 4 of us riders sitting at the corner of the bar, buying Cokes, so we could watch GT-V for the first time.  Even the Canadians didn't want a beer that early in the morning.  We got the bartender to turn the TV, so the ten or so riders who were under age, could peer through the glass window, and sort of, kind of, see the video, 15 feet away, but not hear the sound.  And that's how I watched the first GT Bikes video, GT-V, for the first time.  You can watch the final version of GT-V (with lame audio) on YouTube by searching " (1986) GT-V Absolutely Unreel," as of the time I'm writing this.  Premiere parties didn't become a thing for at least 10 or 12 more years.  When a video came out, you plugged into whatever VCR was around, with a few friends, and that was your "premiere."

I was sitting at a bar, drinking a Coke, with  Eddie Fiola, Chris Lashua, and about three Canadian riders I'd just met over the previous couple of days.  The GT/Brittania RV that's in the opening shots of the video, was parked half a block away.  Seriously, for a dorky kid from Idaho (and San Jose), it was just surreal.  Every few minutes, we'd kind of look over our shoulders, and see this group of faces pressed up against the window behind us, trying to catch every bit of action in the video they could.  They would pull their faces back every little while to keep from fogging up the glass with their breath.  In those days, we got all of our news and visuals about BMX freestyle from BMX and freestyle magazines, and the two or three videos that had come out over the previous couple of years.  The main ones were two videos by BMX Plus, and Rippin' by the BMX Action Trick Team.  There was also a Curb Dogs video, but not many people had seen it at the time.  We were all so desperate to see video footage of freestyle back then, we'd do about anything to see new footage of the pros riding.

The GT-V video started with Eddie, Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and Brian Scura teaching some dorky kid (played by Josh White) to be a good freestyler.  The video shows those four, plus Dino Deluca and Brett Hernandez, doing flatland in Huntington Beach, Hollywood, and at a school show.  There's also ramp riding at the BMX Action T.O.L. halfpipe, and on the GT Brittania quarterpipe.  Eddie does his best airs, and shows off the "over and out," his can-can to one footer, which I'm pretty sure is the first multiple variation air, something Mat Hoffman got known for a year or two later.  Martin showed off a ton of flatland, including the quickspin and bar rides, new tricks at the time.  Josh White showed off all his crazy variations and his insane flexibility.  And... Chris Lashua wasn't even in the video, because The Man was still keepin' the East Coast riders down then. 

That version of GT-V, and the copy I ended up with a year later, had the original music, which started with Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home," as they turned the ignition key in the motorhome at the beginning.  It was actually a pretty cool sound track for the day.  Then, after the video was completely finished being edited, some lawyer told the producers that the music could get GT sued.  So they put in this crap canned music.  Back in those days, producers could pay $100 or something for a whole cassette tape of mediocre electronic music that came with the rights to use it in any video.  "Canned music," as it was called, was also used in porn videos in those days.  So it wasn't unusual to watch an 80's BMX video, and then hear the exact same electronic instrumental song in a porno video later on.  I know at least two songs from the first BMX Plus video (1985) were in popular porno videos at the same time. 

After we watched GT-V in the bar, which Eddie and Chris themselves were seeing for the first time, we all went out, and talked about it to the younger riders, and described all the new tricks we could remember from it.  Later that day, someone paid like $50 to rent a VCR from somewhere, and I think they showed it in the mountain bike shop, and in someone's hotel room once or twice.  The video wasn't released for another month or so, so it was this awesome sneak preview for those of us in Whistler.  I wasn't really a part of the industry yet, though I had hung out with most of the pros in Tulsa, a couple months earlier.  I was doing my zine, covering the NorCal freestyle scene then, and I took some photos of Eddie and Chris Lashua while we were all riding together for those few days.  The photo of Chris Lashua, above, is one of those photos. 

For the next two or three days, I hung out and rode with Jay Bickel, Eddie Fiola, Chris Lashua, and the Canadian and Northwest U.S. guys.  The two Canadians I remember the names of are Rob Dodds, a really good vert and all around rider from B.C., and Rob Thring, a top rider and freestyle organizer in eastern Canada.  Monte Hill, a good, but unknown, vert rider from Washington, was also in the mix that week.  Basically,  that week was this crew of totally unknown, but hardcore and solid riders from Canada, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, plus pros Eddie and Chris.  

We sessioned flatland in the town square, and the quarterpipe and wedge ramp when they got set up that Friday, as I recall.  We also pushed our bikes up the mountain, and did a little riding on the hiking and mountain bike trails. They weren't crazy MTB trails with big jumps and drops, like today's MTB trails, they were hiking trails, basically, used by cross country MTBers.  But there were some fun downhill sections to haul ass down.

  

We also rode the BMX track before the racers showed up.  Two pro racers, I think it was Greg Hill and Stu Thomsen, showed up that weekend, but I never talked to them.  They were up at the BMX track most of the time.  There was a story that Greg was chasing Stu through the little town one night, just screwing around.  They carved around the corner of a building, and a local woman pushing a baby stroller was right there.  Stu bunnyhopped the kid in stroller, and Greg carved around it, freaking out the woman pushing the stroller.  A couple of the Canadian guys said they saw the incident happen. 

 

The BMX track had this huge, insane gap between the second and third berms.  It made like a ten foot high, 25 foot plus gap, that dropped downhill.  Today it would be a big jump on a BMX bike, and a solid MTB jump.  In 1986, that gap was Evel Knievel level shit.  Two or three of the Canadians challenged each other to jump it one night, and after a couple of huge, bails, one guy made the gap.  At that time, that was the craziest thing I'd ever anybody seen do on a BMX bike.  I don't even remember the guy's name who jumped it, and I didn't have my camera when he did it.  It was a hint of things to come a decade later, when dirt jumping really took off and jumping got insane.  

Eddie Fiola also had a brand new trick he just invented that week, called the "Expo."  He learned it right before coming up to Whistler, while he and Chris were doing demos at the Expo '86.  It was a quarterpipe trick where he would ride up the ramp, and do a 90 degree flyout, landing sideways on the deck.  Then he'd hop once or twice, then hop back in spinning 90 degrees, going in fakie, and rolling backwards off the ramp.  At the time, Ron Wilkerson had not yet invented the abubaca, and hopping in backwards was a really gnarly trick.  Eddie showed us that one, and it blew our minds.  We usually don't think of Eddie as someone who did lip tricks, but if you ever see him riding a skatepark, yell, "Hey, Eddie, get a foot out," and see what he does.

Then, on Saturday morning, we had the flatland contest, as the "World Championships" BMX race (with only two top pro racers), was going on up the hill.  Like most BMX freestyle contests I've competed in, I remember nothing of the contest itself.  Yeah, Jay and I competed against all the other guys.  I think Jay placed well, and I was in the middle of the pack, as usual.  Let's face it, the contest itself has really always been a way to justify going to ride with friends from other regions for a couple of days, and we usually forget the contest itself, and remember the riding from the rest of the weekend.

Since I,rode up to Whistler with the Bickels, and we had a long drive back to Boise, we left right after the flatland comp, and missed the ramp riding.  We didn't see a sasquatch or a bear on the drive back either, which is probably a good thing.  The Bickels gave me a ride to the Boise airport, and I flew back to San Jose, and my "normal life" of making pizzas and riding around San Jose every afternoon.  At Pizza Hut in San Jose, we did have Canadian bacon to put on pizzas.

I have a new blog, check it out:

Crazy California

Creative Life: 6/15/2019- Time to plan an art show...

I've been in the desert, north of L.A., back in Southern California, for nearly  six weeks now.  I love the lack of humidity.  I've got a roof over my head.  I'm still working all day every day, usually starting 5:30 am or so, towards the goal of finally escaping homelessness, for good.  My current situation is a temporary one.  I earn some money, but I'm still along ways from earning an actual living.  So I'm helping a friend build one online business, which will be able to pay me a fair amount when it really gets going.  But it could easily take 6 months to a year or more for that business to get fully up to speed.  So I need to create a smaller business of my own, to earn a living in the meantime.

For three years, I scraped by, homeless much of that time, selling my Sharpie drawings.  In the process of actually selling 80 or 100 major pieces of art, I learned quite a bit about blogging, social media, and promotion in today's world.  In 21st century fashion, I learned by watching how-to videos to get the basics, and then actually putting the ideas into practice.  So that gives me several options.

I'm working on a small book, which I'll likely publish as a zine, to help small businesses start or improve their content creation and social media.  Very few small businesses do this much at all, let alone really well.  In the major recession that's looming, this will be critical.  A lot of businesses, large and small, will soon get wiped out.  In the same way that the wind in a thunderstorm trims the old, dead, and useless branches off trees, recessions and depressions weed out the poorly run businesses. In today's rapidly changing world, the businesses based on old, Industrial Age business models that are no longer valid, will also fall by the wayside.  

I can sell the little book I'm working on to the small businesses who are interested.  That's one option.  It's inevitable that some of those businesses will ask me to do their social media, but I'm already doing that for one active business, and the small one I'm building, to help me build my own income in the meantime.  But the going to rate to help people figure out how to best use blogging, social media, content creation, and get them going, is $20-$30 an hour, so there's another option.  A few hours of that here and there would add up.

In addition to that, I recently learned there are job boards online, filled with businesses who hire people to do the menial work on Pinterest, which I'm doing a lot on these days.  Instagram is for fronting and pretending.  Pinterest is for selling.  That's why I spend far more time on Pinterest.  But I can sign up for those jobs, doing the same menial Pinterest stuff I do everyday, for $1,000 or $1,200 a month.  One guy says he was doing as many as ten of those jobs at once, making $10,000 to $12,000 a month.  So that's another option.  I could probably handle two, maybe three, of those jobs, and keep doing most of what I'm doing now.  Boring, but it pays well for a while.

The more appealing option, is to simply use these tools to build my own income with affiliate marketing, and selling my own writing and artwork online.  Less money at the start, but far more interesting, and it's a long term thing. This would focus on some smaller drawings and written works.  In any case, I need to find the combination of these ideas that will put at least $1,200 to $1,500 a month in my pocket, enough to get a room or apartment before too long, a cheap car, and a good bike to ride.  And a skateboard, lots of good skate spots around here.

With all that going on, I've barely been doing any drawing in the last couple of months, my last days in Richmond, and my time here in Lancaster.  So I'm going to go kind of underground with my Sharpie art for a while.  Rather than keep drawing people's favorite musicians for $2-$3 an hour, I'm going to draw some ideas I really want to draw, and then have a little solo art show somewhere around here.  I'm aiming on making that happen by the end of August.  When I get to that point, you'll all be invited, if you're anywhere near Southern California, anyhow.  The move back out here to California, though it's keeping me super busy, has given my life some basic stability, which is what I needed to take the next step, and begin to rebuild my life.

Oh, and I'm sitting on hundreds of little stories about taxi driving, homelessness, and other weird things I've experienced, so I'm going to start sharing some of those stories, as well as more ideas on creativity, art, the creative process, and using social media and blogging to promote whatever it is that you do.  So that's the tentative plan at the moment.  Things an change at any time, I know that better than most people.  In that case, I'll adapt, and keeping moving on. 

Here is the drawing I just finished, for freestyle friend Alma Jo Barrera, last night.  This is her Project Bug, built as a tribute to other soldiers.  It's followed by a couple more of my favorite Sharpie drawings.  #sharpiescribblestyle

Block Bikes vintage BMX stuff on Ebay today- 6/11/2019

I just put a bunch more vintage, NOS stuff on Ebay for Block Bikes:

NOS 90's Block frame pad sets in blue
Green
Tan
Green plaid
Lizard Skins kids (ages 6-12) shin guards
Macneil bar ends
Fly Bikes bar ends

The last two pad sets I put up literally didn't last five minutes.  You guys know how the collector market is these days...

The Bummyhop

Blog post: The Bummyhop

Homeless person passed out on Hollywood Boulevard,on the world famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 2019.  I shot this photo while I was homeless last year.  This is the kind of guy we'd do bummyhops over in San Francisco back in 1985-86. 

Often after a few hours of riding at Golden Gate Park, a bunch of us would head to the Embarcadero to ride.  That was a spot in downtown S.F., with big concrete ledges and other cool stuff to ride.  At that point, in 1985-86, street riding was about bunnyhopping up, or jumping off things, doing footplants, launching off curb jumps, and things like that.  Wall rides and ped grinds on street hadn't been invented yet.  At some point, while riding the Embarcadero with Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, and others from the Golden Gate Park crew, someone mentioned the term vollie.  When I asked what that was, they explained that it was an ollie over any homeless person, usually one laying down, or maybe over their legs while sitting.  A "vollie" was the San Francisco skateboarder term for a "vagrant ollie," ollying over a homeless person.

  As an inquisitive dork, and the zine guy of the scene, I asked what a BMX bunnyhop over a homeless person was called.  I got about five different answers.  I realized that there was no actual, "official" term for bunnyhopping over a bum.  WE did actually do that once in a while, usually when Vander and Drob would head off through the streets, and we'd follow them, hopping over or footplanting any obstacle we found.

Being the zine guy of NorCal, I decided this issue needed a resolution, so I took a poll among all the Golden Gate Park riders, to get their ideas.  Out of the 5 or 6 initial ideas, two terms led the pack, vunnyhop, for vagrant bunnyhop, or bummyhop, a bunnyhop over a bum.  There was some serious discussion (well, sort of serious), and a bit of arguing.  The poll was close.  But in the end, the term "bummyhop" was officially sanctioned as the term for bunnyhopping over a homeless person in an urban setting.  I put the results in my zine, and we all got a laugh out of it. 

Now, as a person who has been homeless for extended periods, one just ending a month ago, I'd like to say that it's really lame to harass homeless people, they have more than enough to worry about, and get shit from all kinds of people all the time.  Homelessness is also an industry, and several groups and many people make a living off the homelessness industry.  And that sucks.  That's why I avoided nearly all non-profits and programs for homeless people. 

But as a longtime BMX rider, if there's a bum crashed out on the sidewalk, and you're in a hurry, and can do it safely, bunnyhop the fucker.  I've done a few bummyhops in my time.  Looking for a good, old school video of someone bunnyhopping a bunch of people just now, like maybe Mike Buff's 15 person bunnyhops back in the day, I ran into a video of a news clip of some kids in L.A. getting in trouble for bummyhopping homeless guys and putting the videos on YouTube.


I'm an old BMXer, I've done this in San Francisco, 30-some years ago, but not for video or photos.  I think the people in the video that I found, acting all uptight, are pretty hypocritical.  I doubt they think twice about the homeless normally, until a camera was thrust in their face, and someone showed them a bummyhop video and asked their opinion.  They said it was terrible. 

Here's my thoughts, if you're out shooting video, and you want to bunnyhop a homeless person and shoot video of it, talk to them first.  Stage it, let them know what you want to do, and show them you have the skills to do it without injuring the person.  Then, after you shoot your footage, hook the person or people up for helping you get some cool footage.  Give them $5 or $10, buy them a pizza, a beer, or some cigarettes.  If you're really cool, give them money to get a cheap motel room for the night.  Whatever.  Make it worth the homeless person's while.  Then shoot some bonus footage showing that you set it up, and the people were cool with it.  You'll probably get some cool interview footage, as well, homeless people make for great interviews.  

But do not go around looking for passed out homeless people, and bunnyhopping them just for your video.  Obviously, you could seriously injure someone, if they sit up suddenly.  Ideally, just leave homeless people alone, they have enough problems.  But I can't say "Never bunnyhop a bum," because we did it, once in a while, back in the 80's.  So I'd be a hypocrite to tell riders to never do it if you're hauling ass down a street and there's a person passed out on the sidewalk.  But now you know there's an official name for it, the bummyhop.

One more thought about homelessness in general, as someone who understands it far more than I ever wanted to.

There are more empty buildings and spare bedrooms in this country than there are homeless people.  

We could house everyone indoors , and then address the issues that got them there.  We, as a society, simply choose not to.  Hopefully we'll get better at dealing with this issue in the coming years, as more and more people have to struggle to pay rent in our current, crazy, economic times.

Rabbit hole #1

A month back in California

All of us stereotype people to some extent.  But the absurd number of people who stereotype Californians in North Carolina, and Virginia continued to amaze me when I was back there.  Even funnier was the level of stereotyping there was.  Most of North Carolinians seemed to think this classic movie from the 80's was a documentary, not a dramatic comedy.  So yeah, people back East, this is why I moved back to Cali, so Mr. Hand could steal my pizza.

Random fact, seriously, actual fact, then unknown actor Sean Penn wore his personal black & white checked Van's to the set, and pulled one off and banged it on his head while playing the really stoned scene in the movie.  Van's didn't know their shoes were in the movie, yet, Van's shoes dales doubled that year because of that scene, from about $20 million to $40 million.  If that isn't weird enough, I'm typing at a McDonald's, and some kid just walked up to the drink fountain next to me... wearing checkered Van's.  Seriously.

All shoe synchronicity aside, this past Thursday marked one month that I've been back in Southern California.  I flew out of LAX in November 2008, with the clothes on my back, and a small, bookbag sized backpack.  I had some stuff in a small storage unit, which I lost, including all my BMX stuff and video footage.  A month ago, I rolled into L.A.'s Greyhound bus terminal, with the clothes on my back, and a small backpack. Both times I was leaving several months of straight homelessness.

But I came back this time with my Sharpie "scribble style" are honed to a point that nearly everyone calls "art."  I've sold about 100 major drawings in the last 3 1/2 years.  I've also got a decade of blogging, several of those blogs successful in readership, if not money, though the last blog reallyhelped sell my artwork.  I've also got a pretty good grasp on the underlying principles of internet and social media marketing, but there are plenty of technical aspects I need to work on, but that's an ever-changing world.  Those blogging and marketing chops are what got me back here.

I'm working a fair chunk of my time doing a new blog and social media stuff for Block Bikes new online BMX store... driving traffic, as it's called.  Big thanks to Rich Bartlett for this opportunity.  With my SEO skills, I moved Block Bikes to the #1 spot in a Google search, where another Block Bikes shop had been anchored.  We didn't have to buy links, spam anyone, or advertise, I didn't it with daily blogging and social media work.  I also started the Block Bikes Blog, and it has about 3,600 page views in two months, about six times what this blog had in its first two months.

I've also built a huge Pnterest page for Block, which may seem counter-intuitive to a lot of people in marketing, but I learned the power of Pinterest for SEO and brand awareness while promoting my art.  The month old Block Pinterest page is getting about 30,000 views a month already, so that's off to a good start.  We haven't had a huge sales surge yet on the website, but people don't buy complete bikes all that often, and it will take a little while to build up awareness to really get the online sotre up to full steam.  It's like a big ship, it takes a while to get up to full steam, but then it should cruise well.

I had the good luck to make it to an old school BMX freestyle weekend, and see a whole bunch of pro riders and industry people from BITD.  That trip was thanks to Maurice Meyer, Chris Rothe, and Marc McKee, so big thanks to those guys for letting me tag along.  Thanks also to Dominic Phipps for hosting his signing party, for the 2nd edition of The Birth of the Freestyle Movement," and to Mat Hoffman for putting on the contest that morning, both events were a blast.

Antoher aspect to coming back to Southern California is the food checklist.  There are certain places a former Californian has to eat at upon returning to the state, it's in our contract.  In-N-Out, check.  A family owned Mexican restaurant, check.  A Famous Star a Carl's Jr., check.  Something gut busting at Del Taco, check.  There's a Tommy's Chili Burger a block from me right now, but that will have to wait.  Also on my list is Papa Joe's pizza and Las Barcas Mexican in Huntington Beach, along with about 5 donut shops where I once had "Local" status.  And as a former TV industry guy, I have to hit Jerry's Famous Deli and Carney's at some point.  Then there's Knowlwood's down in Orange County, and...

Shit, I need to walk about 7-10 miles a day to handle all those.  I am walking about 2 1/2 miles nearly every day, though.  My body, beaten to hell by the 9 most intense months of homelessness I ever faces, is slowly healing.  I've lost about 7-9 pounds in the last month, I'm kind of bouncing right now. I've also been riding an old mountain bike they tuned up for me at Block, every now and then.  I'm still trying to get into a steady rhythm on a day to day basis, and start building my life back.  So that's where I'm at right now.  More random ideas and old BMX stories to come...


I'll end this post with one of my favorite Californians, and the only musician I've seen play live more than Social Distortion and The Dickies combined, Kerry Getz.  I'm pretty sure she never ordered a pizza in history class. 

Dizz-pocalypse drawing

I put this on Facebook last week, when I drew it, but I forgot to post it here on the blog.  I'm going and busy now from 4-5 am every morning until 9 or so every night, doing blogging and social media for Block Bikes, my personal blog, and and a new project, and like everyone else, I need 48 more hours every day to get everything done I want to do.  So I just spaced on posting this here.  It's 11" X 14," about 12 hours of drawing, or so, and is the first scribble style drawing I've done in about a month, because of the move from Richmond, VA to Lancaster, CA.  That's my longest gap in drawing since late 2015.

I've been wanting to draw John "Dizz" Hicks for quite a while.  He was a cool guy, totally unique rider, and great character in BMX freestyle in the 1980's.  I did this one small, so I could sell some copies, and I have two orders.  On all the musician drawings I do, I put lyrics or song titles in the background, which gives it a texture that looks kind of cool.  For this one, I wanted to try a bombed out building, post apocalyptic sky background, to see how that looked. 

It's pretty cool, and I want to do a full size (18" X 24") drawing of John for an art show some day.  Anyhow, I like the basic idea, the test worked, and I'm going to send this original to John (Dizz) for him to hang on to.  Because I'm working so many hours doing other blogging/social media now, I'm going to stop doing drawings for hire, and focus on doing some really good ones so I can put on a solo art show in a few months.  #sharpiescribblestyle

Retail Apocalypse: 20,813 retail stores closed or planned to close, in the last 2 1/2 years

According to this CNBC article (June 5, 2019), discount stores like Costco, Walmart, and Target are doing well, while 7,150 retail store closings have already been announced for 2019, to add to the 5,524 in 2018, and 8,139 in 2017.  That's 20,813 stores already shuttered or planned to this year.  I've heard much higher numbers from 2017-18, so I think this just counts major national chain department and  retail stores, but it isn't clear in the article.  In addition to these 20,000+ closings, there were at least 5,000 to 10,000 more closings in 2010-2016. 

Multiple sources over the last 2 or 3 years have reported that 400 of the 1,100 to 1,200 shopping malls in the U.S. were expected to close between about 2016 and 2021 or so.  Some have closed, I haven't heard an exact number, but probably a few dozen in the past ten years.  The website Dead Malls.com has stories and reports from many still open dead malls, which means they're either closed, or below 70% occupancy.

My thinking is that this is the collapse of the Industrial Age distribution system, as the Information age distribution system takes over, like Amazon, Ebay, tens of thousands of small online stores, and online sales/in store distribution through major stores like Walmart and Target.  I call this decades long transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age "The Big Transition." Here's my latest blog post explaining this idea. 

At least 25,000 to 30,000 stores closed this decade, and we haven't hit a recession... yet.

Create the things you want to see in the world

For some reason, this video popped in my mind to go along with the nebulous, partially formed idea  for today's blog post.  I've learned enough in my (almost) 53 years on this planet, to know that intuitive spark means my post, though not yet fully thought out, not yet written, will tie in with the message Peter Dinklage gives in this short, but incredibly powerful video.  That's how the Universe works.  It's cool like that.

"The greatest words on written page, only come to life when you're on stage."

- Me, line from "Actress," a poem a wrote for my sister's best friend in about 1995.  That talented woman, a serious actor at heart, is now mom of two kids who happen to have some of the most successful channels on YouTube

The job, the real job, of writers, is to find new ideas that society needs at a particular point in time, and present those ideas in some form of text, so that the ideas are drawn out into society, and acted on... hopefully.  That can be done in many ways, in straight forward non-fiction, in personal blogs or zines or self-published ebooks.  Or those ideas can be woven into fictional stories and published as novels, plays or TV shows or movies.  The hardest part of writing, I've found, is to simply be able to survive, preferably with a roof over my head and enough food, while doing the time consuming work of thinking, and then writing.

Yesterday was four weeks that I've been back in Southern California, and tomorrow will be 30 days, a month.  For a month I've had a roof over my head, thanks to Rich at Block Bikes.  I can take showers, I have a room nearby, where I can sleep inside, I'm not out in the elements, like I was for most of the last two years.  I have a refrigerator and cupboards to store food.  I'm doing work to promote the new Block online bike store website.  But Block is a high caliber bike shop, it's not some huge corporation that can throw me a huge salary while building a brand new division.  So I'm living on a very small income, as we build up the online store into a successful business.  The Block Bikes online store, is a big, broad, major website, and it's going to take a solid year or year and a half to build something that large into a well known, popular, and profitable business.  It's a long term thing.

So while I have a stable, but temporary, place to stay for now, I still have to build an income on my own, if I'm going to build my life back into something close to a typical life.  I need to do that while helping Block get to where it needs to be.  I've spent most of the the last two years homeless, to be able to focus on my main talents.  I needed to live as cheap as possible, since there was no one willing to invest in me, to really build my art and writing into a business.  Homelessness was the best option, as crazy as that sounds. 

Most people think that homelessness ends when a homeless person gets a roof over their head.  Actually, that's not the case.  Homelessness, and the struggling mentaility that helps a person survive it, ends when a homeless person gets a room to rent, or an apartment, AND they have a stable income, high enough to keep that place indefinitely, barring an unexpected tragedy.  Homelessness really ends when a homeless person is confident they won't be homeless again, unless something really crazy happens.  I'm now at the top level of homelessness, similar to someone who's found a job, but is staying in a weekly motel or halfway house, working towards their own place, their own space.  I'm almost there, but I need to build a big enough, stable income, that will allow me to get my own apartment, a car, the basic stuff needed, and finally (hopefully) stabilize. 

The one thing that hasn't changed over the last month is my frantic, dawn to dusk work, to build a foundation, to build my own income, as well as building the awareness and online presence of the Block Bikes online store.  This blog hit the 70,000 page view threshold about a week ago, making it my second most popular blog, trailing only Freestyle BMX Tales.  Meanwhile, the Block Bikes Blog will be 2 months old tomorrow, and it has over 3,000 page views, more than 5 times what this blog saw in its first two months.  I'm off to a really good start on those things. 

I've also been building the Block Bikes Pinterest page.  I got interested in Pinterest when I started seriously promoting my Sharpie art.  I googled "Sharpie art," and saw that half of the pictures that came up were from Pinterest.  I've since learned that Pinterest has 250 million viewers a month, and they are largely higher income, and they actually buy stuff.  So while everyone is stroking their egos by posting B.S. on Instagram, the people who want to actually sell things online are learning the ins and outs of Pinterest, and putting it to work. 

Once I started building a personal Pinterest page, which included my art, I found I just like sitting down in the evenings, and looking through cool photos, and adding to my collections, my Pinterest boards. Google my main hashtag, #sharpiescribblestyle, and you'll be drowned in images of my artwork.  My Sharpie art now has a bigger online presence than most successful, mid-sized businesses, and I built that while living homeless, sitting in the libraries or at a McDonald's, on my old, hand-me-down laptop.  In the course of promoting, and actually selling, about 100 major drawings, I got pretty good at social media marketing.  There are a ton of things I still need to learn, and it's a continual process, but I understand the big picture of it now.  This has become another skill set that I can use to make money.  This is the skill set that Rich at Block tapped into, making it worth his while to get me back to California, and get a roof over my head.  This skill set will help me earn more money, as I use it to build up the Block online business. 

So, the night before last, I was able to finally do something I haven't been able to do for a couple of years.  I took the bus to the big shopping area near here, where there's a Barnes & Noble, among other things.  I was able to just relax, take some time off, and "catch my breath," so to speak.  I didn't have to worry about where I was going to sleep that night, or if my clothes and art supplies would be stolen, like they were in Richmond.  I've been an avid reader my whole life, and simply wandering around a book store and browsing magazines and books, is a thing I love to do now and then.  For the first time in several years, I had enough money to actually buy a new book, if I wanted.  As simple as it sounds, it was wonderful.  I browsed through magazines for maybe 45 minutes, and then wandered the store for another hour or so.  It was wonderful. 

But I didn't really find anything I wanted to read.  That spoke to the writer in me.  After wandering for  a while, I started to ask myself, "What do I want to read these days?"  There are a couple of business oriented books I do want to read soon, but they're both $20 or more, and I didn't really want to spend that much.  The store didn't have either one, anyhow.  In fiction, the last novels I really got into were the original Lisbeth Salander books, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and the two follow-ups.  The original author died, and the two new books with her character didn't interest me.  I was a big fan of Michael Crichton, and there are a couple of his novels I never read.  But those didn't seem right, right now.  Neither did  any of Clive Cussler's novels, though I always find them a good read.  Dean Koontz' books have some of the greatest characters, but I wasn't feeling his vibe right then, either.  Maybe re-read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land?  They didn't have that either, which was fine. 

I ended up buying the $8 version of Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad.  That was the only book that called to me, and was a price I didn't feel bad paying.  I've read that book 4 or 5 times, and I knew the new, 20th anniversary, updated version would refresh his ideas to me, helping with my work at Block on with my own stuff.  But still, I asked, "What to I REALLY want to read right now?"  That basic question is why BMXers started their own companies 30 years ago, and began to completely re-design the classic, double diamond hardtail, BMX bike, into the new, modern, much stronger versions.  That basic question is why people like me made zines in the 80's (and 90's and 2000's, and even today), and while people blog, and why we started making our own BMX freestyle videos in the late 80's and early 90's. 

That basic question, "Why doesn't somebody make (do, write, produce, build, film...) ______________?"  That's the question that leads to creative progression.  I realized that the book I REALLY wanted to read, was an idea I had in my head, to write, for a long time.  So I headed back home, and the next morning, I began writing it.  It'll be a big, fat zine soon.  I'll let you know. 

So that's where I'm at.  I was finally able to let go of the frantic struggle to survive, the homelessness survival mentality, to some extent, and relax a little.  That's a good thing.  And mixed in with all the other stuff I spend 15 hours a day doing, I'm writing a new idea, one I've had in the back of my head for maybe 15 years.  It may be a really cool zine.  Or it may completely suck and fail.  I'm OK with that.  If writing it didn't scare me, it wouldn't be worth the trouble.  That's the nature of creative projects.  You gotta take chances.  Now go do something you think needs doing.  And light up the night.

The Unraveling...

Wall Street Warns of Mounting Recession Risk from Trade War

This article above is from Bloomberg business news, yesterday, 6/2/2019. The article says we could face a looming global recession due to the trade wars in 9 months.  We could face a global recession due to the trades wars in 9 days.  That's really where we are right now.  It'll probably be a couple more months or so, but I don't think our horribly manipulated economy can be propped much longer.

Before I left Richmond, nearly a month ago, I started thinking of the Big Picture of where things are headed as "The Unraveling."  I've been writing about the looming recession for a couple of years now.  I predicted that the stock markets would start dropping soon after the Corporate Welfare plan, aka the Trump Tax Cuts, were passed.  The Tax bill was signed by President Trump on December 22, 2017, and went into effect January 1, 2018. The stock markets continued to rise early in Trumps presidency because major corporations knew that huge windfall was coming.  The NYSE markets peaked on January 26, 2018, and began to drop.  That's what I predicted, and that came true.  The tech heavy Nasdaq went up a while longer.

Here's where I screwed up.  I didn't realize just how much our economy was being rigged, I completely underestimated the corruption at the top levels in our world.  A relatively small number of major investors soon began to buy a small number of key stocks, and the market averages climbed again, as the huge windfall major corporations got in the tax cuts were used mostly to buy back their own stocks.  There was no much-needed infrastructure plan, that both parties promoted in the 2016 election. There was very little major capital investment.  We didn't hear of dozens of new factories opening in the last year.  The tax cuts did exactly what all major tax plans are designed to do, they made the super rich richer.  

But even that focused investment to buoy up the stock averages, aided by a decade of super cheap money due to artificially low interest rates, couldn't raise the markets much past the January 26th high point.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked again on September 21st, then began dropping again when the Federal Reserve did exactly what the Fed should have been doing, they began to raise interest rates back to a reasonable level.  Some of the markets dropped 20%, some individual stocks were down 40% or more, and that led to the huge market drop last Christmas Eve.  The stock market, according to one analyst, was actually halted 40 times, that day, to try and negate the carnage.  

Ultimately, Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell completely flip-flopped, to such a degree that many people watching wondered just what he had been threatened with.  So the Fed stopped doing its job, it cut plans to hike up interest rates further.  And that bought the stock markets some more time, which was the whole point, to prop up the economy until after the 2020 election.  Stupidity came back in vogue, and the markets climbed back near the two previous peaks.  But stocks, by and large, are priced high right now.  Even the best investor in the U.S., Warren Buffet, said he was sitting on $112 billion to invest, and had no good place to put it, in an interview this past spring.  

So now our President Trump has stoked the Trade War fires, at the time when he's under threat of an impeachment, has been named a co-conspirator in the case that put his lawyer in Federal prison, and has about 16 major investigations into corruption, financial issues, and obstruction of justice, some of which could turn to be outright treason, if proven.  

Things have gone off the rails.  It's not going to get any better for the President and the establishment Republicans anytime soon.  And now a potential trade war with Mexico, which we are completely intertwined with, business-wise and financially, is escalating.  A trade war with Mexico would be taking a metaphorical baseball bat to the knees of many of our major corporations, they have operations on both sides of the border.  A report last night said about a billion dollars in trade, A DAY, goes back and forth over the Mexican border.  It's just a really bad idea.  Even worse, it threatens our guacamole supply.  We can't have that.  

So this is what I kind of anticipated, we will see an unraveling in President Trump as he tries to cope with bad news from all sides.  This will lead to some really bad decisions, like a trade war threat with Mexico, and many others.  This will put the brakes on the wobbly stock markets, which we've seen happen over the last 5 weeks.  I just don't see any other rabbits to be pulled out of this economic hat.  I think we will finally slide, slowly at first, then increasingly faster, into the recession that's been held off for a couple of years now.  That's hard, but not entirely bad.  We NEED a recession, they sort out the well run businesses and weed out the poorly run ones. 

I've only been talking about the stock markets so far, which are largely the wealth of the financial elites.  The stock market over the last few years has basically detached itself from "Main Street" America.  Most Americans are already struggling.  Around 60% of workers struggle with low wage service jobs, and at least another 25%, that make good salaries in tech and other fields, are struggling with massive student loan debt.  That student loan debt will be the thing to watch when things really head South in the stock markets.  Because much of the $1.5 TRILLION in student loan debt, has been repackaged and resold, just like sub prime mortgages were in 2007-2008.  

Maybe, someone, somewhere, behind the scenes, will find another form of manipulation to stave off the recession (actually, we're likely looking at a full blown, decade long, Great Depression at this point), for a few more months, but I really doubt it.  

As I've said before, buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.  But for the three of you who read this far, there is hope.  Remember, a recession is when the whole world goes on sale, but nobody wants to buy.  There will be incredible opportunities in the next few years, whatever happens.  but few people will take advantage of them.  Hopefully you are one of them.

This outlook on the future, depressing as it seems, is why I believe that helping workers learn to become functional small business people, is a key to our future.  The major corporations, like today's tech giants, don't hire tens of thousands of people like major manufacturing companies once did.  Not until they get to an Amazon size, anyhow.  Somebody needs to create lots of jobs, and tens of thousands of tiny businesses, aided by today's technology, is the best bet I see to do that.  

Hey, it's Monday.  I guess that's as good a time as any to hit you with the "bad news."  Whatever happens, Friday's still on its way.