Looking back on my early years of freestyle... and on Eddie Fiola's influence

I saw it was Eddie Fiola's birthday today (OK, yesterday now, I didn't finish this post yesterday), he's hitting the big 55 today.  Happy Birthday Eddie.  That seemed a good reason to blog about Eddie and the early days of freestyle, for us guys who jumped on that first wave of it in the mid 1980's..  When I got into BMX freestyle, Eddie was the best known pro, and one of the veteran"old guys,"being 21 or 22 then.  Now, so many years later, he's only two years older than me, we're practically the same age, and he still is a blast to watch on a bike.  

 I went looking for clips to use, and decided to watch this whole, half hour video.  I've only watched this video maybe two times, while I was working in video stores in Huntington Beach around 1994-1995.  This video was produced by East Coast BMX freestyle promoter Ron Stebbene in 1988, and features two of my old bosses, Bob Morales and Don Hoffman, and industry legend McGoo, so there's a lot for me to write about here.

As I've mentioned many times before, I got into BMX jjumping, and then BMX racing while living in a trailer park outside of Boise, Idaho in 1982.  I was 16 that summer, in between my sophomore and junior years at Boise High School.  Us Blue Valley Mobile Home Park kids hit the last local race of the season in October '82, got totally stoked on BMX racing, and then had to suffer through an Idaho winter until we could race again.  Before our dirt jumps dried up enough from spring mud to ride, we were making ramp to ramp jumps out of cinder blocks and plywood sheets on the street.  We got racing again about March or April, but most of the guys faded in a couple of months.  We were broke ass motherfuckers back then, and the "crazy" $2-$3 fee to race (minimum wage was about $3.35/hour then) was a lot to us.  But I managed one race every couple of weeks or so, keeping the BMX stoke going.

What I haven't written much about was that my family moved back into town in the early summer of 1983.  Suddenly I was out of the trailer park, back in a cool, middle class subdivision, but I didn't have any jumps or people to ride with.  I kept racing pretty steadily all through 1983.  But I also started to work some odd jobs, make a little bit more money, and I started buying BMX magazines.

At that time, "trick riding" was just starting to get more popular, and transitioning into the sport of "BMX freestyle."  At the time, that meant you rode flatland, a wedge ramp, and quarterpipes.  So there were trick how-to's in almost every magazine at the time.  BMX freestyle was just on the verge of its first wave of popularity and breaking into mainstream consciousness.  BMX Plus was the only magazine on the newsstands in Boise, either at 7-11's and Circle K's, or at the grocery stores.  I stumbled across BMX Action later that year, in Bob's Bike Shop (and Lawn Mower Repair), my local shop in Boise. 

In the January 1983 issue of BMX Plus magazine ("Skatepark Shoot out in the Badlands", scan pg. 27), I saw my first article about this crazy place in California called Pipeline Skatepark.  There was this big picture of this HUGE concrete bowl, with all these kids sitting on the coping up on top, and all their bikes piled up in the bottom of the pool.  The place looked enormous, and I couldn't imagine riding walls so vertical and steep.  "Those skatepark guys are crazy." I thought.  My only tricks at the time were a one handed wheelie, and I couldn't even ride it, just pop it up, do one crank while standing up, take a hand off, and then put the hand back on and drop down all sketchy.  My other trick, a trailer park trick, was doing tire endos.  We'd roll up to a car tire on the ground (plenty of those around a trailer park), pop our front wheel into it, then to an endo, curb endo style, but it was more stable. The only jumps I hit were two foot high jumps to flat, or the rolling tabletop at the Fort Boise track.  So seeing the photos of the kids riding Pipeline blew my freakin' mind.  In those pre-internet days when information barely traveled at all, I had no idea that kind of riding was even possible.  It was that article that opened me up to this whole new kind of riding, carving huge vertical walls on pools, and airing out of vertical walls.

It was in that article that I first heard of the rider named Eddie Fiola, he had the top photo on the second page of the article.  As time went on, and I saw more photos and articles about trick riding and freestyle, I realized this Eddie Fiola guy was the biggest name in freestyle, as he became the King of the Skateparks that year. 

Even so, no one else I knew outside the Fort Boise BMX track had any idea who he was.  My high school friends were outdoorsy fishermen and hunter types, we liked to fish, shoot guns, and smoke weed.  Even in my high school, there were three grades, with 400+ students each, and I was about THE ONLY BMXer.  The other riders I knew were mostly younger kids in junior high, or they went to the other high schools, Borah, Crapitol... I mean Capitol, or Meridian, the little town next to Boise.  I was literally into a weird little sport that, for all intents and purposes, didn't even exist to the 1,200 people in my high school.  And I was weird to start with, so it wasn't like anyone else wanted to jump on that bandwagon and follow me.  16-year-olds simply didn't ride "little kids' bikes" back then.  Everyone just wanted me to grow up and give up my stupid BMX "hobby."

As I got more into BMX, read magazines, and went out for solo rides every day around the neighborhood, Eddie Fiola became the Michael Jordan of freestyle to me.  On the edge of our subdivision was this 50 foot tall embankment, and at the top of it was the New York Canal.  Much of the year it was 18 or 20 foot deep with fast moving water.  But part of the year it emptied out and was dry, a big ditch with 45 degree banked sides.  As I got more stoked on the riding of those crazy skatepark riders, I would ride up on the banked walls, do a tiny bunnyhop, and tilt the bike sideways a little, mimicking the tabletop aerials I saw skatepark riders doing.  Yeah, we called them "aerials," still, in 1983.

I won a contest at the Fort Boise track, to re-design the track for 1984.  That landed me something like 22 free races for the 1984 season.  But coming out of the winter indoor races, I was losing interest in racing, and getting more and more into the emerging freestyle thing.  I looked up to a lot of riders then, particularly the rider/entrepreneur guys like R.L. Osborn, Ron Wilkerson, and Dave Vanderspek.  I was deathly shy, dreamed big, and never acted on my dreams, and it seemed amazing that those guys were putting on so many shows, actually get paid for shows, and in R.L.'s case, booking whole tours.  A big part of BMX freestyle then was promoting the sport itself, letting other people know about this cool thing we had found, and how much fun it was to try and invent tricks on these little bikes.

But as a rider, Eddie was getting a bunch of coverage then, and doing most of the biggest aerials I saw in photos.  He was the biggest name in the sport, as far as I knew.  But I was a kid in Idaho, and it really didn't even occur to me that I could meet him someday, let alone would meet him.  That spring of 1984, I heard about a local trick team having a show, went to it, and met Justin "Jay" Bickel, Wayne Moore, and Jay's parents.  I wound up part of the trick team, and later Jay and I reformed it, when Wayne "retired" from freestyle at the ripe old age of 17.  Jay's parents, Dwight and Cindy, were totally supportive of BMX freestyle, and became my "freestyle parents."  Suddenly I could go to Jay's house and ride a six foot quarterpipe, and try to actually learn to do aerials.  Every time I hit that ramp and aired coping high, I was pretending to be Fiola or Dominguez or R.L. or Wilkerson.  Jay and I did a dozen or so shows around the Boise area that year, and rode in about 5 or 6 parades, and became the freestyle guys in Idaho at that time.

Then, in early summer of 1985, my family moved to San Jose, California.  I stayed and worked my summer job in Boise, managing a little amusement park called The Fun Spot.  I went to my first AFA Masters contest with the Bickels, the Venice Beach comp in June of 1985.  It was the first time I actually saw pros and sponsored amateur freestylers ride, including Eddie Fiola.  We had to leave before pro ramps on Sunday, but I got to see them practice on Saturday, and it blew my fucking mind.  To see 7-8-9 foot airs, and canyon airs, for the first time, amazed me.  I had a totally new frame of reference of what was possible on a BMX bike.  Freestyle was blowing up, Eddie, R.L., and Wilkerson were in the Mountain Dew commercial that summer, and the sport and riding seemed to be progressing so fast.  Still, Eddie Fiola was the biggest name in the sport to me.  If outsiders knew anything about BMX, they knew one name, Eddie Fiola.

In August of 1985, the Fun Spot, the little Boise amusement park I worked at, closed for the season.  I packed up my 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, which was just a tad bit smaller than a battleship, and drove solo to San Jose to live with my family again.  Once there I got a job at Pizza Hut, started a zine, and found the NorCal freestylers like pros Vander, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, and that whole crew, over the next few weeks.  Somehow college was out the window (I was broke, and my parents didn't have money set aside to help me go), and BMX freestyle became the focus of my life.  I made it to the fall 1985, and spring 1986 Velodrome contests, and moved on the edge of the national freestyle scene.

Then, in April of 1986, thanks to my zine, Andy Jenkins of FREESTYLIN' magazine tapped me to cover the AFA Masters contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  On my flight layover in Dallas/Fort Worth, I ran into Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparjo, and some new guy named Josh White.  Suddenly I was standing there talking to a couple of the guys I'd been reading about in the magazines for three years.  The next morning, Eddie walked up and just started chatting, and I was stoked beyond  belief.  That weird wall between "those guys in the magazines" and "the rest of us out in anywhere USA," was collapsing.  Things like that, talking to the pros you looked up to and hanging out with them, didn't happen in pro football or basketball.  But in our weird little sport of freestyle, it did.

By that point, the skatepark era had faded, and quarterpipes had taken over.  But I think the skatepark days, Pipeline Skatepark's Pipe Bowl, in particular, played a key role in vert riding.  As all of us Old School BMX freestylers know, there's a documentary called The Birth of Big Air, about Mat Hoffman's mega quarterpipe, and his motorcycle tow-in mega huge airs in 1992-93.  But I think the name's a misnomer.  Looking back, I think "The Birth of Big Air" was really the Pipe Bowl era at Pipeline, led by Eddie Fiola.  What Mat did a decade later was the birth of ridiculously humungous air.  I wasn't there in the skatepark era, but from the photos, there were these shots of guys doing one-two-three foot aerials out of skatepark bowls at Lakewood or Whittier or Pipeline's Combi pool.  And then, all of the sudden, there's Eddie, Mike Dominguez, Brian Blyther, Brian Deam, Tony Murray... and they're going 6-7-8-9 feet out of this one bowl.  The Pipe Bowl at Pipeline.  And that bowl had 8 feet of transition, and four feet of vert, but no coping.  That stands out as the real birth of Big Air when you look back at magazine photos. 

Then vert riding moved to quarterpipes, and we saw Eddie, Mike, and Brian getting those big airs on quarterpipes.  Coming up on their heals, and soon passing them, were riders like Todd Anderson, Josh White, Joe Johnson, Dino Deluca, and Mat Hoffman.  That was the generation bred on quarterpipes, but who were inspired by those 1983-1985 photos of Eddie, Mike, and Brian blasting huge at Pipeline. 

As BMX freestyle grew and exploded in its first big wave of popularity, from 1984 to 1988, Eddie Fiola was on GT, and was touring, doing shows at bike shops and other events, letting kids see freestyle firsthand.  I got picked up to work at FREESTYLIN' (and BMX Action) in August of 1986, as things surged upward.  During my short stint at Wizard Publications, I got interested in how all the other riders got into freestyle in the first place.  For me it was jumping in the trailer park, like I wrote above, then racing and into freestyle from the magazines.  But seeing that first local show with Jay and Wayne in Boise, that was a key point in getting stoked on freestyle.  So I started asking all the other riders, pros and amateurs, how they got into freestyle.  It was an informal poll I did just because I was curious.

Almost every single rider I talked to said they got into BMX freestyle because they saw a live freestyle show, usually one of the factory teams.  It was the live shows the really grew our sport back then, and then new riders started buying magazines, to get their monthly fix.  This was especially true for the riders outside of Southern California.  Throughout that whole time, Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo, along with Josh White and Dave Voelker, were out there, in the smelly vans (shoes and vehicles), showing kids everywhere this new thing called BMX freestyle.  They were the GT guys, and then Haro was the other rock star team, with Ron Wilkerson, Brian Blyther, and Dave Nourie hitting the road as one team, and the other Haro riders as another.

During that time of five or six AFA national contests a year, six magazines covering BMX and freestyle, and 8 or 10 factory touring teams, Eddie Fiola continued as one of the biggest names, showing kids his smooth showman style on both flat and vert, show after show.  When not on the road, I got to know Eddie well, since he was dating Wizard photographer Windy Osborn at the time.  So he was in the Wizard offices most every day while I worked there, and no one tore up the T.O.L. ramp in the parking lot like Eddie did.

The funny thing was, during those years, 1986-1988, word in the industry was that Eddie was burning out, thanks largely to the long months of touring to promote GT bikes.  We all knew he had a three year contract with GT, and everyone thought he was just biding his time, getting ready to move on, maybe into TV acting or something, and then he'd let the young guns, like Josh White, Joe Johnson, and wunderkid Mat Hoffman, take over the world of vert.

Meanwhile, I got the boot from Wizard, and went on to work for Bob Morales, who not only ran the AFA, but was doing magazine ads for several companies, and we designing products and part owner of Mor Distributing, as well.  My official job was as editor and photographer of the AFA newsletter.  But working for Bob Morales, I did a little bit of everything, from putting heat transfers on AFA T-shirts, to driving the van and 30 foot trailer to local contests and trade shows.

During that year, 1987, I did a feature interview with Eddie Fiola for the AFA newsletter.  That was during the time Eddie was supposedly burned out and ready to give it all up and move on.  I shot the photos with Eddie at Pipeline's Pipe Bowl,  mostly as an excuse to see him ride there.  I didn't have a car, and I couldn't get to Pipeline to ride it.  But doing the interview there, I had an excuse to take the AFA van there for an afternoon, and then get a little riding in at the park I first saw in that crazy BMX Plus article in January of 1983.

Eddie showed up in his standard riding "uniform," Levi's, a T-shirt, and an open face helmet.  Although I had been part of the BMX industry for a year at that point, it amazed me that suddenly I was shooting photos of Eddie Fiola at Pipeline, something I never even dreamed could happen back in Idaho, a couple of years earlier.  The Eddie that showed up, was anything but a burned out has been.  He fucking tore up the Pipe Bowl, and was just having fun riding.  That was his home park at that point, his local spot, and he shredded it with his amazing style.  More than anything else, Eddie Fiola made riding freestyle seem really damn fun.  I wanted to be able to ride the Pipe Bowl like that, or at least try to.

As fate would have it, I started producing videos for the AFA that year, and that landed me a job at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company.  Don Hoffman, who was the first guy to really make a bunch of BMX freestyle videos, including those skatepark videos used in the video above, was the head of Unreel.  While little known to the riders outside Southern California, Don played a huge role in mid 80's freestyle, by making those skatepark videos, and later producing the big 2-Hip King of Vert finals (where Mat went pro) in 1989, producing the first syndicated Action Sports TV show series, and putting out Freestylin' Fanatics, and Mondo Vision.

Because Eddie Fiola, Bob Morales, Don Hoffman, McGoo, and Ron Stebbene, all played big roles in my years in the BMX freestyle industry, it was cool to watch the Eddie Fiola video above again.  That video was produced right at the end of freestyle's first wave of popularity, right before we dropped into the "ramen days" of 1989, and the early 1990's.

Again, Happy Birthday Eddie, hope it was a cool one.  Back in the late 80's, I don't think any of us dreamed BMX freestyle would be as big as it is now, that many of us would still be riding (I'll get back at it when I can afford a bike), or that rider's would be wearing skinny jeans in 2019.  The weird little activity that turned into a sport and into a lifestyle, BMX freestyle, continues to grow in different ways, and evolve into new things.  Eddie Fiola was a huge part of that in its earliest days, and is still part of it today.  If you're around SoCal, hit the Huntington Beach Pier area on Tuesday evenings, for HB Tuesdays with Eddie, Martin Aparijo, and a bunchmore old schoolers hanging out ans sessioning.  It's as much fun as it ever was.

The last time I talked to Dave Vanderspek

Dave Vanderspek in about 1985, in the white sleeveless T and backwards Zeronine cap, explaining foreign concepts like a sticker toss and a car smash, to the Bay Area media and cops.  There was a time when everything we now take for granted was new.  Vander was one of the early innovators, he brought punk rock, skater inspired DIY attitude, functional riding clothes (not leathers and jerseys), street riding, and a whole lot of fun to BMX freestyle in the 1980's.

After a beer inspired comment on a classic Vander photo on Facebook, James Pines and I got into a FB chat about stuff, including Dave Vanderspek himself.  That got me to thinking about Dave and his legacy.  In this clip, we see Dave explaining how skaters have fun, in his classic, sort of Spiccoli-esque style.  It would be easy to write Dave off as some goofball from this clip, or some of the other clips he's in. To be honest, I thought Dave was kind of over-hyped and kind of a goofball the year I lived in NorCal, in 1985-1986.  I was overly uptight and super-anal about everything, and Dave seemed just the opposite.  I wanted to become an R.L. Osborn-type, clean cut BMX freestyle pro rider and successful entrepreneur, and I just didn't fully appreciate Vander's offbeat, relaxed, and zany style then.  He was a blast to ride with, and always down, like the other NorCal pros, to help you learn a new trick or with some advice about life and riding.

The last time I saw Dave was at an event with GT's Stonehenge box jump in Huntington Beach, in the summer of 1988.  Some guy Mike Sarrail and I talked to at the H.B. Pier turned out to be a cheezy video producer, the kind that sold thousands of low budget, poorly produced videos, real cheap, at discount stores.  The guy thought our freestyle tricks looked cool, talked to Mike for half an hour or so, about what a cool BMX freestyle event would be like, the best music for a video, so forth.  Then the guy actually put an event on.  He hired a video crew that knew nothing about BMX, made a cheap video, and sold thousands and thousands of copies, probably more than any other BMX video at the time.  Nobody in the BMX world made a dime off of it, but we all had a fun day of riding.

Dave Voelker, Brian Blyther, Vander, Maurice Meyer, the NorCal crew, Eddie Roman, Pete Agustin, and all the SoCal locals showed up, after we got word out in the freestyle grapevine.  We all sessioned the four-sided Stonehenge ramp all afternoon, in one big, long jam session.  No judges, no contest, just a fun jump/street jam, which was a pretty rare thing then, only months after the first 2-Hip Meet the Street in Santee, CA.

On a personal level, I was riding a GT Pro Performer that had been sitting in the back of Unreel Productions, where I worked, for a couple of years.  I think this was after my Raleigh riding days, and before I got an Auburn from Bob Morales.  In the two years since I had been a part of the NorCal/Golden Gate Park scene, I had become a part of the freestyle industry.

My zine landed me the job a BMX Action and FREESTYLIN', in the summer of 1986, where I worked a few epic months, but didn't really fit well, and I got laid off.  Then I spent a year as editor/photographer for the AFA newsletter, working with Bob Morales, and doing all kinds of stuff.  That got me into working on videos, which eventually landed me a job at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company.  I wasn't making much money, but I was in the bike/skate industry, living in Huntington Beach, which was a rowdy, fun town then, and I was still riding 2-3 hours a day, and progressing as a rider.

Much to my surprise, Dave Vanderspek pulled me aside at that jam that day.  We rolled up on the sidewalk, and Dave sat on his bike, turning his back on the jam.  Over his shoulder, I could see Dave Voelker, Brian Blyther, and the others, blasting over the box jump.  Dave ignored all the action, and took a few minutes to tell me he was really stoked on how I had become a part of the industry, and all the cool stuff I'd had done.  He also said he was proud of how I'd progressed as a rider, and named off some of the tricks he'd seen me doing, and how I'd gotten a lot better from when we met, three years earlier, at a Beach Park Ramp Jam, held by Robert Peterson's bike shop.

Dave didn't say anything particularly epic, but he was real, and he showed me that he not only remembered me, and my riding, from a couple of years earlier, but had watched my progress along the way.  He was just being real.  Talking with Dave, I got this cool sense of why the Golden Gate Park scene was so different than any other freestyle scene.  Dave Vanderspek really cared, he gave a damn, about every rider in the scene.  He wanted everybody to have fun, ride hard, and keep improving.  It wasn't just about him getting more coverage, a big sponsor contract, or whatever, he truly wanted that for everybody.  That was one of the things, though he never really put it into words, he did it through his actions.  He wanted everybody in NorCal to be the best they could, regardless of how good or lame they were at first.  That attitude flowed through Drob, Peterson, Hugo, Rick Allison, and the rest of us. 

At a time when most of us were hiding tricks from each other until we had them down, and trying to get better sponsors, and being really competitive in many ways, Dave Vanderspek, they guy who came across so goofy to many people, was looking at a bigger picture.  He wanted the scene to grow, not just himself or the official Curb Dogs riders and skaters.  He wanted BMX freestyle itself, to grow.  That is a huge difference in attitude to most of us riding then, and I've never forgotten those few minutes Vander took to give me a sort of pat on the back and thumbs up for doing some cool stuff, both as an industry guy, and a rider.

The fact that happened to be the last time I saw Dave alive makes it even more memorable.  Thanks Dave, for showing me the world is much bigger than my little viewpoint, and scenes themselves need to be nurtured, not just my own career or ideas.  When someone you really respect, a pro or top person in whatever you do, takes the time to personally show you they give a damn, it can have an inspirational effect for decades to come.  That's one of my biggest lessons from Dave Vanderspek.

I have a couple of new blogs I'm getting off the ground.  Check them out:

Small Business Blaster

I'm selling art (slowly) in Hollywood now...

 Selfie, looking west, from my spot on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.  This is where I'm selling art now, Hollywood and Highland.  My selfies always look weird for a couple of reasons, 1) I'm in them, and 2) After 20 years of not being able to afford dental insurance (and eating too much sugar before that), I have a mouthful of broken teeth, so I don't smile. 

All that aside, I headed to Orange County a couple months ago to find a place to sell my artwork, continue selling my stuff online (it's selling in Europe now, thanks to Sven from Norway, Thanks Sven!), and rebuild my life into something that looks like an actual life again.  But my Paypal got frozen as soon as I started to make a little money, for reasons I still don't know.  Like an idiot, I forgot to change my phone number to my current one months ago, and I have a thrashed ID.  So I couldn't do the quick fix to get access to my Paypal account right away.  So I got stuck having to sell art for cash... somewhere... while I work those issues out.  I tried Laguna Beach, during their First Thursday Art Walk, and people liked my work.  But no buyers.  So I looked for places I could set up for no money, in my sketchy-ass situation, and hopefully make cash.  Much to my surprise, Hollywood came through as the best spot.  So now, 24 years after my last summer wrestling the American Gladiators (and being a crew guy), I'm on Hollywood Boulevard with the street performing dancers and rappers, a few artists/craftspeople, people in costumes taking photos with tourists, Mexican ladies selling water and bacon-wrapped hotdogs, and the pantheon of Hollywood weirdos and wandering crackheads. 

Hollyweird is so weird, that things like a guy carrying a guitar while walking his baby goat (for real), barely get noticed.  It may even be weirder than Venice Beach, these days.  In any case, I'm selling a little bit of art each day, not really making enough to survive yet, but getting there.  The people who actually stop to check out my Sharpie art (#sharpiescribblestyle) actually like it, and I get a lot of compliments.  But I can't take compliments across the street and buy a slice of pizza.  It's been rough week and a half, I've lost 14 pounds, but I'm used to rough.  I think I'm starting to get the hang of this place.  Hopefully sales will pick up, and I can get my fat, smelly butt off the streets, into a room, and work towards "real life" once again. 

 It doesn't get anymore iconic Hollywood than Marilyn Monroe's star, which is in front of... McDonald's.  Really.  Hollywood, just east of Highland.

 Everyone's workplace gets a little Goofy now and then.  Mine gets a little Goofy, and Minnie, too.  Bootlegging a tourist pic, of the mall "tunnel" at Hollywood and Highland.  The Hollywood sign is actually (though barely) visible in just below that bottom rectangle of sky in the background.  When there are tourists on that bottom bridge, they block the view from this angle. 

My set up right now, to get started.  11" X 14" drawing of Frida Kahlo on deck.  When you're homeless and have to carry everything you own wherever you go, it's best not to own much.  Hopefully a room (with a bed and nice hot shower) is in my near future...  Life is weird, and sometimes you just have to start over, right where you are, with just what you've got.  I'm doing just that... again. #sharpiescribblestyle

80,000 page views! Cool...

Can I get a Woo-Hoo!  Thanks Homer.  Two years and 1 1/2 months in, this blog just hit 80,000 page views.  So thank you for reading everyone, I'm stoked that all of you keep checking out my stories, Sharpie art, and random weird ideas.  This blog is a weird mix of my old school BMX freestyle stories, my futurist thinking, thoughts on the economy and where society is heading, and my Sharpie (#sharpiescribblestyle) artwork.  That's a weird mix, but it's the stuff I'm most into.  When I started this blog in late June 2017, I really didn't expect much of a readership at all.  You guys have blown my mind, and I appreciate that. 

The blog crept up the last 1,000 page views or so.  Shortly after my Facebook feed got all weird for a few days, about a month ago, this blog suddenly started getting about 2/3 less page views than normal.  I'm not sure what's going on there, probably some of the same monkey business happening in the rest of my life.  But 80,000 is a nice, big, round number, which is always a cool milepost as a blogger.  Of the 30+ blogs I started for one reason or another (they all seemed like good ideas at the time), four have gained good followings, only  my Freestyle BMX Tales blog got more page views, than this one, about 125,000 total, back in 2009-2012.  Make Money Panhandling, which started as a joke to learn SEO, and turned into a sometimes serious, sometimes humorous look at homelessness, f got about 63,000 page views during its lifespan, back in 2010-2012.  My original Old School BMX freestyle story blog, FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, got about 25,000 page views back in 2008-2009.  I took all of those blogs down completely in 2012, during a really dark time after my dad's death.  I regret taking them down, but that's life.  I did a repop version of Freestyle BMX Tales in 2015-2017, but I wasn't consistent with it, you can check it out here.

As for my life now, I'm homeless, on the streets, still, and struggling to make some money to get back on track, as always.  As soon as I started making some money selling my drawings online back in June, my Paypal account got frozen for no apparent reason.  I'd never updated my phone number on it, so now it's a long process to unfreeze it.  That was a big gut punch as I tried to get myself going financially.  I've been struggling to make day to day living money, as well as money to make more copies of drawings to sell, to help me get back on track.  The behind the scenes pressure on my life has stepped up again.  After the police completely avoiding me (which is really strange when you're homeless) in Orange County for about 2 1/2 months, I've suddenly had three run-ins with the police in a week.  No tickets, no arrests, just warnings.  That's the kind of thing that happened to me on a regular basis from 2002 to 2008, when I was forced to leave California, and banished to the hell hole that is North Carolina, for ten years.  After ten years in a living hell, I draw cool pictures now, and I'm still just trying to build a small business, and make a living selling them, blogging, and doing that kind of thing.  In today's world, that's totally possible, but raising enough money to give this business a fighting chance has been impossible.  I honestly don't know if I'll ever be allowed to make a living again, but I'll keep trying.  That's what I do, keep trying to live my own life in this weird world of 2019.

Thanks again, I'll try to keep writing pretty interesting posts, and hope you all find a few worth the time to read.  

Feelin' Nifty: The Birth of Club Homeboy

The image of a surprised Buckwheat from the Little Rascals, neon green, crack and peel sticker, with the words "Club Homeboy."  The little "loft it" was added on later versions.  This is the classic, iconic image from Club Homeboy.

Loft it, bitch.  If you were a BMX freestyler in the mid-1980's, you remember Club Homeboy.  You remember this image above, and it probably calls up memories of busting cherrypickers and sliders and side glides and boomerangs and tailwhips in a parking lot at night, maybe with the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill cassette blasting from a ghetto blaster that didn't have near enough battery life.  Am I close?  Something like that.

Recently, Jeff Venekamp, better known back in the day as Lew's good friend Shinglehead, has been sharing pics on Facebook of his old Club Homeboy stickers.  This is cool, because as Lew's good friend back in Michigan, Jeff got copies of the very first stickers and is about the only guy with good copies of them left.  One of the stickers he posted recently was made about 3/4" wide, 5 or 6 inches inches long, and there was a tiny photo of some 70's looking guy, with shaggy brown hair and a big mustache.  Next to that little photo were the blown up, typewritten words, "Feelin' Nifty."  Only a handful of people know, but that was actually the very first Club Homeboy sticker.  I know this, because I was there in the room when Lew came up with Club Homeboy, and I was one of the original members.  I watched Lew make those first "Feelin' Nifty" stickers a couple nights later, on the Wizard Publications copy machine.  I wrote about CHB a few years ago in my old blog, but I figured it was time to tell the tale again.  Here's how I remember the birth of Club Homeboy.

Mark "Lew" Lewman, the man who in invented it all, at about age 20, flatlanding at The Spot, in one of the first full color Club Homeboy ads, when the whole idea blew up and got huge.

It was the Fall of 1986, and every night there was a flatland BMX freestyle session at The Spot in Redondo Beach, California.  Pretty much every night the session included Mark "Lew" Lewman, Chris Day, Craig Grasso, and myself.  Craig "Gork" Barrette came down 3 or 4 nights a week.  R.L. Osborn rode by himself most of the time, but came down to The Spot a couple of times a week.  Andy Jenkins skated by once or twice a week.  Janice Jenkins, Andy's sister and the FREESTYLIN' art director then, was into cycling, and she rode by a couple of times a week to say, "Hi."  Once in a while, BMX comedian and then CW team manager, M,cGoo came down, sometimes with John "Dizz" Hicks and Ceppies Maes.  Later on, East Coast rider Pete Kearney was out West a while and sessioned with us.  If that's not enough, freestyle skateboarder Rodney Mullen would come down and practice on the smooth concrete next to The Spot when he was staying with Steve Rocco, usually 3 or 4 weeks at a stretch.  That was our crew.  

Lew, Gork and me were roommates, we'd just moved to a three bedroom apartment on the edge of Hermosa Beach, and Andy Jenkins and his wife Kelly lived right down the alley from us.  We all worked at Wizard Publications, as you know well, if you read this blog regularly.  Andy was the editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine, which was about 2 years old then, and Lew was assistant editor.  Gork was the editor BMX Action, and I was the editorial assistant for both magazines.

Craig Grasso was this weird, artsy, funny, crazy guy, about our age (19-20), who rode for SE Racing as a freestyler, and was fun as hell to ride with.  Chris Day was this young local kid, 14 or 15 years old, who was coming on strong with his amazing flail boomerangs and other flatland tricks.  R.L. Osborn, was a top pro freestyler, a pioneer of the sport, rode for Redline, and made the change to General Bikes right around that time.  He was son of Bob Osborn, aka OZ, owner/publisher of  Wizard Publications, and our boss.  R.L.'s sister Windy was the photographer for both magazines, and was dating Eddie Fiola at the time.

One one hand, our scene was a handful of guys who were totally hardcore BMX freestylers, like a a couple dozen scenes around the U.S. and in Europe at the time.  On the other hand, we were all part of the industry, and the coolest magazine in freestyle.  So despite being 5 pretty good to really good riders, and one pioneering pro, our scene at The Spot had a ridiculous amount of influence on the BMX freestyle world, and that's how Club Homeboy happened.

One night after our normal session, Lew, Grasso, and me, and maybe Chris Day, rode over to Andy and Kelly's apartment to hang a bit.  Kelly was cleaning up the small place, Andy was working on some artwork or something on the kitchen table, as I recall.  Lew paced around, ideas flowing freely from his head, as usual.  The rest of us dropped our sweaty selves on the couch and a chair (sorry Kelly).  Lew's idea of the night was that us locals were a kind of posse, a word used by all the rappers at the time.  Remember, this was 1986, and it was cool to hate rap, but fact was, a lot of middle class white kids were starting to dig RUN DMC, The Big Boys, and them weird white rappers, the Beastie Boys.  Their album, Licensed to Ill, dropped right about the time this happened, and Lew played that album non-stop, at work and at home.  

None of our crew, sitting in Andy's apartment that night, thought much of what Lew was saying, because he was spouting new and weird ideas constantly.  Most of the time then, the ideas faded, and new Lew Ideas popped up the next day.  So as Lew walked around the tiny apartment, he said we needed a name for The Spot locals.  The term "posse" was over-used at the time, but Lew wanted something with a hip hop/ghetto feel, you know, because we were all middle class white dudes.  He wanted something that sounded cool.  The word "homeboy" was one he was really diggin' from the start, but homeboy what?  Homeboy Posse?  No.  The Spot Homeboys?  No.  We all tossed out our ideas, and actually "Club Homeboy" was one of the first, but it was quickly discarded.

This went on casually for maybe 15 minutes, as Lew wandered around, Andy worked on whatever he was working on, Kelly cleaned the kitchen, and the Craig, Chris, and me hung out.  Finally Lew came back to the name "Club Homeboy," and Andy agreed it sounded cool.  So Lew pronounced that the official name for us local riders at The Spot was Club Homeboy.  And that was that.  So when Club Homeboy was created, it was Lew, Andy Jenkins, Craig Grasso, Chris Day, Me (Steve Emig), Gork, R.L. Osborn, and McGoo, since we hung out with him all the time.  We threw the name around a bit as we rode around the next couple of nights.  But seriously, we all thought it was just one more of the multitude of Lew Ideas, and it would fade away in a few days.

Two days later, we were all working late at Wizard, and I walked out to take a break, probably from proofreading magazine articles.  Lew was in the open area of the warehouse, where there was a sink, counter, microwave,  a picnic table, and the copy machine.  Lew had bought some sticker paper, which I didn't even realize existed then.  I did a year of making zines before that, but my zines had no"Xerox art" to speak of, and I'd never made stickers.  I asked Lew what he was doing, and he smiled big and handed me a couple of the skinny "Feelin' Nifty" stickers, just made and cut by hand, a couple minutes earlier.  "I'm making some stickers for Club Homeboy" Lew said, really stoked on it all.  Never mind that the stickers didn't say Club Homeboy.  Lew was thinking up weird and clever little sayings, and making stickers for our little crew of riders.

At the time, I had the same helmet that I first got, when I started racing BMX in Boise three years earlier.  It was some old, heavy, 1970's motorcycle helmet that I bought at a garage sale.  My dad got into the mix, and painted it white with spray paint.  I bought a red Haro visor, and was ready to race, and later to use for flatland contests.  I took one of those first two "Feelin' Nifty" stickers, and stuck it on the underside of my helmet visor.  That sticker was still there in the late 1990's, when I lost that helmet, by not paying my storage unit rent, I think.   

A couple of days later, working late again, with more sticker paper, Lew found this picture of Buckwheat in, of all places, a Japanese magazine called Popeye.  It was a weird, pop culture magazine that Oz subscribed to, to give us ideas for stuff, since it was a odd mix of images and stuff.  Lew copied Buckwheat, typed the words "Club Homeboy" on an actual typewriter, blew them up big to get the good distortion (the basis of all 80's and 90's Xerox art), then shrunk them down again, and put them at a 90 degree angle around Buckwheat's head, and the iconic Club Homeboy image was born.  Lew made maybe 30 or 40 of those that night, on white sticker paper, and handed them out to all of us Spot locals.  Club Homeboy, as a crew of local riders, was born, because we all put them on our bikes immediately.

That, of course, made other riders ask what Club Homeboy was.  "It's our crew of locals from The Spot," was the answer.  For about three or four weeks.  Lew found out he was getting sent to the first 2-Hip King of Vert contest, being held, in a barn, in Minnesota.  By that time, Lew found another office supply store that had neon green sticker paper.  Lew ponied up his own money, and made around 300 stickers, I think, to take to Minnesota.  After that weekend, every top vert rider had the stickers on their bike, and the barn probably had 50 of them slapped all over.  Then everybody in the industry wanted a Club Homeboy sticker.  So Club Homeboy was a locals only thing, for us 1986 era locals at The Spot... for about a month.

More stickers were made on the down low on the Wizard copy machine, and stickers were shared, slapped, and put on bikes for the next 3 or 4 months or so.  During that time, I got laid off from the magazines, partly for being a dork, and mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  Midwest photographer Mark Snavely took a stab at working there, but he and Windy didn't meld well, and he was gone in a couple of weeks.  A month or so later, Andy and Lew tapped this biker/skater kid from the East Coast to work at Wizard.  That kid was Spike Jonze.  He did mesh well, and worked at FREESTYLIN' til the end.  I went on to work for Bob Morales, at the AFA, down in Huntington Beach.

Spike, of course, immediately became a new local at The Spot, and a member of Club Homeboy.  As time went on, Oz started to ask what this Club Homeboy thing was, since everyone had stickers on their bikes.  Andy, Lew and Spike, from what I heard, didn't want to tell him at first, since they'd been using Oz's copy machine and toner for months.  But they fessed up, and Oz ended up liking the whole thing, and then he backed it.  Now, when you write the coolest magazine in BMX freestyle, and you can advertise for free, it's hard for your ideas not to get popular.  So Club Homeboy was stepped up into the thing all you 1980's freestylers remember.  And that's my memories about the birth of Club Homeboy.

Thirty three years later, I'm over 50 and still Feelin' Nifty, more nifty than ever, as a matter of fact.  The old body hurts more these days, so I don't loft much jive, but then, I never was a really big jive lofter. I am still dual and silk on a good day, though.  To keep things on the right vibe, I've been listening to the Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill the whole time I've been writing this post, and this post is sponsored by Brass Monkey.   

I have 4 blogs going right now, check them out when you're bored at work...

 

The Big Freakin' Transition- about the future and economics

 

Crazy California 43- weird and cool locations in California

 

Full Circle- about writing and the writer's life

 

and a fiction blog

 

Stench: Homeless Superhero

 

Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now

I just started a new blog for Marvin Davits, to promote Marvin's business, installing dinghy davits on boats and yachts.  Check it out.

HB Tuesday 9/3/2019

 It was pretty quiet this past Tuesday, for the HB Tuesday, since it was the day after Labor Day.  Here are my pics.  As always, it was fun hanging with the Old School BMX freestylers, talking some smack, and jokin' around.  Above, Martin Aparijo with a circular backwards wheelie, with the H.B. Pier in the background.

 Still forget this guy's name, sorry man.  But he's all about the fire hydrant variations.  Good thing, he was on fire.

 The Cowboy, Chuck Johnson, with his home made high tech freecoaster/direct drive combo back hub.  He's actually pedaling from left to right.  Really. 

Huntington Beach at dusk from south of the pier.  It's great to be able to see this view in person once again, after only seeing this on Facebook for ten years... 

Next Tuesday is the anniversary of Martin and Eddie's H.B. Tuesdays, big party farther down the beach.  Check Martin's Facebook page for details...

A Modest Proposal: Let the Homeless Camp on Golf Courses

NSFW!- of course... it's the late great, George Carlin.  If you remember him, you know he's really smart, really funny, and cusses like a drunk sailor.  He figured out the answer to homelessness about 30 years ago, let homeless people camp on golf courses.

My thoughts on golf mirror Carlin's pretty closely.  I did, though, spend two summers after high school managing a small amusement park, with a miniature golf course, in Boise, Idaho.  By the end of the second summer, another worker and I both had tied for the course record, 31 strokes for 18 holes.  You've never heard Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicolas, or Tiger brag about a score like, because they've never done it.  So if you think you're a great golfer, and want to challenge me to a game of miniature golf, hit me up.

When you get past the provocative title to get your attention, the point of this post is to say this:  if your city is going to build a homeless shelter, build one geared to the realities of the 21st Century homelessness issues, not one based on a model from 80 years ago.

Before I get into this post, let me share four facts:

America's "Ten Year Plan To End Homelessness" began in 2002.  There are now far more homeless people than there were in 2002.  The plan was a failure.  What happened?

There are more spare bedrooms and empty buildings in the United States than there are homeless people.  It's not that we can't house nearly all the homeless people in the U.S., we, as a society, simply choose not to.  

Homeless people, at all the various levels of homelessness, are nearly all U.S. citizens, or residents, and have all the rights that everyone else has.  You may not like that, but that's the nature of our democratic republic, everyone has certain inalienable rights that cannot be taken away.  Period.

One of the biggest misconceptions about homelessness is that people become homeless primarily because of drinking or drug addiction issues.  For some that's the case, but the real reason for most homelessness is a lack of a strong family or social network to help the person work through a tough situation.  

I'm currently homeless, and working as an artist, blogger, and social media content creator to create my own job (aka small business), make a reasonable living, and get a decent place to live again, as soon as possible.  I don't drink.  I don't do drugs, legal or illegal.  I'm a smart guy, I work hard, yet I've still struggled with homelessness for a variety of reasons.  I was working 80 to 100 hours a week as a taxi driver in 2007 when I got to a point where I couldn't make enough money to rent the taxi anymore due to industry changes.  I became fully homeless the next day.  I've struggled with homelessness for nearly two decades.

My weird personal story aside, in a conversation at McDonald's this morning, I was turned on to this local newspaper article, by journalist Hillary Davis.  The man who mentioned the article said they were putting a sprinkler system in at the Newport Transportation Center, a large OCTA bus stop hub, a couple of blocks from Fashion Island Mall, in Newport Beach.  The city or county (not sure which) plans to put in a sprinkler system to force out the homeless people who have put up tents and camped there, having moved there after being forced out of other places around O.C..

I know this, because I am one of those homeless people.  I slept there last night.  I started sleeping there a little over a month ago, when I got back to Orange County after years back East, when there were about ten tents at the Newport Transpo Center.  I found a better place to sleep about a week  ago, under an overhanging roof of a long abandoned building that nobody cared about.  I think the building was an REO, but someone apparently bought that building, suddenly, and just began upgrading it.  So I moved back the NTC last night.  At this point, all of you reading this, who don't know me personally, have a series of ideas about me.  Most, if not all, of your assumptions about me, are wrong.  These misconceptions about homelessness are one of many issues that make the problem worse.  But that's not the point of this blog post.

The point of this blog post is to tell you, the fine, upstanding residents of Newport Beach (and neighboring cities), that building a homeless shelter will not solve the city's homeless issue. In all likelihood, it will almost certainly increase the number of homeless people in the city over the mid and long term.  This brings us to another little known fact about homeless shelters:

When your city builds a homeless shelter, the taxpaying residents, in a very literal way, are adopting some of the homeless people who go to the shelter.  You tax dollars will support many of the people who go to the shelter, for the rest of their lives.

Wait?  What?  Here's the dynamics. I learned this firsthand, after to moving from Orange County to central North Carolina right when The Great Recession hit.  Unable to find work while living in a small town with my parents, I went to the much larger, nearby city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  I stayed at a homeless shelter, and began to look for work there.  What I found was that homeless shelters don't help homeless people find work, get back on track, and become functional working people again.  What homeless shelters actually do is to pressure homeless people into one of two tracks, addiction or mental health issues.  The homeless person gets a case worker, and they begin to jump through a series of hoops to get free housing, Medicare and/or Medicaid, and, most importantly, to get on Social Security Disability.  The homeless shelters in NC actually worked against people who were trying to simply get a decent job, and get back on track after some kind of personal tragedy.

This is the quiet truth.  Homeless shelters are a 100+ year old concept, going back to a time when there were lots of jobs, very few homeless people, and most of the homeless were lazy drunks or just deadbeats.  We live in a much, much different world now, where tens of millions of good paying jobs have been lost to new technology, outsourcing, and changes in the dominant industries.  Today's homeless problem is powered by long term demographics major business disruption, workplace changes, and often by catastrophic medical costs, as well as more well known issues like addiction to alcohol or drugs.  Homeless shelters are a really old idea, and they push people toward absolute reliance on social programs for the rest of those people's lives.

By building a homeless shelter in Newport Beach (or Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, or wherever), you're actually going to attract MORE homeless people, never put most of them back to work, and wind up paying for their rent, food, and medical costs, indefinitely.  Hey, you Newport Beach residents re loaded financially, we all know that.  But I doubt that's where you really want to spend your tax and philanthropy dollars.

I've found no solid numbers on how many people are on Social Security Disability nationally, but it seems to be AT LEAST 12 to 15 million people, most getting $700 to $1,200 a month, or more, per month.  You're paying, through your tax dollars, for those people to sit in cheap apartments, watch a big screen TV they didn't pay for, watch Game of Thrones again, and play video games.  That's the system for the homeless we now have in America.  It's broken, and few are even thinking about trying to fix it.


In this 2016 news segment, think tank thinker, researcher, and author ,Nicloas Eberstadt, explains about the group of 7 million plus men (at that time), in their prime working years, that aren't working, or looking for work.  At the very end of this segment, he mentions the "Disability lifestyle," I'm speaking of.  I spent over a year total, 3 or 4 months at a time, over about three years, living with a couple hundred of these men in shelters in Winston-Salem.  The vast majority of them had worked most of their lives in the various textile mills and furniture building factories in that area.  When the factories shut down en mass in the 1980's and 1990's, these men couldn't find decent jobs.  Felonies are another huge issue, as well, as Mr. Eberstadt mentions, that hamper finding good jobs.

Now virtually all of those men "get a check," as they say.  That means they're living off of S.S. Disability, a military pension, and/or other forms of government assistance.  Homelessness, and homeless shelters in particular, have become a sort of railroad to lifelong government assistance.  They document their actual medical issues, and most cases fake serious mental issues, go through a long approval process (about three years now), and scam Social Security Disability.  Once approved, these people get a check for life, though they're re-checked every five years or so.

Having spent a lot of time living with hundreds of these men in shelters , I think AT LEAST HALF of the people on Disability have scammed the system, and are living off YOUR tax dollars, indefinitely.  I truly believe, having spent ten years in North Carolina and Virginia, that West Virginia and Kentucky in particular, the Southern States to a huge extent, and now probably a lot of the Midwestern states economies, rely heavily on Social Security Disability to survive.

By building a traditional homeless shelters here in Newport Beach, and surrounding cities, you will just grow the non-working population in this area, like it has grown in much of the U.S. already.  By creating a hub for homeless services, you will actually be attracting more homeless people to your city.  The shelter will house SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE at any given time, but others will be camped out in the general vicinity, living in cars or encampments.

You may have noticed that the areas I mentioned as having huge numbers of people living on Disability, are also the states where opiate addiction is a much larger problem.  The "Disability lifestyle" is a key part of the opiate problem in this country, which is another huge part of this issue.

There's another way I saw in NC that people living this "Disability lifestyle" make money.  They are incredibly litigious, and the worst of them are constantly looking for chances to sue someone with money (that'd be you, Newport Beach city, businesses, and residents), for harassment, falls, "accidents", and the like. So by building a traditional homeless shelter, you will attract more homeless people to Newport Beach, without a doubt, attract more homeless people, and the number of lawsuits, frivolous and legitimate, against the city (for accidents and harassment by police, etc.), will undoubtedly increase, as time goes on. 

So what's the answer?  How do you deal with homelessness in this, or any other, city?

In all likelihood, you'll do exactly what other cities do, build a typical shelter, actually increase the local homeless population, and government entitlements will continue to grow exponentially, and the local cities will have bigger opiate crises to deal with and more lame lawsuits to fight, costing many, many more millions of dollars in coming years.  In other words, I'm sure Newport Beach and surrounding cities will completely ignore me, think short term, and completely ignore the ideas I've presented above.

The sarcastic, punk rock side of me would love to see homeless people camp on local golf courses, like George Carlin mentions above.  That would be funny for to lot of struggling, working class people, and make for good news stories.  But, in the long run, that's not a viable solution either.

What would a solution to homelessness look like? 

What homeless people need, REALLY NEED, is a stable place to live for a while, and  to build a solid income, somehow. 

They need a way to begin earning a legitimate income that will eventually pay for rent, food, and a"normal" life.  That's the long term solution.  The vast majority of homeless people are actually homeless for a period of a couple of weeks to a couple of months.  They hide in the shadows, they live in their car, or a friends spare room, or a weekly motel, until the new job comes through, or whatever, and then get back to normal lives.

The homeless people you see, the ones that bug you, (like me), are the chronically homeless.  Quite a few of them, like me, want to work, but the struggle to simply survive day to day makes the process of beginning to make a living again much harder.  This makes the transition to a stable life take much longer.  But many will eventually get back on track.  These people are the low hanging fruit and, and could be dramatically helped by some new form of viable homeless help.  A small subset of the homeless, often those with serious medical issues, are much harder to get back to a "normal life," and will likely wind up on Disability.

What do homeless people actually need in today's world?  These things:
-a stable, safe, place to sleep, out of the weather.
-clean restrooms
-a legitimate way to make some money day to day
-food, or money to buy food
-a SAFE place to store personal belongings
-a SAFE place to store and fix food (which would make EBT (food stamp money) go MUCH farther
-cell phone to communicate, look for work, etc.
-access to computers, and/or an older refurbished laptop, and wifi
-a place to plug in their cell phone (and laptop if they have one) and charge it
-free wifi to search for work, connect with other people, and learn online, on their phones, borrowed computers, or laptops
-a physical mailing address
-help getting an I.D./driver's license if that's an issue
-a place to do laundry
-library card
-training on computers, networking, social media/online networking, and how to find work today
-a bus pass to shop, run errands, got to medical/legal appointments, look for work
-transportation to medical appointments
-low cost, SAFE housing, once they do start earning an viable income (where credit score is not a major issue)
-a place for groups to have meetings (AA, NA, mental health, veterans support groups, etc.)
-a way to connect with people outside the homeless world, to network to find jobs, learn skills, etc.  Homeless people aren't hiring other homeless people for work
-training in today's entrepreneurial platforms to help earn money, like eBay, Craigslist, LetGo, etc.  These can provide much needed extra, LEGITIMATE, income to people getting back to a normal life.

I don't have the answer to homelessness, but a Homeless Resource Center, with the items listed above, and perhaps an area where people can camp safely (and out of public view), is a good start to a 21st Century answer to a new kind, and level, of homeless people.  This would help large numbers of people make the transition back to productive lives again.

Or you can just keep paying more and more in taxes, and support an ever increasing number of people who will never work again...  It's your choice.

This blog post, as long as it is, just scratches the surface of what is needed to make a meaningful effort, and true change, to get people off the streets and back into viable working lives.  Obviously, as a fairly intelligent guy who's had way too much experience being homeless, I have a lot of ideas on this subject.  If someone in a position to help this situation, media, government, business, or social organization, wants to contact me, you can email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com, or message me on Twitter @steveemig43 . I'll be sharing this on Twitter, and be glad to answer comments there.

I firmly believe that Newport Beach will completely blow this opportunity, and follow the crowd of other cities feeding the ENTITLEMENT MONSTER.  But I'm putting this post out hoping someone out there may be interested in actually taking on this issues in a viable way at some point.  We'll see. 

About the blog title... "A Modest Proposal" was a satirical social essay written by Jonathon Swift and published anonymously in 1729, explained here.

I just started a new blog for Marvin Davits, to promote Marvin's business, installing dinghy davits on yachts.  Check it out.