I've written a 20 chapter "book/blog thing" about the ultra long term trends that have led into the Tumultuous 2020's. (Blogger's note: I wrote "Dystopia" between October 2019 and the first week of June 2020)
Is this the haggard face of the highest IQ guy in the United States? Perhaps.
Starting in September 2018, while homeless in Richmond, Virginia, I physically heard police officers talking. They had been told I had the single highest legitimately documented IQ score in the United States of America, a score of 198, and that they needed to keep an eye on me. But they weren't supposed to actually talk to me. They couldn't figure out what was going on. Last June, in 2019, while sleeping homeless at the Newport Transportation Center bus station, I heard both Newport Beach Police and Orange County Sheriff's deputies saying the same thing. When I first came to Hollywood last September, and slept over the hill in Studio City, I physically overheard LAPD officers who had been told the same thing. So it is true? I don't know. I've never been told that I have a 198 IQ score to my face, officially.
In January of 1985, shortly after enlisting for the Marine Corps Reserves to get money to go to college, I took some tests at the Military Enlistment Processing Center in Boise, Idaho. Those tests, to the best of my knowledge, included a test for IQ score. I was never told what my score was. I took an IQ test in junior high in Ohio, and scored 132. I worked really slow as a kid, and didn't finish the test. To the best of my knowledge, from the late 1970's, until late 2018, I thought my IQ was 132. Pretty good, but not in the genius range. So I never thought much more about it.
When time came to ship out to boot camp, in early 1985, I was back at the MEPS Center. The first day I went there, I didn't ship out. I was told the UPS truck with my orders got stuck in s snowstorm in Oregon. I was picked up by the recruiters the next morning, and spent another 8 hour day at the MEPS center. On that day, I was told that the UPS truck carrying my orders actually slid off the road, in Oregon, and crashed. The recruiters seemed to find that pretty weird.
On the third day I was supposed to ship out, halfway through the day, a recruiter took three of us into a room, and asked if we had done anything, like maybe smoked some weed, during our time in the delayed entry program. He also said that some jobs in the Marine Corps require security clearances, and that Marines may go talk to our high school friends at some point, to find out background info on us. That was the first time I heard a recruiter mention talking to my friends.
A couple years earlier, I sold "speed" for a couple of months, to make some money. Crosstops and Black Beauties, were what we called the pills. I think they were actually ephedrine, a bit stronger than caffeine. I later found out they could be bought out of an ad in Hustler magazine, but were illegal in Idaho. A friend of mine was selling them, and making some money. So I did it for a couple of months. My best day as a drug dealer in high school, I made $33. I wasn't a good drug dealer. So I quit, and went on with my life. I got a job setting and pulling trap at the local gun range instead, a couple nights a week. Not much money, but it was something, and kind of fun.
I didn't tell the recruiter about my time as a bad drug dealer during my initial paperwork. But when they said they might go back and talk to my friends, I decided I better come clean, and tell them about it. So I did. I told them my story. Then they had me write it down. Then I was interrogated by two Marines for six hours on the subject. It was the truth, I was completely honest, and my story didn't change. They took me into see their colonel, and told him the story. I was taken back home, and told to wait to hear if I could go on to boot camp, or not. The decision took a week.
I was finally called and told that I could not go to boot camp, I was being dropped from the delayed entry program for "fraudulent enlistment." Basically, for lying. OK, fair enough. I was also told by recruiter that the CMC made the call on my case. I didn't know what a CMC was, so I asked. He told me CMC stands for Commandant Marine Corps. For some reason, the top general in the whole Marine Corps, looked at my file, a geeky, 18-year-old recruit from Boise, Idaho, and said, "No." I could never figure that out. Why would a guy, who's a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, take time to look at my file? It made no sense. I ended up getting into BMX freestyle seriously, and that turned into my career. I never took a single college course. I wanted to start my own business at some point, and I didn't need a degree to hire myself. College simply didn't enter the picture again, as far as I was concerned. I went on with my life.
Now, 35 years later, if I actually scored the highest IQ in the U.S. while in the delayed entry program, in 1985, it makes sense that the CMC might have seen my file. IF that is the truth. I don't know for sure. I don't know if I ever will know. I don't know if I will have a fatal "accident" soon because I wrote this blog post. I do know it won't go over well in some circles.
I also know that I've overheard multiple police officers, from 4 agencies in two states, that were told I have the single highest legitimately documented IQ score, a score of 198, in the United States of America. I also know that an incredible amount of pressure has been put on me, since about 3 weeks after 9/11, back in 2001, for some reason. That's 18 1/2 years of weird events, being denied for jobs, and hundreds, literally hundreds, of undercover officers or agents, of some kind, questioning me. The one at the bus stop last night was the last straw. I'm sick of this bullshit. I simply want to live my own life, and make a living as an artist, blogger, and writer. That's all.
I don't know the truth, and this story of the high IQ, that several police have been told about me, is the only explanation I have. This pressure is the reason I haven't been able to escape homelessness. Somebody somewhere seems to want me to fit into their agenda. That's not cool with me. So I've tried to live my own life, and work as a blogger, artist, and Old School BMX Has Been guy. It hasn't gone well. We'll see where it goes from here.
My advice? If you're a smart person, NEVER, EVER take an IQ test. EVER.
Blogger's note- 10/7/2021- I believe the story being told about me behind the scenes has changed, since the powers at be figured out I'm never going to go to college. Now I think people are being told I'm just delusional, and none of this stuff that happened ever happened. I can only officially have a high IQ if I work for the Right side of the political spectrum, or their associates. If I do my own thing, my IQ score from 1985 will never become public. That seems to be the story... for now.
Thank you for reading my blog. There are over 600 million blogs in the world now, and 2 billion blog posts get written annually, according the the most up-to-date stats I just searched. The vast majority of blogs probably never hit 1,000 views in their lifetime, although I couldn't find stats either way. People start a blog, often planning to get rich through ads or affiliate marketing or selling some product of their own. And then they fade, they don't promote their blog, then give up, and hardly anyone reads it. That's the fate of 99%+ of the world's blogs. This isn't one of those blogs.
I started this blog three weeks after moving into a tent, in the woods, in Winston-Salem North Carolina. I moved out of my crazy mom's apartment, bent on either making a living from my Sharpie artwork, or dying while trying. It's been a toss-up between those two, but I"m still alive and blogging. I'd sold maybe 20 of my Sharpie drawings at that point, most for $20 to $50 each. I couldn't get hired for even the most lame job in North Carolina. I was flat broke. I didn't really think very many people would read my new blog. But I like blogging, and it was a way to promote my Sharpie art for free.
I don't buy links or pageviews, I don't game the system. I don't blog just to "monetize" my content and get you to click on ads for shit you don't need, or follow links to buy junk, just to put money in my pocket. I'm not against making money blogging, but blogging just to make money always results and a real spammy and lame blog. That's just not me.
I write about shit I'm interested in. This blog brought three wildly different subjects into one blog: Old School BMX freestyle stories, thoughts on the future and the economy we all take part in, and my weird, unique, Sharpie scribble style artwork.
Much to my surprise, many of my former readers from my earlier BMX blogs (Freestyle BMX Tales, and FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales) hopped on for the ride. For that I thank you. I blog about things that matter to me, and stories I think might be worth sharing.
Just under three years later, I'm still homeless. But now I'm homeless in the San Fernando Valley of California, which kicks ass over North Carolina. Fer shur... like totally. I'm now known mostly as an artist and blogger, mainly because I've drawn well over 120 Sharpie drawings, most taking 35 to 45 hours each. I've sold over 80 major pieces of ar in the last 5 years, and my originals or prints are now on 6 of the 7 continents. That just makes me laugh. It's a really weird world we live in these days. My blogging and artwork is not a good living... yet. But it's a much better spot than I was in three years ago. I've got a long way to go in this world, if I manage to survive long enough, and a ton of ideas for projects I want to create and make happen.
I did some soul searching recently, and I've decided to go in a couple of new directions. I have two new blogs that I'm just starting, and now that Steve Emig: The White Bear has hit a nice, big, round number of 100,000 pageviews, I'll be focusing on those two.
Thanks for coming along on the journey of this blog, I may add a few more posts here, I'm not sure yet. But most of my work will be on the other two heading forward.
In addition, I've written a book/blog thing about the long term trends that have led us to the Tumultuous 2020's, which I believe will be a pivotal decade across the world. There is change happening at so many levels right now, everything seems crazy. We've started off this decade three months into a financial breakdown in a the little known Repo Market. Most people paid little attention to that. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit American shores, it triggered the already shaky financial world, leading to a massive stock sell off, and now the craziest economic scenario since the Great Depression of the 1930's is upon us. I did not see a pandemic coming, but I did see major economic turmoil coming, and I called the massive stock market drop before the market peaked, and about three weeks before the 10,000 point slide began. My book/blog thing, Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now- Book 1, explains why I saw trouble ahead in the 2020's. 19 chapters are up as I write this, I'll publish chapter 20, and clean the whole thing up, before long.
Thanks again for checking out my stuff. I hope you find more of my future content worth the time to read and watch. As always, let me know what you think on Facebook Twitter, or in an email.
Here's the latest drawing I finished, the enigmatic Frank Zappa. #sharpiescribblestyle
I have a new blog I'm focusing on now, as of May 2022:
Keith Treanor. New Jersey born and bred. Moved to Huntington Beach with his Mom, brother & sister in 1990. Got known for a hot temper BITD, but also a fun, occasionally even goofy, rider who was always down to push the limits. I'm stoked that Keith with this huge fakie wall ride shows up when you pull this video up.
"The first time I saw you was in the video that fat guy made."
-Pete Augustin to Keith Treanor, in 1993 or so. Keith shared the line with me, some time later, and I thought it was hilarious, since I'm the fat guy (I wasn't fat then, but wasn't ripped abs thin, either), and the video is The Ultimate Weekend.
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OK, it wasn't exactly 30 years ago today, but pretty close. It was just about this time, late April or early May, of 1990, when I rode up to the Oceanview flyout jump in Huntington Beach. It was early evening, maybe an hour before sunset. You can see the Oceanview segment in the The Ultimate Weekend, above at 23:22. There were a couple of guys there that I didn't know. Those guys turned out to be recent New Jersey transplant Keith Treanor, and English vert rider who moved to SoCal, John Povah.
I'd lived in Huntington Beach, California for three years then. Bob Morales brought me to H.B. to edit the AFA newsletter in January 1987, and got me into video work, kind of by accident. That led to a job at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear's video company. Being socially retarded, and not having a girlfriend most of the time, I spent my evenings hitting street riding spots, or doing a little flatland by the Taco Bell at Bolsa Chica and Heil. I spent weekends doing flatland for the crowds at the H.B. Pier, hanging with Mike Sarrail, and freestyle skaters Pierre Andre', Don Brown, Hans Lingren, Jeremy Ramey, and whomever showed up.
The Oceanview jump, located at Oceanview High School, on the corner of Warner and Gothard, was the perfect freestyler's jump. A long, concrete sidewalk led up to a 6 1/2 high flyout jump, under a huge tree. At that time, jumping contests were just becoming a thing, mostly held at BMX races. Chris Moeller was about the craziest jumper of that time period, and he had just taken over his little garage bike company, S&M Bicycles, from co-founding partner, Greg Scott. Greg was the "S" and Chris was the "M," their last initials. They had different ideas on how to run the company, and Chris went solo with it in 1989, I think. Chris changed the name to S&M Bikes, and worked like a mad dog to sell BMX bikes actually made for dirt jumpers.
The S&M guys, like Chris, Dave Clymer, and John Paul Rogers, summed up racer jumping at that time. Tricks like X-ups, nac-nacs, no footers, no handers, and 360's over big (for the time period) doubles were what the serious racers that jumped were doing. But the freestylers, like myself, were still partial to flyout jumps. Ride up to the jump slower than the racers did when hitting doubles, get some hang time, and try to weirder tricks, like a one-hand 360, or maybe a tailwhip (which hadn't been pulled on dirt then) or even a decade attempt. There was still a big chasm between pro BMX racer jumping, and freestyler jumping. Over the next few years, the styles blended, as dirt and street comps progressed during the ramen days long recession of the early 1990's. Racer jumpers started trying crazier tricks, and freestylers learned how to pedal. Then the next generation, like th eSheep Hills Locals in the H.B. area, rose up as dirt jumpers. Most didn't race much, and rarely, if ever, did flatland freestyle, just street and dirt.
I think my first reaction to Keith jumping at Oceanview was something like "Holy FUCK!" Nobody, no-fucking-body, even came close to getting as high off of this jump as Keith Treanor did. It's not an accident that a high contrast shot of Keith jumping over John's uplifted hand was on the box of The Ultimate Weekend video. Keith is 9 or 10 feet off flat ground in the Mike Sarrail photo I used for the video cover. I personally saw Keith get a full two feet higher than that once or twice, but not when I had video running.
John Povah was no slouch either. He was a solid vert rider from England, who moved over here a year or so earlier, I think. He was riding street and some dirt then, and hitting backyard ramps, when possible.
We had a good session that day I first saw Keith and John, and in typical BMXer fashion then, I had no idea what their names were when I rolled away. I'd been shooting a little bit of footage on my RCA S-VHS- camera on the weekends, and I was thinking about trying to produce my own freestyle video. Unreel Productions had been dissolved a few months earlier, in January 1990. All of the main people were let go, and I was moved to the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear main offices in Santa Ana. I worked cheap, compared to the rest, and knew how to work most of the equipment. That's why they kept me.
At Vision, I sat in a room all day, alone, and got called to shoot some video every week or so. I got a good check for doing nothing, which is a dream job for many people. But it was driving me crazy. I wanted to produce my own video, to show BMX freestyle as I saw it. The Vision videos, like Freestylin' Fanatics, were goofy, the footage was old, and I pretty much hated it. Fanatics was cool because it gave some props to a bunch of younger riders, but it didn't show what riding was really about in my opinion, and missed the rapid progression happening in riding then.
Eddie Roman made Aggroman a year earlier, which I saw as a funny, goofy, movie-made-on-video of freestyle. Us riders didn't make freestyle videos then, just companies like GT or BMX Plus! made freestyle videos then. I wanted to create my own take on riding. I wasn't actually sure I could even produce a video from start to finish. The idea scared the hell out of me. But around the time I met Keith and John, I was getting pretty serious about the idea.
I saw them again at Oceanview a few days later, we had another session, and I think that's when I got their names and numbers, and started calling them to go session and shoot footage for this video I wanted to make. And that turned into a few months of taking my big video camera, using full size S-VHS tapes, around to our sessions, and hitting a bunch of places we may not have normally.
In October of 1990, I rented a video editing system for $25 an our, located in the back of a video shop. I spent 40 hours, $1,000 out of my pocket, to edit The Ultimate Weekend. The whole video producing process cost me $5,000 of my own money. OK, a grand was borrowed from Mike Sarrail, and then paid back. That's what making a self-produced video cost in 1990. I made about $2,500 back, selling VHS tapes through a surf video distributor. I lost my ass, then lived off my credit cards for a while, when I was working freelance. Why did I did I live off my credit cards? Because I was only working part of the time, and because I was 24 years old, and I was an idiot. I lost money on The Ultimate Weekend, but I'm stoked I made it. I had a crazy idea, I gave it a shot, and I finished a big project, something I really struggled with then.
This year is the 30th anniversary of The Ultimate Weekend, my first totally self-produced video. Over the next few months, I'm going to do a series of posts about making that video. I really wanted to make a sequel ten years ago, for the 20th anniversary. But I was broke in North Carolina, and it just was not going to happen. I wanted to make a 30th anniversary sequel this year, and... well, we'll see. Maybe it'll happen. Either way, I'll tell some of the stories of the making of this video, as I wind down this blog, and start up my next main blog... Stay tuned.
I have a new blog about BMX, skateboard, and action sports spots, check it out:
Skyway's Master of Balance, Robert Peterson, at the AFA Masters comp in Columbus, Ohio, in 1986, showing off is signature balance tricks, and signature style.
The irony of today's world is kind of weird, from my point of view. A virus, one of the tiniest things on planet Earth, has mutated into a form infectious to humans, and is wreaking havoc on hundreds of millions of us intelligent, sophisticated, technological, human beings. This is something that happens in nature, generally when animal populations get too numerous for the environment. Human scientists, understanding how viruses operate, have decreed a bunch of rules to keep this virus from spreading to more people than absolutely necessary. Because of this, most of you have been mostly cooped up in your house or apartment, very likely not working, for 4 to 6 weeks, or so.
Meanwhile, since years of really weird events have led to me being homeless right now, I'm wandering the streets of Los Angeles county, primarily in the San Fernando Valley. Like oh my God, fer shur. Homeless people have largely been left outside to die in this pandemic, myself included. Most of the businesses and places we rely on to survive, like fast food restaurants, and the libraries, have been shut down. So basically, while you were bummed about having to watch 17 hours of Netflix a day, I was trying to find a bathroom to take a dump. While most of you are chomping at the bit to get outside, and move around and ride, eat out, go to a club, and shop like normal, I'm working towards the day when I have my own apartment again, and can hole up and draw and write 14 hours a day... on purpose. Irony. On both sides of this equation, we have adapted, dealing with the weird rules, as this pandemic plays out across the U.S., and much of the world. As it turned out, being stuck outside turned out to be a blessing, since many communal living places, like homeless shelters, nursing homes, jails and prisons, are turning into virus hot spots, with many people dying.
In March and April, I spent a month seeking out power outlets where I could charge my laptop, and wifi guest spots still open, since McDonald's and the library, my usual work spots, are closed. I was barely able to keep up with posts and comments on Facebook, while most of you consumed more media than ever. Because of this, at a time when I really wanted to be writing the most I could, I have been blogging the least.
Searching my mental data banks for a blog post subject for all of you still cooped up, Robert Peterson came to mind. I first heard of Skyway's Master of Balance in an article in FREESTYLIN', in 1984, I think. Most pro rider' tricks seemed beyond me then, though I was full bore into freestyle, my skills on a freestyle bike were just starting to build. Bert's balance tricks showed me something I could start on that day, and then build upon. I could balance on my front peg, with my bars turned sideways, and soon climbed up, standing on the front wheel, and got the hang of balancing there.
I spent the Idaho winter of 1984-1985 in my small bedroom, in Boise, balancing on my bike, moving around from peg to front tire, learning to move around my bike in a tiny space, indoors. I learned to do The Peterson, the no-footed trick you see Bert do at :39 in the clip above. I also learned Dave Nourie stomach stands, and other balance variations. When I slipped and fell, I'd hit my bed, with one arm, my dresser with the other, and sometimes hit my head on my nightstand. That's how small my riding area in my room was. I learned to balance on the bike and juggle three tennis balls that winter, which became a signature trick for me in shows and the first contests. Then I learned to balance on the bike, and juggle two tennis balls and a bread knife from the kitchen. Balancing and juggling became a standard part of my trick show and contest routine. I even had "Go for the Juggler" printed on the butt of my leathers. Really. Go ahead, laugh, it's pathetic. But it was the 1980's, we were just making all this freestyle stuff up, a lot of goofiness ensued.
The next August, 1985, I moved to San Jose, California, with my family, and became a part of the San Francisco Bay Area riding scene. I met the Skyway guys, Robert Peterson, Maurice Meyer, Oleg Konings, and Hugo Gonzales. Later on I got to know Eddie Roman and "little Scotty Freeman, " as we called him then, as well. Since I was riding a Skyway T/A then that seemed epic.
San Jose was much warmer than Boise in the winter, and I could ride outside much of the time. But that winter of 1984-85, sessioning my bedroom, doing balance tricks, helped shape my early days as a BMX freestyler. I even invented a third version The Peterson. Bert invented the trick, hold the front brakes, and take both feet off the front tire, while balancing over the front end. Then he came up with version #2, doing The Peterson, one handed. My third version was to do a Peterson, but lift the back wheel off the ground, balancing no footed with only the front wheel touching the ground. I could balance 10 to 15 seconds, like that. I showed Robert my variation outside of Beach Park Bikes one day, and got his official approval on The Peterson, version #3. I was pretty stoked, as we both spent a few minutes doing my variation of his trick.
BMX freestyle, as we used to call this sport-type thing, is all about adapting, to begin with. Bob Haro took a standard BMX bike, adapted to its form, and started inventing tricks on that little machine. A whole bunch of us other weirdos thought it looked fun, and joined the party. So now, 35ish years later, a tiny virus has upended our lives. I thought a blog post about sessioning in my bedroom all one winter, doing Peterson-inspired balance tricks, would be a good reminder that whatever life throws at us, we have to adapt to it. So if you're cooped up and jonesing to ride, this may give you an idea. Get the bike in the family room, in the garage, the back patio, or up on the roof, and see if there are any balance tricks left in your trick bag.
In other blog news, I think this blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear, has pretty much run its course. I'm going to let this one creep up to 100,000 page views, which it's real close to. Then I'll let it sit here, for anyone who follows a link to one of the nearly 700 posts. I've started two new blogs, and I'll start focusing on those two soon. Here are the links to thenew blogs:
I have a new blog about BMX, skateboard, and action sports spots, check it out:
This is the AFA Masters contest in mid-1986 where a young Oklahoma kid named Mathew Hoffman got his first factory sponsorship. Eddie Fiola and I met Mat at the contest before this, in Tulsa, we just didn't realize it at the time. That story is below.
With the Covid-19 shutdown going on, I'm fighting to find power to charge my laptop, and have to pirate wifi any place I can find it. That's making blogging well damn near impossible. I just don't have enough time online each day to do decent blog posts. So here's a "golden oldies" post. Here are 5 of my most popular Old School BMX Freestyle posts, and each one got over 400 views originally. Check them out again, or maybe you missed them when I first posted. I'll get back to serious blogging as soon as I can everyone...
There is no"real job" for me, at this point. I haven't gone in to detail on my crazy story over the past 20 years, for several reasons. The biggest reason is that my personal story is so fucking weird, it's not believable. But now, suddenly, much of the world's events seem unbelievable.
I spent the winter simply trying to survive, then got a two month reprieve when a friend let me stay in a spare room, in her house in Newport Beach. But I made hardly any money those two months, so renting a room afterwards wasn't an option. So I wound up back on the streets, as the SoCal winter, spouts of 3-5 days of chilly, rainy weather, came late. I kept busy working, drawing, blogging, and doing my daily social media interacting, which promotes my Sharpie artwork. That's my main source of income.
I would go to a McDonald's early, get a cheap breakfast, and blog and do social for a while. Then I'd go to a public library, where I could charge my laptop, and non-activated old iPhone 5, which is my camera. I'd spend 4-6 hours doing listening to talks and how-tos, and researching and writing my blog posts. I'd also draw there sometimes. Then I'd wind up in a McDonald's or Carl's Jr., out of the evening chill, and draw in the evenings. The library and fast food places were not only places to eat and work stations for me, they were the bathrooms I used daily.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S., and suddenly "isolate at home" and "social distancing" became part of our lexicon. I can't isolate at home, since I don't have one. Moving around, and riding buses and trains daily, is part of my work and survival. With the restrictions, I lost my bathrooms (fairly big issue), my "work stations," and my electric power to charge devices, and my access to wifi.
So for the last month, I've had to find new bathrooms I could use, I've blogged and done computer work, mostly sitting on the ground, in 45-55-65 degrees, anyplace I could find wifi. I lucked out and found an out of the way spot that had an outdoor power plug that worked, and three different wifi signals. But it also had a wide roaming security guard. So I would work and charge as long as I could, then get kicked off. That power plug got turned off yesterday. Two days after an undercover cop posing as a homeless man showed up to chat with me. Nice enough guy, told me a good joke one day. But I've had literally hundreds of undercovers in my life in the last 19 years, and I do my best to avoid them.
Yesterday I got kicked off public power plugs while charging my laptop. This morning I tried the outdoor plug again, just in case. It was turned off, and the cop showed up again. So I went out in front of a row of shops nearby, where I can blog and work on my computer, thanks to a couple of wifi signals there. An NBC TV crew was shooting a segment about the clothing stores that have just closed down there, right by my wifi spot. So one producer nervously asked me to stand out of hte shot (hey, no problem, I've done video work), until they were done.
Finally, 2 1/2 hours after I woke up this morning (where I sleep reasonably comfortably on the sidewalk) I was finally able to sit down, and use the 43% battery life (seriously, 43% when I checked it), and write this lame post. I'll check the news, listen to a song or two (amps me up for another day), and check my social media. Then I'll head to my storage unit, which is an inside one, where I sit on the floor, use a box as a desk, and work on the latest drawing I'm doing, for Joe M. in Florida.
While you guys are sheltering at home, this is a glimpse of what my life has been like. What's really frustrating is that I really want to be blogging about 18 hours a day right now. What's happening on the business and economic front, and the massive layoffs, is the stuff I've been studying for 30 years, and I have a lot of thoughts and insights about. But I barely have time to stay up with people on Facebook and Twitter, so blog posts are few an far between right now. I just can't get enough time charging up and sitting at a wifi spot, until things open up again.
OK, enough rambling, you get the idea. I'll do my best to keep working and stay in touch on FB and Twitter. You guys don't get to stir crazy. Like a thunderstorm, this too, shall pass.
I have four new blogs I'm focusing on now, check them out...
My footage and editing of Chris Moeller, in 1991, when S&M bikes was being run out of the garage of a one bedroom apartment, on Alabama Street, in Huntington Beach, California. Clip from the first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer, that title was the pick-up line Dave Clymer used to pick up his girlfriend.
I was sitting outside the front door of the tiny "Winnebago" apartment, on a lawn chair. It was 1991. The apartment, officially on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, actually opened up to the backyard of three other units. It was like we had to go into someone else's backyard to get to our front door. The whole apartment was 8 feet wide, tiny living room, tiny kitchen, hall and tiny bathroom, small bedroom, then the single car garage that housed S&M Bikes. There were two tiny windows. It felt like you were in a motorhome, so it got dubbed the "Winnebago," before I moved in.
The fledgling S&M Bikes company, then doing about $100,000 gross revenue a year, lived in the garage. Chris lived in the bedroom, and most nights, his girlfriend stayed over. I slept on the living room floor. Shaggy, who looked just like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, slept on the two cushion couch. I wound up getting fired from my video duplicating job in North Hollywood, while making the "Leg Muscles" video, a story which became a BMX industry urban legend. That's a tale for another day. After losing that job, while making "Leg Muscles," I wound up living in the Winnebago.
Mornings usually started with Chris' then girlfriend Shelly, waking up early, stepping over me and my sleeping bag, and heading out to work. The three of us roommates were up late, usually drinking a bit, and slept in. Often there was an early call from some East Coast bike shop a little later, wanting a Dirtbike frame or a pair of Slam Bars. I groaned in my mild hangover, crawled halfway out of my sleeping bag on the floor, and reached up for the landline phone, sitting on a little wooden stand we found in an alley. I'd bring the phone down to my head, and croak "S&M Bikes." We had a sheet or two of scratch paper, and usually a pen pr pencil on the stand. I'd take down the order, hang up, and go back to sleep.
Somewhere around 8:30 or 9:00, I'd wake up, roll up my sleeping bag, and tuck it in a corner of the living room, then pour a bowl of cereal. I'd usually open the front door, and sit outside it and eat breakfast. Chris would often wake up soon after. I distinctly remember him coming out with a cup of microwaved hot water day after day, and sitting outside the door in the other sketchy old lawn chair, in cheap shorts and some random, well worn T-shirt. He would drink a cup of hot tea. Some days he'd go get a free cup of coffee at his bank, about three blocks away. Money was tight, even for him. Shaggy and I had $200 rent and a little food and beer to buy. Chris had bicycle frames, forks, and handlebars to get built, and orders to ship out, many bills to pay, rent to pay, and a small company to keep running. A pack of ramen really was a standard meal once or twice a week, and sometimes more than that.
One day, Chris came out with his cup of hot water, sat down, and opened up a tea bag, and made his hot tea. We'd usually talk about what orders needed to go out that day, or getting 25 more sets of Slam Bars made, or maybe a place to go ride later, after the day's orders were packed, and picked up by the UPS guy. After drinking his tea, on that particular day, Chris sat his tea bag on the plastic arm of the lawn chair.
The next morning, Chris came out with his mug of hot water, grabbed the tea bag from the day before, still sitting on the arm of the lawn chair, and made another cup of tea with it. I joked about him re-using it, and he said it was still good, and tea bags cost money. Then he finished his tea, and set the used tea bag on the arm of the lawn chair, again.
When he came out the third morning, mug of hot water in hand, and made tea a third time, with the same tea bag, I laughed again. Chris Moeller was a cheap ass motherfucker back then. Maybe he still is. But that is part of what it took to start and run a tiny bike company, in the recession, in 1991. He started S&M, with a $1,200 loan from his Grandpa, (his business idol), as fas as I know. Chris had to live cheap, and re-invest as much money as possible back into buying frames, forks, bars, t-shirts, and the other things S&M Bikes sold. H bought a batch of something, sold that stuff, and took that slightly larger amount of money, bought more stuff to sell, and repeated the process. In this way he multiplied the business' money, and built a small company, without any debt. That's pretty freakin' amazing, considering how much money most traditional businesses start with, how much debt they take on, and how many of those businesses go out of business.
Up in the Hermosa Beach area, skateboarder Steve Rocco was doing the same thing, with a little skateboard company called World Industries. The word was that Rocco named his company "World Industries" as a joke, because it looked big time when the name was printed on a credit card. Rocco's story is documented in the film The Man Who Souled the World, which you need to watch, if you never have.
By 1989, the third wave of skateboarding popularity (60's, 70's, 80's), the second wave of BMX racing popularity (70's,80's), and the first wave of BMX freestylepopularity, (80's), had run their course, and they were business aspect of the two sports were fading. Then the recession of 1990 hit the real business world. The Big 5 companies in skateboarding, and the handful in BMX companies, were hit hard. The industries, run by diehard, old school business guys, went into a nosedive.
Into that mess a few well known skaters and BMXers started their own little companies, which everyone with any business experience, expected to fail. These companies all seemed to have a top name rider/skater running the business, and a smart guy, and less known, less skilled rider/skater, as a sidekick. the sidekicks helped out to a greater or lesser extent, behind the scenes, depenidng on the company.
Steve Rocco started World Industries, and freestyle skating world champion, Rodney Mullen was the smart sidekick. Tony Hawk started Birdhouse, with freestyle skater Per Welinder as the sidekick. Freestyle skater Pierre Andre Senizergues got a shoe company in France, Etnies, to make skate shoes. Then he took it over, working with good friend, and another freestyle skater, Don Brown as assistant everything in the early days. In BMX, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson started 2-Hip, putting on halfpipe and then street contests. His sidekick was former East Coast freestyler Kevin Martin. Meanwhile, Chris Moeller started S&M Bikes in 1987 with fellow racer Greg Scott. They parted ways about 1989, and Chris took over, and I became his brainiac sidekick for about 4 years, after he hired me to make the first S&M Bikes video. John Lucero, another pro skater, and curb skating officianado, started Black Label Skateboards. Ed Templeton started Toy Machine Skateboards. Mat Hoffman and sidekick Steve Swope took their Sprocket Jockeys trick team, and morphed it into several businesses, including contest promotion and Hoffman Bikes. All of these businesses, and several others, really took root in the long "double dip" recession of the early 1990's.
These businesses were not ideas pitched to rich angel investors, who gave these budding entrepreneurs $5 million to burn, while waiting to see if the businesses turned into something that could be taken public, or sold to Google or Yahoo. Hell, Google and Yahoo were still years away from being invented. These little bike and skate businesses were started with a thousand, two thousand, or maybe five thousand dollars, and no clue of how to actually run a business. They were started by guys who were thinking, "We need bikes that don't crack," or "We need to make skateboards where skaters can help design their board and graphics." Basically, the ideas going in were, "We don't know what the fuck we're doing, but this NEEDS to happen."
S&M Bikes is still going strong, 33 years old now, and Chris Moeller is a millionaire. He's probably still a tightwad, at least until one of his twin daughters asks for money. He still rides, with two replaced hips, and it still a brilliant business man. Me, I'm homeless in the San Fernando Valley, but wherever I go, local police are told by someone (apparently from a federal level) that I have a 216 IQ, and they can't fuck with me, since a whole bunch of three-letter agencies have spent the last 18 years fucking with me, went kind of overboard. Apparently that ridiculously high IQ test score (I took that test when I was going to join the Marines in 1985) is overly important to certain groups of people. I've never been told in person what the score was, but have overheard police, who were told, talking about it. I really don't believe it, but that's the only explanation I have for a couple of decades of really weird shit happening in my life. Seriously, that's my story, as best as I can figure it out. OK, my story is far from typical of the others in this bunch, most have fared much better.
Steve Rocco sold World Industries for $20 million in 1998 or so. Rodney Mullen is a skate legend, still skates, and gives TED Talks to super smart people on the subject of creativity. World Industries also spawned Spike Jonze' film career, and Johnny Knoxville, and the whole Jackass phenomena. The three Jackass movies, made for $35 million total, are three of the most profitable movies in the history of film. Really.
Black Label Skateboards is small, but vibrant. Mat Hoffman owns like 9 companies, and has been re-engineered with alien DNA. OK, I can't prove that, but that's the only explanation I can think of for why his body still functions after so many horrific crashes. Toy Mahcine skateboards is still going strong, and Ed Templeton still skates, even after seriously breaking his neck. Ed's also a world reknowned aritst.
Birdhouse Skateboards is still around, I don't know if Tony is affiliated with it these days, or not. But the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game made over $ 1 billion in its ten year run. Tony's doing well, and still skating hard.
Etnies shoes morphed into Sole Technology, which puts out Emerica, E's shoes, 32 snowboard boots, and Altamont clothes. At its peak, Sole Tech did somewhere around $200 million in sales a year, dwarfing these other companies. Now they're battling Nike and Van's, the big boys in sports shoes. More power to them. Pierre and Don are my old bros from years riding and skating at the Huntington Beach Pier, they're good guys.
So now we're in the beginning of another, more serious, recession. I personally think it will be a long, drawn out, depression or great depression, kind of like the Great Recession of 2008, and the long recession of the 1990's, put together. I've dubbed this The Phoenix Great Depression, follow the link to find out why. The dirtbag riders and skaters of 30 years ago are industry moguls now. Will young guys and gals in BMX, skateboarding, and other action sports, start a new series of small businesses to take them out? I don't know. They're all in it for the long haul, and I expect them all to be around for a while.
A whole slew of other companies were also spawned from bike/skate world in the recession of the 1990's. My focus in this current economic collapse isn't on the BMX, skateboard, and the now huge action sports industries. In this economic downturn, I think millions of Americans, many recently laid off, others already working gig jobs or running small businesses, will do what the BMXers and skaters of 1990 did to that world. I think we will see a huge wave of small businesses emerge, many out of sheer necessity, in this decade, the 2020's. Some of those will grow into giants, and into completely new industries, going forward.
Still in the grips of the Covid-19 business shutdown, small business itself has taken a beating. Millions of small businesses are on the ropes now, to use the boxing metaphor. Many will fail. But there just aren't enough major businesses to put 20 or 30 or 50 million Americans back to work, as we exit this recession. Millions, literally millions of new small businesses will be necessary to do this. I think we will start seeing micro and small businesses rise up from the ashes of this massive economic collapse, and create some amazing things. I saw it happen in our little BMX and skateboard world 30 years ago. I think this time around will be even more exciting.
Here's the garage on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, that housed S&M Bikes in 1991. The back end of the Winnebago apartment
I have a new blog now, about side hustles, gig jobs, small businesses, and making a living in recession of 2023-2025. Check it out:
In this Lawrence O"Donnell interview from MSNBC, well known economist Paul Krugman tells how the Trump administration is magnifying the economic crisis because of their own agenda. Krugman ends the segment with, "...we really are talking about a depression level event."
I dubbed this economic collapse the "Phoenix Great Depression" for my own reasons months ago, looking forward to all the "dominoes" that were set up to fall in the financial world. Now the most mainstream economists are coming around to a similar conclusion.
I have a few new blogs I'm focusing on now, check them out...
Here's Stanfield's General Store, in North Carolina. I grew up largely
in rural and small town Ohio, and there were still a few of these around
in my childhood. Most were modern versions in a tourist spot, but I
saw at least a couple of actual, functioning general stores. For most
of my 4th grade year, my family told everyone we lived on a farm in
Shiloh, Ohio. That was a "burg" as we called them, not even a town, but
a small community, about 1,000 people, in farm country. But the farm house we rented was
actually a few miles from Shiloh, and was a quarter mile outside Rome,
Ohio. Rome was a crossroads, with a functioning general store, that had
been in business there since some time in the 1800's, I think. That general
store looked very much like this one, which is why I picked this video
to embed.
Walking through the local grocery store the other day,
getting my daily share of unhealthy foods, I started talking to a very upscale woman,
probably in her late 40's. We
talked about how crazy things had become with the Covid-19 scourge
crossing the country, and the major responses we have been taking to
decrease the spread of the disease. It was a quick conversation between strangers, about how much our lives had changed in the last 3-4 weeks, due to the pandemic. It surprised me when the woman
said, "I have to learn a whole new way to shop, we have to stock up on things now."
This woman most likely lived in the hills above Studio City, a very
expensive area, right over the hill from the Hollywood world famous Hollywood sign. Her comment threw
me, because I grew up in a world where stocking up on extra food and
supplies was the norm. She obviously grew up in a world where daily
shopping was normal. The quick conversation reminded me of what we
called "Grandma's Store," as a kid. The response to Covid-19 is
suddenly sending us back to earlier times, in this area, and perhaps
others.
When I was a little kid, my mom's parents
lived in Mansfield, Ohio, and we made frequent visits there on
weekends. My Grandma Kate was a mild-mannered woman, who spent most of
her time in the kitchen when I was there. Usually when she was cooking,
she'd need a can of this, or a can of that at some point. One of us kids, usually
3-4-5 years old, would get asked to go down to "Grandma's Store," and
get a can of beans or corn, or maybe a jar of grandma's home canned
peaches or pears. Cheesy as it sounds, it felt good to be trusted to go
down and bring up something for dinner, as a little kid. The task was always asked of
one of the smaller grandkids,starting with me, the oldest of the cousins, then being handed down to the younger kids, we grew up.
The kid asked would head down
into the basement, from a door at the end of the kitchen. It was a
dark, unfinished basement, with the washer, dryer, and a big chest
freezer on one side, and and "Grandma's Store" on the other. On the
back wall were old, wooden shelves, filled with dozens of Mason jars
full of peaches, pears, bread & butter pickles, and homemade jams
and jellies, along a few nasty things, like jars of pickled eggs and
pigs knuckles, a German delicacy, that Grandpa Mayer bought. On the
side wall of Grandma's Store were cans of corn, green beans, lima beans,
and other standard foods of our world. Grandma Kate always had at least
30 or 40 cans of food, and dozens of jars of home-canned foods. Next to the cans were
packs of paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, and other non-food products. The
kid of the day would grab the item needed, and climb back up the stairs,
then hand the can or jar to grandma. The job often came with payment
of a cookie, or on a really good day, licking the mixing spoon or mixing
blades of a cake batter or frosting.
The reason my Grandma
Kate had a "store," a few weeks worth of food stored up, and always
restocked, was because she lived through the Great Depression and other tough times, as a young
woman. She had seen really hard times. She grew up in a time when
preparing for the future, and being stocked up in case of a unexpected
time of hardship, was simply they way everyone lived.
Here in the major earthquake zone of
Southern California, also known for brush fires, seasonal floods, and
occasional mudslides, we are told to always have an "earthquake kit" in
case of a major quakes, that shuts things down for a few days or weeks. People in "Tornado Alley, or areas known for serious blizzards, have similar ideas. We all know this here in SoCal, but most people don't have much of an earthquake
kit.
So I'm writing this post, to raise the bar a little. It's time for us to take a lesson from my Grandma Kate. There was a
reason my grandma had here little store in the basement. Now, after
after 2-3 weeks of many empty shelves in stores, and people hoarding
toilet paper and paper towels, maybe starting to build your own little
basement, pantry, or spare closet "store" will seem like a great idea to
our modern generations.
I'm not saying to buy a chest
freezer and pack it full of 300 boxes of Hot Pockets and tater tots, so you can play World of Warcraft for 3 weeks straight, if this happens again.
I'm saying, do what my Grandma Kate did. When you go on your regular
shopping trips, buy a couple extra jars of pasta sauce, some bottled water, a bag of rice, maybe canned
foods (even if you don't normally eat them, they last a long time), and an extra pack of paper
towels. In a few weeks, without spending a ton of extra money, or panic
hoarding a 3 year supply of toilet paper, you soon have a small "store"
of your own. As time goes on, you slowly build it to what ever size
makes sense to you. By doing this, you have your "earthquake kit"
covered, and you're much better prepared if some other crazy event
happens, like the one we're dealing with right now. When any unexpected event happens, you can rest easy, you're good for two or three weeks, even if the grocery stores are not good.
If
you are a fresh food only vegan or something, buy some canned or frozen veggies,
just because they last forever. If you don't use them in 2 or 3 months,
you can donate them to a food pantry, soup kitchen, or other place
where someone in need can use them. Then keep stocking with new cans
(or frozen foods if you have a big freezer), and keep your stock there
for emergencies.
As the world gets crazy, maybe it's
time for everyone to go a little old school, build a little "store" of everyday items, and slowly stock up for
whatever other crazy event may come along in your life.
I have a few new blogs I'm focusing on now, check them out...
Blog post: Before the word "huck," there was Hugo Gonzalez
I wrote a whole big post offline, but when I went to cut and paste it, the code got wacky, and wouldn't format. So I'll write a new post. 13 years of blogging, I'm still a technical numbskull.
Like most of you who read my Old School BMX freestyle posts, I got into BMX, and then freestyle, in a place far away from Southern California, where both were born. As a kid in the 1970's in Ohio, I rode a Schwinn Scrambler knockoff, made from my dad's collection of spare bike parts. He was a packrat, and had tons of junk, so a purple, spray painted, 20 inch rat bike was my first ride. Then came the red, white, and blue banana seat three speed, T-shift on the down tube, for my 8th birthday. $50, straight from Grant's (like K-mart).
That's the bike I first hit tiny jumps on. Later came a 26 inch brown ten speed, I jumped that thing, too, on little, 6 or 8 inch tall, vacant lot jumps. I didn't even know BMX existed until 1979, when I saw Schwinn Phantom Scrambler in a bike shop window. I bought my first BMX bike the day before I moved away from New Mexico, in 1981. I paid $5for the complete bike, with 3 pound aluminum mags, heavier than Moto-Mags. I bought it from my friend Mike. But I didn't actually get into BMX riding until June of 1982, in Blue Valley trailer park, outside of Boise, Idaho. Those heavy mags had a jacked up coaster brake, and I hardly rode the thing for a year. When I started riding it, and got into BMX, I didn't stop.
Like most of you reading this, I was soon reading every single word of every BMX magazine that I could scrape up money to buy, back in 1983. I learned the names of those skatepark riders, Eddie Fiola, the first King of the Skateparks, Brian Blyther, Mr. Smooth, and Mike Dominguez, the up-and-coming super kid back then. Also in the mix were Rich Sigur, Tony Murray, Donovan Ritter, Steve McCloud, Brian Deam, Jeff Carroll, and a few more. But there was one who always stood out. Hugo Gonzalez. I soon learned from the magazines that he was the guy who would think up the craziest stunt to try every contest. Landing seemed completely optional for Hugo's last trick, and often some of the other tricks in his run. The high airs and new tricks of the other skatepark riders were amazing, but I soon began to wonder, "What did Hugo do at that contest?"
In Del Mar he raced across the long, concrete halfpipe, and launched a tabletop over the fence, crash landing in the next bowl. The next year he 360'd over the fence, and almost landed it. Hugo did the fence bounce at Pipeline, flying out of the banked section, landing sideways on the chainlink fence, then flying back into the bowl. That was the first recorded "wall ride" in BMX. He did the endo drop-in to knockout in the Pipe Bowl. A downside footplant attempt, out of the Pipe Bowl, on another rider's crossbar. Huge canyon airs at quarterpipe comps. 540 attempts over canyons. The big 720 launch off the pier an into the ocean, somewhere (photo sequence is in a Hugo tribute video on YouTube). Before we used the word "huck" much, there was Hugo. Is it a coincidence that those two words both start with "Hu?" Like, "Huh? Did he think he could land that?" I doubt it.
My personal favorite Hugo stunt was one that I think happened in Vancouver, in 1984. There was a contest at a horse track, much like the track at any fairgrounds anywhere. There was a paved area on the infield, where the contest was held, with a single quarterpipe at one end, and a wedge ramp at the other. There was nothing to gap to. No landings, no other ramps, no roof to flyout on. My teammate from Idaho, Jay Bickel, and his family went to the comp, and Jay's mom caught Hugo's run on video. I saw it when they got back. For his last trick, Hugo went hauling ass at the lone quarterpipe, and just launched off the side of it, to the left. He got 9-10 feet off the ground, in a big, tweaked out, semi-tabletopped arc. He flew over about fifteen feet of asphalt, over the rope fence, and went another 6-8 feet. He didn't even try to land it. He was leaned over in a table, and just landed in the grass, 20-25 feet from the ramp, in a tabletop. He just fucking launched into nothing. It was so ridiculous, and epic at the same time.
So for my 6th Old School BMX Freestyle pro drawing, I drew this pic below of Hugo. It's not his craziest trick. It's my Sharpie art take on a cool close-up photo (a BMX Plus cover shot), and it's at Pipeline Skatepark, where he did several epic stunts. He's also riding a Skyway, the sponsor he's best known for.
I first met Hugo at the Beach Park Ramp Jams in 1985, held at the shop in Foster City, at the bike shop where Robert Peterson worked. Hugo wouldn't do insane stunts at the ramps jams where it was just locals riding, but he pushed his quarterpipe airs to the limit. When you talked to him, he was cool and down to Earth, then he'd got on his bike and just go nuts.
At my first Old School Freestyle event in 2019, for Dom Phipps' book, The Birth of the Freestyle Movement. I wound up talking to Hugo for quite a while. He's a truck driver now, and had us laughing at cool stories for an hour or more. He's still a totally chill guy to hang out with, and he has a ton of great stories to tell. But he's the guy that really put the whole "just huck it and see what happens" idea out first, and had us all holding our breath at the end of every run when we saw him in a contest back in the day. He pushed the limits beyond what anyone thought was possible in the early and mid-80's, pioneering the way for other crazy riders to follow.
This is my dad, Tom Emig, in 1964, leaning against his powder blue, 1957, Ford Thunderbird.
My dad was a total car guy, back in the days when you could buy and sell cool cars pretty easily. He owned three T-birds, this was his third. For those of you not familiar, the Ford T-birds, the 1955-57 models, were some of the coolest cars ever created. My dad met my mom when he was driving this one, and they got married right around the time this photo was taken.
At the time of this photo, my dad could drive this T-bird down to the gas station, and with a quarter, he could get a gallon of gas. Hey, it was 1964, gas was cheap, right? I'm writing this on March 18, 2020, and we're in the early stages of a widespread economic meltdown, as well as a pandemic from a crazy virus from China. The Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index has dropped over 9,000 points in about a month, down from 29,551 to 19,898 today. The world is crazy. People are freaking out on many levels. Nobody knows what to invest in, those that still have money.
Here's the thing, I could take that same quarter from 1964,the quarter that my dad could have bought a gallon of gas with, and I could sell that dinged up 1964 quarter at a coin shop for $3-$3.50 right now. That 1964 quarter WILL STILL buy a gallon of gas in most of the United States, 56 years after that quarter was minted, 56 years after that photo of my dad and his T-bird above. Here in California, we have a special blend of glass to help keep the air cleaner (supposedly), and gas is over $4 a gallon. But that 1964 quarter will still buy most of a gallon of gas.
Why is that? The reason is that U.S. quarters (and dimes) minted in 1964 or before, were made form 90% silver. Silver, like gold, is a precious metal. It's still used in making coins some places, as it has been throughout human history. In addition, some people hold silver as an investment, like they do with gold. Silver is used in jewelry, and A LOT of silver is used in industry, particularly for soldering and electrical connections in cell phones, and all kinds of other electronic devices. So silver, unlike stocks, bonds, and other paper assets, is always worth something. Silver has intrinsic value. "Paper assets," like stock shares, can go to zero, and become completely worthless. But precious metals are always worth something. The same is true of gold, though gold is widely considered far more valuable, because gold never tarnishes, and is believed to be far more rare.
The value of paper money, when it's not backed by gold, can fluctuate wildly. This is called "fiat money," and eventually, all fiat money winds up worthless. Every type of fiat money in human history eventually became completely worthless. But precious metals, like gold and silver, are always worth something, even though the prices goes up and down. The small amount of silver in a U.S. quarter would buy a gallon of gas in 1964, and will still buy a gallon of gas in most places in the U.S. today. You can check it out on this silver coin price page.
The silver price per ounce (troy ounce, more than our regular ounce) has dropped to about $12 an ounce, over the last few days. It was hovering around $16-$18 a troy ounce for about six years, before that. In the 1960's, silver was about $1.30 an ounce, and a gallon of milk was about 95 cents. So a troy ounce of silver would buy you about 1 1/2 gallons of milk. In the late 60's, silver rose to about $2.50 an ounce, or 2 1/2 gallons of milk. Now, 55 years later, after all kinds of changes in the world, a gallon of milk costs about $3.50, and an a troy ounce of silver will buy you 3 1/2 gallons of milk. Milk is subsidized, so the price would be higher in a free market. The ounce of silver will buy roughly the same amount of a standard item over along period of time. As the value of dollars (or any fiat money) goes down, silver and gold, by and large, hold heir value. This is particularly why you hear of people buying gold, or silver, in times of crisis. The really smart investors actually load up on silver and gold before a crisis, when the prices are usually cheaper.
My point here is that we are in REALLY crazy economic times, and one of the best things to own during a crisis, for average people (and smart investors) is silver and gold. Gold has gone up quite a bit over the last couple of years, and is $1492 a troy ounce right now. Most people would have trouble setting aside $1500 to buy one ounce of gold right now. But a one troy ounce Silver Eagle coin, a standard coin for saving silver, is $12 an ounce, and you'll pay a premium of about $2 to buy one. Just about anybody, like you, can afford to buy an ounce (or several) of silver to set aside. Over time, silver holds its value well, whether the value of dollars (or euros, kronor, yen, pounds, etc) goes up or down.
I'm not a financial advisor, I can't tell you what to invest in, or what not to invest in. My point in this post is to point out that silver and gold hold their value over time, and there's a really good reason a lot of people buy silver and gold in times of crisis, like right now. So now you know why, and this may be an option you want to think about while things are so crazy in our world, economically, and otherwise, right now.
You can buy silver bullion in bars, 1 ounce, 5 ounces, or 10 ounces, or in 1 ounce coins. But these days, the U.S. 1 ounce Silver Eagle is one of the most common. You can buy them in a coin shop, or online, if you're interested. The Silver Eagles are well known, and easy to sell down the line, if you want or need to sell them.
When the financial world calms down, then you can think about buying one of these puppies...
Let's rock this apocalyptic series of crazy ass events. Here's No Doubt bringing in the 21st Century covering REM's "End of the world as we know it." New Year's Eve 1999/2000 in the MTV studios.
The CDC's website is WAY behind... But a 17-year-old from Seattle has built the leading website to stay up to date on the Corona Virus stats worldwide. Thanks kid!
This is my footage from the 2-Hip King of Dirt contest as Mission Trails in the spring of 1991. This clip is from Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer, the first S&M Bikes video (the whole video cost about $250). There had never been a King of Dirt jam/contest on a jump like Mission Trails' infamous Death Jump at that point, and this contest took riding to a whole different level. This was some of the craziest riding any of us had ever seen. Mat Hoffman made the first backflip attempts on dirt, and Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson hucked himself like a rag doll off Death Jump. Epic day in BMX riding.
For what it's worth, After getting started in video work in 1987, I produced the first six AFA videos, the first 2-Hip Video, and the first two S&M Bikes videos, among others. If you got some time to kill while the C-virus is wandering the U.S. (or your country)and causing hysteria and mayhem, here's most of the videos I produced, edited, or somehow worked on, back in the 1980's and 1990's. Enjoy.
1987- My video career started in the Spring of 1987, when American Freestyle Association founder, Bob Morales, walked into the back office at the AFA, and asked, "Hey, you wanna make a TV commercial for the Austin contest? I can get local cable TV spots on MTV for $25 each." Since I had never made a TV commercial, had no fucking idea how to make one, got paid $5 and hour, and worked at the AFA, I said, "Sure!" He sent me to Unreel Productions (They sent a cameraman to each event, since Vision Street Wear sponsored the AFA that year. Both the AFA and Vision could use the footage). I called Unreel, and when I went over there, they handed me about ten VHS tapes, copies of the raw footage, and told me how to pick the shots I liked, and write down the time code numbers. I went home, did that, went and they walked me through the whole process of making a 30 second TV commercial. I was a 20-year-old BMX freestyler, a year or two younger than most film students are when they leave college to start a film or TV career.
After the Austin comp (which was epic!), Bob Morales said, "You know... I kind of advertised some contest videos a while back, and never really got around to making them. You wanna make 'em?" I said, "Sure." So I "produced" the first six AFA contest videos, for 1987 events. They were from the Oregon, Texas, and Ohio AFA Masters contests, one video each for pro ramps, one video each for pro flatland. Again, Unreel, mostly Dave Alvarez, the wizard video editor, shepherded me through the process of making the videos. Of those six, only this one below, is on You Tube. So here's the start of my video career, and my "film fest." AFA Oregon Pro Flatland- My job- producer/director, camera was by Gary Langenheim from Unreel Productions.
AFA Oregon Pro Ramps- Check out Dave Voelker (still amateur then) and Mike Dominguez, in particular, in this one. My job- producer/director, cameraman was Gary Langenheim.
AFATexas Pro Flatland- My job- producer/director, the cameraman was Don Hoffman, head of Unreel.
Texas Pro Ramps, Ohio Pro Flatland, and Ohio Pro Ramps, the other three videos I produced in 1987, are not on YouTube. I lost my personal copies of these videos in the 1980's. These six videos sold around 25 to maybe 50 copies each, which doesn't sound like much, but the AFA sold these for $30 each then, the standard rate for BMX videos, and they cost the AFA about $3 each to make copies, and I got paid $250 for producing each video. Unreel Productions sent a cameraman to each contest, because Vision Street Wear (Vision owned Unreel Productions) sponsored the AFA Freestyle Masters series in 1987. The deal was that both the AFA and Unreel/Vision could use the footage. In addition, Unreel would let us, at the AFA, edit, using their editor and their $500,000 edit bay. So the only costs to make these videos were what Bob paid me to produce them, $250 each. So each of these videos, even with small sales, made a little profit for the AFA, which was always strapped for cash. So making these videos were a good thing for both me, to learn how videos got made, and to the AFA.
1988- 1989- I got hired at Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear's video company, in December of 1987, and left the AFA. Nothing against Bob Morales, he was cool, though often frustrating, to work for. He just had so many things going at once back then, that there never seemed enough time to get everything done. Unreel was just a good opportunity, and better money. I was nicknamed The Dub Guy there, because I mostly made copies of different videos for people in Vision Skateboards, Vision Street Wear, and Sims Snowboards all day long. I was basically a production assistant, and didn't have a key role in their videos, but helped in some way on them. Here are the main Vision videos from that time: Freestylin' Fanatics Sims Snow Shredders Vision Psycho Skate Mondo Vision (has BMX and GPV's) Mondo Part 2, Mondo Part 3 (Vander, 2-hip Finals, Santee Meet the Street) Vision Skate Escape-Final part- Hawk vs. Hosoi (Unreel worked with the NSA to produce this contest, so I did a lot of work helping with this actual event) Red Hot Skate Rock- The Red Hot Chili Peppers performing at the Skate Escape event. I was in the slam pit during the show. A great way to blow off steam after a couple really long weeks of work before the event. Vision Street Wear commercial
We shot this commercial in the same Hollywood studio where Motley Crue shot part of the "Girls, Girls, Girls" music video two weeks earlier. We filled the whole building, even their offices, with the fog we used for a couple shots, which smelled like Strawberry Quick. The studio's office staff wasn't too happy about that. Vision BMX compilation- This was not an official Vision video, but it's a re-edit of a whole bunch of BMX stuff Vision put out. It may be one of the videos we made for a trade show. It's a bunch of Unreel produced, Vision Street Wear BMX stuff, all edited together in chunks. But it contains segments not in the videos above. We made videos like these, looped to play for two hours straight, for every trade show. Vision Barge at Will- (1989) This was Don Hoffman's best attempt (and a good one) to make a Vision skate video as cool as the Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade videos, which ruled skateboarding at the time. Barge at Will had real good skating, and much better music, than the Bones videos. I was a cameraman for Mark Cernicky, Kele Rosecrans, and some other parts, and you can see my sitting on the rail in the background in Ken Park's section, a few times. I also edited one segment of this video, my first official editing at Unreel. Tom Petty "Free Fallin'" music video- Easiest day of video work ever. We (Unreel Productions) didn't produce this video, and had nothing to do with it. But I got sent up to this film shoot to shoot behind-the-scenes video footage, since our skaters, Eric Nash, Kele Rosecrans, and Joe Johnson, were in it, along with the Vision mini-ramp. I just wandered around, watched, shot some video now and then, and ate free food from the craft service table all day. Tom Petty was as cool as could be.
2-hip BHIP- Part 1- Originally called 2-hip: The '88 Adventure, Ron Wilkerson called me up in early 1989, and asked if I could edit the 1988 2-hip season video for them. I said sure. I made $500 for editing this video, took the money, got a money order, and sent it all to my sister, who was in college, and needed money then. So I'm either a helpful, or stupid, brother. She's been a school teacher for a lot of years, after graduating, and this video helped her get through her freshman year. This section pulls up the other sections of the video on YouTube. 2-hip BHIP Part-2 - This is my edit of the Santee Meet the Street, the first BMX street contest most of us knew about. Dave Vanderspek actually had a small street contest about a year earlier, but it didn't get any media coverage. So this was "the first ever BMX street contest" for most of us. This day changed BMX bike riding forever. I just realized that I'm sitting behind on my bike (blue shirt) as Craig Grasso paints at :23. I also put the shot of me ghost riding into the wall in the clip. The cameraman was Pat Wallace, Unreel's main camera guy then, who gave me a ride to the contest.
1990-In January of 1990, as the Vision empire was basically collapsing from the inside (it grew too big too fast), and Unreel was dissolved. So I was kept, and moved to the Vision main office in Santa Ana. I basically sat in a room, bored out of my skull, did one little project every week or two, and got a check, for 6 months. Then I quit, and started trying to do freelance video work.
All through 1990, I was shooting bike footage on the weekends, on my own S-VHS camera, hoping make my own bike video sometime later in the year. At that time, individuals didn't make their own videos. Eddie Roman made the BMX movie-on-video, Aggroman, the year before. And I heard Mark Eaton in Pennsylvania was making low budget flatland videos, but I hadn't seen one yet. The "rider-made" video idea wasn't really there yet. I just thought all the Vision videos were kind of goofy, and had old footage, not the newest tricks, for the most part. I wanted to make a video that showed riding, as I knew it. Tuff Skts promo- Few people remember that Christian Hosoi teamed up with Vision Skateboards, for a new company called Tuff Skts, in 1990. The idea only lasted a few months, but I got to go hang with Christian and his crew for three full days, shooting footage, which was an adventure. Venice Beach, his halfpipe, a backyard pool, and a larger pool way up on a mountain in the Antelope Valley. This was the only Vision video I made completely alone, as cameraman, director, and editor, on betacam. This is a chopped down version of the original promo, which was 7 minutes long, and had Bad Brains and Muddy Water music. But my copy of that tape is lost.
In late 1990, I worked freelance for Gerard at NSI video, a surfing and skateboard video distributor. I edited two episodes of Skater's Quarterly, and one of Snowboarder's Quarterly. I don't have copies, and the only part Skater's Quarterly online is this clip, from the year before. Gerard was a crazy character, he's the guy talking in the little circle in this clip. He's also the guy who sold 500 copies of my BMX video later that year.
The Ultimate Weekend- In 1986, working at FREESTYLIN' magazine, Andy Jenkins decided he was going to try and talk Oz (the publisher, and our boss) into making another BMX video. Andy told Gork, Lew, and me to think up some ideas for a video. We had a little meeting in the parking lot one night, and I pitched the idea of us getting off work on a Friday afternoon, and just going and riding with all the best riders over a whole weekend, then coming back in exhausted Monday morning. The guys thought my idea sucked. And no idea was ever pitched to Oz. But four years later, I took my idea, and I shot, self-produced, edited, and financed ($5,000 out of my pocket, with some last minute help from Mike Sarrail), my own video. If Old School riders remember me for anything, it's usually this video.
BMX freestyle had officially "died" in 1989, mountain bikes were the new hot thing. But progression was going crazy. The Ultimate Weekend had a lot of firsts in it. The first time most people saw Keith Treanor ride. The first handrail slide down stairs. the first mini-ramps in a BMX video. The first spine ramp in a BMX video. The first 360 over a spine in a video. The first ice pick grind on a rail. The first footage of the Nude Bowl in a BMX video. The first video of the P.O.W. BMX House and riders. The first S&M Bikes shield logo and S&M riders in a video.
About six months later, Eddie Roman came out with Headfirst, the single most influential BMX video of all time. No question. Headfirst blew The Ultimate Weekend out of the water. But those six months in between, everybody saw, and watched, this video, and I'm glad I made it.
1991- Chris Moeller, who had this tiny little bike company then called S&M Bikes, called me up and said, he wanted to make an S&M Bikes video. His idea was to take a porno video, show the bad acting scenes, and when they cut to sex, we'd cut to bike riding. That was the initial idea. Here's part of what this super low budget video ended up looking like. The title ended up being, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer. That was a Dave Clymer pick up line that he used to pick up his girlfriend at the time. Leg Muscles- Jimmy Levan Leg Muscles- Alex Leech Leg Muscles- Dave Clymer Leg Muscles- Chris Moeller Leg Muscles- Mission Trails (The clip at the top of this blog post)
1992- I got a job working on the the crew of the 1991 Supercross and Monster Trucks TV series, for GRB Motorsports. Here's one of the shows from that season, Anaheim Supercross. I'm actually in the credits. I've never seen one of these shows on YouTube.
In the GRB main office worked motorcycle stuntman Johnny Airtime. So I sent him some of the raw footage from the Mission Trails King of Dirt contest, through interoffice memo one day. Much to my surprise, and everyone else's he called over t our office. No one couldfigure out why Johnny was calling me, the least important person in the office. They didn't know I had sent him BMX footage. I picked up the phone, and Johnny said, "You BMX guys are crazy!" That's really something, considering it was the guy who did this stunt, and this stunt, and many others, saying that. GRB's main TV shows were World's Greatest Stunts and Stuntmasters. Johnny was a stunt coordinator, and well as the best known motorcycle jumper of that era, between Evel Knievel, and Seth Enslow. I'd never met him, so it was a trip having him freak out on the phone about the BMX footage from the Mission Trails King of Dirt. He asked what kinds of stunts a BMX rider could do. So I tried to hook up my friends, thinking mostly of Chris Moeller's and Dave Clymer's skills. I said they could jump and do a 360 over 2 or 3 cars. We talked about several ideas, and he liked the car jump, but said it had to be more exciting. I said, "What if you light the cars on fire?" Johnny liked that idea, and I pitched Chris Moeller as the guy to do it. Then Johnny said, "I've seen video of that Mat Hoffman kid, could he do it?" I said, "Yeah, Mat could do it."
In the TV industry, though I was new, I was learning there is a lot of talking about cool ideas in the office, and most of those ideas never, ever happen. I wound up meeting Johnny at the Las Vegas Supercross that year, and we talked about the idea some more. But I left the production for another job, a couple months later, and didn't think any thing else about the flaming car jump.
Two or three years later, someone told me they saw Mat Hoffman on a TV show, doing a 360 over three flaming cars. That blew my mind. Somehow the original trick idea actually wound up happening, with Mat nailing it, of course. Here's the video of that stunt. Another cool fact, I read years later in Mat's book, is that Johnny Airtime, on this stunt shoot, was the guy who gave Mat the idea to build the first mega quarterpipe, so Mat could get past the 14-15 foot air threshold, where he had plateaued, on a regular halfpipe.
1992-1995 American Gladiators- "Turbo punches Kyler"- in the summer of 1992, I got a job on the stage crew of American Gladiators, as a spotter. I worked on this crew for our seasons, and led the crew of 8 in 1994 and 1995. If you pause this clip at :24, I'm the guy black in the background, on Wesley Barry's tower. Kyler's Storm's crazy move- I saw this one happen right in front of me. Pretty freakin' cool. Wesley "2-Scoops" Barry is the most talented athlete I've EVER met. He has an incredible story, and was one of the coolest people I've ever met, as well. His first day of practice, we were sitting on the bungee towers, and he said, "I think I'm going to take this thing." I asked, "The bungee event." He said, "No... I'm going to win the whole thing." He did. It was bravado. It was solid confidence.
Of all the American Gladiators I worked with, Elektra (Salina Bartunek)and Siren(Shelly Beattie, were the ones I got to know the best. Both amazing women. 1993- Since I got to know a bunch of crew people on American Gladiators, I got a call to work on a similar show, staffed by several of the people I worked with at GRB Motorsports. Again, I was a spotter on the only season of Knights and Warriors.
1993- I wound up Chris Moeller's roommate after we made "Leg Muscles," and that story became a BMX urban legend for a while. But we teamed up for one more video in 1993, the second S&M Bikes video. S&M Bikes 44 Something
1994- Another year, another call to be a spotter on the crew of
another Gladiators-style show. This time it was the Inline Skating show Blade Warriors.
This set had about 25 ramps on the set, including a halfpipe. But my
bike was down in Orange County, while I stayed in the Santa Monica area
during this whole shoot, since I didn't have a car. I did have a
skateboard, so I had some fun on that set.
2000- I tried to get back into making BMX videos again, while working as a taxi driver. This video was basically an edit of a whole bunch of "lurktographer" video I shot, from several contests in SoCal, from the 1999 X-Games (scammed a press pass), and some local H.B. and Sheep Hills footage. I bought a Hi-8 edit system from a wedding video guy, and made a "practice" video I called Animals. I called it Animals because I mixed in a bunch of animal footage I shot at the San Diego Zoo, and a few wild shots (the coyote was on the Bolsa Chica mesa in Huntington Beach, right off Warner Ave.).
Somehow, one of the 12 or so VHS copies of Animals survived, and made it into BMX Movie Database (Huge thanks BMX M DB guys!). I just found out this video still existed a year or so ago. I lost the master and my copies in 2008. Click this link above to check it out. Not a half bad mid-school video for no budget. The Cory Nastazio section is my personal favorite. I made Animals as a "practice video," to show some riders of that 2000 era, so I could then get guys to go ride street and trails, to make a "real." video. I wound up homeless at the end of 2000, a DMV clerical mistake got my driver's license suspended, totally by accident. But I was a taxi driver, and that meant I lost my job a few days before Christmas 2000, right after I'd done my Christmas shopping. Things were pretty sketchy, I wound up homeless in 2002-2003, then got my license, taxi permit, and was living in a taxi and working again, in late 2003. Then I got fat driving a cab 7 days a week, working 70-80+ hours a week. So I never made another video. But there's still hope. Maybe I'll make The Ultimate Weekend II... some day.
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