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...
