Break stereotypes...

This one just popped up on YouTube out of nowhere.  Hell yeah, Marbie. 

Sebastian Keep- More Walls PRO GRESS SHUN!

This one just came out, and if you're ever been into BMX, you've probably seen it.  It's worth watching again.  This is true BMX stunt work on street.  Taking one basic trick, wallrides, and just pushing it in multiple directions past the current limits.  Insane progression by Sebastian Keep.  Another epic Red Bull backed video.  Nobody does content creation like Red Bull.

Dakota Roche "Native Land" (BMX) edit

I just realized this is a year old, I thought it was more recent.  This is my favorite Dakota Roche edit, when I want to watch some new school street.  Back in about 2002, Cory Nastazio had a jam, up in Gorman, and most of the people had dinner at a good burger spot afterwards.  The woman who helped put on the event was there, with her son.  The kid was pretty skinny, and talking to all the pro riders saying, "I'm gonna go pro like you guys some day."  The riders were all cool and encouraging.  That kid was Dakota Roche.  I ran into him two or three times after that, riding better each time.  I remember him an a couple guys showing up at the Westminster Skatepark once, while I was riding there.  He's freakin' a beast on street now.  Love seeing his parts, but this one is my favorite. 

#SEstreetlife- I'm starting to share three years of photos taken while homeless

Rather large black woman, dancing on the train, while high AF on something, Blue Line train, on a Friday night.  The Blue Line goes from downtown L.A. to Long Beach, passing through Skid Row, South Central, Watts, Compton, and other places that are not well known from rap songs.  Things can get a bit weird on that train in the evenings.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.

As most of you know, I've struggled in and out of homelessness for about 20 years now.  I first became homeless in 1987, while working at the American Freestyle Assiciation (AFA).  My female roommate moved out of the two bedroom apartment we shared while I was off working at an AFA comp, and disappeared, right before rent was due.  Since I made about $600 to $700 a month at the time, I couldn't make the next $800 payment for the rent, and had to move out.  I lived in the AFA trailer, parked on the street, outside the AFA office, in a Huntington Beach business park, sleeping on top of the folded quarterpipe, for three weeks.  I got a couple of paychecks, and found a crazy old guy renting shared rooms in his house for $150 a month.  He was creepy, but the other roommates were cool, and that worked for several months.  About 4 years later, I saw my roommate who bailed in a phone sex ad in the back of Hustler magazine.  I thought about calling her to say, "Hi," but I didn't want to pay $3.95 a minute.  So I put her nude ad in one of my zines.  Since freestylers knew who she was, that was a popular zine. 

But my real battle with homelessness began in 1999.  I left a good paying, Hollywood lighting tech job because of a hernia.  I saved up about $3,500, took time off, and planned to get surgery over that summer, then go back and work freelance.  But my insurance kept having issues, and I never could see the doctor for the initial visit.  Unable to do the heavy lifting, I looked for another job.  I started driving a taxi, primarily in the Huntington Beach area.  In two months, I couldn't afford my apartment anymore, and moved out.  that sucked, because I was living three blocks form the ocean in downtown H.B., on 15th street.  On the bright side, without doing a bunch of heavy lifting, the hernia mellowed out eventually, and rarely bothers me now.

Message on a table, in a cheap motel room, in Richmond, Virginia.  This one always made me laugh.  I got this room several times when I stayed there.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

So I put my stuff in storage, and lived in my taxi for about six months, working 7 days a week.  A change in the taxi industry came along, our company got the John Wayne airport contract, and for three weeks, I made really good money.  Working seven 17 hour days a week, I put $1,800 in my pocket the first week, then it ratcheted down from there.  By week four, when the company got fully staffed with drivers, I was back to $350 a week.  I was able to rent a room, and went to another company and just worked weekends through late 2000.  But that move to taxi driving, actually the hernia, began the downward spiral.  

My driver's license got suspended right before Christmas in 2000, apparently due to a clerical error at the DMV.  Around the same time, my own car, a Datsun 280ZX, got towed for parking tickets, and impounded, and shit went downhill from there.  I couldn't afford ot get the car back.  It's been a crazy struggle to just make a living ever since.  

I don't do drugs, recreational or prescription, and I was a pretty average social drinker back then, and just gave up drinking when I was driving the taxi.  Depression has been an issue much of my life, so I have battled that at times.  But I've just struggled to make a decent living since late 1999.  A lot of outside pressure got put on my life starting shortly after 9/11, and I thought my talking about conspiracies got me labeled a "suspicious person."  People got paranoid about everyone back then.  That outside pressure snowballed into utter ridiculousness, and is still an issue today.  I have some idea why it may have began, but can't go into it.  

Taxi driving from 2003-2007 was going downhill, due to the switch from CB radios to computer dispatching, and it got harder and harder to pay the $550 to $600 a WEEK taxi lease, and then another $300 to $350 a WEEK for gas.  The taxi companies just put more and more taxis on the road, so there was more and more competition for each ride.  I gained over 150 pounds, had three bouts of bad cellulitis, and walked away from taxi driving the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 2007.  I was prety sure I was going to die soon, my health was so bad.  But I didn't.  My attempts to start find a better way to earn a living just didn't work out.  I worked a minimum wage job while homeless in 2002-3, and knew that was the dumbest thing in the world to do.  You never get off the streets, unless someone offers a free room for several months, or something like that.  I thought about trying stand-up comedy, and selling stickers at a swap meet booth, but couldn't get either one going.

After a year on the streets, I took my family's offer to fly me to North Carolina for "a while."  That was the biggest mistake of my life.  That's when I lost all my video footage, a good Mac laptop, my video camera, and everything from my life in BMX.  I got stuck in NC, and couldn't find ANY job, except another year of taxi driving in 2011-12, while living in the taxi again.  Sleeping in a mini-van on an 80 degree, humid, evening sucks balls.  I was miserable.  

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle graffiti piece just off of Hollywood Boulevard, in Hollywood.  2021.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos 

I flat out hated North Carolina.  It may be great for some people, it sucked for me.  But, I did start my first BMX blogs there, since I was bored out of my skull.  First was FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, stories from my short stint working there in 1986.  I followed that with Freestyle BMX Tales (the original verison, here's version 3), and I've been blogging ever since.  

Another thing about NC, I did get to see my niece and nephew grow up, which was cool, and I was there when my dad died.  But North Carolina is not the place for me.  In fact, I don't want to ever set foot in the entire state for the rest of my life.  I started trying to sell my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings in late 2015, just to make a little money, while living with my mom, after my dad's death.  I applied for over 140 local jobs, over a couple of years, and got one call back, but not hired.  I'd never had that happen before.  I got hired for every single job I ever applied for, up until age 28, so a dry spell like that told me it was pointless.  Selling Sharpie drawings helped me make a few bucks, which somehow my mom always needed for an "emergency," often involving chocolate or her late QVC bills.

That was a toxic situation, and I bailed, and wound up living in a tent, in the woods, in Winston-Salem, NC.  Yep, there's actually a city with two brands of cigarettes named after it.  Actually three, it's nickname in "Camel City," and it was home to Reynolds Tobacco, now just Reynolds.  I did start selling more drawings, and did a small art show, in Winston, while living in the woods.  That sounds adventurous, but 20-30 bug bites a day, and getting a bug lodged in my ear for a month, proved otherwise.  If you've never experienced a hardcore Carolina thunderstorm in a tent along in the woods... don't.  It sucks.  I've never seen lightning like they have in the Carolinas.  

I escaped NC in August 2018, and had enough money to get a Greyhound to Richmond, Virginia.  I landed there with about $3.50 in my pocket, I didn't know anyone, and I'd never been in that city before.  I lived homeless, and in about three weeks heard from old BMX friend Steve Crandall, founder of FBM Bikes, and now TV announcer for BMX comps.  Steve said to come meet him at Powers Bike Shop, outside of downtown.  When I did, he handed me his old iPhone 5, with a cracked screen, and a bag of food, and a little money, as I recall.  He and Chad Powers at the bike shop helped me quite a bit while in Richmond, and I used that little iPhone mostly to start taking photos.  I've take a couple of thousand pics since, mostly of just weird stuff I saw on the streets, or of my #sharpiescribblestyle drawings as I made them.   

I've decided to start sharing the funny, crazy, weird, and sometimes kind of cool photos, in a series I'm calling #SEstreetlife.  

People have all kinds of ideas about homelessness, most of them quite a bit different from reality, if not completely wrong.  There's been many years of demonization of homeless people in some of the press, and most people now seem to see every homeless person as a drunk or drug addicted, mentally ill, a complete failure, that has absolutely no chance of being a "normal person" in society again.  

Yes, there are a lot of drunks, addicts and mentally ill people on the streets.  But most addicts have homes to live in, most drunks have homes to live in, most mentally ill people have homes to live in. Think of all the well-housed train wrecks you know personally.  Addiction and mental illness are prevalent on the streets, but those are not the main reasons people are homeless.

 Public service announcement spray painted on the sidewalk, San Fernando Valley, 2020.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

The main reason people become homeless is lack of a strong family or friend support network, when they go through financial hardships.  Most people get some help when they take some kind of big financial hit, something that happens to pretty much everyone, at some point.  They have a place to stay, can borrow money, use someone's car a bit, borrow needed items, or whatever.  The people who don't have that strong network of either friends or family, fall through the cracks.  Most homeless people are never seen, and fall into homelessness, and bounce out, in a couple weeks, or maybe 2 or 3 months.  Some fall deeper, and wind up being the people you see eventually on the streets.  I'm one of those people.  For now.

  One of my "art studios."  Working on my David Bowie drawing at a McDonald's in Richmond, 2019.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

There is no "typical" homeless person.  Most of the people I meet, especially these days, had decent jobs and made decent money, at some point.  Huge medical bills, bad divorces, house fires, car accidents, illnesses, and all kinds of similar paths lead people to the streets.  

In my case, I work as much, probably more, while homeless, then I did when I had jobs (except taxi driving, that was 70-100 hours a week).  While homeless, I've sold maybe 50 pieces of pretty cool Sharpie art, written hundreds of blog posts that actually get read, and done other creative work.  I built a small, but solid, hardcore blog following,  some of which I've sold drawings to.  

Like I said, I've also taken thousands of photos along the way, of the weird stuff I see, and documented my journey.  #SEstreetlife is me sharing some of those photos, on Pinterest, on Twitter, on Facebook, here in my blog. and I plan to start making NFT's for sale (Non Fungible Tokens), with some of these photos.  Here are a few of my photos from the last three years. I've spent all but six months of that time homeless.  These all happened because Steve Crandall gave me his old iPhone, and I really thank him for helping me out.  Like every creative project, I have no idea where this will lead.  That's part of the fun.  Welcome to #SEstreetlife.  My #SEstreetlife Pinterest board will have the biggest collection of these photos. 

Big air at the DIY World Championships, put on by Steve Crandall and Chad at Powers Bikes.  Powers Bikes' parking lot area (old location), in October 2018.  This was one great day of BMX, made even better since I hadn't been to a BMX comp in over ten years at that point.  I shot this photo standing almost on the exact spot where Steve gave me his old iPhone a month earlier.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos. 

I've started a new personal blog, centered around my life on the streets, and the fight to make a decent living doing creative stuff, check it out:

Steve Emig's Street Life  #SEstreetlife

 

Spinaroonies: A Brief History of BMX Spinning Tricks

 

Days ago, as I write this, Mike Varga landed the first 1260 air (that's 3 1/2 spins folks) on a BMX bike, on a halfpipe.  It was so crazy, even Mike's tire had its mind blown.  As fate would have it, I happened to be there when Mat Hoffman landed the first 900 on vert in a contest, 32 years ago, in the Spring of 1989, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  As an Old School BMX blogger guy, I decided this would be a good time to go back and look at the history of aerial spins (not flips, just spins) in BMX history.  Here goes. 

Blogger's note (11/24/2021):  I wrote this blog originally in July 2021, on my WPOS Kreative Ideas blog, the blog I was doing primarily at the time.  Since I' moved back to this blog, I decided to bring this post back here, so you know I haven't forgotten about BMX.  I'm also going to put this post on Freestyle BMX Tales, where I'll do most of my Old School BMX posts from now on.

Bob Haro- forwards 540 on wedge ramp and rollback 360-  1980- This video says Bob is 22 years old, and he was born inJune of 1958, so this is 1980, or early 1981.  That's the very early days of BMX freestyle as a demo activity, years before the first competitions.  The rollback to 360 by Bob Haro (1:22) is probably the first spinning trick on a BMX bike.  I'm pretty sure the front wheel 360 spin came later.  Bob also does a solid forwards 540 on the wedge ramp at :27.

360 flyout attempt, out of a concrete banked bowl, 1980???- 1:03 in this clip.  Reportedly near Sydney Australia, according to the comments.  Riders unknown. 

Andy Ruffel- 360 jump in 1983- 26:05 Andy also does Old School 360 bunnyhops, also called 360 floaters BITD, at 25:32.  He also does a front wheel 360 on a wedge ramp at 21:44.  Oh, and don't play chicken with airplanes, they have propellers.

Eddie Fiola- 360's over small doubles (by today's standards) in races in 1983?  1984?  I remember reading an interview with Eddie Fiola in 1983 or maybe early 1984, where he said he had done 360's in  BMX races over doubles.  I actually asked Eddie about this a few months back.  If I remember correctly, I think he said they were about 2 foot high doubles, maybe 8 feet apart, standard for BMX tracks in that era.  No photos or video for this, but I did get the story straight from Eddie himself. 

R.L. Osborn, front wheel 360 on a quarterpipe on video, 1984.  This Mountain Dew commercial, which featured R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, Ron Wilkerson, and bike stuntman Pat Romano, aired nationwide on network Tv in the summer of 1984.  I was about a year into learning tricks on BMX bikes myself, and RAN to the TV to see this commercial, every time I heard the music start.  As a high school kid in Idaho then, I'd never seen a 540 on a quarterpipe, or a front wheel 360, which is what R.L. does here at :27.  It took me all summer to figure out what R.L. was doing, we didn't have a VCR, and no one I knew to tape the commercial in those days. Also R.L. with a 360 lake jump at the end.

Legend has it the Woody Itson did the first 540 on a quarterpipe, about halfway up the ramp, sometime about 1984-1985.  While known as mainly flatland rider to us younger guys of that era, Woody rode jumps, skateparks, and ramps, as well, in the early days.  I can't confirm this, so if anyone can, let me know.  

Eddie Fiola- 360 flyout on quarterpipe to deck- 1984.  It's at 1:33 in this clip.  This one is at the AFA Master contest in the old Surf Theater parking lot in Huntington Beach, in the late summer of 1984. 

Hugo Gonzalez- 360 out of the halfpipe into the banked area at Del Mar skatepark- 1985- It's at :43.  540+ jump off pier into ocean at :37, alley-opp 270 flyout onto roof at 1:22.

Eddie Fiola- 540 in the Pipe Bowl, Pipeline Skatepark in 1985.  To the best of my knowledge, this was the first 540 on video in a skatepark, though not the first 540 on a ramp.  Leave it to the original King of the Skateparks, Eddie Fiola, to bust this one first.

Josh White- One of the first 540's on a quarterpipe, on video- 1985- It's at 1:29 in this clip.  This is the Huntington Beach, CA AFA Masters contest in 1985, in the old Surf Theater parking lot.  At the time of this contest, Josh White was a completely unknown amateur from Oregon, so you can bet he turned some heads blasting huge airs, and a 540, at this comp.  He debuted to the rest of us in a feature interview in FREESTYLIN' magazine, in the August 1986 issue, and was riding for the GT factory team by then. 

Brian Blyther- One of the first 540's on a quarterpipe on video- 1985-  It's at 2:11 in this clip.  This one is also at the AFA Masters contest in Huntington Beach in 1985.  Brian Blyther was a Haro team rider, and one of the top skatepark/vert pros at the time.

Mike Dominguez- 7'-8' high 540 (judging by sprocket height)- 1987- It's at 9:33 in this clip.  AFA Masters contest in Oregon. This was in the 8 foot high by 8 foot wide AFA quarterpipe, with no vert. 

Craig Campbell- Wall ride to 360 (aka 540 wall ride)- Spring 1988- It was the first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California, at one of Dave Voelker's favorite riding spots.  Street had been emerging, but there had been only one contest in NorCal, no one really knew what to expect at this comp.  Craig Campbell blew everyone's mind pull this wall ride to 360 out of nowhere, at 4:53 in the clip.   

Jeremy Alder- the world's first barspin air- 1988-  In a small East Coast contest at the Crownsville Fairgrounds in Maryland, Jeremy Alder, largely unknown to West Coast riders, stepped up the game with the world's first barspin air.  It's right at the end of the video, go to 3:50.  He also does a couple of half barspin airs early on, a couple really big 540's for that era, and a 360 flyout to abubaca.  Jeremy was sponsored by Haro Bikes for a couple of years.  Progression.

Mike Dominguez nearly lands a 900 in fall 1988- 4:55- Mike Dominguez claimed to have landed 2 or 3 900's on his own ramp, months before Mat Hoffman landed the first one in a contest.  But there was no video and no photos.  Some people believed Mike, some weren't sure.  At 4:55 in this video, shot at the 2-Hip King of Vert finals in September or October of 1988, Mike hucks a 900 attempt and just barely misses landing it.  I believe Mike on nailing the 900.   About six months later, Mat did it with several camerasrolling (including mine, as Vision cameraman), and made the 900 official.

Mat Hoffman- first 900 on vert in a contest- 2-Hip King of Vert, Spring, 1989.  Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  (My angle of that 900 is at the end of this clip- 14:43).  None of us knew he was planning to try that (except Steve Swope), until he tried the first one.  Mat missed the first attempt, and landed it on his second try.

Mat Hoffman- First no handed 540- 1989- It's at 1:34:00 in this video.  Mat actually pulled the no handed 540 the contest before this, at Woodward in Pennsylvania, but I couldn't find video on YouTube.  This is the 2-Hip King of Vert after that, in Colorado Springs.   I was the cameraman on this shot, and the video (Ride Like a Man) was edited by Eddie Roman. 

Craig Campbell with the first dirt jump 720 on video- 1989- In this Ozone freestyle team segment on Home Turf, a local San Francisco Bay Area TV show for kids, Craig lands a 720 at the Calabassas jumps in San Jose, at 1:49.  This video has interviews with Craig Grasso, Craig Campbell, and Pete Brandt, I believe, and there's some funny stuff.  It's worth watching the whole video. 

Ride Like a Man- 2-Hip/Eddie Roman directed video- 1990- 3:32- Maurice Meyer- 360 street abubaca.  4:02- Eddie Roman and ?, 360 down 6 long steps.  7:06- Rider?- 360 nsoepick over spine.  13:04- Rider?  Flatland body varial spin thing around the seat.  22:06- Vic Murphy?- fastplant to 360 on flat.  24:44- Mike Krnaich- tailtap 540 on spine.  28:34- Bob Kohl- tailwhip drop-in on 8 foot ramp.

 The Ultimate Weekend (my self-produced video) 1990-  Chris Moeller with the biggest 360 over doubles on video at that time- 35:45 (Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson lands a toe dragger tailwhip earlier, same session).  Keith Treanor with the first 360 over a spine on video- 22:12. Gary Laurent also does one at- 22:56 (same session).  Josh White, lookback 360 (on a flyout)- 23:59.  Josh White, one hand one foot 360 (flyout)- 24:13.  Keith Treanor, big one hand 360- 25:25

Eddie Roman's Ride On video-1992-  Intro- Huge 360 over doubles(rider unknown).  Dave Voelker(?)- turndown 360- 1:39.  First no handed 360 on video (?) Rider unknown- 1:55.   There will be more, I need to watch this whole video again...  

Mat  Hoffman jumps three flaming cars on Stuntmasters- 5:53.  1991or 1992?  Crazy as it sounds, I got this idea underway, but never knew the stunt actually happened.  I was working at a TV production company in 1991, and sent some footage from the 2-Hip King of Dirt at Mission Trails to motorcycle distance jumper Johnny Airtime, who worked in the other office.  Much to my surprise, the BMX stuff blew his mind, and he wanted to know what kind of real stunts a BMXer might be able to do.  Johnny and I threw ideas back and forth over the phone, and came up with a 360 over three flaming cars.  I was trying to hook up Chris Moeller or Dave Clymer for the gig.  Johnny had sen footage of Mat Hoffman, and asked, "Could Mat do it?"  I said, "Yeah."  I quit that company about a month later, but the Stuntmaster's show happened, and Mat did the stunt with ease.  In a side note, according to Mat's book, it was Johnny Airtime, on this stunt show, who told Mat that if he wanted to do bigger airs, he needed a bigger ramp.  Mat and Steve Swope built the first 20 foot tall mega quarterpipe soon after.  

Todd Lyons- fastplant to 540- dirt quarterpipe jump- 1993-  It's at 20:10.  Todd Lyons boosting a new spin at Twin Palms in Riverside.  

Jay Miron- First public 540 tailwhip- 1998- at 8:24.   There's a lot of vert ripping in this clip, by Miron, Dave Osato, Tony Hawk, and others.  That rollback nosewheelie tailwhip to drop back in thing Jay does?  WTF?  Never seen that trick.  I'll make you watch the whole clip to find that one.  The info says this was a small comp. at BC Place.  Sponsored by Kokanee beer!  Canada, eh.

Mat Hoffman with the first no handed 900 ever- 2002- At the X-Games.

Mike Spinner- First 1080- 2007- He talks about the whole thing in this 27 minute video.

Mike Hoder- 360 down El Toro 20 step- 2012- At 3:20.  There are a ton more big 360 and 180 drops in this video as well. 

Daniel Sandoval- First 720 tailwhip to barspin- 2012?

Crazy Shurva- bunnyhop 720 and 360 tailwhip bunnyhop- 2014.

Nitcholi Rogatkin- mountain bike 1440- 2017- That's 4 full spins, corked out.  That's the record right now on a jump, and 3 1/2 (1260), in the video at the top of this post, is the reigning record on vert.

 Dennis McCoy- Longest span being able to do BMX 900's on vert-1990-2021?  First 900- Summer 1990- in Indianapolis, IN.  900 at age 52 in 2018.  That's a 28 year span of being able to land one of the craziest vert tricks ever, on video.  I believe he has pulled at least one 900 in 2021, stretching that span to 31 years.  DMC continues to amaze us all.  

What about the women?  BMX freestyle has been a boy's club from the start, but since girls like racers like Deanna Edwards and Cheri Elliot, and freestylers Krys Dauchy from Ohio and Alma Jo Barrera from Texas in the 80's, there have been some women riding hard on BMX bikes.  So here are some of the best women's clips of spinning tricks from recent years.

Women spinning tricks in 2019- Mexico City Van's comp-2:28- gnarly backflip attempt.  3:06- Macarena Perez- Tailwhip air.  7:00-Natalya Diehm- tailwhip jump.   

Top Ten Women's BMX tricks compilation- 2021- :02 Macarena Perez- backflip over box jump.  :07- Nikita Ducarroz- 540 on vert.  :16- Charlotte Worthington- Flair on vert.  :20- Shanice Silva Cruz- front flip on box jump.  :26- Hannah Roberts- tuck no handed 360 jump.  :29- Hannah Roberts- double tailwhip jump.  :39- Hannah Roberts- triple barspin.  :43- Hannah Roberts- double truckdriver jump (360 barspin to barspin).  So yeah, there are a lot fewer women riders than men, but they're holding there own out there at the parks.

This blog post got out of hand real quick.  I did a similar post about backflips a while back, but there are a lot more spinning tricks.  I could watch and dig into old videos, and add 100 more variations to this list.  But I'm going to stop it here.  I did say a "brief" history of spinning tricks.  The idea for this post, after seeing Mike Varga's insane 1260 on vert, was to show the long and continuing progression on the basic idea of spinning your bike around, one way or another.  I seriously never thought a 1260 on vert would happen.  

The craziest thing about this post is that I couldn't figure out who did the first truck driver, a 360 over a jump with a barspin.  Logic would say Chris Moeller might have been the guy, but I was roommates with Chris for quite a while in the earl 90's, and I think he was the 2nd or 3rd guy to do one.  Maybe Tim "Fuzzy" Hall did it first?  But I'm not sure on that, the first and most basic 360 variation.  

I also found tricks and clips I had no idea existed, like Andy Ruffel doing a 360 on film in 1983, and the Australian video supposedly from 1980.  This post is not complete, by any means, but I've got a lot of the firsts, or firsts on video, in a timeline in one place.  That was the basic idea, to see when spinning tricks and certain variations began, and how they fit into the 43 or so years that BMX freestyle has been a thing.  Thanks, as always, for checking out my blog post.  I'm not going to do as many Old School BMX posts as I have in years past, I've written well over 1,000 already.  But I'll try to make the ones I do good ones. 

What's a Spinaroonie?  Listen to Eddie Roman's color commentary, 4:58 in this clip.  I was the cameraman for that footage, by the way. 

Sharks hunting other sharks

What's cooler than seeing a 14 foot hammerhead shark cruising near a beach?  Seeing a huge hammerhead hunting smaller black tip sharks.  

Here's another amazing shark video I found yesterday, while taking a break from the research and blogging I've been doing.  Enjoy.

A BIG Great White Shark video

This video is by The Malibu Artist, from Southern California, but this video was shot in Isla Guadelupe, aka "Shark Island," off the coast of Baja California, in Mexico.  

I've been doing a ton of research and blogging for the last couple of weeks.  When I need to take a mental break, I usually watch some entertaining videos for a bit.  Sometimes skateboarding or BMX, but this one popped up yesterday, so I checked it out.  It's a really cool video, not that long, and features a couple of huge great white sharks.  Enjoy.  Then go swim in the ocean after Thanksgiving dinner and flounder around like a seal, see if you can have your own great white encounter.  OK, just kidding.  Just a cool shark video to waste time, since you're not actually doing anything at work, anyhow, today. 

CryptoArt Revolution documentary (Sept. 2021)

This recent documentary about the NFT/CryptoArt movement is only a couple months old, which is good in this fast moving movement.  The New York company Adorama put this out, and it's a very well produced, solid overview of what the NFT (Non Fungible Token) technology has made possible in the art world.  If you're an artist, photographer, writer, or musician who wants to learn more about what NFT's are, and how they're being used in art so far, check this doc out.  It's under an hour long, and a great place to begin learning.

For those of you who know this blog as an Old School BMX blog, mostly, you've noticed that I'm suddenly writing all about this "NFT thing."  Yeah, I started diving into learning about this technology a couple of weeks ago, seeing if there is something in it for small time artists, like me.  I'm still going hard with the research. 

Yes, when you google "NFT's," most of what initially pops up are the crazy prices paid for JPEG's or PNG's of pixelated zombie looking things, funny apes, and Beeple's $69 million auction price for a digital collage called "The First 5,000 Days."  I just found another article about Christie's Auction house selling over $100 million in NFT art this year.  Really.  And none of these art NFT's are tangible.  It's fucking weird.  That's the crazy side of the NFT/crypto art movement.  

But is there anything in this technology for a typical Esty-type artist, photographer, writer, musician, or designer?  Yes, I'm glad to say there is.  Here are the basics I've learned so far.

One: NFT's are a digital file tied to a blockchain transaction, which gives proven ownership.  That little thing is the magic.  It makes that one (or a series) of pieces of digital art rare.  And in art, rare stuff can sell for higher prices.  

Two: Pretty much any digital file of art, photo, video, writing, or music, (up to 30 megabytes, I think), can be "minted" into an NFT. 

Three:  This whole movement came out of the high tech/gaming/crypto world, which means there's a fucking shitload of money around NFT's and crypto art.

Four:  The price of entry is to 1) get some crypto, Ethereum in particular in an exchange, 2) open a wallet, and 3) join one of the marketplaces, like OpenSea, Axie, Super Rare, Rarible, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, or the others that exist. Then 4) Most important, do a whole bunch of research to learn about how things work.  Google or YouTube your questions, and dive in.  

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, (who dropped a series of  10,000+ NFT's called Vee Friends, in May), says to do your "50 hours of initial research" on any new thing.  Then decide if it makes sense for you, or not.  That's real good advice.  

Five: Take a piece of your creative work on a digital file, and "mint" it into an NFT, which takes services fees and a "gas" (blockchain) fee, and show it off in the marketplace you chose.  

If you do that, will your artwork NFT sell?  Probably not.

Like selling art and creative work anywhere, you, or someone, still has to PROMOTE and MARKET your work to gain interest, and get sales.  If you already have a following, you need to see if any of them are into NFT's already.  Most average people are not.  It's still a very new and emerging thing.  

If you don't have a following, you need to begin building one.  The main market for small creator NFT's  (and the big series drops) may be a few of your current patrons, but more likely will be a whole lot of "traders" or "flippers."  These people are buying and flipping NFT's like day traders in the stock market, or sports card/collectible traders.  They want to find new projects that have potential to grow, and they want to buy your NTF's CHEAP!  Cheap is $150 to $200, maybe $300, or less in NFT land.  These traders want to buy into your work, and resell it quickly for a 10X or 20X gain, that's 10 or 20 times what they paid for it.  

So if your NFT costs you $80 to mint, and you sell it for $150 to a trader, that trader wants your work to get popular, and take off, they're in it to make money.  They want to resell your NFT art for $ 1,500 or more (paid in Eth aka Ethereum, usually).  In this scenario, you, the artist, make $70, the trader makes, $1350, and a bunch of traders learn you exist, and will pay more attention to your next pieces minted.

To most artists, that sounds like a shitty deal.  And for one piece, it is.  But if you continue, and you do multiples of you pieces, (a series of 3, 10, 50, 100), then you can begin to make some decent money on future NFT's.  That's the basic idea.  Yes, it's possible you could do a series, and they could get noticed and take off quickly.  But more likely, you'll have to spend a bunch of time online promoting your work to people who have a sports card trader mentality. 

So if you want to jump into NFT's and sell one NFT of your epic painting for $5,000, that's not going to happen.  Unless your physical paintings already sell for that kind of prices, then it might.  Most small time artists, I think, will either try selling NFT's, and fail, because they aren't willing to do the marketing or promotion necessary.  Then they'll post somewhere saying "NFT's suck!" and stay on Etsy or in their own Shopify store selling pieces.  Hey, that's fine, NFT's are not for everyone.  

The artists and creators who are willing to sell for low prices in the beginning, to do steady promotion, and build a following over time, have a much better chance of success somewhere down the road.  For people willing to learn this world, and do the work, there's a good chance of being able to create whatever you want to create, and make decent money at it, at some point.  There are a lot of people from the crypto world doing this already, it seems.  That's the upside of the NFT/crypto art scene, as far as I can tell at this point.  When somebody's art NFT's take off, they freakin' LAUNCH.  Ask Beeple.  But his "5,000 days" collage of sketches took him 13 1/2 years to compile.  So he definitely paid his dues. 

So that's what I've learned so far.  If you're willing to seriously market your creative work, NFT's may be really cool for you over several months time.  If you're the typical artist that just puts a piece or two  out there, puts two Instagram links, and hopes to make big money, don't waste your time with NFT's.  I hope this was helpful for some of you.

Oh, and Twitter and Discord are the main social media platforms for NFT/crypto art.  I'm on Twitter: @steveemig43 . 

Disclaimer for "Steve Emig: The White Bear" blog and my Patreon site

 

Disclaimer:  

Investing in Stocks, commodities, NFT's, aka Non Fungible Tokens, and other investments that may be written about in this blog, are high risk activities, and you can easily lose money.  Please do your own due diligence to learn about this technology, crypto art, and any other potential investment made in this blog.  This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only, and nothing I write or say should be taken as advice.  Consult experts in any area needed before making investments.  

I am not a certified financial planner, a certified financial analyst, a CPA, an accountant, or a lawyer.  The contents of this blog are for educational and entertainment purposes only, and do not constitute financial, investment, accounting, or legal advice.  Please consult a lawyer, accountant, CPA, certified financial planner, or other need professionals, as needed, before making any investment, financial, or legal decisions.  Do your own proper due diligence before making any investment, financial, and/or legal decisions.  By reading and/or using this blog, or any post within it, you agree to hold me harmless of any ramifications, financial or otherwise, that happen as a result of acting on any of the information in this blog.  

The views expressed in this blog are my own.  The authors, speakers, or other sources I share or quote in this blog are those of the individuals, and my use does not mean they endorse my views and ideas.  I consider myself a futurist, someone who studies and analyzes trends in economics, society, business, and other human endeavors.  I express my opinions on how these trends and forces may play out in future months or years.  I do my best to give what I see as the most likely future outcomes, but there are always many other factors which may change the course of events as we move forward in time.  Please use your own best judgement, and that of experts you trust, to make any decisions regarding future business, investments, financial or other decisions.

Steven T. Emig (aka Steve Emig)

Writer and publisher of this blog

November 23, 2021

Why the hell are you wasting your time on that stupid idea?

Me (Steve Emig), doing a Robert Peterson inspired balance trick, on my Skyway BMX bike, in the summer of 1985, at the Boise Fun Spot.  Photo by co-worker Vaughn Kidwell.

In the photo above, I was 19-years-old, wearing way-to-short Op cord shorts, which I thought were what guys in California wore then. I was wrong.  At that job I managed 12 employees, while making $3.10 an hour during the day, and practiced tricks on my bike for 2-3 hours every night.  Everyone thought I was an idiot for wasting all my time on a "little kid's bike." 

 I got into BMX in 1982, while in high school, and everyone wondered why I spent so much time riding a "little kid's bike."  I told them BMX freestyle was this cool, new,emerging sport.  They didn't believe me.  I graduated high school from Boise High in 1984, and I didn't have money for college, so I got a job at a big Mexican restaurant, and kept riding my bike as much as possible.  I was one of the first 3 or 4 BMX freestylers in Idaho, and rode with Jay Bickel on the reformed version of the first Idaho trick team, the Critical Condition Stunt Team. 

My family moved to San Jose, California in June of 1985, because my dad got a new job there.  I rented a room at my best friend's house for the summer, and worked at the Boise Fun Spot as the manager.  It had six carnival rides, a food stand, and a miniature golf course (I tied the course record, 31 for 18 holes), and was in Julia Davis Park, near the zoo, by the Boise River.  It's gone now, there's a playground where The Fun Spot used to be.  When The Fun Spot closed in August, I packed up my ugly, brown, 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo to San Jose, and moved back in with my family.  

I quickly got a job at a local Pizza Hut, and wondered how to find the BMX freestylers in the Bay Area.  In those pre-internet days, things like that were hard.  So I started publishing a zine about freestyle, and passed it out at local bike shops, hoping to meet some other riders.  It worked, I soon met some San Jose local riders, and they told me about the monthly ramp jams, and that led me to Sunday sessions at Golden Gate Park, the tightest scene in freestyle at the time.  I kept publishing a zine monthly, and sending copies to several BMX industry people.  Pretty much everyone thought publishing a zine was pretty stupid, and it eventually ate up half my monthly pay from Pizza Hut. 

The article in the August, 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine, where my zine, San Jose Stylin', was called the best in the U.S. at the time. 

 Then in July of 1986, I got offered a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  At age 20, I moved to Southern California with a bike, a suitcase, and $80.  I didn't really click with the guys at the magazines, and got laid off after 5 months.  They hired a biker/skater kid from Maryland named Spike Jonze to replace me, and I went on to edit a freestyle newsletter.  That led to me producing low budget BMX videos in 1987.  

In 1988, I had the idea to do an "audio zine" about BMX, basically a cassette tape with contest highlights, interviews, some music I liked, and stuff like that.  That didn't take off, and people thought it was a dumb idea.  But it was basically an early version of a podcast, just 30 years too early. Sometimes an idea is just way ahead of technology.

I had another idea in 1988.  The Godfather of BMX himself, Scot Breithaupt, sold a TV series to ESPN to produce bike shows.  He and his editor rented our edit bay and cut the shows at night.  I got the job of hanging out while they were editing.  One night Scot asked if I had any ideas for the next show.  I told him street riding was the hot new thing in BMX, and it took me about 20 minutes to sell him on that idea.  I ended up helping him put on the first made-for-TV bike street contest, six years before the X-Games.  It was called The Huntington Beach Street Scene.  Short on time and money, Scot used me and riding buddy Randy Lawrence in the intro, as well.  Even Scot wasn't sure about street riding, it was something BMXers had always done, he couldn't understand it as its own genre'.  But the show wound up getting the best ratings of any show in his series. 

In 1990, after working at the Vision Skateboard video company for 2 1/2 years, I decided to self-produce a BMX video.  Only a couple riders, Eddie Roman, and Mark Eaton, had tried that at the time.   Even riders couldn't figure out why I was making my own video.  BMXer/mountain biker Dave Cullinan asked me, why are you making a video, you don't have a company?  I told him I wanted to make a video that showed our real riding, not doing flatland, in a uniform, at a miniature golf course, something that one business did in their video.  In 1990, I shot and produced a video called The Ultimate Weekend.  I lost a bunch of money, but helped show other people that us BMX freestylers could actually produce our own videos.  I wound up making the first BMX videos for the AFA, 2-Hip, and S&M Bikes.  I produced or edited 12 early BMX videos in all, becoming one of the pioneers in the rider-made video movement, which happened in BMX, skating, snowboarding, and inline in the early 1990's.  Obviously making videos has become a huge part of action sports, as the sports, and technology, continue to progress.  

Wall ride over my sister Cheri's head, a still from The Ultimate Weekend.  Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, 1990.

 I published my first zine of poetry in 1992, with nearly 100 poems.  That didn't seem like a good idea, even to me, but my nickname, The White Bear, came from the first poem in that zine.  I did a handful of other zines during the 90's, 2 more of poetry, and 3 or 4 of action sports and random stuff.  I've published over 40 zines, several 48  pages or more, in my life.  People always think zines are kind of dumb, until you give them one, then they think they're cool.  Zines blew up in the 90's, with thousands being published worldwide.  Even one popular song mentioned them. 

Many years later, I wound up homeless, while working as a taxi driver, living in my cab.  When the business really took a dive (before Uber and Lyft), in 2007, I wound up totally living on the streets.  No booze, no drugs, just the wrong job at the wrong time.  After a year, I went to stay with my family for a while.  My parents, and my sister's family, all wound up in North Carolina, though we were originally from Ohio.  I went there in November of 2008, as the Great Recession economic collapse was happening.  With nothing to do, and unable to find any job at all in NC, I used my parents' computer, and started blogging about my days in the BMX industry in the 1980's.  In North Carolina, they though BMX was stupid, and most people didn't really know what a blog was. 

I had never spent much time online before that, I was a Luddite, and didn't think much of the internet in general.  But with nothing but time in NC, I started "surfing the web," as we called it back then, and blogging about BMX.  No one thought anything would come of my blogging, especially me.  But I've written over 2,400 blog posts across more than 25 blog ideas, and have raked in over 240,000 total page views, on personal blogs, in 12 1/2 years. I got real depressed in late 2012, a couple of months after my dad's death, and deleted all my blogs.  But there are still well over 1,000 posts that I've written since then, online.

Later in 2015, still unable to find any job in NC, I decided to take my weird form of Sharpie art drawings, that I call Sharpie Scribble Style, and start selling them.  I was living with my mom then, and literally didn't have a dime to my name when I started.  I had my Sharpies, a sketch pad, and a $65 refurbished laptop.  No one thought my Sharpie art would sell, even me.  But I had few options at the time.  I'd applied for over 140 local jobs, over a couple of years, and got 1 call back, but not hired. 

Kurt Cobain Sharpie drawing that was in my first, and only, solo art show.  The show was a small one, at Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, NC, in 2017.  The shop owner, Phred, has since passed away, which is terrible, he was a really cool guy, and totally helped the music and art scenes in W-S.

So I started drawing every day, stepping up my art game.  Who did I hit up to sell drawings?  The BMXers around the U.S. and the world that read my blog.  I had a solid following of several hundred readers at the time.  Google #sharpiescribblestyle, on an image search, and you can see a bunch of my drawings.  I've sold about 90 originals, and they take 40-45 hours each to draw.  I didn't get rich, I didn't even make a living, but I survived as a "working artist," for five years, and am now known mostly as a blogger and Sharpie artist.  Thanks to old freestyle friend Ron Camero, you can see prints of my drawings in several Wahoo's Fish Tacos locations.  That's about the coolest "gallery" there is for action sports artists and photographers, in Southern California. 

Do you see a trend here?  OK, I excel at not making much money, that's one trend.  But throughout my life, over the last 35 years, I kept getting ideas to try something new, something kind of weird or crazy.  Every freakin' time, a whole bunch of people told me those ideas were stupid, and that I was wasting my time.  This happens to everyone who has new ideas, and tries to make them happen.  Over those years, I got much more in touch with my own creativity, and learned to work with my own creative process.  Sometimes the ideas, like zines and BMX videos, turned into whole scenes, even creative movements.  Some ideas, like the audio zine, fizzled out.  

I've learned that whenever you get into something new, nearly everyone thinks it's a bad idea,   BECAUSE... it's something new.  It's outside their frame of reference.  Once an idea takes off, most of those same people who talked shit tell their friends, "I always told him that would work."  Most of the haters come around, at least those close to you.  That's the arc of creation.  You just have to endure and work through it.

"The person with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds"

-Mark Twain

Recently I've been diving in and learning about art and NFT's, Non Fungible Tokens.  In a couple weeks of research, I've learned one thing.  There's something to these.  From the creators, and the traders, buying and selling them, there's a crazy, frantic energy of this quickly moving thing.  I recognize that energy from the early days of freestyle.  Then there are the Haters.  Much of the established art world, old school bankers who say crypto is going to crash (uh... like fiat already is?).  And the Haters are really vocal.  That's a sign something pretty cool is happening.  Oh, and unlike the other movements I've been a part of, this one has ridiculous amounts of money involved.  That's good and bad.  But being a homeless artist sucks a lot more than being a pretty well set artist, I can tell you that.  

I don't know where this whole thing is headed, but I'm already seeing that crazy energy in the NFT world, art, gaming, metaverse/VR, all across the board.  I'll be making a few NFT's of some of  my creative work in the not too distant future, and testing out the waters.  I'm still in the deep dive and intense learning phase in all of this, but I already see there's something to all this new tech, and all the creativity surrounding it.  

So that's my main focus at the moment, learning something new, a new direction to take my creative work.  We'll see where it leads.  But the more I dig in, not to the crazy money, but the actual creativity and work being done behind the scenes, the more interesting it gets.  I've had this feeling before.  I think it's going be a fun ride.  I'll end with a meme I made about a couple of bike riders who had a really crazy idea a while back. 

 

The Wright Brothers bike shop in Dayton, Ohio, circa 1905 or so.  Two brothers in a bike shop, Orville and Wilbur Wright, had this crazy idea to make an airplane.  Much to everyone's surprise, it worked, eventually.  The rest is history.  You never really known where a crazy idea could lead. 

The Best NFT film ever made

Is this the best NFT film ever made?  Well, it's shot on video, so technically it's not even a "film."  But who cares?  WTF is an NFT?  It's a Non Fungible Token, basically a digital file linked in a blockchain, usually Ethereum, making it a one of a kind, or one of a limited series, that's digitally verifed.  Who cares?  The traders and flippers making tens of thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars flipping them.  That's who cares.  And a lot of other people, as well.  

I've spent the last five years as a "working artist," using one of the worst ways to make money with artwork in today's world.  It's been a learning experience.  I started, literally without a dime to my name, in November of 2015.  I wasn't known as an artist.  But I had this unique way of drawing I called Sharpie Scribble Style.  I stepped up my art game, put a couple of drawings on Facebook, and began selling them, starting at about $20.  I've sold around 90 original drawings in 5 years.  The problem has been that my large #sharpiescribblestyle drawings take 40-45 hours to draw, and I can charge about $150-$200 each.  So I survived by doing art, mostly while homeless, drawings cool pictures for about $3-$4 an hour.  That's a big part of why I'm still homeless.  Yes, art is not supposed to be about money.  But it's hard to draw when starving, and with no place to work.  Money is a part of life, I couldn't find ANY "real job in North Carolina, when I started, so I went full bore into my Sharpie art.  Now I'm known as an "artist," but also known for being homeless.  I can't sell street cred, it's time to figure out a decent way to make a living in today's world. 

I started hearing about something called NFT's over the last several months, and recently started looking into it.  Are these art?  It depends who you ask.  But they are creative projects, artsy digital collectibles in many cases, and I'm a highly creative guy, so I kept learning more.  If you want to learn about NFT's how they tie into art and creative work, what other potential they have, then watch this 82 minute movie.  You'll learn more about this crazy tech/creative trend in an hour and a half than anywhere else.  

After that you should know if they may play a roll in your life.  This movie gets past the insane money being made, and looks under the hood at the NFT craze, phenomenon, or whatever you want to call it.  Personally, the more I dig into this these things, the more interesting they become.  Maybe after the first of December, when I have a few more bucks to work with, I can create a couple, and see what happens. 

Joseph Campbell's instructions to "Follow Your Bliss"

This is an excerpt from the multi-hour interview Bill Moyers did with Joseph Campbell, back in 1983.  It was released in video, audio, and book form as The Power of Myth.  I had the tapes, and have listened to all 6 hours, at least 50 times each.  Many creative people were inspired by Joseph Campbell's work, including George Lucas, while writing Star Wars.  This interview took place at Skywalker Ranch.  Here's George Lucas talking to Bill Moyers about Joseph Campbell, and the mythology behind the original Star Wars trilogy, 12 years after the Joseph Campbell interview.

Joseph Campbell was 25 when he went to Woodstock.  But he didn't go to the huge hippie concert in 1969.  Joseph Campbell went to Woodstock, New York in 1929, at age 25, when there was no work because of the Great Depression.  He rented a cleaned out chicken coop for $5 a month, and began to read classic literature for 9 hours a day.  He didn't read because he had to, he read because he wanted to.  He did that, 9 hours of reading, and 3 hours of hanging with friends, for about 5 years.  He also did some traveling during that time, but he spent most of it in the quiet little town of Woodstock.  

During those reading years, in story after story, he began to see the same themes played out, over and over again, in the best literature throughout history.  That concept, those themes, became the basis for Campbell's 1949 book, The Hero With 1,000 Faces.  Campbell went on to teach for nearly four decades at Sarah Lawrence College, and wrote and spoke much more about mythology and the religions of the world, and what they all had in common.  Ultimately, near the end of his life, that led to the interview above, at about age 79, which became The Power of Myth.  

Campbell's idea to "Follow your bliss," as explained in the video clip above, is to find what truly interests you, at this point in your life.  It's different for every person, and your intuition leads you to it.  It can, and will, change, as your life progresses.  It's pretty much always NOT what the people around you want to to do with your life, which leads to a lot of soul searching and drama at times.  No one can tell you you're doing it right or doing it wrong.  But if you do follow your bliss, life will lead you on an adventure you'd never imagine early on.  

I know, this is how I've lived my weird life.  It's caused me a lot of trouble, but also has shown me great rewards.  Yeah, I'm homeless these days, so financial rewards weren't in the picture for many years of my life.  But I sleep better as a homeless man, than a lot of people in luxurious bedrooms.  I've now lived for 2 1/2 years, this stretch, on the streets of Southern California, mostly in L.A. county.  I live and sleep alone, without a tent, unarmed.  I haven't carried any weapon since I've been back out here in 2019.  

How is that possible?  Because of what my weird journey through life has taught me.  That doesn't mean it doesn't get dicey at times.  I've struggled, been pretty hungry at times, cussed up a storm when frustrated, and been toe to toe with a crazy fucker who actually had devil horns tattooed on his bald head (I recommend avoiding that type of situation if possible).  I'm still here.  Still learning.  And still working every single day, doing work I love, even if it doesn't pay shit for the time being.  

So what's your "bliss?"  What subject or idea fascinates you right now?  What could you dedicate the next chunk of your life to, if you had no other responsibilities?  Just think about that for a moment.  What was the very first thing that came to mind?  The idea that made the rest of your mind go "oh no, I couldn't do that."  Think about that for a few minutes.  That's a start to finding our "bliss," if you haven't already.

Now, you have a life, of some kind.  You have responsibilities.  But that doesn't mean you can't spend a little time on that subject or activity that really fascinates you.  Go ahead, give that thing a little more time in your life, and see where that leads.  That's how you "follow your bliss." 

The Big Freakin' Transition in a nutshell

I'm going way back, for a classic comedic look at the factory worker's life in the Industrial Age.  Charlie Chaplin trying to get through the day in Modern Times, from 1936.

Disclaimer

The Big Freakin' Transition is my concept, an extension of The Third Wave idea put forth by futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and published in Alvin's 1980 book, The Third Wave *.  

This is a big idea, and involves a lot of different aspects of our society.  But at it's core, my concept of The Big Freakin' Transition is two basic ideas:

One:  We are not IN the Industrial Age anymore, but we are not IN the Information Age, either.  We are in an 80 to 90 years transition period where American society morphs from the Industrial Age into the Information Age.  This transition period began in 1956, according to futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and I estimate the end will be about 2035-2045.

Two:  To remain viable in modern society, EVERY business, industry, organization, institution, and individual must make the transition from an Industrial Age living and working model, to an Information Age living and working model.  When pretty much all of society has made the switch, then we will be fully in the Information Age.  The world seems so crazy these days because we are in this huge, long, major transition phase.  

There are tons of details and factors, but that is The Big Freakin' Transition concept at its core.  

To grossly oversimplify things, originally humans were tribal people that we usually refer to as hunter/gatherers.  The First Wave of civilization was the transition from hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society  People began to plant crops and farm, stay in one place, and villages became permanent, and turned into small towns, and eventually into cities.  That began about 10,000 years ago, probably in the region that is now Turkey.  It took a couple of thousand years for agriculture to travel the Earth, and become the dominant form of human society.

The Second Wave of civilization was the transition from agricultural society to an industrial society.  This, the Tofflers tell us, began about 350 years ago, and took a couple of hundred years to circle the Earth, to become the dominant form of society.  The factory based Industrial Age continued well into the second half of the 20th century.  

The Third Wave, as the Tofflers saw it, is the transition from an Industrial-based society to an Information-based society.  As it's called now, the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.  Alvin Toffler's book on this came out in 1980, four years before the Apple Macintosh computer, the first personal computer for "regular people."  He also wrote it right as the thousands of American factories began to either outsource jobs to other countries, or replace human workers with industrial robots and other technology.  So most people who did read The Third Wave when it was knew thought, "OK, the factories are shutting down or moving overseas, we have Silicon Valley, high tech, computers and cell phones, we're in the information-based age now."    

Of the people alive today, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X were born at times when the Industrial Age was still going strong.  The Millennials, Generation Z (you'll get a new nickname, don't worry), and today's kids, were born into times when the Industrial age was fading fast, and the Information Age was (and still is) coming on strong.  So to our older generations the Industrial Age is "normal," and to the younger generations, the Information Age is "normal."  That alone explains a lot in today's culture.

The Big Freakin' Transition is my idea that the Toffler's Third Wave concept is still playing out.  I think that we didn't jump right into the full blown Information Age when all the factories shutdown, or moved overseas in the 1980's, 1990's, or 2000's.  I believe we are actually in an 80 to 90 year long transition period BETWEEN the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  We have a lot of the technology of the full Information Age now, but a lot of our businesses, industries, and institutions are still working from Industrial Age models, and have not fully integrated their business or working models to ones that work in the Information Age.  The Tofflers put the beginning of this transition period at 1956, the first year "white collar" office workers outnumbered "blue collar" factory workers in the United States.  I believe this transition period will last at least until about 2040, maybe longer.  

Very simply, we are about 2/3 the way through this long, crazy, chaotic period of transition from one type of society and lifestyle, to another.  No other civilization has had to make this big of a social transition in the span of a single lifetime.  We are going from one way of life to another, and it's weird, scary, crazy, and chaotic.  We are in between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, and have aspects of both working in our world right now.  

That's the Big Freakin' Transition, in a nutshell. For the record, I've been referring to this idea as"The Big Transition" in my personal and online writing, for 3 years or so.  I figured that I'd come up with a catchier name at some point, but I never did.  When I decided to write this blog, and go into more detail on all that the idea ties into, I finally googled "The Big Transition."  There's one religious book by that name, on totally different ideas, and several other things that came up in my search.  So I added the word "freakin'" to set it apart, and to not make it too serious and boring.  I think this concept, as a context for the craziness of today's world, can help us explain and understand what's going on. 

In future posts I'll go into much more depth on this general idea, and into the details of the various aspects of it.  The basic idea to get right now is, yes, the world seems crazy for a reason, we're in a huge transition period that is crazy and chaotic, by it's nature.  It's OK to be freaked out by all that's going on.  I hope this concept can help other people understand this transition, and then find their own way to work within it.

* Not a paid link.

My clothes got stolen...

The good thing about being a Social Distortion fan is that whatever happens in your life, they have a song for it.  "Bad Luck." 

I'm homeless.  I'm not shy about mentioning it, when it comes up in conversation or writing, but I don't bitch and moan about it in my blog, for the most part.  I lost my storage unit, just couldn't pay the nearly $300 a month, a couple weeks ago.  My fault, no one else's, shit happens.  For a couple weeks, I've had about two changes of clothes.  They were almost all dirty, in a plastic bag, and definitely needed washing.  Pretty ripe.  Someone stole those while I was sleeping last night.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't the local mountain lion, or the coyotes, they aren't my size, and have better taste should they decide to where clothes.  So it was probably one of the many roaming crackheads or tweekers.  Fuckin' street zombies. It's L.A., shit happens.   

On the bright side, I don't have to do laundry today.  I'll be modeling the new homeless cologne, Stench, for Men (it helps with social distancing).  OK... moving on...  We all have days when we wake up, and Life says...

Gary Vaynerchuk explains the basics of NFT's (back in February)

Like millions of people, I'm a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, I've been following his content for maybe 3 years now, I think.  In this video he gives a fairly quick, 8 minute take on where NFT's (Non Fungible Tokens) were, back in February.  

With my current, sketchy lifestyle, it's been nearly impossible for me to take in large amounts of information, for most of the Covid period.  As a homeless guy who actually does some kind of "work" every day, like art and content creation, I struggled to get any decent amount of time online to learn.  The little bit of time I had, 1-2 hours a day, was mostly keeping in touch with people social, and quick blog posts, content creation. So I didn't listen to much of what Gary, and many others, were doing, for several months.  

Over the past few months, in the limited amount of media I did consume, I started seeing the term "NFT" in relation to artists and musicians.  I knew it was somehow tied to Ethereum, but didn't have time to dig into it, and learn anything about it.  

NFT stands for Non Fungible Token.  Let's start with "fungible."  Money, for example, is fungible, one dollar is worth as much as any other dollar.  You can pay for lunch with dollar bills, coins worth a dollar, a dollar in your debit card account, or a dollar in your Apple Pay account.  Any dollar is worth the same, that's what fungible means.  That's a big part of the point of money.  

Now one big problem for creative people, of any kind, in the digital age, is that we all can share digital files.  A book, a song, a piece of art, a photo, a video clip, whatever, we can all make copies, and share the copies, and millions of copies could end up being made.  Nobody gets paid, and most are pretty much worthless.  Creative people, and businesses, lose lots of money because of this.  

So someone figured out how to take a digital file, let's say a scan of one of my drawings, and "mint" it, tying it into a blockchain, mostly the Ethereum blockchain.  Because there is only one file tied to the blockchain in that transaction, and anyone can check that, suddenly it's "scarce."  It's an original.  When you do that, mint a digital file into the blockchain, that's called a Non Fungible Token, of NFT, for short.  You can make NFT's out of art, photos, music, video clips, contracts, things like ID, any digital file.  And people can prove, "that's the REAL one."  You need to make them out of your own work, that you own, or else you get into copyright trouble. 

This started among tech geeks in 2016-2017, and different projects started to happen.  Crypto Kitties was one of the first.  Crypto Punks, a group of 10,000, unique, 24 bit characters, was another.  That one was actually tied to Bitcoin.  Another early big one was Bored Ape Yacht Club, funny looking apes in clothes, all with different features.  The Crypto Punks were given away, for something like 11 cents in fees.  People did what people do, they collected them, traded them, and started selling them, and an aftermarket developed.  Even though these are just files, the blockchain tie makes each unique, and potentially valuable, and this year they've been selling for downright ludicrous prices.  

One of the 10,000 Crypto Punks sold for $530 million.  Again, they were free, with an 11 cent service charge, in 2017.  One of the Bored Apes sold for $3.4 million.  A Crypto Kitty sold for over $3.4 million.  Digital graphic designer Beeple, (who says he's not an "artist") sold a compilation of 5,000 of his digital sketches, for over $69 million in March.  You get the idea.  If you think the real estate market is crazy, it's tame next to the high end of the Crypto Art/NFT market.  

The NBA did an NFT project called Top Shots, and raked in over $100 million.  Gary Vaynerchuk did a launch of 10,000 NFT's, based on his own doodled characters.  He made about $20 million, instantly formed a huge community of his followers, and then sold 5 of the original sketches in a Christie's auction for $1.2 million. So that's the insane side of the NFT boom, the 2021 NFT Art/Collectibles market.  

On the much more sane side of things, a whole bunch of artists and musicians have minted NFT tokens of their work, and put them up on several market sites, kind of like eBay for NFT's.  Most sell for $40 to maybe $300, plus some fees, when they sell. They pay (almost exclusively) in Ether (Ethereum crypto).  You have to buy crypto, get a wallet, and then sign up to the marketplaces, to create, buy, sell, or trade NFT's.  But there's a lot of that going on.  

NFT's have a whole bunch of other potential, as well.  Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank guy, is stoked on NFT's.   He sees a future where they may be the standard type of concert or sports event ticket.  You may get bonus, digital stuff, with your game or concert NFT.  They could be used for ID's, passports, and things like that some day.  You can take your NFT into vitural worlds, there are actually virtual art galleries displaying NFT's right now.  You know that Metaverse thing Mark Zuckerburg is talking about, these are part of that concept.  

So that is a basic look at the emerging world of NFT's.  I've been digging into this world for about a week now, to see if it makes sense for any of my creative work.  We'll see where that leads.  If any of this interests you, watch the video above, check out the links, and you can find a ton more info on YouTube.