Rick Rubin has been behind the scenes of dozens of great music projects over the years. If you're reading this, you're likely an Old School BMX freestylers, and the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill is etched in your brain. Yeah, Rick Rubin produced that. And many more. Check out his Discography from Wikipedia. This clip from his interview podcast with Joe Rogan, has some of the best advice and thoughts I've ever heard about bring creative. It's only 8 1/2 minutes. Check it out.
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Christian Hosoi and crew- skating in 1990 as Tuff Skts
The only version of the Tuff Skts promo on the web, when Christian Hosoi and Vision Skateboards worked together for a short time in 1990. I shot and edited the original promo (7 1/2 minutes)) and a shorter version (4 1/2 minutes), using Bad Brains and Muddy Waters for the soundtrack. This is a further cut down version, dubbed with canned music, to avoid copyright issues, to air on Sk8-TV on Nicklodeon in 1990.
While known primarily as a BMX industry guy from the 1980's to Old School freestylers, I actually worked for Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Street Wear video company, for 2 1/2 years from late 1987 to mid 1990. I was mainly a production assistant, the other six people, plus a few women in promotions, and most anyone in other Vision departments, could tell me what to do. My nickname was The Dub Guy, I spent most of my time making copies of video footage for all kinds of reasons. I pretty much lived in a little 6' by 8' room, filled with all kinds of VTR's, professional grade VCR's, basically. I made dubs, copies of one thing or another, for the whole Vision empire. Betacam raw footage to VHS with a window to log footage? Yeah, I did it. 1" to 3/4" for offline editing, I was the guy. 50 copies of the four second shot of a Psycho Skate skateboard that appeared in some lame ass TV sitcom, yep, I'll make copies. I'll hide in my room, and make them, three at a time.
In 1989, our staff camerman, Pat, found another job, and I got upgraded to cameraman (while continuing as The Dub Guy). All of our producers and tech guys were also cameramen when we did big shoots, but I did the little jobs. The cool part of that was that I got sent to all the 2-Hip events that year, which Vision sponsored, and occasionally I got sent out to shoot video of Vision Street Ware fashion shoots, skateboarding footage, whatever. I even went to this video shoot, the skateboard part, and shot behind-the scenes footage all day (Kele Rosecrans, Joe Johnson, Eric Nash, and Micke Keller were the skaters). That was in 1989, when BMX freestyle was "dying," as corporate America deemed the "fad" over, and pulled their money out, followed by the mainstream bike industry. Vision also began to struggle that year. Their massive sales growth didn't double that year, like expected, it only went up about 15%. The 1980's skateboarding "fad" era was ending, and skate and snowbard sales began to fade. In January of 1990, Unreel got dissolved, and the two cheapest people, myself and our production coordinator, were kept on, and our boss, Don Hoffman, went to freelance mode. We moved out of our plush office, with the upstairs ocean view, at the end of Brioso Drive in Costa Mesa, and into the Vision main building in Santa Ana.
Before the Brioso building was all cleaned out, I got a call one day. "We need you to go shoot Christian Hosoi and his guys for a couple of days, then make a promo video for a new joint venture company." I thought, "Hell yeah!" I'd worked at contests where Christian and Tony Hawk skated, even been to Tony's Fallbrook ramp to shoot film, but I'd never actually met either of them. I was stoked to meet one of the two best vert skaters of the era.
I packed up the $50,000 Sony Betacam, one of our huge "TV news cameras," that were full broadcast quality. The beasts also weighed 35 pounds each, which made shooting airs from a ramp deck a workout. While most BMXers and skaters were using the new "prosumer" S-VHS cameras, or the brand new Hi8 video cameras, Unreel was still in broadcast quality mode, when there was still a huge difference between consumer and broadcast quality video.
Day one of shooting was at Christian's home ramp, a full size halfpipe hidden at his hilltop house in Echo Park, not very far from downtown L.A.. The idea I heard that was behind Tuff Skts was that Christian's top skaters on Hosoi were intimidated when competing against him, because not only was he one of the top two vert skaters, but his name was on all the boards. At least that was the idea. So he decided to work with Vision, starting a new brand called Tuff Skts, under their corporate umbrella. Vision also ran Sims and Schmitt Stix skateboards, and Sims Snowboards, so it would save Christian headaches on the business side of things, and it could be a huge new source of board sales for Vision, who made their own boards. At the time, the deal made a lot of sense.
Christian and Tony Hawk were the consistent top two vert skaters then. Christian was known for his really high airs, super smooth technique, and amazing style. Tony was known for having less style, but doing incredibly hard, far more technical vert tricks. Contest after contest, it was high air and style versus tech. Usually one of the two won the contest. Occasionally Steve Caballero, Chris Miller, or even Vision guy Gator might sneak in for a win. But mostly Tony and Christian battled for the top spot, contest after contest.
As 1990 rolled in, Christian was tired of being known just as the "high air guy," and he worked on some more technical tricks. Part of his plan that day was to debut some new tech tricks. In the promo above, you can see him doing tail grab nose grinds, and alley-oop nosegrinds, and a blunt, along with the standard grinds in his trick bag. In this video, edited by Sk8-TV (a Nickelodeon TV show in 1990, hosted by Gerry "Tater" Hertado), Christian talks a bit about Tuff Skts, and you can see his classic style in a good pool skating session. Here's another good video, it's just Christian skating vert in 1990, going through his reportoire of tricks. He's even wearing a Tuff Skts T-shirt part of the time, so it was in the era I'm talking about.
Always the showman and host, my first day shooting footage of Christian was an event, not just a casual video shoot. After reaching Echo Park, I drove the little Unreel Toyota van up this steep, winding driveway, where several cars were already parked, precariously, on the edge. I crabbed the wheels, pulled my gear out, and headed up to the house. Not only was I there, representing Vision, but a handful of magazine photographers were also there, as was surf filmaker Herbie Fletcher, shooting 16mm movie film. Herbie's son, pro surfer Christian Fletcher, another friend of Hosoi's, was also there. Christian's am guys, friends Block, Little Man, and Joey Tran, were there as well.
The house had trees around much of it, a full size halfpipe hidden a bit below on the hill, and an amazing view of downtown L.A. from the driveway. Word was that it was old time actor W.C. Field's house at one time. It was the most rock star skateboard day I could have imagined. The house had a 25 yard lap pool, long and skinny, something I'd never seen before. From the pool, it looked a lot like the house from 5:00 to 5:16 in this video, but the driveway is different. I did a little research just now, and I just figured out it wasn't the W.C. Fields mansion, but the story that day was that W. C. Fields lived in the house back in the day. What I remember thinking is "Holy crap! Skateboarding paid for all this?"
Everyone was gathered in a room of the house, and when I showed up, Christian was the gratious host. He introduced me as Vision's video guy, and walked me out and showed me the ramp, and gave me a run down of the plans for the day. He was as friendly and cool as could be. I think I set up the camera on the tripod outside, and went back inside, where everyone was watching skate videos, (and smoking some weed). Within ten minutes or so, everyone wandered out to the ramp, and the session began. Christian wasn't the only one skating, Christian Fletcher, and Christian's am guys took some runs. But he was the star of the show, and we all spread out on the deck to get shots as Christian tore it up run after run, talking with us guys on the deck between runs.
After maybe an hour of skating, Christian said, "OK, fatty break!" Most of the guys headed in the house to smoke some more weed. Again, this was 1990, years before the trouble Christian ran into in later in the 90's, and before cleaning up his act after that. When they headed inside, I asked him if I could ride my bike on the ramp. The skater vs. BMXer vibe was still strong in much of the skate world, but Christian just told me to go for it. So while most of the group went inside, I got some runs in on his vert ramp. I could never ride vert worth a damn, I'd do airs a foot under coping on any ramp. Six foot quarterpipe, I'd air a little under coping, On an 11 foot skate halfpipe with a foot of vert, I'd air a foot under coping. In the San Juan mansion pool, with 8 foot transition and four feet of vert, I aired a foot under coping. The funny thing was that day, while everyone was inside, it was me on my bike, and a guy with dreads down to his waist, who someone said was Christian's weed dealer, on his skateboard. We took turns on the ramp while most everyone else was getting stoned.
When guys started wandering back out to the ramp, someone told me to get my bike off the ramp. Much to my surprise, Christian walked up behind him, and said, "No, let the video guy ride. Let's see what you got." So I did a few under vert airs, and Christian seemed stoked to see I had some skills on a ramp, if not a lot, even if wasn't skating. That really surprised me. On local backyard ramps, I often got vibed by skaters. But at the backyard ramp of one of the top vert skaters, he was down to let everyone get some runs in, bike or board. That was really cool, and totally unexpected. I took my bike along mostly in case I had to ride some distance with the camera, following them skating.
At that point, Christian herded us into a small guest house. Herbie Fletcher had set up his movie projector, and was going to show everyone some film footage he shot of Christian a few weeks before. It was high speed film, meaning it played back in slow motion. Christian put some music on a record player, since the film didn't have sound. Once he saw the slow motion, he said, "Wait, I've got the perfect music for this." He pulled out a Muddy Waters blues album, on vinyl, and put that on. It blended perfectly with the slow motion skating footage.
I just sat there on the floor watching, wondering how this weird day had happened. I was a dorky BMXer/industry guy, sitting in a room with Christian Hosoi, a few of the top skateboard photographers, top pro surfer Christian Fletcher, and surf filmmaking legend Herbie Fletcher was showing his footage. I'd heard of all these guys before, but didn't expect to meet any of them. It was kind of surreal, like, "This is cool as hell, how did this happen?" The Muddy Waters music inspired me to do the same thing in the promo video, I edited a couple minutes of slo-mo footage of Christian doing airs to Muddy's song, "King Bee." It worked out really well.
When the day's sessions were over, we made arrangments for the next day, and I headed back down to Orange County. I can't remember exactly what order we went which places. Over the next two days, I shot some more of Christian, and his guys, Little Man, Joey Tran, and Block. They were more good friends who were good skaters, then top amateurs, and all Venice locals, I believe. We went down to Venice Beach, and I shot footage in their local skate shop, skating the curb out front, and then on the board walk, skating and hanging out. The guy with the surfboard in the mural, in the top clip, that's Block, who was also the founder of the MSA, the Mexican Surfing Association.
The short wall tricks of Venice local skater Tim Jackson, in the last post, is what inspired me to write this post. I knew Block had some different tricks on that same wall, one of which is in this clip above. Block would also skate with "sky hooks" on his board at times. Those were little plastic clips that went on the outside of your feet. They would screw into your board, then you're kind of clipped in, with plastic bits around the outside of your feet. That's how he does the method off the curb, and "bunnyhops" over Joey and Little Man. Those things were kind of hokey, but Block was a guy you didn't make fun of, and he could do cool stuff with the clips on his board.
One the second day of shooting footage, we also went to the blue pool in the clip. It was a drained backyard pool in Van Nuys, at an abandoned house that was next to a crack house. That was a great session, partly because Christian tore up the pool, and partly because we ran into this unknown guy skating named John Swope. John was doing Smith grinds that were more stylish than Christian's, which was a tall order. Christian started calling him "Johnny Grind" while we were there. We had a great session, They all skated, I shot video, and Block shot some photos.
Christian was so impressed with John's skills that he invited him to session another pool the next day. That's the big rectangle pool. But first we headed out to session another backyard pool, also The Valley, but it was half full of water or something. There was some reason it wasn't skateable. I think that's when he headed back to Venice to finish up the afternoon, actually.
On day three, we met up somewhere, picked up John Swope, and head to some obscure driveway up the 14 freeway, way north of L.A., on the way to Palmdale. It's about as 'middle of nowhere" as you can get, and still be in Los Angeles county. We parked at some little spot, then had to hike over a pretty high ridge, then down the other side, to get to this big rectangle pool. That was the day I wished I had a little Hi8 camera, not the big, heavy Sony Betacam. But we got to the spot after a solid hike, and no one was around. It was a big rectangle pool, larger than a big backyard pool, but much smaller than Olympic size. Everyone got some good skating in, and Christian just tore the place up. He would do whole lines of just cess slides, like 8 different variations of slides in one line, with that great skidding skate wheel sound. Then he'd air, grind, do corner airs. It was hard picking the best shots for the original promo video, which was 7 1/2 minutes long. There was a lot of great footage from the three days of shooting. As is the case with nearly all the raw footage in the Unreel tape library, there's a bunch of great footage sitting in a box, right now, somewhere, that no one has ever seen.
After a great session, we made the hike back to the van, and had dinner at some restaurant near the 14 and the 5 freeways. It was a great dinner, and Christian was telling stories to the skaters and me, from his travel and adventures. Then he gave the ultimate pro skater advice, how to skate a contest properly. He told his guys to have a big pasta dinner the night before the contest, to do some carbo loading. Then he told them to wake up the morning, take a big shit, smoke a fatty, have some breakfast, and "you're ready to skate hard all day." It actually was good advice (if you smoked weed), but it was so funny the way he said it. They all piled into the other car at that point, and we parted ways. I got in the Unreel Toyota "toaster" van, for the long drive back to Orange County.
Over the next 3 or 4 days, I did something I'd never done before. I actually edited the clip in our broadcast caliber edit bay. That place always intimidated me. I never in a million years thought I would be able to work that room, technology has always scared the hell out of me. It was simple cuts editing, and luckily no one else was in the building to hear me cuss and watch me struggle. But that was the one bit of video I edited in the actual edit bay, on the Big Boy system. I'd never make it as a real video editor, doing broadcast TV caliber work. I was used ot having Unreel's wizard editor Dave Alvarez doing the editing. But the whole staff had been cut at that point, except for two of us. So I managed to edit a mediocre promo video for Tuff Skts. When the women in the promotions department saw it, they wanted me to cut it down. So I made a shorter, 4 1/2 minute version. That's what got shown at trade shows, and sent out to anyone who needed to see one. I made a 3/4" copy of the original version. That was one of the tapes I lost in 2008, when I lost everything in my storage unit. I wanted that one for my demo reel someday.
So that's my story of spending three epic days with skateboard legend Christian Hosoi and his crew, in the spring of 1990. It was an great skate adventure for me. Tuff Skts ended up lasting about 6 or 8 months, as I recall. I quit Vision in July, 1990, so I wasn't around for the end of it, I'm not sure what the story was. But there's a little known piece of skateboard history few people know of, or remember.
I've got a new blog now, check it out:
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Little known Venice Beach street skater Tim Jackson- 1990
When I first moved to Southern California, Venice Beach was the place you went to see the crazy side of California in one afternoon. It was the freak show people in the rest of the world expected of California. The boardwalk area had the weirdest, craziest, coolest range of people anywhere. There was no skatepark back then, but there were curbs, short walls, and open sidewalks. Here the cameraman and editor of what I think is a Santa Cruz/OJ's wheels video, re-cut the footage of Venice local Tim Jackson. For you Old School BMX freestylers watching this, the 1984 and 1985 Venice Beach AFA contests were held on this same sidewalk area.
Although he won't take credit, Mark Gonzales is generally considered to have sparked street skating in about 1984. Boards were big and wide for those early years, and a bunch of skaters, inspired by the skating of Gonz, Tommy Guerrero, Natas Kappas, Mike Vallely and others, began to see what was possible to do with a skateboard on the urban freatures around them. Tricks were simpler, generally, but more creative and with a wider diversity, every skater had their own ideas, style, and usually a few original tricks.
Also in 1990, when this footage was taped, the skateboard hype bubble of the late 80's had popped, and sales and interest in the mainstream was going down. The skateboard and BMX industries were going into recession, as was the whole country. The long recession of the early 1990's found the hardcore skaters going underground, and street skating blew up, and grew exponentially. This era is also when the big dogs, Vision (who I worked for) Powell-Peralta, and Santa Cruz, lost their stranglehold on the business, and new companies like World Industries, New Deal, Black Label, Plan B, Blind, and a slew of other small companies, rose up. By the time ESPN decided to jump on the action sports bandwagon in 1995 with the Extreme Games (renamed the X-Games in '96), skater run companies were the norm.
This video is a great edit of that time just when the posers were fading from the scene, and street skating was evolving in many places.
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
The most inspiring music video I've ever seen... "Hi Ren" by Ren
I saw first watched this today, after Alex Leech from the U.K. shared it on Facebook and said he was watching this guy's video late into the night. This performance/video blew my fucking mind. I'm not even going to promote this post. It you're meant to find it, you'll find it. "Hi Ren" by Ren.
If you like it, check out these videos next...
Therapist reacts to "Hi Ren" video (The therapist cries before the end of the video, her reaction video is about 35 minutes long, but definitely worth watching if you're a actively creative person of any kind, or have struggled with depression/psychological issues at some point)
Ren has a bunch more work to check out. If you like these, keep digging...
It's been two days since I clicked on a Facebook post to watch "Hi Ren" for the first time. I didn't know what I was seeing. Instrumental? No, he's singing weird sounds... "Oh shit, there's lyrics..." This video changed me. It's as simple as that. I told Alex Leech, whose post I saw this video in, "some pieces make say, 'that's cool,' and make me want to go create something amazing. This is the second kind."
I've been looking for a new direction for my Sharpie art, I want to stop doing my take on classic rock star or BMX photos, and I want to draw pictures that say something. Yeah, making a living and actually having a place ot live would be nice, too. But I can live this crazy street life a while longer, if I'm doing some seriously cool work, drawings, writing, blogging, whatever.
After watching Hi Ren several times, and several of his other videos, I've finished one new drawing, a totally different idea. I started writing poetry again, which I stopped doing in late 2008, when I lost all my creative work, including 165 unpublished poems that no one else had ever seen. That was ten years worth, the best creative work I've done. Part of the new poem, called "You're not doing it right," is in the first new drawing. I'm now working on a second new drawing, another completely new direction. We'll see how it comes out.
The big things I got from being exposed to Ren's work is 1) Tackle the hard subjects, go deep, don't be afraid of going into the really deep ideas I've held back from writing and drawing. Go deep, dig into the meaning of life stuff, the things I had in the back of my head, but didn't write or try to draw. And 2) Be honest. "Brutally honest," seems cliche', but that's when the good stuff comes out, or comes through us, creatively.
I was already really prolific writing and drawing before this video sparked me in new directions. But now I'm twice as amped to dig into new themes, go deeper, and see what comes of it. That's what I got out of a video by a guy half my age, who had the courage to make one of the most incredible pieces I've ever seen on video.
How Fight Club (story and movie) were written
Looking up other stuff, I ran across this short video about how the short story/novella, "Fight Club," was written, by Chuck Palahniuk, and then the movie script, by the screenwriter Jim Uhls. I love the movie, and have read the original story. 13 minutes, cool video.
Saturday, January 14, 2023
And the best investment in 2023 is... Eggs?
2023 B like... "Yo man, I got eggs."
I hate eggs. I never buy them, even when living a normal life, unless I'm doing some baking, which I do like doing at times. But I like to laugh, and I make memes. Eggs have jumped an insane amount in price, 60% or more, and lots of people are making jokes about it. This is my entry into the expensive egg meme fest.
And just to prove I'm Old School at food memes, here's a meme with my video still of me making Oreo pancakes, way back in 1990. Tips... use Double Stuff Oreos, break into big chunks, add to batter and cook. No syrup needed.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, abandoned, and unused buildings, as well as the economy, and commercial real estate in general.
Check it out!
Friday, January 13, 2023
The Gap- A homeless issue most people don't get
The Gap- My name for the space between a homeless person having $5 to buy lunch, and the $2,500+/- per month of consistent income it takes to actually get to the next level, which is often a weekly motel room. Crossing The Gap is one reason why there are so many more chronic homeless people, long term street people, today. Myself included. This idea has been in my head for years, so I finally did a quick sketch to help visualize it. There's a HUGE difference between having $5 -$7 in your wallet to buy lunch, and the money needed to rent a room, any room, week after week, or month after month. A low wage job usually won't come close to the initial money needed to work off the streets. That's a homeless person with a shopping cart on the left, my sketchy sketch.
I avoid writing about homelessness for the most part, partly because there are just too many aspects that average working people just don't get. People aren't dumb, it's just that they just don't live in the homeless world day to day, and see the actual issues keeping so many people on the streets. It would be like me understanding the issues an airline pilot has day to day. I'm not in that world, so I don't understand the nuances.
Right about now, you are most likely thinking "but that's what shelters are for, to get people off the streets, right" No, homeless shelters, and most programs, funnel homeless people into two tracks, addiction or mental illness, and these two tracks have a bunch of programs to "help" homeless people. They do help in some ways. The part most people don't get is that these programs help homeless people get into a structured environment, and those vary widely. But the purpose of nearly all "homeless programs" is to process the person through a series of programs run by organizations, some non-profit, and some for profit, that get that person on every possible government assistance program. Those government pay for for homeless shelters, motel rooms, "tiny homes," other temporary housing, and eventually "permanent housing." This can be Section 8 housing, or another program.
During this process, there are addiction programs, mental health counseling programs, and medical programs. Nearly all of these are paid for by your tax dollars, or sometimes by grants, to the organizations. In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with that, if these were all efficiently run programs, and got all the homeless people possible working and paying taxes again, renting their own apartments at some point. Shouldn't the point be to get homeless people paying taxes again, whenever possible, instead of living off of them?
But that is not the point of homeless programs. The point of most homeless programs is to get homeless people into a living situation where government funds, your tax dollars, pay for these people to NOT work... for the rest of their lives. Yes, there are a lot of homeless people who will never work a normal job again for medical or other issues. Bu there are also a huge percentage of people who could work again, and our current programs actually pay them not to in most cases. Social Security Disability is full of scammers, millions of them, it appears, who live in apartments, buy food, watch Netflix, and play video games all day, usually with plenty of drugs, if they choose. All this is paid for, sometimes dramatically overpaid for, with your tax dollars.
To get off the streets, and actually start working and making a decent living again, IS NOT the goal. For someone who just wants to get back working again, and renting our own apartment, we need to cross The Gap. To go from panhandling or recycling $5-$10 to buy lunch and bus fare, to earning around $2,500 a month, from the streets, to pay for renting a weekly motel room ($450-$550 a week), or a roommate room ($7000-$900 a month) buy any meds, do laundry, have transportation money, and day to day essential items. If you get kicked off of Food Stamps for working and earning too much, then you need food money as well.
If you go into housing programs, and find a decent paying work, you'll most likely lose your food stamps, Disability, G.R. SSI, or other payments before your earn enough to rent a room of some kind, and pay all normal expenses. Plus you may lose your medical, and everyone on the streets has some kind medical issues, if only minor ones.
In addition, homeless people in prorams are often treated like little kids, have overly strict rules, curfews, and other rules that make the temporary housing programs worse than living on the streets. Yes, rules are needed, I get that. So what I've seen happen, over and over, is people go into programs, and they just work the system for a couple of months, maybe a few months, until they get sick of the B.S.m the rules (can't smoke a cigarette inside or outside, can't have friends into their room, etc.). Then they have a meltdown, or just go AWOL from the program, because they'd prefer their personal freedom on the streets to the life in the program. Then they live the street life of their choice (drugs, alcohol, prositution, or just living alone and free, whatever), until the programs seem worth another chance. That's usually when bad or cold wather hits. Ask a paramedic how many ambulance calls they get right before a big storm or a cold spell. Homeless people call ambulances just to try and get out of the cold all the time.
In the meantime, when a new program gets going, their workers motivation is to stay employed, and the program's motivation is to keep that program going, so they need a continuing stream of new bums to sign-up. I'm not saying these programs don't have value, they help some people leave the streets, and live on a govrnment check, sometimes permanently. S.S. Disability IS Universal Basic Income already, in effect, if not in name, for some sick people, and a lot of lazy people, usually with addictions. These programs, collectively, now run into the billions of dollars now in some metro areas, over a few years time.
Both of these become feedback loops. Homeless people, particularly lazy ones, and many addicts, are used to bouncing in and out of programs, living for months on the street in between. On the flip side, many homeless programs (non-profit and profitable) have a neverending stream of their needed commodity, homless people. These feedback loops have been growing for 20 years or so, and those people who earn their living working in these programs plan to KEEP making their living in them. These cycles keep growing, so the visible street (and RV/van) homless populations keep growing, and the dollars flowing to programs keep growing as well.
Just a reminder, the 10 Year plan to End Homelessness had its 20th anniversary in 2022, it began in 2002. There were A LOT LESS homeless people in 2002.
Meanwhile, the people who are temporarily down and out, and just trying to find decent work again (a "normal" job, gig work, some other legit source of income) have to cross The Gap, from coming up with $5 to $25 a day to get by, to a stream of income of around $2,500 a month to rent a room (motel or roommates), then pay for food, transportation, laundry, new clothes, a storage unit, perhaps education/training, and basic everyday needs. They have to do all of that, while doing what's needed to survive and get by in the streets, or some sketchy situation day after day. It's damn near impossible.
That's why most people just lay back and bounce in and out of programs. Some wind up in Section 8 eventually, some just bounce between the streets and programs indefinitely. This is also why we now have about three men who are unemployed and NOT looking for work, for every "officially" unemployed man that's counted in the unemployment data (See Men Without Work, Nicolas Eberstadt). The numbers are lower for women, but there's a similar trend. The homeless programs are one of many things pulling working age Americans out of the workforce, permanently. Less workers, more strain on Social Security for retires, and government programs of all kinds.
This is just ONE little aspect of the homelessness issue, which I've learned way too much about, and which I really don't want to spend time writing about. But the general lack of understanding of the issues involved bug me. I'm going to get my ass kicked, in some way ,for writing this post. But it needed to be said somewhere.
Thursday, January 12, 2023
The Haro Bar Hop- the lesson I learned from my first how-to trick
Here's a Bob Haro demo in the U.K. from 1983, The Master, official inventor of freestyle, wowing the kids in the U.K. in the early days. This was the year that the Haro Master, the first BMX bike built for "trick riding" came out. I couldn't find a video of Bob actually doing the bar hop, but this clip is from 1983, the year I saw Bob's how-to in BMX Plus!.
As I've said many times in my blogs, I got into BMX in the summer of 1982, in Blue Valley trailer park, outside of Boise, Idaho. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school, and there were about ten junior high and high school guys in the park. Isolated from all the kids in town, we'd gather after dinner each night by the basketball court, at the end of the pond, to do something. There were only four teenage girls in the park, and only one of those who didn't have a steady boyfriend. With no girls to chase, us guys wound up playing basketball, football, whiffle ball, threw rocks at each other, or rode our BMX bikes, for a couple of hours after supper. In early summer, we'd switch off on the evening activities, one day football, one day whiffle ball. But as the summer of 1982 progressed, we spent more and more time out at our little jumps, pushing each other on our sketchy BMX bikes.
By late summer, we started buying BMX magazines once in a while, which spurred us to ride harder. At the end of October, we found the BMX track, and three guys raced one race, then we all piled into my dad's van the next weekend, and the whole crew raced the last BMX race of the season. We were hooked on BMX big time... just as winter began to roll in. Come spring time, we were amped to get riding again. It was sometime that spring that I bought a copy of BMX Plus! that had a trick how-to from Bob Haro himself. It was called the Haro bar hop. The trick was amazingly simple, ride along, standing on the pedals, jump up, kick your feet through your hands, and land sitting on the crossbar, still rolling forward. At the time, I was still the worst rider in the trailer park, and jonesing to learn a trick the other guys didn't know, hoping to move up to second of third worst rider. "BMX freestyle" didn't have a name yet, it was still "trick riding."
I checked down the hill, no one was out at the basketball court. The coast was clear. I took my bike, a red Sentinal Exploder GX (K-Mart special type bike from a store cheaper than K-Mart) and my copy of BMX Plus, determined to learn the trick before I showed the magazine to anyone else. It took about 20 or 30 minutes, but I got the Haro bar hop down. By the time another kid showed up, I was hopping over the bars, landing on the crossbar, and riding 10-20 feet like that. Boom! I was the kid with the new trick, upping my BMX game in the trailer park, which was my whole plan. My perceived level of BMX suckage dramtically decreased. Within 15 minutes, three other guys were learning the trick, rolling around the old, rough asphalt of the basketball court.
It was that drive to out-do the other guys that pushed us all. We were pretty broke, none of us were much good at anything, and we lived in a trailer park, where there was lots of negative reinforcement that we would always suck at pretty much everything. We were HUNGRY, we wanted to prove people wrong, just in general. We all wanted to be good at something. BMX skills became our way to do that. So we kept pushing each other. That spring day was the first time I was the kid with the new trick, and I won't lie, it felt fucking good.
As the months passed, I did Haro bar hops now and then. I wound up learning one of my biggest BMX lessons from that simple trick. One day I tried one, and my toe caught the handlebars, and I got squirrely and ate shit, getting jabbed in the side by the end of the bars in the fall. It hurt like hell for a minute. and I cussed and stumbled around. Since my side hurt, I didn't try the trick again that day. A day or two later, I tried it again. I was scared. I couldn't jump my feet over the bars. I either didn't jump right, or I caught my toe, and fell. My mind created a mental block, and I never learned to do that trick again. Ever. I never landed another Haro bar hop, easy as that trick was.
That bummed me out, but the lesson was clear, when I crashed on a trick from then on, if I could move at all, which I usually could, I got up immediately, and tried to land the trick again. There were tricks I never landed, and a few, like boomerangs, that I learned, but gave up on, in that case because everyone did them, and the killed my wimpy abs. But I didn't lose another trick after that while I was riding consistently. If I fell, I got back up and tried, usually until I landed it at least one more time. Later I also learned that visualization can help overcome phobias and mental blocks to many tricks.
But it was from the simple Haro bar hop, the one trick I actually learned from a how-to by Bob Haro himself, taught me my first life lesson from BMX. Get back up, keep trying, no matter what.
Crazy as it sounds, that lesson is something I do every day, in my current sketchy life situation. Things are rough right now, just in day to day life, but I get back up each morning, litterally of the ground, and work to do something creative every day. Standing up each morning, is another example of that lesson, keep going, no matter what life throws at you. Forty years after learning that simple lesson, I'm still applying it daily in completely different circumstances. Whatever your level, whatever your era in BMX, we all learned more than just tricks by riding day after day for years. That's a great part of the lifelong legacy of spending time in BMX freestyle, or in other action sports.
Before BMX, I was a kid who daydreamed amazing ideas. Man, I invented great shit in my head, or sketched out on paper. I had wonderful answers to the world's problems, and dreamed up all kinds of stuff. And then did nothing. I was a dreamer who didn't act on my great ideas, for the most part. When I did try something, if it didn't work, I'd be like, "Well I tried, it didn't work," and I'd give up. We all know what Yoda said about trying. BMX taught me persistence and perseverance. Life keeps testing me, and all of us, on these, and many other, basic life lessons.
These days my writing/blogging focus in more on what's happening now, in 2023. But most of you reading this blog check my blog out because of my Old School freestyle BMX tales. So I'm going to write a series of posts on the life lessons learned from BMX, to add to all the other BMX posts I've written. Enjoy.
Saturday, January 7, 2023
BMX, action sports, and the 2023 recession...
Here's a really good look at where the bike industry is, as things slow down going into 2023. Recession? We're probably in one. Maybe. But this guy from Top to Bottom MTB channel does a really solid job of explaining the wild ride of the whole bike industry since the beginning of 2020, how it got to where it is today, and where things seems to be heading. It's a 7 minute video, well worth checking out if you ride any bike on a regular basis.
As a Generation X, middle-aged geezer now, I remember being part of the BMX/skate industry in early 1989. I was working at Unreel Productions, the video arm of the Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear empire. Yep, kids, "street wear" happened about 35 years ago. Anyhow, I was basically a production assistant at a company that sponsored skateboarders, snowboarders, and BMXers. I used my business card to get into the big bicycle industry trade show in Long Beach, in January of 1989. At that time, BMX freestyle had peaked in its first big wave of popularity, BMX racing was peaking in its 2nd big wave, and skateboarding was peaking in its 3rd wave of popularity.
As I walked around, I literally heard the same mantra over and over, in several booths, and in small talk between industry people. "BMX is DEAD! Mountain bikes are the new thing." I was a hardcore, if not that great, BMX freestyler, riding every night, just for the fun of it, at that point. I kept thinking, "What are all of you talking about? BMX IS NOT DEAD!" It wasn't dead to all the hardcore riders around the U.S., and some parts of the world. But it was dead to the major bike companies, and to the corporate sponsors form outside the sport. They declared BMX dead, and money drained away from the sport. The fad was over as far as they were concerned. Almost every BMX freestyle brand dropped their teams that summer. Top pro riders were left without sponsors. All of the hardcore riders, regardless of what level our riding was at, went, "What the fuck, dudes?"
The bad news was that it was really hard to get paid to ride a freestyle bike, even for many top pros. GT and Haro kept their teams going, and toured their guys all the time, to sell bikes where they could. This is what causes the waves (roughly ten year cycles) in BMX and skateboarding. The major bicycle corporations that ride fads pulled their money out, along with corporations that sponsor from outside the bike and skate industries. They are about profit only, and they ride the "fads" like surfers ride waves. When one wave is over, they're on to the next one. In 1989-1990, that meant money flowing out of BMX and skateboarding, and into the new things, mountain bikes (BMX bikes for "adults") snowboarding, and inline skating.
The good thing about these downturns in the waves, only the hardcore people are left, in the sport aspect, and in the indsutry. Vert skating was still ruling skateboarding in 1989, but street skating had been slowly rising in popularity. In the down years, the long economic recession of the early 1990's, World Industries rose up, sponsoring street skaters only. Many skater-owned companies popped up, like New Deal, Black Label, Blind, Birdhouse, Plan B, 101, and others. In the BMX world, S&M Bikes was just really getting going as the downturn hit. Soon after came Standard, Hoffman, Eastern, FBM, Kink, and other rider-owned companies. In both BMX and skateboarding, the riders and skaters took over their industries.
Riding and progression didn't slow down, it sped up. Contests became local events, the big glam events ended. The main sponsors of BMX and skateboarding in the early 1990's were ramen (23 cents a pack), Del Taco (49 cent tacos), Taco Bell (59 cent tacos), and in the Huntington Beach area, What-a-Lotta Pizza, with $4 cheese pizzas and $5 pepperoni pizzas. We ate so many of those pizzas at the P.O.W. House, that when no one ordered a pizza for three days, the manager of the local What-a-Lotta Pizza called us up to see if we were alright. Seriously, that actually happened. We promptly ordered 4 or 5 pizzas.
If you read my blog on any regular basis, you know I'm an amateur futurist, I write posts about economics, recessions, and shit like that. (Thank you to the 7 people who read each of those posts). I think we are now going into a Big World recession, and it will last a while. A lot of action sports companies will downsize, some good riders and skaters will lose sponsorships, some will get smaller deals, and some industry people will be laid off. This is already happening in the high tech world.
But these sports are like a fungus, they never really go away. They go underground. Events like Steve Crandall's DIY comps, and Trey Jones' Swampfest will probably be the norm for two or three years. All the sports will continue to evolve, and a lot of the idiots will wash out of these sports (sorry, not me, I keep blogging from way outside the industry). The people who really love action sports, athletes and industry people, will stick around. A lot of crazy ideas will be tried, and really cool new shit will emerge on multiple fronts. But you might have to get a day job. Or flip stuff on eBay to help survive. When you run out of food, ask one of us geezers who survived the 90's, we all have at least 7 different recipes for ramen meals, most that can be made for under a $1 each.
In a surfing metaphor, the big set of waves has passed, in the business world. Now we wait, and try new ideas using very little money. In a year or two, things pick up some, in 3-4 years, big money will probably flow back in, much more than before. That's a rough timeline, The Fed is pumping and dumping the economy these days, and they set the time schedule. Generally, every wave of these sports gets bigger than the last. Except inline skating, fruitbooting just kind of fizzled.
This is a BIG recession in the Big World, like nearly all of the world, the big shots who run political parts of the world, and the financial world, are battling it out, and all of us regular people get sloshed around in the meantime. The world will look quite a bit different in 5 years. Those of you who try out new ideas, and build some good new shit, will be rewarded down the road, most likely. All of these sports are much, MUCH larger than they were in the 1990's, so BMX, skateboarding, and other action sports can't totally die, like they nearly did back then. But things are slowing down. This happens about once a decade. Now is when it gets fun. Learn to live cheap, and think about where you would like to see things at in 5 years. Then do some DIYing and make something cool happen. Ride on!
Friday, January 6, 2023
Trend analyst Gerald Celente says, "The game is rigged"- Is he right?
Here's one of the best future forecasters out there, whose work I've never read. My mistake, I only learned of him recently. This is a crazy interview with Daniella Cambone, where he goes into economic trends, World War III, the future of democracy, the recession, crypto, politics, crypto, gold, and much more. If any of these things interest you, watch this 42 minute video.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, unused, and abandoned buildings, as well as the economy, and commerical real estate in general. Check it out!
Thursday, January 5, 2023
Martin Aparijo now... he just keeps getting smoother
One of the original flatland innovators of the 1980's, long time GT pro, Martin Aparijo, is still riding a lot, and he just keeps getting smoother. Here are a three of his recent videos, all short sequences, of him in the last month or so, from Martin's YouTube channel. Above he does a silky smooth backwards wheelie variation.
Here are some more short clips:
And the link to Martin's YouTube channel main page
If you read have read my blogs on any kind of regular basis, you know my BMX posts are usually my personal stories, sometimes my own little adventures riding, but often something I witnessed, usually involving a top rider or event. Basically, I write BMX memoir tales, mostly. It makes sense to add a little story here.
Thanks to my zine, and meeting FREESTYLIN' magazine editor, Andy Jenkins, at a contest, I got my first chance to do a freelance article for FREESTYLIN' in the spring of 1986. Andy asked me to write the article for the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters contest, which I was going to anyway to compete in. In the magazine world then, freelance writers would pay our way to an event, write the article afterwards, and then get a check for the work when the magazine issue was published, which was usually about three months later. I was working at Pizza Hut when I got the gig, making about $450 a month. I flew solo to Tulsa on a wing and a prayer, with barely enough money to scrape through the weekend. I didn't didn't have hotel reservations, I didn't even know where the contest was being held. It was the first time I had ever flown to a contest, and the first time I had ever flown solo anywhere. In other words, I was an idiot at traveling.
I headed out of San Jose airport, and like every flight west of the Mississippi seems to do, my my plane flew over the rand Canyon, and then had a layover at Dallas/Fort Worth. My dad had flown through DFW, and told me to find my next gate while on the first flight, since it could be a long walk, even a run, if I had to go from end to end of the airport. I got my bearings with the airport map in the online magazine, and made it to the gate of my second flight, and waited there. I didn't see any other BMX riders, but it was a huge airport, so I didn't really expect to.
Then, about fifteen minutes before the plane was ready to load, I saw Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some blond guy walk up, across the aisle. I knew Eddie and Martin from all the magazine photos I'd seen of them. At the time, I was still incredibly shy, and hated to go up and introduce myself to people. I was like a Rainman level of shy then, or pretty close. But it was also my first major trip to an AFA contest, and I needed to meet as many top pros and amateurs as I could, to get info for my article. I got past the shyness, and walked over and introduced myself.
Martin and Eddie were totally cool, and they introduced me to the other guy, a kid named Josh White. Josh White had just done the photo shoot and interview for FREESTYLIN' that would blow him up as one of the top new vert riders, but the magazine wouldn't be out for a couple of months. So he was still unknown to most freestylers. I hung out and talked to them until the last boarding call, when I was getting really nervous. But we all walked to the ramp, and made the plane. That was the day I met Martin Aparijo, late March or early April of 1986.
I wound up meeting two other up-and-coming vert riders at that contest. I met an East coast kid named Joe Johnson at the Tulsa airport. There was another kid, a younger one, who was doing some crazy variations, as well, but I didn't get is name at the contest. As fate would have it, that kid got his first editorial photo in my first freelance article. That article, a review of my zine, and most amazing, the Josh White interview, all appeared in the July 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN'. The kid who got his first photo was none other than Oklahoma local, Mat Hoffman.
Starting with meeting Martin, Eddie, and Josh, that was the coolest weekend of my life up until that point. Joe Johnson introduced me to the Haro guys, and I crashed in one of their rooms for the weekend. I seriously felt like I had won some contest. The GT guys were at a different motel, but many of the top riders were at the trusty old Holiday Inn, where I stayed. It was a crazy weekend.
Right about the time that Tulsa article came out, I got flown down to Wizard Publications, to interview for a job there, and getting hired changed the course of my life. Part of my new job was driving Windy Osborn, the photographer, to photo shoots. One of the first bike tests we did was for a GT freestyle bike. We did a photo shoot with Martin Aparijo on a sidewalk in Redondo Beach, doing Miami hop hops. That was the first time I really talked to Martin at any length.
Here's Martin praying those mags would hold up, in that FREESTYLIN' photo from 1986. Windy Osborn photos, borrowed from the web.
Martin's an all around cool guy. Besides being a pioneering freestyler and a better dirt jumper than most people realized, he's always down to tell you a story or two. If you're struggling, he's likely to give you a pep talk to get back on track. When I make it down to H.B. Tuesdays in Huntington Beach, Martin's always there, gliding some new variation of the classic tricks, and telling stories.
I wanted to do a quick post tonight, and the thought of showing everyone who reads my blog Martin's YouTube channel seemed like a good idea. If you haven't already, go check out his channel, as he keeps adding more videos, and keeps getting smoother and smoother it seems.
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Cheap living: Flophouses vs. L.A. homeless "tiny homes"
Though I lived in the P.O.W. House for two stretches in the early 1990's, I didn't have a video camera at the time,so I shot very little video there. So here's a bit of Dave Parrick's video footage of Keith Treanor in the backyard, then Dave Clymer on the spine ramp out front, about 1992-93.
Sometime around 1989, a group of BMX racers formed, rented a house, and dubbed themselves the Pros Of Westminster, or P.O.W.'s. It was the first serious BMX rider house, a four bedroom, two bath, single story place, on Iroquois Road in Westminster. There was a total of 22 riders that lived in the house, officially, over the course of about five years. There were also at least 200 or more traveling riders, from across the U.S. and around the world, that spent one or more nights there at some point. The best known members of the P.O.W. house were Dave Clymer, Chris Moeller, Alan Foster, Brian Foster, John Paul Rogers, Todd Lyons, and Jay Lonergan.
A few riders, Dave Clymer, in particular, were there for long stretches, years, and others were there for a few months,at a time. Riders were moving in and out over the life of the P.O.W. House. Generally there were two guys in each bedroom, usually on single matresses on the floor, sharing the bedrooms. It wasn't as freaky as it sounds, it was just a bunch of 20-something, hardcore BMX riders, living cheap during the long recession of the early 1990's. We had 8 to 12 paying roommates pretty much all the time, though often several were away traveling. Rent on the house then was around $900 a month, I think. With utilities, each guy paid from $90 to maybe $120 a month for rent and utilities. At the time, renting a room in a nice apartment, in a traditional California roommate situation, was $350 to $400 a month. A one bedroom apartment was $600 or so. With rent and bills right around $100 a month, we could spend a lot less time working, and a lot more time riding our bikes and traveling, which was our main priority then, other than beer and women.
For about $1,200 initial rent and deposit, the P.O.W. House's changing group of roommates provided a dirty, rowdy, fun, and CHEAP, but sort of decent, place ot live. It worked for that time period, and for our group of guys, a couple of women, and Bob the Dog. No one was trying to escape homelessness, but we had a cool, if usually dirty, self-directed, super low cost, housing solution for all the guys looking for a super cheap place ot live in Southern California. Another house, the H.B. House, took over a couple years later, for more young BMXers, in the mid and late 90's.
Just to be clear, to me a "flophouse" is a house or apartment with a lot of mostly unrelated people living there, with cheap rent being a priority. In my mind, it's not a drug den, though there may be people getting high. Those places are crackhouses, a completely different thing, in my mind. The P.O.W. House was a bunch of us living cheap so we could ride our bikes more, basically. Artists and musicians and many college students have been living cheap for generations, and it's normal among action sports people and punk rock musicians to crash on people's couches and floors while traveling. I'm not trying to diss the P.O.W. House, just use it as a personal example of living cheap, compared the the homeless world.
Now, I realize it's 30 years later, and everything, except pizza, oddly enough, have gone up in price. OK, $5 pizzas are now $6 at Little Caesar's or 7-11 with their bonus program. Anyhow, rent has gone up dramatically, and the whole internet age has happened since.
In addition, the population of chronically homeless people, here in the L.A. metro area, and in nearly all major cities, has exploded. One of the resources being used to house some of these homeless people is called "Tiny Homes." These small, 8 foot by 8 foot, prefab shelters are built in little groups, on obscure pieces of land, since land is so expensive in Southern California. The people in these little communities share bathrooms, showers, and get some food from the people who run the places. They get to keep their foodstamps, to help them eat other meals.
It gets people off the streets, and into semi-permanent places, under a roof. These are temporary housing, while homeless people work through programs to get permanent housing, Section 8 or something like it, paid for by a group of government resources, aka your taxi dollars.
So far, that makes sense to most people. Give people a small place to live temporarily, get them off the streets, and into programs for whatever issues they are dealing with. But as a homeless guy myself, and a blogger, I've learned there aren't really programs for people who want to actually earn a real living again. The housing people talked to all of us in my current area, for a while, about the options. My first option was to share a tiny home with a street friend, a raging (though very funny) drunk, occasional meth user, who was prone to violent outbursts. I declined. I asked a lot of questions, since I've stayed long times in shelters while I was back east. I know theft, daily backed up toilets, lots of drama, and occasional fights, are always issues when you put a bunch of fucked up people in close proximity to each other.
I also did a bit of research. Having spent a long time in various forms of homelessness, I know that homelessness is now an industry in certain aspects. There are people working at non-profit organizations, and some businesses, making their living from "the homeless problem." I have no issue with businesses making profits, that's a major point of business. But back east, I learned how many crony deals work between non-pofit organizations, taking in donations, grant money, and taxpayer money, and funneling it into their buddies' businesses. Old fashioned cronyism. Some organizations are legit, but there's a lot of shadiness as well.
So I began to wonder how much these "tiny homes" actually cost. It was hard to find good numbers at first. One article said the tiny homes cost $7,000 and up. Another source I saw a while back said they cost $17,000. For quite a while, I had no idea what these "tiny homes" cost.
The subject came up while chatting with someone on Facebook, and so I took another look. I found this report, which comes up at the top of Google now. According to this report, by an organization that has been digging through records for years, to bring obscure info like this to the public.
It turns out L.A.'s "tiny homes" for the homeless, cost from $32,712 per bed, to $60,047 per bed, for an average of $42,344 per bed, for the 224 beds in the "tiny homes communities, built, at the time of the report. The report also says the service providers who are running the camps get $55 a night, per bed, for the services they provide on a continuing basis.
OK, this is a SHITLOAD of money to house 224 of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county these days. Yes, Pallet, the company making these tinyhomes, is doing well, really well, their business has increased 7,000% in a couple of years early in the pandemic. Again, I have no problem with businesses making a solid profit. The "tiny homes" idea makes sense as one way to work on the huge homelessness issue in major cities.
My point here is that a bunch of us young BMX riders, 30 years ago, figured out a way to house ourselves for about $100 a month, which would equal $218 today, per bed, per month, figuring in inflation. We lived in a flophouse, a BMX rider themed flop house. That was during the long, double dip recession, and era somewhat like today's, in that sense.
My point is, I'm pretty sure we can do better, here in California. We are close to 40 million people as a state. That includes many of the most innovative people in the country. I'm pretty sure a few businesses here could build what are bascially pre-fab tool sheds, with a power outlet, and some portable bathrooms and showers, for less than $84,000 each (tiny homes are made for two people). You can buy a 8' X 12" tool shed, which is 50% larger than the "tiny homes," for $3,700 at Home Depot (link below).
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of contractors who could safely wire tiny homes for a single power outlet, in a small community. There are companies, like this one in California, that make good portable restrooms and showers. There are also lots of other types of small housing options that could potentially work to house homeless people, like myself, at many different price points. YouTube "real estate whisperer" Kristina Smallhorn has a bunch of videos on these options. Here are a few:
Pallet's Tiny Homes, and other small house ideas...
LA Currents segment on Pallet Tiny Homes - The ones L.A. is using now, for and average of $42,000 per bed average.
These ideas don't included using empty houses, empty retail buildings, empty office properties, buying current motels out, renting apartments, houses, and any other possible options.
Way back in about 1997, before my struggle with homelessness began, I worked as a furniture mover. one day we were moving a dirty Dogloo, an igloo-shaped, molded plastic dog house. Joking around, I asked my co-worker, "Why don't they make these things for homeless people, call them Bumgloos?" We laughed, and kept working.
The idea stuck in my head, and at one point, while homeless, years later, I was thinking about writing a novel about a guy who starts making the Bumgloos, (8 foot diameter, four foot high walls, with a domed roof that fits over them- so several could be packed on a flatbed truck) and builds a community for the homeless. That also winds up housing some artists, and BMXers and skateboarders who want to live super cheap. They build a skate/bike park, art studios, a mini mart, a miniature golf course, a P.O. Box shop (homeless need mail) and Kinko's type office place (computer rental for homeless people). Those businesses help put some of the people to work, and help pay for the community, drawing in business from the local city people. That was the basic idea, not just housing, but work and fun as well. I never wrote the novel, but I thought it out pretty extensively, while homeless, and unable to find any job, when I was in North Carolina (2009-2012, 2017-2018).
Obviously, that idea is similar to the current tiny home communities, happening in many parts of the U.S.. What you might not believe is that even Andres Duany, a major urban designer, and proponent of the New Urbanism movement, has been paid big bucks to share somewhat similar ideas, with his clients.
Several years ago, he was hired for a sizeable sum to help re-design, and help kickstart Highpoint, North Carolina's business development and economic prospects. Highpoint is a former industrial city, a leader in the furniture industry, that got hit hard by factories closing down in the 1980's-2000's. One asset they had was the dying Oak Hollow mall, a now fairly typical "dead mall." Duany's team suggested, (are you ready?) turning the mall property into a business incubator, using lots of shipping containers to let entrepreneurs and artists build the containers into live/work spaces, as well as using the mall's indoor area for similar purposes. Duany understands, and says so in the long videos of those Highpoint meeetings, artist, small business people, and entrepreneurs all need the same thing: CHEAP places to live and work. Cheap live/work places help them get their ideas off the ground.
Build a place where these people can do that, and you'll attract a lot of people with new ideas, who can then bounce off each other's creativity while living in this incubator community. In my nomeclature, this is nurturing "Creative Scenes." The leaders of Highpoint did not see benefit in the "crazy" shipping conatiner ideas, and they didn't apply any of these ideas. But I believe Duany and team are right on track for what's needed in so many places around the U.S. now. These same ideas could be used to house the currently homeless, as well as other groups of people looking to live really cheap for a while.
So there it is, a whole bunch of potential ideas to help chip away at the homeless issue in L.A., and anywhere else. Sheare your ideas and thoughts on Facebook, if you want to weigh in.
Monday, January 2, 2023
This blog just topped 140,000 page views- Thank You!
Being a homeless guy, the places I charge my laptop are usually not open on holidays. So I didn't check this blog the last couple of days, after running my battery down watching videos the other night, before New Year's Eve. Much to my surprise, my stats say I got over 1,500 page views on December 30th, but I'm not sure which post got them. In any case, the popped the total over 140,000. Cool!
The post by post stats aren't showing that crazy number, about double what I usually get in a month, these days. Thanks whomever checked my blog out. My previous blog page view record was a little over 125,000, for the original Freestyle BMX Tales blog, back in 2009-2012 ( deleted that blog in 2012). This blog topped that last year, or maybe in 2020. In any case, thanks for checking out my blog, I'll try to keep putting out pretty solid content. Sooner or later this writing thing may even pay, again. I don't get paid for page views, but it shows somebody is checking out what I'm rambling about. Thanks everyone! More stuff coming soon...