Check out my writing on Substack

Here's a clip of Joe Rogan interviewing Substack founder Chris Best, on the JRE podcast.  Substack is a platform designed for writers and readers.  Writers can write and publish on Substack, and readers can find the work on the website, or subscribe either for free content, or behind a paywall.  When readers subscribe, the posts, or newsletters, are sent to their email.  The platform is set up for writers to publish the original work they're really passionate about, and be able to make a living at it, if they can draw a big enough paid audience.  For lesser known writers, it's a place to publish and build an email list, and have the potential to start charging for their work at some point.  

You can check out my Substack page, and subscribe if you like, at this link:

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack

I started my first zine with a manual (as in NOT electric) typewriter, almost identical to this one above, except mine was the "travel model" built into a little suitcase.  It was the laptop of its day, made for traveling journalists and writers.  It was a 1930's or 1940's era Royal.  I bought the typewriter for $15 at the San Jose Swap Meet.  I published 11 issues of my first zine with that typewriter, which landed me a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, drawing me into the BMX industry.   Public domain photo.

I'm 57 years old now, and I've been self-publishing my writing for 38 years, since I started my first BMX freestyle zine, in September of 1985.  I wasn't trying to be a writer then, I was 19, and had just moved to San Jose, California, from Boise, Idaho, with my family.  I didn't have .  Armed with an ancient Royal typewriter, and a Kodak 110 instamatic camera, I published my first zine.  When I met Bay Area riders, they said, "This is cool, when the next one coming out?" I said, "Next one?  So I went to work on making another zine, and wound up being the zine guy for the Bay Area freestyle scene in late 1985 and half of 1986, putting out 11 issues of San Jose Stylin'.  

I spent a few months working at Wizard Publications, doing some writing, all the proofreading, but working mostly as an assistant for the other editors and our photographer.  I wasn't the right fit at Wizard, and they laid me off.  I got a job as editor and photographer for the AFA (American Freestyle Association) newsletter, for most of 1987.  More writing, and shooting mediocre photos with my 35 mm Pentax.  That job led to producing some videos for the AFA, which led me to a job a Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company, in December of 1987.  

While I learned how videos were made at Unreel, working as everybody's production assistant there, I had some time and money, and I was starting to think of myself as a writer.  I was writing poetry, but not telling anyone about it, thanks to a former girlfriend who was a singer in a local rock band.  Trying to write her a hit song led to writing "lyrics."  After she dumped me, I realized that when you don't have a band, "song lyrics" are actually poems.  I had become a closet poet, and public zine publisher through the late 1980's and early 1990's.  Somewhere in that period, I started journaling, and trying to be a "real" writer.  Like every wannabe writer in their 20's, I planned to become a famous writer by writing a bestselling book, or maybe a hit movie screenplay, at some point.  That didn't happen.  But I kept writing.

What did happen is that I began to write, mostly in my journal, on a regular basis.  Through the 1990's, I put out a handful of zines, mostly about BMX, but with other bits that interested me.  In 1992, inspired by a Henry Rollins poetry book my roommate showed me, I published my first zine of poetry.  Coming out of the poet closet, and putting my mushiest thoughts and feelings out in public scared the shit out of me.  I gave a copy to one of the American Gladiators, who I worked with.  A crew guy on the show named Lico, a Mexican American hippy and diehard Grateful Dead fan, said my stuff reminded him or Jack Kerouac.  Much to my surprise, several people actually liked my poetry.  That first poetry zine, published in 1992, also earned me the nickname The White Bear, which, I took as my poetry penname for a while.  

All together, In the 1980's and 1990's, I published over 35 zines, was a staff writer for four BMX magazines, and contributed words or photos to four more.  In the early and mid 2000's, I was working mostly as a taxi driver, and most of my writing was journaling, though I put out a few zines.  My most popular zine ever, The White Bear's Very, Very Unofficial Guide to Huntington Beach, is one I published in 2006 (I think).  I handed out over 250 copies of that 48 page zine in my taxi, to passengers, and H.B. locals.  That's the only zine that ever made me money.  I probably made about $1,500 in taxi rides from people who called me, form my name and number on the zine.  There are about 300 Irish kids, all college age, who came to Huntington Beach every summer, and they kept asking where different things were.  So I made the zine as a guide book, and looked up a whole bunch of H.B. history, like the old 1920's brick jail cells behind the Longboard bar downtown, across the alley.  Locals started seeing the zine, and that whole summer people would walk up to my taxi when I was parked down town, and ask, "Can I get one of those little H.B books?"  

In 2007, I discovered blogs.  I used to pay $5 an hour to get on the internet at the Huntington Beach library, because I didn't have my own computer.  I started a blog about taxi driving.  It completely sucked.  My health was getting really bad because of all the weight I gained driving a cab.  I got cellulitis, a severe leg infection, three times, and the first bout nearly killed me.  At the same time, the taxi business was dying, and so was I, so I had to quit.  That sucked, because my taxi was my source of income, my transportation, and I lived in it.  

I wound up living on the streets of Orange County, CA, for a year, unable to find work, and panhandling to survive.  Eventually I accepted my family's offer of a plane ticket to North Carolina.  I'd never lived there, and I didn't want to, I grew up in Ohio and Idaho mostly, I had no connection to NC.  My parents and my sister's family just wound up there years after I moved out.  

As the U.S. plunged into the Great Recession, in November of 2008, I wound up living in my parent's spare bedroom, in a tiny apartment, in a small town, in central North Carolina.  I couldn't find any job, I was broke, living with my mellow dad and my mom, who I never got along with.  I was fat, broke, didn't have a BMX bike, living in a toxic household again, and completely depressed.  But my parents' computer was in my room.  It was the first time I ever had full time access to the internet.  So after a couple weeks of surfing the web and watching too much porn, I decided to start a blog, about my time in the BMX industry.  I started a blog called FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales.  I knew nothing about the internet, or online communities.  I didn't know how to do tags, or even upload a photo.  I was basically a tech Luddite, but needed some creative outlet to keep from going completely insane in NC.  I wrote little stories about working at FREESTYLIN' magazine.  I thought the internet was like this big black hole, a void with weird little web pages just kind of floating around out in the void.  So I wrote little stories about working at the magazines, and set them adrift, out there in the interwebs.  

After about 30 posts, one post went viral in the Old School BMX Freestyle community online.  I didn't even know there was an Old School BMX community online.  Friends, and riders I didn't even know, started emailing, and telling me to keep writing my weird BMX stories.  So I did.  Since early December of 2008, I've written over 2,500 blog posts, and tried at least 50 different blog ideas out.  I've pulled in somewhere over 450,000 page views in the 14 years since.  To top it off, I just contributed to one of the articles in Greystoke magazine, the first Old School BMX magazine, which just came out.  I was stoked to be asked to do that.  

I not only couldn't find a good job in North Carolina, I couldn't find any job.  I couldn't get hired as a gas station cashier or anything.  Because of that, from sometime in 2009 on, I've been trying to figure out how to make a living as a writer in the 21st  century.  It's a completely different world from the 1980's, when magazines dominated.  Now it's about self-publishing, and "building your own brand," and then finding some way to "monetize your audience."  I found an audience in the Old School BMX freestyle world, but haven't figured out the monetize part.    

I've come full circle as a writer.  I've spent 38 years writing about things I'm interested in, and putting much of that work out in the world, in some way, a DIY self publisher since way back.  In those 38 years, I've been an actual paid writer for less than two years.  

Just over a month ago, I found Substack, a platform designed for people who love to write, and think they have something to say to the world.  I tried it out, and spent the last month figuring out how my writing and ideas would fit into the parameters of this new platform.  I've got about 20 posts on Substack, most of them pretty long, and on a single subject.  Only one is about BMX.  This is where I'm going to do most of my writing from now on.  

There will be some BMX stuff, but there will be a whole lot of other ideas, as well.  I will still be writing stuff on this blog, just less stuff, and mostly BMX or action sports related.  If you want to check out my Substack page, the link is below.  You can subscribe, which just means you'll be added to my email list, and each post will go into your email box.  You can check them out, or delete them, like all the other crap emails we all get.  Thanks for checking out this blog, and reading some of my stuff.  Hit me up on Facebook with any thoughts, comments, or ideas.  To all of the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos who read my blogs, thanks, and keep on rockin' it.  Here's the link to Substack again.  There's lots more to come...

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack

The crazy spike in page views continues...

 Shortly after hitting about 142,000 page views on this blog, I started seeing these huge spikes in views.  At first they were all coming from Singapore, officially, anyhow, and all on Safari mobile devices.  I still don't know what is going on, and now lots of them are from Chrome.  But there's about 65,000 of those views, now.  Either I'm HUGE in Singapore and Southeast Asia all of the sudden, or something weird is going on.  I do have actual readers from 15 or 20 countries regularly, but it's still weird.  In any case, there are over 150,000 legit page views on this blog, not including the crazy spikes.  

Unclicked podcast with longtime rider/BMX industry guy John Povah (August 2023)

John Povah is an 1980's BMX freestyler from England, who came to the U.S., found work painting cars, and wound up working for years in the BMX and action sports industries.  He was a team manager for Schwinn Bikes, working with guys like Jay Miron, Dave Osato and others.  He later became BMX team manager for Etnies, working with riders like Rooftop, Taj Mihelich and others.  In this podcast Ryan Fudger, Mike, "Rooftop" Escamilla, and Nathan Williams interview John.  This podcast tracks John's life, riding, and work in a BMX freestyle career spanning five decades.  

This may sound weird, since I've written hundreds of blog posts about BMX freestyle, but I rarely listen to BMX podcasts.  The main reason is that I'm always busy doing other work.  When I draw my Sharpie drawings, I spend hours listening to things on YouTube, but it's usually music, interviews, and documentaries, about the musician I'm drawing.  That's because I usually draw musicians.  When I'm writing and blogging, I usually listen to music, often pretty mellow, stuff in the background.  That's pretty much all I do, seven days a week.  So I just don't get around to listening to many BMX podcasts.  But I've really liked the few I have listened to.  This podcast with John is my favorite, mostly because I knew John well in the early 1990's.  

I met John and Keith Treanor at the Oceanview flyout jump, in Huntington Beach, in the spring of 1990.  Actually I met Keith at the H.B. pier a couple weeks earlier, but I talked to so many people there, Oceanview is where I first remember meeting Keith.  In any case, I started hanging out more with them, and shooting footage of them, for my 1990 self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend.  

That's John holding his hand up, on the cover of the video, with Keith blasting over him at the Oceanview jump, 1990.  I took Mike Sarrail's photo, Xeroxed it zine style, and went high contrast, because I sucked at graphic design.  I still suck at graphic design.  

John and Keith became the main riders in the video, which I shot footage for, from spring to the fall of 1990.  You can see John, Keith, as well as Josh White, Woody Itson, and H.B. local Andy Mulcahy, at the Oceanview jump, at 23:28 in The Ultimate Weekend.  

John and Keith were both really good, and just getting known, so I just asked them when I was going riding, or they'd call up and I'd take the camera when they went riding different places at times.  The Huntington Beach area scene then, in 1990, was Chris Moeller and his roommates, The P.O.W. House guys in Westminster, Keith, John, Sean McKinney, Alan Valek, Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean just beginning to build Sheep Hills, flatlanders  Andy Mulcahy and 3-4 other guys, and me.  We were all spread out around the H.B./ Westminster area, riding in little groups through the recession days of the early 1990's.  As people got jobs or lost jobs, we moved in and out of different houses and apartments, among the BMX rider houses.  

I was totally surprised, when the podcast spent several minutes going through The Ultimate Weekend, looking for the footage of John doing the first ice pick grind down handrail, which is in TUW at 32:30 (at that link above).  The dark shot of Keith Treanor, after John's ice pick grind, is the first handrail down steps in a BMX video.  Street riding was still really new, and progressing fast then, so every video in 1989-1991 had several first ever, or first on video, tricks.  Listening to this podcast is what inspired me writing this post on Substack, where I tried to figure out the sequence of the first double peg grinds on street, in those early videos in 1990.   

At one point, 1993, I think, I got a better job, and John Paul Rogers and I did a house switch.  I moved out of the P.O.W. House, and J.P. moved in.  I took his place, renting a room in a house in Westminster, with Chris Moeller, John Povah, and John's girlfriend at the time, Bitch Girl, who is mentioned in the podcast.  So I was roommates with John for several months during that period.  In those days, all the people in that scene were riding with each other in groups, on dirt or street day to day.  At night, we were meeting up and going to see punk bands play, or going to night clubs to meet girls.  Almost every night, at the P.O.W. House living room, a group would form, then they'd drink a little, and head out to the night's adventure, in one of more groups. 

Those were fun, often broke, and crazy times.  BMX, according to the bike industry, was "dead" from 1989-1995, between the end of the 80's boom, and the beginning of the X-Games.  During that time, the young kids at Sheep Hills became the SHL crew, and riding just kept progressing.  I broke away and went off on my own in 1995.  While still riding, I was riding alone daily, and not going to events, until about 2003.  I would see guys once in a while, but not often.  So all the stuff John Povah did after that, the amazing stuff, like being Schwinn team manager and then on to Etnies as team manager, I didn't know about until many years later.  So much of that was new to me, hearing it first in this podcast. 

All in all, with Rooftop leading into lots of crazy stories, this is a hilarious and great podcast.  Also, like everyone Rooftop asked, I agree, John Povah is really an all around cool human being.  Just a solid, hard working, dependable guy who was also a really good rider.  It was cool to hear all the stories of the years I didn't know much about, like Jay Miron doing the first double backflip, and all His time working at Schwinn and Etnies.  

If you bothered to read this blog post, stop reading, listening to me babble, on and just watch/listen to the podcast.  It's great stuff if you're an Old School or Mid School BMX rider from the late 1980's, up through today.  

The BMX freestyle foreshadowing of Freestyle Motocross

 This is my recent Sharpie Scribble Style drawing of Martin Aparijo doing a no-footed can-can on his CR 125 in late 1986 or early 1987.  The original photo was in the February 1987 issue of BMX Plus! magazine.  Sean Ewing commissioned me to do this drawing, and he always finds really unique photos for me to do in my weird, Sharpie style.  Thanks Sean.  He also posted the photos from the original photo shoot on Facebook that I'm using below.

If you've been around BMX a while, or have watched Mark Eaton's Joe Kid on a Stingray documentary, you know BMX started in 1970, and was inspired by motocross racing.  Back then motocross bikes had a couple inches of travel, and only got really big air when guys like Evel Knievel or the other distance jumpers flew ramp to ramp.  The first big BMX jumping variation, the classic tabletop, came from BMXers imitating motocross riders.  

But then BMX took off, bikes improved, and jumping evolved.  By 1983-1984, BMX freestyle, trick riding, was becoming an actual sport, and BMX air tricks evolved well past what motocross free riders were doing at the time.  So the guys at BMX Plus! decided to do a photo shoot with some BMX guys doing tricks on motocross bikes.  

This February 1987 article in BMX Plus! opens with Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola doing no handers on their motorcycles, side by side.  You can also see several other tricks done by them that day.  You can NOT look up this issue's scan on Old School Mags, they don't have the scan of this issue, unfortunatelty.

Here's the next page, and we see Martin Aparijo again, busting a scary looking nothing, and a small black & white photo in the upper right, of the no footed can-can, again.  The drawing I did above was from a color poster of the trick that came in the magazine.  

So in this article, published in the February 1987 issue of BMX Plus!, we have Martin Aparijo documented doing a nothing and a no-footed can-can on his motorcycle.  Then we have Martin, Brian, and Eddie all doing no-handers on motocross bikes.  In addition they're doing a surfer, a framestand, and a "riding body varial," climbing in a complete 360 around the bike while riding.  

Here's the cool part, freestyle motocross wasn't "invented" for about 7 or 8 more years.  Even better, Martin was best known as a flatland freestyler, though he had been an avid jumper, rode pools, and did the first front flip jump (no photos or video) on a BMX bike. I believe Matt Berringer was the first guy to land a BMX front flip on video, around 2000.  You can see him doing a blackflip followed by a front flip, over doubles, at 10:27 in this video.

So we have Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola doing freestyle motocross tricks, 6-8 years before freestyle motocross was invented.  Now, there were, in 1987, and have always been, off road motorcycle "free riders."  I don't know what tricks they were doing in 1987, and couldn't find any clips on YouTube of tricks from that era. 

 Motorcycles were invented in the late 1800's, and there were races by the late 1890's.  Motorcycle "scrambles" in Europe go back to the 1940's or 1950's.  Motocross had been happening in the US. since the 1950's.  Then there was Evel Knievel, Gary Wells, and a few other motorcycle jumpers performing in shows in the late 1960's and 1970's.  That was when motorcycle distance jumping first blew up in popularity, thanks to Evel.  Then there was kind of a lull in motorcycle jumping during the 1980's.  By 1989, and into the early 1990's, daredevil Johnny Airtime was doing super technical jumps, like this jump, over two moving semi trucks, in 1991.  Robbie Knievel was also jumping again, beginning in 1989, even doing no handed distance jumps later on, in the 1990's.   

In the free riding world, motocross racers Jeff Emig,  Phil Lawrence, and Ryan Hughes were three of the top free riders, known for jumping big on natural terrain, in the early 1990's.   Then the first Crusty Demons of Dirt video, in 1994, sparked the free riding explosion, and ultimately leading to the birth of freestyle motocross, or FSMX, as a competitive sport.  

Taking it back to the BMX Plus! article above.  When Martin, Brian, and Eddie did that photo shoot with Scott Towne in late 1986, Jeff Emig* was about 17 years old, Phil Lawrence was about 16, Brian Deegan and Seth Enslow were about 11 or 12, and Travis Pastrana was 2 1/2 years old.  So Martin, Eddie, and Brian were way ahead of the curve of motocross tricks at that time.  At this photo shoot, all three guys got photos doing no handers on motorcycles, three of the first documented no handers.  I can't confirm they were the first no handers ever, but they were definitely three of the first no-handed jumps documented on motorcycles.  Then we have Martin busting out both a nothing and a no-footed can-can, which was originally done on a BMX bike by Mike Dominguez, a few years earlier.  It looks like Martin Aparijo may have invented both of those tricks on a motorcycle.  The next documented no-footed can-can I could find was Larry Linkogle, on the cover of Racer X newspaper, in 1994.  So BMX freestylers Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola all have a spot in the roots of freestyle motocross, for the tricks they pulled at this BMX Plus! photo shoot above.

When it comes to variations that were invented on BMX bikes, and then went to motocross, we have to look at Mike Dominguez, Eddie Fiola, and Mat Hoffman.  Either Dominguez or Fiola invented the can-can, and Mike invented the no footed can-can.  Fiola invented the opposite one hand one footer, to the best of my knowledge, and the "over and out," the can-can to one footer.  Then, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, we have Mat Hoffman, seen here in Aggroman in 1989.  Mat stands as the single most innovative vert BMX rider ever.  He invented dozens of variations, among them, the Indian air, and Superman seat grab on vert, which later became standard FSMX tricks.  So several basic, early, FSMX tricks were invented by BMX freestylers, and no handers, no footed can-cans, and nothings, were actually done on motorcycles by BMXers, years before freestyle motocross began.  

Like the late night infomercial guy, here's my "But wait!  That's not all!" part.  The crew at BMX Plus! did another odd article featuring an MX cycle in the 1980's.  Here's the cover of the September 1988 issue of BMX Plus!  Notice anything unusual?  

Yep, you're seeing that right.  There's a guy on a motorcycle doing an air, on a huge quarterpipe, in 1988.

In this 1988 issue of BMX Plus!, a guy named Kerry Day is doing airs on a specially designed, 15 foot high quarterpipe, on an 80cc motorcycle.  That issue came out 29 years before Moto X Quarterpipe high air first appeared in the X-Games in 2017 (with an 18 foot ramp to dirt landing).  Kerry Day did actually air out of this ramp on his motorcycle, and landed back on the ramp.  

 

Here are the photos from the actual article, with Kerry doing a bit of a tabletop, and then a turndown table.  You can find this article on Old School Mags, that's where I stole these photos from.  Kerry was a motocrosser, but may have ridden some BMX in skateparks.  He had seen Tinker Juarez doing airs at a skatepark years earlier, and always wanted to try it on a motorcycle.  This fifteen foot high monstrosity, at a time when BMX quarterpipes were 8 feet high, and halfpipes maybe ten feet high, cost him $3,000 and three months to build.  This huge ramp was built about 4 years before Mat Hoffman's 20 foot high mega quarterpipe.  Kerry could do some variations on his MX on the ramp, including a no footer air.  Check the article at the link to read the whole thing.  While this isn't a BMXer doing airs on a motorcycle, it is the BMX idea of a quarterpipe taken into the motocross world for the first time.   

I'm not done, there's still more.   Many of you Old School BMX freestylers know this one already, but most freestyle motocrossers and young BMxers are not aware of this.  Not one, but two BMX guys did backflips on motorcycles long before Cary Hart made his famous, if sketchy, "first" MX backflip in 2000.  What Cary Hart, and pretty much no one else knew, is that both Jose Yanez and BMX vert rider Bob Kohl had both landed backflips on motorcycles several years earlier.  I'm not dissing Cary Hart, no one in the stadium in 2000 knew backflips had already been done on motorcycles, and it took a lot of balls to try that backflip.  Here's the video.

Thanks to Jan from Frez Productions for compiling this all into a 5 1/2 minute video.  This shows the actual story of motocross backflips in a few minutes.  

Gymnast Jose Yanez decided in the 1980's to learn to do a backflip on a BMX bike, after seeing some freestylers ride in San Diego.  In 1984, he became the first guy to do a backflip on a BMX bike, which landed him a magazine cover.  Jose wound up going off and joining Ringling Brothers circus, doing the BMX backflip in their show, for several years.  It would be six years before another BMX freestyler learned to flip a BMX bike.  Southern California freestyler Jeff Cotter learned it next, and several other riders, like Mat Hoffman (2:13 in this clip), Dave Clymer (5:14 in this clip), Todd Lyons, and Bob Kohl, learned the flip in the next couple of  years.  By that time, Jose had already done double backflips into water, in 1987.  Another few years later, Canadian vert rider Jay Miron became the first BMXer to land a double backflip ramp to ramp, in 1997, followed by Dave Mirra landing his first double backflip in 1999, then doing it in the X-Games in 2000.  

As I said at the start, BMX racing was an offshoot of motocross racing, and it began in 1970.  But in the years since, BMXers have created new variations that were later taken to motocross bikes.  In some cases, BMXers actually landed tricks on motorcycles before freestyle motocrossers did.  And then we have Kerry Day, decades before it became a competitive event, taking the BMX quarterpipe into the world of motorcycle riding.  I've tried to compile all these photos and videos in one blog post, so all the BMXers and FSMXers who aren't aware of these events can check them out all in one place.  I can't verify the Aparijo, Fiola, and Blyther did the very first no handers on motorcycles, or that Martin invented the no footed can-can and nothing on motorcycles, but as I've showed, they were the first I know of to have those tricks documented.  If you have any more information or photos and videos to add, check out my Facebook page, where I'm sure the discussion will continue on all these events and tricks after I publish this post.  

I'll end this post with a link to a cool documentary I found about the Crusty Demons of Dirt video series, and the birth of freestyle motocross as a competitive sport.

How a group of misfits PISSED OFF an entire sport (Crusty Demons)

Blogger's note: 9/9/2023- I just retitled this post, after watching the freestyle motocross documentary below.  Early freestyle motocross included several BMX variations, like the Indian air, Superman seat grab, the nothing, and others, but the early riders that built the sport and lifestyle of freestyle motocross didn't know about the things I wrote about above, in this blog post.  Those events were already kind of lost to history, just as guys doing 25 foot jumps and backflips on bicycles in the 1910's and 1920's were unknown when us Gen X BMX freestylers first did tricks on our bikes. 

So I retitled the post, because these things above, tricks done by Martin Aparijo, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Kerry Day, Jose' Yanez, and Bob Kohl were foreshadowing things that would happen later, when the right group of crazy guys (and some gals) came along to take motocross riding to a new, highly creative, highly progressive level.  I wrote this post to bring these two BMX photo shoots, and the early MX flips of Jose' and Bob, into one place, for anyone interested learning about them.  Below is the real documentary about the birth of freestyle motocross.  Check it out.

Unchained:  the Untold Story of Freestyle Motocross (2016)

I'm doing a lot of my writing now, as of the late summer of 2023, on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out!

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack

* Yes, my name is Steve Emig, and I might be related to Jeff Emig, but I'm not sure.  Randy Lawrence tried to introduce us at a Supercross race once, in 1991, where Jeff was racing, and I was working as a TV production assistant.  But we kept missing each other.  I never ended up meeting him.  Someone in my family said my dad and Jeff's dad were cousins, but no one ever verified that for sure.  So Jeff and I might be distantly related cousins, or we might not, I honestly don't know.  I have no idea if either of us is related to Matt Emig, either, but he's badass, just like Jeff.  

The coming stock market crash and recession is a "White Swan event"

The man being interviewed in this CNBC clip (July 2023) is Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the guy who wrote the book The Black Swan.  That book popularized the idea of a "black swan event," a low probability event that has an incredibly high impact, like the pandemic, for example, or a meteorite hitting your house.  The chances of it happening are very, very low, but if it does happen, it will have a huge effect.

Disclaimer

In this clip Taleb says outright that what's happening in today's economy is a white swan event.  All of the things that are collapsing the economy today are right in front of us. We have far more debt than we did in 2008, The Fed used super low, zero or near zero interest rates, to prop up the economy for 15 years. Using that short term tool over a long term warped the economy, banking, and business.  Now The Fed has raised interest rates back up close to historically normal levels, which is sending shock waves through financial markets, banking, business lending, personal lending, commercial real estate, and residential real estate.  Those days are over.  

"The whole structure needs to tumble," Taleb says.   A whole generation of people now have to learn how to operate in a world with higher interest rates.  We don't need a black swan event to spark a market crash today.  All the reasons it will happen are right in front of us.  It's just a question of when.  With Europe already in recession, the huge Chinese real estate market now collapsing, and the U.S. economy grinding to a halt, a major market crash, in stocks and real estate, is inevitable at this point.  These things have a long history of happening in September or October, looking back over history.  

A lot of smart investors have pulled their money out of stocks, and parked their money in either short term T-bills or money market funds.  Some are even calling this the "T-Bill and Chill" idea.  You can get 5% to 6% to sit on the sidelines an wait to see things play out right now.  When things become more predictable, and good investment opportunities come up, they can act quickly to take advantage of those opportunities. 

Unfortunately, most average, retail investors still have much of their life savings or retirement fund in the stock market, generally in 401k's, or similar instruments.  It looks like most average Americans are about to lose a huge chunk of their life savings in the next 6 to 12 months.  That's not good.  

I'm taking my writing in a new direction on a platform called Substack.  Check it out.  You can subscribe for free to get posts direct to your email.

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack

Apparently Hipster culture has died (for now)...

While I've been carefully cultivating my own unique subculture (of 1- just me), Neo Homeless AntiSocial Intellectual Capitalist Slobbism, to fend off all the damn nouveau homeless hippie tweekers populating L.A county streets, apparently the Hipster culture has died off.  I was too busy blogging and being the world's # Old School BMX freestyle poser (and oddly, the world's #1 Old School BMX blogger as well), to notice.  Anyhow, hipster culture is now mainstream, and some new form of hipster culture will pop up in a few years.  I guess I need to retire the meme below.  In any case, this is a pretty funny video.  

Club White Bear... not really a club.  Definitely NOT cool to hipsters... if there were any left, which there aren't.  Now they're just metrosexual guys with well groomed beards and a fixie they don't ride anymore.  Not cool to anyone else either, but that's beside the point.

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Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack