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:
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...
