As public officials continue to tell us the economy is going well, the Retail Apocalypse continues apocalypting in the background. The word just came out that Party City is shuttingdown all of its stores, and also that Big Lots is bankrupt and beginning "going out of business" sales. Two more well known national chains of retail stores are going under. This video above tells the story of the rise and fall of Party City. It's December 20th, 2024 as I write this, office Christmas/holiday party season, and a week and a half before New Year's Eve. Did everyone stop partying?
I live in the San Fernando Valley these days, a place where there's a lot of wealth in the general area. But one Big 5 just closed, and a Guitar Center store just closed as well, not to mention all of the 99 Cents Only stores that all closed down months ago. This is in an area where there are hundreds of "mom and pop," privately owned, brick and mortar stores that are still in business. But as the flood of pandemic stimulus money got spent, business has slowed back down for many stores, and major shutdowns are happening again. Here's a video about the downfall of Big Lots.
There are a whole bunch of reasons for these stores closing down, like the rise of online sales, getting bought out and loaded up with debt by private equity companies, and the sales slowdown of the pandemic. These factors are part of the bigger picture of why these particular chains have closed down. In any case, two more chains are going under, and hundreds of large stores are going to become vacant soon in cities across the United States.
The term "Retail Apocalypse" popped up around 2016, as chain store closures and dead malls became a trend. In reality, many stores had been closing for a decade before that, but those closures increased dramatically around 2015-2016-2017, as online sales surged. Chalk up a couple more large chain closures to the list of dozens of other retail chains that have become extinct, like Toys-R-Us, Radio Shack, and others.
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Over the last couple of years, Reventure Consulting founder Nick Gerli has built an amazing app to look at residential real estate all over the United States. In this video, out a few days ago, he takes a look at where prices are likely to go up, and likely to go down, around the state of California. Hint: Here in SoCal, the region from downtown L.A. west through Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and Santa Monica is going one direction, and Orange County is doing the opposite. Watch the video to see his overview of the state, and then check out Reventure App to check our neighborhood.
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Here is Andy Ruffel, doing a 360 off a jump, on a BMX bike in 1981, for a British TV show. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first BMX 360 jump caught on video or film, and it happened 43 Years ago.
In late 2021, I had a crazy idea for a blog post. "What if I search YouTube for all the earliest, 'first on video' clips of BMX 360's and variations of 360's?" I wondered just how far back the basic 360 jump on a bike went. When I was first reading the BMX magazines every month, in 1983, I remembered a story saying that Eddie Fiola did a 360 over doubles in a race, at the Orange YMCA BMX track, I believe. That was where I started my search, looking for the first 360 on video. At the time, Mike Varga had just landed the first 1260 air, a few months earlier, at the X-Games in Riverside, California. It seemed a good time to dig into the video archives of BMX spinning tricks.
This basic search for the first BMX 360 on video opened a huge can of worms, and I wound up spending something like three weeks watching dozens and dozens of BMX videos, looking for 360's, 540's, 720's, 900's, and other variations. The blog post was epic, with links to dozens of "first on video" clips of BMX spinning tricks. Here's that post from November 2021:
In my research, this clip of Andy Ruffel had the earliest BMX 360's I could find, both 360 bunnyhops (also called a "360 whip floater" then), and a 360 over a small jump. At about 25:20 in that clip, you see Andy Ruffel, in front of a moving airplane, do some 360 bunnyhops, among other tricks. He also does a 360 off a mellow jump at 26:04. Three years ago, that was the earliest 360 jump I could find, Andy Ruffel, in the U.K., in 1983. Today, when I looked it up, the short video clip embedded above came up, again with Andy Ruffell, predating this clip by two years. So now, it looks like the clip above, Andy Ruffell in 1981, is the very first 360 jump on a BMX bike that's out there. That means we've now had 43 years of BMX 360 jumps on video, and that called for a blog post. You can check that Spinaroonie blog post for dozens more "first on video" BMX spinning variations. But here's a few more of the early ones.
If you lived in Los Angeles in the 1980's and 1990's, you've heard of Angelyne. According to one account, she started putting up billboards of herself in 1984. I think the first one I saw was in Hollywood, probably 1988 or 1989. It was around that time that I started to drive up there, doing runs, picking up equipment for my job. It was also around that time I started going to punk gigs up there once in a while. Angelyne is the single name L.A. Billboard Queen of the Los Angeles in the 1980's, and is basically famous for being famous. Before the Kardashians, before Paris Hilton, before the internet, before influencers as a job title, there was Angelyne... and her hot pink Corvette.
A few days ago, I got a book from the library called Binge Times, by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chimielski. I've read several books about L.A. and the San Fernando Valley in the past few months, after my backpack, including my laptop, got stolen. As a homeless blogger/artist, my online time got cut, I'm using library computers for now, and I had more time to do something. So I've read a lot about L.A. and The Valley. Binge Times, published in 2022, dove deep into the "streaming wars," the battle in the entertainment industry for viewership... and money, since Netflix, YouTube, and video streaming began pulling millions of eyeballs away from TV and movies, and cable TV systems, in particular. The book was incredibly well researched, and interesting, another major industry in transition, in today's world, something I've been writing about for years.
Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I read chapter 15, which talked about the Peacock streaming service. The chapter was called, "If you want to grab their attention, you have to tease," a quote from L.A. billboard icon, Angelyne. There's a paragraph in the chapter about the feature Peacock did about Angelyne, which is what the video embedded above is plugging. Angelyne, herself, wasn't happy with the movie. Now, living in The San Fernando Valley, I've seen Angelyne's hot pink Corvette around a handful of times, at a distance. Reading the book where she's mentioned a couple of days ago, it brought her back into my consciousness.
The next day, Thanksgiving day, I wound up in a McDonald's in the afternoon, where my T-Day dinner was the $5 Meal Deal. Not epic, but it was a cool, mellow day, I didn't mind missing the whole traditional Thanksgiving feast. I was sitting there in the back, hanging out, and reading the final chapter of Binge Times, when a hot pink Corvette pulled up outside. Yep, Angelyne herself. She came in the restaurant, walked up to the counter, I think to ask of there was a restroom code, and then walked back to the ladies room. She walked right by me, three or four feet away. In all the years since I first saw an Angelyne billboard, over 35 years ago, it's the first time I've seen Angelyne up close. The first thing that grabbed me was how tiny she is. She's barely over 5 feet tall, maybe 5'2", I'd say. Yeah, she's top heavy, and had the intsense make-up, unique outfit, big blonde hair, and a pink veil over her face. But she's really small. Her image is so huge, I always thought she must be at least 5'9" if not a full six feet tall. But she's a actually quite petite woman, except for the boobs, of course.
As Angelyne was in the restroom, one woman ran out into the parking lot, and snapped a phone pic of the back of the pink Corvette, with the "Angelyn" license plate. Myself, I wondered if I should catch her attention, and tell her she was mentioned in the book I had in my hands. Hey, I'm a big, ugly, sketchy looking homeless guy, so I decided against it. I didn't want to freak her out. But I snapped a pic of her Corvette through the window. After taking care of things, and walked back past me, and out to her car.
What is it about Angelyne? I've worked on several TV shows, worked with the American Gladiators, hung out for a day shooting footage on a Tom Petty music video, and seen Dennis Rodman, Geena Davis, Charlton Heston, Gene Simmons,Diddy, Pamela Anderson,Ashlee Simpson, and the a capella singing group Pentatonix in the wild around SoCal. But seeing Angelyne up close, as a long time SoCal resident, is like a unicorn sighting. There's a weird mysteriousness to this real life, Barbie-like character. The odd little bit of synchronicity, actually reading a book she's mentioned, in when she rolled up, made it more memorable. That was my L.A. Thanksgiving, seeing Angelyne close-up in a McDonald's. Hey, it's weird out here. It's L.A., shit happens. That's why I'm here. It's a good place for us freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos.
Here's a real fight between male gorillas, in the wild, in Rwanda. We're humans, male silverback gorillas can weigh up to about 600 pounds (270 kilos), and are much stronger than us. There's a reason we have a saying "the 800 pound gorilla in the room," about huge issues we all ignore. This post is not about gorillas, it's about the economic realities of the next few years in the United States of America. But I'm starting this post with the economic "800 pound gorilla in the room."
We have far too much debt in our economic system. That's the huge issue everyone ignores on a daily basis. Nearly all average people have far more debt than they can handle. Home mortgage debt, student loan debt, auto loan debt, credit card debt. Businesses large and small also have huge debt loads in many, if not most cases. Local governments, villages, towns, cities, and counties, have debt issues. States have huge loads of debt. And yes, the United States of America now has over $36 trillion in debt, it just crossed to $36 T recently, according to the U.S. National Debt Clock, as I write this.
Not all debt is bad debt, debt allows us to buy houses we could never afford buy paying cash for, it allows us to buy newer and better cars, go to better colleges, and businesses routinely use short term debt to buy merchandise, while giving their buyers terms to pay for items sold, allowing a smoother flow of goods and services all around.
More important, the U.S. dollar is backed by debt, not gold, since 1971. We're over 50 years into the largest fiat money experiment in human history. Our entire economic system runs on debt. Our system NEEDS debt to keep functioning. But there's an amount of debt where things function smoothly, and an amount of debt where nearly everyone struggles to pay their bills, month to month, and everything slows down to a breaking point. We're in the latter, right now.
This country has an amount of debt that is dramatically slowing down consumer spending. Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy. This is the huge, underlying issue everyone is ignoring as we head into a new presidential administration that wants to make massive changes in many areas. Their game plan has largely been created by Right wing, highly religious, "conservatives." I put that word in quotation marks because they don't believe in conserving money like decades ago, they definitely aren't for conserving the environment, "conservative" in today's world seems to imply fundamentalist Christian social beliefs. Conservatives aren't really into "conserving" much of anything, except the status quo.
On January 20th, 2025 Donald Trump will be sworn in as president, a 78 1/2-year-old man who quite admittedly loves McDonald's French fries... and salt. But this post is about what life will be like for Americans in the next few years, not fundamentalist social views or Trump's health. In less than two weeks since the election, the stock indices hit new highs, and then dropped back quite a bit, and now are climbing higher. Gold dropped over $200 per ounce from its recent all time high, and is now bouncing back a bit. The U.S. dollar has surged higher, compared to other major currencies, which makes life and business harder for many other countries, including our allies. Despite having The Fed lower their Fed Funds rate 3/4% in the least couple months, overall interest rates have been trending up. The 10 Year U.S. Treasury, a common bookmark for interest rates is at 4.41% as I write this, a much higher return than through all of the 2010's.
While small and mid-sized business owners tend to lean Republican, and believe the economy will take off in a Trump presidency, in reality there are all kinds of mixed signals in the financial world, contradicting each other. Here are the major trends I see playing out now, and into the future months and years.
Inflation- Inflation has been trending down, from a high 9.1% CPI, to around 2.5% recently. Truflation, a wider, nearly realtime inflation indicator, got down to 1.01% annual inflation rate on September 13th, 2024, but has surged back up to 2.84% since. The investment world, the big players, see a Trump presidency likely to push inflation back up. That's a recent trend change, and has kept going up since the election, about two weeks ago. But there are major trends pushing overall inflation downward at the same time, particularly stagnant or dropping values in both commercial and residential real estate in some areas.
Consumers are broke-Advanced Auto Parts is the latest large business to announce mass store closings and layoffs because consumer sales are slowing, and everyday people are broke. McDonald's, Starbucks, and several other major corporations have been saying the same thing for about six months now. As I mentioned above, most consumers are saddled with high levels of debt these days, and working hard to pay day to day expenses and keep current on their various debt payments. Consumers spending is about 70% of the U.S. economy, and I see nothing coming in the next couple of years to change this issue. To increase consumer spending, either wages have to increase by an unprecedented amount, quickly, or TRILLIONS of dollars of some forms of debt need to be written off. I don't see either of these ideas as having a chance in Hell of happening anytime soon. This issue alone, broke consumers, makes the strongest case for a recession that has either started, or will start soon. We have been slowly, steadily dropping into a recession, and it would have happened either way, under a Harris or a Trump presidency. But how the government reacts and responds would be quite different.
Commercial real estate collapse- The collapse in prices of commercial buildings, across the U.S., has been going on for around a year now. Buildings worth tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars have been selling for up to 90% discounts, in some cases, for several months now. This is happening nationwide, to these large office buildings, along with many vacant retail stores and malls, which have been struggling for the last decade or more. Here's a 20 story building in Denver that recently sold at an 80% discount. One of the tallest buildings in Texas sold in May for more than a 90% discount. Here's an office building in San Francisco that sold for nearly 80% off of it's peak value. You get the idea, this isn't just happening in the few biggest major cities. The overall values of many retail stores, malls, and office buildings are dropping all over the country. Lower values mean lower tax incomes for cities, which means those cities will ultimately have to reduce services somewhere, to compensate. Like broke consumers, there is no quick fix to this problem, and it is a part of our transition out of the fading Industrial Age era and into the building Information Age society, which needs different types of buildings in different places. This trend will just have to play out over many years, probably two or three decades, just like the closure of factories did in the late 1970's through the 2000's.
Residential real estate slowing down- In this video by Nick at Reventure Consulting (from mid-November 2024), he shows multiple homes that have dropped tens of thousands in value, to a $400,000 loss in a home's value in one case, over the last two or three years. Much of Florida's residential real estate, in particular, is turning down quickly right now. I think most of us know that home prices vary tremendously across the United States right now. For example, the median home price is now $1.2 million in Los Angeles, California. Yet, there are cities that have gone downhill in recent decades, mostly from the loss of factories and high paying manufacturing jobs. There are many areas where homes are for sale for incredibly low prices.
I won't pick on the well known cities of Detroit, Michigan, Gary, Indiana, or Youngstown, Ohio, which are known for these issues. Here's a house for sale for $59,900 in Mansfield, Ohio, where my grandparents lived until I finished 8th grade. I spent a lot of time in Mansfield as a kid, going to the now closed Richland Mall, playing on my grandparents' swing set, and getting yelled at by my drunk German grandpa. Mansfield was a thriving Midwest industrial city when I was a kid, in the 1970's. Now, like most of rural, small town, and mid-sized city America, it's struggling. There are probably 150 or 200 mid-sized and small cities in the U.S. that have been struggling since the early 1980's, and Mansfield is just one of them. If all these towns and cities really had the potential for large numbers of people move in and live really well, Americans would flood back into those cities. If that happened, new businesses would rise up in those towns and cities, and the overall real estate prices would rise in those places, and even out across the country. But that is not what's happening, over the long run. Though the pandemic reversed the migration flows for two or three years, the long term trend is that Americans, overall continue to migrate to the larger metro areas.
These are just three of the really big, long term trends, that are playing out now, and will continue well into the future, regardless of what President-elect Trump, or any other politicians do. Trump's much trumpeted ideas for tariffs could easily lead to higher prices and more inflation, or a full blown trade war with China, neither of which helps working Americans.
Yes, stock prices, and particularly crypto prices, are rising right now, which helps the relatively small number of Americans who own large stock portfolios. But stocks are largely overvalued overall by long term standards, which is why people like Warren Buffet, one of America's best investors, have been selling large quantities of stocks, and is now sitting on over $320 billion in cash. He is waiting for good opportunities to invest large sums, and can't find them at this time.
There are huge negative trends economically right now, and some very positive trends in some markets, and these mixed signals will most likely continue well into the next year or two. Future actions by the new administration will have some effect on the economy, and we'll have to see how the overall picture plays out. But it's not going to be smooth sailing, or the unbounded upward trend that most Republicans are now expecting. Finding true organic growth in the economy at a large level has been a problem since the Great Recession (aka the GFC) of 2008. It's going to be a weird and tumultuous road ahead economically, and some actions by the Trump administration could make it worse for average Americans.
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This is my latest Sharpie Scribble Style drawing, motorcycle racer Kenny Roberts, known to many as "King Kenny." This is another project given to me by Sean Ewing, a lifelong BMX and motorcycle enthusiast and rider, and a guy who I've done several really cool drawings for. Sharpie markers on paper, 18" X 24",about 45 hours of work, #sharpiescribblestyle, November 2024.
Kenny Roberts rose up in California to become a great flat track motorcycle racer on the dirt tracks as a young man. He moved on up to road racing, got sponsored by Yamaha, and was the first guy to touch his knee to the ground while leaning into turns. In the late 1970's and early 1980's. Kenny went on to become the first American World Champion at road racing, long dominated by the Europeans at the time. Then he won the World Championship a second year in a row. Check the videos below for footage and the story of Kenny Roberts.
The mummy of a three week old saber tooth kitten was found in 2020, frozen in the Siberian permafrost. This find just hit the news yesterday. In this video above, a real paleontologist gives us some background on Homotherium, which did live here in the U.S., among other places around the world. But the mummified kitten was a Homotherium, not the more famous Smilodon, the saber tooth cat with the 9 inch canine teeth. According to this video, Homotherium were part cat-like and part dog-like, and built for distance running. Check out the video for more details on this extinct animal. I believe this is the first mummified saber toothed cat ever found, which is amazing.
The best voice of Halloween creepiness ever, Vincent Price explains why humans are some of the greatest monsters of all, then he does his cover of "The Monster Mash."
It's 1:00 pm here in California, and I've already shot photos of an actual raven in an enchanted oak tree with twisted limbs, seen a werewolf, a guy in a ski mask (OK, maybe he was just a bank robber), and two Waldos. Yep, I found Waldo twice this morning.
Here's a Generation X group of Halloween songs and pieces, to get you in the mood to get creepy and let your freak flag fly tonight. Or to sit by the door handing out $75 worth of candy to ungrateful brats in lame, store-bought costumes. Whatever you have planned. Happy Halloween everyone!
I stumbled across this segment on YouTube a couple days ago. I'd never seen it before. It's now one of my favorite BMX street/dirt sections ever. That's mostly because it doesn't look like every other street video section. Brian Yeagle from Anthem II, 12 years ago? Something like that.
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The Jesus College at Oxford University dates back to the era of Elizabeth I, and was opened in 1571. It was opened as the first Protestant college to be a part of Oxford. In this video, Oxford staffer Matt Williams explains why standardized IQ tests are not used to qualify potential candidates for Oxford University.
For a variety of reasons that I won't go into, I've come to basically despise the whole concept of IQ tests, IQ scores, and think that they are dramatically over-hyped in today's world. There are all kinds of intelligence in the world of human beings, and what we call IQ tests only test a smart part of those skills. There are many other kinds of traits and skill sets that matter in life, like determination, being a self-starter, creativity, being able to think and talk on your feet, perseverance during times of trials, and so forth. Matt explains all of this very clearly in about five minutes in the video above.
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I have a Pinterest board that acts as a table of contents for my Substack, where you can read nearly every post title, then go to that post with one click. Here's that page:
On occasion, I make it down to H.B. Tuesday, where Martin Aparijo, Sean Ewing, and the crew of old schoolers ride flatland in a beach parking, every Tuesday afternoon. Last week I made it down to H.B., and hung out for the afternoon. Honestly, going down there is the highlight of my month. While Fate has pushed me away from the BMX world for a really long time, I'm still a huge fan of doing tricks on "little kid's bikes" (as people called them back in the 1980's). Yes, I got fat and haven't ridden in many years, but I still love BMX freestyle, and I'll always be a fan of riding, and action sports in general.
Last week I met a guy there named Fish, from up in the Seattle area. He was ripping it up with a bunch of rolling tricks... backyards, frontyards, and sideyards, high speed hang 5's and a bunch more. Watching Fish, I realized that I was an "apartment flatlander" back in the 80's. I had no front, back, or side yards in my trick bag. I had no yards at all. My scuffing repertoire was limited to Shingle shuffles and funky chickens on occasion. My main tricks were sliders, Switzerland squeakers, a bunch of tailwhip variations, back wheel peg spin variations (megaspins that weren't "mega"), high speed 180 bunnyhops to half Cabs, and a few other obscure tricks.
Fish was familiar with my blogging, and we got talking, while Martin and a few others were riding. It was great to just talk about Old School flatland riding for a while, with someone I'd heard of, but never actually met. I brought up David Morris, a Seattle area guy, a really solid rider, who never got much coverage, but was the real Raleigh Factory Freestyle team, which I joined for a year in 1987. Fish had a cool story about meeting and riding David's team BITD. We also talked about the BMX business, and flatland over the many years since.
I told Fish how the whole rolling trick transition was when I clocked out of flatland, I just wasn't up for learning all those tricks, and street was getting more interesting to me. Fish said that's when it really got fun for him. His style and skill set rocked in the forward rolling era, and he's still riding hard today. Anyhow, great to meet and talk a while, Fish. Glad we got to hang out a while and share some stories.
Blogger's note- 10/18/2024- I rewrote this post quickly today, because the original post sucked. This started out as a couple of lines about meeting a cool Old School rider from Seattle, and then I rambled off topic, like usual. Sometimes that works, but in this post it didn't. So I cleaned it up today.
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Frank Fritz, long time co-star of American Pickers, just passed away yesterday, September 30th, 2024. I've been a fan of the show since I first saw it, shortly after it hit the air in 2010. Frank had a stroke in 2022, leaving him in a wheelchair, and just passed away at age 60. He's best known for about a decade of driving around the U.S. with Mike Wolfe, looking to pick antiques and collectibles, to resell. They picked "rusty gold" treasures from garages, barns, long fading outbuildings, and anywhere else cool stuff has been stored for years.
Since I live in the San Fernando Valley now, I picked the segment where Mike and Frank visited custom car legend the late George Barris, in his shop in North Hollywood, California. They got to sit in the original Batmobile, from the 1960's TV show. That's a big thing for young Boomers and old Gen Xers. In that episode, Frank and Mike got a tour of the shop that put out decades of customized cars for TV, movies, and private clients. They did pick up some collectibles, photos and similar things, from Barris, but this clip is just the first part of that show.
My dad was a guy who was always "wheelin' and dealin'" all kinds of things as I grew up, items bought from gun shows, garage sales, and flea markets. He taught me how to make a few bucks on the side when I was a kid. Many years later, I got into buying and flipping stuff from storage unit auctions, and tried to turn that into a business at one point. That never really got going full time, but I still enjoy looking for odd treasures in old junk, and may get back to it some day. So American Pickers was right up my alley, and I really enjoyed Mike and Frank's adventures, and learned a lot from the show. So it's sad to see "the bearded charmer," as Mike often called him, pass on from this life. RIP Frank.
The Canadian Beast, Jay Miron, just got inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame this past weekend. He ripped on flatland, he ripped on ramps, he ripped on street, and he did the first double backflip on a BMX bike in 1997 for Canadian TV. Congratulations Jay on induction into to the USA BMX Hall of Fame. I'd never seen this segment above before, and it would be amazing if it came out today, and it's absolutely mind blowing for 20 years ago, in 2004. See kids, this is what's possible if you have brakes on your bike (and practice for over 20 years and have balls the size of Manitoba).
This past weekend, BMX freestylers the late Jeff Watson and Hugo Gonzales got inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame in the "Early Freestyle" category, and Jay Miron in the "Modern Freestyle" category. Congratulations to all of you! You can watch their acceptance speeches on the link below. Jeff Watson at 1:34:30, Hugo Gonzales at 2:04:47, and Jay Miron at 2:39:06.
Here's the crazy thing, when you look up FREESTYLIN' magazine on YouTube, almost nothing comes up. How is there no documentary about FREESTYLIN'? Mark Eaton, what are you up to these days? This video above is former EXPN website editor Brian Tunney shooting a video at 3162 Kashiwa Street in Torrance, California, in 2019, I believe. That building was the longtime home of Wizard Publications, which put out BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, as well as two or three issues of Homeboy magazine. The words, and especially the photos, that came out of this building in the 1980's, changed the lives of thousands of us BMXers and early freestylers in that era. This is the best video I could find paying homage to FREESTYLIN'.
Bob "Oz" Osborn, founder and owner of Wizard Publications, begins the introduction for the FREESTYLIN' magazine staff introduction at 30:30 in that link above.
Last weekend, September 21st, 2024, the legendary staff of FREESTYLIN' magazine was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the BMX freestyle "Industry" category. The staff of FREESTYLIN' inducted includes the editor Andy Jenkins, assistant editor Mark "Lew" Lewman, managing editor/proofreader Don Tosach, art director Janice Jenkins, associate editor/photographer Spike Jonze, advertising salesperson Valerie Adlam, and receptionist/mild-mannered superhuman Dian Harlan. They are all completely deserving of this honor, and it's great to see them all included in the official BMX Hall of Fame. This group of people inspired thousands of us kids doing tricks on bikes around the U.S. and around the world, including me. Wizard Publications owner Bob Osborn, and his daughter and photographer, Windy Osborn are already members of the BMX Hall of Fame.
FREESTYLIN' magazine was the bible of 1980's BMX freestyle. It was, by far, the hippest, coolest, most stylish BMX magazine ever. I was a dorky BMX freestyler in Boise Idaho, way up at 43 degrees of latitude, when the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine came out in the summer of 1984. I didn't even see the first two issues of it until long after they came out. The first issue of the mag that I got my hands on was issue #3. It had SE Racing freestyler Todd Anderson one the cover, blasting a one footed tabletop over a convertible Volkswagen bug full of SE's BMX racing legends, including Scot Breithaupt, Perry Kramer, Toby Henderson, and several others. From that issue on, I spent hours reading every single issue of FREESTYLIN' for the next several years.
Like so many other riders out there at the time, when it was definitely not cool to do tricks on a "little kid's bike," FREESTYLIN' was the main thread showing us kids around the world what was happening in Southern California in BMX freestyle, and later all over the U.S. and the world. In 1984-1985-1986 and beyond, we didn't have the internet, YouTube, or even very many BMX freestyle videos in those early years. FREESTYLIN' was where we got the news, new tricks, style, attitude, and DIY ethic that was the rapidly changing and progressing sport of BMX freestyle. As my blog readers know, BMX freestyle changed the entire course of my life, and FREESTYLIN' magazine was a huge inspiration in those years. I had a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' issues, until I lost them in a move back east in 2008.
Here are a few clips of some of the FREESTYLIN' magazine staff members since the 1980's.
BMX lost one of the all time top riders last week, Harry Leary. One of the early legends of BMX racing, Harry Leary, passed away last Saturday, September 7, 2024. It was announced on an Instagram post, and the only details I've seen are that he was 65 years old, and died of heat exhaustion in the Arizona desert.
Although he raced for 50 years, part of his iconic status comes from inventing the Leary, one of the classic BMX jumping tricks of all time. The Leary goes back to about 1975 or 1976, I believe, and got dubbed the lookback by freestylers, early on. The still shot on the video above is Harry Leary, doing a Leary, on the July 1984 cover of BMX Action. Easily, this is one of the greatest magazine covers ever. This video above is a review of that magazine, and there is another great shot of Harry in the magazine, a full speed bonzai jump photo. Both the cover shot and the inside two page spread are shots by Jim Cassimus.
Months after I got into BMX in 1982, a couple of my friends got their bikes stolen at a local arcade. Luckily they just figured out a week earlier that their bikes were covered on their parents' renter's insurance policy. With a little bit of creative writing on the insurance claim, they both got big checks for the stolen bikes. One of them bought a 1983 Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo. That was the first top-of-the-line BMX bike I ever got to ride. In a straight line, on the street. He didn't let any of us jump it. That bike felt so good to pedal, compared to the rat bike clunkers we all had at the time. It gave us something to aim for. Like thousands of other kids around the U.S. and the world, Harry Leary helped inspire our little crew in the trailer park outside of Boise to keep riding and progress as BMXers.
Here are some of the highlights I found online for all of you out there who were also inspired by Harry Leary at some point in your riding life.
The Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo- When it comes to the iconic signature BMX bikes of the late 1970's and early 1980's, there are four that really stand out. The Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo, the PK Ripper (Perry Kramer), and for freestyle, the Haro Master (Bob Haro), and the Redline RL-20 (R.L.Osborn). There were others, but those four were above the others in popularity and becoming the great bikes in the many years since.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, "Jungleland," live in Tempe, Arizona in 1980. This is my personal favorite of Bruce Springsteen's several epic, long songs. This song contains one of my all time favorite lines anywhere, "...and then the poets down here don't write anything at all, they just stand back and let it all be."
I've written somewhere over 2,800 blog posts in the last 16 years, and have told hundreds of little stories about my days in BMX freestyle in the 1980's and 1990's. I've written about many other things as well. These days, I'm doing most of my writing on my Substack site. Since this blog hit 1,000 posts, I've throttled back on the new posts. It still gets a bunch of views from various links. But I just do posts here that seem really interesting to me at the time. This is an idea that popped into my head a couple days ago, while listening to some classic rock songs.
My first car was a 1971 Pontiac Bonneville. It was a gigantic four door sedan powered by an Oldsmobile 455 V-8, and it was about 18 1/2 feet long. A land yacht. That car was big, powerful, horrible on gas, and a blast to get loose in, on snowy roads in the winter. It could hold 10 or 12 drunk high school kids, and my taxi driving career really began in Boise, Idaho, in 1983, when I would be the designated driver, and drive a bunch of teens home from parties. These, big, long, hard rock songs remind me of my land yacht Pontiac. Big and comfortable and a memorable part of a certain era.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of great Rock n' Roll songs that have been sung, recorded, and often covered by others later on. But there's this subset of Rock songs that are really long, let's say, over 5 minutes, and epic rock as well. Here are a bunch of my favorite long, epic rock songs.
Just for the record, I listened to every song in its entirety while working on this blog post, except for "In A Godda Da Vida." I had limited online time at the library, so I skipped over that 20 minute epic. When I started out on this idea, I thought there were about 10 or 15 classic, long songs from the 1970's and early 1980's. Then I got into this blog post, and just kept finding more epic, long songs. I didn't link every song, there are quite a few more, but I got most of the classic rock bands known for long songs, and then brought it right up to the present day. 91 epic songs and performances over 5 minutes each. Enjoy.
I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
I've been living homeless in the San Fernando Valley. Yes, this is the place Moon Unit Zappa made fun of way back in 1982. They don't talk like that anymore, by the way. Fer shur. The Valley is just north of the Los Angeles basin, on the other side of those little mountains where the Hollywood sign is. The SoCal weather, overall, is way better than any place else I've lived. But it's pretty damn hot this week. The interwebs said it was 112 degrees (F) here yesterday. We've got a few more days of this.
So I'm doing my best to stay out of the heat and stay hydrated this week. Doing a little blogging and a bunch of writing and reading, mostly.
I just finished reading the book, When McKinsey Comes to Town, by journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. The book was straight out mind blowing. McKinsey & Co. is a management consultant company that's nearly 100 years old, and has advised many of the best known, major corporations, and many government agencies in the U.S., and around the world. After reading this book, I'd like to try and explain who McKinsey is, but John Oliver and the LastWeek Tonight crew does it so fucking well in this video above. Just watch the video.
"To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspects are the Illuminati, Lizard People, or 'globalists.' They are wrong, naturally. There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company."
- a former McKinsey consultant, quoted in the book, When McKinsey Comes to Town. (p.278).
For me, learning about McKinsey & Co., in the last several weeks, started with wondering why McDonald's corporate officers seem to be making so many odd decisions in recent years. As someone who eats at McDonald's a lot, I began to wonder why McDonald's seems to have forgotten that they actually run restaurants.
I started checking out some of the YouTube videos about the fast food industry and McDonald's, like this one, and this one. With the pandemic and high inflation afterwards, the last few years have been incredibly tough for fast food restaurants in general. McDonald's issues though, go back a decade or more. The McDonald's corporate officers, according to multiple reports, have been increasingly squeezing more money out of the local franchisees for several years now. This became such an issue, that McDonald's franchisees actually started a union, to collectively voice their issues to the corporate officers. As time passed in recent years, the local owners, the franchisees, have seen decreasing profits in many places, due to corporate decisions in many cases. And then, the pandemic hit, with the business shutdowns, followed by high inflation and rising prices for food items. As a business owner, that's a lot to deal with.
After a while, I came across this article, with McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski, from 2021. In it, and the embedded video, he talks about McDonald's focusing more attention on their rewards program, and delivery orders using Postmates, Uber Eats, and similar delivery platforms. He also talks about McDonald's testing out restaurants that had no inside seating at all, just drive-thru, phone order takeouts, and delivery orders.
It looks like that for three years or more, McDonald's has been looking into the cost savings of having fast food restaurants, with no actual "restaurant." I have a hunch, that if you polled 1,000 Americans, and asked them, "What is McDonald's?" their answers would say that it's a fast food restaurant where families go to eat for a reasonable price, or something similar to that. Tens of millions of current American adults played, as little kids, in the Play Places that no longer exist at McDonald's.
Somehow I don't think the idea of McDonald's being just a drive-thru/delivery business would fly with most current customers. Not for the long term, anyhow. Maybe that's just me. It also seems like it would be difficult to get the owners of the 12,775 McDonald's franchisees in the U.S. to shut down the indoor part of the restaurant, when it usually costs $1 million to $2 million to buy a McDonald's franchise. In any case, it appears there's a lot more drama ahead for most, if not all, fast food companies, for the corporate staff and franchisees alike.
In any case, that article with the McDonald's CEO is on the McKinsey & Co. website. So I asked myself, "Who's McKinsey?" That's when I found the LastWeek Tonight video above, and a bunch of other interesting posts about this consulting firm. Last week, looking for an interesting book in the local library, I stumbled upon When McKinsey Comes to Town. Since that three year old article is on the McKinsey website, it's obvious that McKinsey was consulting Mickey D's in 2021, and likely still is. After reading that book, I now understand how McDonald corporate could have forgotten that they actually run restaurants, not just phone app delivery sites.
Several weeks ago, I was wondering why my local McDonald's no longer have dedicated clerks manning the register and taking orders full time. That led to this crazy trip through learning about the current the tribulations of the fast food industry, and then to this secretive management consulting firm that literally seems like a parody of the terms "management consulting." Man, it's a weird world we live in, and McKinsey has had consulting gigs with a lot of it in 100 years.
The renowned talk show host, Phil Donahue, died this past weekend at the age of 88. This is Entertainment Tonight's tribute to the guy who invented the afternoon, audience participation talk show. If it wasn't for Phil Donahue's show, Oprah, Sally Jessie, Maury, Jerry Springer and all the others may have never had the shows we know them best for.
Somewhere in a box, probably in my sister's attic back east, there's a picture of me when I was 19-years-old. I was about as close to thin as I ever got, and I was wearing my Boise High School letterman's jacket, red with white sleeves, and a big red "B" on it. Believe it or not, my fat ass got a letter in cross-country during my senior year of high school (Go Braves!). In the photo, my hand is raised up, left hand, I believe, and there's a small monkey on my hand. I had a splint on one finger that I had smashed or something. It wasn't broken, but the doctors at the ER put a splint on it, to keep it from moving for a few days. The monkey kept picking at the white tape and splint, trying to figure out what it was for. The photo was taken in San Francisco, in either the fall of 1985, or spring of 1986, I think it was in the spring. My mom and I were standing in line to see a taping of the Phil Donahue Show. Or Donahue, as it was called then. That episode had something to do with grandparent's rights, when their kids were abusive to their grandkids, something like that. The show did a few days of taping in San Francisco for some reason. The monkey was owned by a guy working the line, letting people take photos with the monkey for tips. There were a few hundred of us lined up for an hour or more, so I imagine he made a decent amount of money. My mom snapped the photo.
As I recall, once we were all seated, Phil Donahue came out before the show, and let the audience ask him questions. My mom was really excited, and he came over, pointed the mic towards her, and let her speak. My mom, Kathy, told Phil Donahue that she had been a fan of his show since he was a local talk show host in Dayton, Ohio. In fact, she explained, she once was in the studio audience of the local show when she was pregnant with her son, who's now 19-years-old. She pointed to me. She told Phil Donahue that she'd been a fan all those years, and was delighted to be able to come to another taping.
Now even for a TV host who has interviewed hundreds of celebrities, and pointed a mic at thousands of audience members, that's a pretty unique story. Phil Donahue was incredibly gracious and professional, and said he was glad she came to a show taping all those years later. It's been a long time, obviously, but I think that all happened before the show taped.
He went backstage after the questions, and came back out to tape the show. During the latter half of the show, my mom got to make a comment about the topic of the day, which, of course made her happy. Because of that, we were both on camera for a few seconds during the actual show. She might have mentioned seeing him before in Dayton in the show, but I think it was before hand. My memory is hazy on that part. In any case, we watched the show being taped, and it was pretty cool.
After the show, the audience was told that Phil was available to get a photo with, back in those days before cell phones and selfies as we know them today. My mom, of course, wanted a photo. We left the auditorium, and there was a big line of well over 100 people to get a photo. So we stood in another line for probably 20 minutes or so, and eventually made it up to say "Hi" to Phil, and to take a photo. As my mom walked up, he smiled and said, "You're the lady from Ohio, right?" Wow. That one floored me. The audience probably had 400 to 500 people in it, and he had talked to quite a few of them, both during the question period, and while taping the show itself.
As you can imagine, my mom was ecstatic that he remembered her, and she talked to him for a minute, and I shot a photo of them. We headed out, and back home to San Jose, where my mom promptly called everyone she could think of and told them she saw Phil Donahue, and that he remembered her after the show.
I'd heard the story about my mom going to see a Phil Donahue Show taping live, while she was pregnant with me, several times before that day. I remember her watching his show going way back in my childhood. Today I looked it up, and found that the local Dayton Phil Donahue Show started in 1967. I was born in 1966. But he did an earlier afternoon show called Conversation Piece, at the same station, WHIO-TV, from 1963 to 1967. We did live in both Dayton and Cincinnati (close by) when I was little. We moved out of Dayton when I was five. But my parents lived up by Akron, in the opposite part of Ohio, when I was born. My guess is that my mom went with a couple of other women to the taping back in 1966. I never heard the whole story of the trip. My mom died earlier this year, so I can't get the details from her.
As a kid in Ohio until I was 14, I watched a lot of Phil Donahue Shows as a kid. My mom, and most other moms we knew, watched it nearly every afternoon. The show was on a lot, whether us kids wanted to watch it or not. My dominant memory is my mom folding laundry while watching it, on many different occasions.
From all of his shows I watched on TV, and the one taping that I went to when I was 19, I have to say Phil Donahue was a class act, on TV and off. He and his team figured out in the 1960's that you can do a really interesting TV show, day after day, with a live studio audience and a good topic to talk about. He invented the afternoon talk show genre' and taped thousands of interesting shows. RIP Phil Donahue.
I couldn't find the photo of me with the monkey anywhere online, or on social media. If I find it, I'll put it up here, or link to it.
Or is "Nothing Compares 2 U" Sinead O'Conner's song now? Her 1990, stripped down, soul wrenching cover and full face video is what really launched this song into the stratosphere. What about Chris Cornell's cover in 2016 with acoustic guitars, cello, and haunting vocals? Cynthia Erivo took it in another direction at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier this year.
"Nothing Compares 2 U" has been covered by P!nk, Brandi Carlile, Madonna, Annie Lennox, Chris Stapleton, actress/singer Kate Hudson, as well as instrumental versions by orchestras, pianists, a romantic saxophone player and a bass clarinet player, along with many more.
But it was this cover and video by Sinead O'Conner in 1990 took this song to a whole different place. Sinead and her crew reinvented this song. When it's a Prince song to begin with, that really says something.
I often learn things when writing blog posts, that's part of the fun. I get an idea for a post, and get drawn deep into one subject or another, falling down a rabbit hole that goes places I didn't expect. In the last 24 hours, I've learned that this epic song is not only 40 years old this year, but it has become a modern standard, with a whole lot more really good cover versions than I had any idea existed. There are 29 versions of "Nothing Compares 2 U" linked in this blog post. There are three versions by Prince and three by Sinead O' Conner linked, each a bit different from the others. Then there are 23 other versions. I discovered P!nk's cover with the orchestra yesterday, recorded in a BBC studio, embedded above. That blew me away. Then I just kept digging on YouTube, and finding more and more covers.
Here's how this blog post came to be. As a homeless blogger, I spend most mornings in a certain McDonald's, with a sweet tea, and a sausage biscuit on a good day. I'm usually hanging out with 3 or 4 other homeless guys, decent guys from different backgrounds. We sit there, talking about one thing or another, from the weather to politics to surfing and current events. We have some really cool conversations at times.
Yesterday, one guy mentioned something about Chris Cornell being in Soundgarden, which I didn't know. Yeah, they had several cool songs, but I was never a huge fan, and I'm not someone who knows every musician in every band. I just like music.
About a year ago, I ran into Chris Cornell's incredible SiriusXM version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," and I love his version. Yesterday, I realized I probably met him, way back in 1989. One day while working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, a band walked through our studio. That happened occasionally, Vision was trying to get bands to help promote Vision Street Wear clothes. Gene Loves Jezebel, Antrax, and INXS all toured Unreel back then, along with several lesser known musicians. Our office was the coolest part of Vision, with a 7 foot high Statue of Liberty on the landing of the steps, an ocean view from two offices, and the $500,000 video edit bay. So when Vision owner Brad Dorfman wanted to impress someone, he brought them to Unreel.
As I walked out after work that day, one of the guys from the band said something like, "Hey, we're Soundgarden, want some stickers?" This would have been in their early, SST Records days. I may have heard the name of the band at that point, but wasn't familiar with them. But I was a BMX guy, I never turned down free stickers. "I said, "Sure." They gave me maybe 20 of the rectangular, "Soundgarden Louder than Love" stickers. I put them in the glove compartment of my truck, and forgot about them. A couple years later, my friend Keith was digging the the glove box for something and found them. He freaked, "Holy shit, dude! You've got Soundgarden stickers. Can I have a couple?" "You can have them all," I said. Did I meet Chris Cornell that day in the Unreel parking lot? Probably. But, I can't say for sure. But I remembered the band's name after that, though I never was a became a big fan. Yesterday, when I realized I probably met him, I got the idea for this blog post, thinking there were at least three awesome versions of "Nothing Compares 2 U."
In 2016, after the untimely death of Prince, Chris Cornell did his amazing cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U," as did several other people, as a tribute to the purple musical genius. As you can see in the links below, several people covered this song in 2016 and 2017, but I, personally, think Chris Cornell's cover rises above the others. This led to a resurgence of interest in Prince, and in this particular song, still best known for Sinead O'Conner's breakout, 1990 version.
Then, in 2017, Chris Cornell tragically died by suicide. His death brought another wave of interest in this song, since he had just done an epic version of it. Though my list of links below may not be in perfect order, you can see that there was a surge in people who covered this song, in that era. This brought "Nothing Compares 2 U" into the awareness of a whole new generation of fans, and the covers of this song increased.
Then, last year, 2023, Sinead O' Conner passed away, also at a relatively young age, of pulmonary issues. Whether she liked it or not, this was the song that unexpectedly launched her into mainstream success and notoriety. As a singer, songwriter, activist, and all around strong woman, Sinead had a huge fan base. Her death led to yet another wave of interest in her work, and in this song in particular. Another wave of young people was introduced to this song, and more began to cover it, in a variety of ways. "Nothing Compares 2 U" has become a true standard of our times, as it turns 40 years old this year.
As if the song is not haunting enough, the three people with the strongest ties to it all died in their 50's. Prince was 57, Sinead O' Conner was 56, and Chris Cornell was 52. That's as tragic as the heart wrenching song itself.
This blog post is my little tribute to this incredible song, during its 40th anniversary. This is a tribute to its creator, Prince, and to Sinead and Chris. This is a tribute to all the musicians who have given this incredible song a go, adding their own soul and style to the song, and the music world as a whole. If you've read this far, check out any of the links that sound interesting, above and below. Maybe all these variations of this song may spark some inspiration in you to write your own song, or do whatever creative work you do. Or maybe this song will help you survive your own broken heart someday. I think music is one of the great things human beings have come up with, and we need musicians to keep creating as a key part of human society. Music is a form of magic that, sometimes, just keeps growing and expanding on its own, even long after the creator of it is gone.
