Chinchilla "Ok As I Am"- new music video

Chinchilla's music keeps getting better and better.  I first heard of her a couple of years ago, after an old BMX friend's post turned me on to Ren's "Hi Ren."  Within a couple of days, I discovered the Rex X Chinchilla videos, "Chalk Outlines," and "I Forgot How to Be Me."  Those are still my two favorite songs I've heard of hers, along with her rendition of "I Put a Spell on You" on the British version of The Voice.  

I think there's a song out there with her name on it, something big and orchestrated, that will really let her show her skills as a singer and performer.  When that song comes along, she will quickly blast into the ears of millions of more listeners.  I'd love to hear her cover a Meatloaf song, or anything written by Jim Steinman, but that's just me.  Anyhow, I clicked on to find this video with under 6,000 views, and it's my new favorite solo video of hers.  It will have many, many more views by this time tomorrow.  A LOT more views.  Check this Chinchilla video out while it's brand new. 

5,700

Illegal skate contest in the L.A. River bed

This event happened on the DL about a month ago, somewhere in the L.A. riverbed.  This informal contest video just has a lot of damn good skating in it, and apparently was sponsored by Gorilla Energy Drink (never heard of it) and Keen Ramps.  It's just a cool, solid video if you're into street skating.  

I stumbled upon this video, while checking out a BMX video.  This came up on the side, as things do on YouTube.  As some of you may know, I worked at Vision Skateboard's video company, Unreel Productions, way back in the olden days.  We did a street skating video shoot back when street skating was a really new thing.  It happened in an empty parking lot, right on the corner of 17th and Placentia in Costa Mesa, caddy corner to the bar that had once been the legendary Cuckoo's Nest.  

In this Vision Street Wear commercial, one of the obstacles was a 4 foot high quarterpipe up against the wall of a building.  You can see 3 or 4 quick shots of that shoot in this commercial.  Kele Rosecrans was doing loud, wheel squealing, six foot high, front side power slides above that tiny ramp that day.  It was amazing.  So the quarterpipe against the wall, under the bridge, reminded me of that Vision shoot, way back in the day.  

These skaters go off, and it's great vibe for the jam/contest.  Check out the video.

For most people of Generation X, this location looks familiar because the L.A. River bed was where they filmed the iconic race scene for the movie Grease.  

$10,000 Investment Challenge- Update 8/14/2025- Down big time at the moment

 

All in on Apecoin since January 2025.  Am I an idiot?  It sure looks like it... for now.  

Disclaimer

Way back in December of 2023, I tried to open up a crypto account, but was unable to, because I had a cheap Obama phone.  I thought it was a good time to hop into some crypto, but couldn't open an account.  So I decided to do a paper trading experiment instead.  My question was:

If I had $10,000 to invest on that day (12/11/2023), what would I invest it in?

This is, and has always been a paper trading exercise.  It's an imaginary investment account, making imaginary trades, based on market conditions at the time of each trade (including adding in gas fees, etc.). 

You can check this link for links to all of the changes in this paper trade experiment since I started.  

I picked a handful of cryptos, and have traded in and out (again, purely imaginary- paper trades) since.  In a few months, the paper trade fund was up 40%.  I've traded in and out of a handful of cryptos, mostly taking profits on those that were up, and re-investing in others.  As of January of 2025, this was my paper trade account:

8,685.31 Apecoin

$392.81 in cash 

Right now, on August 14 2025, Apecoin is at 60 cents per coin.  Total value of my paper trading account currently is:

 $5,211.19 in Apecoin, plus $392.81, for a current total of $5,604.  

At this point, this paper trading experiment is down 44%, over 20 months.  But, my investment window, when I expected this to be a worthwhile investment, has been late 2025 or early 2026 from the start.  

My bet was that this Apecoin would rise to a solid investment between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026.  Yes, it's down big right now, but we're only 6 weeks into the window I was aiming for.  As of right now, buying Bitcoin, Eth, or Solana over this time period would have paid off more at this point.  Buying Nvidia stock would have paid off more at this point.  Even buying gold or silver bullion would have paid off more at this point. 

I thought gold was going to go up some in late 2023, but honestly, gold has really surprised me since.  That's mostly because this whole scenario is playing out much slower than I thought it would.  But it's still playing out.  

Here's why I'm hanging onto the Apecoin in my imaginary paper trade account, and riding it out.  I think we are dramatically overdue for a major correction in both stocks and crypto.  I don't think $121,000 Bitcoin is the peak of this crypto cycle, but I think we're near the short term peak.  

I believe we will see a major financial crash this year, that's already overdue.  I think a huge ($5 to $10 TRILLION) bailout will follow, over the course of several many months, after a major correction, we will see a huge liquidity wave, which will send stocks and crypto back up, gold and silver down.  The now expected decline of interest rates over the next year is lining up with this idea, as is the massive slowing of real estate in the parts of the U.S. that boomed over the last several years.  There's also the commercial real estate collapse (see my Simulpocalypse Series on Substack for more on that).  Anyhow, when the bailout money surges into financial markets, probably in the spring of 2026, we will see a prolonged surge in crypto.  I think in mid to late 2026, maybe early 2027, we will see $150,000 Bitcoin, and over time, huge rises in many other cryptos.  That is the scenario I was betting on from the start.  

My assessment may be completely wrong, of course.  It's already running somewhat behind the timeline I had in mind, but I'm sticking with this overall assessment.  So I don't care that I'm all in on Apecoin when it's at 60 cents a coin.  This time next year, we'll know if my $10,000 Investment challenge was sound thinking or not.  

Checking this today, I decided to write a post, even though it's down, and I'm making no changes, because I should show when things are not going well, as well as when they are going well.  

A look at some of the bigger discount sales of large commercial properties in recent years

Bond market expert and economic content creator, Steven Van Metre dives into the most recent large value drop on a huge office building.  Most of the investors in the $277 million bond on this building will be wiped out, and even investors in the highest and safest tranche will take big losses.  He cites a report about the Wells Fargo "Cash Register" building in Denver.  

Reminder: Recessions are when the whole world goes on sale, and almost no one wants to buy  

OK, officially we are not in recession, but...  Here are a few of the big commercial discount sales in recent years.

Brookfield sells 601 S. Figuroa office tower in downtown L.A. at 42% loss (June 2025)

Los Angeles County buys Gas Company Tower for $200 million (69% loss in value over 5 years)

Brookfield Corp owned Gas Company Building in L.A. goes into receivership- 2023

New York City office towers, 135 West 50th Street, sells for 97.5% discount (2024)

Two Denver office towers sell for 90% loss (2025)

The tallest building in Fort Worth, Texas sells at auction for 91% loss

65 story Chicago office tower sells at 85% loss

Portland, Oregon office tower known as "Big Pink" sells for $45 million- an 88% discount to the 2015 price (2025)

The Irvine Company sells 401 B Street office tower in San Diego for 71% loss (2025)

San Francisco office tower, 410 Townsend Street, sells for 74% loss (2024)

Blackstone sells office complex in Santa Ana, CA for 36% loss

I actually worked in this complex for a short time in the 1990's, it sits next to the 55 freeway in Santa Ana, not too far from Irvine and John Wayne (Orange County) airport.

CNBC TV (2024)- "The real estate debt problem still hasn't been dealt with..." 

Bloomberg Television (2023): "The Debt Crisis Looming in Commercial Real Estate

Epic Economist YouTube channel: "Commercial Real Estate Crash Triggers Huge Property Value Drop and Hit 2008 Levels (Late 2024/early 2025)

The Investor Who Profited from Dying Malls is Now Betting Big on Empty Offices

These are just a few of the biggest properties that have sold at massive discounts in recent years, along with empty stores and dead malls before that.  These sales are intentionally being kept out of the major media and search engines, to keep the "Economy is fine" narrative going, apparently.  

Most of these types of sales, the bigger ones anyhow, are reported in local TV newscasts, local newspaper sites, or local business journal newspapers and websites.  You need to subscribe to many of these sites to read the whole story.  If you started digging, you could find many more similar sales.  The point here is to simply show that quite a few sales with losses in the tens of million dollars are happening, and thousands more buildings are still under used with high vacancy rates, or sitting vacant, maybe completely abandoned, in some cases.  

SOMEONE, banks, investors, REIT's, or major corporations, are taking huge losses on these sales.  They are also going to a lot of trouble in the media/social media works to keep all of this out of the public eye.  

Blogger's note- 8/11/2025- In an amazing little bit of synchronicity, the Los Angeles Times newspaper, this morning, has a front page, above the fold story about an L.A. skyscraper building that's in the planning process to be renovated into "deluxe" apartments.  I've heard that there are a lot of structural issues to overcome doing that type of conversion, but that's great, if the developer can make it happen.  I have a feeling they may run into some funding issues in the next 2-4 years, but time will tell.  The "LA Graffiti Towers" are a project that lost funding, twice, and they now sit partially built, and abandoned.  Click the link to learn their story.  

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform specifically designed for writers.  Check out the companion post, "Simulpocalypse- Post #8" that goes with this blog post.  Or check the main page here:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

The Pacific Ring of Fire is waking up. What does that mean for us in Southern California?

Meteorologist Bill Martin explains the Pacific Subduction Zone, and shows some great graphics to help visualize what's happening in the Pacific Ring of Fire lately. He also repeatedly says to just "be calm" during an earthquake, and just act intelligently.  The majority of the time, very few people are injured in earthquakes, even large ones.

Over the last few weeks, I started having videos pop up on YouTube about earthquakes and volcanoes around the Pacific Ring of Fire.  I didn't think much about it.  I watched a video about the earthquake swarm around Mount Rainier in early July and thought, "Hey, maybe the Ring of Fire is waking up a bit."  The big earthquakes since in Alaska and Kamchatka, and Kamchatka region tsunami, along with other quakes, make it seem like we're heading into a more active period around the Pacific Ring of Fire.  

For any who don't know, the Pacific Ring of Fire is the name for the line of tectonic plate seams that go up the west coast of South America, through Central America, up the American and Canadian west coast, along the southern Alaska coast, peninsula, Aleutian Island chain, over to the Russian east coast, down through the east coast of China, Japan, through Indonesia, and through the western Pacific islands to New Zealand.  

Because of all these major and minor plates of the earth grinding together, this Ring has lots of earthquakes and lots of volcanoes.  Watch the 15 minute video above for a good explanation of why these earthquakes are happening in these areas, why some volcanoes are a bit more active, and what this means for us here in California, and along the North American Pacific Coast.  Don't believe the crazy hype videos.  This group of plate seams and faults seams to be getting more active, but that doesn't mean "The Big One" is coming next week, or that "California's going to fall into the ocean,"as so many people across the U.S. think.  California is not going to fall into the ocean.  The area west of the San Andreas fault will, in 30 or 40 million years, slowly carve away and become a big, 400 mile long island, off the shore of mainland California.  That's millions of years away. 

Bill Martin explains in the video above why a large earthquake off the coast of the far north part of California is our biggest threat.  That could lead to tsunami damage in the Bay Area, and maybe to the L.A. area, to a small extent.  Maybe.  But down here in Southern California, that's not a major threat.  Again, watch that video for a better understanding of what this recent activity in around the Ring of Fire does and does not mean.  Below are videos about the larger earthquakes and volcanic activity this year, to learn more, if you're interested.  

 Five of the eight earthquakes over 7.0 in 2025 have been around the Pacific Ring of Fire

July 29, 2025- 8.8 earthquake/tsunami off coast of Kamchatka region of Russia's east coast

Volcano eruption in Kamchatka after 8.8 quake, but not caused by the quake directly

July 20, 2025- 7.4 earthquake of coast of Kamchatka region in Russia

May 4, 2025- 7.4 earthquake off the coast of Chile

July 16, 2025- 7.3 earthquake/tsunami warning off the coast of the western peninsula of Alaska

March 20, 2025- 7.0 earthquake off the coast of Tonga

July 8th week, 2025- Swarm of over 300 small earthquakes in Mount Ranier region, south of Seattle, Washington  No eruption expected, it hasn't erupted for over 1,000 years.

Late July, 2025- Axial Seamount- active underwater volcano off of the coast of Oregon has also had swarms of small earthquakes  This volcano is far enough offshore and is not believed to pose a serious threat to humans.  Scientists are monitoring it, including with sensors and underwater video cameras, and expect to learn a lot during this period of heightened activity.

My tweet from July 17-" #ringoffire firing up?   Or just getting a bit restless?"  That was a day after the big quake off of Alaska, and after I had watched the video about the Mount Ranier mini-quake swarms, and a short video about the Axias Seamount underwater volcano off Oregon, which had been in the news.  It seemed like a potential trend, by that point.  I tweeted this before the 7.4 and 8.8 Kamchatka quakes.  Yep, Kamchatka seems to have answered that question.  

Mary's Monster- the story of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and the creation of "Frankenstein"

Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein, the visual book by Lita Judge, is an incredible work of art.  It's a visual take on the story of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote one of the most classic horror tales of all time, Frankenstein.  This book kept catching my eye at the local library, where I work every day.  Finally I picked it up and absorbed it.  I didn't just read it, it has over 300 incredible paintings, every page a full bleed to the edges.  I spent time checking out all the images that Lita Judge spent five years painting.  Mary's Monster is a haunting take on the tragic, yet incredible, life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

"At 17 I am already the mother of bones and daughter to a ghost."

-Mary Shelley, quoted in Mary's Monster

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley saw far more than her share of tragedy in her life.  She was also a very intelligent young woman, and incredibly well read for a woman in the early 1800's.  Have any of you read Dante's Inferno?  I haven't.  But Mary Shelley read it, and other classics, as a teenager.  She wrote the novel, Frankenstein- or The Modern Prometheus, when she was only 18 and 19-years-old.  

Not only did she, as a young woman, write a novel that invented the concept of science fiction, it was a deep and brutal look at humanity, a brilliant social commentary that still stands up today.  She also created a fictional creature, Dr. Frankenstein's monster, that is still iconic today, 207 years later.  Frankenstein, her first novel, has been in print for the entire time since, over 200 years.  

After going through Mary's Monster twice, I realized that I needed to read the original Frankenstein.  It was not the book I thought it was, not even close.  We all have our pictures of the monster, big blocky head, bolts coming out of his neck, but those are from the endless series of movie, TV show, and Halloween versions of Frankenstein's monster.  The monster in Shelley's novel is much different, and highly intelligent.  Frankenstein, over 200 years later, is a brilliant novel, and it's a story of revenge and tragedy, but in a much different way than I thought.  I realized that, probably like many people, I didn't really know the story of Dr. Frankenstein, and his monster, at all.  

I've never been a big comic book or graphic novel reader.  Super heroes didn't do it for me as a kid.  No super hero was around when I could have used one as a kid, so I never got really into comics.  I was a nerd, but not a comic book nerd.  

Around age 30, though, I worked for a small furniture moving company in Huntington Beach, California.  Our moving company office was at a very unique shopping center called Sea Cliff, and there was a small comic book shop in the shopping center, a couple doors away.  On days when we finished up working early, I started going to the comic shop, and just browsing all the comics out then.  That was in 1996 and 1997.  I saw a bunch of comic series that were more interesting to me, stories that were not just super heroes in spandex with extraordinary powers.  There were much more complex and interesting stories being told in comics and graphic novels.  During that era, I read two Alan Moore classics, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, I read Neil Gaiman's The Sandman later on, some Spawn issues, and bought a few issues of Sin City, which had really cool black and white art.  There was one comic that I really loved, Seekers into the Mystery, written by J.M. DeMatteis.  I bought and read every single issue of that series.  That was is the best comic series I've read, personally.  I didn't get into any other graphic novels after that, but I'd check them out from time to time, to see if there were any other stories that interested me.  

Mary's Monster is not really a traditional graphic novel, it's a story told through a collection of paintings and a small amount of verse.  I'm not going to go into any more detail, but if this post interested you at all, find a copy of Mary's Monster, and check it out.  It's a great work of art telling an amazing true story.  You may get drawn into the tragic story of Mary Shelley, and maybe you'll wind up reading the actual novel, Frankenstein, like I did.  

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

There are no paid links in this post. 

Canada... patiently waiting for Trump and MAGA to destroy U.S. so they can take over...

 Peacefully waiting, just to the north, Canada knows Trump and MAGA will continue to destroy the U.S. economy, then American society.  At some point Canadians will be able to take over, clean up the mess, and create a functional country out of what is now the United States.  It's only a matter of time.

I've been kicked off of Facebook (or hacked)

 I got into my Facebook account this morning, and went to click on a message, and got the whole, "Your computer is infected!" thing.  I'm on a library computer, so I just had to shutdown and restart it.  

I haven't been able to log directly into Facebook for months before this, I had to put in my phone number (for the phone that got stolen a year ago, I never got a new phone) log in indirectly for a while now.  In any case, I cannot log into Facebook at all now, and appear to have lost that account.  

The funny thing is, I don't really care.  Facebook has gone downhill so much in recent years, I don't even know if I want to bother getting a new account.  If you are someone I know, and find this because you can't contact me on FB, feel free to email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com to reconnect.  I'm still on Twitter (surprisingly) @steveemig43, and I'm still on Pinterest, which actually does have a message function, though I never check it.  Moving on.  

Blogger's note- 7/17/2025- I spent 20 minutes or more trying to get back on FB yesterday when this happened.  It kept saying my account no longer existed.  A couple hours later, I came back, got online, and tried again, just for the hell of it.  And I got back into my account.  I don't know what the fuck is going on...

Blogger's note- 10:18 am- 7/18/2025- OK, Now I'm blocked from getting into FB again.  The phone number they have is a phone that got stolen a year ago... long gone.  Jeeeeeez...

Edgar Cayce: The Most Documented Psychic in History

This documentary tells the basic story of the life of Edgar Cayce, best known as the most documented psychic in American, and probably all, history.  He lived from 1877 to 1945.  

In his 20's, Edgar Cayce learned to put himself into a trance-like state, where other people would ask him questions, and he would tap into some other levels of information, including something he called the Akashic Record.  Over 14,000 of these readings, as they were called, were documented by a stenographer, and then transcribed and organized.  The material covered was mostly health readings, to diagnose and find treatments for illnesses and injuries for thousands of different people.  But he also gave "life readings," which dove into the history of individual people.  It was those readings that spoke of past lives, reincarnation, ancient Egypt, the "lost" civilization of Atlantis, and many other topics.  

Edgar was a devout Christian throughout his whole life.  At age 13, he decided to read the Bible, the whole thing, start to finish.  During the rest of his life, he read the entire Bible once for every year of his life, 67 times in total.  He taught Sunday school from his teen years on.  He worked several different jobs, but spent many years working as a photographer with his own small shop.  He moved a few times around the eastern U.S., and at one point tried to use his abilities to strike it rich in the oil boom in Texas.  He married a woman named Gertrude, they had two boys, and eventually settled in Virginia Beach, Virginia, led by suggestions in his psychic readings.  

With the help of some investors from Wall street, he opened a small hospital in Virginia Beach, where people could be treated by doctors and nurses, using the treatments suggested in his health readings.  Thousands of people, including Edgar himself, and his oldest son, Hugh Lynn Casey, were helped by Edgar's health readings, through serious ailments and injuries.  When Edgar woke up from his readings, he had no idea what information had come through him, which is why a stenographer (a woman writing in shorthand, taking detailed notes) was necessary, to accurately compile the information received.    

Edgar's readings predicted the stock crash of 1929, earlier that year.  He predicted in the early 1900's that some day doctors would be able to take a single drop of blood and diagnose what's wrong with a patient.  He predicted that the obscure Jewish sect, the Essenes, would become more prominent in the future.  Many years later, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in Israel, which shed light on the Essenes.  He also predicted things that didn't happen, like the Earth's poles shifting in the 20th century.  But he said that the future is not predestined, it can change, depending on what we do in the present.  

Near the end of his life, in the 1940's during World War II, Edgar Cayce did as many as 8 readings a day.  The readings took a lot out of him, and he pushed himself to physical exhaustion, while trying to help as many people as he could.  Edgar Cayce died in 1945, months before World War II ended, at age 67.  

Below are talks given by different scholars of Edgar Cayce's readings, on a few different subjects.  There are dozens more talks on many different subjects that came through the 14,000+ psychic readings of Cayce.  This post is just a little introduction into the life of this regular man who could tap, somehow, into extraordinary pools of information and knowledge.  

If you find him interesting, you can research more about him on your own.  You can also join the A.R.E., the non-profit Association for Research and Enlightenment, which Cayce started late in his life, and which continues on today.  The link to their website is below.  There are also several books, most published in the mid 20th century, on different subjects, based on information in his many readings.  

A.R.E. Center of New York- John Van Auken- Edgar Cayce's Story of the Soul

The Meaning of Dreams- Kevin Todeschi, ARE CEO

Edgar Cayce Arizona- "What is My Ideal?"- John Schroeder & Steve Bobbitt

John Van Auken- Going from Karma to Grace

There is a River- The Story of Edgar Cayce- by Thomas Sugrue  (Not a paid link)

Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment)

Half a million page views and over 1050 posts...

This blog just crossed the 500,000 page view threshold.  Cool.

As I said in the post a couple of days ago, I don't know where the big chunks of page views are coming from.  This has been happening over the last 1 1/2 to two years, maybe.  This blog has 1,062 posts, but there are a few I started and never finished, so the real number is 1,050 to 1,055 published posts, just on this blog.  This blog has about 200,000 or so "normal" page views, which is damn good for a weird, niche blog.  Then it has around 300,000 page views that have come in big chunks, thousands in a day, from around the world.  Bots?  AI searches?  People using VPN's to check it out?  Something else?  I don't know.  

On all the blogs I've done since my first, really lame, taxi blog in 2007, I've written somewhere over 2,800 blog posts, most pretty meaty, at least 400-500 words, sometimes more than 1,000 words.  Those assorted blogs have pulled in over 800,000 total page views.  For all intents and purposes, I've made almost no money off of all of that writing.  I have a handful of people that support me on Patreon, about $65 a month total, for a year and a half or so.  A number of people have given me small amounts here and there, mostly because I've been homeless much of the time I've been blogging.  I really do appreciate that support, and I thank all of you who have read my posts, and helped me out.  

I have sold well over 100 Sharpie Scribble Style drawings, many of them to readers of this blog, over the last ten years.  But that income isn't directly from the blog itself.  I've written all these posts because I enjoy doing them, and because I wasn't able to find "a real job" for many years, after working as a taxi driver.  So I had a lot of time on my hands.  

I'm building up my Substack site, which is designed to actually earn money as a writer, and I'm working to earn a decent income from that, at some point.  I will shamelessly ask all of you for your support on Substack (probably about $7 a month or so) when I can get a bank account, and the other things needed to get the paid subscriptions working.  

Thanks again for checking out my blog!  Again, I don't know where these big groups of views are coming from, but the counter hit half a million.  I'll keep adding a post now and then here, as I write mostly on Substack.  So check out my Substack for longer, in depth posts on a bunch of different subjects. 

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack  

Click on "No thanks" on the first page, to see the latest posts.  If you subscribe for free, it just means each post will come directly into your email.  I appreciate all subscribers, and when the paid subscription option happens, there will still be lots of stuff to view for free, but some posts and series will be for subscribers only.  

Right when I noticed the number of views, we had a little earthquake, a 2.7, right under this part of The Valley.  It felt like someone picked up the library a couple inches and dropped it.  I'll take that as a thumbs up from the Earth on hitting a big blog milestone.  Thanks again... enough babbling... onward!

Steve Emig

The White Bear

June 24, 2025 

I honestly don't know what's going on with the page views on this blog... as it creeps towards 500,000

 AI?  Bots?  Thousands of people finding this blog while using VPN's?  I don't know.  Steve Emig: The White Bear blog has about 200,000 "normal" page views, and now nearly 300,000 in huge chunks from all over.  I spend most of my time and effort on my Substack now, and just put up blog posts here once in a while.  If anyone knows what's going, let me know.  

People living in commercial buildings and alternative scenarios to save money or create dream homes

When it comes to alternative living spaces, there's one that goes way back.  Ever wonder just exactly what it was like down in Oscar's trash can on Sesame Street?  Of course you did.  It turns out Elmo got a quick peak at it once.  

As a grubby little kid who didn't care much about cleanliness, I definitely could relate to Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street a bit.  When the drama was high in my house, there seemed times when living in a trash can like Oscar might be a good idea.  I'm only half joking.  Alternative housing, when you live in a tense household, was appealing as a kid.  I couldn't wait to grow up, make money, and have my own place to live.  OK, things didn't play out quite like I expected.  As a result, I have lived in a wide range of "non-normal" living situations, as well as several cool apartments and houses, in my adult life.

It was the late 1970's TV detective, Dan Tanna, who really turned me on to the idea of living in a commercial building.  In the TV private detective show, Vegas (See 20:06, 30:38, 38:14). Tanna lived in a warehouse/industrial building in Las Vegas, and drove a classic, red, 1957 Ford Thunderbird into his living room.  When I was 12 or 13 years old, that seemed like the coolest bachelor pad ever.  Tanna, being a TV detective, was always surrounded by beautiful women, which added to the idea.  My dad, a serious car guy in his younger years, owned a red, 1955 Ford T-bird, and two 1957 T-Birds, which was another reason Dan Tanna seemed super cool to me, as a kid.    

A few years later, and about 1,500 miles west, in Boise, I got into BMX bike racing and freestyle while I was in high school.  A year after I graduated high school, in 1985, my family moved to San Jose, California.  With no money for college, and with BMX freestyle being the driving force in my life then, I started publishing a BMX freestyle zine, financed by my low wage job at Pizza Hut.  Old School BMXers remember that the BMX movie Rad came out in 1986.  The whole plot of Rad seemed pretty hokey to me, but it was cool that BMX made it onto movie screens.  

Another bicycle movie came out about the same time, the Kevin Bacon movie Quicksilver.  It was about a stock broker who loses big, goes broke, and becomes a bicycle messenger in San Francisco.  Personally, I liked Quicksilver better than Rad.  In that movie, Jack and his girlfriend lived in a big, industrial loft turned into an apartment.  Again, that just seemed like a really cool place to live.  I thought, "if I lived there, I could freestyle in my living room."  It wasn't like I suddenly started dreaming of living in an industrial building, it was just something that seemed cool, and the idea stuck in the back of my head.  

Years later, as I lived in a bunch of different places with BMXers, and backyard ramps became a thing, the idea grew.  In addition, I was living cheap all through the 1990's.  During that era, I was working odd jobs, reading dozens of books, and just trying to work through my shyness and personal issues.  Then, after an injury in 1999, I wound up living in a taxi, and in a whole lot of unusual places, in the early 2000's, and beyond.  In high school, I had expected to live a pretty typical life.  But BMX took me off in another direction, and I'm glad it did.  Over my adult years, I've lived in two houses with 10 or more roommates at a time, in an office, in RV's, in an indie art gallery, in an industrial building, in my personal car and several taxis, and a whole bunch of different homeless scenarios, ranging from shelters, to a tent in the woods for several months.  It definitely wasn't the plan, but I became very experienced at cheap and "alternative" living situations.  

Now it's 2025, and nearly everybody, at every income level, is complaining about how high rent and mortgage payments are.  And they are right.  Mortgage and rent affordability is worse than it has been for most of your lives.  For a while now, I've been writing a series on my Substack site about the tens of thousands of vacant and abandoned buildings in the United States.  I call this issue the "Simulpocalypse."  You can check my Substack posts, to learn more about that idea.  At this point, after many years in and out of homelessness, I just want to find a decent place to live and work.  But that old idea has grown.  Getting an industrial or warehouse building large enough to create a live/work/art studio place, one big enough to put a mini ramp inside, sounds really, really cool.  It will probably never happen, but the dream is still there.  

In any case, housing affordability is a huge issue for millions of people now, not just me.  At the same time, there are more and more warehouses, industrial buildings, stores of different sizes, and now entire office buildings, becoming vacant.  One possible option to save money on housing, or to build a dream house scenario, is to look to these vacant and abandoned commercial buildings, sitting empty around the country.  

It turns out YouTubers seem to be leading the charge with this idea.  I think we're heading into a long, pretty gnarly, recession. I think people finding cool ways to live in vacant urban and commercial buildings will grow into a decent sized trend.  It's not the only option to save money on housing, but it's one interesting option that's out there today.  As traditional homes and apartments have become more and more expensive, a huge number of commercial buildings have become vacant, even totally abandoned.  Many are much cheaper to lease than apartments in the same area.  Sure, you're not supposed to live in commercial buildings.  But building owners need tenants, and some may let a decent tenant live in the building, and not sweat it, so they have some rent coming in.  

So here are a bunch of different people who are, or have lived in, commercial buildings, in one way or another.  Check out the ones that sound interesting.  

YouTuber Marianne and her boyfriend live in an old bank in Montreal that they remodeled 

Stacie and her family live in a remodeled, 100-year-old school building in Indiana

An old train car turned into an Airbnb in rural Idaho

Sheila bought an abandoned lighthouse in Ohio and turned it into her home

Abandoned missile silo turned into a home in New York

OK, enough of the crazy places, here are some much more down to Earth homes in commercial buildings and other alternative living spaces.  

This couple, who run an online business and a YouTube channel, were building a home in part of their warehouse out in the country in Florida

Performer/YouTuber and his girlfriend live in an industrial building in Orange County, California

An architect bought an abandoned auto repair shop, and rebuilt into his work/live space in Atlanta

Another guy who lives with roommates in a warehouse in California

This real estate investor "became homeless," and lived in his office to save money, after the real estate market crashed, during the Great Recession.  He credits the time spent living in the office with helping him to get his business going strong again.  

This former patent attorney bought an abandoned building and spent four years building it into his dream live/work space

Another guy who lived in an office in the Los Angeles area, to help his friend who was getting a small online business going.  He paid low rent, which would help his friend pay the lease on the office, and he helped work on the business, as well.  

A 1940's era gas station turned into a home in Lousiana

A retired couple built a luxury home inside of an old factory building

This former Catholic church was turned into a home in Boston

This YouTuber and her 4 kids live in a former thrift store turned into apartment

This guy lives in a converted commercial property

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack  

Post #1 of my Simulpocalypse Series on Substack (it links to the later posts)

Inflection Point Weekend- June 13th-June 15th, 2025

Generation X was grew up under the threat of a potential, worldwide, nuclear Holocaust at any time.  A holocaust that never happened.  Not yet, anyhow.  What can I say, it made us a bit jaded.

Generation X, of which I'm one of the older members, was the last generation to be raised in the Industrial Age, when the factories of America were still thriving.  By the time we hit our teens, and the first Millennials were being born, the factories were closing down, and we were visibly in the long transition into the emerging Information Age.  

By the time the Millennials started hitting their teen years, the internet came along, and democratized communication around the world, in a way that had never happened before in human history.  At that time, the earliest Gen Z kids were being born.  Gen Z was born into a fully digital world, with Web 2.0 in full effect from childhood, and social media and smartphones coming along in their childhood years.  Through all these last few decades, the pace of social and technological change has been steadily increasing.  The power brokers of the Industrial Age world have been desperately clinging to what power they could, while the paradigm shifted around them.  

There come times when the slow grind of change builds up pressure, and a major, sudden shift happens.  An earthquake in society, you might say.  A major inflection point.  

The pace of changes becomes social inflection points when a great deal of change happens in the mentality of large numbers of people.  Or changes in mentality that have already happened make themselves known.  It looks like this weekend, June 13th through June 15th, 2025, will be one of those major inflection points in human society in the United States, and perhaps around the world.  Pay attention kids, we are all living history this weekend, however things play out.  I'm simply calling attention to the importance this weekend will play in society overall.  And somehow, it all starts with a Friday the 13th.  Crazy.  

Here are a few songs to set the mood for what looks to be a pretty crazy weekend, one way or the other.  

"We didn't start the fire" - Fallout Boy, cover of Billy Joel 

"We didn't start the fire" - Bill Joel original

"American Idiot" - Green Day, live in Berlin

"Take back the power" - The Interrupters

"Worker's song" - Dropkick Murphys

"The times they are a-changein'" - Brandi Carlile, cover of Bob Dylan

"Killing in the name of" - Rage Against The Machine

"Punk rock song" - Bad Religion

"End of the world as we know it" - REM

"Get up, stand up" - Bob Marley & The Wailers

"One day" - Matisyahu

Blogger's Note- Monday, June 16th, 2025- It turns out that all those AR-15's owned by 2nd Amendment activists have been completely useless in preventing the drive toward authoritarianism in the United States of America.*  The push by the American Right away from a constitutional democratic republic, and towards an authoritarian state, continues.  Guns are useless in a war of ideas and culture.  The NRA is MIA in the fight to preserve democracy.  But we all knew that already.  

Here are some new reports from today (6/16/2025):

Democracy Now- Headlines- Monday morning, June 16th, 2025

Democracy Now- "No Kings" report- Monday morning, June 16th, 2025 - The pro-democracy majority in the United States of America now has a face.

Rachel Maddow report about President Trump's fading popularity- June 16th, 2025

BBC report comparing the relative military strengths between Israel and Iran

Medias Touch You Tube channel video with Fox News clips included in it

Economic analyst/former Fed economist-  Lacy Hunt interviewed by Adam Taggart- "I think recession risks are better than 50/50..."  (NSFSASP- Not Safe For Short Attention Span People)

And on the lighter side, here's a parody music video: 

"No Kings" music video  by Scared Ketchup art club

Was this weekend, June 13th-June 15th, 2025 an actual inflection point in the United States, or society as a whole?  Time will tell if democracy or authoritarianism wins in the U.S., and elsewhere...

* Just for the record, I am 100% for legal gun ownership.  If you own guns, you need to be a responsible gun owner.  

 

Rumble in Richmond 2025

Here's the Dig BMX edit of the Rumble in Richmond BMX day O' fun, put on by Steve Crandall and posse.  If you like BMX, and you ever get the chance to go to one of Steve Crandall's events, do it.  It's as simple as that.  Check out RAD Share, and help them out if you can.  Bikes to kids who need them.  

Just for the record, I was not at the Rumble in Richmond.  But I lived there a while back in 2018-2019.  I went to the DIY World Championships event in October of 2018, and it was epic, even as an old guy with no bike.  That's why I recommend checking out any event Steve Crandall puts on.

The "Lost Cities" of the Amazon

Have you ever heard about the "Legend of El Dorado," the city in South America that was made entirely of gold?  The very first European explorers in the Amazon in the 1500's reported huge cities.  When more explorers made it into the Amazon area about 100 years later, those cities couldn't be found.  Over centuries, a legend was born that there was a Lost city, built entirely of gold, somewhere in the Amazon basin.

An explorer in the early 1900's, named Percy Fawcett, became obsessed with a lost city in the Amazon he called "Z."  A few months ago, I read the book, The Lost City of Z, about Fawcett.  On his 8th expedition into the Amazon, looking for the lost city of Z, Fawcett disappeared, in 1925.  Dozens of other explorers later went into the Amazon, looking for both Fawcett, and "Z," and disappeared themselves.  Fawcett never found the Lost city of Z, but he did report finding earthen mounds, and ancient pottery in places.  In reality, he actually did find parts of the "Lost Cities of the Amazon," but they weren't built with stone, with huge temples, like the cities of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas.  Fawcett didn't recognize the earthen mounds and bits of pottery as remains of the cities he was looking for.  

But now, partly because of the massive deforestation for cattle ranching, and LIDAR scans showing huge, shaped, earthen mounds under the jungle cover still remaining, there is a lot of evidence that large villages and cities once existed there.  More and more signs of these societies are being found on a regular basis.  

If you're interested in the lost cities of the Amazon, the 7 minute video above gives a good overview of what has been found.  There are many more videos that go into more depth on the subject, as well as interviews and talks with Graham Hancock, who has written a book on this subject.  

I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

There are no paid links in this post.

Top Ten Reasons The White Bear Sucks

Op cord short shorts for guys.  Izod ankle socks, yeah, they actually had the little fucking alligators on them.  Nike Pegasus running shoes because I sucked at running cross country before I sucked at BMX.  The Vuarnets are cool, I found them in a field.  This is me as manager of the tiny Boise Fun Spot amusement park, balancing on my Skyway T/A, in the summer of 1985.  Yep, a lame freestyler (one of three in Boise then), running racing frame pads while doing balance tricks.  Let's face it, it was all downhill after this photo was taken.  Photo by Vaughn K., my co-worker at the Fun Spot.  

Top Ten Reasons The White Bear Sucks

(One) He looks gay as fuck in that photo from Boise in 1985 (above), he must be a fag.  (Actually I'm just a lame straight guy who's been fat, ugly, broke, and had bad teeth for the last 20-25 years, so it's not like women have been beating down my door or anything).  

(Two) He had terrible, shaky camera work in this video, although the ending is cool.  "Somebody fire that cameraman right now."  Heh, heh, heh...

(Three)  He spent way too much time writing about trying to do bunnyhop tailwhips in his blog, and never, EVER, pulled one.  Bill Nitschke invented that trick, let him enjoy the props for being the first guy to land it.  

(Four) He's a loser... anybody who can manage to be homeless for 17 or 18 years must be smoking crack or meth or something.  How could anyone not get a job for 17 years?  (Actually no alcohol, no drugs, I even kicked my Diet Coke habit a couple of years ago.  I do have a serious 7-11 pepperoni pizza habit though, after my years driving a taxi, and then being unable to find any job in NC for ten years, I actually have no work history to even put on a resume' at this point).  Either I manage to get a little, one man publishing/content creating business going, or I'll do the work for free.  Time will tell which way it ultimately works out.   

(Five) He hasn't been able to jump anything at Sheep Hills since about 1992, when The Bowl was still a thing.  And he had the audacity to write a "History of Sheep Hills" post on his Substack.  What the fuck is a Substack, anyhow?  

(Six) He writes like he's still a BMX guy, but he hasn't ridden a bike since like 1995 or something.  (Actually I rode nearly every day from June of 1982 until August of 2003.  The last trick I learned was nollie 180's on a speed bump, in a parking lot in Garden Grove, across the freeway from the Van's Skatepark and The Block of Orange.  I started gaining weight working as a taxi driver in late 2003, got really fat, and haven't ridden hardly at all since, that's true).  

(Seven) He's fat, ugly, and he smells bad.  I know you're homeless, but damn dude, jump in the ocean once in a while or something.

(Eight) He wrote FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog and totally pissed off everyone at Wizard Publications.  (Yep, I wrote that blog in 2008-2009 (over 100 posts).  Then I wrote the original Freestyle BMX Tales blog from 2009-2012 (over 500 posts).  I deleted both of those blogs completely from the internet in the fall of 2012).  

(Nine) He actually admits that he used to work in a porn store.  He must be a perv.  I bet he has sex with goats, aardvarks, and transgender pygmies or something.  (Sorry to disappoint everyone, but a little free lesbian porn when I get a motel room keeps me away from the goats, pygmies, and such.  I do find aardvarks cute, though, but in a purely platonic way).  

(Ten) The guy made like three low-budget BMX videos, waaaaay back when, and they all sucked.  And he acts like he's some big Hollywood producer or something.  What an arrogant prick!  Here's the Steve Emig: The White Bear's Film Festival.  You can decide how much they all suck.  Feel free to go off on Facebook to make it official.  

(Bonus) The guy is 58-years-old, and he still calls himself "The White Bear," a nickname from 1992.  Who the fuck does that?  He writes blog posts making fun of himself, in the third person.  Who does that?  Besides, the guy is so damn sarcastic that I can never tell if he's kidding or he's serious.  What a fucking kook!  He's a fucking NEVER WAS sell out.  And he draws pictures of other people's photos and calls it "art."  What a loser.

Blogger's note- June 9- 2025- Everything on the list above is a reference to things that have been said to my face, said about me in social media comments, or said behind my back that I heard about later.  My life has been really weird for about 25 years now, and I've been plugging through a whole lot of bullshit, sometimes my own, but also a lot that came at me from outside sources.  It's a crazy world, shit happens.  I'm still plugging away at trying to create pretty cool stuff, to the extent I'm able, every single day.  I will continue to do that, as long as I can.  In this post, I just decided to address a bit of the mud that's been slung at me, in my usual, sarcastic way.  

When not writing self-deprecating posts while Old School BMX events are happening elsewhere, I do most of my writing on Substack these days.  It's an online platform designed specifically for writers.  To find more reasons to hate me, click the link below:

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack 

Which was weirder: the year 2024 or "A Boy and His Dog" - set in 2024?

In 1975, before cell phones, personal computers, the internet, social media, Miami Vice, and most video games, a sort of kinky, weird, post-apocalyptic movie set in 2024 came out.  It was called A Boy and His Dog, and starred a young Don Johnson.  Working on an unrelated substance post, I just learned that movie was set in 2024.  Well... we didn't have World War III, or World War IV.  Civilization is still around, we didn't live through the end of the world.  But the real world in 2024 was something they couldn't possibly have imagined back in 1975.  Which was crazier?  A Boy and His Dog or real life 2024?  You decide, and let me know on Facebook.  

The year 2024 in review by NBC News.  I'd say the real 2024 was a hell of a lot crazier than a talking dog helping a guy get laid.  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  

I'm doing most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out sometime:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

You don't have to subscribe to read it, just click "No thanks" on the front page to get to the main page.

A few weird and funny songs... something to piss off everybody

I'd like to thank the Sunday afternoon Grateful Dead/jam band show on KPFK radio (90,7 FM in L.A.) for turning me on to this song in the early 2000's.  The single best band name and song title combo I've ever heard of.  The Ominous Seapods with "Bong Hits and Porn."  They seriously do ROCK, by the way.  

This blog post it NSFA (Not Safe For Anybody) 

You have been warned...

No long ramble.  Here are some songs I've heard of that are weird, sometimes funny as well.  At least to my warped sense of humor.  

Steve 'n' Seagulls- "Thunderstruck"

Johnny Paycheck- "Take This Job and Shove It"

Johnny Cash- "One Piece at a Time"

Bloodhound Gang- "The Bad Touch"

Garfunkel and Oates- "The Loophole"

Kinky Boots OBC/2013 Tony Awards- "Kinky Boots"

The Kinks- "Lola"

Elle King- "Ex's & Oh's"

George Strait- "All my Exes Live in Texas"

Belles of Bedlam- "The Drunken Scotsman"

Rodney Carrington-"Show Them To Me"

The Poxy Boggards- "Hey Nonny Nonny"

Merry Wives of Windsor- "Has Anyone Seen My Cock"

Primus- "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver"

CWA- "Only Straight Girls Wear Dresses"

Aqua- "Barbie Girl"

"Sponge Bob Sqarepants theme song"  (... absorbent and yellow and porous is he...)

Tony Basil- "Hey Mickey"

Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq.- "I've No More Fuck To Give"

Zoe Lewis- "Snow White"

Dynamite Hack- "Boyz In The Hood"

Weird Al Yankovic- "Amish Paradise"

Rocco Elliot- "Just me & My Plants"

Afroman- "Because I Got High"

The Ramones- "The KKK Took My Baby Away"

Black Flag- "Six Pack"

The Vandals- "Urban Struggle (I Want To Be A Cowboy)"

The Offspring- "Pretty Fly For a White Guy"

L7- "Shitlist"

No Doubt- "Oi to the World" (The Vandals cover)

Dropkick Murphys w/ Stephanie Dougherty- "Dirty Glass"

No Doubt- "A Little Something Refreshing"

Beetlejuice movie- "Day-O Banana Boat Song" scene

Dr. Seuss/Albert Hague/Thurl Ravenscroft- "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" (seriously, listen to the lyrics, "You're a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce")

Leroy Van Dyke- "The Auctioneer Song"

Cheech & Chong- "Me and My Old Lady" 

Ray Stevens- "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival"

C.W. McCall- "Convoy"

Charley Ryan- "Hot Rod Lincoln" 

Rent movie cast- "La Vie Boheme" 

Idina Menzel, Jimmy Fallon, The Roots- "Let it Go"

Jerry Reed- "She Got the Gold mine (I Got the Shaft)"

The Blues Brothers- "Soul Man"

Steve Martin (SNL cast)- "King Tut"

Weird Al Yankovic- "Fat"

April Wine- "If You See Kay"

Gary Lee and Showdown- "The Rodeo Song"

Ray Stevens- "The Streak"

The Roches- "Married Men"

Kinky Friedman- "Asshole from El Paso"

Mac Davis- "Drive Myself to Drink"

Ray Stevens- "I'm My Own Grandpa"

Dropkick Murphys- "Kiss Me I'm Shitfaced"

Censorship?  Pretty much everyone who checks out this list would want to censor some of these songs, but everyone would pick different songs.  That's the whole point of free speech.  Ponder that for a bit.

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, check it out.  But it's not near as funny as these songs.  

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

There are no paid posts in this post.

Greenwich Village folk singers scene of the early 1960's

Dave Van Ronk with "Dink's Song" in the early 1960's.  

I just picked up a new book at the library, Talkin' Greenwich Village, by David Browne.  It's an incredibly well researched look at the folk singing scene that emerged out of Greenwich Village, in New York City, from the late 1950's, through the 1960's.  This scene was full of young singers and guitar players, enamored by the earlier folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, and the folk musician tradition in the U.S. that went back 100 years or more before then.  From public singalongs at the fountain in Washington Square Park, these young musicians began to perform the songs they heard from Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, and a whole slew of the folk and blues players of the early 20th century.  

By 1957, when the book dives into the scene, the Greenwich Village district in New York City had a history as home to several prominent writers, going back decades.  At the time, the small clubs and coffee houses of the Village were where jazz greats like John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk performed in small clubs while in NYC.  The coffee shops were the stompin' and reading grounds of the beat poets, Jack Kerouac being the best known to most of us now.  The young folk singers began to play gigs at these clubs and coffee houses, which were often hassled by police and city officials, because of neighbors complaining about the noise.  

A legendary scene evolved, as more young folk singers were drawn to the scene.  They all played music, drank, argued, worked odd jobs, fell in love, broke up, marched in protests, and got followed by the J.Edgar Hoover FBI in some cases.  Most of them were on the far Left side of the political spectrum, often socialists and in some cases, actual communists.  I'm more interested in the music scene, but the politics of the time was a part of it all.  

In the early 1960's, with Village newcomer Bob Dylan being one of the first, they began writing their own folk songs, in addition to singing the classics.  Ever heard of Dave Van Ronk?  Neither had I.  But he was an early and constant part of the scene, and taught several others to play guitar when they showed up on the scene, as well as writing many songs.  The book marches through the happenings, and Van Zonk is a major thread in much of it.  Browne chronicles the comings, goings, interactions, and key events of the main musicians in this scene, year by year.  

I picked up the book for a couple of reasons.  As a goofy, young kid in Ohio, I was a fan of guitar playing singer/songwriters.  The first album I asked my parents to buy me as a gift (Christmas or birthday, can't remember), was John Denver's Greatest Hits, Volume 2.  Our family had moved to a farmhouse outside the tiny burg of Shiloh, Ohio.  Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" became my theme song.  OK, we didn't actually work the farm, we just rented the house, but I wandered that farm, the creek, and woods every day.  I did have to help chase the cows back into the pasture two or three times, when they got out.  That was the extent of my actual farm life.  

At 8 or 9 years old, I was a fan of bluegrass that I heard on Hee Haw, like Grandpa Jones, Roy Clark, and Glen Campbell.  While I didn't like most of the country music coming out of my mom's radio in the kitchen, I did really like the music of Johnny Cash.  So acoustic guitars, folk music were my favorites in my grade school years.  

The other reason for picking up Talking Greenwich Village is because as a BMX freestyler in the 1980's, I developed an interest in what I call "Creative Scenes."  To me, a Creative Scene is any group of people who come together on a regular basis to do something creative.  That can range from a couple of skateboarders at a skatepark, to people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple Computers in the 1970's.  Art, music, creative businesses, action sports, there are creative scenes in all these things.  I witnessed the early scenes of the BMX freestyle world, when there were little pockets of riders in different locations, promoting our weird, new, little sport.  Since I moved around, and became a part of several different BMX and skateboard scenes, I saw how they helped riders and skaters progress, and how these scenes ultimately influenced many other people, and helped the sports grow and evolve overall.  Over several years, I realized there are all kinds of different Creative Scenes, and that most of the progress in society comes from various Creative Scenes that spring up and thrive for a while.

The Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960's was one of the most influential musical scenes in the history of the United States, and that influence continues to ripple outward, in today's young singer/songwriters, like Alice Phoebe Lou, Jenn Fiorentino, and many more, covering the songs they grew up on, and then writing and performing their own.  Generations of singer/songwriters in the U.S., and around the world, were influenced and inspired by the 1960's Greenwich Village folk scene.  

I'm only about halfway through the book, but it has already turned me on to a whole bunch of singers and musicians I had never heard of.  First, here are several of the people who inspired the early Greenwich Village folk music scene, people who were in and around the Village, coming out of the 1950's.  Then I've linked a whole bunch of the early musicians that were part of the Village folk music scene in that era.  If you have an interest in folk music, Greenwich Village, U.S. music history, or guitar picking, Talkin' Greenwich Village is well worth the read.    

The inspirations

Woody Guthrie- "This Land is Your Land"

The Kingston Trio- "Tom Dooley" 

The Weavers- "Goodnight Irene"

John Coltrane- 1958

Jack Kerouac- 1959- reading from On the Road

Charles Mingus- "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" 1959

Thelonius Monk- 1961

Greenwich Village scene folk singers of the early and mid 1960's

Dave Van Ronk- "House of the Rising Sun"

Bob Dylan- "House of the Rising Sun"

Judy Collins- "Fannerio"

Danny Kalb- "Pretty Baby Blues"

Nina Simone- Live in 1961

Carolyn Hester- "I'll Fly Away" (with Bob Dylan on harmonica)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott- "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"

Bob Dylan Live at the Gaslight (recorded at the Gaslight, in Greenwich Village, in October 1962)

Peter, Paul, and Mary- "If I had a Hammer"

Bob Dylan "Blowin' in the Wind"

New World Singers- "Blowin' in the Wind"

Harry Belafonte- "Midnight Special #1" (With Bob Dylan on harmonica)

Phil Och- "The Power And The Glory" 

Lou Gossett (known to most of us now as the actor Louis Gossett, Jr.)- "See See Rider"

Burl Ives and Glen Campbell- "Jesse James," "Cool Water," "Billy the Kid," "John Henry"

Dave Van Ronk "Clouds (Both Sides Now)" 

Judy Collins- "Clouds (Both Sides Now)"

Joni Mitchell- "Both Sides Now" 

Mitchell Trio (featuring John Denver)- "Violets of Dawn" 

Lovin' Spoonful- "Do You Believe in Magic" and "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"

The Blues Project- "Projections" 

Bob Dylan- "Like a Rolling Stone"

There are no paid links in this post.

I do most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack