Let's get to work

Here's an intense moment of Harrison Ford talking about what it really means to be an actor.  In another interview I just watched, he said that he took a drama course in college mostly because he was lazy.  His grades were slipping, he didn't have any real direction in life, and drama seemed like it would be an easy class, and maybe a way to meet women.  But in that course, and those that followed, he found he really liked the actual work of acting, of being part of this group of people collaborating on a movie set, working to tell a good story.

I was a big fan of the show Inside the Actor's Studio.  While I've never had any interest in being an actor, I am, at heart, a writer.  By the time that show was on, I had already worked on several TV show crews.  I was trying to figure out what to do with my life after burning out on the TV world.  I loved hearing the various actors get deep into what it was like to actually be good at their craft, and their thoughts on acting, which is, basically, telling the stories that writers write. I learned an incredible amount about storytelling from that show.

When Harrison Ford was on the show, where this clip comes from, he told people he was working mostly as a carpenter, repairing houses or building projects for people around the Hollywood area, and taking acting jobs he could get, when the role of Han Solo in Star Wars came his way.  He didn't know it would be a hit, and thought it may likely flop when they shot it.  But the movie took off, and made him a movie star, one who would then get offered good roles on a fairly regular basis.

James Lipton, the host of Inside the Actor's Studio, asked Harrison what he felt when the first Star Wars movie took off.  Harrison rubbed his hands together and said, "OK, NOW we can get to work."  He knew that he could stop being a self-employed carpenter, and he could finally be a serious working actor.  Harrison Ford wasn't in it for the fame and to be a movie star.  He really likes the day to day work of actually being an actor.  He was happy, not that Star Wars made him famous, but that it gave him the chance to get to work at acting full time, from then on.

I'm not Harrison Ford, by any means.  But over the course of my life, I've come to grips with the fact that I'm a highly creative guy, and I like actually doing the work of coming up with new things.  Zines.  Blog posts.  Sharpie drawings.  Videos.  A funny new T-shirt design.  Hopefully a real book one of these days.  But for that last 18-20 years, I've struggled.  I managed to sink to various levels of homelessness for around ten years, on and off, without drinking alcohol or doing drugs.  A whole lot of really crazy shit has happened.  When it comes right down to it, the Universe put me through the wringer to see if I was serious about doing creative work.  I was financially trapped in a part of the country where there just isn't the culture to do highly creative work for a decade.  And that frustrated the fuck out of me.

This past week, with a kind of vague description of a job, no set agreement on pay, and only a little backpack to my name, I made the 72 hour bus ride across the United States.  The trip sucked, Greyhound is a horrible way to travel, but it was the viable option, and it got me here.  I did make dozens of "50 Shades of Greyhound" torture jokes along the  way, though. 

Rich Bartlett, a guy I knew from BMX 30-some years ago, made the trip possible.  We started talking, and I know there are a million things I need to learn technically to make this work.  I need to help jump start an online store using the social media skills I've learned selling my artwork and blogging successfully.  Tired from the bus ride, beaten down after nine, really intense, and nearly deadly, months on the streets of Richmond, Virginia, and hearing all of Rich's different ideas, I was overwhelmed.

But I was still excited.  The reason why is the same reason Harrison Ford was excited when Star Wars took off.  Now, I sense, I can really get to work.  Now I'm at a point where I can dig into the actual day to day work of helping to build up a friend's BMX online store.  I can blog about bicycles, the multi-faceted little vehicles that changed the entire course of my life as a young man.  And I'll spend my spare time still doing some art, and sharing a whole bunch of ideas I have about building small businesses in today's rapidly changing, media saturated world.  I think small businesses, ones that use today's tech and communications well, and are well run, by decent human beings, are our only real hope of building a solid future.  If you read this blog much, you know futurist thinking is a big part what I do.

So now, as I officially have a day off, I can catch my breath, and do some planning.  Because creativity doesn't take days off, it's always going.  And that's how I like it.

Happy Mother's Day to the moms out there.  Have a good one.  Now I'm going to walk to McDonald's and get busy on the next set of ideas to make happen.  That's what I do. 

Can you make money with music on YouTube?

While I'm not a musician, I'm always checking out ways to promote and make money with various types of creative work.  This 5 minute video has a ton of solid info on what it takes to make money with music (or other content) on YouTube.  If you bootleg music for your videos, you should watch this, too.  Basically, it's hard to make much money on YouTube unless you're in a decent sized niche and your stuff goes viral.  But there is money to be made if you can pull in the views.  For most people, though, it's better to view YouTube as promotion, and try to make your money some other way. 

Lessons from BMX freestyle: Get around the people who make stuff happen

When I came to Winston-Salem last summer, and camped out in the woods since I couldn't afford a room anywhere, I started wandering around and showing my Sharpie art to people in restaurants and stores to see what they thought.  I went to McKay's used bookstore (AWESOME place, BTW), and the women working in the back said, "Go to Delurk Gallery."  I met several other people who said the same thing, most of them in their 20's.  Delurk, on sixth street, just off Trade, in the space where Urban Artware used to be, is the coolest gallery here in Winston to the college age crowd.

My Michael Jackson drawing above is hanging on the wall there right now, in the "Creatures of Fortune" exhibit, one of 17 pieces chosen from all the talented artists in this area.  If you're a young artist, or a "creative" of any kind, you're probably wondering how a homeless guy who draws in an obscure medium made that happen.  The truth is, I didn't make it happen.  I got around the people who make stuff happen in the local art scene, and my first piece to hang in Delurk happened without me even knowing it.

How did I get to this point, having a drawing in the hippest gallery (to young people) around?  First of all, I  put in the work to learn to make cool looking drawings.  I tried to draw a mural on big sheets of paper in my room with markers waaaaaay back in 2002.  It sucked.  I kept goofing around with markers, switched to Sharpie markers, and stumbled on my "scribble style" technique in 2005.  I started drawing on a pretty regular basis, using my unique style of shading to do different types of drawings, most of which weren't very good.

In late 2015, unemployed and living with my mom at age 49, I couldn't find ANY "real job" in this area.  I made a little money now and then drawing kids' names in their favorite colors, and selling the drawings for $20.  I decided that I could either keep trying to get a lame ass minimum wage job, or I could focus 100% on turning my art (and writing) into a small business.  It wasn't much of a decision.  Obviously, I went all in on art.

I sat down one night and spent over two hours looking at all kinds of artwork online, asking myself, "What would I want to put on MY wall?"  It's a simple, but powerful, question.  I love the colors in graffiti art, the wide array of street art, and I kept coming back to stencil art.  I found a very simple stencil art picture of Bruce Lee's face.  So I printed it out, blew it up on a photo copier, and transferred the outline to my paper, then I drew it and colored it in using my Sharpie scribble style.  It wasn't amazing, but I liked it, and I did actually put it up on my wall.  I realized I was on the right track, and I started drawing picturse of people,working from photos, mostly athletes at first, that had deep shadows and stencil-like looks.

In the time since then, I've drawn around 80 to100 drawings, most of which took 18 to 25 hours each, some as much as 40 hours each.  I stepped up my game.  I kept improving, and still am improving.  I learn little things on every drawing.  I promoted my work online, and sold a lot of drawings super cheap, $1 to $2 an hour for the time I spent drawing them.  Over the last two years, I got better.

I finally got to the place where my drawings, all by themselves attract attention.  Then I came over to Winston-Salem, broke as fuck, and left a toxic living situation where I never could have made a living with my art.  That was necessary, but it meant going back to homelessness.  I kept drawing every day, struggling to survive day by day at the same time.  It was tough.  Really tough.  But I knew it was the right thing for me to be doing right now, and I loved doing the actual work.

A couple of guys saw me drawing at McDonald's, and said I should show my work to the music shop across the street.  That shop was Earshot Music (3254 Silas Creek here in W-S), and the manager, owner, and the art director liked my stuff.  They put a couple of drawings up on the wall, then asked me to do a full show with 8 drawings.  I knew that was a launching pad for me.

To be clear, I don't actively "network."  I figure out who the people are who make stuff happen in the scene I'm interested in.  In this case, it was the Winston-Salem art scene, centered mostly around Trade Street downtown.  Earshot Music is not there, but it's vibrant part of the local art and music scene.  I went there, talked to Phred the owner, and we hit it off.  I don't try to push myself on people I don't really like.  I don't go around talking fast, using Neuro-linguistic programming, and hand my business card to everyone.  I hate that shit.  I go out and meet the people in the scene, show them what I do, and some people and me click, and some don't.  I don't worry about the ones that don't.  I learned that years ago in the BMX freestyle world.  Just meet the people in the scene, and you'll click with some.  Start working with those people.  Forget the rest.

Right when the Earshot show was about to open, I finally made it to the First Friday Gallery Hop on Trade Street.  I showed my drawings to several people, and a woman named Luba really liked my stuff.  She led me around meeting other local people.  She introduced me to Rachel White of Designs, Vines, and Wines, at Studios at 625 on Trade Street.  I talked to Rachel for a while.  A month later, at the next Gallery Hop, I talked to her some more.  She made me a featured artist in her space in February.  She liked my Michael Jackson drawing that I did for someone.  That person never got back to me when I sent them a picture of the drawing online.  So I gave it to Rachel to hang up, along with some others.  Then I had drawings hanging at two places in Winston-Salem.

I wasn't even there the day a person from Delurk Gallery came around, scouting work to have artists apply for the "Creatures" show.  Rachel took the initiative and entered two of my drawings.  Normally I don't like people doing stuff without asking me concerning my work, but it was near the deadline to enter, and I'm stoked he just did it.  As I mentioned, the Michael Jackson drawing made it into the show.  So now, while still homeless (hopefully for not much longer), I have drawings of mine hanging up at Earshot Music, Studios at 625, and at Delurk Gallery.  And to be honest, I didn't work hard to make those happen... recently.  But I put in the time to figure out how to draw with Sharpies, which I was attracted to for some reason.  I think that reason was mostly because I didn't want to learn how to paint.  I wasn't out to create a unique style.  That failed mural attempt just really pissed me off, and I was determined to find a cool way to shade with Sharpies. 

The recent part, working into the local art scene here, is based on something I learned in the BMX freestyle world in the 1980's.  In Idaho, I got into BMX racing, then freestyle, and went to a show by the only freestyle team around.  I met the guys, Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore, and started riding with them two or three times a week.  In a couple of months, I was part of the team and doing shows with them. 

When I moved to San Jose, California with my family a year later, I started a zine as an excuse to meet the riders in the San Francisco Bay Area, which included a few pro riders.  I didn't think I was a good enough rider to actually just hang out with them.  Within a couple of months, I met them all, interviewed them and shot photos for my zine, and I was part of the scene, which happened to be the most cohesive BMX freestyle scene anywhere then. 

Intuitively, I sent copies of my zine to the guys at the BMX magazines.  A few months later, at a big contest, I went up and introduced myself to Andy Jenkins and Lew from FREESTYLIN' magazine.  Much to my surprise, they said they really liked my zine.  That led to writing an article for the magazine, which was a huge deal in those pre-internet days.  Soon they offered me a job, and I "stumbled" into the BMX freestyle industry, and later the skateboard, video, and TV industries.  Along the way I realized that the two main things I was doing were: 1) Working hard to make a cool zine, (and later other cool stuff, like videos), and 2) I was finding and meeting the handful of people who actually made stuff happen in the BMX freestyle world.

In any scene (art, music, BMX, skating, whatever), or business, or industry, there are a relatively small number of people who make most of the stuff happen.  Do something cool, and then send it to those people.  Or meet those people at an event, and give them a small gift of your work.  That's a totally different mindset than say, stalking Kim Kardashian and trying to get her to give a shout out to your handmade jewelry or something.  Tons of people try to do that these days to get hype from "influencers."  Don't.

Work on whatever creative thing it is that you do.  Get to where it's pretty good... maybe even great.  Then give it to the people you admire in that world.  Lots of people ask those people for their influence or hype.  But not all that many people will just give the people they admire a small gift with no expectation of them helping you.  It's not hard to do, and the people who make stuff happen don't get that many personal gifts like that.  You will be amazed how many people will respond.  Many will remember your gift much later on.  But don't just do it as a quid pro quo.  Give a gift... a TRUE gift, without expecting anything.  Then just go on with life.  Some of those gifts will help you connect with the people who make stuff happen.  When you get around those people, opportunities will just start coming your way.  Yes, HARD WORK is a definite part of the equation.  But if you're doing something creative that you enjoy doing, it doesn't really feel like work. 

How crazy can this get?  At one point in the '90's, I made a little zine of my poetry, handmade, typed on a typewriter, and photocopied.  They were cheesy, but some of my poems were halfway decent.  I sent those zines out to several of my favorite writers.  Like real writers who published real books.  And then I just forgot about it and went on with daily life.  I got four or five thank you notes and letters back from my favorite writers, all very positive.  In fact, I got a form letter back from best selling novelist Dean Koontz, who gets thousands and thousands of fan letters.  He hand wrote two lines at the bottom.  That blew my freakin' mind.  Guess what, I read several more of his novels in the next few months.  If you happen to be a Koontz fan, write him an old-fashioned snail mail letter.  He has a newsletter he sends out to fans that write to him.  It's awesome.  That's his way of giving a little gift to his readers, the opposite form or what I'm talking about here.

This is one small part of getting to the point where you can make a living from your creative work, which is what I'm working to do myself.  And it IS work.  But in today's high tech, info age, hyper-connected world, there's a lot of work out there for creative people.  So take the time to develop your craft, work hard, and get around the people in your world who make stuff happen.  You'll be amazed what that can lead to.

Who the heck is Steve Emig... My Creative Work

When I shot this footage in the spring of 1991, BMX was all but dead, because the bike industry turned their attention to the new sport of mountain bikes.  We were also in the long recession of the early 90's, and pretty much everyone in this clip could make about ten different meals with a packet of ramen.  But that didn't keep the best riders in the world from hucking themselves like crazy over the huge Death Jump at Mission Trails.  Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip King of Dirt contest, Mission Trails, outside San Diego, California.

I'm meeting a lot of new people in the creative scene around here who don't know anything about my background.  So this post is part creative resume' and part ego trip.

1983- I raced BMX all year and entered a contest to re-design the Fort Boise BMX track.  I tied with a couple of younger kids, using my drafting skills to make a kick ass design.  I won half a year worth of free races for 1984.  But I got more into BMX freestyle (trick riding), and only used about 9 free races.
1984- I graduated from Boise High, and used my grad money to buy my first good BMX bike, a Skyway T/A.  Everyone thought I was an idiot for spending all my time riding a "little kid's bike."  I saved up $1,000 over the summer, working at $2.10 an hour, but couldn't afford to go to college.  I joined Idaho's only BMX trick team with Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore.  Wayne retired (at age 17), and Jay and I reformed it into the Critical Condition Stunt Team, and performed in shows and parades around Boise.  I also competed in Idaho's first two BMX freestyle contests ever.
August 1985- My family moved to San Jose, California.  I started a Xerox zine called San Jose Stylin' as a way to meet the San Francisco Bay Area riders.  It worked.  Soon I was riding with the best scene in freestyle at Golden Gate Park on the weekends.
Spring 1986- You can see me chasing my bike at 5:07 in this TV clip about the GG Park bike scene.  I was asked to write a contest article for FREESTYLIN' magazine, thanks to my zine.  My zine was ranked as #1 in the country in the same magazine issue, August 1986.
August 1986- I landed the job that changed the course of my life, working for Wizard Publications.  2-hipThat opportunity came thanks to FREESTYLIN' editor Andy Jenkins. They published BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  I was an editorial assistant, but also proofread both magazines.
December 1986- I was told (the night before Christmas vacation) I was getting laid off at Wizard on December 31st.  I just didn't click well with the guys there.  And I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  I was permanently replaced by an unknown, 17-year-old kid from the East Coast named Spike Jonze.
January 1987- I was hired  by BMX freestyle pioneer and serial entrepreneur Bob Morales to be the editor/photographer of the American Freestyle Association newsletter.  The AFA was the organization that put on all the BMX freestyle competitions then.  With the job, I moved From Hermosa Beach, about 15 miles south to the working class beach town of Huntington Beach.  I started hanging out at the HB pier on the weekends, where I rode (and sometimes skated) with walking punk rock encyclopedia and BMX freestyler Mike Sarrail, freestyle skateboarders Pierre Andre, Don Brown, Hans Lingren, and Bob Schmelzer.  In addition, street skaters Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton and others came by often, as did a bunch of really good BMX freestylers.
Spring 1987- Bob walked in one day and asked if I wanted to make a TV commercial for our next contest in Austin, Texas.  I learned how to produce a (really bad) TV commercial, and then produced six home videos for the AFA.  The two shots at 2:18 and 2:19 in this trailer came from those videos. 
Around the same time, I had a girlfriend who was in a band.  I decided I'd write her a hit song, so I started writing (really bad) lyrics.  She dumped me, and I wrote a poem that night called "Journey of The White Bear."  I kept writing poetry, mostly as cheap therapy.  I didn't show my poems to anyone for fear of criticism.
December 1987 to late 1988- Got hired at Unreel Productions, the video arm of the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear empire.  I was a basically a production assistant when they made all these: Sims Snow Shredders,  Vision Psycho Skate, Vision Street Wear World Cup of BMX, AFA Masters Finals,  Gonz Goes to New York, Vision Skate Escape, Red Hot Skate Rock (with the Red Hot Chili Peppers) Vision Street Wear Freestylin' Fanatics, Mondo Vision, and Sims Snow Daze.
 Early 1989- Pat, the staff cameraman at Unreel moved on to another job.  I became the staff cameraman.  That meant traveling with a 35 pound, $50,000 Sony betacam camera.  That made me pretty nervous.  I was called on to shoot behind-the-scenes footage of Vision/Vision Street Wear photo shoots, and other random things.  I got sent to all of Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip contests that year, because VSW sponsored his events.  Here's footage I shot at the King of Vert contest in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  At 14:43 in this clip, amateur Mat Hoffman makes history by landing the first 900 air (2 1/2 spins) on a bike.  In this clip from the Colorado contest, which someone else shot, you can see me shooting video on the deck of the ramp.  I'm on the left ramp deck, near the far end, with a black and white shirt on.  At 9:25 in this clip, Mat Hoffman surprises the heck out of me by doing a front flip off his bike right in front of me.  I almost stepped backwards off the ramp on that one.
Spring 1989- 2-Hip Promoter Ron Wilkerson hired me to edit 2-Hip's 1988 contest video, now called 2-Hip BHIP.  That included the very first Meet the Street contest, a day that changed BMX bike riding FOREVER.  I didn't shoot this footage, but you can see me ghost riding my bike into the wall at 5:49.
Fall 1989- I shot some footage and actually did a little editing on Vision's best skate video ever, Barge at Will. 
I also got sent to shoot behind-the-scenes footage of the Vision skaters at a shoot for Tom Petty's "Freefallin'" video.
January 1990- Vision was having big financial issues, and they dissolved Unreel Productions.  Since I was the cheapest guy who knew how to work the most equipment, I didn't get fired, along with Laura, the woman who was our production coordinator.  Don Hoffman, founder of Unreel, continued to work freelance for Vision.  We closed down our cool office in Costa Mesa and got moved to the Vision headquarters in Santa Ana.  Laura soon found a job at a "real" TV production company in Hollywood.
Spring 1990-  I shot and edited a 7 minute promo video for Tuff Skts, a company where skate legend Christian Hosoi and Vision worked together.  The company didn't last long, but this was a blast to make.  Only this short version with different music has survived.  This appeared on Sk8-TV in 1990.
I also decided to produce my own BMX freestyle video, largely because the Vision videos were pretty goofy, and I wanted to show the world "real BMX riding."  I started shooting video of different riders on the weekends, usually with my friend, rider/photographer Mike Sarrail.  Following the lead of rider/video producers Eddie Roman and Mark Eaton, I became a pioneer in the "rider-made" video movement that exploded through the action sports world in the early 1990's.  None of us realized that at the time, though.  We were just trying to make videos we'd want to watch.
July 1990- Quit at Vision Sports video, went on a three week, cross country skateboard tour with these guys: Buck Smith, Chris Gentry, Mike Crum, Mark Oblow.   Drove 24 hours straight (27 out of 30 hours total) to make it to Atlanta on time because the rig only did 55 mph.  Dumb.  Don't try that.
Summer/Fall 1990- I worked freelance for surf/skate video distributor, NSI video.  I edited two issues of his Skater's Quarterly video, one issue of Snowboard Quarterly and got to go to the premier of this, my favorite snowboard video ever.  Got to interview Brandi Sanders at the premier.
October 1990- Released The Ultimate Weekend.  I shot, edited, produced, and mostly financed the 45 minute video, following in the steps of Eddie Roman and Mark Eaton making "rider-made" bike videos. My friend Mike Sarrail helped with the last chunk of money to finish it.  We didn't realize it then, but we were pioneers leading the rider-made video revolution that swept through action sports in the early 1990's.  I used music from a Toledo punk rock band called The Stain, a band discovered out west by skateboard legend Mark Gonzales.  In those days, every video had a lot of firsts in it.  The Ultimate Weekend had the first hand rail slide on a bike (Keith Treanor), the first mini-ramp footage, the first spine ramp footage, the first footage of the Nude Bowl with bikes, the first ice pick handrail grind (John Povah), the first footage of the S&M Bikes riders and the P.O.W. BMX House in a video, the first double wall ride in a video (Randy Lawrence/myself), the biggest 360 over doubles to date (Chris Moeller) and the first tailwhip jump over doubles (Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson) in a video, among other firsts.  My video was the best quality rider-made video at the time.  Then Eddie Roman put out Headfirst with Mat Hoffman about six months later, and blew my video out of the water.  The Ultimate Weekend put Keith Treanor on the map as an up and coming rider, and featured about 40 other great riders as well.
   I also did some riding in The Ultimate Weekend as well, at:  1:04, 1:25, 10:47, 11:23, 11:25, 11:35, 15:40, 20:07, 23:17, 27:33, 28:28, 36:22, 37:15.  I also wrote the lyrics for the song "Mom's Imagination," and had The Stain record it for the video.
Early 1991- Got a job at GRB Motorsports, working on the production crew of the 1991 Monster Truck, Mud Racer, and Supercross TV shows.
Spring 1991- Working at GRB Motorsports, motorcycle stuntman, Johnny Airtime, worked in the other office nearby.  He was a stunt coordinator on GRB's flagship shows World's Greatest Stunts and Stuntmaster's.  I shot the BMX footage that's at the very top of this blog post.  I made a copy and sent it by interoffice memo to Johnny. At that point I hadn't met him, but I figured he'd get a kick out of it. I was a lowly production assistant, so it surprised everyone in the office when Johnny called our office and asked for me.  He said, "You BMXers are crazy!" We talked for about 20 minutes, and he asked what kind of stunt a BMXer could do for the Stuntmaster's show.  I suggested a big 360 jump, thinking of friends Chris Moeller and Dave Clymer.  Johnny and I went back and forth with ideas, and decided a 360 over three flaming cars would be a cool stunt.  I told him about Chris and Dave.  He came back, "What about Mat Hoffman, I've seen videos of him, he's amazing."  I replied, "Yeah, Mat could do it."  I hung up, and didn't think much more of it.  I moved on to another job a couple months later, and never worked for GRB again.  A couple years later somebody told me about Mat Hoffman on Stuntmasters.  I got an even bigger surprise several years later when I read Mat's book.  In it he wrote that talking to Johnny Airtime on the Stuntmasters set, he learned that a bigger ramp was the key to doing higher airs on a quarterpipe.  That led to Mat blowing everybody's mind by doing this in 1992.  It's amazing the legacy one little phone call can have. It was inevitable that Mat would meet Johnny Airtime at some point, I just happened to help that happen.  Mat's secret mega quarterpipe project changed action sports forever, and he later became personal friends with Evel Knievel, which also was inevitable.
Summer 1991- I shot part of and edited Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer*, the first video for S&M Bikes.  At the time, pro BMX racer, legendary smartass, and crazy jumper turned entrepreneur Chris Moeller was running the company out of the garage of his one bedroom apartment.  The video featured Dave Clymer, Jimmy Levan, and English bloke Alex Leech.  The original version also featured a fight scene by porn legend John Holmes.  The total budget of the video was $250, including beer.  I edited the video sitting on the floor of Chris' tiny living room, using my camera and a VCR and a 40 of Mickey's.  I ended up living on that living room floor afterward (long story).  * The title was an actual pickup line Clymer used to pick up his girlfriend at the time.
Sometime in 1992 ( I think)- Chris, Bill Grad, and me got really drunk and designed the ultimate BMX bike, the BS20-Neon.   Just for the record, the first Big Brother magazine video, Shit, didn't come out until 1996.  That later morphed into the Jackass TV show in 2000, and the later Jackass movies.  We were ahead of the curve on stupid action sports comedy at the time, although skate entrepreneur Steve Rocco was the King.
Summers of 1992-1995- I worked as a spotter on the crew of the American Gladiators hit TV show.  I worked on that crew for four seasons, and led the crew of eight in 1994 and 1995.  I got to see this happen live from 15 feet away, and played the games against the gladiators and contenders during in the several days of practice.  I also met the best athlete I've ever seen, Wesley "2 Scoops" Berry.  I'm on Wesley's tower in this clip, and if you freeze it at :24, I'm the guy in black.  Hey, crew guys aren't supposed to show up much.  Weird show, but it was a blast to work, and I met a wide range of people, famous and not famous, working there.
Fall 1992- Self-published a huge zine with about 80 poems, called We're on the Same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  The first poem was "Journey of the White Bear," written in '88.  That became my nickname in the BMX world, and I later took it as my pen name.
1993- Worked in the box office of then little known Cirque du Soleil on their first tour to Orange County, CA with Saltimbanco.  Most amazing job I've ever worked.
 Fall 1993- Worked as a spotter on the crew of Knights and Warriors TV show.
1995- Worked in the box office of Cirque du Soleil's Allegria for a while they were in Orange County.
Summer 1995- Worked as a spotter on the crew of the inline skating show Blade Warriors.
I burned out on TV work, and worked more "normal" jobs, like as a furniture mover and a video store clerk.  I got back into the entertainment industry as a lighting tech (basically a roadie), in 1998.
1996- I self-published my second zine of poetry called Mush.  It had about 30 of my best poems written from 1991 to 1996.
1997-1998- I published two issues of a zine called Huevos, mostly about action sports.  I interviewed free skier (and my neighbor) Jason Moore, and musician, artist, and founding member of The Cramps, Bryan Gregory, among others.  I also had a pretty funny interview with Sasquatch.
1997- Worked in the box office of Cirque du Soleil's Quidam in Orange County, CA.  I also self-published my third zine of poetry and thoughts.
1998- Stumbled into the job of staff writer for the short-lived BMX magazine BMX Rider.  It was published by Peterson Publications, best known for car magazines.  It only lasted two issues.  I did feature interviews with BMX entrepreneur Chris Moeller, and all around amazing rider Brian Foster.
1999- I had to quit my lighting tech job due to an injury.  I became a taxi driver in Huntington Beach area of California.  Things started going down hill,  I became homeless and lived in my taxi in October 1999.  After six months, I had a great month driving the cab, and got myself a room in the spring of 2000.  I've struggled with homelessness ever since.
2000- I worked freelance for a few weeks, and wrote most of the website copy for an "action sports web portal," a dotcom start-up called LNXS.  They pronounced it "lynx."  I never got paid and it bombed.
I worked in the box office on Cirque du Soleil show Dralion while they were in Orange County, CA.
 2002- I was working a lame job and rented a tiny room built on the side of a Mexican American family's house.  The room had one tiny window and felt like a cave.  So, inspired by an idea I saw in "House of Style" on MTV, I got big rolls of paper, and taped them to one wall.  I wanted to draw a scene looking out a cave to a sunset.  I've never been much of a painter, to I tried to do the mural with markers.  It sucked.  I couldn't find a way to shade with markers.  So I started playing around with different doodles looking for a way.  I made a bunch of big collages of action sports magazine photos and marker doodles.  That's where working with markers started for me.
Spring 2003- I worked on Cirque du Soleil's Varekai in Orange County, CA.  Nobody knew I was living homeless in the bushes at the time.
Late summer 2003- I went back to taxi driving, after losing my license in a DMV mix-up in 2000.  I gave up all creative work and focused entirely on making money and getting my life back on track.  From Labor Day 2003 to Labor day 2005, I only had five days off.  The taxi company put dispatch computers in the taxis, replacing the old radios, and that completely changed the entire business.  Literally overnight, it became much, much harder to make money as a cab driver.  I worked seven days a week, often 14 to 18 hours a day, while living in the taxi.  It sucked.  Giving up on creative pursuits and focusing just on making money didn't get me back on track financially, I wound up in much worse shape. There's a lesson there.
Late summer 2005- A taxi driver who owned an indie art gallery offered me the chance to work only weekends driving his taxi, and live in AAA Electra 99 gallery in Anaheim during the week.  Taxi driver/fame ass arteest Richard Johnson is a crazy character, and it was great to get away from working 80 to 100 hours a week and to start being creative again.  Suddenly I was surrounded by all kinds of art by up and coming artists, as well as 7 cats.   Although it's only 2 or 3 miles from Disneyland, Electra is so far underground that you need spelunking gear to find it.  Oh... and Mamie Van Doren's a whore! (Inside Electra joke)
I started drawing a bit my second day staying in the gallery.  Soon I was drawing big pictures with markers, and bought my first set of 24 Sharpies.  I played with different doodles and ways to shade with markers, and one day I drew a tree.  I started scribbling different colors of markers over each other to color the tree roots.  That's where my "scribble style" of shading with Sharpie ultra fine markers was born.  I spent the about seven months living there, and my scribble style started to evolve.  When I went back to driving a taxi full time in June 2006, I would often draw while waiting for rides in my taxi.  My creativity was reborn at AAA Electra 99.  That's what weird, quirky little creative scenes are good for.
2005- BMX freestyler and rider-made video pioneer Mark Eaton produced Joe Kid on a Stingray, the documentary history of BMX and freestyle.  Two shots from my 1987 AFA videos, Mat Hoffman at 2:17 and Kevin Jones at 2:18 in the trailer, made it into the movie.  
November 25, 2007-  I dropped off my cab at the taxi company in Santa Ana, California, and walked out to live on the streets with about $15 in my wallet.  My possessions were in a small storage unit.  I weighed about 365 pounds, could barely walk due to horribly cracked and bleeding feet, and I survived three cases of cellulitis/MRSA infection that year.  The first infection nearly killed me.  The ED doctor that I saw the third time told me,"if you don't quit driving a taxi, you will die.  We're talking weeks, maybe a few months."  I walked out to live on the streets believing I would die within a few weeks.  I couldn't make any progress in getting my finances back on track, I'd drifted away from my friends in the BMX and other industries, and I rarely talked to my family.  It seemed like "game over," to me.
December 2007-  After a couple of weeks living fully on the streets of Orange County, California, I realized I needed a project to focus on.  In six weeks I wrote, practiced, and planned out a one hour long comedy video.  I panhandled enough money to get my video camera out of the pawn shop.  I traveled around on the bus, went to locations I picked before, and shot the whole video, section by section, each in one take, straight to tape.  I watched it once or twice in the camera, and put the master tape in my storage unit.  By the time I finished that video, I realized that I probably wasn't going to die.  So I started looking for ways to make money and get my life back on track.  I spent hours in fast food joints drawing picture in my Sharpie "scribble style" while homeless.
Spring 2008- I sold a Sharpie drawing of an alien for $5 in Hollywood, near the corner of Hollywood and Highland.  That's today's "Hollywood and Vine" tourist area.  That was the first scribble style drawing I ever sold.  Back then, there were still a lot of people in that area of Hollyweird dressing up as famous people and taking photos with tourists to make tips.  That day I saw a guy dressed as Elmo get in a fight with a biker in a Harley Davidson vest.  Gotta love Hollywood.
Early November 2008- After nearly a year on the streets wandering Southern California, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to get back on my feet financially in SoCal.  I called up my parents in Kernersville, NC, and they offered to fly me to North Carolina.  My parents, my sister, and an uncle pitched in to get me cross country.  If you happen to remember late 2008, you know that it was a REALLY bad time to try to find a new job.  The American economy was in freefall, and serious investors and economists were worried about a world economic collapse.  The financial crisis became the Great Recession.  As for me, surviving that year on the streets in California was the biggest accomplishment of my life.  But there are few people who can understand that.  The TV show "Survivor" is a GAME, everyone knows they're going to survive.  They can quit and go take a hot shower and eat great food any time.  Homelessness is a REAL survival situation.  The streets are no joke.
 Early December 2008- I came to North Carolina with a bookbag sized backpack.  That's it.  My Mac laptop was in a pawn shop in Huntington Beach with 10 years worth of poems typed into it.  My digital 8 video camera was in another pawn shop.  The rest of my worldly possessions were in a 5' X 5' storage unit in H.B..  In that little room was all my journals and hand written copies of hundreds of poems, going back to about 1988.  It also contained one of the best collections of raw video footage of BMX freestyle from 1989 to 2007.  I dreamed of making a freestyle documentary with all that footage.  That dream was got me through years of tough times and homelessness. I also had the master tapes of my videos, and all my action sports magazines ,including a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' magazine, with a few extras.   (Check scan page 29, magazine page 56 for an interview I did with a guy who now gives TED Talks).  To get my stuff, including all my creative work, to NC, I needed to borrow about $200.  Before I flew to NC, my family said they could loan it too me.  A couple weeks after getting to NC, I asked my mom to borrow the money to get my stuff out of pawn, storage, and shipped to NC.  She said, "No, we don't have money for that."  I lost EVERYTHING creative that I still had moving to North Carolina.  From an action sports point of view, and an intellectual point of view, and a creative point of view, I didn't have anyone to talk to in Kernersville.  I went into a deep, deep depression.
Mid-December 2008- I was pretty much a Luddite through the 2000's.  I never had a computer that I could use as much as I wanted until I moved to my parents' place here in NC.  So I started surfing the net every night, as we used to say.  During that time I learned that my former co-workers Andy Jenkins and Mark "Lew" Lewman, along with Spike Jonze, had put together a limited edition book about FREESTYLIN' magazine, published by Nike.  The whole thing was part of the hype leading to BMX racing (a really lame version of it), being included in the 2008 Olympics.  Just for the record, I'm totally against action sports in the Olympics.  But that's another matter.  A scan of the book showed up online, and I read it, figuring there would be a line about me and my collection of bad nicknames from my time there.  But I wasn't even mentioned.  Neither were people like Steve "Guy-B" Giberson, Mark Snavely, or others who worked on and contributed to the magazine at some point.  I was already totally bummed out because I was so isolated from anything creative at the time.  So I decided to start a blog and write 20 or 30 posts about my memories of working at Wizard Publications, home to BMX Action and FREESTYLIN'.  It wasn't an act of revenge so much as just saying, "Hey, I worked on it for a bit, too."  I called the blog FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales.  I didn't think many people would ever read it.  I just wanted my memories of that time out there in cyberland.  Since I had just lost all my creative work, all I had left were my memories.  So I started blogging.
Late December 2008- After about 25 or so posts on FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, a post about an awkward personal moment went viral in the old school BMX community online.  I didn't even know there was an old school BMX community online.  Seriously, that's how clueless I was about the internet then.  I started getting emails and comments from old friends form BMX in the 80's and 90's, and a bunch of people I didn't know but who were into BMX back then.  My blog became the #1 old school BMX blog in the world.  Yeah, it's a small niche, but I'll take it.
Fall 2009- FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales had gone over 200 posts, and seen something like 25,000 page views in a year.  That seemed like a lot to me.  And that was only five months of my BMX life.  Also, I managed to piss off everyone I worked with there, which wasn't my intention.  But I wasn't too worried about that either.  I had a couple hundred avid readers, and decided to delve into all my other stories from those early days in BMX freestyle.  So I ended the FREESTYLIN' blog and started Freestyle BMX Tales blog.  I also started learning about ways to try and make money with blogs, since I still couldn't find ANY job.  I started writing about my first days, riding in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho in 1982.  Most of my readers followed along, and I gained more as time went by.
Sometime in 2010- Still unemployed, I wanted to start a blog to make money.  I put Google Adsense ads on my BMX blog, but only racked up about $35 in a few months in ad revenue.  Then I got kicked off Adsense because I didn't see the email to send them my tax info.  Dumb mistake.  I'd also been learning about how to get a blog to rank #1 in a Google search.  So I tried to think up the stupidest blog name I could that had "make money" in the title.  It was just an experiment to see if I could get a blog with a "make money" and a crazy title to rank #1.  Since I'd been homeless and a panhandler, I decided Make Money Panhandling was the stupidest title I could think of.  I started the blog, and used what I learned to get it higher in the search rankings.  Then something unexpected happened, I realized that I had a lot to say about the subject of homelessness and panhandling.  So I started posting away, while doing my BMX blog as well.  In a couple months, Make Money Panhandling was solidly locked in the #1 spot when someone searched for "panhandling."  At that point, I had the top two old school BMX blogs in the world, AND the top panhandling blog in the world.  Again, I didn't set out to do that, it just kinda happened.  At one point, I was contacted by TV journalist John Stossel's producer.  They were doing a show on freeloaders, and he wanted info on panhandling.  We traded 2 or 3 long email, and I answered all his questions to the best of my ability.  Most media reports about panhandling super negative, and often just P.R. for non-profits.  But Stossel's Freeloaders show handled the subject well.  That's Stossel himself panhandling at the beginning.  So who turned out to be the biggest freeloaders in the U.S.?  GE.  As in General Electric.  Panhandlers may be annoying, but in the amount of money sucked out of American taxpayers, they barely make it on the list.  A panhandler may walk with $30 in a day, maybe even $50.  Huge corporations walk away with tens of millions or more.
June 2011- I got some money that helped me start working as a taxi driver in Winston-Salem, NC.  I lived in the cab, and often just ate a loaf of French bread from Walmart and a bottle of water as I learned the city the first month.  I transferred to a better taxi company.  I worked seven days a week, living in the taxi, until June 2012.  I never made enough money to rent an apartment.  I got a cheap motel room one night a week to watch a little TV, eat a cheap pizza, and catch up on sleep.
March 2012- My dad had a serious stroke.  With surgery, he survived the stroke, but was partially paralyzed and lost some of his cognitive ability.  Still had his sense of humor.  I visited him when I could in the hospital and nursing home, while working 7 days a week in the taxi.
June- 2012- I quit driving a taxi, and built a hut in the woods in Winston-Salem.  I lived in it, and  got a panhandling permit. I used funny panhandling signs like, "Why lie? I need a Lexus." and "You didn't send me a card on Father's day," among many others.  I would panhandle a 2 or 3 days, and then take the regional bus and go visit my dad, who was getting worse.
August 2012- My dad died.  I moved into my mom's apartment.  You never realize how good of neighbors raccoons are until you move in with family.  Heh, heh, heh.  Just wanted to see if anyone actually read all this.
Fall 2012- In a real dark time after my dad's death, and unable to find any work, I deleted all my blogs.  At that point, my three main blogs had over 180,000 total page views, and I'd written over 2,000 posts over about 30 different blogs.  The next three years were really tough in several ways.
June 2015- Started a new version of Freestyle BMX Tales on Blogger.  I tried Wordpress for a while, but went back to Blogger because it had a good mobile version that I didn't have to worry about.  It has a total of about 25,000 page views.  I stopped doing it in August of 2017.
Fall 2015- I started doing larger drawings in my scribble style with Sharpies, starting off with some big, Georgia O'Keefe style flowers, and then some animal drawings.
October 2015- I started an art blog called Steve Emig Art to give my drawings a home online.  I started doing all kinds of drawings and this blog shows the recent evolution of my Sharpie art.  With little promotion, it has 9,250 page views in two years.
November 2015- Still unable to find a job of any kind, I decided to focus on my artwork, the only thing that made me a little money from time to time.  I spent two hours looking at art online one night, trying to answer a simple question.  "What could I draw that I'd want to put on my own wall?"  I love graffiti and street art.  My 30+ zines over the years taught me Xerox (copy machine) art.  Stencils by Banksy and others caught my eye that night.  I found a simple stencil of Bruce Lee's face and drew that in my style.  I liked it, taped it to my wall (I'm too broke for frames), and knew I was on the right track.  I started promoting my Sharpie art on Facebook and my art blog, and started getting a few orders, mostly for drawing classic, old school BMX photos, or photos of friends, their kids, and stuff like that.  I started doing 18" by 24" drawings, which took 20 to 25 hours to draw, and I sold them for $50 to $75.  Money was always tight, living with my mom.  So I never was really able to re-invest what I made to really get a business going.  But my skills and technique improved steadily.
Summer 2016- By doing drawings of people's photos, I realized that high contrast drawings with hard shadows work best with my style.  I started doing drawings of athletes and musicians, and have been focusing on those since.
October 2016- I got a big write up in the local Kernersville (NC) newspaper about my artwork and my thoughts on writing a book about building creative scenes.
June 2017- My mom and I parted ways.  She got a one bedroom apartment, and I stored my stuff with friends and moved into the woods, living homeless in Winston-Salem.  I've been focusing fully on my art ever since.  I also decided to consolidate all my blogs into one, this one.
November 4th, 2017- My first solo art opening is happening at Earshot Music, 3254 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem, on Saturday, November 4th, from 7 to 9 pm.  

After getting into the kind of trouble homeless people tend to get in, I'm back staying at my mom's place temporarily.