Here are two of my older BMX blog posts you may not have read:
Don Hoffman, Eddie Fiola, and Pipeline (skatepark)
Mike Dominguez's Best Public 900 Attempt
I started blogging stories of my days in the old school BMX world in 2008, right after losing all my raw video footage (1989-2007), my master tapes, and all my magazines, hundreds of poems I'd written and all my other creative work. It was a real dark time for me, but also the first time I had unlimited access to a computer. I was basically a Luddite before that. I knew nothing about online communities or even that old school BMXers communicated online. I found the FREESTYLIN' book online, and I wasn't mentioned, though I published the top freestyle zine at one point, and I worked at FREESTYLIN' for a few months. I thought they'd at least make fun of me. So I decided to write 20 or 30 blog posts about my stories just to say, "Hey, I was a BMX industry guy, I saw some cool stuff happen, here's some stories."
I started a blog called FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, and soon started connecting with old school riders again, much to my surprise. I wound up writing over 200 blog posts about the magazines I worked at for only five months. Then I started a new blog, Freestyle BMX Tales, and wrote stories about my other experiences from my serious years of BMX riding and working in the bike skate industry.
Over about 2 1/2 years, I wrote over 500 blog posts about my BMX days in Freestyle BMX Tales. I think that blog got over 125,000 total page views. I wrote them all because I wanted to, for free, on my blog. I did put ads on my blog for a few months, but I got kicked off Google Adsense because I didn't respond to an email about tax info. I took the ads off the blog. All of those 700+ BMX blog posts were read by quite a few people, which amazed me.
Then, in March 2012, my dad had a severe stroke. After a couple of months, I quit my taxi driving work to spend more time with him. He had survived the stroke, but he wasn't strong enough to live much longer, and he died in August 2012. I moved in with my mom, and went into a real dark period of my life. In a depressed moment, I deleted all my blogs, the BMX blogs, and other's I tried out on other topics. At one point, Brian Tunney, at ESPN, actually wrote a eulogy to FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, which is pretty crazy. What kind of blog actually gets a eulogy when it dies?
Here are two more of my older blog posts many of you haven't read:
The S&M Bikes BS 20 Neon
You Are (fo)R(g)OTTEN- The P.O.W. House Video (sort of)
At one point, I switched from Blogger and went to the better blog platform Wordpress, and did another version of Freestyle BMX Tales there for a while. But I wasn't as into to it, and didn't do that many posts. I eventually went back to the simpler Blogger, mostly because it automatically formatted the blog for smart phones at the time, and Wordpress didn't. I ended up writing another 89 blog posts about my BMX days, published between 2015 and 2017. That's where these blog posts have been sitting. More of these are from the time period of 1990 on, which I never wrote about in my first two blogs.
Here are two more BMX posts from this surviving Freestyle BMX Tales blog:
The Birth of Club Homeboy
Feel My Fingers... I 'm Editing Drunk
As time went by, living in the small town of Kernersville, NC, I couldn't find any work at all. Even restaurants wouldn't hire me. I finally decided I had to create my own job. The one thing that made me some money from time to time, was drawing pictures in my weird Sharpie style. So I decided to focus on that. After spending a couple of hours looking at all kinds of art online one night, I decided to start drawing people. I found a simple stencil painting of Bruce Lee, and I blew up the photo, got the simple outline, and drew it. I started working towards the goal of creating a small business, without a dime to my name. I've been building it slowly since, drawing nearly every day for three years now. I'm still not making a viable living. There's been a ton of drama since. But I'm still plugging along, still drawing, and trying to write more, as I can. I brought all my former blogs together into this one in late June 2017, and it's been well read since, much to my surprise.
Here are two more of my older BMX blogposts you may not know exist:
Memories of Scot Breithaupt, part 2 (The Godfather of BMX)
The First Time the S&M Guys and the P.O.W. House Were in a Video
Ten years ago this week, I was at a real dark time in my life, having just lost my entire life's creative work. For several years I'd been thinking of making a really cool documentary with all of my original BMX freestyle footage. Then, because I couldn't borrow $150 to get my stuff shipped to NC from CA, it was gone. Poof! That's when I started blogging about stories from my life and work in BMX freestyle in the 1980's and early 90's. I've written well over 800 blog posts about BMX in ten years. All of them were available for free on my blogs. Over 100 are still available. At the same time, I was struggling personally and financially.
Last week I set a big six month goal, to earn $10,000 in sales from my artwork and writing in six months (until April 27, 2019). All of you reading this will probably make and spend far more than that during this time on everyday life. But I'm starting again, in a new city, while homeless. That's a big goal starting from basically nothing.
Much of this money will go to buy art supplies, make the prints, zines, original drawings, and ship them to people. The biggest chunk will be to simply rent me a room to live as soon as possible. It's winter here in Richmond, and I'm sleeping outside. It was 38 degrees when I walked to McDonald's this morning (cheap food, bathroom, and wifi). I cussed up a storm for a minute because I tweaked my back Saturday, and could hardly move this morning. Then I picked up my stuff and headed off to get to work. That's what I do everyday.
Yes, there are homeless programs for housing, which usually take 6 to 12 months (for single men) to get a subsidized, usually not very safe, ghetto apartment. And then you're not allowed to actually make a good living in most cases. You have to earn a sub par income forever. That's just not me. I WANT to work. I have lots of drawing and art show ideas. I'm starting a series of Freestyle BMX Tales zines (see below), the first one will come out in 2 or 3 days. I have several books I want to write, ranging from my crazy taxi stories to building creative scenes (art/music/bike/skate, etc), and where we're heading as a society (my geeky brainiac side is a futurist).
I'm not asking for donations. I've figured out that if I sell $10,000 worth of work in six months, I should make enough to go from homeless dude drawing at the library, to a legit art/writing small business. That's my way to make a living going forward. You can help by buying the prints on this page. They are, technically, high quality color copies on card stock, which comes out really cool. These are the other things I have available:
Freestyle BMX Tales Zine #1- "The Spot in Redondo Beach" - 48 or more black and white zine pages of tales from my time riding with R.L. Osborn, Gork, Lew, Craig Grasso, Chris Day, and others. Unlike my blog posts, this will be more than just stories of riding, it will be some history of each place, and a bigger picture look at BMX freestyle and its place in the world. These are $6 shipped in the continental U.S, paypal to stevenemig13@gmail.com . $5 + shipping anywhere else (message me, I'll figure shipping). If you've ever made zines, you know the cost and shipping of a 48 page zine is about $5. Not much profit, if any, but I want people to get these and check them out. Zines, by their very nature, become collector's items almost immediately. Each copy will be signed and numbered by me.
Large, original, 18" X 24" Sharpie drawings, you know, like these:
Club White Bear. $25 a year. I'll send you a 24 page or bigger zine every other month, with BMX and other stuff in it. And you get first chance at buying my future prints, and 20% off any original art of mine you buy. Plus random goodies, and art copies no one else will get. Paypal $25 to stevenemig13@gmail.com, add your address to send it to.
Thanks for reading everyone. Thanks even more if you buy something. Let me know what you're thinking about my blogs and artwork. Look up the 60+ big drawings I've done, with #sharpiescribblestyle on Instagram or Google images. Later.
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