New meme, getting ready for what's ahead. Smell that? That's sarcasm. And yes, I suck at computer art. The T-shirt outline is lame, but you get the idea... Gonna be an interesting year in the economic world...
Blogger's note- May 4th, 2023- A few days later, First Republic tanked, and FDIC gave J.P. Morgan a sweetheart deal on the best parts of it. A couple more banks are teetering right now, I won't mention names. The Fed just raised interest rates another quarter point yesterday. It's time for a new meme. Again, I see this Bankpocalypse beginning like the Retail Apocalypse. It's another aspect of The Big Transition. The old, Industrial Age models are crumbling, piece by piece, and the Information Age models are rising up.
Tony Hawk, during the best trick jam at the 1999 X-Games in San Francisco. I think it was on the 11th attempt he landed the first 900 on a skateboard ever. He'd been trying the trick for nearly ten years.
Ride a bike, it will take you places. SE Bikes brand manager Todd Lyons says that a lot these days, and he's right. There were about 5,000 stories of Tony Hawk landing this 900, the first ever on a skateboard, that night on a pier in San Francisco, a different story for each person in that crowd. This is my version. I was standing behind the pro skaters, less than 20 feet from the side of the ramp, talking to San Francisco BMX freestyle legend Maurice Meyer. My Sony Digital8 video camera was in my hand... with a dead battery. I'm glad actually, that was a moment I was happy to just stand there and witness, without trying to capture it on video, and keep him well framed during each try. More than a decade later, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Sean Penn's character sums up that feeling better than I've ever heard it described.
I had finagled a press pass to the X-Games that year, planning to write an article or two for Dig Magazine in the U.K. about the contest. Maurice had nabbed a VIP pass, too. I rode with him and the other Golden Gate Park locals, most weekends, during the one year I lived there, in 1985-86. We ran into each other near the end of the BMX vert practice, and started talking about "the old days" and how much BMX and action sports had changed over 12 or 13 years' time.
While we were talking at the bike halfpipe, a red helicopter with a World Industries logo on the side of it, hovered near the ramps, and started dropping stickers. The handful of kids around the area ran around picking them up. Then we realized that something else was getting thrown out of the chopper, little wadded up pieces of paper. Because of the breeze, most were falling on the empty BMX ramp area, where we were, not on the skateboard crowd. Someone grabbed one of the pieces of paper, and unraveled it. "It's money" they said. Suddenly all of us jaded Old School guys were picking them up, too. Mike Dominguez Jr., amped up after an afternoon of free Mountain Dew, sprinted around and grabbed 30 or 40 of the wadded up dollar bills, I think. I wound up with four of them, each with a World Industries skateboard character, like Flame Boy or Wet Willie, rubber stamped on them. We laughed at yet another example of Steve Rocco's crazy promotion methods. When in doubt, just throw money on the crowd. I literally had real helicopter money in my pocket when Maurice and I decided to walk over and watch the skate best trick jam, which had just started.
Dusk was descending on the huge pier that housed the 1999 X-Games, next to San Francisco Bay. With our passes, we just walked over and stood behind the rows of chairs there for pro skaters and their girlfriends, wives, and a few kids. In some of the wide shots in the clip above, you can see two really bright lights, that look lke stars on the video. We were right below, and maybe 20 feet in front of those lights, they were shining over our heads, lighting up the skate halfpipe for the TV cameras.
Maurice and I kept talking, as the world's best skaters tried their newest and best tricks. As I recall, Pierre Luc Gagnon was trying to land a heeflip Caballerial, as Steve Caballero himself sat 10 feet in front of me. Bob Burnquist was trying a one footed Smith Grind to revert, I believe. Other skaters were trying their "Merry Christmas" tricks, the things they could land once in a while. For Tony Hawk, that was the varial 720. About 12 or 15 minutes into the half hour jam, he landed one. Then he went back up, and just stood on deck a few minutes.
Skaters dropped in, sometimes snaking each other, to try to pull that one big trick. It was the closest thing I'd seen to "real," everyday skateboarding in a contest environment. The best trick jam was a concession to the vert skaters, who still weren't really happy with ESPN's take on skateboarding, in their 4th year of the putting on the X-Games. The big TV contest idea for action sports was evolving, as skaters got more involved and vocal about how they were portrayed to millions of viewers.
It was obvious the bigwigs at ESPN didn't give a shit about the best trick jam, but they had a big crowd, around 5,000 people in the stands on the other side of the ramp, so they kept the cameras rolling. It would make for soem good highlight clips, I think that's how they saw it. Old School skater and announcer, Dave Duncan, called the action out live from the deck. Maurice and I watched and talked.
Then Tony Hawk dropped in again, and no one paid that much attention. Until he opened up out of what looked like a over-rotated 540. We stopped talking, "Did he just try a 900?" one of us asked the other. I can't remember who said it. Tony walked back up to the top of the ramp, and did the same thing a couple of more times. The second rotation got tighter and tighter. After the 3rd or 4th try, he walked off the side of the ramp, facing us, He was 15 or 20 feet away, and we could totally see his eyes, he had the stare, the "thousand yard stare," as I've heard some call it. He was looking right towards us, but saw nothing. Pure focus. I asked Maurice, "Did you see his eyes? He's serious. He's either going to land it or go to the hospital trying." Maurice agreed.
The whole aura of the place shifted. Other skaters stopped dropping in. The skaters on the deck knew Tony really wanted the 900, and stepped back in respect. It wasn't planned. No color commentary guy had to spew stats and percentages to hype people up. The energy in the whole area changed. This was real skateboarding at it's best.
A top skater just got a taste that tonight was the night to land the unlandable trick, and Tony just laser focused on it. Everyone stopped skating after a couple more attempts. It wasn't about trophies or prize money anymore. We all wanted to see Tony Hawk progress vert skating to the next level. Tony kept trying, getting more and more determined, and closer to landing it. Dave Duncan kept talking into the mike like only a hardcore skateboarder could. This was a moment, one way or the other.
I think it was on the 7th attempt that Tony landed on the board, made it a few feet, then washed out on the flatbottom. I jumped up in the air screaming, I gave that one to him. But he didn't ride away, it wasn't clean, he wanted it 100%. He kept trying. On the 11th attempt, I believe, is when Tony Hawk landed the first skateboard 900 air, totally solid. Everyone went nuts.
If you freeze that video above at about 6;03, you'll see Maurice right behind Tony, in a white hoodie, with sunglasses. He ran up there with all the skaters to congratulate Tony. I, for some reason, stayed right where I was, 30 feet away, watching the pandemonium. The place went nuts. But I had seen that happen before, 10 years earlier, up in Canada.
Mat Hoffman's first 900, at 14:43 in this clip, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, in the spring of 1989. After the intro with Eddie Roman's girlfriend, this is the footage that I shot from that contest, with Eddie and friends doing their funny color commentary over it. This is from the 1990-2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man, edited by Eddie Roman.
Riding a bike did take me places. I was a dorky, unathletic kid who grew up in Ohio, spent 9th grade living in New Mexico, and then lived in Boise, Idaho through high school. The summer after my sophomore year, I got into BMX riding, then BMX racing, and then new sport of BMX freestyle, in 1983. A year after I graduated high school, my family moved to San Jose, California. I worked at Pizza Hut, started publishing a freestyle zine, and met the Bay areas freestylers, like Maurice, Dave Vanderspek, Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzalez, and a couple dozen more. My zine led me to a magazine job in Southern California. I wasn't punk rock enough for that place, and I got laid off. I got a job editing a newsletter, which led to working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, in late 1987. I was out riding three hours a night like everyone else, but didn't have the balls to make it to pro caliber as a BMX freestyler. By 1989, I was Unreel's camerman, traveling to all the 2-Hip vert and street contests to shoot video, because Vision Street Wear sponsored the contests.
While I was bouncing around the BMX and industries, the early skatepark riders inspired a bunch of great quarterpipe riders around the U.S. and Europe. In 1987, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson started putting on halfpipe contests. Riders like Todd Anderson, Josh White, Joe Johnson, and this kid from Oklahoma, named Mat Hoffman, moved up the amateur ranks and into pro. They pushed the older guys like Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, as vert riding progressed.
The first 2-Hip King of Vert of 1989 was in Kitchener, Ontario Canada. The less than epic 2-Hip halfpipe was set up in a college gymnasium for the weekend, and the riders, amateur and pro, gave it their best. The talk of the weekend was that this crazy, unknown guy from Canada, called The Terminator, was going to do a backflip abubaca or fakie or something. No one except lake jumper Jose Yanez had done flips on a BMX bike then. No one had even tried them on vert. The Terminator was an amateur, and when his final run came up, he did a high fakie, leaned back a little, and crashed hard. The weekend up hype fizzled.
The rest of the amateurs rode their runs, blasting high and pulling their best tricks. Joe Johnson landed the first double tailwhip air, which was amazing. I was on the deck, with a $50,000, 35 pound, rented Ikegami Betacam, shoulder checking photographer John Ker for a good angle to shoot from. I was doing my best to get good footage of the days events.
Then came Mat Hoffman, in what I believe was his second pro contest. He won his first pro contest. At the end of his final run, with about 300 people watching, mostly Canadians, he nearly landed a 900. Mat got up, and went for it again, landing the first BMX 900 in a contest, and the first recorded 900 in any action sport. Even snowboarders hadn't pulled a 900 air at that point. I caught it on video from the deck, and Eddie Roman and another guy caught it from two angles below. Mat Hoffman, new pro vert rider and wonderkid, broke the 900 barrier in action sports, with video and photos to prove it. Word was the Mike Dominguez had landed a 900 or two on his own ramp. But there were no photos or video. Mat made it official, the 900 was possible.
By some weird quirk of fate, me, the goofy kid from Ohio and Idaho, was there to get video. And by an even crazier quirk of fate, I was in San Francisco a decade later to watch Tony Hawk do it, live, on a skateboard. The only other two people that I know were in both places were Mat and his buddy Steve Swope. But they were running the bike contest in 1999, and I don't think they were watching the skate best trick jam. I'm not sure. There may have been a couple of people who saw both happen live.
We live in a weird Universe, and really crazy coincidences happen now and then. It still trips me out that I somehow saw both of these happen live, right in front of me. Riding a bike did take me places, for the first 20 years of my adult life. I met alot of cool people, traveled around the U.S., and into Canada a couple of times.
Then I got injured, became a taxi driver, and things went into a downhill spiral. I think life wanted to kick my ass for a couple of decades to teach me some other lessons. One of the things I've learned is that there are a lot of ways to spend your time in life, and goofing around on bikes is one of the best ways. You never know where it will lead you. Ride on!
A couple of guys goofing around in a garage led to a revolution in consumer technology that changed the course of human history. That is not an understatement. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were fascinated by the emerging technology of computers in the early 1970's. Woz built the Apple 1, and Steve decided they needed to sell them to other hobbyists. Apple Computers, now Apple, was born in 1975. What kind of phone do you have? These two guys were ,arguably, the most influential Creative Scene in history.
"Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara valley... There were great stables... rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches."
-Jack London
From the second paragraph of The Call of the Wild, 1903, describing the Santa Clara valley, the San Jose area of California, in the 1890's, when the Klondike gold rush began
My interest in what I now call Creative Scenes began with my first BMX race, October of 1982, in Boise, Idaho. About ten of us from the Blue Valley mobile home park piled into my dad's big, silver, Ford van, to go race the last BMX race of the season. Three guys raced the week before, after we heard a track actually existed in Boise, and I tagged along to watch and coach. They all got first or second place in their novice class. We went back to the trailer park, and got everyone else stoked on the idea. So I talked my dad into borrowing the van the next week. We got there way too early, and rode around a very rudimentary BMX track, which seemed like the coolest thing ever to us.
We wore faded Levi's and T-shirts, and rode bargain store BMX frames, cobbled together with mismatched, halfway decent components, some stolen. We got pie plates with a number in marker on it, taped to our handlebars, for numberplates. The Boise BMX scene was already solid, but not fast growing. So even in our first or second races, in the novice class, we all raced some intermediates, and novices who had raced for months. The track gave trophies for 1st through 3rd place. We all went home with trophies, mostly 1sts and 2nds. Most of the kids we raced against were on $400 to $600, top-of-the-line BMX bikes, many had full racing leathers and fancy helmets. We shared a few old, heavy, motorcycle helmets we borrowed from dads in the trailer park.
All day long we kept hearing kids and parents asking the same question, "Who are all these kids on crappy bikes, and why are they all fast?" That whole summer, we had been coming out as it cooled down each evening, and riding our BMX bikes, pushing each other to get better. I later realized we had formed a little BMX scene, completely by accident. Isolated in the trailer park outside of town, from most of the people we went to school with, and the whole city of Boise, BMX became our thing. We were high school and junior high kids, and we just kept trying to outdo each other, to race faster, jump higher or farther, and learn new tricks the other guys couldn't do. By forming a little scene where BMX became our life, we improved faster than many other guys in town, who liked BMX, but also did a bunch of other activities. We were fairly focused, day after day, and hungry to be good at something. There's not a whole lot of positive reiforcment for kids in most trailer parks. So we showed up at the last race, and beat a bunch of much more experienced racers.
At first I wondered how that happened. In time, I figured out we had created a hardcore little BMX scene. I became fascinated with the scenes in BMX freestyle, and later was a part of several different scenes as I moved around over the years. In time I realized these scenes existed in skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, and other action sports. I also realized they were similar to the art and music scenes that we've all heard of. Later still, I was a part of a few art scenes, and learned that high tech start-ups, and entrepreneurial scenes also exist. These are all different forms of Creative Scenes.
So what's a Creative Scene? My working definition is that it's a group of two or more people who get together on a regular basis, to pursue some creative endeavor.
The video above, which appears to be a segment of a larger program, starts with Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in 2004. He leaves the Boston area, home to Harvard, where he went to school, and to MIT. He moved his fledgling social media busniess to Palo Alto, part of "Silicon Valley," officially the Santa Clara Valley on the south end of the San Francisco Bay. The area is anchored by San Jose, and a bunch of suburb cities on the west side, heading up into the peninsula leading to San Francisco.
From the birth of Hewlett-Packard decades before, the area had grown into THE place for cutting edge computer technology work, by 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg took his social media platform there. From the grape arbors and fruit orchards that Jack London wrote of more than 100 years earlier, the San Jose/Santa Clara Valley area had become a massive scene of many interwoven tech scenes, some influenced by the strong counter culture wirters, hippies, and music scenes, just to the north in San Francisco. London himself, in his day, was a part of the Carmel writing scene in the early 20th century, not far to the southwest.
It was in this large, originally defense-oriented, high technology region, an area with thousands of engineers and computer scientists, that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were raised. They grew up in a huge a scene of interwoven high tech, and other Creative Scenes, including the R&D departments of major corporations, computer hobbyists, along with the counter culture, music, and other scenes in nearby San Francisco.
They not only had an interest in computers and new technology as young kids, but they were surrounded by a culture of many different Creative Scenes, and a big part of the high tech industry. As Steve Wozniak says, if he hadn't been surrounded by both the engineers and tech people, and his dad's other connections in the industry, his first score of 400 transitiors, and his first homemade computer, would never have happened. He would have still had the interest in computers, but lacked many of the other factors that led to his and Jobs' success later on. His story would have been much different. Being in that area was a big part of what made the Homebrew Club, one of the most legendary high tech Creative Scenes ever, to form. That was a key part of the story of Apple Computers, and many other early innovators in tech.
Creative Scenes can be as simple and small as two 5-year-olds drawing "cool cars" in the back of a kindergarten class, or two tween girls learning dance moves in the living room off of TikTok or YouTube. Or Creative Scenes can be as massive as Apple, now a $2.6 trillion company, which is a scene of probably hundreds of smaller Creative Scenes interwoven inside the business. I'm going to be writing quite a bit on the whole concept of Creative Scenes in the future, and looking at all kinds of them throughout recent history, and maybe farther back, at some point.
We are now, in late April 2023, at the edge of what I believe will be the worst recessionary period of our lifetimes. We are now in the "powers-at-be says there won't be a serious recession" part of the timeline, which happens for a few months right before every recession, then things really head down. Yes, recessions and depressions suck on many levels. But they are also times of incredible change and innovation. Recessions are a great time to try out new ideas, because a lot of old, lame ideas come crumbling down, in many parts of society. Economic down times are when lots of new ideas, movements, businesses, and industries are really needed.
This is a little look at the general idea of Creative Scenes, which most of us have some knowledge of, but I think will become much more important in the next several years. There will be much more on this concept coming in this blog, on my Patreon page, and in other my other writing. Stay tuned...
I don't drink, so I pretty much party like the Minions when I hit a milestone.
If you've been into BMX sometimesince 1986, you know 43 is to BMX what "420" is to weed/marijuana/cannabis culture. Check the last post. So I'm totally stoked to hit 143,000 views on a personal blog. Thank you everyone who's read a post, or a bunch of them, over the nearly 7 years of this blog, and my other blogs before this one. I keep trying to write reasonably interesting stuff, and just keep plugging along. Thanks for checking my work out.
I've now written well over 2,500 total blog posts, and pulled in over 450,000 total page views since 2008. I don't have ads on my blogs, I do them because I love writing and have a bunch of ideas at any given time. Every post gets a few views, some really resonate, and get a bunch.
Check out my Patreon page, you can support my creative work for as little as $3.43 a month. There's a few posts open to check out, and other content, including two e-zines you can download, if you sign up and support me. Thanks again! Let me know any thoughts and ideas you have, good or bad, on Facebook or Twitter (@steveemig43). Onward!
Time lapse video taken from the top of one of the Hutton Center office buildings in Santa Ana, California. The two towers mirror each other, along the 55 freeway. Video from YouTube.
In late 1993, in 5 Hutton Center, in Santa Ana, in the video above, I told my boss I thought interest rates were about to go higher. He disagreed, bcause he was an experienced mortgage broker. Rates did go up, and he was out of business two or three months later. Nearly 30 years later, that same big office building, and the mirror image one next to it, just got sold by Blackstone, the world's largest, and best connected real estate company... at a 34% discount. When the supposedly smartest real estate investors in the world start defaulting on huge loans, and selling large properties at 30% off, things are about to get crazier for the rest of us before too long. More crazy times are coming in the worlds of money, investing, and real estate.
If you have read this blog much, you know I have this geeky fascination with economics, recessions, and futurist thinking. For some reason, I actually found the semester of economics we took during my senior year in high school to be really interesting. That was way back in 1983-84. There was something about the dynamics of the financial markets that piqued my interest. It wasn't just, "Damn, I could get rich if I figure this stuff out," I just found the dynamics of many interwoven trends really interesting. I started reading the business pages of the Boise paper that sememster, a little bit, and following some of the markets. Nothing serious, just as a casual interest. That spring, my mom won a contest at the company she was telemarketing for, and got a one ounce gold coin, worth about $400, as a prize. I told her, "Don't sell it yet, it's going to go up in price." That was based on what I'd seen happening in a few months. Much to my surprise, she listened, and sold it about a month later for $440, making an extra 10% just for waiting a bit. That was my first call on the future price of an investment.
A couple years later, when I got the job at the FREESTYLIN' magazine in Southern California, I'd make a big plate of pancakes every Saturday morning, and flip on the TV while I chowed down. Then I'd go ride my freestyle bike all day. Many of those mornings I watched the real estate infomercials, with guys like Dave Del Dotto and that little Asian guy with the hot women on the yacht, who seemed really cheesy, even then. Real estate was booming in Southern California, and I got interested in it, and started to read a book now and then on the subject. Later, in 1987 and 1988, two people I worked with each made $100,000 in one year on their houses, which got me more interested. I learned more about real estate, and thought about maybe trying to become an agent. I wasn't to serious, but I took an interest in it. My life revolved around BMX freestyle, but I definitely wanted to make more money than I was at the time, if I could figure out how.
Later on, while visiting my parents, who had moved to North Carolina, during Christmas of 1989, I picked up a book called The Great Depression of 1990, by economist Ravi Batra. He talked about these really long term cycles in economics most people were not aware of. I got even more interested, and actually began to price houses. I could have possibly bought a house out in Lake Elsinore or Perris, California, inland of Orange County. I was making more money then, and actually looked at a few houses. But, like Batra predicted, we headed into a recession in 1990. It wasn't as deep and crazy as he forecast in his book, but the real estate market was dtoast for about six years in Southern California from 1990 to late 1996. That book got me really interested in the dynamics of economic and financial market trends. And yes, I was in my early 20's, and thought, "Hey, if I can figure this stuff out, I could make a ton of money, and then go ride my bike all the time." Instead, I wound up living in a series of low budget BMXer houses and apartments, with lots of roommates, as we slogged through the long recession. During those years, we all learned how to make about 10 different meals from a pack of ramen. Money was tight for most everyone I knew.
I began to watch the financial markets in the newspaper every day for several months, trying to figure out what made the markets move up and down, and to see of there were long term trends in them I could get a grasp. I also started reading business books and the annual Forbes 400 magazine, trying to figure out how the super rich became super rich. I was just scraping by, BMX and skateboarding had "died" in 1989-1990, and I worked a bunch of odd jobs during that time. At one point I was living in the P.O.W. BMX House, with 8-11 other guys, paying about $110 a month in rent, yet watching CNBC business news every morning before the other guys woke up. I also started reading dozens of books a year, on business, real estate, personal development, philosophy, religion, and a few novels as well. I even bought a $300 speed reading course so I could devour more books and get through them faster.
Bit by bit, I learned about aspects of business, market dynamics, relationships between different markets, and began to get some sense of how things were playing out over time. One of the odd jobs I got was in late 1993, telemarketing for a mortgage broker. The job was in a nice office building in Santa Ana, called 5 Hutton Center. There were a few women, and myself, in a really big office in the evenings, callling people to set appointments for mortgage brokers to talk to them about refinancing. Interest rates were low, and a lot of refi's were happening. Most smart homeowners had already refinanced, but we still could get two or three leads a night, usually. It wasn't a great job, but better than most telemarketing jobs at the time.
One night, the owner of the company came in and hung out while we were calling, and we all talked a bit. I asked him if he was worried, since it looked to me like interest rates would be going up soon. The question surprised him, and he told me that interest rates were going to stay low, and the business would be busy for a long time to come. He said he'd been in the mortgage business for over 30 years, and he knew how these things worked. But he appreciated my interest, and said to keep at it, and maybe they could turn me into a mortgage broker sometime.
I had been watching the markets pretty steadily through the four years of recession from 1990 into late 1993. The Federal Reserve, aka The Fed, had lowered interest rates months earlier. To me, it looked like interest rates were being held way too low, and they would have to raise them soon. That's exactly what happened. The Fed raised their Fed Funds rate from about 3% up to 6% in 1994. Two or three months after that conversation with the veteran mortgage broker, he was out of business. That same interest rate rise also sent Orange County, California into bankruptcy, because of some shady stuff one county official had been doing. That was the first time I made a forcast to somebody I didn't really know about where I thought the financial markets were heading, that night, as a telemarketer, in 5 Hutton Center.
It's been about 29 1/2 years since that night as a telemarketer at the mortgage company. I've been learning about business and economic trends, and keeping a casual eye, or more, on the markets the whole time since. I've made several calls on inflaection points, some good, some less so, to people I know, and in this blog over the last six years. I've been writing about a huge recession, or depression, that I believed was coming, since 2019. It looks like we are finally heading into the deepest part of this economic crisis now, though many are still doubting it, as always happens. I was looking at ultra long term cycles, that few people have even heard of, let alone believe in, including two concepts from Ravi Batra's 1989 book. Those cycles led me to think we were in for a depression or great depression, starting around 2020. Technically, we went through a short depression, by definition, in the Spring of 2020. Now comes an even bigger mess, which is happening behind the scenes now, and will become obvious to everyone over the next 4 to 6 months.
Those ultra long term cycles seem to still be playing out, not caring if today's traders believe in them or not. But this time around, we have a whole host of really smart people digging through data on YouTube channels, on Twitter, and looking at many aspects of today's markets and trends. One analyst said recently that this is the most anticipated recession in history. That sure seems to be true. Lately, I've been watching hours and hours of Financial YouTube, diving into all the ideas and information about the crazy economic times coming our way, from several different source. It feels like I'm on the Titanic, and have drone footage of the huge iceberg the ship's about to hit, but no one wants to hear about it. There's so much information about what's happening in the economy right now, but very few people who are interested in it, until the crisis crashes over them, and everyone else. Again, I'm a geek on economics and futurist thinking, and most people are not.
You may have heard about troubles in commercial real estate world recently. Most of you don't geek out on this stuff like I do, and I know this post is really "in the weeds" of the financial world that most people avoid. But a recent event caught my attention, the discount sale of the exact office building I worked in, and made that interest rate prediction in, nearly 30 years ago. Blackstone, the world's biggest asset manager, has defaulted on several commerical properties in the last few months. One of those was a sale of the Griffin Towers, as they are now called, known . Blackstone just sold 5 and 6 Hutton Center at a 36% loss.
The office building I was sitting in way back in 1993, when I told my boss that I thought mortgage rates were about to go up, has just been sold at a 34% deiscount, by the biggest landlord in the world. That's just weird. They own thousands of properties, it's just a weird coincidence, from my perspective, as I was looking into the crsis, still trying to figure out where things are headed in the future.
The world's largest, and presumably one of the smartest, commercial real estate landlords, Blackstone, along with Brookfield, and others, are now struggling with the effects of the huge rise in interest rates, and the work from home movement, which has hit office building owners hard. This is a big issue right now, because a huge chunk of commercial real estate loans are held by regional banks, much like the three that collapsed last month. The work-from-home trend, the steep and quick rise in interest rates, and the after effects of the whole pandemic period, are conspiring to send several parts of the commercial real estate world into huge drops in value. This is putting more stress on many of those smaller, regional banks, already nervous after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. There's a lot more crazy times ahead, it seems.
From the 1980's into the 2000's, we saw the closing of hundreds, maybe thousands of factories in the U.S.. In the 2010's and into the 2020's, we've seen the closing of over 30,000 retail stores, and a bunch of shopping malls, Now the evil lord Bankruptcy is coming for the office buildings. Will we be able to find new uses for most of these properties? Or will they sit vacant and become new places for UrbEx exploring, like the crumbling factories and malls? Time will tell.
However it plays out, my personal research and view is that we have a lot more of crazy economic turbulence coming, probably several years worth. But with all the negative effects of recessions and depressions, these periods are also when many of the best opportunities come along, and when lots of new businesses, new business models, and entire new industries rise up from the ashes.
Thirty years after that night of telemarketing, I'm a broke and homeless artist and blogger. But I've seen this next recession coming from miles away, and I know there will be all kinds of great opportunities in the next few years. Maybe I, too, can finally rise from the ashes, as well.
This day in the spring of 1988 completely changed BMX riding forever. The first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest. Ron Wilkerson and posse put on this comp in a spot behind a shopping center in Santee, California, a spot where Dave Voelker had built some giant wall rides.
At 4:00 in this clip of Mondo Vision, you get the official Vision Street Wear edit of the Santee Meet the Street contest. The edit above is my edit for the 1988 2-Hip contest video, it's edited from the same footage, but is my rider-made edit, and much lower budget. The Mondo Vision edit was directed by one of the Unreel Producers, I can't remember which one.
None of us knew what to expect. Wall rides on BMX bikes were just invented the year before, and the biggest wallride ot appear in a magazine photo before the contest was about two feet high. BMX freestyle then was closely following skateboarding, and street skating was just beginning to become its own thing, led by skaters Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, and Nata Kaupas. What exactly did "street" riding mean, anyway? None of us who showed up at Santee really knew. We all had been doing it as long as we'd been riding, just like all the BMX racers a decade before us. We'd been hitting driveway curb jumps, doing kick turms on banks, doing footplants on benches, carving and doing bunnyhop "airs" in ditches, jumping down steps, and launching off loading docks on occasion. But there had never been a contest of street riding before, as far as we knew. Actually, later I heard Dave Vanderspek had held a small DIY comp in NorCal a year or so earlier. But I didn't know that on this sunny day in Santee.
A group of maybe 200 people total, mostly riders, showed up in a weird little area, behind a pretty average shopping center, in the Spring of 1988. Ron Wilkerson, Haro pro rider, vert and lip trick legend, and the guy who started putting on a halfpipe contest series the year before, put the event together. I rode down to the contest with the Unreel Productions cameraman, Pat Wallace. He was a lifelong California surfer guy, VW van and all, and Unreel's official camerman then. Vision Street Wear sponsored all AFA and 2-Hip contests that year, and Unreel, where I worked, was Vision's video company. So Pat got sent to every event to shoot footage, and both Vision and 2-Hip could use that footage however they wanted later on. And just for the record, as the Unreel tap libraian, MOST of the AFA and 2-Hip video shot from 1987-1990 has NEVER BEEN SEEN by anybody, except me. Really. There are dozens of hours of high quality, early, BMX freestyle footage form the 1980's that never got used in ANY video. It's all sitting in a warehouse now... somewhere.
All that aside, I was there as a rider, not a video guy. As we neared the contest sight, I joked, "It's going to be crazy, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody does a can-can wall ride or something today." That seemed like an completely crazy trick at that point. We rolled back behind the shopping center, and the first thing I saw, out the window of the VW van, was SoCal local rider George Smoot doing a can-can wall ride, on this HUGE dirt bank to wall. We hadn't even parked, and my mind was alreayd blown.
Soon after, I was on my bike, as Pat got the camera, and started shooting. Another guy, I think a friend of Pat's came along as well. The riding area was completely unseen from the road in front of the shopping center, and while one police car rolled up to see what was happening (and somehow got a 12 inch square Vision Street Wear sticker added to the trunk), the world had no idea out little contest was happening. It was just a bunch of BMXers, and a few obstacles. But there was a car. Most of us dreamed of riding on a car at some point, in our day to day riding, but never got the opportunity. and Ron Wilkerson had a huge, old, land yacht towed in to thrash. Right after we got there, cans of spray paint were pulled out, orange and green. A whole bunch of guys laid down bikes and started spray painting the car, and duct taping the windshield.
The guys best known for street riding at the time were the NorCal pioneer of everything, Dave Vanderspek, and San Diego thrashers Eddie Roman and Pete Agustin. So those were the guys most expected to blow minds going in. But we'd never all got together before to thrash urban obstacles, so everyone else was an unknown commodity.
Vander, Eddie, and Pete were there, of course. Santee area local, Dave Voelker was the guy who rode that spot on his own, and built the dirt jumps to giant wall rides. He was an immediate standout. Straight outta Torrance, The Spot locals, R.L. Osborn and Craig Grasso stood out immediately as well. R.L., one of the pioneers of BMX freestyle, going back nearly a decade then, was thought to be pretty much "retired" from riding at the time. Yet, he was there blasting huge wall rides in both directions and back peg fakie wall rides, among other moves. Grasso, the artsy looking omnivorous rider who could ride anything well, was doing big fakie wall rides, wall ride variations, and throwing his unique style at obstacles.
But the contest also drew hardcore BMX racers, most notably pros Rich Barlett and Chris Moeller. The launch ramp up to the five foot box, then to a four foot high box, was up their alley. Moeller, well known magazine test jumper, as well as pro racer, made fun of freestylers by putting a trick list on the back of his number plate, with tricks like "bunnyhop" and "long skid" listed on it. Vert legend Todd Anderson, running his coaster brake General, was there as well, and tossed out amazing fakie wall footplants into the growing trick lexicon of the day. Scott Towne, magazine photographer, was throwing out tons of style as well on his bike. NorCal young buck vert rider, Mike Golden, jumped the car sideways, to flat, off a tiny launch ramp. Dave Vanderspek launched off the tiny ramp to footplant on the roof over the car. Vander still had it.
The whole day was a "Fuck yeah! This is cool!" vibe among all of us. You can't put it into a context for modern riders, who have grown up with ramps, skateparks, and decades of videos to watch. It was like you took 100 hardcore BMX riders, and dropped them at the first skatepark ever built. It was all new. Yeah, we'd jumped off skater's launch ramps, and homemade plywood ramps before. But the obstacles were largely new. Many of the tricks were pretty knew, wall rides and fakie wall rides had been invented less than a year before. And then we had the boxes, and a car to figure out what we could do on it. Something like Steve Crandall's DIY comps, or Trey Jones Swampfest would be the closest comparison to the Santee vibe, in today's world. It was just a fun, crazy, experimental day of riding new stuff, real, hardcore, BMXin'.
The only crowd really was a few dozen friends, girlfriends, and some family members. It was mostly just a bunch of riders. And we all just went nuts. There were only two classes, Good (amateur), and Great (pro). There were no pro street riders then, this was the contest that turned street riding into a "sport," so riders just decided if they felt "pro" or not. In addition to the big car, launch ramps, and big boxes, and ramp/dirt wall rides, the obstacles included two parking blocks and a shopping cart. The one complaint some of us had was there wasn't much in the way of actual "street" obstacles. No one had done peg grinds on rails or ledges yet, that hadn't been invented. But there were no bench sized ledges, concrete or asphalt banks, or other types of often ridden obstacles. It didn't really matter. It turned into a jumping and wall ride contest mostly. But that's the stuff that looks the best in person and on camera.
Like I said, coming into the contest, Dave Vanderspek, Eddie Roman, and Pete Augustin had the biggest reputations as street riders. That day in Santee moved Dave Voelker, Craig Grasso, R.L. Osborn up into the mix. One more rider, the one from farthest away, dropped jaws with the trick of the day. English rider Craig Campbell, best known for vert, threw out solid tricks all day, and then blew what few brain cells we had left at the end with a huge wall ride to 360. I don't think anyone else had even imagined that, let alone thought of trying it.
I'll give the hardcore street riding roots medal to NorCal, early originators of street style riding since 1982-1983, like Dave Vanderspek, Maurice Meyer, Robert Peterson, and the whole Golden Gate Park crew. Being from the San Francisco area, with so much crazy terrain everywhere, street riding was in their DNA. That's the place Ron Wilkerson came from originally. But the street riding torch got passed to the San Diego crew that day in Santee. Yeah, Eddie Roman and Pete Augustin could bust some cool tricks on street, we knew that before. Look at the results, Vic Murphy won the Good class, and Dave Voelker won Great, with Eddie Roman, Pete Augustin, and contest promoter, Ron Wilkerson, who lived in Encinitas then, also among the top 8 in the Great class.
The first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest not only put the San Diego riders front and center in the new street riding genere', it opened everyone's mind to the potential riding available in the urban jungle around all of us. We all rode away looking at the city streets around us completely differently after a few hours at that contest. A few months after, the contest photos came out in the September issue of BMX Plus!, and probably the September issue of FREESTYLIN'. I don't have my magazine collection anymore, and oldschoolmags.com is missing that issue, so I couldn't check. The BMX Plus issue is on their site.
Much like the first King of Dirt jam at Rich Bartlett's dad's haouse, a year earlier, the Santee 2-Hip Meet the Street changed the way everyone there looked at the world around us, and what was possible on a BMX bike. The magazine photos, and later the videos above, spread that vibe to thousands more riders. And BMX street riding spawned into a sport, as well as just something fun to do between racing and freestyle sessions. Bike riding was never the same after that day in Santee, and street riding continues to evolve now, 35 years later. Even crazier, many of the riders there that day are still riding. None of us expected that.
Nearly a year later, I got a call from Ron Wilkerson, asking me if I wanted to edit the 2-Hip contest season video. I jumped at the chance. I was able to borrow Unreel's S-VHS "offline" edit system, and chopped it all together in the spring of 1989, 5 vert comps and this street comp. Why did Ron ask me? The year before I produced six videos for the AFA, and I was the guy who seemed to have the basic skills to edit a low budget video at the time. Eddie Roman's "BMX movie," Aggroman, came out later in 1989, which really sparked the rider-made video movement in BMX freestyle. For the next year or two it was Eddie, Mark Eaton of the Plywood Hoods, me, and Jeremy Alder Back east, producinga few rider-made, low budget videos. By about 1991, a whole lot more people start putting out low budget BMX videos, which sparked a video revolution during the recession of the early 1990's, after BMX "died," and only the hardcore people were left. This video embedded above, became part of the 2-Hip BHIP video, check it out.
So that's my story of the first media covered BMX street contest, one sunny spring day, in Santee, California in 1988.
This was maybe a month ago. For a while, I've been throwing all the pennies I get from change into one pocket of my backpack. One day I remembered them, and decided to cash them in at a Coinstar machine. Now when Coinstar came out, I think they took something like 6% for counting change. That was a lot. Hell, slot machines in casinos usually have a 95% or even 97% payback. Coinstar had around 94% payback just for counting your change. Then their fee kept going up... and up.... and up.
So I tossed 144 pennies into the machine to cash them in and... WTF? They charged me a 50 cents up front fee, and then 12% I think. $1.44 turned into 76 cents. Fuck Coinstar.
Janis Joplin, kickin' ass, singing live, and showing why she was the queen of bluesy rock in the late 1960's. My #sharpiescribblestyle drawing for a couple in NorCal. 18" X 24"
In late 2015, 7 1/2 crazy years ago, I started trying to really sell my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings. I had been living with my mom in a small town in central North Carolina, after my dad's death. I was struggling with serious depression for a few years, partly because I couldn't find any "real" job after taxi driving died off in California a few years earlier. I applied for 140 different local jobs in a couple of years, and didn't get any of them. That had never happened to me before. We were living off my mom's social security check, which she didn't manage well. One night just trying to figure out some way to make a little bit of money on my own, I decided to try selling some of my Sharpie drawings.
My Sharpie Scribble Style technique was something I invented while living in an indie art gallery in 2005. I had tried drawing a mural with markers back in 2002, in this tiny, dingy room I lived in. I kept playing around, trying to find a technique to shade different colors with markers, to get beyond the basic 12 or 24 colors. The layering of different colors of scribbles to get different hues and to blend colors is something I stumbled upon while living in the AAA Electra Gallery later on. I had been drawing different things, on and off, for ten years, using the style. But nothing really cool.
Janis' name, hand drawn style inspired by actual Big Brother & the Holding Company concert posters, from the late 1960's. The name is surrounded by song lyrics and song titles in the background, with colors over them.
When I decided to step up my art, and try to sell something, I spent about three hours one night looking through all kinds of art, trying to answer one simple question, "What could I draw that I would want to put on my own wall?" I dug through work, from Picasso and Monet to Banksy and Shephard Fairey. I decided on a simple stencil drawing of Bruce Lee. That's how I started drawing people. A couple weeks later, I sold a drawing for $25 to someone on Facebook. I kept drawing people. Within a couple of months, I decided to draw Johnny Cash, a favorite of mine from childhood.
I showed the drawing to a woman who had a little Amish food store and sandwich shop in downtown Kernersville, NC, where we lived. She asked what I'd want for the drawing. Jokingly, I said, "Lunch for me and mom would be cool." She replied, "What do you want?" So I traded my first musician drawing, Johnny Cash, for a couple of great sandwiches and drinks. A week or two later, we were back in the shop, and Jo, the owner asked, "could you draw Janis Joplin for me?" That was my first musician drawing request. My skills were much less developed then, but I drew a pretty good rendition of a popular Janis photo, with with lots of shadows, which made drawing easier. That was in early 2016, and I've been drawing musicians ever since, mostly by request. I've lost track, but I've sold around 100 original drawings since 2016.
Close up of the latest Janis Joplin drawing.
For 7 1/2 years now, I've been drawing nearly continuously. My drawings went from taking 12 to 15 hours to draw a 12" X 18" drawing, to 40 to 45 hours or more to draw an 18" X 24" drawing. During the drawing process, I watch all the interviews I can find about whomever I'm drawing, as well as listen to their music (for musicians), and watch any documentaries about them. I try to understand the person or group as much as I can. As the years passed, this has been one of the coolest parts of the process for me.
I love Janis' music, I used to listen to the Pearl album, in particular, quite a bit, years ago. It was great to dig into her story while drawing this piece. I knew she died from a drug overdose, and was part of the now infamous "27 Club," artists who died at the age 27. That group unfortunately included Jimi Hendrix, who died shortly before Janis, Jim Morrison, and more recent musicians like Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.
I didn't know that Janis didn't start really singing until high school. I didn't know that she was part of a bluegrass folk band early on, or that she was bisexual. I also didn't know that she died accidentally of a heroin overdose, while recording the Pearl album in Hollywood. I thought it was just crazy, excessive partying. Her life and career was really on an upswing at the time of her death, and she had quit using hard drugs months before. Hendrix had died of an overdose just over two weeks before she OD'd, which hit Janis hard. The people around her seem to think she was just feeling down, struggling with the the long periods of alone time during recording, and decided to get a bit of heroin again just to take the edge off the sadness, and she wound up with really pure stuff. It was enough to end her life, to everyone's surprise. The band finished up Pearl, and it was released just three months after her death. This is one of my top 5 favorite drawings I've done, it came out better than expected.
Here are some of the best videos I came across of Janis Joplin while doing this drawing.
Nick Gerli, of Reventure Consulting, is a financial YouTuber I found last summer, looking for more info on wear real estate was heading. He's been calling things ahead of time, trend by trend, by looking at the actual real time data, and just using common sense. Which should be called "uncommon sense" since so few people seem to use it. This video explains where we are now, mid-April 2023, and where things appear to be heading, better than any of the 30 or 40 videos I've watched recently about the economy.
I've been blogging about "the next Great Recession" (or depression) since 2018-2019. Looking at obscure ultra long term trends that most people either have never heard of, or simply dismiss, it looked like we were heading for either a bigger Great Recession,or a full on Great Depression (a recession for 5+ years), starting in 2019-2020. The recession tried to begin in December of 2018, but The Fed dropped interest rates and calmed things down. Then the pandemic hit in 2020, tossing the economy off a cliff into the recession. But The Fed responded by creating $5 to $6 trillion in "helicopter money," throwing money at banks, Wall Street, corporate America, near bankrupt states, cities, and towns, and eventually to us lowly, average citizens. That was like buying 5 kegs of beer at 2 am at a high school or college party. "Hey! More beer (free money) keep the party going!" The new money propped things up from late 2020 into early 2022.
But that eventually caused inflation, which soared, finally forcing The Fed to raise interest rates faster then ever in history, to fight the inflation they caused with all the newly created money. Now a bunch of factors are pulling money out of the economy, and the financial roller coaster is headed back down into recession. A BIG recession. Nick explains the mess in this video above far better than I can. So just watch the video to get a good idea where things are headed economically this year.
For the last two or three weeks, I've been working on the second Janis Joplin #sharpiescribblestyle drawing I've done. The first one was in 2016, the second musician drawing I ever did, out of abou t80 or so. When I do my drawings, since they take 40 or 45 hours each, I listen to the person's music, interviews, documentaries while I draw. This is a short documentary about Janis, almost all great live clips of her singing, with a little bit of talking in places. I can listen to her music for hours. Great stuff.
American Gladiators was a hit TV show, starting in the late 1980's and running for 8 seasons. It came out before reality was invented, and pretty much started the sports competition genre'. There were several spinoffs, the biggest being Gladiators, the U.K. version, I believe. Lori Fetrick was Ice for six seasons on the show. This is her brand new podcast, which is really funny and entertaining.
Most of you reading this blog know of me from the BMX industry days of the 1980's and early 1990's. A lot of you also know my BMX and skateboard video work led to me stumbling into the TV industry, first at Unreel Productions in the late 1980's, and then into more mainstream TV crew work in the 1990's. I worked as a spotter, on the stage crew of American Gladiators, for the last four seasons, taped in the summers of 1992-1995. The spotters were those guys on the sidelines of many of the games, with the white, shield-shaped karate pads, to keep people from flying out of bounds.
I worked right on the floor with the Gladiators and contenders, for the 7 or 8 days of practice, then a about 5 or 6 weeks of shooting all the episodes for that season. The show started on the Universal Studio lot, but we shot on the CBS-MTM lot the years I worked there. That studio in often called the Radford Studios by industry people, and is located in Studio City, "over the hill" from Hollywood. We used several of the empty stages to store all the sets used on Gladiators, including Stage 1, then the home of the Roseanne show, and the former stage where the Mary Tyler Moore Show was shot years earlier.
I knew Ice, Lori, on the set, but didn't talk to her all that much in the downtime. While us spotters actually practiced many of the games against both the Gladiators and the contenders, my biggest memory of Ice was just a weird little thing that happened on the way to lunch one day.
I lived in Orange County then, and would rent a cheap motel room near the studio, for the weeks I worked on the show. I didn't have a car then, so I would take a bike to ride back and forth to work each day. One year I had a beach cruiser, instead of my freestyle bike, I can't remember why. The crew was huge, about 100 people total, and a catered lunch was part of the deal working on the set. Since there were so many of us, and since we shot in summer, when most other shows were on hiatus (summer break), the caterers usually set up in a small stage for lunch.
So halfway through the day, we'd break for lunch, and everyone would walk halfway across the big studio lot to eat lunch. It was maybe 150-200 yard walk, winding between the big studio buildings, depending which stage they used that year. On this one day, I hopped on my beach cruiser, which was parked backstage, and started pedaling over to towards lunch, to beat the line. A few people, including Ice, walked out another door as I was rolling up. She said, "Hey, give me a ride." So I said, "OK, hop on," and in her Gladiator outfit, she hopped on my handlebars, and I rode her over to the lunch stage. We beat most of the crowd, so we didn't have to stand in line. It's really no big deal, but of all the things on the set, including getting my ass kicked by her on several of the games, that's my first memory that pops in my head, when thinking about Ice.
In the first Chillin' With Ice podcast episode above, her girlfriend interviews her about her childhood, teen years, and early bodybuilding career, leading up to trying out for American Gladiators. First of all, she's obviously still incredibly fit, and looks great. Lori is also really funny, very open, and goes into the good and bad of her early life, being rebellious, high school sports, partying, early jobs, slowly realizing her sexual preference, and one of the better babysitting stories I've heard. If you were a fan of American Gladiators, are into bodybuilding or fitness training, are LGBTQ, or just want to hear some funny stories, this is a really interesting and funny podcast. Check it out.
This is "The Hero's Journey," the first hour of The Power of Myth series. The whole interview series is six hours of journalist Bill Moyers interviewing comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. The interviews took place at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Northern California, in 1982. Campbell was a professor and wrote many books about mythology and the religions of the world, throughout history. Campbell was best known for for a book called The Hero's Adventure, which popularized the concept of The Hero's Journey.
I discovered Joseph Campbell, I think from Roy of Hollywood's show on KPFK radio, in the early 1990's. In the last post, I finally wrote publicly about why I think a relatively small group of people has dramtically warped Christianity in the United States in recent decades, to the detriment of all of us. In my own search to try and figure out what makes sense from spiritual and religious traditions, this series of interviews was a huge help to help make sense of religous teachings of the ages. Maybe it will help you figure out some of your own philosophical questions as well. George Lucas was heavily influenced by Campbell's work when writing the original Star Wars trilogy (now episodes 4, 5, and 6).
This is the first hour of the series, and while this comes from over 40 years ago, the themes they talk about are timeless. I hope this post will help many of you find your bliss, and then follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell often told people ot do.
This is a seven foot tall concrete bunny rabbit, in the Newport Beach Art Park, which I was thinking about going to today, since it's Easter. But I decided not to. It's a long haul down there. I still have no idea how a giant rabbit and basket of colored eggs became associated to Easter. I'm not going to bother googling it. #steveemigphotos
This is Bunnyhenge, it's a real place, also in the Newport Beach, California art park. It's a circle of 14 concrete bunnies, each about 3 1/2 feet high, on the hill, above the seven foot high bunny in the photo above. #steveemigphotos
This is the view from the lookout spot above Bunnyhenge, with most of the art park below, as well as Newport Beach City Hall, and the Pacific ocean inthe distance. #steveemigphotos
Why did I think about going to Bunnyhenge on Easter morning? It's a beautiful place, it's on a hill, filled with all kinds of fragrant plants, flowers, and various sculptures. Bunnyhenge, and parts of the art park overlook the Pacific ocean. I don't go to church anymore. So going to a beautiful, outdoor spot with giant bunnies seemed as good of a place to go as any on Easter morning. I seriously thought about it.
I still believe in God, more than ever actually. But I've given up on religion. I'm not alone. Check this out. This is what came up when I googled "Is Christianity in decline in the U.S.?" Right from the Google results page.
Yesterday I saw this article on CNN's website, a P.R. piece trying make the case that Christianity in the U.S. is more popular than it actually is. I realized that traditional churches have lost a lot of membership, and that fundamentalist and evangelical "Christianity" have grown in recent decades. But I honestly had no idea that only 64% of Americans now call themselves Christians. That really surprised me. I still thought somewhere around 90% of Americans identify as Christians. But that number has dropped to 64%, in whatever poll was used. It's hard to figure how many people have given up on church, given the change in population in 50 years, and whether kids are included in this number. But the number has to be somewhere around 25 to 40 million Ameicans that have given up on the Christian religion, or at least belonging to a church, since the 1970's.
I wrote the rest of this blog post this morning, as my laptop battery was dying. I'll stand by my personal beliefs on why this has happened. You may agree or disagree, I don't care. As an American, you have the right to your opinion, and I to mine. I put my thoughts out there, in my blogs and eleswhere, but don't believe anyone is obligated to share my opinions. If my thinking makes sense to you, that's cool. If it doesn't, then it doesn't. I'm just fine with agreeing to disagree with people.
The peak in the number of people who call themselves Christians came when I was ten years old, and was going to a big Lutheran church in the small town of Willard, Ohio, in 1976. I later went through Lutheran catechism classes for a year, and was given my first Bible of my own by that church. Years later I read most of the Old Testament, and all of the New Testament, four or five times, start to finish.
That time of peak Christianity, 1976, was also about the time that a small group of highly politicized people decided to work towards a group of "Christians" taking control of the Republican party, American politics, the media, and all major businesses in this country. Not long after that "evangelical" megachurches began to pop up. There has been an organized effort by this originally small group of people to take control of "Christianity," as a way to take political, social, legal, and media control of the entire United States of America. These are the people working to dismantle democracy and turn the U.S. into a theocracy.
In the 50 years since, these people, who in no way live by the ACTUAL teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, have infiltrated politics, much of the media, many major businesses, and much of the U.S. legal system. These people have driven tens of millions of Americans away from Christianity in the process. They have also warped the meaning of the term "Christian," to where it actually means a lunatic to most unaffiliated people now. We see these politicians who call themselves devout Christians acting like complete fucking lunatics, on TV, and in other media, every day.
I'm calling bullshit on you. Fuck every fucking one of you political "Christians." The original followers of Jesus lived communally. Everyone had to give everything they owned to the group, to be used for everyone's good. Two people refused to give everything, and they dropped dead on the spot, according to the book of Acts. That's what the whole book of Acts in the New Testament describes, how the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth actually lived. I know of no Christian who lives that way in today's world. None of us do.
I've read the New Testament, start to finish, like an actual book, four or five times. Some chapters and books I've read several times in addition to that. I highly recomend doing this, alone. I got a much different take on the teachings of Jesus than what I'd been taught through a small number of individual verses growing up. When I came to a verse that puzzled me, I would read different versions of the Bible to see if that helped clear it up. It can help to meditiate or pray for understanding on these verses, as well. Sometimes an epiphany, or insight, comes later, to help you understand them.
I did this on my own, 25-35 years ago, just to try and figure out what made sense for my own life. I also read all of the gnostic gospels that were available in English, and some basic history of the Bible itself. The oldest version of "The Bible" dates to about the 4th century A.D., nearly 300 years after the life of Jesus.
The evangelicals are not followers of the teachings in the Bible. It's a political group using religious references for political, social, fianncial, or other gain. The Bible is silent on abortion, and only 4 or 5 verse even mention pregnancy. That was most likely something handled by women back then, and that men had little, if anything, to do with. The concept of Hell is only in modern Bibles about 12 times. Much of the Bible is written in metaphor, and not meant to be taken literally.
Evangelicals can spout all the nonsense they want, but your actions prove otherwise. Their warped version of what Christianity means is not something I want to be associated with. I no longer call myself a Christian because it has become a farse by so many high profile people who call themselves Christians today. Happy Easter fuckwads!
I believe in a higher power, and do my best to help other people in the ways I can. I don't give a damn what you think. There are plenty of good, decent people who do go to church, and that's fine. But not very many of them grow much spiritually after grade school. Church has many functions, such as a community and learning about these teachings from 2,000 yearsd ago. If church helps you be a better person day to day, that's great. But a growing number of people feel differently, myself among them.
I, personally, want nothing to do with the over-politicized, highly authoritarian minded thing that American Christianity has become. I have no obligation to believe what you believe, and you have no obligation to believe what I believe. We should be able to move on as a country, despite our differences of opinion. But that seems to be getting harder and harder. And that also seems to be why so many people don't go to church, or have found other beliefe systems these days.
I wrote this post spontaneously this morning, I had no intention ahead of time to write all this. I generally avoid all talk of religion, but some dream or something, early this morning, got me thinking along these lines. I tried to finish quick before my laptop battery died. I came back later, added quite a bit, and proofread it. If you don't like my thoughts, go read or watch something else.
The host of this short video is Richard Johnson. He's a weird cat. Self described Fame-Ass Arteest, indie gallery owner/leader, and long time taxi driver. In 2005, when I was driving a taxi, he approached me with an offer. He asked if I wanted to drive his taxi on the weekends, and live in his indie art gallery, AAA Electra 99, the rest of the week. I said, "Yes." A few days later, I was literally living in an indie art gallery, surrounded by creations by dozens of different people. This gallery is where my Sharpie Scribble Style of drawing was born.
I first met Richard Johnson, veteran Orange County taxi driver, sometime in 2000. At some point, while driving my taxi, I ran into him, and we talked a bit. I can't remember exactly when.
I had a hernia I couldn't get fixed in 1999, and I had to quit my "Hollywood" lighting tech job. I was basically a roadie that never went on the road, cleaning, prepping, and fixing tv/movie industry lights, for all kinds of productions. I would pack them up to go out on gigs, with about ten other guys, in a warehouse in North Hollywood. It was a fun job, I was making $14 an hour, and getting frequent overtime, making the most money I'd ever made consistently. But I couldn't do the heavy lifting needed on the job anymore, my hernia was getting out of control. I took the summer off in 1999, lived off my savings, and planned to get hernia surgery, heal up, and go back to the same company, just working freelance. I could make more money per day just working on the gigs. My rent was $350 a month, so two or three good days of work would pay that. I had been driving from Huntington Beach to North Hollywood every day, a 50 mile hell commute, right through downtown Los Angeles, to work in the warehouse of the lighting company. That summer, after leaving my job, I kept having problems with my COBRA insurance, and never even got to see a doctor. Everything kept getting postponed. By August, it realized it just wasn't going to happen, so I looked around for some other job near Huntington Beach.
I was living in a cool apartment on 15th street in downtown H.B., three blocks form the beach. One of the neighbors told me about a taxi driver who said he made $300 a day. I liked driving, I didn't mind working long shifts, and I thought I could set my own hours. So I applied to a taxi company, and wound up driving a cab at the Orange County airport a few days later. At the time, 1999, we still looked in the newspaper want ads to find local jobs. There were two jobs that were always hiring, and both had ads that started with "Cash Paid Daily." Those jobs were driving a taxi and being a stripper.
It turned out that, yes, it was technically possible to "make $300 a day" driving a taxi. The part I didn't realize was that was on a really good Friday or Saturday night, working a 15-to 18 hour shift. Out of that $300 gross income, I had to pay the taxi company $115 taxi lease for the day, and also put about $35 in gas in the cab for the day. So that $300 on a really good day turned into $150, and only for two days a week, at most. And that was a really good weekend day, as a street driver, who really knew their way around the county.
Since I didn't know the business, the company suggested I start working at the airport, where rides were guarranteed. As an airport driver, I had to dress like a waiter, black slacks, white dress shirt, and a tie, and work seven days a week, about 17 hours every day. Doing that, I could make about $300 or $350 a week in cash. I spent most of my time sitting in a parking lot near the Orange County airport, listening to the Arab, Persian, Chinese, and other foreign guys bitch about everything in various languages. Taxi drivers gossip like old women at the hairdresser. Since I was hardly ever home, I ate out every meal, and spent half of what I earned on food and large iced teas. After two months, I couldn't afford my apartment anymore. I moved my stuff into storage, and began living in my taxi, and taking showers at a gym.
I began to blow off the airport on Friday and Saturday nights, and just sit near Main Street in downtown Huntington Beach. H.B. was much less busy back then, there were about five or six bars dowtown, and none of the current hotels existed. In the fall of 1999, there were no taxis hanging out downtown Huntington Beach. I just sat on the corner, under Hurricanes a second floor bar, and gave rides to anyone who walked by and needed one. After about a month of doing that, I quit driving at the airport, and became a "street driver." I struggled, but I made enough money in Huntington Beach on the weekends to pay my lease and gas, and scrape by, as I learned the business. Taxi drivers didn't get hourly pay or salary. Technically, it was a small business, and we were independent contractors. Once I earned enough money, I paid about $600 a week for taxi lease, put about $300 to $350 in gas in the cab every week, and the car was mine for 7 days. All fares and tips went together. After I paid those $900 a week in expeneses, anything left over was mine. I focused on finding which bars and clubs were best for business each night of the week, and I'd hang out and take calls off the radio during the day. By spring time, I would make $180 to $250 a week.
Then I heard of another company, California Yellow Cab. They had good bar business, and I could rent a cab for just Thursday through Sunday afternoon, three days. By late Spring of 2000, I could make $300 to $350 a week working three days. I rented a room in inland H.B., and things began to improve. Then, right before Christmas, 2000, my driver's license got suspended. I didn't know why. It turned out to be a clerical error at the DMV, but it took me a couple of years of struggling, and homelessness, to get it worked out and get back in a cab again.
I started back on Labor Day weekend in 2003, and it took about two months to figure out where the night business was every night. At the same time, the company switched from the old C.B. radios to a dispatching computer. That killed the industry. We all had to rent the cabs weekly, so there were more drivers on the road, and most of our bar business stopped calling our company, because now they had to give a full address. Before, bartenders could call real quick and say, "Need a cab at Sharkies," or Need a cab at Gallagher's." With the new system, bartenders had to wait on hold, talk to a dispatcher in a St. George , Utah call center (I'm not kidding), and give the full street address, because it was GPS based. Bartenders are busy, they didn't have time for that shit. So most of the company's business disappeared, literally overnight. Over $7,000 worth of taxi busniess disappeared, just in Huntington Beach, every week. We still had to pay $600 a week, but we only got a few fares from dispatch per day. It sucked.
I struggled to scrape by, since I was living in my cab again. I was able to get by, and with some business from the new hotels in H.B., I made $250 or so a week, with an occasional $600 week now and then. From late 2003 to mid August 2005, I worked 14-18 hours nearly every day. I would get a motel room one night a week, to catch up no sleep, watch a little TV, and eat a cheap pizza. But I still worked 8 hours that day, and 11-12 the next day. I took about 5 full days off in two years.
During that time, I saw a flyer at the taxi office one day, "Taxi driver art show." The woman at the window said, "Yeah, Richard Johnson, one of our drivers, owns a little art gallery." It was near the Orange County Airport, and I went to check it out one day. I'd met Richard, but didn't talk to him much. I liked the gallery, and made a homemade taxi driving board game for the art show. It was like the game of Life, but with taxi driving stuff on each square. The only one I remember said, "Party at Dennis Rodman's house- Lose Turn." It was pretty stupid. But the crazy little gallery was cool, and I rented a 4 foot by 8 foot section of wall, and put up a bunch of my poems. Yeah... really... poetry. I would stop by for a little while early on Friday or Saturday nights, before things got busy. Over the course of the next couple of years, I got to know Richard better and better, and would cover some of his personal customers if he took a few days off, now and then.
In late August 2005, he rolled up to my cab, in the taxi line at the Huntington Beach Hyatt hotel, and said he had an offer for me. I had gained about 150 pounds two years, I was fat, in poor health, and really bitter and burned out on driving. But my taxi was my house, my transportation, and my income, so I kept driving. Richard owned his own cab, within the company. That meant he paid them much less money a week, but he had to cover maintenance on his cab. He asked if I wanted to start driving his taxi on the weekends, my best driving time, from Friday afternoon to early Monday morning. Then I could live in his art gallery Monday through Friday, AAA Electra 99, which had moved to an industrial building in Anaheim.
Richard and his girlfriend were going on a trip to New Orleans for the weekend, so he let me takeover his cab on August 23, 2005, and they headed off on their trip. On the drive to the gallery, which I hadn't been to in a long time, he asked, "Oh, by the way, do you like cats?" I said, "Yeah, sure. Do you have a cat?" Richard said, "Yeah... there's a gallery cat. Well, technically, eight cats." He explained that there was a gallery cat named Pita. Then a new female cat showed up, which they called P.A., for "Pita's Assistant." P.A. just had six kittens a couple weeks earlier. So it's a good thing I wasn't allergic to cats.
I dropped my stuff at the gallery, and I think I gave Richard and his girlfriend a ride ot the airport. I headed back to the gallery to get settled in. I remember it was August 23, 2005 only because Richard called the next day, their plane got stopped in Chicago... because Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, their intended destination. So they spent a weekend in Chicago, and I settled in at the gallery.
I had been totally focused on nothing but earning money in the taxi for two years, and had nothing but excess weight and burnout to show for it. Suddenly I could chill and relax, alone, but with 7 cats (P.A. had run off Pita), in an indie art gallery. I had not done anything creative for at least two or three years. On my second night there, surrounded by all kinds of indie art, I drew a little picture on a Post-it note while taking a dump. It felt good to draw. I went out and got a roll of banner paper, and a generic pack of markers. I had been doing some Sharpie drawings/collages back in 2002, and I started messing around again, just trying different ideas for fun.
Once Richard and his girlfriend came back, I was off driving the taxi most of the time the gallery was open, on the weekends. During the week, except for Wednesday evenings, when it opened for a few hours. I began to recuperate, mellow out, and draw every day, that fall of 2005. I started walking a little bit, and my health improved some, and my attitude improved a lot. I made about $250 a weekend, on average, after paying Richard taxi lease. I paid him another $50 a week rent to live in the gallery. There was a bathroom, and a shower in a little loft area. Cheap living, paid for by 2 1/2 days of work a week, with lots of sleep, and plenty of time to be creative.
Years earlier, when I saw the movie Quicksilver with Kevin Bacon I loved the big loft space he and his girlfriend lived in, in that movie. The movie also featured BMX freestylers Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, two guys I knew from my BMX days. Going back even further, I had always wanted to live in a warehouse, since watching Dan Tanna in Vega$, in the 1970's. Something about being able to drive his car into his living room seemed really cool when I was a kid. So in 2005, I got my chance to live in a warehouse space. But not just a dingy warehouse, one filled with paintings and other art by a couple dozen different people. My creativity was reborn that fall and winter in 2005-2006, while living in AAA Electra 99 Gallery. And that's how I came to live in an indie at gallery. The gallery closed down in 2012, after hundreds of artists, and over 1,000 bands played at its three locations over 12-13 years.
There's probably something in this video to offend just about everyone, I haven't watched it in over 15 years.
I lived there, in the location in the top video, but chronologically, between these two videos. The gallery was always changing, and individuals and groups of people, would come and go over time.
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