Listening to something completely different the other night, a video of Heart singing a Led Zeppelin song that was not "Stairway to Heaven" popped up on the side of the screen. I checked it out. Then I started wondering what other female singers have covered Led Zeppelin songs. That's when I found this clip. I was a fan of Jewel from when she first popped up on the radio, and I knew she could rock. But this is a great cover. So I started looking for other hard rockin' female covers of Led Zepplin songs. After watching a handful on YouTube, it seemed a blog post was in order.
This isn't a Led Zeppelin song, but check out this long, live version of "You're No Good" by Linda Rondstadt. This is some serious 1970's rock & roll. Just listen, second song in this clip.
Beautifully shot and edited, here's another high caliber MTB video of Brandon Semenuk. As a video guy way back in the olden days, I know that "RGB" refers to "red, green blue," in video tech terms. And it has a much better ring to it then "Y, R-Y, B-Y." Just watch it...
Out of 15 (yes, 15) ultra low budget action sports videos I produced and/or edited BITD, this is some of the best footage. Horrible editing, Play-Rec-Pause, machine to machine, while fairly drunk, but the footage is good. Scenes from Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip King of Dirt at Mission Trails, in the spring of 1991. This segment was my footage that I edited into the first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer.
Thank you readers!
I started this blog in late June of 2017, when I couldn't find a job in North Carolina, and literally had just moved into a tent in the woods. That was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Really. My FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales Old School BMX blog (2008-2010, 100+ posts, 25,000+ page views), and my follow-up Freestyle BMX Tales blog (2010-2012, 500+ posts, 125,000+ page views) had both run their course. Both blogs were really popular in those early days of the Old School BMX Freestyle online community. I deleted both of those blogs completely off the internet during a dark moment in my life, in 2012, a couple of months after my dad died.
I played around with 50 or more other blog ideas, writing 20 or 30 posts, then giving up on each idea. I started two follow-up versions of Freestyle BMX Tales, Version #2 on Wordpress, and version #3 (still up today) back here on Blogger. In this "Addicted to Blogging" post on one of those blogs, there's a list of the most popular of my "unknown" blogs, though the page view stats are totally out of date. Those years, 2012-2018, were a really depressing time in my life.
I was living with my mom in North Carolina, couldn't find ANY job, at all, and blogged a lot to fill the time. I even attempted suicide, in the spring of 2015, with a serious overdose of my depression meds, including a whole bottle of lithium (let's see if this sentence gets me kicked off Blogger). That led to nearly two weeks in the local hospital. I came out the other side of that, with the help of a good therapist, and focused on creativity. Late in 2015 is when I started drawing people in my Sharpie Scribble Style, and selling my drawings on Facebook. The more creative I got, the more my mental health improved, even if my financial life was still tanking.
My mom and I never got a long well, and after a serious argument in the summer of 2017, I moved out, and went to live in the woods in nearby Winston-Salem. I lived in a tent behind Bolton Park, near Hanes Mall, and drew Sharpie drawings for food and day to day money. I sold them online and through a really cool local record shop, Earshot Music, thanks to Phred the owner, and the art director, Jane Buck. I owe them both a huge "Thank you!" It's been a tough decade since. I never have made a real living since, but I keep blogging, drawing, and putting out creative work. I've scraped by financially for many, many years at this point.
When I started this blog, I really didn't know if anyone would ever read any of it. But I wrote more stories about my days in the BMX freestyle and skateboard worlds in the 1980's and 1990's. I also wrote about anything else I found interesting. This blog had 150,000 or so page views by 2023, when I jumped over and started writing mostly on the Substack platform. I've added posts now and then since, but just left this blog, sitting there on the web. Around that time, the blog started getting big chunks of views from obscure locations like Hong Kong or Singapore. For real. This was about the time VPN's showed up, so I thought that might be what was going on. Those big blocks of views from all over the world just kept coming. I still don't know what's going on with them. Whatever the case, the blog just rolled over one million total page views last night.
Thank you to everyone, anywhere, who has read this blog, or any of my blogs, over the last 19 years that I've been blogging.
There are over 600 Million blogs online, and the vast majority of blogs never even get 1,000 views. One stat says that 96.55% of ALL blog posts get ZERO traffic. Every single post on this blog, more than 1070 total, have views. Blogger (owned by Google) is a tiny part of the worldwide blogosphere. I can't find any specific Blogger blogs with one million views, but there are some that get 1 million views a month. Technically, Huffington Post, and similar websites, are blogs. There are many news and mainstream blogs that get a million views or more a month. A few may get millions of views a day. But that's not true of personal, niche blogs. So this is a really cool milestone to reach.
Just for the record, I write all my posts myself, and don't use AI. I've written somewhere around 3,000 blog posts in 19 years, though I deleted all my blogs (maybe 1,500 poststotal) in late 2012. Then I started all over.
Also, I have never made money on my blogs, at all. From a monetary standpoint, all of my 50+ blogs are financial failures. I don't blog for money, and haven't put ads on my blogs, except for trying Adsense for a couple months in 2009, but I never got the money. I've never done affiliate marketing, either. It just doesn't really work with my style of blogging. Ads clutter up blogs, and the money isn't worth it on niche blogs. Now, most of the sales of my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings have been to people who read my blogs, so I have made money, but not much, indirectly, thanks to my blogs.
Like I said, I do most of my writing on Substack now, so while I'm stoked on the views on this blog, check out my Substack for my more recent writing.
I started this blog in late June, 2017, when I literally had just moved into a tent in the woods, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I had no idea if anyone would ever read this blog. Now it has 989,459 page views as I write this. Crazy.
I pretty much gave up on this blog, and started writing mostly on Substack in 2023. But here we are, May 7, 2026, and the blog is creeping up on 1 million total page views. That's freakin' mind blowing for a personal blog, on Blogger, where I wrote mostly about Old School BMX freestyle in the early years, then about whatever I happened to find interesting after that.
When this blog had about 150,000 views, three or four years ago, I started noticing big chunks of views, 2,000, maybe 4,000 or more at a time, popping up. I don't know where those views came from. I still don't. This started happening about the same time that VPN's started getting popular. I don't get post by post stats for these views, just overall numbers. So is it VPN's? Bots? Aliens? Or just people finding random posts (out of about 1,070 total posts), and blasting them to their followers. I still don't know. This blog has about 250,000 "normal" views, and 3/4 of a million of these chunks of views. Whatever is going on, the blog is within a couple days of rolling over to one million views. Thank you to everyone who has checked out my blog over the last 8 1/2 years!
These are the numbers on my analytics, from the last 7 days (May 1-7, 2026), they're coming from all over the world, all different browsers and all types of phones and computers. It's been like this for 2 1/2 or 3 years now. I never, never expected this blog to be at this level in 2017. I just wanted to blog about the things I found interesting, as I drew Sharpie pictures for food money at the local library, day after day. Crazy. Thanks everyone...
Saturday, May 9th, 2026, 1:29 pm Pacific time- Here we go, 999,142 page views, and this blog is averaging 4,000 to 5,000 views a day. So it should roll over one million views today. Again... thanks to everyone who has ever check out this blog, or any of my other blogs, over the last 18 1/2 years!
I do most of my writing on Substack these days, long form posts about art, writing, creativity, poetry, the histories of classic BMX/skate spots, and other stuff I find interesting. Check it out:
Morgan James singing "Take Me to Church," accompanied by Scott Bradlee on keyboard. Performed and recorded at the Paste Studios in New York City. A while back I made a Morgan James playlist on YouTube, and I added this song, even though I had never listened to it before. Then I listened to it, and it blew my mind. This song is a Hozier cover.
In the course of researching and writing blog posts nearly every day, I listen to a lot of different music on YouTube while I'm working. Because I listen to several different types of music, I get some cool clips popping up on the side to check out. Over the last couple of days, I realized there's a cool theme with a few of the songs I've been listening to recently, and one outstanding song from decades ago.
Personally, I think that on a good day you can learn more about God from a really soulful and well performed song than you can from the average church service. But hey, I'm weird. You're free to disagree. In any case, here our six songs that I think are all great pieces of music. They all have titles that sound religious, but contain lyrics that aren't actually religious, but are really powerful. Enjoy.
This is an NBC News report on the U.S. and Israeli military strikes that began overnight on multiple targets in Iran. This news report includes the statement by U.S. President Donald Trump released early this morning. According to the reports, Israel and the U.S. are beginning an extended military campaign against Iran, and they are seeking regime change.
I'm documenting this news here on my blog, because these strikes are obviously the beginning of a set of actions that will have many intended effects, and undoubtedly, a lot of unintended effects. These effects could very likely affect much of the world, in a variety of ways. In addition to the human consequences of all the places being hit by the initial strikes, and Iran's counter strikes, a major rise in oil prices worldwide seems inevitable, affecting millions or billions more people to some degree. The United States Congress has not declared war on Iran at this point, and their response remains to be seen.
At this point, about 12:30 pm Pacific time here in California, we don't know how long these military strikes are intended to last. No one knows how long the unintended effects will last, and ripple through the rest of the world in many ways. This is a major action, and not a whole lot is known about where these military strikes will lead in the weeks, months, and years to come.
As of today, we have three conjoined countries involved in two different wars in the region us Americans refer to as "the Middle East." See the map (Google Maps still shot) below for reference. Again, no one knows now all of the many effects these actions will have in the future.
Today, February 28, 2026, is one of those days which will have major historical consequences, however these two wars, and the coming actions by all parties, play out in the future. I'm posting this to mark this day in time, and it may become something to look back at, months or years from now, as the many consequences play out and continue over time.
The Big Push covering Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," last summer in Bristol. This video just dropped last week on YouTube. The Big Push formed in 2017, in the U.K., and is made up of Ren Gill, Romain Axisa, Gorran Kendall, and Glenn Chambers. Ren, Romain, and Gorran switch off on lead vocals and backing vocals, depending on the song. Most of the time, Romain plays lead guitar. Ren plays lead guitar on occasion, as well as rhythm guitar and bass. Gorran plays acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass. These guys are best known for a whole bunch of great street performing videos playing a really wide variety of cover songs, with many millions of views among them. Simply put, they rock. This post will link a few of my favorite videos from The Big Push, as well as some of Ren's solo and duet work, mind blowing videos, and raps, and Chinchilla's work. If you like any of these, there are many more videos on YouTube, and probably elsewhere, to check these amazing musicians out.
And to all the salty, crusty, old geezers like me, The Big Push, Ren, and Chinchilla are proof that not all new music sucks.
This mind blowing original song and video changed my life. An old BMX freestyle friend in England, Alex Leech, shared this video on Facebook, shortly after it came out on YouTube. I think it had less than 3 million views when I first watched it, about three years ago, this video has over 65 million views now. After watching this video, and several other of Ren's videos that night, I started writing poetry again. I had only written 3 or 4 poems between 2008 and 2022. I managed to lose all copies of ten years worth of poetry, 165 of the best poems I've ever written, in 2008, when I got pushed out of California and wound up in living in North Carolina for ten years. After losing that much work (and all my video master tapes and raw footage), the poetry in me just left. I had no urge to write poems.
The utter brilliance of "Hi Ren" motivated me to try and start writing poems again. I haven't written that many, but most of the new poems I've written since (like this one) have been pretty decent, long epic poems. I also took a break from the kind of Sharpie drawings I had been doing for years, those based on classic photos of musicians, and I drew a couple of big Sharpie Scribble Style drawings straight out of my head. I did that just to get out of my personal rut, and challenge myself a bit creatively. Seriously, this song and video had an incredible creative effect on me. Thanks Ren. I still watch this video sometimes to get into a deep, creative vibe.
These five young people from the U.K. are all incredible musicians. If any of these tracks piqued your interest, dig into their work on YouTube and anywhere else you find music, there's a lot more out there.
I do most of my writing on Substack now, a platform created specifically for writers, check it out:
Keith Treanor, born and raised in New Jersey, came out to Huntington Beach and rode and rode and rode and wound up riding for S&M Bikes for years. In this podcast, #43 for The Union Tapes podcast out of the U.K., Keith goes through his life in BMX, from early days on the East Coast, the days coming up as an unknown amateur in the Huntington Beach/Orange County, California scene, and all through his years as a pro riding for S&M Bikes.
I remember meeting Keith at the Oceanview Jump, a freestyler fly out jump at Oceanview High School in Huntington Beach. That jump was an amazing set-up, a long, concrete sidewalk runway to a 6 1/2 foot high jump up to flat. Keith flat out RULED on that jump, no one even came close to getting as high out of the Oceanview Jump as Keith did. In my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, Oceanview made for a cool jumping segment (for that time) at 23:22* in the video. In one shot, Keith is a good 10 feet out, in a full tuck, landing to flat. That was insane for that era, where you could easily snap a frame or forks coming down from that high up. I've personally seen Keith go a good 1 1/2 to 2 feet higher than that, 12 feet up to flat, but didn't get it on video.
Keith Treanor with a one handed 360 at the Oceanview fly out jump, which they mention in the interview. He's about 4 feet up, going from right to left, in this still shot.
I was already shooting video footage on the weekends, to make my own video, which became The Ultimate Weekend, when I remember meeting Keith and John Povah at Oceanview. I used to ride there, as well. When I started making that video, GT rider Jess Dyrenforth was supposed to be the star of the video. But every time I wanted to go shoot video, Jess was busy. He was riding for GT Bikes, and was deep into the inline skating world, as well. After I met Keith and John, I'd call them up, and Keith was always down to ride, and John was too, when not busy with his auto painting job. Keith was young, hungry, and would just go off anywhere we went, so he ended up being the star of the video.
Here's another still shot from The Ultimate Weekend, with Keith doing the first 360 over a spine ever to appear in a BMX video. Gary Laurent did a 360 over the spine a few minutes later. In 1990, peg grinds, mini-ramps, handrails, and a lot of things were just starting to happen at the time, so every video of that era had lots of "world firsts" or "firsts on video" in it.
This mini-ramp set up above was amazing for its day, this was the backyard of freestyle skaters Primo and Diane Desiderio, who were working in the City Streets show at Sea World at the time. Gary Laurent also rode in the show, I believe, and he got the OK to take us to this ramp, even though Primo and Diane weren't home. Gary had those ramps wired, but he had never tried a 360 over the spine. Keith, still really new to mini-ramps, because only a couple of them existed then, stepped it up to 3 over the spine. Then Gary had to do it. Because riding was evolving so fast then, every video that came out in that era had a bunch of world firsts, or firsts on video. So this was only the second or third mini-ramp ever in a BMX video, and Keith did the first 360 over a spine on video. These are just a few of my memories of those early days (1990-1994ish) hanging out and riding with Keith and John Povah.
There's a whole lot more in the podcast above, Keith talks us through his whole BMX career. If you're a rider from the 1990's era, check it out.
The Ultimate Weekend- 1990 - Beginning with 7 shots in the intro, Keith Treanor appears throughout the video.
* Right before the Oceanview segment, there's a shot of me doing a double peg grind on a little ledge in Huntington Beach in early August of 1990. That year, 1990, the year I was working on shooting and producing the video, The Ultimate Weekend, was the year that BMX freestylers took double peg grinds, the BMX version of a 50/50 grind on a skateboard, onto the streets. In this ridiculously self-serving Substack post, I dug into the various people who did the first double peg street grinds on video, and approximately when they did them. If you are interested in the very beginning of the double peg grinds that led to all of handrail, hubba, and ledge grinds in the last 35 years, check this post out.
This is "Asian Guy." Seriously, that's what he calls himself now. Who is he really? How does he know so much about the precious metals and financial markets? Is that really him, or is it an AI avatar? Is this a PR campaign from China? Is it a PR campaign out of London? Is it a PR campaign out of J.P. Morgan (who now reportedly holds 700 million to 1.1 billion ounces of silver in their vaults)? Nobody seems to know for sure.
I stumbled into one of his videos on Christmas Eve, four days ago, and have been hooked since. He has a real name, he said it in at least one video. He also said he's been a trader in London for over 20 years. He has multiple channels, and he talks about more than just silver. I think the guy we see is an AI created version of him, not actually him. Obviously all the graphics (which can be really weird and really funny at times) are AI created. I don't think he's a Chinese PR campaign. I don't think he's a J.P. Morgan PR campaign either. Whoever he (or the team) is, he/they are INCREDIBLY knowledgeable about precious metals, commodities trading, economics though history, and Big Picture dynamics in economics, financial markets, and industrial processes and infrastructure.
Pure and simple, he's WAY TOO INFORMATIVE to be a government or bank PR campaign. His quick Disclaimer says he or his business may hold positions in the markets he talks about. His insights are fucking mind blowing. He's way too smart to work for the government, media, or a PR firm. My best guess, having watched several videos, is that's he a trader who's kind of sick of the BS, and decided to school people on how these markets work. He's been making videos for at least a month or two before the recent silver market drama exploded. In any case, he's the new hot trend on Financial You Tube, and conspiracy theories about him are starting to pop up.
Here's a video from 4 months ago on his Financial Historian channel, and there are only 16,000 views. This channel is really informative, if you're into economics and history. If there was a huge PR machine behind this guy, he'd have a lot more views, and the posts would all be super dumbed down, like Fox News. I actually watched a couple of these videos before the first silver video popped up on my feed. Whomever he is, whatever the reason he/they is/are making these videos, there's A LOT to be learned from them.
I remember going to the Action Sports trade shows in San Diego in the mid 1990's and seeing this little kid running around. "That's Christian Fletcher's son," someone said. He's a fourth generation member of the Fletcher surfing dynasty, Great Grandpa Fletcher was a surfing and big wave pioneer. Grandpa Herbie Fletcher is the well known surfer and legendary surf filmmaker Herbie Fletcher. Grandma is a really good artist. Dad Christian Fletcher took short board surfing vertical, airing off waves, and ripping in general. Uncle Nathan Fletcher pushed surfing even further.
Coming up in that family, we could definitely understand if Greyson found it hard to forge his own path, and make a name for himself. But he just tore it up in his own way, found his own path, and in his mid-30's now has this absolutely insane new skate segment. Just watch the video.
When I was driving a taxi in Huntington Beach in the 2000's, I had Christian Fletcher in my cab twice. One time he was pretty blitzed, and decided he wanted to autograph the dashboard. I talked him out of that, since I didn't own the taxi, and had him sign my taxi permit instead. That autographed permit was in the storage unit that got auctioned off when I wound up moving back East in 2008. I'm still bummed about that.
The Big Push, from the U.K., covering "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," live on the beach, in the fall of 2025. This has become my favorite cover of this song, eclipsing the Guns N' Roses version from 1990 on a soundtrack, and 1991 on the Use Your Illusion II album.
Bob Dylan wrote this song for the soundtrack of the 1973 movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.Dylan even played a role in the movie. The song was released a couple of months later as a single, and became one of several songs Dylan is best known for. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has been covered by all kinds of people, in several different styles, ever since. Here are some of the best versions over the years.
I have question marks on a lot of the dates because I'm going by the year it was loaded onto YouTube, and the performances may have been recorded earlier.
I do most of my writing on a platform called Substack these days, it's a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
OK, there's a story behind this post, I'm not trying to be totally morbid. I was at McDonald's the other day, talking to a friend, and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on in the background. I said, "I want this song to play at my funeral." He replied, "You're crazy." I agreed, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I want the hearse to be bumpin' this song really loud as they drive to the cemetery. He just shook his head.
But I was serious. OK, I'm homeless (living in a "tiny home community" at the moment) and basically broke. If I don't get my shit together at some point, there's a pretty good chance I'll just keel over on the sidewalk somewhere, some day, and get cremated or put in a potter's grave, with no funeral service. But on the chance I get my shit together, and someone actually has a funeral for me, or some kind of memorial service, I want people to remember the times I made them laugh, or the times they laughed with me, or even the times the laughed at me. I truly do want to put the "FUN" back in funeral on my way out of this life.
With that in mind, I wrote down two or three songs that I'd want to play at my funeral or memorial service. I started thinking about those songs this morning, and wound up with a list of 21 songs. To be clear, I'm in no hurry to kick the bucket, but I figured I might as well go ahead and make a funeral music playlist. I like to plan ahead. I just put the whole thing on my YouTube channel: Steve Emig's Funeral Playlist. So it's there, for anyone who wants to check it out.
Here are the songs I selected, in order. I lined them up so that if this music was playing in the background of my memorial service, or the hangout meal afterwards, most people probably wouldn't really catch the theme of the playlist until about halfway through. Yes, I have a dark, fucked up, sense of humor. It's served me well many times. This is another example of that.
Has anybody done a podcast with Don Hoffman (Pipeline Skatepark/Unreel Productions/Vision)? Somebody should. Same with Frank Scura and Bob Morales (who started the AFA). On camera we have Frank Scura in the intro, and Don Hoffman behind the camera. Bob Morales put on the contest, and I was a roadie at it, and rode in the comp as well. This is the third video I produced and directed in 1987. Nearly an hour of 1980's flatland. Officially, this video is titled Texas Pro Flatland. Enjoy.
I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack these days, it's designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
This isn't a video, this is a short movie. Beautifully shot, produced and edited, crazy action, and he breaks a couple of world records, just for good measure. Just watch it... like three or four times.
Chinchilla's music keeps getting better and better. I first heard of her a couple of years ago, after an old BMX friend's post turned me on to Ren's "Hi Ren." Within a couple of days, I discovered the Rex X Chinchilla videos, "Chalk Outlines," and "I Forgot How to Be Me." Those are still my two favorite songs I've heard of hers, along with her rendition of "I Put a Spell on You" on the British version of The Voice.
I think there's a song out there with her name on it, something big and orchestrated, that will really let her show her skills as a singer and performer. When that song comes along, she will quickly blast into the ears of millions of more listeners. I'd love to hear her cover a Meatloaf song, or anything written by Jim Steinman, but that's just me. Anyhow, I clicked on to find this video with under 6,000 views, and it's my new favorite solo video of hers. It will have many, many more views by this time tomorrow. A LOT more views. Check this Chinchilla video out while it's brand new.
This event happened on the DL about a month ago, somewhere in the L.A. riverbed. This informal contest video just has a lot of damn good skating in it, and apparently was sponsored by Gorilla Energy Drink (never heard of it) and Keen Ramps. It's just a cool, solid video if you're into street skating.
I stumbled upon this video, while checking out a BMX video. This came up on the side, as things do on YouTube. As some of you may know, I worked at Vision Skateboard's video company, Unreel Productions, way back in the olden days. We did a street skating video shoot back when street skating was a really new thing. It happened in an empty parking lot, right on the corner of 17th and Placentia in Costa Mesa, caddy corner to the bar that had once been the legendary Cuckoo's Nest.
In this Vision Street Wear commercial, one of the obstacles was a 4 foot high quarterpipe up against the wall of a building. You can see 3 or 4 quick shots of that shoot in this commercial. Kele Rosecrans was doing loud, wheel squealing, six foot high, front side power slides above that tiny ramp that day. It was amazing. So the quarterpipe against the wall, under the bridge, reminded me of that Vision shoot, way back in the day.
These skaters go off, and it's great vibe for the jam/contest. Check out the video.
For most people of Generation X, this location looks familiar because the L.A. River bed was where they filmed the iconic race scene for the movie Grease.
Way back in December of 2023, I tried to open up a crypto account, but was unable to, because I had a cheap Obama phone. I thought it was a good time to hop into some crypto, but couldn't open an account. So I decided to do a paper trading experiment instead. My question was:
If I had $10,000 to invest on that day (12/11/2023), what would I invest it in?
This is, and has always been a paper trading exercise. It's an imaginary investment account, making imaginary trades, based on market conditions at the time of each trade (including adding in gas fees, etc.).
I picked a handful of cryptos, and have traded in and out (again, purely imaginary- paper trades) since. In a few months, the paper trade fund was up 40%. I've traded in and out of a handful of cryptos, mostly taking profits on those that were up, and re-investing in others. As of January of 2025, this was my paper trade account:
8,685.31 Apecoin
$392.81 in cash
Right now, on August 14 2025, Apecoin is at 60 cents per coin. Total value of my paper trading account currently is:
$5,211.19 in Apecoin, plus $392.81, for a current total of $5,604.
At this point, this paper trading experiment is down 44%, over 20 months. But, my investment window, when I expected this to be a worthwhile investment, has been late 2025 or early 2026 from the start.
My bet was that this Apecoin would rise to a solid investment between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. Yes, it's down big right now, but we're only 6 weeks into the window I was aiming for. As of right now, buying Bitcoin, Eth, or Solana over this time period would have paid off more at this point. Buying Nvidia stock would have paid off more at this point. Even buying gold or silver bullion would have paid off more at this point.
I thought gold was going to go up some in late 2023, but honestly, gold has really surprised me since. That's mostly because this whole scenario is playing out much slower than I thought it would. But it's still playing out.
Here's why I'm hanging onto the Apecoin in my imaginary paper trade account, and riding it out. I think we are dramatically overdue for a major correction in both stocks and crypto. I don't think $121,000 Bitcoin is the peak of this crypto cycle, but I think we're near the short term peak.
I believe we will see a major financial crash this year, that's already overdue. I think a huge ($5 to $10 TRILLION) bailout will follow, over the course of several many months, after a major correction, we will see a huge liquidity wave, which will send stocks and crypto back up, gold and silver down. The now expected decline of interest rates over the next year is lining up with this idea, as is the massive slowing of real estate in the parts of the U.S. that boomed over the last several years. There's also the commercial real estate collapse (see my Simulpocalypse Series on Substack for more on that). Anyhow, when the bailout money surges into financial markets, probably in the spring of 2026, we will see a prolonged surge in crypto. I think in mid to late 2026, maybe early 2027, we will see $150,000 Bitcoin, and over time, huge rises in many other cryptos. That is the scenario I was betting on from the start.
My assessment may be completely wrong, of course. It's already running somewhat behind the timeline I had in mind, but I'm sticking with this overall assessment. So I don't care that I'm all in on Apecoin when it's at 60 cents a coin. This time next year, we'll know if my $10,000 Investment challenge was sound thinking or not.
Checking this today, I decided to write a post, even though it's down, and I'm making no changes, because I should show when things are not going well, as well as when they are going well.
Bond market expert and economic content creator, Steven Van Metre dives into the most recent large value drop on a huge office building. Most of the investors in the $277 million bond on this building will be wiped out, and even investors in the highest and safest tranche will take big losses. He cites a report about the Wells Fargo "Cash Register" building in Denver.
Reminder: Recessions are when the whole world goes on sale, and almost no one wants to buy
OK, officially we are not in recession, but... Here are a few of the big commercial discount sales in recent years.
I actually worked in this complex for a short time in the 1990's, it sits next to the 55 freeway in Santa Ana, not too far from Irvine and John Wayne (Orange County) airport.
These are just a few of the biggest properties that have sold at massive discounts in recent years, along with empty stores and dead malls before that. These sales are intentionally being kept out of the major media and search engines, to keep the "Economy is fine" narrative going, apparently.
Most of these types of sales, the bigger ones anyhow, are reported in local TV newscasts, local newspaper sites, or local business journal newspapers and websites. You need to subscribe to many of these sites to read the whole story. If you started digging, you could find many more similar sales. The point here is to simply show that quite a few sales with losses in the tens of million dollars are happening, and thousands more buildings are still under used with high vacancy rates, or sitting vacant, maybe completely abandoned, in some cases.
SOMEONE, banks, investors, REIT's, or major corporations, are taking huge losses on these sales. They are also going to a lot of trouble in the media/social media works to keep all of this out of the public eye.
Blogger's note- 8/11/2025- In an amazing little bit of synchronicity, the Los Angeles Times newspaper, this morning, has a front page, above the fold story about an L.A. skyscraper building that's in the planning process to be renovated into "deluxe" apartments. I've heard that there are a lot of structural issues to overcome doing that type of conversion, but that's great, if the developer can make it happen. I have a feeling they may run into some funding issues in the next 2-4 years, but time will tell. The "LA Graffiti Towers" are a project that lost funding, twice, and they now sit partially built, and abandoned. Click the link to learn their story.
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Meteorologist Bill Martin explains the Pacific Subduction Zone, and shows some great graphics to help visualize what's happening in the Pacific Ring of Fire lately. He also repeatedly says to just "be calm" during an earthquake, and just act intelligently. The majority of the time, very few people are injured in earthquakes, even large ones.
Over the last few weeks, I started having videos pop up on YouTube about earthquakes and volcanoes around the Pacific Ring of Fire. I didn't think much about it. I watched a video about the earthquake swarm around Mount Rainier in early July and thought, "Hey, maybe the Ring of Fire is waking up a bit." The big earthquakes since in Alaska and Kamchatka, and Kamchatka region tsunami, along with other quakes, make it seem like we're heading into a more active period around the Pacific Ring of Fire.
For any who don't know, the Pacific Ring of Fire is the name for the line of tectonic plate seams that go up the west coast of South America, through Central America, up the American and Canadian west coast, along the southern Alaska coast, peninsula, Aleutian Island chain, over to the Russian east coast, down through the east coast of China, Japan, through Indonesia, and through the western Pacific islands to New Zealand.
Because of all these major and minor plates of the earth grinding together, this Ring has lots of earthquakes and lots of volcanoes. Watch the 15 minute video above for a good explanation of why these earthquakes are happening in these areas, why some volcanoes are a bit more active, and what this means for us here in California, and along the North American Pacific Coast. Don't believe the crazy hype videos. This group of plate seams and faults seams to be getting more active, but that doesn't mean "The Big One" is coming next week, or that "California's going to fall into the ocean,"as so many people across the U.S. think. California is not going to fall into the ocean. The area west of the San Andreas fault will, in 30 or 40 million years, slowly carve away and become a big, 400 mile long island, off the shore of mainland California. That's millions of years away.
Bill Martin explains in the video above why a large earthquake off the coast of the far north part of California is our biggest threat. That could lead to tsunami damage in the Bay Area, and maybe to the L.A. area, to a small extent. Maybe. But down here in Southern California, that's not a major threat. Again, watch that video for a better understanding of what this recent activity in around the Ring of Fire does and does not mean. Below are videos about the larger earthquakes and volcanic activity this year, to learn more, if you're interested.
Five of the eight earthquakes over 7.0 in 2025 have been around the Pacific Ring of Fire
My tweet from July 17-" #ringoffire firing up? Or just getting a bit restless?" That was a day after the big quake off of Alaska, and after I had watched the video about the Mount Ranier mini-quake swarms, and a short video about the Axias Seamount underwater volcano off Oregon, which had been in the news. It seemed like a potential trend, by that point. I tweeted this before the 7.4 and 8.8 Kamchatka quakes. Yep, Kamchatka seems to have answered that question.
Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein, the visual book by Lita Judge, is an incredible work of art. It's a visual take on the story of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote one of the most classic horror tales of all time, Frankenstein. This book kept catching my eye at the local library, where I work every day. Finally I picked it up and absorbed it. I didn't just read it, it has over 300 incredible paintings, every page a full bleed to the edges. I spent time checking out all the images that Lita Judge spent five years painting. Mary's Monster is a haunting take on the tragic, yet incredible, life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
"At 17 I am already the mother of bones and daughter to a ghost."
-Mary Shelley, quoted in Mary's Monster
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley saw far more than her share of tragedy in her life. She was also a very intelligent young woman, and incredibly well read for a woman in the early 1800's. Have any of you read Dante's Inferno? I haven't. But Mary Shelley read it, and other classics, as a teenager. She wrote the novel, Frankenstein- or The Modern Prometheus, when she was only 18 and 19-years-old.
Not only did she, as a young woman, write a novel that invented the concept of science fiction, it was a deep and brutal look at humanity, a brilliant social commentary that still stands up today. She also created a fictional creature, Dr. Frankenstein's monster, that is still iconic today, 207 years later. Frankenstein, her first novel, has been in print for the entire time since, over 200 years.
After going through Mary's Monster twice, I realized that I needed to read the original Frankenstein. It was not the book I thought it was, not even close. We all have our pictures of the monster, big blocky head, bolts coming out of his neck, but those are from the endless series of movie, TV show, and Halloween versions of Frankenstein's monster. The monster in Shelley's novel is much different, and highly intelligent. Frankenstein, over 200 years later, is a brilliant novel, and it's a story of revenge and tragedy, but in a much different way than I thought. I realized that, probably like many people, I didn't really know the story of Dr. Frankenstein, and his monster, at all.
I've never been a big comic book or graphic novel reader. Super heroes didn't do it for me as a kid. No super hero was around when I could have used one as a kid, so I never got really into comics. I was a nerd, but not a comic book nerd.
Around age 30, though, I worked for a small furniture moving company in Huntington Beach, California. Our moving company office was at a very unique shopping center called Sea Cliff, and there was a small comic book shop in the shopping center, a couple doors away. On days when we finished up working early, I started going to the comic shop, and just browsing all the comics out then. That was in 1996 and 1997. I saw a bunch of comic series that were more interesting to me, stories that were not just super heroes in spandex with extraordinary powers. There were much more complex and interesting stories being told in comics and graphic novels. During that era, I read two Alan Moore classics, Watchmenand V for Vendetta, I read Neil Gaiman's TheSandmanlater on, someSpawn issues, and bought a few issues of Sin City, which had really cool black and white art. There was one comic that I really loved, Seekers into the Mystery, written by J.M. DeMatteis. I bought and read every single issue of that series. That was is the best comic series I've read, personally. I didn't get into any other graphic novels after that, but I'd check them out from time to time, to see if there were any other stories that interested me.
Mary's Monster is not really a traditional graphic novel, it's a story told through a collection of paintings and a small amount of verse. I'm not going to go into any more detail, but if this post interested you at all, find a copy of Mary's Monster, and check it out. It's a great work of art telling an amazing true story. You may get drawn into the tragic story of Mary Shelley, and maybe you'll wind up reading the actual novel, Frankenstein, like I did.
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