How I came to live in an indie art gallery many years ago...

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.  

Here's another video from Electra- a few years earlier  

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.

That time I lived in an indie art gallery

The guy talking in this video is Richard Johnson, long time taxi driver, indie gallery owner (at the time), gifted storyteller, poker player, and self-proclaimed "fame-ass arteest."  Richard's one weird and great character, and he offered me a uniquedeal back in 2005, because he needed someone to drive his taxi on the weekends.  I took the offer, and wound up living in AAA Electra 99 gallery, where my creativity was reborn, and my Sharpie Scribble Style art technique was invented.   

With the turn of the new millennium, in January of 2000, came a tough time in my life.  After an injury, I quit my good paying, Hollywood lighting tech job, in late spring of 1999, and took time off to get a needed minor surgery. My insurance was all screwed up, I couldn't see a doctor, or get the surgery.  I looked for a new way to make a living, without heavy lifting, and became a taxi driver in the Huntington Beach, California area.  I was living three blocks from the ocean, in downtown H.B. at the time, and one of my neighbors told me, "Some taxi driver told me he makes $300 a day."  "OK," I thought, "that sounds good, so I gave it a shot."  I soon found out it was a really hard way to make a living.  I learned you could make $300 on a really good Saturday.  But you had to pay $115 of that to the taxi company, and spend another $35-$40 for gas.  And that was the best day of the week for driving.  

I scraped by for a couple of months, driving a cab at Orange County (aka John Wayne) Airport, working seven, 17 hour days, while dressed in black slacks,  white shirt, and a tie..  I looked like a waiter, and made about $300 a week take home money, if I was lucky.  I started hanging out at the downtown bar scene in Huntington Beach on weekend nights, to make extra money driving drunk people home.

I couldn't afford to pay rent anymore, after about two months.  I wound up moving out of my apartment, putting all my stuff in storage, and living in my cab, in about October or November of 1999.  I also quit driving at the airport, and became a "street driver."  I could wear shorts and a T-shirt, and I had to find most of my own business, while paying the taxi company $600 a week to lease the cab.  I also had to ante up about $300 a week, to pay for my gas.  All my fares and tips blended together, and after I paid for lease and gas, what was left was my "pay."  I made about $300 to $350 a week, but worked less hours than at the airport.  I soon became an expert at "flagging" the local bars and nightclubs of Orange County, learning which bars were the best which nights of the week.  I got really good at finding rides in places other drivers never thought of.

I switched to another taxi company, a new one, that had brand new Ford Crown Victorias, but they were natural gas powered.  So I had to go to obscure places to refill, but I got free gas for months.  Since it was a new taxi company, they had almost no business, but the lease was only $400 a week.  I lived in that taxi, and easily made enough to pay my lease, but not much more.  I was making about $200 a week, while living in my taxi, for six more months.  Then the new company got the big O.C. Airport contract, and didn't have enough drivers for a month, as the drivers from the other company switched to our company.  So I made insane money for three weeks, working back at the airport, and was able to rent a room in a house after that.  

By that time, I knew how to make money in a taxi, and I switched to another company where I could rent the cab just on the weekends, for $115 a day, for three days.  About 8-9 months into my taxi career, I rented a cheap room in inland Huntington Beach, I made about $300-$350 a week, and had four days off.  Life was pretty good.  Until Christmas 2000, when my driver's license got suspended suddenly, apparently from a clerical error at the DMV.  

I wound up working odd jobs, and was homeless on the streets, while working a restaurant job for nine months.  On Labor Day weekend, 2003, I was finally able to get my taxi permit again, and go back to taxi driving.  Once again, I was living in my cab, and working 7 days a week, and taking showers at the gym as I kept getting fatter.  It was around that time I met another cab driver named Richard Johnson.  He was a long time taxi driver, a couple years older than me (I was 38, I think), and he was this weird, funny, driver I'd run into now and then.  

At the taxi company one Monday morning, I saw a flyer by the window that said, "Taxi Driver Art Show," and asked the girl in the window about it.  She told me Richard Johnson had a little indie art gallery, and wanted any taxi drivers who did artwork to do something for an art show.  That's how I first heard of AAA Electra 99, and indie art gallery, museum, and co-op, or something like that.  I rolled by the next Friday evening, and talked to Richard, checked out the gallery.  Unlike traditional art galleries with their miles of cold, boring, white walls, Electra was crammed with all kinds of art.  Artists paid $40 a month to rent a 4 foot X 8 foot section of wall space, and they could put up anything they wanted.  There was no selection process, and only three rules, all begun because of Richard, himself.  The three rules were: 1) No fire.  2) No live animals.  And 3) No really bad smells. 

 I decided to do something for the taxi driver art show.  I wound up drawing a hand made, taxi driver board game, sort of like the game Life, but with Matchbox cars as your markers.  I can't remember what all was on it, except that one square said, "Party at Dennis Rodman's house, lose turn."  I regularly picked up people at Rodman's Newport Beach house at the time, usually after the bars had closed.  His and Carmen Electra's beach house was almost like an after hours club, so many people partied there.  My board game got a few laughs, and I soon rented a wall, and put up prints of a bunch of my poetry, along with a poem written on a toilet paper roll.  People would unroll it to read the poem, and then roll it back up.  It was my homage to the great (and terrible) bathroom wall graffiti of the 1970's, where hand drawn dick pics and odd poems were standard in any public restroom.  Before "graffiti" was spray paint tagging and colorful pieces, it was something we read while taking a dump in public.

 I came to know Richard as a weird, old school punk rocker, artist, and funny storyteller guy, and started hanging out at the gallery a little bit on weekend evenings, before the bar business got going.  He drove his taxi mostly in Anaheim and inland O.C. during the days, and I made most of my money from the H.B., Newport, and Costa Mesa bar scene fares at night.  I hung out at the new Huntington Beach Hyatt during the days, catching a few rides from there, and sleeping when I could.  Richard would roll by, and just jump in my cab and hang out, once in a while.  

Soon after I started driving the cab in 2003, the company pulled our dispatch CB radios out, and replaced them with new technology, dispatch computers.  Those computers totally screwed up the business, allowing the company to put more and more cabs on the road, mostly.  So we had fewer calls, more cabs, and A LOT LESS business per driver.  And we all had to lease the cabs weekly, so suddenly everyone was working 7 days a week.  Before that, most drivers just worked weekends, and a few worked all week.  

It got harder and harder to make a living.  From Labor Day weekend 2003, to about the same time in 2005, I had 5 complete days off.  Normal working people get two  days off a week, I took five full days off in two years, and worked every other day.  By late summer 2005, I was angry, burned out, and had gained about 150 pounds.  When you drive a taxi, you either eat too much or smoke too much.  I don't smoke.

That's when Richard made me and offer.  He bought his cab, which meant he paid $200 less a week, but was responsible for all the maintenance.  He drove mostly during the day, during the weekdays, and needed a good weekend driver to help pay for the cab.  I needed a break from driving 14-18 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The deal was that I would pay $270 a weekend, and drive his cab from about 6 pm Friday until about 4 am Monday morning.  I made most of the money I made on Friday and Saturday nights, so I could make $200 or $250 to take home, after paying him, if business was decent.  I paid him $50 a week for rent, and could live in his art gallery, which had moved to Anaheim, from Newport, by that time.  I thought the deal over for a couple of days, and went for it.  It's the location you see in the clip above, which is from 5 or 6 years later.

As Richard was helping move my clothes and stuff to the gallery to move in, only then did he ask, "Do you like cats?"  I said, "Uh... sure.  Do you have a pet cat in the gallery?"  Richard said, "Yeah... well, technically, we have 8."  Good thing I wasn't allergic to cats.  They had a cat maned Pita, and then another stray female cat that just showed up, and started hanging out in the gallery most of the time.  They called her "P.A.," for "Pita's Assistant."  P.A. had just had a litter of six kittens, in the gallery a couple weeks earlier.  So suddenly I had 4 1/2 days off, and lived alone in an indie art gallery, inside a typical small industrial unit, with 7 cats. By the time I showed up, P.A. had run Pita off, and it was me, her, and the kittens all week.  The gallery was open on Wednesday nights, and then Friday and Saturday nights each week, when local garage bands played.  

I moved in on a Wednesday, since Richard and his girlfriend were going on a trip to New Orleans for a long weekend.  So I got a couple extra days driving his cab that first week.  As it turned out, that was the weekend Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, so Richard and Michelle only made it to Chicago, and spent a weekend there, instead.  Come Monday, they got back, he took the taxi, and I suddenly was surrounded by a huge room, jam packed with art from all kinds of local, unknown artists, and a couple from Europe who Richard knew.  The bathroom was plastered with band flyers for shows at the gallery.  

I slept for most of the first two days, I was completely exhausted from the two previous years of non-stop taxi driving.  In the evening of the second day, I drew a little picture in pen, on a post-it note.  It was the first creative thing I had done in about 2 1/2 years.  The last place I lived, in 2002, I'd been playing around, doing artwork with markers.  I had been making collages of BMX, skateboard, snowboarding, and rock climbing photos, with marker doodles in between.  I was trying to find a way to shade well with markers, after trying to draw a big mural with them for my dingy room.  Instead I made several huge collages.  

I did this drawing in 2021, a reminder of my taxi driving days.  Another driver drew a skull and crossbones, with the words "Drive, Die, Cash," above the visor, in pen, in one cab.  That sums up taxi driving, so I remembered that basic idea, and drew this.  Then I lost my storage unit, including this drawing, about a month go.  Bummer. #sharpiescribblestyle

 

The next weekend, while out in the taxi, I bought a roll of big, white paper, the kind cheerleaders use to make banners in high school.  I also bought a cheap set of 12 generic markers.  I started spending my days trying different drawing styles, looking for something I liked.  I soon bought a 24 pack of regular size Sharpie markers, in all their colors.  About October of 2005, sitting in AA Electra 99, just me and P.A. and the kittens, listening to music and the rain on the roof, my Sharpie Scribble Style of shading was invented.  That link is a blog post telling how that all happened.  

My creative drive, abandoned for over two years while I tried to do nothing but make money in the taxi, and get my life back on track, was reborn.  I just started drawing for hours a day, trying whatever ideas came to me, on 4 or 5 foot long sheets of that roll of paper.  I mixed scribbles of different colors over each other, seeing what I ended up with, and figured out how to blend the colors to arrive at the final color I wanted.  At first I wrote some of my poetry real big, then did designs in the background.  

As I drew, P.A. and the kittens roamed the gallery.  There was a stage at one end, and old couches on both walls.  I slept on one of them, and once the kittens hit about 4 weeks old, they would venture from their box to my couch, and I usually woke up each morning with kittens climbing all over me.  P.A. became my best art critic.  She would jump up on the table where I drew, and sit on my drawings, while I was drawing them, in typical cat fashion.  But she only sat on the good ones, and somehow avoided the crappy drawings.  

We had a refrigerator and a microwave, and early, dial-up internet, at the gallery.  I spent a little time trying to surf the web, but mostly I drew pictures, and read some art books that were there. At one point I drank some mini whiskey bottles, and then took photos of the kittens when they fell asleep in weird positions, with the whisky bottles around them.  It looked like they had passed out at a party.  I also start taking boxes and making a kitten amusement park.  I made all kinds of little things for them to crawl through, play with, and explore.  And I just kept drawing and playing around with my "scribble style" technique with Sharpies.  Back then I was drawing things by hand, then shading with different colors, seeing what colors blended the best with the scribble style. 

The Ramones, 18" X 24", one of the first music related drawings I did, in 2016.  Hey, ho, let's go!  #sharpiescribblestyle

 

My sister had taken me to see the movie Rent when I visited them in North Carolina, during the time I lived in the gallery.  She loved the play and the movie, and was friends with Anthony Rapp, the filmaker guy in Rent.  So I did a huge RENT logo drawing for her and my niece and nephew, about 2 1/2 feet high and 5 or 6 feet long.  I put a bunch of quotes from the movie, handwritten in the background, which is something I still do today in many of my drawings.  I had a 4' X 8' section of the wall in Electra, which was part of the deal of living there.  So I kept doing drawings to hang up, and changing them out when I did new ones.

As time went on, the kittens grew up, and were sold off or given to people who came to the gallery to watch bands play.  P.A. had another litter, 4 kittens that time, after the first litter was grown and gone.  She would go out, and just wander outside, for one or two days, then show up at the door again, and want back in.  Obviously she met some male cats while out and about.  

On Wednesday nights, the gallery was open for 3-4 hours for The Spinning Head of Big Prizes, which Richard called "An open format poetry game show for people who hate poetry."  Basically, each person would spin the big wheel (visible in the video above), and do what the wheel told you to do.  It may be to sing or act something out, to tell some weird story of your life, read a poem, or to "tax Matt."  Matt was a life size dummy in coveralls, made of wadded up paper and duct tape.  "Tax," was supposedly an old jail term for beating up someone who disrespected you, or broke a rule.  So when you hit, "Tax Matt" on the wheel, you had to attack and beat up the dummy, which was lying on the floor most of the time.   That got pretty funny, at times.  Most of the people coming to the gallery were in their late teens or early 20's, usually friends of one of the local bands playing.  And artsy kids usually aren't big on violence, so some would barely hit Matt, while others would just go berserk on him like it was WWE wrestling.  After doing what the wheel said, you got to pick a prize from a box of dollar store stuff. 

Spinning Head Wednesday nights usually wound up with Richard telling crazy stories (for $1 each), the taxi driver in him felt people needed to be charged for everything.  He'd also break into a closet of his albums, and play really obscure punk bands, like Nail, and other bands I'd never heard of, loud as can be.  Since the whole business area was empty at night, no one cared how loud it got.  

Richard, his girlfriend Michelle, and  few others were also big into playing poker.  The whole Texas Hold 'em craze was in full swing then, so Wednesday nights usually ended with me falling asleep on my couch and a few artists smoking and playing poker around the main table.  Michelle usually walked away with most everyone's money, she was the sleeper poker shark in the crew.  

I just kept drawing every day, and walking a bit, so I lost some weight while there.  But I ordered way too many pizzas, since there wasn't a stove to cook, and I got sick of microwave food.  But my health improved quite a bit, which was good. 

Kurt Cobain, drawn for my first, and only, solo art show, in November 2017.  The show was at a great indie music store, Earshot Music, in Winston-Salem, NC, and Phred the owner, used this drawing as a flyer.  The drawing sold an hour after going up on the wall, the day before the art show.  I started getting a lot of requests for drawings after that.  #sharpiescribblestyle

 

After about three months of drawing the scribble style, I moved to the smaller, ultra fine point Sharpies, which worked much better, allowed me to do much more detail, fade colors well, and they lasted a lot longer.  I lost some weight, walking a bit every day, and was feeling a lot better just because I was being creative, and not as stressed out from working 7 days a week.  But I wasn't making much money, and couldn't make enough to actually rent a normal room, or my own apartment, and get back to "normal life."   

So in June of 2006, I went back to working full time as a taxi driver, but this time I had a 12" X 18" art pad, and my Sharpies, in the cab, and would draw while sitting in front of hotels, or waiting other places.  That helped a lot.  I never could make a decent living in the cab, but I was less stressed out, generally, since I was drawing a lot. 

I left a bunch of my drawings at the gallery, when I moved out.  I also lost two sketch pads worth of drawings that I left on a bus about a year later.  While they were all in my #sharpiescribblestyle, they were totally different types of drawings then I've done since.  But I invented, and then learned the basic color combos, of my scribble style, while living at Electra.  I kept drawing on and off since.  Then in 2015, while living in North Carolina, I started drawing people, leading to the drawings I've been selling for the last 5-6 years.   

This is my personal favorite, of all the 100+ large drawings I've done since 2015.  Harley Quinn/Tainted Love.  I had to sell this one cheap in Richmond, VA, to get a motel room, after a week long hospital stay.  It was in a gallery in the Richmond Arts District last I saw it.  #sharpiescribblestyle

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

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Living in an Art Gallery: Cats

This man is Richard Johnson, taxi driver, fame ass arteest (in the hippest of SoCal circles), owner/benevolent dictator of the AAA Electra 99 Art Gallery (& Museum), and the guy who gave me the opportunity to actually live in an indie art gallery.  That gallery is where my Sharpie scribble style of drawing was born.

I had about two weeks of peaceful sleeping on a couch, then they finally got to me.  Every morning after, I would wake to several tiny claws poking me in different places.  It wasn't a horrible way to wake up, but it could be startling, especially if the claws were in my eyelids or face.

It started on August 24th, 2005.  I remember this because it was the weekend that the massive category 5 hurricane known as Katrina was barreling down on the gulf coast.  I had been working as a taxi driver for two years straight, from late August 2003 to August 2005, based in Huntington Beach, California.  I began driving a taxi in Orange County, CA after an injury, what I thought was a hernia, in 1999.   I drove a cab until losing my driver's license, due to a clerical mishap at the DMV, in December of 2000.  I worked odd jobs after that, and ended up homeless, in late 2002.  Then I got a job at Stone Creek Cafe, a weird deli/restaurant/mini mart/sushi/wine bar combo in the food court of the ultra upscale, Fashion Island Mal,l in Newport Beach, California.

For those not familiar with Southern California, Los Angeles, the city, is the center of the huge SoCal metro region of over 13 million people, 18 million people if you include San Diego and thedesert cities.  L.A. is the main city in Los Angeles county.  Right below L.A. county is Orange county, known for being a suburban and mellower than L.A., and, until, 2016, Orange County was a Republican stronghold in the Democratic state of California.  Newport Beach is the Beverly Hills of Orange County, that's where the concentration of the big money is.  In 2002, I somehow ended up living in the bushes next to the Newport Back Bay, in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., and working in the restaurant at Fashion Island (known as Fascist Island in punk circles), the outdoor mall that looked out over the Pacific ocean, on one side.  The mall was so rich, that there were "mall rats," people that hung out there every day, who were in their 50's, 60's, and 70's.  It was a really weird scene.

It took me nine months of living in the bushes, taking a bus to the mall, "showering" in the sink at the bus stop restroom, and working at Stone Creek Cafe, to save up enough money to get my license back, and my taxi permit, and go back to taxi driving.  I started driving a cab again on Labor Day weekend 2003, and for the next two years, my life was about nothing but money.  I didn't do anything creative.  I didn't ride my BMX bike.  I had no life outside taxi driving. 

I only had 5 complete days off in those two years from August 2003 to 2005.  I worked 7 days a week, 15 to 18 hours most days, and slept in my taxi in parking lots six nights a week.  I took showers at the gym most days.  Technology had changed the taxi industry, and I was just struggling to pay my $600 a week, to lease the taxi, and $300 in gas, and then make a little for myself. For those two years, my "day off" was working from about 7 am to 3 pm in the taxi, then getting a cheap motel room, a $6 pizza, a bottle of Diet Coke, watching a couple hours of TV, and sleeping for ten hours.

By August of 2005, I was 374 pounds, bitter, pissed off, burned out, and struggling to find a way to escape the taxi lifestyle and make a living some other way.  That's when fellow taxi driver, Richard Johnson, made me an offer I couldn't refuse.  Richard is one of the craziest characters I've ever met, and I mean that in a good way.  He owned his taxi, the actual car, and worked within the same company I did.  That meant he "only" paid the taxi company about $335 a week, but he had to pay to maintain his cab.  He liked to work days, mostly driving old ladies to doctor's appointments, and that kind of thing.  He rented his taxi out to another driver at night, and that paid most of what he owed the company every week.  So his taxi life was much less stressful than mine.  It also meant he could hang out in the small industrial unit where he owned the AAA Electra Art Gallery (& Museum) at night.  In fact, Richard and his girlfriend Michelle lived there.  But Richard's mom's health was getting worse.  Richard and Michelle moved into her condo nearby.  I had rented a wall at the gallery earlier, in 1999 and early 2000, at the previous location.  Richard and I became friends, and shared jokes and crazy taxi stories when we ran into each other while driving.

So I came to mind when he needed a new weekend driver, AND someone to live in the gallery.  The deal was, I would drive pay Richard $270 for his taxi, and drive it from 4 pm on Friday afternoon to 4 am Monday morning.  I was a night an weekend driver, specializing in driving Orange County drunks home night after night.  I usually made $200 to $250 each night, on Fridays and Saturdays.  So $270 for 2 1/2 days, and having 4 1/2 days off, was a good deal for me.  The other part of the deal was, I could live in the gallery in Anaheim during the week, and I'd pay Richard $50 a week for that.  At heart, I was a creative guy.  But for two years, 2003 to 2005, I completely set my creativity aside to focus entirely on making money, to dig myself out of a financial hole, and get back on track.  Instead I wound up fat, pissed off, and burned out. 

I took the deal.  That particular weekend, Richard had planned to take Michelle on a trip to New Orleans.  So I got his taxi to drive a few extra days, while they were gone, as a bonus.  I moved into the gallery on Wednesday, August 24th, and drove Richard and Michelle to the airport.  They flew to Chicago, planning to catch a flight to  New Orleans for a fin weekend.  But Hurricane Katrina had other plans.  So the two of them wound up having a long weekend in Chicago as they watched Katrina annihilate New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on TV.  I drove his taxi that weekend, and slept on one of the couches lining the walls of the gallery.

As he was driving me to the gallery that Wednesday, after dropping off my leased cab, Richard asked, "By the way, do you like cats?"  He made sure not to mention it beforehand, until I was committed to the move.
"Yeah, I guess," I said, "Do you have a cat at the gallery?" I asked.
"Yeah," he replied calmly, Well... technically... eight."  That's classic Richard Johnson.  The lifelong taxi driver in him is a shyster at heart.  He likes to get the best of you in some way, even if it only means something like charging you a dollar to hear the story of why there's a back door from a taxi in his section at the gallery. 
"Wait, what?  NINE cats?"
"Yeah.  We've had Pita for a year or so.  Then this other female cat started showing up, we called her Pita's Assistant, or P.A..  And P.A. just had a litter of six kittens.  So technically, there's eight cats.  We haven't seen Pita in a couple days, though."

So that's how I came to live in an indie art gallery in Anaheim, California with eight, actually seven, cats.  P.A. ran Pita off after she had her litter, so Pita never came back.  Being fairly streetwise, we assumed Pita found a nice home somewhere in Anaheim.  P.A. and her kittens were in a box, in a corner by the glass display cases.  I slept on one of the couches across the width of the industrial unit, about twenty feet away.  P.A. and I became friends over the first couple of days.  But the six kittens were only about three weeks old, and barely left the box at first.  It took about 2 or three weeks until the kittens started waking up and going exploring around the gallery in the mornings.  That included climbing up, on, and around me, and the couch I was sleeping on.  From then on, for maybe a month and a half, until we sold the kittens, they would climb all over me every morning and wake me up.  Nothing like a tiny claw to the nose, ear, or eyelid to startle the fuck out of me in the morning.

After two years of nothing but working around the clock, focused entirely on money, I was suddenly sleeping as much as I wanted (well, almost), I had a place to chill out, a refrigerator, a microwave, and crappy TV, a place to make art, and was woke up by marauding kittens every morning, and was surrounded by walls full of independent art.  It was a pretty cool way to live, actually.