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:
Author of several books, including the novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and the non-fiction book on creativity, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield tells people what it takes to "turn pro" and get serious about creative work. This interview, a little over an hour and a half long, is mind blowing if you're someone who delves into artistry of any kind. If you do any kind of creative work seriously, read The War of Art.
Here's what many of you longtime readers are likely to know about me. I got into BMX freestyle in a trailer park outside of Boise, Idaho in 1982. Riding bikes led me down a weird path in life, and I wound up working at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines in 1986, for the AFA in 1987, and worked as a video guy for Vision for a while after that. I was one of the guys who lived in the P.O.W. House in the early 1990's, the first famous BMX rider house. I was also a longtime roommate of Chris Moeller, owner of S&M Bikes, during that time, and I edited the first two S&M videos, Feel My Leg Muscles and 44 Something. I also made a self-produced video around 1990 called The Ultimate Weekend, that I just won't shut up about.
Then I disappeared for a couple of decades, wound up back east, and started blogging about my early BMX freestyle days, in 2008. Before the Old School BMX Reunion, before the Old School BMX podcasts, and before Greystoke, I was blogging, writing about my adventures as a BMX freestyler and industry guy in the 1980's and 1990's. Then, in 2015, I started selling my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings, doing my versions of classic photos, with Sharpie markers. And I'm homeless, and can't seem to get my act together financially. I keep blogging, drawing, and scraping by as a homeless dude. Something like that.
Life after suicide...
Then there's the part you don't know. In the spring of 2015, shortly before Easter, I woke up on Sunday morning, in a small apartment in North Carolina, and just couldn't take it any more. While my mom was alseep in her room, I swallowed a whole bottle of Lithium and a whole bottle of Abilify, the two drugs I had been prescribed for many months. The medication turned me into a zombie, I could barely function, and had no energy. I was absolutely miserable on the meds, and pretty miserable off of them. Being on medication was so bad, that I had stopped taking my meds a month earlier. On that Sunday morning I swallowed both entire bottles of pills, and sat on the couch in the living room, waiting to die. A weird calm came over me, and I sat there for about 45 minutes, "knowing" I was dead. I had no great insights, I didn't really have any regrets. I just wanted the pain of living to be over... finally. I just sat there thinking, 'OK, that's it, I'm dead."
Then I started to throw up. A lot of the medicine was in my system, but I threw up some of the pills. At that point I realized I might actually live, and that I needed to get to the hospital. I woke my mom up and told her what I had done, and that I needed her to drive me to the nearby hospital, 3 or 4 miles away. She was pissed. My mom did not like getting up in the mornings, she usually slept until at least noon. It took over half an hour to get her up, wait for her to get dressed, and get to the hospital. I puked some more then, and then some more at the hospital.
After not initially believing that I had really swallowed all those pills, the doctors and nurses believed me once they got the results of my blood test. I had a ton of lithium in my system. The next day I got transferred to a larger hospital, where I'd already made two trips to the psych ward in the previous couple of years. I wound up spending about 9 days in regular hospital rooms, and then 7 or 8 more days in the psych ward. The doctors gave me dialysis into my neck, through my jugular vein, to strain as much of the lithium as possible out of my system, twice, in the next two days. I had to lay there for five or six hours, motionless, while they did that. For nearly three days, I had three times the "fatal" level of lithium (a heavy metal) in my system. I should not have lived. I should have wound up a vegetable, practically brain dead, just from the lithium poisoning. There is some higher force at play in this world, whatever you call it. That higher decided to keep me around a while longer.
When I finally got out of the hospital, I got a new psychiatrist, a good one, for once. I already had a cool therapist. The psychiatrist put me on much better meds, so my symptoms died down, but I could still function. I had been severely depressed because I was 50 years old, living in North Carolina (which I hated), I was unable to find any job, or earn any money, and I living with my mom, who had her own serious mental health issues that she refused to ever get help for. She was a very toxic and abusive person who drove everyone around her crazy. At the time there was no one in my life that I really found interesting. For over 20 years, I had been around weird, crazy, creative, action sports people, and a lot of really entrepreneurial people. There was non of those people in North Carolina. I literally didn't have an intelligent conversation for about 7 years at that point. I just wanted to earn $300 and get on a bus back to California, where there were people I could actually relate to.
Once out of the hospital, and on decent meds for that period of time, I started diving more and more into my creativity, blogging online and doing my Sharpie drawings. Still unable to find any job, I decided to try and sell my Sharpie drawings online in November of 2015, about seven months after the overdose. I stepped up my game, and started drawing pictures of people. I put a couple on Facebook, and I sold a drawing for $20. Then another one.
By the late spring of 2016, a year after my suicide attempt, I was a "working artist," drawing every day, and making a small amount of money. I lived free with my mom, her Social Security was enough to pay the bills. I did the "guy things" around the house, and drove her to all of her appointments, and to go shopping, since her eyes were really bad. But the continual drama kept eating at me. And every time I made a little bit of money, she created some kind of "emergency," which required every dime of my small amount of money. That was one of the manifestations of her issues. While my depression has lessened a lot, I couldn't make any progress towards making a living again, and getting my own place.
In late may of 2017, my mom and I had a big argument, and I called a friend, to get me out of the house. I grabbed some of my stuff, and my friend gave me a ride to a patch of woods in a larger city nearby. I built a lean-to, out of branches and leaves, and slept in it for three nights. Then some guy in the nearby park gave me an old, six-man tent. I began living in the tent in the patch of woods. Later that year, with that friend from group therapy keeping tabs on me, I weaned myself off of my meds. My depression was largely gone. I've been getting by, selling Sharpie drawings, though living homeless, almost the whole time since. My psychiatrist said I was one of his best success stories. Then he took another job, and moved.
It was after three weeks living in the woods, a friend gave me some money to get a motel room for a night. I woke up the next morning, in late June of 2017, and I started this blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear. I didn't know if anyone would read it. I didn't know if I'd survive the winter in the tent in that city. I didn't know if I could ever make an actual living from my Sharpie art. But going back wasn't an option. So I kept blogging, drawing, and surviving as a homeless guy, day after day. I've been doing that for the 8 1/2 years since my suicide attempt. My depression faded away. I'm really frustrated a lot, from not being able to make a living and rent a room or and apartment. But focusing on creative work keeps me in pretty good spirits.
It's now about 6 years and 11 months since I started this blog. I've lived 8 1/2 years, sold over 100 drawings, and now written and published a blog with 1,000 posts, since I "committed" suicide. It's also 40 years since I graduated from Boise High School this month. This is not the life I imagined, by any means, when I was in high school. But it has been one hell of an adventure. I've come to grips with my creative drive. I don't question and over analyze every creative idea, like I did for much of my life. Day after day, I sit down and do the work of writing or drawing, and promoting my work.
This is my first blog to make it to 1,000 blog posts, and it also has well over 300,000 page views. My original Freestyle BMX Tales blog ended at about 510 blog posts. I deleted that blog from the internet in 2012, which I immediately regretted. It was a couple of months after my dad's death, and when I was beginning to get severely depressed.
It's been a long, crazy few years while I've doing this blog, including the pandemic years. But I'm still alive. I'm still writing my blog, and drawing regularly, though still homeless. I'm back in Southern California, the only place, out of the six states I've lived in, that ever seemed like home to me. I'm still here, still alive, and I've become ridiculously prolific as a creative guy, after my suicide attempt. I wanted to write some mind blowing blog post for post #1,000. But I decided to finally tell you guys why I began to focus so heavily on being creative, several years ago, instead. Now you know.
A huge Thank You to everyone who has read a post, or many posts. A huge Thank You to everyone who has bought one or more drawings, or has helped me keep going, in one way or another. I'm going to keep at it until this is how I make my living. I just keep plugging away at the creative work. This is who I am. This is what I do. There's a lot more to come. Thanks for taking this journey with me.
I've been doing a lot of writing on a platform called Substack lately, which is designed specifically for writers. On my Substack I go deeper into big ideas. I've also just begun writing the stories of some places, locations I find interesting (like Sheep Hills trails). If you like anything in this blog, check out my Substack:
Thanks again everyone! Post #1,000 is on the blog. There's a lot more to come.
Riding my Schwinn Cruiser backwards in 2009 while back East. Just for the record, I was under pressure to sell this bike from my family, shortly after the time it was given to me. This bike was a gift from a group of my blog readers from the Midwest. I put it in a pawn shop, and would go pay the interest on it every month, so it was out of sight, and safe, hoping for a better situation in the future. During one of my stays in the hospital I missed the interest payment, and I lost the bike. So I apologize to the guys who hooked me up with this bike, it was just a really weird situation while in NC. I was hoping to start making a living again, and then be able to start riding regularly again.
I've been doing most of my writing lately on a platform called Substack, which is designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
Here's a little known clip of Craig Grasso and Pete Augustin, dueling it out on a big wall ride at the Huntington Beach Street Scene in 1988. My blog post, "Schralpin' with Grasso" came in a lucky #7 on this list, with 1,331 total page views. That post is about the month after I got laid off from FREESTYLIN' magazine, when I spent my mornings calling around the BMX world, looking for a new job, and then spent the rest of each day riding streets, local ramps, and flatland with Redondo Beach local Craig Grasso, back in early 1987. The Huntington Beach Street Scene post itself had around 600 views, putting it in the top 25 posts by views.
This is blog post #999 of Steve Emig:The White Bear blog. That's a line I never expected to write. I started this blog days after moving out of where I was living, and into the woods in North Carolina, in the summer of 2017. The living situation was just a really toxic situation, and I had to get out for a bunch of reasons. My Sharpie scribble style art was the only thing making me any money, but only $2 to $3 an hour for the time I spent drawing. I hadn't been able to get hired for any "real job" in North Carolina, for over 8 1/2 years, at that point. I started this blog partly to help promote my artwork, but mostly just for the creative outlet of blogging. I seriously didn't think very many people would check it out.
I was wrong. Most of the posts with lots of views, 300 views or more, came in late 2017 and 2018. If you follow this blog, you know that I've had more than 150,000 views in the last year or so. But I think these huge surges are coming from people using VPN's, because I don't get a breakdown of what posts they are viewing, and they come mostly from cities like Singapore or Hong Kong. These surges seemed to start as the VPN's got popular, so people could stop websites from collecting their data, using cookies to track them online, and all of that. So those views don't count in the totals below, just in the overall total you see on the view counter on the right.
In any case, for post #999, I decided to link the most popular posts, out of the 998 so far, as determined by you, the readers. These 14 posts below all got more than 1,000 page views each, and some of those that made the list surprised me. Here's the list, so you can check them out again, or see which ones you missed over the last 7 years.
As the publisher of this blog, I'd like to thank every one of you who has ever checked out a post, or a bunch of posts, on my blogs. I love to write, and always have lots of ideas, but having people out there who actually read what I write is a huge part of why I keep going. Thank you!
OK, there they are, the 14 most popular posts out of the first 998, as judged by you, the readers. This is post #999 you're reading right now. Post #1000, a new milestone for me, coming soon.
I've been doing a lot of writing on a platform designed specifically for writers, called Substack. Check it out:
1970's era skateboard Hall of Fame women Vicky Vickers, Deanna Caulkins, and Robin Logan, with drawings I did for them. This happened a while back, but I just found the photo, misfiled in my hard drive.
About 4 or 5 years ago, a friend of mine, who was also a friend of Robin Logan, had me do a drawing for Robin's birthday. Robin is from the Logan family, that put out the Logan Earth Ski skateboards in the 1960's and 1970's, and they are still putting out boards. Robin later had me do a couple of other drawings for her, including one for older brother Bruce. She also had me do these two drawings from classic photos of Vicky Vickers and Deanna Caulkins, when they got inducted into the Skateboard Hall of of Fame. I was stoked on this project, because these women were teenage girls, already top skaters, tearing it up on skateboards, back when I first got into skateboarding, during the 1970's boom. It was just a really cool project for me to be a part of. So that's Vicky, Deanna, and Robin above (L to R), the day she gave them the drawings.
As I improved, and became a bit better known for my Sharpie Scribble Style, after I started seriously selling drawings in late 2015, I began to get a few special projects. Yes, they're all cool, but I was asked to do 2 or 3 drawings for people's birthday's, a couple of memorial drawings for people's friends who had died, and then projects like this, for women who were defining skateboarding when I was a kid, just getting into it. Those are the projects that have more weight, where I really wanted to do my best.
Like any artist, I'm never 100% happy with any drawing I do. There are screw-ups in every one, in most cases, that only I notice. I shade in ink, and I very rarely use any whiteout to touch up. So I have to blend in any tiny mistakes I make, or start the drawing all over if it's a big enough mistake. The pressure is on, artistically, in every drawing. But certain projects hold a bit more pressure.
In any case, I just found this photo above, misfiled in a folder, and wanted to share it, since it's cool to see women that had a lot of influence in early action sports with my work on their walls. Thank you Robin Logan for tapping me to do these two drawings.
Video as we know it now didn't really exist in the 1970's, and there isn't a lot of film of individual skateboarders then. But here's an intro piece of Deanna Caulkins from her induction into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.
Help support my blogs and my writing work on my Patreon page
The Chain Bank was a lesser known, but serious skate spot in the 1990's. In this video, pro skater Rob Dyrdek narrates as Tom Penny flat out shreds the place.
When I left this blog, again, back in May of 2022, I started Steve Emig's Street Life, because that's been the theme of my life for quite some time. Years after taxi driving died, I'm middle aged, fat, and homeless, but still pretty motivated to write and create. I've managed to spend a long time homeless without alcohol and drugs, just not being able to find good paying work for years.
Going back to my late teens, I'm an old, fat BMX freestyle and skateboard Has Been rider/industry guy, and want to start getting back in shape, and riding and skating again. A couple of weeks ago, I had the idea for a new blog, which I call The Spot Finder. In this new blog, I'm telling the stories of well known BMX freestyle and skateboard spots, and eventually exploring and showing some new ones, as time goes on. As freestyle and skateboarding evolved in the 1980's and 1990's, particularly street riding and street skating, obscure little places that we rode or skated started to become known. Much to everyone's surprise, some of these spots gained worldwide fame. From Baldy Pipe, and Pipeline Skatepark in the late 1970's, to Sheep Hills BMX jumps, and sets of stairs like El Toro or Hollywood High these days, locations now have fame and stories.
Action sports are always evolving, and as an old, out of shape blogger, trying to get my life back on track, this seemed like a good times to start blogging about spots in the BMX and skateboarding world, along with a few art and other sports spots. So that's my new project, it's something I'm really stoked on, and like all my crazy ideas in the past, like publishing a freestyle zine in 1985 (landed me a magazine job), talking Scot Breithaupt into making the first BMX street riding TV show in 1989, producing my own BMX video in 1990, helping stuntman Johnny Airtime brainstorm a BMX stunt for TV in 1991, and then doing BMX memoir blogs starting in 2008, this may or may not turn into something bigger down the line. Who knows? It's fun now, and the idea is already evolving beyond the initial concept. We'll see where it goes.
So if you're a BMXer or skater, or even an artist, this blog may be worth checking out. But that's what I'm up to now, in October 2022.
In September of 2020, my Sharpie drawings were selling for more than Beeple had ever sold a piece of his art for. Really. And I'm a homeless, goofball, Sharpie artist, known only in the Old School BMX freestyle world. I'm not dissing him, just putting his insane NFT sales from 2021 in perspective. But Mike Winkleman, aka Beeple, had been putting one piece of digital art up on the web and social media, free to everyone to check out, every single day, for nearly 13 years. The collection of those works, "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days," was sold by Christie's, as an NFT, in March of 2021. That single sale raked in $69,346, 250, during a 14 day auction. Five months earlier, he'd never sold a piece of art for over $100. We live in interesting times, people. Really interesting times if you're a creative person. The video above is NSFW, Beeple cusses.
This post is about why you should give away as much of your creative work as possible. Mike Winkleman, best known as digital/NFT artist Beeple these days, is the one of the best examples of how giving away free creative work can pay off in multiple ways. He's not the only guy out there that gives creative work away. Every graffiti and street artist gives work away, for example, that's the whole idea. They put there work in public places, free for anyone there to check out. Banksy and Shephard Fairey (Obey Giant), are two of the best known examples from those worlds. Both sell art in major galleries now, by the way.
The video clip above is a good watch, and only about 20 minutes. For those who haven't watched it, Here's a synopsis of Beeple's story. He always liked to draw as a kid, and got into computers, and eventually brought the two together, getting into digital art. He's a family man, and has been making a living, and supporting his family, by doing freelance graphic design work, for many years now. He wasn't striving to be known as an "artist" or "digital artist." There's a clip on YouTube where he says calling yourself an "artist" sounds douchey to him. He just likes making cool digital images and videos.
What made Beeple into the guy I'm writing about today? His $69 million dollar sale of "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days" is what thrust him into worldwide recognition in the mainstream art and business worlds. How that happened is in the title. Way back in 2007, May 1st, I believe, Mike Winkleman decided to push himself. He decided to start putting an image up, every day, on the internet and social media (Instagram: @beeple_crap and Twitter: @beeple). If you watch the video above, you'll see the first images were pretty simple. But he just kept going, he kept improving his skills, and he kept putting up an image every day. "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days," happened because Beeple just put something out, some digital image, for free, every day, for over 13 years now (He has a couple of great Elon Musk pictures up in the last couple of days, BTW).
Much like a high caliber athletes, Beeple put the work in, day after day after day before is big financial and prestigious win came. He strips the magic out of the artistic process," and he repeatedly says, "I just need to get shit done every day." As I'm writing this post, I'm listening to a great podcast with Beeple, from 2018, I think, long before his multi-million dollars sales and recent fame. This podcast is hilarious, and a great listen, here's the link:
He just said, in the podcast, that doing "Everydays" is "what brings in the freelance work, and that's what puts food on the table for the wife and kids." He didn't even have a demo reel of client work back then. People saw his "Everydays" images, and thought, ""Hey, let's get this guy to do our next project," then contacted him Those are two of the great reasons to put out creative work for free, 1) it's a great way to build a following for your work, and 2) putting out cool work for free is a great way to get people to approach you for paid freelance work, and sometimes long term jobs.
So... will doing a piece or art, music, or writing every day help you score millions of dollars in one big sale? Probably not. But these days, as crazy as the world is, I can't say, "that will NEVER happen." It's unlikely you'll ever sell a piece for millions, but it is possible.
Here's what will definitely happen if you start putting creative work out for free on a regular basis. 1) You will get better at whatever you do. It sounds stupid, but if you practice something consistently, you will improve, you will progress. 2)You will get more in tune with your creative process. You'll figure out how you work creatively, and what it takes for you to sit down and actually get something done, consistently. For some of you, it may take a specific cup of coffee, a quiet room, and specific tools to work with. For me, A Diet Coke, a couple of donuts, my laptop and art supplies, and a plug and wifi are what's needed.
Now, I am not Beeple, he's a millionaire, and world renowned digital artist now. But, we do have three things in common. 1) We've both put out a lot of content for free in the last 13 years, 2) We both put are really prolific creative people, and put a lot of creative work out, and 3) we both say "fuck" nearly as much as Jay and Silent Bob.
I put out my first zine (self-published booklet) about BMX freestyle, way back in 1985. I started it to find, and get to know, other BMX freestylers in the San Francisco Bay area. when I moved there. Within in a month, I'd met most of the pros and top amateurs in the region. I liked being the "zine guy" of our scene, So I kept putting my zine out monthly. By the next summer, 1986, I was making about $450 a month working at Pizza Hut, and spending $200 of that publishing my zine. That sounds ridiculous, and like a real waste of time to most people. But that little Xerox zine landed me a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, at age 20. That job changed the course of my life, and set me off on a path I couldn't have imagined before.
That's another thing that doing consistent creative work, and putting it out, for free, does. There's an idea called the "corridor" or "hallway" concept. When you get busy doing something, it heads you down a different path than if you just sat around doing nothing. As you move forward down that "hallway," doors may open, opportunities may come along, that never would have happened on your previous path. You can decide to take, to not take, a particular opportunity. But if you keep working, in this case putting out some of your creative work, for free, more opportunities will come along. Some may seem like little things. For example, two of my drawings are up on walls of the library I'm working in right now. That's cool. The staff here knows me as that "Sharpie artist guy," or something like that. That could lead to bigger opportunities down the road. I'm scheduled to do an art workshop here in a couple of months. That could lead to other opportunities as well, who knows?
These days, my main output of free creative work is my blogs, this one, and 25 or so other ones I've tried. I started blogging about my days in the 1980's BMX freestyle world in 2008, when I was broke, out of work, majorly depressed, and living with my parents, in a small town in North Carolina. I've written over 2,400 blog posts since then. I'm not kidding, check out this post.
I built a following over the years, mostly from my BMX blogs. When I decided to try and sell my Sharpie drawings in late 2015, I put word out to my blog followers. and I sold a drawing for $20. Then another. Then another. While I don't make a decent living selling my drawings (yet!), I've now sold over 100 originals, and 150 or so prints, and they're spread across 12 or 15 states, and more than a dozen countries on 6 of the 7 continents. Now, six years later, I'm known mostly as a Sharpie artist. Nearly all of my drawings are on my blogs and social media, free for everyone to check out, or even print out a free copy of. I'm about to start a new direction with my drawings, and already have a couple people inquiring about it, just from a few sketches I posted.
We have all these amazing platforms to share creative work for free in today's world. Trust me kids, it a million times easier to get exposure for your creative work than it was back in the zine days. So USE those platforms. Blogs, websites, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, Tik Tok, Snapchat, podcasts, YouTube channels, whatever makes sense for you. Seriously, if you want to sell your creative work, maybe make a living at it some day, and you're not putting free stuff out consistently, you're a fucking idiot. OK, maybe not an idiot, but you're not serious. Get your work out there. Let people see it. Then do more. Consistency. That's the main way you build a following as a creative person, in today's world. So put something out! You may never have the insane financial success Beeple had. But you'll be in a much better place creatively in a few years, whatever level of success you find.
This is the David Bowie drawing I did for a friend in 2018, and then accidentally left at a bus stop in Richmond, Virginia. But you can see the progression in my drawing skills in 3 1/2 years. #sharpiescribblestyle
This is the first Sharpie Scribble Style drawing I tried to sell in 2015, a drawing, of a stencil, of Bruce Lee. I think I sold this for $20.
In early 1991, pro freestyler and contest promoter Ron Wilkerson held a 2-Hip King of Dirt contest at Mission Trails, outside of San Diego. BMX was "dead," the mainstream world had given up on the sport, and we were a little underground tribe doing our thing in little pockets around the U.S. and the world. Death Jump, the big jump in this clip, was like no contest jump before. I consider it the first 'mega ramp," a 4 foot launch to a 25+ foot gap, to a hard, sandy, downhill landing. In addition, Mat Hoffman tried a backflip on dirt for the first time in a comp. This contest changed bike riding. This is my clip that appeared in the S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer, S&M's first video.
This is my most popular blog that's still online, and I retired it with just over 100,000 page view in the spring of 2020. A lot of people still check this blog out, or stumble upon it if the Google me. So here are a few of the better things I've done that are online. Just to let you know, Steve Emig: the White Bear is banned from being linked to on Facebook and Instagram.
Crazy California 43- This blog tells little stories about locations of all kinds in California, places I find interesting, weird, funny, historical, or interesting in some way.
What 12 years of blogging can add up to
I just added up the stats of my blogs, most of them anyhow. Here's what I came up with (as of May 2021):
12 1/2 years of blogging, 25 blogs, 2,405 blog posts, 438,932 page views.
Really. Slow and steady work pays off (in content, if not in income).
In 2005, while actually living in an indie art gallery, I developed a way to shade with Sharpie markers, using overlapping scribbles. Unable to find any job while living in North Carolina, I stepped up my art game, and started to actively sell my drawings. I've done hundreds of drawings, sold around 90 originals, and my artwork has somehow made it to 6 of the 7 continents (I'm looking for art collectors in Antarctica and on the International Space Station, to go fully global). Here's a post on how my Sharpie art began. You can find it almost everywhere by searching #sharpiescribblestyle
In 1988 I got dumped by my first fairly long term girlfriend, got depressed (and a bit drunk), and wrote a poem called "The Journey of The White Bear." It told of my journey from a super shy, naive kid in Idaho, to working in Southern California, and dating a singer in a band who was a few years older, and much more experienced partying, and at life in general. I published that poem in 1992 in a poetry zine, gave one copy to my roommate, Chris Moeller, and he started calling me The White Bear. The nickname stuck. It's not a racist poem, but used the colors white and black as metaphors for going from a naive young man to some experience at real life.
My best BMX videos
I've produced, directed, and sometimes edited 11 BMX videos, 10 of them from 1987 to 1993. I was one of the first four BMX freestyle riders to produce full length videos, which soon became a key aspect of the BMX world. Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, and Jeremy Alder are the other three early BMX producers. I lost all my videos, masters, and raw video footage in a move in 2008. So only other people's copies online are left to share.
Oregon Pro Ramps-(1987) This is the second of 6 BMX freestyle videos I produced for Bob Morales and the AFA (American Freestyle Association) in 1987. Those video started my video career.A couple of shots from Oregon Pro Flatland were used in Mark Eaton's documentary, Joe Kid on a Stingray.
2-Hip: The '88 Adventure (later called 2-Hip BHIP). (1989)This was the first 2-Hip video that I produced for Ron Wilkerson.Part 3, the Meet the Street in Santee is linked, the other sections of vert riding are on YouTube.
Feel My Leg Muscles... I'm a Racer- (1991) - (the first S&M Bikes video)- Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, Jimmy Levan. (Footage from Jimmy's section was later used in the documentaryGo Fast, Pull Up).
44 Something-(1993)The second S&M Bikes video, made for about $750 (not including equipment costs), this video sold over 7,000 copies, and was listed as one of the ten best BMX videos of the 1990's by BMX Plus! magazine in 2000.
Huntington Beach Street Scene (1989)- The Old Man/Godfather of BMX, Scot Breithaupt, sold ESPN a bike sports series in 1989. He was editing at Unreel Productions, where I worked, and needed an idea for a show. I talked him into producing a street riding show. It went form idea to event to TV show on air in 15 days, unheard of in TV production. Myself and Randy Lawrence and some H.B. locals appear in the into. This wound up being the first made-for-TV BMX street riding TV show ever, six years before the X-Games.
Where I think our society is headed
My online book/blog about the tumultuous 2020's, where I think society is headed, and our world is headed over the next decade. I think we are now in what will be one of the craziest decades in human history. This 20 chapter book as a blog explains my thinking on why I believe that. Like this blog you're reading now, "Dystopia" is banned from being linked to on Facebook and Instagram.
I'm an Old School BMX freestyler, and BMX/skateboard industry guy from the 1980's/1990's. I also have a brainiac side that thinks about long term events, economic and business/social trends, and futurist thinking in general. These ideas have cost me about 20 years of my life, some people find my ideas that offensive, simply because they disagree. Here are a few of the posts on these ideas. You can make your own decision on whether these ideas make any sense or not.
The Phoenix Great Depressionblog- With the Repo Market crisis in September 2019, the U.S. entered a recession. With the 33% drop in GDP in the spring of 2020, we entered an official depression (3 year contraction OR a 10% drop in GDP). I believe we are in what will feel like a great depression, and may very well meet the official definition (5 year economic contraction). This blog shares my thoughts on that from 2020. For 2021-2022-2023 we will see rising prices. Inflation, high inflation, possible hyper inflation (when prices rise monthly, weekly, even daily on many items).I stopped this blog because no one wants to here what's going to happen ahead of time, even if it will totally jack up their own life.
Can I get a Woo-Hoo! Thanks Homer. Two years and 1 1/2 months in, this blog just hit 80,000 page views. So thank you for reading everyone, I'm stoked that all of you keep checking out my stories, Sharpie art, and random weird ideas. This blog is a weird mix of my old school BMX freestyle stories, my futurist thinking, thoughts on the economy and where society is heading, and my Sharpie (#sharpiescribblestyle) artwork. That's a weird mix, but it's the stuff I'm most into. When I started this blog in late June 2017, I really didn't expect much of a readership at all. You guys have blown my mind, and I appreciate that.
The blog crept up the last 1,000 page views or so. Shortly after my Facebook feed got all weird for a few days, about a month ago, this blog suddenly started getting about 2/3 less page views than normal. I'm not sure what's going on there, probably some of the same monkey business happening in the rest of my life. But 80,000 is a nice, big, round number, which is always a cool milepost as a blogger. Of the 30+ blogs I started for one reason or another (they all seemed like good ideas at the time), four have gained good followings, only my Freestyle BMX Tales blog got more page views, than this one, about 125,000 total, back in 2009-2012. Make Money Panhandling, which started as a joke to learn SEO, and turned into a sometimes serious, sometimes humorous look at homelessness, f got about 63,000 page views during its lifespan, back in 2010-2012. My original Old School BMX freestyle story blog, FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, got about 25,000 page views back in 2008-2009. I took all of those blogs down completely in 2012, during a really dark time after my dad's death. I regret taking them down, but that's life. I did a repop version of Freestyle BMX Tales in 2015-2017, but I wasn't consistent with it, you can check it out here.
As for my life now, I'm homeless, on the streets, still, and struggling to make some money to get back on track, as always. As soon as I started making some money selling my drawings online back in June, my Paypal account got frozen for no apparent reason. I'd never updated my phone number on it, so now it's a long process to unfreeze it. That was a big gut punch as I tried to get myself going financially. I've been struggling to make day to day living money, as well as money to make more copies of drawings to sell, to help me get back on track. The behind the scenes pressure on my life has stepped up again. After the police completely avoiding me (which is really strange when you're homeless) in Orange County for about 2 1/2 months, I've suddenly had three run-ins with the police in a week. No tickets, no arrests, just warnings. That's the kind of thing that happened to me on a regular basis from 2002 to 2008, when I was forced to leave California, and banished to the hell hole that is North Carolina, for ten years. After ten years in a living hell, I draw cool pictures now, and I'm still just trying to build a small business, and make a living selling them, blogging, and doing that kind of thing. In today's world, that's totally possible, but raising enough money to give this business a fighting chance has been impossible. I honestly don't know if I'll ever be allowed to make a living again, but I'll keep trying. That's what I do, keep trying to live my own life in this weird world of 2019.
Thanks again, I'll try to keep writing pretty interesting posts, and hope you all find a few worth the time to read.
