Photo of one of my favorite graffiti pieces I saw in Hollywood, in 2021, I think. Is it art? Everyone has their opinion, but I dig this piece. #steveemigphotos.
Is there a need for art?
The truth out there is plain to see
Yet humans continue to disagree
Sitting on a rock on a hill, enjoying the view
Of the city below, where humans do what they do
The good, the heroic, the evil and mean,
The city is the place of human fears and dreams
Though we still can't place where cities got their start
I asked out loud, "Is there a need for art?"
Take away Roman columns, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek plays,
Would it matter how humans spend their days?
Take away cave paintings, ivory etchings, and architecture grand
Would humans still see the guidance of a Creator's hand?
What if the music of a million years had never been heard?
No books, no movies, no poems spoken, only everyday words
What if every spark of inspiration had just fizzled dead?
Would civilization have happened, if all the great ideas had been left unsaid?
The answer is obvious, a definite, "No!"
Without arts of all kinds, there would be nowhere to go
So despite all the pain, all the hate, all the war
Perhaps there's a reason that we're all here for
Perhaps there's a reason actors act and singers sing
There's a reason novelists and poets are seeking something
It's why designers design and movies get made
Why directors direct, and put on their plays
Perhaps it's all part, of a story grand and strong
Playing out over the eons, a span longer than long
Is there a purpose to Art? An enthusiastic "Yes!" I declare
Music, dance, and stories are always found there
This truth came to me, on a rock on a hill
The grand story of humankind... creativity, drama, and free will
-The White Bear
I just wrote this one, in January 2024, while laid up in a sketchy-ass homeless recuperative center, where I couldn't access social media, write on my blog, and was listening to other people's music and chatter for over a week. There's such a strong surge of censorship being pushed onto social media and online platforms these days, by certain groups who hate books, art, and most of makes life interesting, that's it's like this continuous under current of hate and negativity. I've written very few poems in the last 16 years, and this one came out pretty messy, when it came time to write it down. But it captures a lot of what I feel these days, being creative in my own unique ways, in a world where there's so many forces coming down on arts of many different kinds, because they don't conform to certain ideologies.
I recently wrote a big post on my Substack about poetry, writing poems, and becoming a poets decades ago. If that sounds interesting, check it out:
Kansas' hit song, "Carry on Wayward Son," is a song I used to run to the radio to turn up as a kid. Growing up in a really tense household, it always seemed like these guys were singing just to me. "Hang on kid, just carry on, it'll make sense some day."
I've always loved wandering. My family moved nearly every year when I was a kid, which I eventually realized was due more to our family's dysfunction, than my dad finding a new job. When we landed in a new place, I would start wandering the new neighborhood, the local woods, and the area around. I did this as far back as I can remember, even at about 5 years old. I would wander off into the woods, along a creek, through the cornfields, or whatever was around.
To me wandering is the essence of exploring, going off in a direction, with no goal in mind. I'd head off one place, and see something off in the distance, and wonder what it was, or what was beyond it. So I'd head that way. When I got to that point, I amble around a bit and explore the area. Before long, something else would catch my eye, off in another direction. I'd head off that way. There were times later on, on a family camping trip in Ohio, in the desert of southeastern New Mexico, or the miles and miles of open sagebrush country Boise, Idaho, or on my BMX bike, around San Jose or Southern California, where I'd walk 8 or 10 miles, or ride 15 or 20, just exploring by myself. I still wander on a regular basis.
BMX freestyle led me to Southern California, and to writing. My wandering went inward as well, at age ten I remember pondering whether our lives were predetermined or whether we actually had free will, since I couldn't make too many of my own decisions then. I wandered through a few hundred books over the course of my life. I've also wandered into my own thoughts, good and bad. I wandered through a weird series of odd jobs, from menial restaurant work, to a couple of BMX magazines, into working as a TV show crew guy, sweating as a furniture mover, producing and editing a bunch of BMX and skateboard videos, and driving a taxi for years, among other things. I feel now that my working life has come full circle. I stumbled into writing with my first zine, in 1985, and soon worked at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN', and then for almost a year at the AFA newsletter. I was just starting to think of myself as a writer then. Then I went out into the world, wandering, for about 30 years. I somehow came full circle, back to the San Fernando Valley, where I first started "getting serious" about writing, back in 1991.
Looking back now, from well into my fifth decade of life on Earth, that it couldn't have happened much differently. Obscure little things that happened, and lessons learned at one weird job or another, made sense, or came into play, many years later. While most people see me as a homeless loser who can't seem to get his shit together, it's much different from my point of view. I've lived the last four years, through the whole pandemic, on the streets of L.A. county, mostly. I live and sleep and wander alone, without a weapon. My average night, with the multitude of "street zombies" shuffling by, tweekers, crackheads, and crazy motherfuckers of many varieties, my nights would scare the shit out of most people. Yet I manage to get a reasonable night's sleep, all in all.
I wake up, get something to eat, and sit in the early morning light doing my own weird little meditation. I once was a kid with a never ending string of fears running through my head. I was afraid of everything. Now I can empty my mind, for short periods, to a point of no thoughts at all, only sensations oozing through it, mostly traffic sounds. I then pack up my stuff, go to my favorite fast food place, and suck down some iced tea. I never drank coffee, and recently gave up my long Diet Coke addiction. Iced tea, usually with some lemonade, is my caffeine fix now.
Then I come here to the library, or some other place I can get online, and write. I look up things that interest me. I do some research along the way. I write blog posts about things that I'm actually interested in. And, I have some people read what I wrote, day after day after day. My blogs have steady readers. Not a huge amount, but some, day after day. Later on I may draw for a while, or spend an hour or two reading. This is what I love. This is why I'm here. I just don't make a living at it... yet.
As hard as it is to imagine for most people, I didn't fuck up. Every blog post I write, well over 2,500 of them now, is the result of of 57 years of wandering the physical world, the world of books, speeches and YouTube videos, and other content, and the world of thoughts and ideas. 57 years of this crazy path are behind every sentence I write, every picture I draw. My life makes sense now, in a way it never did 35 years ago.
And there's more to come. Hopefully a lot more. Time will tell.
I've started a new blog, looking into ideas for side gigs, and small businesses. Check it out.
Here's Elizabeth Gilbert talking, and reading excerpts from her book Big Magic, about seven years ago. I just found this book wandering the library stacks a few days ago, and read it over the weekend.
Most of you are somewhat familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert's work, even if you don't know her name immediately. She's a writer who has written several books. Her best known book was the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. They even made that memoir into a movie, with a pretty talented actress playing the lead role. Years later, trying to cope with everyone wondering if she was afraid to write another book, because she might have her best work behind her, Elizabeth gave one of the best TED Talks of all time. So if she sounds vaguely familiar, that's why you've heard her name before.
My life is basically focused on two things these days, staying alive day to day in a weird set of circumstances, and doing creative work. Mostly, that's blogging and my unusual Sharpie art. If you've been around this, or my others blogs, for a bit, you probably know that I've been writing, and self-publishing, since I put out my first BMX freestyle zine in 1985. I've done a bunch of creative things over the years, none of them have been incredibly financially successful (OK, I was a crew guy on American Gladiators, and that was a hit, but not my project). The real theme of my fairly weird life, over the last 32 years or so, has been overcoming my personal issues, my fears, and coming to grips with being a writer and creative guy at heart.
These same themes are what Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic, is all about. If you do creative work, for fun, as a hobby, or professionally, I recommend giving this book a look. It's now one of the three books about creative work that I would mention to anyone interested. The other two are The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.
If you have any interest in creative work, check out the video above, and you'll know whether you want to read the book some day. If not, there will be more Old School BMX stories soon.
As of the late summer of 2023, I'm doing a lot of my writing on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out!
Rick Rubin has been behind the scenes of dozens of great music projects over the years. If you're reading this, you're likely an Old School BMX freestylers, and the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill is etched in your brain. Yeah, Rick Rubin produced that. And many more. Check out his Discography from Wikipedia. This clip from his interview podcast with Joe Rogan, has some of the best advice and thoughts I've ever heard about bring creative. It's only 8 1/2 minutes. Check it out.
Nearly a month before its one year anniversary, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection has gone from an idea that "probably wouldn't work," to a business valued at $4 billion which "real" business people love to hate, and real celebrities own pieces of. This documentary by The Defiant above was made in June 2021, when the Ape NFT's were around $5,000 to $8,000 each. No one had any idea how crazy they would get then. Now BAYC NFT's run $318K and up. For jpeg's of monkeys, tied to the Ethereum blockchain! What sets BAYC apart from the dozens of other NFT projects?
"The art was inspired by our upbringing. We grew up in the cultural melting pot of Miami, where we skated, BMXed, and drank half our 20's away, in the parking lot behind the local punk bar, talking shit about music, movies, and books, our love of Miami, 90's hip hop, 80's hardcore punk, skateboarding, crypto culture." - "NOSASS," BAYC Co-founder (18:40 in the doc above)
You may hate crypto and NFT's, or love them. That's up to you. But this post is to let you know that Bored Ape Yacht Club is yet another highly creative business taking off that has some action sports roots, along with punk, hip hop, and crypto culture. I don't know about you, but it'd be cool to see Tony Hawk, Mat Hoffman, and other BMXers and skaters help them build a part of their metaverse. We'll see what happens.
Just found a cool interview with Nicole Muniz, aka vstrange. She's the CEO of Yuga Labs, creators of BAYC and now owners of BAYC, Mutant Apes, Crypto Punks, Meebits, and probably some other stuff. Cool interview on the creation, first year, and future thoughts for the Apes and Ape friends.
Joe Rogan interviews Steven Pressfield about his book, The War of Art. Published in 2002, Pressfield talks about battling "The Resistance" that holds all creative people back from doing the day to day work of being creative in whatever avenue they work in, or want to work in.
There are a lot of books that inspire each of us in some way. But most of the time, those books have something that our individual self needs to hear at that particular point in time. That's why it will resonate so deep with us. But another creative or entrepreneurial person may not get anything out of that book. Then there are books that touch every creative person that dives into them, each in a different way. Here are two books I think every artist, writer, or creative person, and every entrepreneur should read at some point.
What book should you read right now? The one that keeps catching your attention, or sticking in your mind. When that happens, there's something in that book you need to hear at this point in time.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield- I heard Seth Godin mention this bookin a video years ago. But I never looked it up. Right before Christmas, I knew I'd have some time to read over the holidays, so I wandered through the library, looking for a good book. I found this one. I'm only 84 pages into it, and it's blown m mind many times over, already. Pressfield talks about this force, "The Resistance," he calls it, that tries to keep us from doing creative work. He just nails the insidiousness of all the things The Resistance does, or gets us to do to ourselves, to become less productive. I'm a broke dude, but I get a lot of content created, I'm a productive, creative guy already. This book called me on my BS several times. If you're a writer, artist of any kind, or an entrepreneur, or want to be any of those, read this book.
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron- This book is really a 12-step program to reclaim your inner creativity. But it's a 12 step program for people who may hate 12 step programs. You work through it, chapter by chapter, over 12 weeks, and do exercises along the way. Every creative person should read this book, and actually do the work. I went through it in 1996. It made all the difference in the world of helping me come to grips with my creative drive. On one hand many of us have this urge to write, draw, paint, sculpt, shoot photos, produce videos, or whatever. Yet we live in a world that usually says, "Well, that's nice, but what are you going to do for a REAL job." Creative work can be a real job, or just a passion on the side, it's different for everyone. This book, this 12 week course, helps you figure out why you struggle with your creativity, and all the issues that come with it. This book made all the difference in the world to me as a writer, and now an visual artist as well. Just read it, and do your "morning pages." I did them for five years straight after reading this book.
Read both of these books, at some point. That's all I'm going to say.
This is the most innovative bike clip I've seen in quite a while.
Remember when we would just put our bikes in weird positions, and think, could we ride it like that? Back in the 80's when BMX freestyle was a weird, new, tiny activity, and we thought we were inventing brand new things that no one had ever done on a bike? In some cases, others had done similar tricks many years before. In other cases, we were inventing brand new moves and tricks.
When us old dinosaurs look back on those days, we miss that innovative aspect, the "free" part of freestyle that drew so many of us fucked up, weird, but highly creative, kids into this world.
In this video, Danny Macaskill gets that level of creativity back into bike riding, along with his amazing physical skills to actually pull all this stuff off. Even better, it's done with Red Bull money, which means it's shot and edited with high quality video, great lighting, and excellent editing. I honestly wish Red Bull made something I like to drink, because the videos they put out always rock, and their name means quality content, in a world when most content isn't quality, at some level.
Enjoy.
Here's Windy Osborn speaking, with a great intro by racing legend Cheri Elliot, after being inducted into the BMX Hall of Fame in 2012. You can check out (and buy) Windy's classic, fine art, freestyle and other prints at windyosborn.com .
On on Thursday evening, the last day of July 1986, I flew from San Jose, California to LAX airport in Los Angeles with my bike, a Skyway T/A, a suitcase, and $80 in my wallet. I got picked up there by Andy Jenkins, Mark "Lew" Lewman, and Craig "Gork" Barrette. Officially, I started work the next day, Friday August 1st. I was starting the job that changed the entire course of my life, working at Wizard Publications. Wizard was the long time publisher of BMX Action magazine, and for two years then, the first BMX freestyle magazine, FREESTYLIN'. Somehow my zine, San Jose Stylin', got me the job there. That still amazes me. I was 20 years old, and so nervous that I actually got the hives a couple days before leaving the Bay Area. I wore long sleeve shirts to work for two weeks to hide the hives, and the guys made fun of me for that a little.
Although my start date was Friday, Gork drove us all in his van straight back the the office from LAX. As luck would have it, that Saturday was the ten year anniversary party for BMX Action. At the small warehouse building that housed Wizard, I followed Gork up onto the big industrial shelving racks in the back. Our job for the night was to go through a bike box full of little yellow boxes, each close to the size of a cigarette pack. Those boxes held color slides of photos shot by Bob "Oz" Osborn, his daughter Windy, and probably a few other contributors over the ten years. Gork and I were to find 100 of the best photos for a slide show ot play at the party. At his core, Oz was a photographer, and Windy grew up going to BMX races with Oz and her BMX racing brother, R.L.. She picked up a camera, following in her father's footsteps, and Windy began as a girl with a camera in a boy's sport, and worked her way up to legendary photographer in the BMX and freestyle worlds.
When I started at Wizard, Windy was the staff photographer for both magazines. Oz had moved on to spending most of his time out in the wild somewhere shooting fine art photos. As Andy Jenkins explained it to me then, "Oz is here (at the office) about one week a month, and the rest of the time he's out in his van taking Ansel Adam-type pictures of trees and flowers." The van was a highly decked out 4WD van, made for getting to out of the way places and camping for days while shooting nature photos.
Officially, my job was "editorial assistant" for both magazines, meaning Andy, Lew, and Gork could all boss me around. They were all cool, by and large, though we had our different views on things. In reality, my main job was to proofread both magazines, and fix every single little spelling and grammatical mistake. At 20 years old, armed only with my Boise High School diploma, I was taking over for Don-Boy, a guy with an English degree. Hey, no pressure. Andy, Lew, and Gork waited until a couple of days before deadline to start writing most of their articles, and so I ended up proofreading every single word of both magazines over about four days, right before, and after, deadline.
The rest of the month, driving Windy to photo shoots was one of my consistent jobs. Sure, Windy could driver herself, obviously. But having me deal with getting directions, keeping the Astro van gassed up, picking up film, (remember film?) and around to help out when needed on shoots, allowed Windy to focus more on her job, taking great photos. While Andy, Gork, and Lew were officially my bosses, Windy was more like a veteran co-worker. Once we had photo shoots scheduled, she expected me to handle the logistics, to get her to the right place to shoot the right rider or skater, and she was ready to find the best angles and backdrops to snap killer shots. Working with Windy was the biggest thing I was looking forward to when I found out I got the job in July of '86.
Epic Windy photo of Brian Blyther high above the Enchanted Ramp, 1987. For pure ego reasons, this is a favorite of mine, because on the deck, left to right, are Steve Broderson, Mike Golden, Todd Anderson, Me (standing), and Mat Hoffman. Prestige by proximity. This photo just makes me look way cooler than I ever was. I did judge that contest, though, which is why I was up there. Again, you can buy her prints at windyosborn.com.
But working with Windy wasn't like working with just some random person at another job. First of all, Windy was hot (and still is, of course). Second, she was a handful of years older than me, and I was a 20-year-old, deathly shy guy, still a virgin, and completely inept at talking to women, let alone hot women. I always kind of felt like a high school freshman who somehow got the job of driving the head cheerleader around, and I never knew what to say. Since I was always afraid of saying or doing something stupid around Windy, I did exactly that on a pretty frequent basis. So for a while, it seemed the only thing I was good at was pissing Windy off. On more than one occasion, I took a wrong freeway ramp, which instantly costs you 15-20 minutes in Southern California traffic. It's a huge and confusing area, I was new to it, and wasting time driving really bugged Windy. She traveled most weekends for work, and, unlike me, actually had a social life. She took as long as necessary to shoot photos, but didn't like wasting time traveling to and from shoots. She wanted to get back to the office and then head home at a reasonable time. In addition, I'd forget something once in a while, or made some little mistake that bugged her. I also learned, the hard way, of course, that riders who don't have cars tend to give really shitty directions to places. Following those directions often wasted more time. But in time, I got my shit together more, and things went smoother.
I landed at Wizard fresh from 11 months working at a Pizza Hut. It was typical restaurant work, if you do the job well, you're busy every minute, and there is no down time. There's a list of things to get done to clean and close, as well as lots of pizzas that had to be made. I was the shift supervisor, and in charge of closing every night, with a couple workers to boss around. The summer before that, I managed the Boise Fun Spot, a tiny amusement park (carnie street cred!) where I had 12 employees under me, and had to make sure everything got done day to day. I was used to being in charge, having a bunch of responsibility, and a ton of things to do, and planning and organizing things. I'd been doing low level management at pretty traditional jobs. I was used to cracking the whip on other people, being in charge, not doing much creatively, and feeling that if I wasn't constantly busy, I wasn't earning my money.
Then came Wizard. It was a highly successful family business, all about creativity and making an amazing, visually stimulating product, I was the new guy,and not the boss of anything. Even Cosmo, the Factory Watch Cat, could boss me around, but he was chill and never did. There was a lot of down time. As cool as it was, I struggled with not being busy all the time.
Looking back from 33 years later, and lots of personal and creative growth since, I realize that I was both a Blocked Artist, and a Shadow Artist. Both of those terms I learned of in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, which I highly recommend for anyone creative. A Blocked Artist is someone who has a strong creative drive, but also has deep seeded beliefs that it's bad or arrogant to do art. Blocked artists routinely put down other artists, and sabotage their own creative work. There's a continuous inner struggle between the part of them that wants to do creative work, and the part that honestly believes it's bad or wrong to be creative. Those negative beliefs are usually instilled in them as children, and sometimes by religious beliefs, or both.
A Shadow Artist is a highly creative person, often blocked as well, who somehow works themselves into proximity of other "officially" creative people. A Shadow artist might paint cool pictures, but downplay their creativity, and talk up their older brother, a talented musician, the family member everybody knows is highly creative. Hiding in the shadows of another artist lets you off the hook for not really producing what you're capable of. The TV and film production world is filled with Shadow Artists working around the famous actors, directors, and writers, but with dreams of their own. When I worked in the box office of Cirque du Soleil, there were a lot of Shadow Artists there, as well.
So I was a young guy, incredibly afraid of actually using my own creativity, suddenly driving Windy Osborn to photo shoots. She was a professional, seasoned, published monthly, veteran photographer by then.
Looking back from today's knowledge, the biggest thing I really learned from Windy was that it's actually OK, and possible, to be a professional creative person.
I grew up as a kid in rural and small town Ohio, very conservative in the old school, and non-political, sense of that word. People did things they way they'd always been done, and change happened very slowly. The adults in my childhood mostly worked factory jobs they didn't really like. People didn't have "passions," they had hobbies done in their spare time. It was simply known that it was impossible to make a living as an artist, of any kind, so it didn't even need to be said. "Artists" were those weird, crazy, lazy (and usually gay, it was believed) people in New York City and L.A. No one wanted their kid to ever be one. It was simply something that was not done. Period. Coming from there, I didn't take "art" seriously, and that's something I struggled with for years, and still struggle with, even after 35 years of doing many kinds of creative work. (Here's my "creative resume'.")
While I also worked with Andy, Lew, and Gork, we all did most of our creative work alone, in our offices. Windy was the first real working artist I ever worked with, and got to watch in action. Once we got to a photo shoot, I mostly just hung out and watched. What I was watching, I realize now, was a real, functional, professional artist, for the first time. The creative process is something completely different than the list of things to clean that I had in my head as Pizza Hut employee, or the timed world of running carnival rides.
Creative work is largely fun, often playful. It doesn't seem like work, which really makes a Blocked Artist feel guilty. You try different things. Some work, some don't. Ideas pop up out of nowhere, and you give them a shot. You're not on a time clock. You take the time necessary to get a good angle, work with the lighting available, and find cool backdrops to make the photo look even better, when possible. Andy, Gork, Lew, and I used to joke that we knew every weird colored wall within ten miles of the Wizard offices. "Got a photo shoot with Martin Aparijo in his yellow GT uniform?" There's that blue tile wall over on (whatever)street." That'll make the yellow really pop. That was a normal thing.
Windy was always in charge, she knew the technical aspects of photography, and she had her vision and ideas for each shoot, and the riders, and me, collaborated with her to make it happen. That was a huge difference from my mindset, and while it was fun, it wasn't really "work" in my mind, and I was always struggling with the idea that I really wasn't "doing things right," because of my inner battle with doing art and creative work. So I was about as uptight as could be back then, which is probably the main reason I didn't last long working there. Well, that and I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy. Plus let's face it, Spike Jonze wound up permanently replacing me, and Spike meeting up and working with Andy, Lew, Gork, and Windy was destined to be. I'm pretty sure the Universe had that planned eons ago.
While I never did learn to actually work a light meter (I didn't need to with my Pentax ME Super), my photography definitely improved by working with Windy. For the year after leaving Wizard, I was the writer and photographer for the AFA Newsletter. My shots never equaled Windy's (though my panning Vander GPV shot was in the ball park), I went on to do my own photo shoots, and lots and lots of good video shoots, in the next several years. From Windy Osborn, I learned what a working artist, a photographer in her case, looks like, and how they go about things, and how they collaborate, and strive to create something great. So thanks a lot for that Windy.
While Windy grew up in a creative family, in highly creative Southern California, and in a new and growing and evolving sport, BMX racing and freestyle, I came from a part of the country that bought art, but hated the people who made it. I always found that amazing. Most small town people go to church on Sunday to worship God, The Creator. But those same people hate highly creative people. That's one of those weird paradoxes of religion. The struggle to undo those early years of prejudice against artists has led to many years of finding and working with my own creative process. Working with Windy back in 1986, and having to write for real magazines, I now realize, was a big part of getting that process started.
My memories of those shoots I went on with Windy are spotty. I remember little pieces. Windy on her stomach to shoot Don Brown's shove-it, on the Huntington Beach Pier. Joking around with Ron Wilkerson and Windy on the short drive to shoot the original abubaca sequence. Watching Windy shoot a few angles of a cool looking lawnmower variation Frank Garrido did, on a side street, in front of this gnarly, industrial looking building. Taking Martin Aparijo to "the gray wall" for a Miami hop-hops shoot, only to find the shadow was perfect on the wall, shading the wall but not the sidewalk. Windy was super excited about that shadow, which I didn't think was too big of a deal at the time. Now it makes more sense, it was a bit of synchronicity. Then, on the concrete area next to The Spot at the Redondo Beach Pier, she shot Rodney Mullen, and I did a mini-interview of him (December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN'), and I talked both of them into shooting a sequence of Rodney's one footed rocket ollie trick. Neither of them thought it was worth shooting, but I had the feeling that day. The sequence made the magazine.
Then there's the time we did a shoot with Chris Day, just before dusk, on a big, slippery, concrete circle thing in Huntington Beach. I was goofing around on the Wizard shop scooter, doing power slides, while Windy snapped pics of Chris. After the shots of him, Windy said, "Hey, let me see that again," talking about my slides. It was a scooter, but it was also the only time I got to ride something in front of Windy's lens. She got this great shot of me doing a one footed, sideways power slide, back foot off the ground, totally leaned into it, with the back peg on the scooter scraping on the ground. That shot almost made it into FREESTYLIN', in an 80's scooter article. I was stoked, even though it was on a scooter. Then Andy J. called me into his office. "Steve, that shot of you on the scooter makes scooters look cool... and we just can't have that." Andy, Lew, and I laughed. But I was bummed. I really wanted a shot of me riding... something... in FREESTYLIN'. It didn't happen. But I did manage to get to do one little spontaneous photo shoot with Windy, and that's a great notch on the BMX life belt.
Everyone who has a creative drive, also has a long journey in front of them, to discover their own creative process, and what mediums work best for them. There are a lot of ups and downs on that journey, but those ups and downs are where the art comes from. So follow your intuition, find your own path, and keep creating and keep learning.
Here's another great photo by Windy, from the era when I worked there. Who else could make a lawnmower look this fucking cool. Windy snap of Ceppie Maes. Again, you can check out and buy her prints at windyosborn.com.
Wow, I made it through a big, long post without mentioning Windy's
boobs... which happened to be the title of the first blog post of mine
that went viral in the Old School BMX world, way back in 2008. It was a
good little story, but I hadn't learned the limits of what you can and
cannot write about, concerning other people's lives. Sorry about that
one Windy. But I've managed to write close to 1,000 other BMX stories in
the last ten years, that didn't piss Windy off, like the "boobs" post did. So that's good.
Check out my new mash-up "book/blog thing" about the future:
Courtesy of Shannon Gillette, a Boise BMX local who now works for USABMX (BMX sanctioning body), this video is racing at the Fort Boise BMX track, in 1983, I think. I know it says 1984, but I won a contest to help redesign the track in late 1983, and we rebuilt it for 1984. This is the old jump set-up, before the re-build. In any case, this is the spot where the idea of a "scene" that catapults one group ahead of another, first hit me.
On a sunny, brisk, October day in 1982, all the BMX riders from Blue Valley, the unofficial name of our trailer park outside of Boise, packed into my dad's silver Ford van. With about 8-10 kids and bikes packed in, I drove us all to the Fort Boise BMX track, on the north end of downtown Boise, nestled into the edge of the foothills. It was the very first BMX bike race, ever, for most of us. The weekend before, after someone discovered there was a BMX track in Boise, four of us guys and three BMX bikes packed into Scott's mom's Ford Pinto, which was not a hatchback, and went to the race. Scott, James, and Rocky (I think) raced, while I coached and checked out the scene. They all came home with trophies, and we told the rest of our trailer park posse about the BMX scene at a real track. Sure, the track was built inside of an abandoned sewage pond, but we didn't know or care then. It was REAL BMX.
Here's the thing, most of our bikes were pieces of crap. I had a "Kmart special" bike frame, a Sentinal Exploder GX, with some decent parts on it. James, the fastest among us, had a Huffy frame, the "official" cheap, piece of crap bike of the 1980''s. But over the summer of 1982, BMX had become our thing in our isolated trailer park, in the desert (technically sagebrush steppe) a few miles outside of town. Every evening after dinner, as the blazing hot summer temperatures cooled, all of us high school and junior high kids came out and some kind of sport took place. When I moved there in early June, 1982, it was usually a football, basketball, or whiffle ball game. Sometimes we just argued and threw rocks at each other (it was a trailer park.) But often we wound up at these little jumps on the edge of the park, that some motorcycle rider had built a couple of years earlier.
We were White Trash kids, so we were from somewhat dysfunctional families, some more than others, and we joked, argued, talked smack, and continually tried to be better at something than the other guys. As June turned into July, we began to spend less time playing football, basketball or whiffle ball, and more time out at the BMX jumps. One kid bought a BMX magazine at the grocery store with hard-earned lawn mowing baby sitting money ($1 an hour and all the government cheese you could eat), and we all read it and got motivated. We pushed each other, we built our jumps bigger and better, though they were tiny by today's standards, and BMX became our thing. When we broke a stem, or our fork dropout, or our cranks, we bought higher quality ones at Bob's Bikes (and lawn mower repair). We all ended up with several gold anodized parts on our bikes, because other BMXers didn't like the gold color, and Bob would sell them to us a little cheaper. We all had stolen bike parts on our bikes as well, some of the time. We did what we could to keep riding, so we could jump higher than Scott, or do a cross-up better than Brian, or whatever.
By the time we made it to that first race, we were pretty good riders. We were poor kids, by and large. OK, my dad was an engineer, we were solid middle class, but my mom habitually over spent, and my parents moved to the trailer park to save money for a year or two so they could buy a house in town. That plan actually did work. But day to day, we were broke ass teenagers with no place close to get an after school job. So we scraped by and built up our bikes... and our riding skills, by riding every day, and continually pushing each other to improve.
A funny thing happened on that race day. Our Blue Valley trailer park posse, in jeans and T-shirts, with paper plates for number plates, kicked some racing ass. Sure we were all novices. But with the small number of riders, we all raced some intermediate racers, most of whom had $400 to $600, dialed in, name brand bikes, fancy leathers (uniforms), and lots of racing experience. Every one of us, in our first or second races, got first, second, or third. There were seven official local teams racing that day, and I figured out that, had we been an official BMX team, we would have placed second out of eight.
The Fort Boise locals were no slouches. Sure, we were in Idaho, but there was a solid BMX racing scene there, and some riders (with well off parents) raced four to six races a week in the area. They were serious. They were chasing points standings we knew nothing about. Yet our trailer park posse smoked many of them on the track... in our first race.
After the post-race jumping session, the best part of racing then, I drove our elated crew back out into the desert, my brainiac side wondering why we managed to place so well. That was my first inkling in the power of a "scene" of people could have. As I got into the emerging, brand new offshoot of BMX racing, BMX freestyle, or trick riding, I saw that it was small groups of kids, 3-4-5 or so, in random parts of the U.S., that started and promoted our sport, in different areas. Scenes. A couple kids would see a trick show, or buy a magazine, and go out and start learning tricks on their bikes. As years turned into decades, I realized that these small "creative scenes" were how art scenes, music scenes, high tech scenes, and other creative environments, started.
When I heard about the "Creative Class" concept in a local entertainment weekly in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2009, the concept of scenes was well known to me. Richard Florida's research into high tech scenes, and why they clustered in certain regions, put a larger framework around what I'd seen happen over 20-some years in BMX freestyle, skateboarding, snowboarding, art, and music. I learned in his work how these small groups of people, sometimes, turn into major economic engines for their regions. While they don't have the absurd money making potential of high tech, the action sports I was involved in not only became obscure sports that have gone global, they became worldwide industries.
This morning, I read this article about "Brain Drain," put out by City Lab, who build on Rich Florida's ideas and research. I know some regions are going to extreme measures to get highly intelligent people into their areas. I found that out the hard way. But on my three day bus ride from Virginia to California this week, I saw signs of creative scenes springing up all over. I came to a city outside L.A. to join a BMX/bike business, but I saw signs of several really cool art scenes in several cities along the way. I wandered into El Paso's arts district while on a layover, looking for a mini mart to escape the ridiculous bus station food prices. Charlottesville, Virginia had signs of a cool art scene. So did a few other cities, which are kind of lost in the haze of the crazy, 72 hour bus experience.
I've come to believe these small "creative scenes," not just art and music, but action sports, gaming, crafts, street art/graffiti, food trucks/restaurants, custom cars and motorcycles, and, of course, high tech, are key to our economic future as a nation. So while I help my old BMX friend, Rich Bartlett, get his online BMX shop off ground and jamming, I'll be writing more on this idea of creative scenes, and how they are important in our weird, chaotic, rapidly changing world. Much, much more on this area of thinking to come... Now go create something cool, then make your own scene better.
