BMX, action sports, and the 2023 recession...

Here's a really good look at where the bike industry is, as things slow down going into 2023.  Recession?  We're probably in one.  Maybe.  But this guy from Top to Bottom MTB channel does a really solid job of explaining the wild ride of the whole bike industry since the beginning of 2020, how it got to where it is today, and where things seems to be heading.  It's a 7 minute video, well worth checking out if you ride any bike on a regular basis.  

As a Generation X, middle-aged geezer now, I remember being part of the BMX/skate industry in early 1989.  I was working at Unreel Productions, the video arm of the Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear empire.  Yep, kids, "street wear" happened about 35 years ago.  Anyhow, I was basically a production assistant at a company that sponsored skateboarders, snowboarders, and BMXers.  I used my business card to get into the big bicycle industry trade show in Long Beach, in January of 1989.  At that time, BMX freestyle had peaked in its first big wave of popularity, BMX racing was peaking in its 2nd big wave, and skateboarding was peaking in its 3rd wave of popularity.  

As I walked around, I literally heard the same mantra over and over, in several booths, and in small talk between industry people.  "BMX is DEAD!  Mountain bikes are the new thing."  I was a hardcore, if not that great, BMX freestyler, riding every night, just for the fun of it, at that point.  I kept thinking, "What are all of you talking about?  BMX IS NOT DEAD!"  It wasn't dead to all the hardcore riders around the U.S., and some parts of the world.  But it was dead to the major bike companies, and to the corporate sponsors form outside the sport.  They declared BMX dead, and money drained away from the sport.  The fad was over as far as they were concerned.  Almost every BMX freestyle brand dropped their teams that summer.  Top pro riders were left without sponsors.  All of the hardcore riders, regardless of what level our riding was at, went, "What the fuck, dudes?"  

The bad news was that it was really hard to get paid to ride a freestyle bike, even for many top pros.  GT and Haro kept their teams going, and toured their guys all the time, to sell bikes where they could.  This is what causes the waves (roughly ten year cycles) in BMX and skateboarding.  The major bicycle corporations that ride fads pulled their money out, along with corporations that sponsor from outside the bike and skate industries.  They are about profit only, and they ride the "fads" like surfers ride waves.  When one wave is over, they're on to the next one.  In 1989-1990, that meant money flowing out of BMX and skateboarding, and into the new things, mountain bikes (BMX bikes for "adults") snowboarding, and inline skating.  

The good thing about these downturns in the waves, only the hardcore people are left, in the sport aspect, and in the indsutry.  Vert skating was still ruling skateboarding in 1989, but street skating had been slowly rising in popularity.  In the down years, the long economic recession of the early 1990's, World Industries rose up, sponsoring street skaters only.  Many skater-owned companies popped up, like New Deal, Black Label, Blind, Birdhouse, Plan B, 101, and others.  In the BMX world, S&M Bikes was just really getting going as the downturn hit.  Soon after came Standard, Hoffman, Eastern, FBM, Kink, and other rider-owned companies.  In both BMX and skateboarding, the riders and skaters took over their industries.  

Riding and progression didn't slow down, it sped up.  Contests became local events, the big glam events ended.  The main sponsors of BMX and skateboarding in the early 1990's were ramen (23 cents a pack), Del Taco (49 cent tacos), Taco Bell (59 cent tacos), and in the Huntington Beach area, What-a-Lotta Pizza, with $4 cheese pizzas and $5 pepperoni pizzas.  We ate so many of those pizzas at the P.O.W. House, that when no one ordered a pizza for three days, the manager of the local What-a-Lotta Pizza called us up to see if we were alright.  Seriously, that actually happened.  We promptly ordered 4 or 5 pizzas.

If you read my blog on any regular basis, you know I'm an amateur futurist, I write posts about economics, recessions, and shit like that.  (Thank you to the 7 people who read each of those posts).  I think we are now going into a Big World recession, and it will last a while.  A lot of action sports companies will downsize, some good riders and skaters will lose sponsorships, some will get smaller deals, and some industry people will be laid off.  This is already happening in the high tech world.  

But these sports are like a fungus, they never really go away.  They go underground.  Events like Steve Crandall's DIY comps, and Trey Jones' Swampfest will probably be the norm for two or three years.  All the sports will continue to evolve, and a lot of the idiots will wash out of these sports (sorry, not me, I keep blogging from way outside the industry).  The people who really love action sports, athletes and industry people, will stick around.  A lot of crazy ideas will be tried, and really cool new shit will emerge on multiple fronts.  But you might have to get a day job.  Or flip stuff on eBay to  help survive.  When you run out of food, ask one of us geezers who survived the 90's, we all have at least 7 different recipes for ramen meals, most that can be made for under a $1 each.  

In a surfing metaphor, the big set of waves has passed, in the business world.  Now we wait, and try new ideas using very little money.  In a year or two, things pick up some, in 3-4 years, big money will probably flow back in, much more than before.  That's a rough timeline, The Fed is pumping and dumping the economy these days, and they set the time schedule.  Generally, every wave of these sports gets bigger than the last.  Except inline skating, fruitbooting just kind of fizzled. 

This is a BIG recession in the Big World, like nearly all of the world, the big shots who run political parts of the world, and the financial world, are battling it out, and all of us regular people get sloshed around in the meantime.  The world will look quite a bit different in 5 years.  Those of you who try out new ideas, and build some good new shit, will be rewarded down the road, most likely.  All of these sports are much, MUCH larger than they were in the 1990's, so BMX, skateboarding, and other action sports can't totally die, like they nearly did back then.  But things are slowing down.  This happens about once a decade.  Now is when it gets fun.  Learn to live cheap, and think about where you would like to see things at in 5 years.  Then do some DIYing and make something cool happen.  Ride on!

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Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now- My look forward into the Tumultuous 2020's

What will "the future" look like?  Here are Lori Petty and friend, from the intro of Tank Girl, which came out in 1995.  The movie is set in 2033, just over ten years from now.  I'd say we have about a 50/50 chance of this future, at this point.  Here's the trailer for the Tank Girl movie, just in case you somehow missed it.  This post is about the 20 chapter look at our future, that I wrote 2 1/2 to 3 years ago, called Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now.  I'm going back and reading it, chapter by chapter, to see how it's holding up.  Let's do it.  

As I wrote in the last post, I woke up one morning in October 2019, with this big idea for a writing project.  That project would bring out a whole bunch of nebulous, somewhat connected ideas, that were bouncing around my brain.  These ideas were based on three big theories that I had come across, 10 to 30 years earlier, and what I saw playing out in the real world, in the late 2000's and 2010's.  That project turned into Dystopia, as I now call it in shorthand.  

I started writing this group of ideas on paper, in late October 2019, before Covid-19 sprang up in China.  I was writing about a major period of economic chaos, 3 to 5 years long, likely more that I saw coming in our future.  By the time I finished writing the 20th chapter, in early June 2020, Covid had hit the U.S., and the rest of the world.  The stock markets had crashed, mandatory business closures and lockdowns were in effect, and 25 million people were laid off, working from home, or out of work for an unknown period of time.  

So... uh... yeah, I called the chaos part pretty well.  To be clear, I DID NOT see the pandemic coming.  But I expected some "black swan" event to lead us into economic chaos.  Covid became the first black swan.  Actually, because of the pandemic, things got way crazier, much faster than I thought they would.  When I finished writing Dystopia, in June 2020, we still thought the pandemic would probably be over by late summer 2020.  We still had no idea how bad things would get.  

As I'm writing this post, just before Thanksgiving 2022, I think we are now headed into the worst couple of years of this decade, 2023-2024.  The Fed stepped in and created about $6 trillion to help everyone through the pandemic, particularly the banking system and corporate America.  All that money kept the real, underlying economic issues from hitting bottom, and being dealt with.  Ultimately, that money caused our current inflation.  So now we're headed into the "real" recession, and it's going to get ugly.  Er.  Uglier.    

Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now (Book 1) is completely new ideas to most people, though the theories have been around quite a while, and it's a hard read for most.  But I still think I got the underlying Big Picture of why the 2020's will continue to be so crazy, pretty well explained.  If you read any of these chapters, let me know what you think on Facebook (Steve Emig- North Hollywood) or Twitter (@steveemig43).  Here  are links to the individual chapters:

Dystopia: Chapter 1- "We are the mutants"

Intro to the idea that several long term trends are converging, which will lead to a long, crazy, economic downturn, and much chaos, in the 2020's.  Also, because pretty much all of us were raised in "civilization" as opposed to some indigenous culture, we really don't understand the environment, and everyday destruction of the natural world is simply normal to us.  But ultimately, it's unsustainable in the long term.  In this way, we are "mutants" on Earth.

Dystopia: Chapter 2- "The Future the Media Shows You is not the Future You Get"

In the short chapter 2, I tell how I woke up with the idea to go back and watch a bunch of dystopian moive trailers from my childhood and teenage years.  I also discovered that I was writing this project in the exact setting and time, Los Angeles, November 2019, that the 1982 movie Blade Runner was set in.  I realized I was living in my high school self's future.  So I had a real world comparison, of the Blade Runner vision of Los Angeles in 2019, and the real thing, that I was living in.    

Dystopia: Chapter 3- "Where the Hell is My Flying Car?"

In the 1970's, it seemed like we would all have flying cars, like the ones used in Blade Runner, in the 21st century.  OK, technically, flying cars do exist, there have been many variations, going back 80 years.  But the cool movie type hover cars are not available.  The Moller Air Car, which never made it past a hovering prototype, is the closest real world version to that idea.  In addition, I link the 35 movie trailers I looked at, to gauge what 20 century writers thought "the future" would be like.  They were mostly wrong.  

Dystopia: Chapter 4- "Did the Futuristic Movies and TV Shows of My Generation X Childhood Get Anything Right?"

Of all the great minds who wrote about "the future" in the 20 th century, it was an early 1960's cartoon that got more things right about the future, than all the novels and movies.  And yes, George Orwell was right in 1984 about the Big Brother state with surveillance everywhere.  But there was something, just as powerful, that Orwell didn't see coming.  

Dystopia: Chapter 5- "Was There Anyone in the 20th Century Who Did Get "The Future" Right?"

This chapter takes a look at the husband and wife futurist team of Alvin and Heidi Toffler.  Alvin wrote the books, though he mentions often in interviews that he and Heidi worked together thinking concepts through.  I write about his first major book, Future Shock, published in 1970, and The Third Wave, published in 1980.  Even three years after is 2016 death, much of what they forecast came true, and some is still playing out in today's world.  

Dystopia: Chapter 6- "Why Care About the Future?"

Why do people watch weather reports?  We watch weather forecasts to get an idea of what is coming our way in a few hours, or maybe a few days.  By watching a weather report, we get an idea of whether we need ot take different action.  If we see rain in the forecast, we can take an umbrella or a raincoat when we go out, and maybe put boots on.  If it's going to snow in a couple of days, we know we need to get up early to shovel some snow, and warm up the car before going to work.  Reading books or watching videos by futurists is the same idea, their forecasts give you a look at what's coming.  Then you can make better decisions, taking their information into account, if it makes sense to you.  

Dystopia: Chapter 7- "The Power of Creative Scenes- (What I Did Instead of College)"

In high school, I got into the brand new little sport of BMX freestyle.  Doing tricks on "little kid's bikes," that's how most people saw freestyle in 1984-85.  It was dumb, it wouldn't go anywhere.  That's what I was told.  Instead, I was drawn into what I later realized were "creative scenes," small groups of creatively driven people trying something new.  I spent my late teen years and 20's in a series of creative scenes.  This post explains the idea, and shows a 1986 video of several of us riding in San Francisco, and what some of that group went on to do in the years since.  

Dystopia: Chapter 8- "How I Became an Amateur Futurist"

In the BMX freestyle world I first noticed scenes of riders here and there.  This led to my interest in Creative Scenes, and how ideas and movements spread through society.  In addition to that, my high school economics class, the SoCal real estate market of the late 1980's, and a book predicting a great depression, all fueled my interest in economics, social dynamics, how trends interplay with each other, and trying to figure out "The Future."  

Dystopia: Chapter 9- "The 'Bladerunner' future, and the future we actually got"

Our real world in Los Angeles in November of 2019 was much different than this setting that director Ridley Scott predicted back in 1982 in the movie Bladerunner.  We don't have flying cars, the streamlined design buildings, or high caliber androids called replicants.  We do have 30,000 homeless people, 10 million people (not 120 million), the internet, smartphones, and the Kardashians.  Of all the TV shows and movies about the future in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, and early 1980's, The Jetsons cartoons from 1962-63 actually did a better job predicting the technology we have now.  I explain that there are three big theories that I think really help explain the world of the 2020's, and lead into the next chapter.  

Dystopia: Chapter 10- "The Tofflers' Third Wave"

In this chapter I introduce the first of the three big theories that I think help explain where we are in the course of history, and why the world seems so chaotic.  I go back to the late futurist Alvin Toffler, and his wife Heidi, who brainstormed as a team.  Alvin wrote the books explaining their ideas, and published The Third Wave, in 1980.  I explain the first two waves of civilization they saw, and the long periods of time it took for each wave of change to sweep over human society, when they happened.  The Third Wave is the transition from the Industrial Age to a new, Information Age.  Not only is this transition still happening, but it's happening far faster than the earlier waves of change happened.  I believe that understanding that this idea is still at work in our society helps people understand our chaotic current chaotic.  It really helps set the stage for why the 2020's, in particular, will see more change than any previous decade.  

The Tumultuous 2020's: You're a survivor... pat yourself on the back

OK, how many of you kind of feel like this guy, after 2020, 2021, and the first few months of 2022?  This is Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway, where he lives out a Robinson Crusoe couple of years, on a desert island, after a plane crash.  "Wilson" is the volleyball, made by Wilson, that he paints a face on, and becomes his best friend on the island.  This is near the end of the movie where he builds a raft, trying to get out where a ship can find him and save him.  

Give yourself a pat on the back.  Or if you're not that limber, have someone else do it, then give them one.  You're still here.  In the last 2 1/2 years, you have survived a 100 year pandemic that killed over one million Americans, AND you've survived an economic Depression.  Yeah, Depression with a "D."  Really.  That's not including all the personal stuff you've been through, like job loss, working at home, not working, sick and dying friends and relatives, stressed out relationships from all this chaos, and The Great Toilet Paper Scare of the Spring of 2020.  Seriously, if you feel a bit like Tom Hank's character in the scene above, that's OK.  I think we all kind of feel like that at this point.  

Going back to the first few posts of this blog, June 28th, 2017, I've been thinking and writing about huge problems and issues I saw coming in the future.  In late 2017 or early 2018, I started writing about a huge economic downturn I saw coming in the next 2-3 years.  As usual, "the experts" said it could never happen.  Then it happened.

As an amateur futurist my whole life, I've always looked years ahead, wondering, and trying to figure out, what would happen in 2-3-5-10-20 years.  Along the way, I've come across a few theories talking about long and ultra-long term trends that play out in societies over decades and hundreds of years.  I've been watching economic and social trends, to some degree, since the late 1980's.  As we worked through the 2010's, I began to see all of these trends start to merge.  For whatever universal reason, many long and mid term trends were coming together in this period of time.  

What that told me was that we were heading into a really, REALLY crazy era.  The decade of the 2020's made a good reference period.  I began calling them the Tumultuous 2020's.  With my background, observing, and reading lots of books most people don't find interesting, I realized that we were not just in for a big economic downturn, but there would also be social, business, education, communication, and daily life changes.  In short, it appeared to me that this decade in particular, would be one of the biggest periods of change in modern history.  

In late July and August of 2019, when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates, I knew we were getting close to the economic collapse, and I wrote a couple of blog posts about it (this one and this one).  A month later, the Repo Market crisis in banking happened.  Most people barely noticed, but that was the real beginning of the Depression.  About six months later, Covid-19 hit U.S. shores, bringing a 100 year pandemic to us, something none of us were truly prepared for.  That was not just a widespread medical issue, but business shutdown to reduce the Covid spread sparked the major part of the economic collapse.  

The "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918-1920 killed an estimated 17-25 million people, perhaps millions more.  The current Covid-19 coronavirus crisis, in worldwide effects, was the worst pandemic since.  It has killed over 6.2 million people worldwide, and more than a million here in the United States.  You survived it, so did I, and so did the rest of us still around.  That's a big deal.  It's not something we were prepared for, and it changed everyone's lifestyle in some way, across the board.  Remember March 2022, "Just wear a mask for two weeks and we'll get through this."  Yeah, we had no idea what we were in for, which is a good thing in many ways.  But we're still here.  

That acute medical emergency led to massive work shutdowns, and millions of people losing their jobs, some temporarily and some permanently.  Somewhere over 100,000 small businesses went out of business, and nearly all other businesses, small, medium, and large, struggled to get through it.  That was another big blow to all of us.  The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the official measure of all things purchased in the U.S., dropped over 32% in the Spring of 2020.  That was about the same as the huge drop during the Great Depression of the 1930's.  A drop in GDP of more than 10% IS an economic Depression.  There's an official definition, though they avoid it today, and that's one of the two criteria that separates a recession from a depression.  So you, me, and all of us have survived an economic depression.  And a 100 year pandemic, AND all the other personal stuff that's happened, in the last 2 1/2 years.  If you feel like you've been through the ringer, you have.  We all have.  So give yourself a quick pat on the back, you have survived two really big, global catastrophes, since 2020 rolled in.  And you've survived all the drama in your personal life, caused by those issues, and other issues, as well.  

Is it over?  No.  This decade is still going to be crazy, all kinds of crazy.  But you made it through some serious shit.  We all did.  We should be much adaptable now, and much more able to handle what else happens in the next several years.  The good part is, as old ideas, old industries, and old institutions collapse around us, we get to build a new world, in a sense.  There's a lot more change coming, but we can help create that change.  This is one of the greatest times in modern history to try new ideas, build a new business, or create needed, or to work for meaningful social change.  

In a sense, it's a Do It Yourself world now.  What do you think needs to be built?  Get to it.  

I started a new blog, check it out:

The Spot Finder

Welcome to Dystopia: My take on why the 2020's will be the craziest decade ever

 After a couple of years of telling people we were headed for a huge recession, or possible great depression, I woke one morning with an idea to put a lot of my big ideas into a framework.  Between October 2019 and April 2020, I wrote a 20 chapter book/blog thing, here's the link:

Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now- Book 1

In the 20 chapters, or essays, I explained why I thought things were going to get completely crazy for pretty much the whole 2020's decade.  I call this ten year span the Tumultuous 2020's.  It's a lot of big ideas, three big concepts from top thinkers, and my own thoughts on how their theories help explain why things seem so crazy.  Covid hit in the middle of writing this, taking things to a level of crazy beyond what I was expecting.  Now, nearly 2 1/2 years into this decade, we all know it's a crazy period of time.  And we've got 7 1/2 years to go...  So this is a reminder that this big book/blog thing is sitting out there on the web, and I think it can help give a context to this turbulent time of history we are are going through.  Check it out, if you dare.  Oh, we're being driven into another, bigger recessionary period right now.  Hang on.

I started a new personal blog in May 2022, check it out:

Steve Emig's Street Life- #SEstreetlife