Why I'm not doing any drawing right now...

Janis Joplin drawing I did last year (2023), one of the most detailed drawings I've done with my Sharpies.  #sharpiescribblestyle

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't shared any new drawings in a few months now. If you've followed my blog or social media, at any consistent level, you also know I'm a homeless guy.  I'm not your typical homeless guy, by any means.  I work 7 days a week, writing, blogging, and drawing usually, and doing social media every day to promote the art and writing, and keep in touch with the people who follow my work.  

But it's winter here in Southern California, and that means it's our rainy season.  When I first moved to SoCal, back in the 1980's, the rainy season was from early December to the end of February.  Back then, by March first the rain was over.  Southern California is known for is great weather, so I'm not complaining.  But it's different here.  We rarely get a quick downpour that's gone in 20 minutes, and almost never get actual thunderstorms.  I think I've seen lightning three times in California.  

This is desert that's right next to the ocean, much different than Florida, which California often gets compared to.  We get long, slow rains that often last two to four days.  It's gray and ugly, with steady rain, almost the whole time.  All winter here, it's chilly, in the 50 to 65 degree (F) range, often with some wind.  No big deal, until you're outside in it around the clock, and it gets down to 40 or 45 degrees at night.  Now I know people in most of the country are laughing.  Hey, I grew up in Ohio and Idaho, I saw plenty of cold and snowy weather as a kid.  My family survived a week during the Blizzard of '78 with our power out, heating our living room with the Franklin stove, one of those steel fireplaces.  I appreciate the lack of weather in SoCal, a lot.  

Young Bob Dylan Sharpie drawing I did in 2018.  

But the winter rainy season here, when you're homeless, is a time of panhandling money for basic needs (food, bus fare, laundry, other daily needs) during the sunny days, then hiding as much as possible, and hanging out in dry places (libraries, fast food restaurants, buses, metro trains etc.) during the rainy days.  It costs extra money to stay dry when homeless.  

It's a time of just surviving much of the winter.  I get a lot less done as far as writing and particularly with artwork, because I spend a lot more time scraping up money, dodging the rain, drying out clothes and sometimes my sleeping bag, and hanging out in places where I can't draw.  There's more daily "work" to surviving as a homeless person during the rainy season.  

With the climate change going on, the Southern California rainy season has stretched out, as well.  We may get rain in November, and  those rain storms now stretch into March, and often April, maybe even May.  It used to be that on March 1st, there would be no rain, at all, until early December.  Now this season of having rainstorms every week lasts maybe six or eight weeks longer into the spring.  

This year, in addition to the normal rainy season to deal, a bunch of other stuff happened.  I signed up for Food Stamps again(called CalFresh), the one government program that really helps, in late November.  I got one months worth a couple days later.  I normally get those loaded on my card the 2nd of each month.  But they didn't show up in December, or in January.  That meant I had to panhandle much more to buy everyday food, right after the holidays when regular people pretty much stop giving to homeless people.  So I was struggling for day to day food in early January.  I called up the office twice, and they said, we'll load your card in a day or two.  Then it didn't happen.  

In addition, the sketchy prepaid debit card I had, that lets me get my art money out  of my Paypal, that account got shut down.  No notice, no reason.  Eventually I got a notice saying it expired, but the expiration date on the card  wasn't until 2025.  That happened in December.  After that, I couldn't sell artwork the way I normally do, using Paypal for payments,  So that was a a double financial hit during the already sketchy rainy season.  

Then I got really sick in mid January.  I was just worn down, more tired than usual, not eating much at all, and caught some infection when my system was depressed.  I went to the hospital, where I spent 2 1/2 days, getting antibiotics.  Then got shipped to a "homeless recuperative facility" way up in Palmdale.  When I left the hospital, they had either lost my sleeping bag and blanket, or thrown it away.  When you sleep outside, a sleeping bag is pretty important. The infection I got turned to cellulitis in my left leg, which got really swollen, and super painful.  Initially I was told I would be at the recuperative place for 90 days.  Then that got cut to just over two weeks.  The recuperative places are super low budget, and while the staff was really cool, I didn't always get my meds on time, and didn't heal as fast as expected.

 Stevie Ray Vaughn Sharpie drawing I did back in 2018.

I could barely walk a few painful steps when I went in there.  By the end of the two weeks,  I'd lost about 10-15 pounds, because we didn't get a whole lot of food.  by the time I left, I was walking about a quarter mile to the local library every day.  My leg was still really swollen by the end of each day, and still swells up every day.  

I expected to be sent back out to the streets.  But then I got sent to a "transitional housing" place on the outskirts of downtown L.A..  It was an 80 or 100 year old, dilapidated, building.  The rundown, old hotel was a real looney bin of characters.  One of the residents was walking around with a baseball bat under his arm in the lobby, because someone had dissed him a couple days before.  The food was pig slop.  There was mold or mildew all over the window sill of my room, and some on the mattresses.  The toilet didn't flush, and there were no public restrooms in the building, which had been a mediocre hotel, in probably the 1940's.  The elevator was tiny, and had the safety thing you had to pull across before hitting the button to go up or down.  

I was supposed to live there, with no food stamps, surviving off of their horrible, cold food, for 3 to 6 months, while they tried to find me "permanent housing."  Now, that sounds good to average people.  But "permanent housing" means being diagnosed as either having mental illness or serious addiction, then getting S.S. Disability or SSI.  Then you eventually get approved, living in poverty, in a ghetto apartment that is empty because the people in the ghetto don't want to live there.  

"Housing" programs DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT help you get back to working in some normal way, and making a good living again.  When you go into housing, you are going to rely on a government check, and several local programs, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.  You're not allowed to earn very much money.  If you find a decent job, and start making money, you lose your housing, your food stamps, your monthly government check, and your medical insurance and prescription benefits.  My point is, there is a reason that there are 40,000 homeless people in L.A. county. If the "housing programs" were really better than living on the streets, the homeless people would flood into them.  Most people, myself included, would rather live homeless, rather than to be in the current housing programs.  The people going into housing are the worst of the worst, the people who just don't care anymore.  

I can actually work every day as an artist and writer, living outside.  I'm (supposedly) allowed to earn money, and try to get my life back on track.  The homeless programs of this country are creating a separate population of people, and they are government sponsored drug addicts, for the most part.  There are over 7 million men already living this way, and more every day.  I don't want to be a government sponsored drug addict.  I don't drink ANY alcohol.  The last beer I had was in 2009, I think.  I don't do any drugs.  I don't take any prescription drugs, except when I'm sick, like for the leg infection.  I don't do any recreational drugs, at all.  My last hit off a joint was at a Cirque du Soleil crew party in 1997 or '98, and before that was in Boise in 1987.  I don't have a work history after the years of not being able to find a job while in North Carolina, which, combined with being old and out of shape, make a "real job" pretty much impossible.  If there was a job I could have found that would pay enough to rent a place to live, I would have done it years ago.  So I keep working to create my own job, some combination of my art and writing.  Not being able to get a real bank account has been one big issue over the last few years. 

Evel Knievel Sharpie drawing I did in 2023.

 

Anyhow, I left the sketchy ass transitional housing, the government sponsored crack house in downtown L.A., after one night, and went back to the streets.  Right into the storm that dumped over 7 inches of rain in about four days.  A few nights later, someone stole my shopping bag with some of my stuff, while I was sleeping.  It had all my spare clothes in it. 

So, to recap, I lost my food stamps in late December (but finally got them going again a couple weeks ago).  I lost use of the debit card that I use to get money out of Paypal, so I can't get paid to draw right now.  I lost my sleeping bag and blanket.  A friend here loaned me a sleeping bag, but it's really not good under about 48 degrees.  It's much better than nothing.  And I lost all my spare clothes.  I have the clothes I'm wearing, and two extra pairs of socks right now.  That makes laundry a bit of a problem.  Then I left my big sketchpad in a restaurant one night, and lost that.  That was totally my fault, I was tired and just spaced off and left it behind.  I do still have my Sharpies and basic art supplies.

So I'm working to slowly replace all the stuff I lost, and get back just to a basic street survival level.  Then figure out a new debit card I can get, and get back to drawing.  This is everyday life as a working, homeless, artist/ blogger.  But it was just a whole bunch of hits in a short period of time, and that time was the worst part of the year for weather here. It's just been a rough winter.  

I'm writing a lot now, and I will get back to drawing, but probably not for a couple more months.  Check out my Substack for some of the deeper writing I've been doing link below).  Yes, this is a depressing, whiny post.  I don't write these very often.  I'm not asking for help, I'm just explaining my current situation.  My Patreon money from February and March is in Paypal, but I can't access it yet.  There's just a bunch of little steps I need to take to get back to "homeless normal," and then work to rise beyond that.  So that's where I'm at, for any of you wondering.  Lots more writing coming, and the drawings will start up again when I can do it.  

"Regrets"  The drawing that was in my big sketchpad when I left it in a restaurant one night, about a month ago.  I did this Sharpie drawing in October and November of 2023.  

I'm doing most of my writing on Substack lately, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out.

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack- "Steve Emig Art"

    
 

Sharpie Scribble Style drawings from the last year... 4/16/2022

For quite a while, I wanted to draw a set of eyes real big, just to see how it would look in my style.  I asked a Facebook friend if I could draw her eyes, since she had beautiful green ones.  She knew me well enough to not get creeped out, and sent me a few selfies to work from.   To help her green eyes pop, I looked for a way to make the background red or near red.  My idea was that she was peeking through an a hole created by a missing brick, in an old brick wall at her boyfriend, in a broken down part of the city.  But nearly everyone who saw this finish drawing thought it was creepy.  It wasn't meant to be.  

The words in the background in the bricks are a bunch of quotes from music and literature about eyes.  I was actually stoked on the final drawing.  But this is one of the ones I lost when I couldn't afford to keep paying my storage unit rent last year.  Bummer.  I drew this in 2020, or early 2021.  I planed to save this for an art show.  But I lost the original, and never got a copy to my eye model.  18" X 24", #sharpiescribblestyle

This taxi driver drawing was one I did just for myself, to remind me of my 6 1/2 crazy years driving all kinds of people, from homeless people, to a billionaire, from proper church ladies, to porn stars, from stone cold sober, to drunk maniacs.  I lived in my taxi for 5 1/2 of those years, and I have hundreds of pretty crazy stories form those days.  I actually got into a cab one day, and another driver had written "Drive, Die, Cash" behind the visor, on the roof, in pen.  Those three words seemed to sum up taxi driving better than anything else.  Unfortunately, this is another one I lost when I lost my storage unit last fall (2021).  Again... bummer.  But shit happens.  18" X 24"

I did this drawing, and put the original on a skateboard deck, for the 2020 Boozer Jam.  That's an annual BMX jam at Sheep Hills in Costa Mesa, which started as a fundraiser for Mike "Boozer" Brown, who was paralyzed at a race in 2011, I think.  Mike died in 2019, and so the 2020 jam became the first memorial Boozer Jam.  This deck was raffled off, and someone later mounted a small clock in the top of it.  

Not a Sharpie drawing.  This is one of my "M.C. Escher Skatepark" drawings.  It's a freehand pen and ink drawing, blending my high school drafting isometric skills, with a little absurdity.  I started drawing these while working at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, way back in 1986.  I hadn't done any in years, and drew a couple a few months ago.  They were quickly snapped up by a Facebook friend, after I posted them.  9" X 12"

I first drew a Grey alien in about 1998, and started drawing them smoking cigarettes in 2009, I think.  Sparked by learning about NFT's, and all the generated art series, I started drawing a bunch of my aliens small, all with funny sayings.  I even came up with a little backstory on them, and I call them Grey Trash, like trailer park aliens.  These are 5 1/2" by 8 1/2", and done freehand, in my #sharpiescribblestyle.  I've done about 35 of this latest series of these, and I post them on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, from time to time.  

I have a new blog now, check it out:

The Spot Finder     #thespotfinder

 

Grey Trash: It started with Norbit

 This is Norbit, one of the three aliens that crashed in 1947 north of Roswell, now living in "Grey Valley" mobile home park, in a canyon hidden deep on a military base.   

After going down north of Roswell in 1947, one crew member died in the crash, and the second died in transit to a U.S.  Army Air Force Base in Roswell, months before the U.S. Air Force was created.  This guy knew very little English, he was the engineer of the craft, not the crew chief.  When the military asked what his name was, he thought they were asking him where he came from.  He said, "In orbit," in the best English he could manage.  They misunderstood him, and thought his name was Norbit.  The name stuck, as the weeks passed, and he learned English, and the government personnel learned of his world and ways.  

Yes, the Roswell crash was 75 years ago.  But Grey aliens have a natural lifespan of about 150 Earth years, and Norbit was 35, in our years, when his ship crashed.  At 110 years old now, he's got plenty of life left, comparable to a 60-year-old here on Earth.  

Norbit has been working with various U.S. government agencies, mostly on engineering projects, since 1947.  And yes millennials, he smokes.  His planet actually has air that's quite toxic by Earth standards, and the Greys have adapted to it over thousands of years, and their bodies flush airborne toxins out much better than ours do.  He picked up smoking in the 1940's, when many of the humans he worked with smoked, and hasn't stopped.  He still shows no signs of lung cancer, and telling to stop smoking really pisses him off.

Norbit, overall, is really low key, like many engineers.  He doesn't talk a lot, he likes solving tough engineering problems, and keeps to himself much of his off time.  He enjoys playing backgammon and a few card games now and then, and watching science based shows on TV and YouTube. 

While he was the first Grey to live here on Earth, among humans, for an extended period, he's not alone.  It turns out that, as advanced as the Greys spacecraft are, our lightning here on Earth can really do a number on them, or at least the craft from a few decades ago.  As more and more craft crashed on Earth, more and more Grey aliens crashed in the 1950's, 60's, and since.  The survivors all lived in secret bases, deep underground, until the mid 1970's.  At that point they had a bit of a mutiny, and demanded to be able to live somewhere on the surface.  

After much debate, a well hidden little canyon,  a ways east of  White Sands missile range, in western New Mexico, was chosen as the site.  Government officials moved in a bunch of single wide mobile homes, drilled a well for water, and put in the basic necessities.  The 53 Greys in the U.S. at the time all moved in, and the place soon got nicknamed "Grey Valley."  

Since aliens don't officially exist, they can't travel anywhere in public, so they're pretty much stuck in Grey Valley.  There is a big cave next to their trailer park, with a pub in the front part, just out of sight.  There are several lower levels hollowed out in it, for labs, machine shops, and tech rooms, for the various types of work they do.  They had TV early on, and eventually got internet a couple years after it came out.  

So now most of the aliens there are active online, using aliases.  Several play multi-player online games, and interact with humans who think they're just another person on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram somewhere.  They also buy a shitload of stuff from Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other online shops. Everything they order gets delivered to a main gate loading dock, miles away, then transported by truck to Grey Valley.  Most of them are into buying crypto as well, and several have become crypto millionaires, which doesn't make the U.S. government very happy.  But they do their respective jobs, and otherwise keep low profiles.  So the feds tolerate their online interactions, and crypto and a bit of stock trading. 

After many years living as a small group in a trailer park, though, some of them are getting kind of weird.  In the future I'll share with you my drawings of this odd, quirky group of aliens.  They are the Grey Trash.  Here are a couple more.  There are many more to come, with their thoughts on different things.  

Moron disclaimer:  Just in case you're a complete fucking idiot (and many of you are, judging by your online posts), this story is all FICTION.  The Grey aliens living in secret bases is an American urban legend at this point, and my Grey Trash drawings are my take on this idea.  I have no idea if aliens actually exist, if the Greys exist, if a UFO is what crashed outside Roswell, or any of the other things people have heard about aliens.  I started drawing aliens in 1998 or so, and first drew one smoking a cigarette in 2009.  It just made me laugh, and the idea of "white trash aliens living in a trailer park," began to form in my head.  

The Grey Trash are coming...

 They live in secret, in a government funded trailer park, in an obscure little valley in the New Mexico desert.  They can't travel,  They can't be seen in public.  They mostly work for the U.S. government, and the ones who don't get a government check monthly, like humans in any other trailer park.  They are online with aliases.  They kick your ass in online games, and have made a shitload in crypto profits.  They're sarcastic, and getting pretty weird in some cases.  They are trailer trash aliens.  They are Grey Trash.  More coming soon...

Jessie Armand Sharpie art from a decade ago...

Jessie Armand's black and white doodle art was THE Sharpie art style in 2011-12.  Here's a cool time lapse of him doing an office wall.  

My first attempt at a marker mural on paper, was in 2002, in a tiny room I lived in Garden Grove.  It completely sucked.  But it got me started making huge collages, and trying to find a cool way to blend colors with Sharpies.  "Real artists" know that Sharpies dry quick, and you can't blend colors.  I didn't bother asking any real artists.  In late 2005, while actually living in an indie art gallery, I discovered my Sharpie Scribble Style.  I've been evolving and pushing it for the 16+ years since.  

As crazy as it sounds, I never bothered to google "Sharpie art" until 2012, after I had been drawing kid's names in #sharpiescribblestyle, and doing drawings for my niece and nephew.  That was also about the time I found three skateboard decks by our dumpster, and did "Grey Trash" alien drawings, then mounted them on the decks.  

When I did finally look up Sharpie art, this video, and a couple others of Jessie's work, are what I found.  His style blew my mind.  I started doing some black and white doodle drawings now and then to try and mimic his style, which I never came close to doing.  My Sharpie doodles are pretty cool looking now, but not near as cool as Jessie's work from a decade ago.  Check out this Lamborghini he did.  Here's Jessie's website today.  Wow.

Meanwhile, I kept drawing, and in late 2015, started drawing people, and trying to sell my drawings, since I couldn't make any money or find a "real" job.  I'm still broke, but I've sold about 100 originals since.  Here's one of my favorites...

The late, great, Stevie Ray Vaughn.  #sharpiescribblestyle.

A few more of my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings form the last 6 years...

These are all 18" X 24" drawings, that took 35 to 45 hours each to draw, done in the Sharpie Scribble Style technique I invented.  Above, Dave Vanderspek, full speed ahead, at the 1987 Palm Springs Tramway road GPV race, from the best photo I ever took.  Below that,Vic Murphy's ultra classic 1 foot tabletop off a curb (from a black & white photo).  Then Kurt Cobain drawing, drawn for my first little art show at Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, NC, 2017.  Below that, Gene Simmons/KISS drawing at the same show.  I drew the "KISS" in my tent in the woods, didn't have a reference of their logo, and yes, I know I did the S's wrong.  It sold anyhow.  Below that, Tupac Shakur.  Then Jerry Garcia.  #sharpiescribblestyle

 

More Sharpie Scribble Style drawings...

Starting from above, Lana Del Rey, done for the 16th birthday of a girl named Erin, whose mother interviewed me for the Winston-Salem paper, in 2017.  Below, this is me standing on stage with the Maya Angelou drawing I did in 2018, at a 90th birthday party in Winston-Salem for Maya, a few years after her death, where she lived the last decades of her life.  Dr. Maya Angelou's niece and archivist, Ms. Johnson, has a full sized print of this in her collection.  Yoda, done for myself in 2016, and now living on a wall east of Chicago.  The Princess Leia drawing is one I started a couple days before Carrie Fisher got sick, and went to the hospital.  By some freaky coincidence, I was drawing this when she passed away.  RIP Carrie Fisher (she's getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this summer, BTW... finally).  This is the second Johnny Cash drawing I did, and one of the earliest musician drawings.  It was in the small art show I did at Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, in November of 2017.  Bob Marley/One Love, done in 2017.  The Blues Brothers drawing is another one I did for the show at Earshot Music, in late 2017, it sold a couple days later.  The Ron Wilkerson drawing was the first large (18" X 24") BMX drawings I did in 2016, when I was just beginning to sell the drawings of people.  #sharpiescribblestyle, #steveemigart

 

Grey Trash Sharpie art is coming soon...

I started drawing aliens in about 1998.  But the Greys smoking cigarettes started when I was experimenting with street art in 2007, and then with Sharpies in 2009, when I was living in a homeless shelter in Winston-Salem, NC, and looking for work.  I drew one grey wearing a wife beater tank top and smoking a cigarette, and it just made me laugh.  So I drew more.  These ones are on some skateboard decks I found by our dumpster in 2012.  The basic idea was, "What if there really are grey aliens living on some secret government base somewhere, and they got sick of staying underground?"  The Feds would build some kind of  small place for them on the surface, in the middle of nowhere, likely in mobile homes. 

So we'd wind up with a bunch of aliens in a trailer park in Nevada or New Mexico, and they wouldn't be able to leave.  Would they take on human trailer park characteristics?  Would they turn into White Trash aliens in a desert trailer park?  Would they become Grey Trash? 

That was the basic idea.  I started thinking about that, and then drew some.  So I've been drawing a bunch of these guys again.  With my laptop gone now, and a phone with no data, uploading photos is an issue.  But more of these guys are coming soon...

The quote on the last board below is, "I'm not crazy, and if I was, I'd send my invisible ninja leprechauns after you."  #greytrash, #sharpiescribblestyle

A funny thing happened on the way to sell art yesterday...

After being busy trying to sell art online, opening an fledgling online store (WPOS Kreative), I finally took a couple of the art skate decks I've made (#sharpiescribblestyle) to set up on Hollywood Boulevard yesterday.  The star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dedicated to our current president, has taken some abuse over the years.

At one point, a group was trying to have Trump's star removed.  Back then, Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself, then tweeted that he knew whose star should replace it, Carrie Fisher, a cause championed by Kristin Grady at #astarforcarrie.  I talked to Kristin last night, she has over 5,000 names on her paper petition to get Carrie Fisher a star, which, let's face it, is needed.

All that aside, I came up the escalator from the Red Line (subway) and saw this gold toilet sitting on the black marble of the Walk of Fame.  I have no idea who did this, my guess would be pranksters with a YouTube channel.  I haven't seen any news since yesterday morning, maybe the prankster is known.

In any case, I laughed my ass off, and snapped a photo.  The was even a turd in the toilet, apparently a fake one.  Some Mexican chicks actually reached down to touch it and see if it was real, as I walked up.  I didn't need to know that bad, but it was hilarious, whomever did it.  As our nation teeters on the brink of collapsing into theocratic totalitarianism, and presidential impeachment looms, it's good  we can still laugh at the whole fucked up situation we're all in at the moment.  Now... if we can only solve this issue, and get a competent president in the White House again, and pull the Constitution out of the trash can and put it back to use.

After that, I set up with the other artists on the sidewalk, between the TCL Chinese Theater (check footprints below) and the Hard Rock Cafe.  I had a couple of my Harley Quinn art skate decks to show off.  It was cold, super windy, and I didn't sell one.  But I did get the cosplay couple who dress up as Harley Quinn and the Joker on Hollywood Blvd. (they take photos with tourists for tips) to give my art decks a thumbs up.  Pretty cool.  It's warmer, and hopefully less windy, today.  I'm working on a sea turtle skate art deck, but don't have any done yet.  I'm still drawing the turtle, based on a Barspinner Ryan freedving photo, which will look pretty dang cool.

My little set-up on the Walk O' Fame.  The big white tent on the left, that's a block long, part of the HUGE set-up for the new Star Wars movie premiere, which I think happens tomorrow night.

I wrote a while back that I went to the hand and foot print ceremony for Jay and Silent Bob, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, made legendary in the movie Clerks, and many films since.  The latest, of course, is Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.  The hand and foot prints for the bong-namic duo are now out and set in the TCL Chinese Theater fore walk area.  The got placed right below the Fantastic Four prints, I think.  I got to watch a live podcast with Kevin Smith there the night before last, of the Fatman Beyond podcast, and Kevin was stoked on the placement of his and Jason's prints.

Kevin Smith, left, in his trademark backwards, white baseball cap, and Mark Bernadin, right.  My view of the Fatman Beyond live podcast taping, two nights ago, in front of the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood.  Seriously, it was some funny ass shit, and I had no idea just how little I know about Star Wars until sitting in that crowd.  Oh, and if you ever had a dream of having sex while standing in Darth Vader's footprints at the Chinese, it's been done.  Really.  Amazing what you learn at a podcast taping.  The podcast will be up soon, and video version will be on YouTube, too.

 So that's a funny, cold, windy day's tale from the weirdness that is Hollywood Boulevard. 

What Dave Vanderspek brought to the BMX Freestyle Party

Blog post:  What Dave Vanderspek brought to the freestyle party

This is photo of Dave Vanderspek was taken by 13-year-old Bill Batchelor, for his really amazing Shreddin' zine, from July of 1985.  This was a couple years before wall rides, three years before the first street peg grind photo in a magazine, and five years before the first handrail grinds on street.  Doing a bar endo in a really gnarly urban place was one of Vander's early street moves, setting the stage for the future of street riding to come.

 I started hearing about Dave Vanderspek in BMX Plus in 1983, when I was getting serious about BMX racing in Idaho, and only BMX Plus was available in 7-11's and grocery stores in Boise.  I didn't run into BMX Action until I started buying parts at Bob's Bikes (and Lawnmower Repair), my local bike shop in Boise.  The first photo I can remember of Dave was at a skatepark contest at Pipeline Skatepark, when he was blasting huge 7 and 8 foot high jumps out of the back corner of the square side of the Combi Pool.  The pool was 13 feet deep with five feet of vert and huge coping, and Dave was BLASTING out of that pool.  It seemed insane.  Later, when I got to ride that pool a little, I couldn't even get my front tire up to the tile in that corner, though I could carve right up to the coping in the round bowl.  Dave's massive flyouts 3 or 4 years earlier seemed even more amazing.  And completely impossible.

While obviously an amazingly talented rider, Dave didn't spend his riding career on one factory team.  He rode a Schwinn in the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine.  He later rode for the Skyway factory team, and later for Kuwahara, and Boss.  But he spent most of his time promoting the Curb Dogs, the local, San Francisco bike/skate team he helped found.  With guys like Maurice Meyer, skater Tommy Guerrero, and several others, The Curb Dogs was the best known independent team in the world, and always landed in the top 5 teams when polls were taken, always beating some of the factory teams of the day.  Since I just did the drawing below as a tribute to Vander, I'm going to be writing some posts about my memories of riding, hanging out, and talking with him.  But in this post, I want to list five big things Dave Vanderspek brought to BMX freestyle in the 1980's.

Street riding- Dave was one of the earliest pioneers of BMX street riding.  Yes, I know, every early rider rode on "the streets."  Bob Haro and R.L. Osborn used to practice kickturns at the Larry's Donuts bank in Redondo Beach, and there's a classic photo of Bob Haro doing an edged kickturn on the 6th and Commonwealth banks, in downtown L.A..  Yes, everyone rode on the streets on their bikes, and hit little curb jumps.  But not everyone had an urban terrain like San Francisco.  Dave Vanderspek was one of the first riders to see the paved world as a big skatepark/bike park, ready to be explored and sessioned, just for the fun and thrill of riding it.  Dave and the Curb Dogs were one of the big early forces in pushing the use of urban terrain in all news ways and figuring out how it could be used to have fun on a bike. 

Punk Rock- As a BMXer, skater, and a punker, Dave brought the "fuck it" punk rock attitude into BMX in a way no one else did in the early 1980's.  With the Curb Dogs bike/skate demo team, he also took the "Do It Yourself/DIY" attitude of punk, and brought it into BMX freestyle, where we were listening to all kinds of music, and wearing motorcycle-style leathers and helmets to compete in flatland.  Vander's punk rock vibe, and attitude, led the way in BMX freestylers learning to be ourselves, wear more functional clothing, and working hard to build and promote our own teams, invent new tricks, and figuring out a way to make things we wanted to see happen in the world.

The Curb Dogs-  In the early days of BMX freestyle spreading across the U.S. and the world, there was no team like the Curb Dogs.  In the annual NORA cup awards, the Curb Dogs were always in the top 5 most popular freestyle teams, ranking among all the factory teams of the day.  They always beat 3 or 4 factory teams in the magazine reader polls.  That happened because Dave, while coming across as a Jeff Spiccoli-like goofball sometimes, worked his ass off to be weird, have fun, and promote the hell out of the Curb Dogs, and BMX freestyle itself.

The first BMX halfpipe contest- While Ron Wilkerson took vert to a new level by putting on the 2-Hip King of Vert contests from 1987 on, the very first BMX halfpipe contest was promoted by Dave Vanderspek at skater Joe Lopes' ramp, in San Francisco.

The first BMX street contest- If you ask an old school rider when the first BMX street contest was, they'll most likely say it was the 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California, in the spring of 1988.  Heck for years, I thought that was the first street contest, because that was the first I heard of and went to.  But once again, Dave Vanderspek led the way, holding a small, NorCal street contest months before Santee happened.  It was a regional thing, none of the magazines showed up to cover it.  From what I heard, that wasn't the point, Dave just decided someone needed to throw a BMX street contest, so he put one on, before anyone else.

Dave Vanderspek, airing out of the Pipe Bowl at Pipeline Skatepark, 1983 or 1984.  Dave didn't have a skatepark to practice at in NorCal, and he rode a coaster brake in the pools.  That pool is 12 feet deep with four feet of vert.  Few, if any, skateparks today are as hard to air out of as the Pipe Bowl was.  

How good of a rider was Dave Vanderspek?  While Dave Vanderspek was known for doing easy tricks like track stands and and harder tricks like bar endos, he had a full bag of flatland tricks, many of them, like the bar endo, and the Vander Roll, were tricks he invented.  Some were not super hard, and more for show, like the Vander Roll, but some tricks were really hard.  I also saw Dave doing blunts on parking blocks on top of banks, a predecessor to the street abubaca, a year before the abubaca was invented.  

One day at a contest at the velodrome, I was talking to Dave, and he looked over at a hubba, an angled concrete wall on the side of a small set of stairs.  He asked, "You think I can pedal stall that?"  Since I'd never seen a pedal stall, I said, "Huh?"  Dave pedaled slowly towards it, did a huge bunnyhop, and landed on his pedal, on the angled wall, 4 1/2 feet off the ground.  First try.  He literally did a 3 1/2 foot high bunnyhop, turned 90 degrees, and landed on his pedal, at a time when street peg stalls didn't exist, and peg grinds on ledges were a year or two away from being invented.  Then he hopped down and kinda of laughed.  I'd never seen anything like that, and Vander blew my fucking mind.  Again.

On one or more occasions, Dave put a freewheel on his freestyle bike, and raced B Pro, and was in the mix with the other pro racers of the day.  He didn't have a skatepark to practice in, but competed in skatepark contests.  He was so far ahead of the game in early street riding, that we usually didn't understand how hard and gnarly his tricks really were.  Then there's that insanely high bunnyhop tabletop photo from 1983 (in a previous section).  That photo is now 37 years old, and I've never seen anyone equal it in height and style, to this day.  Dave Vanderspek wasn't just a funny and charismatic goofball, and a good promoter, he was seriously one of the best all around riders in BMX freestyle in the early and mid 1980's, and a pioneer in many different ways. 

While he died tragically in 1988, Dave Vanderspek was a huge influence on the world of BMX freestyle, and many of the top riders of the era.  That's why I chose to draw a picture of him with my Sharpies, the 4th drawing in my series of Old School BMX freestyle pros.  Here's the picture I drew.  It's 11" X 14", drawn in my signature Sharpie scribble style, and  some signed (by me) and  numbered copies are still available.  Contact me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com for info. 

Martin Aparijo drawing

My third in the series of Old School pro BMX freestyle drawings is this one of Martin Aparijo.  A lot of people liked the "Dizz-pocalypse" drawing of John "Dizz" Hicks, and I sold a few.  Then there was a bigger response to the Dave Voelker foot plant drawing, and I sold about 15.  Talking to Martin a month or so ago, he said I could draw one of him.  So here it is.  My deal with these drawings is to draw something and make copies average people an afford.  Then I ultimately give the original to the rider themselves.  This way I make some money to get my act together again, people who like my art get a cool, affordable piece to hang on the wall, and the riders get a cool original drawing of themselves for decoration or promotion. 

Martin Aparijo is one of the pioneers of a ton of standard flatland tricks, and one of the first pros many of us looked up to, when getting into BMX freestyle in the first wave of popularity in the mid-1980's.  He was a long time GT pro rider, kicked butt in contests, and did hundreds, probably a few thousand, shows over many years.  This drawing is classic Martin Aparijo all they way, full GT leathers, doing a bar endo.

It's drawn in my unique Sharpie scribble style, from a photo.  The whole thing is layers of scribbles, and each color is made up of 3 to 8 colors of scribbles layered over each other.  It's a technique I invented. 

I'm selling 50 copies of this drawing, each full size, 11" X 14," high quality color copies on card stock.  I'm going to sign and number each one, and Martin has agreed to sign them all as well, which is awesome.  You can by one (or more) for $20 each, and that includes shipping (about $8 total usually) in the continental U.S..  Elsewhere, it will be $15 plus shipping costs. 

To order one:

Message me on Facebook (Steve Emig- Huntington Beach), or email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com  . Payment will be $20 to by Paypal at that same email address.  

15 sold... 35 left (as of 4 pm Pacific, 10/16/2019)

Please send your address in the message, email, or paypal payment.  For foreign orders, email or message me, so I can reserve your place number, and then I'll figure shipping costs and get back to you to arrange payment.

Here are some more photos of Martin signing drawings last night at H.B. Tuesday, and one of Martin and Edgar Plascencia with his drawing.  Thanks again Martin for this opportunity.

 #sharpiescribblestyle

 

Meeting Dave Voelker for the first time

Eddie's Roman's 2000 video of fellow San Diego ripper, Dave Voelker, one of my favorite riders of all time.

I was a couple of months into the job that changed the entire course of my life, working at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  As epic as that sounds, I spent much of the first two months sitting in my office, going through boxes of Windy's old 8 X 10 black and white photos, looking for ones to decorate my office, and reading back issues of BMX Action.  I was waiting for the printouts of the articles to get handed to me to proofread, and Andy, Lew, and Gork were masters of the last minute.  I usually got all the copy for both magazines over about two days, the day before deadline.  I also drove Windy to photo shoots, where I helped out a little, but mostly just hung out.  I built up the bikes for that months bike tests.  I wrote little pieces of the magazine, when asked.  But it took a couple of months for my job to really evolve and keep me busy most of the time.

About the time that happened, sometime in the Fall of 1986, it was nearing the end of or normal workday.  FREESTYLIN' editor Andy Jenkins came over my intercom, and said the weird, goofy, but brilliant rider, trick team owner, and inventor, Brian Scura, had a new ramp rider.  He had just driven up to Wizard from San Diego to do a photo shoot with Windy Osborn, the photographer for both magazines then.  Andy told me to go out side and help this new kid set up the quarterpipe for the shoot.

So I walked out of my office, through the small warehouse, out the human door next to the big roll up door, and out to the edge of the parking lot.  There was a van with a flat trailer, with a sturdily built wooden quarterpipe on it.  Walking around the trailer was a young guy, maybe 18 or 19, with stringy white blond hair.  I told him Andy said to come out and help him set up the ramp.  He said something along the lines of, "I don't really need help, Brian Scura designed this thing, he laughed, "it's pretty much a one-man job."  I laughed, Brian Scura was the guy who designed the Gyro brake cable detangler, and I got the job of listening to Brian for an hour on how to properly dial in a Gyro.  Then I had to put that knowledge out to the BMX freestyle world in like 2 or 3 small paragraphs.  Brian was a inventive genius, so I was intrigued on how one guy could set up a big, heavy, 1980's quarterpipe.  I told the blond guy I didn't have much to do, and I might as well hang out.  He just laughed, and went to work unloading the ramp with off the trailer, basically by himself.  There was a car jack, and the trailer tilted as I remember.  It was brilliant the way it had all been designed.  Typical Scura.

He was right, I stood there and pretended to help here and there, but wasn't needed.  Kashiwa Street, where Wizard was located, was on the backside of a closed loop, so there was very little traffic.  When riders brought their own quarterpipes, they'd set up on the side of the street, next to the Wizard parking lot.  In typical freestyler fashion, the blond guy and me just started talking, riders rarely introduced themselves upon meeting back then.  We all rode, so they were part of the group, no matter how they dressed or what music they listened to or what background they came from.  I think at some point, Dave and I introduced ourselves, both being new to the industry side of freestyle, neither of us knowing who the other guys was.

Once the ramp was set up, Dave moved the van, and parked nearby.  Then he grabbed his bike, but not his helmet, and did a few warm-up airs.  Although I rode ramps, I rode them badly, and aired about coping high, or a little under.  Dave's first air, just to check out how the ramp was sitting, was maybe 5 or 6 feet.  That was a solid air for any rider then.  The top pro riders of the era topped out at about 8 foot straight airs in contests, did variations 2 or 3 feet lower, and a few could push ten foot airs on their personal ramps.  Every rider's quarterpipe was different then, with transitions from 5 1/2 feet to 9 feet.  Some had a couple inches of vert, some were still the slightly undervert, six foot tall, Bob Haro-style ramps that had started quarterpipe riding.  The Brian Scura Trick Team ramp was 8 feet high, as I recall, big for the day, and I sat there watching this unknown kid from San Diego, Dave Voelker, blast several six or seven foot airs without his helmet on.  That was insane at the time.

Then he headed to the ramp a tiny bit slower, and I gasped as his bike went completely upside down, for a couple seconds, I thought he'd looped out, and this new kid was going to kill himself before Windy got a chance to shoot a single photo.  As I caught my breath, I realized he was actually doing a downside footplant at the very top of the ramp.  There were 2 or 3 riders that did downside footplants.  But this Voelker guy did one so freakin' upside down, and so stretched out, that it blew my mind.  As he rode back from it, I told him I thought he was going to bail right then.  He just laughed and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, people trip out on those."

A couple of airs later, Windy walked out with her camera.  I asked if she needed any help, because I just wanted to see what this blond nutcase was going to do with his helmet on.  But Windy said she had it handled, and it was still during work hours, so I had to head back inside, and miss the actual photo shoot. 

As the years passed, Dave Voelker did one crazy thing after another that blew my mind, and everyone else's.  His flatland riding influenced mine, and I learned to do quicker flat ground 360's, because the ones he did looked so cool.  On top of amazing riding, Dave was always just a cool dude to hang out with, he always just seemed kinda stoked to just be riding.  And that's a good thing.

When I came across this photo from a few years back, the best footplant photo of Dave I've ever seen, I knew I had to do my own Sharpie art version of it.  That's the drawing below.  I got Dave's OK to draw it, and sell some copies, and he's getting the original.  I'm doing 20 high quality color copies, signed and numbered by me.  Like the John "Dizz" Hicks drawing I did recently, I put a kind of apocalyptic, dystopian, urban background in this one.  I wanted to do something different than the lyrics and song titles I've done in the backgrounds of my musician drawings.  Also, we're in really crazy times in the world these days, and I kind of want to remind everyone that no matter how dark things may seem, BMX freestyle riding shines bright.

Eveyone who gets a drawing copy can get Dave's autograph, if you meet up with him at some point, I left room for that.  Half of the drawings are on their way to Europe, and there are 4 of the 20 still available as I write this.  If you're interested in one of those, hit me up on Facebook, or email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com .  

Now grab a cool drink, and watch that video above.  It's one of the classics that never gets old.  Thanks Dave for letting me draw this, and thanks to Shad Holland, whose photo of the drawing copy I'm using below.  You can also order some of Windy's classic BMX photos, and her new stuff, on her website at windyosborn.com . You can find my Sharpie artwork all over using #sharpiescribblestyle.

Sharpie art reminder to simply enjoy the great days that come along

There's a lot of really crazy stuff happening in the world today.  Sometimes we need a reminder to just enjoy a bit of a great sunny day, and get out minds off the chaos for a little bit.  I wanted to draw something with a California vibe, since I'm back here and roaming Orange County these days.  This drawing is 11" X 14," and I plan to sell (and give away a few) 100 signed and numbered, quality, color copies of this.  The first one is shipping out today, a couple more tomorrow. You can get one for $20, shipped in the continental U.S., anywhere else, $15 plus shipping costs. Pay by Paypal, only option I have at the moment.  I'm trying to work my way out of homelessness, and get to being a writer/blogger/artist/social media guy, and stop being a "homeless artist."  Selling some of these will help me get back on my feet after a couple decades of dealing with some serious headwinds in life.


To order a copy (or a few), hit me up on Facebook, or email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com  Thanks again for checking out my blog and artwork everyone.  #sharpiescribblestyle

Creative Life: 6/15/2019- Time to plan an art show...

I've been in the desert, north of L.A., back in Southern California, for nearly  six weeks now.  I love the lack of humidity.  I've got a roof over my head.  I'm still working all day every day, usually starting 5:30 am or so, towards the goal of finally escaping homelessness, for good.  My current situation is a temporary one.  I earn some money, but I'm still along ways from earning an actual living.  So I'm helping a friend build one online business, which will be able to pay me a fair amount when it really gets going.  But it could easily take 6 months to a year or more for that business to get fully up to speed.  So I need to create a smaller business of my own, to earn a living in the meantime.

For three years, I scraped by, homeless much of that time, selling my Sharpie drawings.  In the process of actually selling 80 or 100 major pieces of art, I learned quite a bit about blogging, social media, and promotion in today's world.  In 21st century fashion, I learned by watching how-to videos to get the basics, and then actually putting the ideas into practice.  So that gives me several options.

I'm working on a small book, which I'll likely publish as a zine, to help small businesses start or improve their content creation and social media.  Very few small businesses do this much at all, let alone really well.  In the major recession that's looming, this will be critical.  A lot of businesses, large and small, will soon get wiped out.  In the same way that the wind in a thunderstorm trims the old, dead, and useless branches off trees, recessions and depressions weed out the poorly run businesses. In today's rapidly changing world, the businesses based on old, Industrial Age business models that are no longer valid, will also fall by the wayside.  

I can sell the little book I'm working on to the small businesses who are interested.  That's one option.  It's inevitable that some of those businesses will ask me to do their social media, but I'm already doing that for one active business, and the small one I'm building, to help me build my own income in the meantime.  But the going to rate to help people figure out how to best use blogging, social media, content creation, and get them going, is $20-$30 an hour, so there's another option.  A few hours of that here and there would add up.

In addition to that, I recently learned there are job boards online, filled with businesses who hire people to do the menial work on Pinterest, which I'm doing a lot on these days.  Instagram is for fronting and pretending.  Pinterest is for selling.  That's why I spend far more time on Pinterest.  But I can sign up for those jobs, doing the same menial Pinterest stuff I do everyday, for $1,000 or $1,200 a month.  One guy says he was doing as many as ten of those jobs at once, making $10,000 to $12,000 a month.  So that's another option.  I could probably handle two, maybe three, of those jobs, and keep doing most of what I'm doing now.  Boring, but it pays well for a while.

The more appealing option, is to simply use these tools to build my own income with affiliate marketing, and selling my own writing and artwork online.  Less money at the start, but far more interesting, and it's a long term thing. This would focus on some smaller drawings and written works.  In any case, I need to find the combination of these ideas that will put at least $1,200 to $1,500 a month in my pocket, enough to get a room or apartment before too long, a cheap car, and a good bike to ride.  And a skateboard, lots of good skate spots around here.

With all that going on, I've barely been doing any drawing in the last couple of months, my last days in Richmond, and my time here in Lancaster.  So I'm going to go kind of underground with my Sharpie art for a while.  Rather than keep drawing people's favorite musicians for $2-$3 an hour, I'm going to draw some ideas I really want to draw, and then have a little solo art show somewhere around here.  I'm aiming on making that happen by the end of August.  When I get to that point, you'll all be invited, if you're anywhere near Southern California, anyhow.  The move back out here to California, though it's keeping me super busy, has given my life some basic stability, which is what I needed to take the next step, and begin to rebuild my life.

Oh, and I'm sitting on hundreds of little stories about taxi driving, homelessness, and other weird things I've experienced, so I'm going to start sharing some of those stories, as well as more ideas on creativity, art, the creative process, and using social media and blogging to promote whatever it is that you do.  So that's the tentative plan at the moment.  Things an change at any time, I know that better than most people.  In that case, I'll adapt, and keeping moving on. 

Here is the drawing I just finished, for freestyle friend Alma Jo Barrera, last night.  This is her Project Bug, built as a tribute to other soldiers.  It's followed by a couple more of my favorite Sharpie drawings.  #sharpiescribblestyle