To be fair, this little group is an outlier, one of the most influential creative scenes in human history. They were much more influential than most Creative Scenes. But that wasn't apparent in the beginning, which is the point. The Homebrew Club, including it's best known members Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, created personal computers. Wozniak and Jobs founded Apple Computers, now Apple, which brought us the Macintosh, iPods, and iPhones, among many other innovations. A small group of creative people, a "creative scene," can have all kinds of effects, and even change the course of human history.
They were geeks when that was something everyone did not want to be. But they found themselves fascinated by eletronics, and the emerging technology of computers. Here's an interview from about 2004, with six early members of the 1975 Homebrew Club, in Menlo Park, California, including Steve Wozniak. These six geeks from the 1970's, and the others from their scene, changed the lives of nearly every single on earth. For real. That's how major of an effect a small creative scene can potentially have.
What is a "Creative Scene?" My definition of a Creative Scene is a group of two or more people, focused on advancing in some creative endeavor. Two kids in the back of a 3rd grade class trying to draw better airplanes than each other is a Creative Scene. A group of artists at a small indie gallery is a Creative Scene. The kids and staff working on a high school yearbook is a creative scene. A band, no matter how good or bad, is a creative scene. The kids riding skateboards, BMX bikes, and yes, even scooters,* at a skatepark, is a creative scene. Two women making Aunt Agnes' gooseberry jelly and selling it online, is a creative scene. Travis Patrana and the Nitro Circus lunatics is a Creative Scene. Todd McFarlane and the original posse that started Image Comics were a creative scene. Three 9-year-old girls in the front yard making up dance moves, is a Creative Scene. Amanda Palmer and whomever she's hanging out with at this moment, is a Creative Scene. One time Old School BMX freestyler Chris Lashua and his Cirque Mechnic is a Creative Scene. A blog or YouTube channel's creator(s) and their followers, are a creative scene. CBGB's in the 1970's, and later, was a creative scene. The group of Montreal street performers that created Cirque du Soleil, was a Creative Scene. The people riding BMX and mountain bikes at Sheep Hills today, is a creative scene. Gary Vaynerchuk and the people at VaynerMedia is a creative scene. Tyler Perry's movie studio in Atlanta is a Creative Scene. Yuga Labs, a hanfdul of artistic, former punk and hip hop influenced skateboarders and BMXers from Miami, that created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT's, and the Otherside metaverse, is a Creative Scene. And yes, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, in their garage, Woz's cubicle, and Steve's bedroom, in 1975, were a Creative Scene... on that birthed Apple. You get the idea.
We all have some idea what an art scene or a music scene is. They are not only the artists or the bands, but the local gallery owners, the patrons who buy pieces of work or go see shows, the local arts organizations that plan the First Friday Art Walk, the local bars and clubs where bands play, and all the people playing roles who support these people and the scenes. Those are the best known kind of Creative Scenes.
There are scenes within scenes. There are better and worse scenes. Most Creative Scenes don't have any major influence, except to help people become more creative, and learn skills, either creative, ogranizational, or business-wise. A healthy creative environment, let's say a thriving city's creative community, has dozens, maybe hundreds, of loosely interconnected scenes, with many types of people playing roles in multiple scenes, moving between scenes, and bouncing off of, and inspiring each other. This type or creative environment separates a city like Austin, Texas from say Detroit, Michigan. Both have creative scenes, Detroit has been huge force in music from Motown to rock n' roll to early electronic music. But it's been devastated economically, and continues ot struggle as a city. Austin is peaking as a Creative Scene city, and currently thriving financially as a major tech hub city, where economic and creative Detroit's heydays were decades ago. But the cheap cost of living and post apocalyptic scenes of Detroit may set the seeds for more great Creative Scenes in the future. Time will tell.
This theme, Creative Scenes, is something I've been learning about since the 1980's, as a BMX freestyler, and ever since, through many creative projects, jobs, and experiences. I even lived in an indie art gallery once, back in 2005-6. That's where my Sharpie Scribble Style art technique was born.
Right now, in late 2022, I believe we are on the cusp of some of the biggest changes in society in modern times, which will take place over several years. Creative Scenes is where I'm going to focus my energy for the forseeable future. I've got a lot to say on the subject, so it's time to get to work. Buckle up, it's gonna be a crazy ride.
*As an Old School BMX guy, I love to make fun of scooter riders. And then R Willy came along... Damn him.
My footage and editing of Chris Moeller, in 1991, when S&M bikes was being run out of the garage of a one bedroom apartment, on Alabama Street, in Huntington Beach, California. Clip from the first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer, that title was the pick-up line Dave Clymer used to pick up his girlfriend.
I was sitting outside the front door of the tiny "Winnebago" apartment, on a lawn chair. It was 1991. The apartment, officially on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, actually opened up to the backyard of three other units. It was like we had to go into someone else's backyard to get to our front door. The whole apartment was 8 feet wide, tiny living room, tiny kitchen, hall and tiny bathroom, small bedroom, then the single car garage that housed S&M Bikes. There were two tiny windows. It felt like you were in a motorhome, so it got dubbed the "Winnebago," before I moved in.
The fledgling S&M Bikes company, then doing about $100,000 gross revenue a year, lived in the garage. Chris lived in the bedroom, and most nights, his girlfriend stayed over. I slept on the living room floor. Shaggy, who looked just like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, slept on the two cushion couch. I wound up getting fired from my video duplicating job in North Hollywood, while making the "Leg Muscles" video, a story which became a BMX industry urban legend. That's a tale for another day. After losing that job, while making "Leg Muscles," I wound up living in the Winnebago.
Mornings usually started with Chris' then girlfriend Shelly, waking up early, stepping over me and my sleeping bag, and heading out to work. The three of us roommates were up late, usually drinking a bit, and slept in. Often there was an early call from some East Coast bike shop a little later, wanting a Dirtbike frame or a pair of Slam Bars. I groaned in my mild hangover, crawled halfway out of my sleeping bag on the floor, and reached up for the landline phone, sitting on a little wooden stand we found in an alley. I'd bring the phone down to my head, and croak "S&M Bikes." We had a sheet or two of scratch paper, and usually a pen pr pencil on the stand. I'd take down the order, hang up, and go back to sleep.
Somewhere around 8:30 or 9:00, I'd wake up, roll up my sleeping bag, and tuck it in a corner of the living room, then pour a bowl of cereal. I'd usually open the front door, and sit outside it and eat breakfast. Chris would often wake up soon after. I distinctly remember him coming out with a cup of microwaved hot water day after day, and sitting outside the door in the other sketchy old lawn chair, in cheap shorts and some random, well worn T-shirt. He would drink a cup of hot tea. Some days he'd go get a free cup of coffee at his bank, about three blocks away. Money was tight, even for him. Shaggy and I had $200 rent and a little food and beer to buy. Chris had bicycle frames, forks, and handlebars to get built, and orders to ship out, many bills to pay, rent to pay, and a small company to keep running. A pack of ramen really was a standard meal once or twice a week, and sometimes more than that.
One day, Chris came out with his cup of hot water, sat down, and opened up a tea bag, and made his hot tea. We'd usually talk about what orders needed to go out that day, or getting 25 more sets of Slam Bars made, or maybe a place to go ride later, after the day's orders were packed, and picked up by the UPS guy. After drinking his tea, on that particular day, Chris sat his tea bag on the plastic arm of the lawn chair.
The next morning, Chris came out with his mug of hot water, grabbed the tea bag from the day before, still sitting on the arm of the lawn chair, and made another cup of tea with it. I joked about him re-using it, and he said it was still good, and tea bags cost money. Then he finished his tea, and set the used tea bag on the arm of the lawn chair, again.
When he came out the third morning, mug of hot water in hand, and made tea a third time, with the same tea bag, I laughed again. Chris Moeller was a cheap ass motherfucker back then. Maybe he still is. But that is part of what it took to start and run a tiny bike company, in the recession, in 1991. He started S&M, with a $1,200 loan from his Grandpa, (his business idol), as fas as I know. Chris had to live cheap, and re-invest as much money as possible back into buying frames, forks, bars, t-shirts, and the other things S&M Bikes sold. H bought a batch of something, sold that stuff, and took that slightly larger amount of money, bought more stuff to sell, and repeated the process. In this way he multiplied the business' money, and built a small company, without any debt. That's pretty freakin' amazing, considering how much money most traditional businesses start with, how much debt they take on, and how many of those businesses go out of business.
Up in the Hermosa Beach area, skateboarder Steve Rocco was doing the same thing, with a little skateboard company called World Industries. The word was that Rocco named his company "World Industries" as a joke, because it looked big time when the name was printed on a credit card. Rocco's story is documented in the film The Man Who Souled the World, which you need to watch, if you never have.
By 1989, the third wave of skateboarding popularity (60's, 70's, 80's), the second wave of BMX racing popularity (70's,80's), and the first wave of BMX freestylepopularity, (80's), had run their course, and they were business aspect of the two sports were fading. Then the recession of 1990 hit the real business world. The Big 5 companies in skateboarding, and the handful in BMX companies, were hit hard. The industries, run by diehard, old school business guys, went into a nosedive.
Into that mess a few well known skaters and BMXers started their own little companies, which everyone with any business experience, expected to fail. These companies all seemed to have a top name rider/skater running the business, and a smart guy, and less known, less skilled rider/skater, as a sidekick. the sidekicks helped out to a greater or lesser extent, behind the scenes, depenidng on the company.
Steve Rocco started World Industries, and freestyle skating world champion, Rodney Mullen was the smart sidekick. Tony Hawk started Birdhouse, with freestyle skater Per Welinder as the sidekick. Freestyle skater Pierre Andre Senizergues got a shoe company in France, Etnies, to make skate shoes. Then he took it over, working with good friend, and another freestyle skater, Don Brown as assistant everything in the early days. In BMX, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson started 2-Hip, putting on halfpipe and then street contests. His sidekick was former East Coast freestyler Kevin Martin. Meanwhile, Chris Moeller started S&M Bikes in 1987 with fellow racer Greg Scott. They parted ways about 1989, and Chris took over, and I became his brainiac sidekick for about 4 years, after he hired me to make the first S&M Bikes video. John Lucero, another pro skater, and curb skating officianado, started Black Label Skateboards. Ed Templeton started Toy Machine Skateboards. Mat Hoffman and sidekick Steve Swope took their Sprocket Jockeys trick team, and morphed it into several businesses, including contest promotion and Hoffman Bikes. All of these businesses, and several others, really took root in the long "double dip" recession of the early 1990's.
These businesses were not ideas pitched to rich angel investors, who gave these budding entrepreneurs $5 million to burn, while waiting to see if the businesses turned into something that could be taken public, or sold to Google or Yahoo. Hell, Google and Yahoo were still years away from being invented. These little bike and skate businesses were started with a thousand, two thousand, or maybe five thousand dollars, and no clue of how to actually run a business. They were started by guys who were thinking, "We need bikes that don't crack," or "We need to make skateboards where skaters can help design their board and graphics." Basically, the ideas going in were, "We don't know what the fuck we're doing, but this NEEDS to happen."
S&M Bikes is still going strong, 33 years old now, and Chris Moeller is a millionaire. He's probably still a tightwad, at least until one of his twin daughters asks for money. He still rides, with two replaced hips, and it still a brilliant business man. Me, I'm homeless in the San Fernando Valley, but wherever I go, local police are told by someone (apparently from a federal level) that I have a 216 IQ, and they can't fuck with me, since a whole bunch of three-letter agencies have spent the last 18 years fucking with me, went kind of overboard. Apparently that ridiculously high IQ test score (I took that test when I was going to join the Marines in 1985) is overly important to certain groups of people. I've never been told in person what the score was, but have overheard police, who were told, talking about it. I really don't believe it, but that's the only explanation I have for a couple of decades of really weird shit happening in my life. Seriously, that's my story, as best as I can figure it out. OK, my story is far from typical of the others in this bunch, most have fared much better.
Steve Rocco sold World Industries for $20 million in 1998 or so. Rodney Mullen is a skate legend, still skates, and gives TED Talks to super smart people on the subject of creativity. World Industries also spawned Spike Jonze' film career, and Johnny Knoxville, and the whole Jackass phenomena. The three Jackass movies, made for $35 million total, are three of the most profitable movies in the history of film. Really.
Black Label Skateboards is small, but vibrant. Mat Hoffman owns like 9 companies, and has been re-engineered with alien DNA. OK, I can't prove that, but that's the only explanation I can think of for why his body still functions after so many horrific crashes. Toy Mahcine skateboards is still going strong, and Ed Templeton still skates, even after seriously breaking his neck. Ed's also a world reknowned aritst.
Birdhouse Skateboards is still around, I don't know if Tony is affiliated with it these days, or not. But the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game made over $ 1 billion in its ten year run. Tony's doing well, and still skating hard.
Etnies shoes morphed into Sole Technology, which puts out Emerica, E's shoes, 32 snowboard boots, and Altamont clothes. At its peak, Sole Tech did somewhere around $200 million in sales a year, dwarfing these other companies. Now they're battling Nike and Van's, the big boys in sports shoes. More power to them. Pierre and Don are my old bros from years riding and skating at the Huntington Beach Pier, they're good guys.
So now we're in the beginning of another, more serious, recession. I personally think it will be a long, drawn out, depression or great depression, kind of like the Great Recession of 2008, and the long recession of the 1990's, put together. I've dubbed this The Phoenix Great Depression, follow the link to find out why. The dirtbag riders and skaters of 30 years ago are industry moguls now. Will young guys and gals in BMX, skateboarding, and other action sports, start a new series of small businesses to take them out? I don't know. They're all in it for the long haul, and I expect them all to be around for a while.
A whole slew of other companies were also spawned from bike/skate world in the recession of the 1990's. My focus in this current economic collapse isn't on the BMX, skateboard, and the now huge action sports industries. In this economic downturn, I think millions of Americans, many recently laid off, others already working gig jobs or running small businesses, will do what the BMXers and skaters of 1990 did to that world. I think we will see a huge wave of small businesses emerge, many out of sheer necessity, in this decade, the 2020's. Some of those will grow into giants, and into completely new industries, going forward.
Still in the grips of the Covid-19 business shutdown, small business itself has taken a beating. Millions of small businesses are on the ropes now, to use the boxing metaphor. Many will fail. But there just aren't enough major businesses to put 20 or 30 or 50 million Americans back to work, as we exit this recession. Millions, literally millions of new small businesses will be necessary to do this. I think we will start seeing micro and small businesses rise up from the ashes of this massive economic collapse, and create some amazing things. I saw it happen in our little BMX and skateboard world 30 years ago. I think this time around will be even more exciting.
Here's the garage on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, that housed S&M Bikes in 1991. The back end of the Winnebago apartment
I have a new blog now, about side hustles, gig jobs, small businesses, and making a living in recession of 2023-2025. Check it out:
I watched (OK, mostly listened) to this a few days ago. It's a really good, and inspiring, in my opinion, look at small business in America today.
Three years ago, I was living in a toxic environment, not getting calls back for any "real jobs" I applied for, and need to find some way to start earning a living again. I started with literally no money, just a few art supplies and a really crappy, refurbished, laptop. It was still running Windows XP in late 2015, that's how ancient my computer was. I think Fred Flintstone had traded it in.
Back then, I started focusing on making money with my unusual and unique Sharpie artwork, the only thing that made me a little money now and then. It's been a wild ride, and I never started making a decent living off my artwork. But I did sell around 100 original drawings in three years, starting at like $20 each, and I used Facebook, my blog, and other social media to promote myself. I created a ton of content, anyone can see nearly all of my drawings on the internet and about 4 other platforms. I got really good at a thing called "content creation." Other than people adding outside drama to my life, my main issue was that my artwork isn't profitable enough to make a drawing that takes a week to draw, and then sell it, and have the money to pay everything I need to.
So after surviving a really rough, crazy winter, in a new city, I did some soul searching. I realized that very few small businesses do much in the way of content creation, even though it's free. It just takes some time to create. Many things don't take that much time. You can snap a quick, cool pic in your business, and upload it to 3 or 4 places, in a couple of minutes or so. So I realized I can keep drawing, but on a less intense level, and take my internet and social media ideas and skills and help small businesses implement them. So that's where I'm headed, again starting a really low financial level. But I now have a body of work, both my artwork, and the online content I've created, to show that I know what I'm doing in these areas.
With this pivot in my work, I'll be blogging a lot more about small business ideas I have, stories of small businesses I've worked at, and creative things we did at those, and I'll be sharing things I find along these lines. This is a good one to start with. At 27 minutes, it's along watch for most of your busy lives, but easy to listen to while doing other tasks. Plus the last blog post took me two days to write, and I've got an offline project taking most of my time at the moment. I need a quick post today. So enjoy this documentary for now.
I know being a "homeless entrepreneur" seems like an oxymoron. On one hand, my original drawings of rock stars are gaining in popularity, and keeping me busy. But they're not popular enough for me to charge a ton of money for them. I'm making $4 to $5 an hour for the drawing work I do. That doesn't count the hours spent on blogging and social media promotion, or the hours spent learning new technology. But that's the game, and I keep at it.
When you're starting a business, which is what I'm doing, though very slowly, you do a lot of work that you don't get paid for. That's just the nature of things. If you do a good job, get a solid business up and running, then there comes a time later on where you get paid for a lot of work you're not doing. I know that, which helps me plug along day after day.
At the same time, I still can't afford a place to live. I have a little bit of money coming in on a steady basis, FINALLY, which is something I really struggled with the whole decade I've lived in North Carolina. This just isn't a highly entrepreneurial culture, like Southern California is. So people around me just don't get what I'm doing. Most people here don't know a single person who has started and built a good sized business. I know many. I know dozens of people who have started successful smaller businesses. I've worked at some of those businesses in my younger years. I understand the basic process. I've seen it happen. But most people here haven't, so they just don't have a frame of reference for what I'm doing. They just look at me, see that I'm sketchy looking and drawing pictures all day, and say (or at least think), "Go get a job." If I could have done that here, I would have done that years ago. But I couldn't get hired for anything. So I created my own job. In the coming years, millions of Americans will have to do the same thing.
At the same time, I still wander into the woods and sleep in a broken down tent every night. The temperature has warmed some, which helps in the mornings. Waking up in a tent in the woods isn't bad. People go camping for fun all the time. But waking up in a tent when it's 40 degrees and raining, that sucks. We've been doing Spring on the installment plan this year here in Central North Carolina. It would warm up to the high 50's or 60's for a day or two, then drop back down into the 40's and 30's for a few days.
The biggest thing I've learned about building a business from my friends' companies is this: Get up every day, make a list of what needs to be done, and do it. Day after day, just put your nose to the grindstone and do the work. So that's what I'm doing.
I've been working on turning my drawings into a business for about 2 1/2 years now, and I started, literally, without a dime. So I've been plugging away for a long time, and now it's just finally getting to the point where other people are starting to believe that what I'm doing may actually work. Another 6 or 8 months and I should have a legitimate business, a halfway decent place to live, and be on my way to a reasonable level of financial success. But for now... back to work.
After my FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog gained a good following back in 2008-2009, I started looking up stuff online to figure out what it took to be a writer, and to make money, in the 21st Century. I haven't made money directly from my blogging, but my top 4 blogs (including this one) have landed over 200,000 total page views, and my blogs have helped me sell my Sharpie art drawings, which I do make money from.
I think it was 2012 I discovered Seth Godin's work. I've only read three or four of his books. But I've listened and watched almost everything he has online, and he has been a huge impact on me.
If you want to be successful at anything in the next 20 years, read Seth's book, Linchpin.
Gary fuckin' Vaynerchuk cusses a lot. Or "curses" a lot, if you grew up in this part of the country. He also understands today's connected world like very few do, and he works his ass off. Just listen.
