Excerpt from "The Spot": my two 48 page zines just out

BMX Action Trick Team founder, one of the first freestylers ever, and Redline, General, and Bully pro, R.L. Osborn.  AFA Masters, Columbus, Ohio, 1986.

In the middle of August of 1985, Idaho freestyler Jay Bickel and I were the Critical Condition Stunt Team, the only BMX freestyle team in the state of Idaho.  I was the 1985, 17 & Over flatland champion of Idaho (there were two of us in the comp).  We lived for the day that FREESTYLIN' magazine would show up in the mail, and we'd each read the whole thing, even the ads, that night.  Sometimes we'd read the whole thing twice, then Jay and I would meet up the next day and talk about all the new stuff in the mag.  That was life for a BMX freestyler outside of California in 1985. No matter what state or country you lived in, besides California, it was the same thing, waiting all month for that issue of FREESTYLIN' to show up, because that was the only info we got about freestyle,

Eleven and a half months later, I walked into an office against the back wall of Wizard Publications, located at 3162 Kashiwa Street, in Torrance, California (I still remember that address).  It was my office.  Lew's was next door, Gork's was 30 feet away, and R.L.'s office was maybe 40 feet away.  In less than a year I went from a goofball biker in B.F. Idaho, to an editorial assistant, and the official proofreader of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  It still blows me away that that happened.  The next night, I followed my new roommate/co-worker, Mark "Lew" Lewman down to The Spot, the local flatland session area by the Redondo Beach Pier.

I've just finished a Club Homeboy-style goodie pack, the start of the Freestyle BMX Tales zine series, featuring two handmade zines, each 48 pages.  That's 96 freakin' zine pages of stories about riding at The Spot in Redondo, and thoughts on how what was then the tiny little sport of BMX freestyle has spread worldwide since.  You can order the two-zine pack, which comes with some cheap ass, homemade, custom stickers, at the bottom of this post.  Here's one of the stories featured in zine #2:

Teaching R.L. Osborn a Trick

I've met a lot of people who say that "famous people are just people, to me they're the same as everyone else."  There's a lot of truth to that.  But not completely.  Famous people became famous for a reason.  Sure, it might not be a good reason.  The Kardashians are mostly "famous for being famous."  But to get there, they learned how to play the internet/social media game better than most.  I have no interest in them.  But a large number of people in pre-internet days were famous because they actually did something.  Actors acted classic roles in major movies that millions of people saw.  Musicians sang or played on albums millions listened to, and on and on.  Professional athletes developed skill and talent to compete at a very high level.

A lot of people who are famous worked really hard to get good at something, and then became famous for that skill at some point.  They moved beyond the realm of "normal" people.  In my younger years, I wanted to know what made those people different from everyone else.  Later on, I wanted to meet and hang out with famous people to learn what they did that I wasn't doing.

When I got into freestyle, and learned there was a hardcore entrepreneurial side to it, R.L. Osborn became the guy I most looked up to as a model of what I wanted to try and become.  I wanted to be a clean cut, professional BMX freestyler, a guy who could get business people and city leaders to take our weird little sport seriously.  Then, suddenly, I went form making 57 pizzas in four hours at Pizza Hut to having an office 40 feet away from R.L.'s office, and riding with him at The Spot a couple of nights a week.  It took me quite a while to just see him as R.L., the guy, and not R.L. the famous pro freestyler entrepreneur.

One night while riding, most everyone had taken off back home.  I think Chris Day was whipping boomerangs at one end of The Spot, and R.L. and I were practicing, each doing our own thing, near the other end.  At the time, I had a weird little tailwhip variation I was working on.  I was starting to do tailwhips differently.  The original, Brian Blyther tailwhip started with crossing a leg over the top tube to the other side of the bike, and jamming that foot behind the front wheel, then kicking the frame around with the other foot.

I think I was trying to learn Pinky squeaks, a Switzerland squeaker and tailwhips together, created by Gary "Pinky" Pollak.  So I would do a brake endo, jump up to my feet on the top tube, and push the frame around counter-clockwise with my right foot, and drop my left foot down to the back of the tire.  I'd figured out this cool little variation.  I crossed my right foot behind my left leg as the frame was coming around, I'd hit my back brake, and catch the right pedal with my right foot, then lift my left foot, cross it over the frame, and set it on the left pedal.  So I did a flatland tailwhip, but ended smoothly back in an endo posistion with my feet on the pedals.  This would be the ideal way to do a nosepick tailwhip, but those weren't invented yet.

So I was practicing those, what I called a "back can tailwhip."  The term "Nac-Nac," a can-can behind the other leg off a jump, hadn't been invented yet, either.  From behind me I heard, "Hey, what was that?"  It was R.L..  I didn't realize what I had done.  It was just a new thing I'd been doing about a week, and it never occurred to me that it was a cool trick.  But R.L. liked the look of it.  He rolled over to where I was.   

Suddenly, I found myself teaching a trick to R.L.Osborn, whose how-to's I'd read in magazines, and the guy I most wanted to emulate in freestyle.  My self-esteem was low enough back then that I never really felt like I was "really" part of the Golden Gate Park scene the year I rode with those guys.  I wasn't good enough, but dreamed of getting there someday.  All of the sudden, I'm teaching one of my variations to one of the top pros, and a pioneer of freestyle.  It was totally surreal for me.

I went through the trick a couple of times, showed R.L. the moves, and then coached him as he tried it two or three times, figured out the weird leg movement, and landed it.  This is what was so cool about freestyle back then, and still is to this day, through maybe not quite as much.  You couldn't be a kid today at the local basketball court and have Lebron or Curry come down and say, "Hey, what was the move you just did?"  It's just not going to happen, or maybe it could happen to one high school superstar in a million.  But never to a mediocre kid who's a bit creative.  But in BMX freestyle, and other always-progressing action sports, this kind of thing happens all the time.


So that's one little piece of the 96 pages worth of zines that I've just come out with.  Many of you remember my Freestyle BMX Tales blog, now I'm starting a series of zines by that name.  I want actual, physical, tangible copies of some of my best old school freestyle stories out there in the world.  And I'm homeless right now, so I don't have the resources to put out an actual book right now.  I'm a zine guy, going back 33 years now, so that's what I'm doing.  You all know that zines, by their very nature, are collector's items.  People keep zines.  OK, I lost all of mine in a move, which really sucked.  But most people keep zines.

So I'm charging a fair amount of money for this, and trying to make it worthwhile for all of you, and for me.  These are huge zines, as zines go, and each will be signed and numbered in the order people order them, because I plan to become as famous as J.K. Rowling someday, just so you can sell these zines on Ebay for $1,000 each.  OK, not really.  But they will be signed and numbered anyway.

 If you would like these first two zines full of stories about The Spot in Redondo Beach, you can Paypal me $15 to:  stevenemig13@gmail.com .   ("steven" not steve, there's a "v" in there).  Add your mailing address in the info.  Or email or Facebook it to me.

That includes shipping in the continental U.S..  If you're outside the "48" but in North America, make it $20.  If you're in the U.K., Australia, or New Zealand, make it $25 U.S..  OK?  Order one today.  Or ten.  If you're really brave, you can paypal me $35 and get The Spot zine pack, AND a one year membership to Club White Bear.  I'm not sure what that includes yet, except you'll get 6 CWB zines each year, and discounts on my art.  And more.  But you'd have to be kinda crazy to send that much money to a homeless dude.  But it you're the adventurous type, go for it...

These zines are pretty cool, and sleeping in an open doorway of an abandoned building in the winter is getting old.  When I get a room, I'll have more time to write and draw more cool shit.

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...



 

Freestyle BMX Tales Zines #1 & 2 are available NOW

These are the masters of the two zines.  I'm finishing them up today and tomorrow.  Both are stories from my time riding at The Spot in Redondo Beach, California in 1986.  Each zine is 48 zine pages, which is really fat for a zine.  Once I got writing tales, I wrote over 100 pages of rough drafts, that's why there are two.  I'm finishing laying out Zine #2 right now, and I'll be ready to ship them (plus a homemade sticker pack and maybe some other goodies) by this Thursday, December 27th. 

Get yourself a Christmas present! 
To order your set, Paypal $15 to me at stevenemig13@gmail.com . Postage paid in the continental U.S..  (It's steven with a "v", not steve) add your mailing address, or FB message or email me your address.  Elsewhere in North America, add $5 shiping.  U.K. and Australia orders add $10 shipping.  Every zine will be signed and numbered in order of the orders I receive.

In 1986, during my short stint at Wizard Publications, I was roommates with Gork and Lew, and riding nearly every night with Craig Grasso, Chris Day, R.L. Osborn, Andy Jenkins, and hanging out with McGoo, who brought Ceppie Maes and John "Dizz" Hicks down from time to time.  So those are the guys who feature in some of the stories.  

Most of you remember my blog, Freestyle BMX Tales, which I published over 500 freestyle stories in back in 2009-2012.  Unfortunately, I took it down during a dark time after my dad died in 2012.  I published another version for a while, about 65 posts worth, back in 2015-2017.  But I decided it's time to put some of my tales of the early BMX freestyle days into a hard copy, physical version. 

Zines by their very nature, are collector's items as soon as they're published, and we all know that there's a serious collector's market in BMX these days.  As the publisher, I think $15 is a fair price with that in mind.  Fat, 48 page zines, actually cost a bit to make.  I'm going to limit this to 243 total copies (plus a few promotional media copies, not numbered.) I doubt I'll come anywhere close to selling 243 sets, but that's a big number to cut it off at.

I've been doing zines since 1985, many of you know that.  My first zine landed me the job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, which changed the entire course of my life. I landed, much to my surprise, in the BMX freestyle industry, and led to working with several of the people making freestyle happen back then. 

I really wanted to have these ready to ship before Christmas, but with my current sketchy living situation, and the sheer amount that I wrote for these, I couldn't make it happen.  But I'm squaking it in before Christmas so you can do a little (well deserved) shopping for yourself this afternoon.

Remember, they're signed and numbered, cool guys get lower numbers, so you can show'em off at the next old schooler event in your area.  Hope everyone's stoked on them.

Zine Guy... 33 years of losing money self publishing... and I still don't mind

This is the Golden Gate Park BMX freestyle scene in San Francisco, summer of 1986.  BMX freestyle, as we called it then, had only been an actual sport for two years.  We were inventing something new, and not realizing how far reaching our weird little sport would be.  I started my first zine in September of 1985 just to meet these guys.  It still amazes me how much that first zine changed the course of my life.  I'm the guy chasing his bike at 5:07.  Dumb trick I used to do in parades in Idaho, but hey, it got me on TV.

Edit- 4:15 pm, 10/13/2018- I just finished making my way through Richmond Zine Fest 2018, here at the Main Library.  Thanks to all zine publishers I talked to for your hospitality.

 I know I'm a sketchy looking old white guy with really bad teeth, but everyone here at Zine Fest was super friendly.  That's one of the great things about zines, bringing such a wide array of people together with a common interest.  In 1985, when I started doing zines, there were no zine fests, just some trading at BMX freestyle contests and through the snail mail.  As a really old dude who's been into zines for decades, it's really cool to see younger people not only publishing zines, but progressing, doing amazing art, design, and writing, and keeping this weird little world alive.  Props to all of you at Zine Fest today, it really stoked me out to see so many zinesters in one place.  I will be adding a ton of links to this post later today, so it might be worth coming back to tomorrow for another look.  

By the way, this is the only song I've ever heard mention zines.  Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta" from 1997.  To me, it's the zine anthem.  Have you all heard it?

I was a dorky kid from the Midwest, born in Ohio in the mid 1960's, moved town to town as a kid in the 1970's, then to New Mexico for a year, then to Boise, Idaho in 1981, where I went to high school.  My parents moved us to a trailer park outside Boise for a year, so they could save money to buy a house.  During that year in the trailer park, in the desert, I got into BMX.  Then came BMX racing at Fort Boise in late 1982 and through 1983.  Then I got into the new sport of BMX freestyle, or trick riding, in 1984.

In 1985, a year after I graduated, my family moved to San Jose, California, where my dad just got a new job.  That was a year after this little guy came out from some tiny company called Apple Computers in nearby Cuppertino.  I worked my summer job in Boise, managing a tiny amusement park called The Fun Spot, and then I packed up my shit brown, 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo to San Jose.  I quickly found a job at a local Pizza Hut, just down the road from the Winschester Mystery House.  I worked evenings, and spent my afternoons riding my BMX freestyle bike by myself.

I started my first zine, San Jose Stylin', as a way to meet the riders of the Bay Area, some of the best anywhere in our little sport at the time.  It worked.  I was soon riding at the Beach Park Ramp Jams, put on by Skyway pro and mad scientist, Robert Peterson.  Within a few more weeks, I was traveling up to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco every weekend I could, to ride with the guys in the video above, and pros Dave Vanderspek, Robert Peterson, Rick Allison, and Hugo Gonzales, as well.  I interviewed Maurice  Meyer (featured in the video at the top of this post) and the others, I covered our scene, and shot photos of us sessioning.  I also called riders around the country, and was soon putting out much of the national BMX freestyle news two months before it came out in the magazines.

The smartest thing I did with my zine was to send individual copies to each of the editorial guys at BMX Action, BMX Plus, and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  Much to my surprise, after six months of putting zines out, I got a call from Andy Jenkins, the editor at FREESTYLIN'.  He wanted me to write a contest article, to cover the next big freestyle contest for the magazine.  That was March of 1986.  In the August issue of FREESTYLIN' (here- scan page 11/mag page 20), which hit news stands in late June, my article came out, as well as a new freestyle zine review article, where my zine was listed #1 in the country.  By August of 1986, I was offered a job at Wizard Publications, which put out BMX Action and FREESTYLIN'.  That job, which came directly because of my zine, changed the entire course of my life.

I only lasted five months working at the magazines, I just didn't click with those guys, and was permanently replaced by a 17-year-old biker/skater kid from Back East... this guy.  Really.  I got a job where I edited and shot photos for the American Freestyle Association newsletter for a year, then got a job at Vision Skateboards' video company, Unreel Productions.  I was the peon of the staff that put out videos like this and this and this.  By 1989, I was not only a freestyler riding every night for fun, I was staff cameraman at Unreel:

I published a few issues of a zine called Periscope while working at Unreel, covering freestyle, a little skating, and random other stuff.  The Vision Skateboards empire began to crumble in 1989, after growing just way too fast.  Unreel was shut down, and I was moved to Vision's main building.  I sat there in an office, alone, for six months, with nothing to do.  A lot of people might love that, but it drove me nuts.  Then I quit and produced my own BMX freestyle video, taking the DIY attitude of zines to the rapidly changing video world.  The Ultimate Weekend was the result.  I lost a bunch of money, but went on to work on TV shows in the early 1990's, like American Gladiators and a few others.

During the same time, pro BMX racer, jumping crazyman, and teenage entrepreneur, Chris "Mad Dog" Moeller, asked me to make the first video for his company, S&M Bikes.  The video cost $250 total, including beer money.  I lost my job while making it (long story), and wound up sleeping on the floor of the tiny, one bedroom apartment where Chris ran S&M out of the garage.

One morning, Chris came out and showed me a copy of a Henry Rollins book, Black Coffee Blues, full of poetry.  I'd been writing poems, and not telling anybody about them, since I had a girlfriend who was a singer five years earlier.  I thought I would write her a hit.  Then she dumped me.  Anyhow, I sat down at my typewriter, and put out a zine of my own poetry, called We're on the Same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  The zine had about 100 poems, and was so thick, I had to bind it with duct tape.  The first poem was called "Journey of the White Bear," an autobiographical poem about my life, in metaphor.  That was the poem I wrote when my singer girlfriend dumped me.  Chris started making fun of me, calling me The White Bear.  That was 1992.  The nickname stuck, and that's still my name in the BMX world (and it's on my blog title).

I put out two more zines of poetry in 1996 and 1997, while working as a furniture mover.  In 1998, I did two or three issues of an action sports zine, called Session Sports, where I interviewed my neighbors, free skier Jason Moore, and skysurfer Troy Hartman.  I wrote a great interview with Sasquatch.  I also interviewed musician Bryan Gregory, founding member of The Cramps, who I worked with at a porn store.  That may have been the last in depth interview anyone ever did with him.  He died a couple of years later.

All in all, I've published about 40 zines, starting with the 11 issues of San Jose Stylin' in 1985-86.  I did a zine about taxi driving in 2005 or 2006.  I did a zine about Huntington Beach, where I worked as a taxi driver around the same time.  That was my most popular zine ever, called The White Bear's Very, VERY Unofficial Guide to Huntington Beach.  I put out about 150 or 200 copies of that one.  Initially, I gave them to the Irish kids, college age people who came to HB every summer from Ireland to work and party.  Eventually, people all over town heard about the zine, and would just walk up to my taxi and ask if they could get one.  That was the only zine that totally paid for itself.  I didn't charge for it, but I got a ton of taxi rides because of it, which more than paid for all the zines I made.  There's a lesson there. Both of those zines were 48 pages, by the way.

I did a zine for my dad's 70th birthday, in 2007, writing down a bunch of his old jokes, and putting pictures of classic cars (he owned three classic T-Birds as a young man).  It sounds lame, but he loved it. 

I've done some one-off zine-books, writing on a single subject.  One on a social theory of mine, I called The Warrior Sports, is my favorite, and I handed out about 50 copies at the 1998 X-Games in San Diego.  I even did a zine of short stories, that an old skateboard friend just sent me a copy of, also from 1998.

Zines, quite literally, changed the course of my life, towards a much more creative, if often crazy and sometimes broke, path.  Instead of being a BMX freestyler for 2 or 3 years, and then going back to college, the job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines changed the entire trajectory of my life.  And that was entirely due to my first zine.  All told, I wound up writing and/or getting photos published in 7 BMX magazines and a newsletter.  I produced and/or edited 15 BMX, skateboard, and snowboard videos, and worked on another ten or so at Unreel Productions.  That led to working on TV crews.  I've worked on over 300 episodes of a dozen different TV shows.  I also worked in the box office of the first five Cirque du Soleil tours that came to Orange County, California.  The first, Saltimbanco, in 1993, was when Cirque consisted of one touring show.  Now they have about 20 worldwide.  Besides that first, I worked on Allegria, Quidam, Dralion, and Varekai.  Cirque du Soleil is th ebest run company I ever worked for, the most creative, and nobody works as hard as circus people.  It's become huge and a lot more corporate over the years, and isn't near as much fun to work at the entry level.  But if I was forced to pick one company to work for the rest of my life, it would be Cirque du Soleil.  But that time has passed.  Now is the time to create my own "Cirque."

My latest zine is called Club White Bear, and is only available to members who pay $25 a year for a membership.  The idea is loosely based on Club Homeboy, a thing my FREESTYLIN' magazine co-worker and roommate, Mark "Lew" Lewman started in 1986.  It's geared toward old school BMXers, but is not limited to them.  Club White Bear only has two members at the moment, so it doesn't matter much.  I will do other zines on single subjects available to everyone as time roll on.

Other than the two zines my old friend just sent me, and the master of Club White Bear #1, I have no copies of any of my zines.  I lost my whole collection of zines, and everything else I owned, including vintage BMX and skateboard video footage, my magazine collection, master tapes of videos I produced, and copies of about 250 of the 500+ poems Ive written, in 2008, when I moved to North Carolina in 2008.  That was probably the darkest time of my adult life.  I simply stopped writing poetry.  North Carolina turned out to be ten years of living hell.  I finally was able to escape it in August.  I've been living homeless in Richmond ever since.  I landed here totally randomly, but there's a LOT of cool stuff happening here.  I've decided to stay for a while.  Priority one is getting my life stabilized, start making a steady income, and get my act together.  Then... then it's time to make some cool shit.  Stay tuned.

Here's a few things I've learned that zines are good for:
Losing money
Getting minority ideas out to a small number of people
Meeting other zine publishers
Getting your name known in a sport, genre', scene, or subculture of some sort
Making friends with similar outlooks on things

Here's what zines are bad for:
Making money

Yes, I'm homeless, I look like hell, and I'm broke at the moment.  What I lack in cash, I more than make up for in stories and insights into the crazy world we live in.  My crazy path through all kinds of work with amazingly creative people started with my first zine.  I wouldn't trade that for a Mercedes and a McMansion.  You never know where taking the time to publish a zine will lead you.  Enjoy the journey as much as you can.  

Zines, by their very nature, are collector's items.  Save them, cherish them, and don't wind up giving your own last copies away like I always manage to do.

The Richmond Zine Fest is starting right now, as I type this.  And all the links to make this post worth checking out are not linked yet.  So come back in a day or so and check it out again.

You can reach me by email at: stevenemig13@gmail.com .  Or you can friend me on Facebook, the only Steve Emig in Richmond, or steveemig43 on Instagram.  I don't have a working phone.  Gotta go, gotta get to the Zine Fest.

Wall ride over my sister Cheri's head.  Blues Brothers Wall, Huntington Beach, California, 1990.  She's a 4th grade teacher in Greensboro, North Carolina now.

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...