Meet Leticia Bufoni... THIS WOMAN CAN SKATE

NSFW (Not Safe For WIFE)  OK old school BMXers, are you ready to feel old, lame, AND creepy?
Meet new school skater Leticia Bufoni, a 24-year-old pro skater from Brazil.  She manages to combine the looks of a model, the body of an aerobics instructor, and the street skating skills of a hardcore pro skater.  In this clip above you can see Leticia playing the model role.  If you only watch this clip, it's safe to assume that I'm just some creepy old HAS BEEN guy.



This clip shows Leticia proving that she could beat you in a game of SKATE, unless you routinely take out guys like Nyjah Huston Chris Cole or Ryan Sheckler.  Seriously, watch this clip, it's nuts.  So what does this have to do with BMX?  In this clip, she learns how to backflip a BMX bike into a foam pit... in four tries.  Really.  OK, Daniel Dhers is coaching her, but still.  Look out world.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

One of my favorite theme songs for Thanksgiving.

"We were all a bunch of dirtbags"

This is a drawing of Bob Marley I just finished a few days ago.  What can I say, I've been doing creative things my whole life.  I've been drawing since somebody put a crayon in my hand before I can remember, like many of you.  But I'm a late bloomer.  So now, in my 50's, my drawings in my unique "scribble style" technique with Sharpies.  My first solo show at indie music shop, Earshot Music in Winston-Salem, NC, opened a couple weeks ago.  Here's the Winston-Salem Journal artist profile that came out just before the show, written by Lisa O'Donnell.  I gave props to my BMX and action sports roots, and named a handful of the creative people who inspired me.  There was no way to list everyone, but a few of you are named in the article.  Thanks to all of you other former "dirtbags" of the action sports world for showing me that getting art out to the world is actually possible. 

I'm on a couch right now, not fully homeless.  I'm looking to sell enough drawings to get a cheap room as soon as I can.

Earshot Music Show: Take 1

 

 Top: Gene Simmons/KISS, Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24"
Above:  "Tainted Love" featuring Harley Quinn and Joker from Suicide Squad, Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".

This is my first solo art show.  I had my early Sharpie art up in an indie gallery in California in 2005-2006, but not in any shows since.  It's a small show, but I'm stoked a handful of people came out, and two drawings have sold and I have an order for a third.  I've been doing my unique thing with Sharpies for a long time, but never really considered myself a visual artist. 

It was a crazy summer that led to this show happening, which you can read more about in the previous post.  I've been drawing in my "scribble style" with Sharpie markers since 2005.  It all started when I tried to draw a mural on the wall of my jail cell sized bedroom in 2002.  It sucked, and I started doing huge collages on big rolls of paper, and shading in between photos with markers in different doodle-type designs.  Over 15 years, its evolved into this, and it's still evolving drawing by drawing.

 "Gwen and Now," Gwen Stefani in 1995 and 2017, Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24"

When this show opened, I was trying to do what I could to promote it on the ground. Jane, Earshot art director, lined up this Winston-Salem Journal  artist profile of me, which I was really stoked on.  It didn't show the music related drawings I'm focusing on now, but told my background well.  When the show opened, I was broke, and didn't even have a camera to take photos of the show, and forgot to ask someone else to.  In these three posts you can see the drawings at Earshot Music.  It's a great music shop with rare and hard to find CD's, DVD's and vinyl records.  So if you're in the Triad area, stop by and take a look in person. I work from photos, and would love to draw your favorite musician (or athlete)...if they don't suck.  I have a Facebook fan page at "Steve Emig The White Bear."

Pick one:  "L"  or "F"
______ame ass arteest
Me outside Earshot

Earshot Music Art Show: Take 2

Earshot Music, in the shopping center with Marshall's and A.C. Moore, across form Hanes Mall

 So here's how it happened.  I wound up broke last summer and wound up camping out in the woods of Winston-Salem.  After three days, I ran into a guy who asked about my situation, and he gave me a tent, a big dome one.  That became my headquarters.  Every night I slept alone in the woods, which is sketchy.  Every morning I'd wake up, walk about a 3/4 of a mile to McDonald's, and order a sausage biscuit and a large drink.  Then I'd pull my laptop (a gift form my niece Katherine, after she got a new one for college), and get word out about my artwork.  Two garbage bags inside my backpack kept it dry through months of Carolina rain ans thunderstorms. 

Johnny Cash: The Man in Black.  18" X 24", Sharpies on paper.

Then I'd pull out my big art pad, also double wrapped in trash bags, to keep it dry.  I had a good sized plastic box with my art supplies.  I spread out my stuff on a table at McD's, and I'd draw for a while.  Other times I'd take a bus across town to a library, and draw there.  I sold a 2 or 3 drawings over the summer, and scraped up money when I had to for food and bus fare.  Most days I had two sausage biscuits and a drink to eat all day long.  I got a lot a ton of drawing done, and lost 65 pounds, to boot.  Not the ideal lifestyle of an artist.  But I was determined.

The wall with my drawings up at Earshot Music, 1254 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem, NC

One day, a couple of hippie looking guys at McDonald's said they liked my drawing.  It was one of the musician drawings, Johnny Cash, I think.  One guy said, "You should show your stuff to that music shop across the street.  They like music themed art, and your drawing is way better then what they have on the wall right now."  I doubted the comparison, but I took the guy's advice.  I walked Earshot Music, completely scummy and smelly from my homeless life.  I showed my work to the manager working that day.  He was stoked on it.  A couple days later, I showed it to Phred the owner, and he said they'd be interested in putting a couple of drawings up on the wall for sale.  Things progressed, and Jane the art director contacted me.  Next thing I knew, they were asking me when I could have enough drawings to do a full show.  So I wandered around Winston all summer, scraping up money for food, living through thunderstorms in a tent, and getting helped out by my friends Rick and Ben in times of need.  Eight of my drawings went up on the wall, two have sold, and I'm busy doing more to replace those.  I'm also working on one for Ben, which I promise to get done soon.  Really, Ben.  I've been putting his drawing off all summer, trying to get the others done.  All the drawings are for sale, $120 each, through Earshot Music.  I will also be glad to do one of your favorite musician (or athlete), IF I can find a good photo to work from. 

Earshot Music Art Show: Drawings sold already

 It's been about ten days since the opening of my art show on the wall of Earshot Music in Winston-Salem (North Carolina).  Living in a tent all summer, meting lots of new people, and drawing like crazy helped make this happen.  The Kurt Cobain/Nirvana drawing, used as the online flyer above, sold the day before the show.  The Prince drawing below sold a couple of days ago.  Getting an artist profile in the Winston-Salem Journal, promotion by Earshot art coordinator Jane Buck and shop owner Phred got word out.  I also pounded the pavement and passed out a bunch of flyers in the Trade Street art district here. 

I'm totally stoked that lots of people seem to be psyched on my work, and that a couple have sold.  I'm not in this to be any kind of famous artist.  I just want to draw things that people dig and are psyched to hang on their wall.  Both drawings are Sharpies on paper, in my unique "scribble style," and 18" X 24". 

Desert Treasure...The Nude Bowl: then and now

Here's old school BMXer Rick Thorne with even older school skate legend Steve Alba at one of my favorite places in the world, The Nude Bowl.  Way out in the SoCal desert, on a hillside past Palm Springs and overlooking Desert Hot Springs, there lies the remains of a nudist colony.  Sometime in the late 1970's or early 80's, the naked people abandoned it.  Somehow, skaters found it.

I started working on an old school BMX project today, and looked up some riders from BITD on You Tube.  Much to my surprise, I found Rick Thorne's Pool Hunters.  The bald guy in this clip looks vaguely familiar.  Anyhow, I watched four different clips tonight, and this one at the Nude Bowl with pool skating legend Steve Alba reminded me of my sessions there.  A blog post was inevitable.  I even learned a few things about the pool I didn't know in this clip. 

I first heard of the Nude Bowl in 1988, in my little cubby hole of a room at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company.  The biggest part of my job then was dubbing copies of videos for people throughout the Vision world.  People of all different jobs needed videos, mostly VHS copies, of different things, and I made those copies.  I was also the tape librarian, so I made window dubs of all the raw footage that got shot, labeled the tapes, and organized them in the tape vault.  One of the best parts of that job was that I got to watch raw footage that the skaters shot, usually a day or two after it happened.  In those tapes, I first saw footage of this crazy pool out in the desert called the Nude Bowl, and several other skate spots.  This was at a time when Del Mar skatepark closed, and the sole surviving skatepark in Southern California was Pipeline in Upland.

While I always sucked at riding ramps, and never could air much above coping, but I loved riding pools.  Figuring out lines and carving pools was a blast, just pumping around at speed seemed one of the best things to do on a bike.  I finally bought Mike Sarrail's old truck in '88, and managed to ride Pipeline five or six times right before it closed.  Since I happened to work for Don Hoffman, whose parents owned Pipeline, I was able to ride Pipeline a bunch more times after it closed.  I loved riding pools from then on, even though I never rose above coping.

Sometime in late '88 or early '89, I got the job of taking a couple of the Vision skaters out to the Nude Bowl for a session and a low key video shoot.  I can't remember which skaters, though Kele Rosecrans comes to mind.  So we made the trip inland, and I bounced the little Unreel Toyota van off road and got about 100 yards from the pool.  The road was too gnarly at the time to get the van to the top.  We hiked the last little bit, and when I first saw the pool, it seemed like the best thing in the world.  In those days, we had to worry about police or security guards nearly every spot we rode.  But at the Nude Bowl, nobody gave a fuck.  That was awesome.

I went out to the Nude Bowl two or three more times in '89, to shoot video of skaters, and I made sure to take my bike and carve some lines when I could.  In those days, when there were no concrete skateparks at all, it was amazing to ride a pool, hour after hour, and not worry about anybody shutting the session down.

When I started working on my self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend, in 1990, a session at the Nude Bowl was one of the first places I thought of.  It was sometime in the summer when I finally got it to happen.  Somehow, I was able to talk skatepark legend Brian Blyther to make the trip out there, though he wasn't riding vert all the time then.  He brought Xavier Mendez, another skatepark rider from the 80's.  I got the then unknown ripper Keith Treanor, English vert rider John Povah, and flatlander/photographer Mike Sarrail, and we headed out.  Despite it being 105 degrees out, we had a great little session.  I got footage for my video, and it was a good day all around, despite the heat.  You can watch it at 25:54 in this video.

As luck would have it, that session at the Nude Bowl wound up being the first time the pool showed up in a bike video.  To make it even better, I used music from Toledo punk band, The Stain, and they had recorded a song called "Pool Party" for some skater friends.  It was the perfect song, and I had these crazy dreams of making it a music video and getting it played on MTV.  That never happened, but it was a cool video section anyway.  In these two clips, you can see a 27 year span of one of the most legendary skate/bike pools ever.  Props to Rick Thorne for doing a great series on real life pool riding and skating.

Rick's Nude Bowl clip had 2,605 views when I wrote this post.  I'm just curious how many views this post may help it get.

I'm doing most of my new writing on Substack now, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack