This is the scene of the fun yesterday. For decades, going way back into silent film days, and through the Golden Age of Hollywood, it was Grumman's Chinese theater. When I worked over the hill on the American Gladiators crew (and a few others) in the early 1990's, it was Mann's Chinese theater. These days, it's TCL Chinese theater, and it's where famous actors have been putting their hand prints and footprints in cement for like 80 years. The sidewalk was rerouted around the little bleachers, which were actually a media platform, but blocked the view for fans. I tried to stand inside those orange barriers, but security kept moving along so we couldn't stand there. So I posted up across the street, where I could see the stage, though kind of far away, and could hear the mike at first, then the audio faded out. So I didn't hear anything after Ben Affleck's first few words.
Here's Ben Affleck, who got his first big role, and several more decent roles, in Kevin Smith movies. Yeah, that's him below the blue light in the center of the shot. Not optimal viewing, but I could see the stage during the actual event. I tried to find a closer place to stand earlier, but the security woman said, "Oh, there's a line over there," and pointed to the West side of the theater, around the corner. I went there, and there was no line. So I watched from across the street.
After the speeches, when Kevin and Jason were actually putting their hand and feet prints, they went out of sight. So I decided to try and find a close view. I went into a little entryway, and it opened up to the side of the scene. This, above, is my view from there. There were two security guys, guarding a fence, and this was the actual fans section, but it was closed off, nobody else was getting in. So I had my funny cardboard sign, and I watched as fans got selfies with Kevin, Jason, and a couple other Kevin Smith movie alums, and they all were doing multiple interviews. I thought this was as close as I was going to get. Hey, there are very few people in Hollywood I'd walk across the street to see. But Kevin Smith's stuff is hilarious, original, and I love his movies. I've been a fan since Clerks. And his random talks about making movies, which are just as funny.
After standing there, after the official ceremony, I stood behind that fence, 40 feet away from the action, for about 20, maybe 30 minutes. Finally things were winding down, Jason Mewes had taken a few selfies with fans, then got pulled across the set to do TV interviews. Brian O'Halloran, who played Dante in Clerks, the guy who said the epic line I put on my sign, was there. I had to look up his name just now, but I recognized him. It was only then, a couple hours into my Jay and Silent Bob hand print adventure, that I thought, "Hey, it'd be cool to get him to sign my sign. But I was back in uncool person land.
Along the way, about ten other fans saw my sign, and stopped me to take photos. I was unshaven, I looked like hell, because, well, I AM homeless, and I'm moving around all day to get wifi and power and to draw the current picture, to make a few bucks. So I'm scummed out most of the time. So it was funny that 8 or 10 people wanted photos of my goofy sign, and me.
Then things just fell into place again. Another fan talked the guards about letting him in, since basically everything was over, except Kevin and Jason doing more TV/internet interviews, and talking to the 40 or so fans there. So the guards decided to let that guy in, and the tall guard pointed at me, because I'd been chill, and joking with him for 20 minutes, and he said, "Let this guy go too." So this photo is me behind the fan crowd, inside the fan area, thinking, OK, THIS is as close as I'll get. I'll maybe be able to get a photo of Kevin from 6 or 8 feet away, right before my phone dies. Cool. That was it for another ten minutes.
I stumbled across a Colbert interview of Kevin Smith last week, and heard about this event. Today, Jay and Silent Bob, aka Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, got to put their hand and foot prints at the TCL (formerly Grumman's and Mann's) Chinese Theater in Hollywood today. I got there early, went to get a Diet Coke at McDonald's, and had this funny idea to make a "panhandling sign" with this quote from "Clerks." It turned into an epic morning for me. Blog post on all that tomorrow. I need to get back to finish drawing the Martin Aparijo drawing right now. But here are Harley Quinn Smith's (Kevin's daughter), and Ben Affleck's speechs from the event.
The first photos I ever saw of Martin Aparijo, back in 1983.
Martin Aparijo, who most of us Old School BMX freestylers remember as a pioneering flatlander, here as a BMX Plus test rider. This is a Champion 24inch cruiser test, from the February 1983 issue of BMX Plus. That was the second or third BMX magazine I ever bought, the first being the December 1982 issue of BMX Plus with Stompin' Stu Thomsen on the cover. This issue has Bob Haro doing a wheelie on the cover, and a Bob Haro how-to inside for the Haro bar-hop, the first trick I ever learned out of a magazine.
Somebody shared this two photo combo on Facebook a couple of days ago, and it instantly took me back to my earliest days as a BMX rider in 1982 and 1983. I knew without reading the caption, that the rider was Martin Aparijo. Yes, Martin is best remembered as the pioneering flatland rider, one of the two riders of the early and mid-1980's that focused on flatland, the other being Woody Itson. Like Woody, Martin could jump well, too. In fact, Martin was the first jumper to do a front flip off a jump, also in the early 80's. You can ask him that story if you meet him sometime.
The trick above is called the Hannah, after motocross legend Bob Hannah. In this case, obviously, Martin pushed it and popped his visor off with the front tire. I knew the name Bob Hannah, because it got thrown around at the trailer park. Motocross showed up on TV maybe a couple of times a year back then, and if people knew one rider, it was Bob "Hurricane" Hannah.
This magazine came out during the cold Idaho winter, while I was living in Blue Valley trailer park. But we didn't have snow all the time, and we rode when the dirt was frozen, we rode on the ice on the pond, and even made jumps out of snow that winter.
There were Jeep trails heading out in several directions from Blue Valley, and often we'd just go out riding, by ourselves, or with a couple other guys, and just ride the Jeep trails for a mile or two in one direction or another, and then ride back. It was all BMX to us, jumping, racing each other, trying to do early tricks like bunnyhops or endos, or riding the Jeep trails like a mountain biker would now.
The locals at Blue Valley were the Damon Brothers, Mike, Steve, Brian, Andy, and their step brother Greg. Mike and Steve were the best riders, but were in high school (like me), and were more into girls and parties, than BMX. I was more of a dork, so I hung with the younger guys and rode my bike, a Sentinal Exploder GX. Any collector got one of those? I doubt it, it was a "Kmart special" bike. The Damon brothers (except Greg) had all ridden BMX while living in California years before, I think. So they all had BMX bikes and a bit more skill than the rest of us, who had none.
Andy, the youngest, had a classic Mongoose with Motomags, a 1980 or 81 model, I think. I jumped it once, off our "big" jump, which was about 2 1/2 feet high... to flat. I landed back wheel first, and the next thing I knew, both of my heels hit the ground, the handlebars were still in my hands, but the bike was rolling away, 8 feet in front of me. Like a cartoon, with a look on my face that made everyone laugh, I slid on my heels, and fell right to my butt, handlebars still in my hands.
Like all ghetto BMXers, we had a "you break, you pay" rule, when riding other kid's bikes. All I could think was that I suddenly owed Andy a bunch of money for whatever broke. It turned out he just hadn't tightened the gooseneck, and the bars and stem slid right out of the head tube when the back wheel hit the ground. Nothing broke, my ass hurt from the hard landing, and everybody laughed about it for a while.
Brian and Andy were the main Damons riding every day. The there were Scott and Rocky, from the other side of the pond (in the trailer park, not England), and Buzzard, Me, and occasionally Shane from our side. Yes, we had a friend named Buzzard. He had a real name, but I have no idea what it was. He got made fun of for a buzz haircut a couple of years before, and got nicknamed "Buzz." then someone mentioned that, with his hair short, he looked a lot like a buzzard (turkey vulture), and he did. From then on, he was Buzzard.
Our trails were about 40 yards long, a dirt area with one foot high berms on each end. A motorcycle rider, a couple of years earlier, had roosted the berms, and rode them for a while, and we kept them shaped. On one side there was an 18 inch high jump to flat, which I jumped 18' 2" off of once, when it had just rained and the dirt was hard and fast. A little past that were our doubles, six inches high and three feet apart. When we all improved a bit, we added a third jump, making them a six foot long set of triples. Then we'd hit the left hand berm at the bottom (it sloped a tiny bit), and head back up to a one foot high jump to flat. That was our "style" jump. It was over that little jump that I spent a couple of days learning to pull the bike vertical and do a Hannah, inspired by that photos of Martin Aparijo above. The was the first jump variation I ever learned, and it's all thanks to Martin on that Champion 24" cruiser bike test, in the photos above.
In the middle of our jumping area was our "big jump." It ranged from 2 feet to 3 feet high, depending on how thrashed it was. We rebuilt it time after time. Like the others, it was a jump to flat. that's the jump I hit on Andy's bike, where the bars came out.
So thanks whoever shared those pics of Martin on Facebook, those took me back to the time I was just getting really stoked on BMX. There wasn't much else to do in the trailer park. There were three cute girls and one ugly one. One cute girl was 16, my age, and had an older boyfriend. No play there. Of the other two cute ones, one had the same boyfriend the whole time, and one was prude/shy, and didn't make out with anybody. So all of us horny, frustrated, young guys rode our BMX bikes all the time, and took turns making out with the ugly girl. Hey, it was a trailer park.
When I started getting more into freestyle in 1983, and into 1984, most freestylers rode coaster brakes. I always hated coaster brakes, since my first crappy BMX bike had one that never worked right. So I decided to freestyle on a freewheel, which was unusual at the time. Martin Aparijo rode a freewheel, and so I figured I could learn tricks on a freewheel bike, too. If other riders asked why I didn't ride a coaster brake, I's say, "Martin rides a freewheel, and look at all the tricks he's invented."
When I originally wrote this blog post, in the fall of 2019, I was working on one of my drawings of Martin Aparijo to sell. Homeless and struggling to get my act back together at the time, Martin helped me out by letting my draw a picture of him, and sell them. I first met Martin on a FREESTYLIN' magazine photo shoot in 1986. He's a first class guy, and helps a lot of people out behind the scenes, but he'd never tell you that. We've talked a lot over the years, and he's given me advice many times.
Here's the 11" X 14" drawing I did of Martin, my take on a classic photo from his GT days in the 1980's, done in my Sharpie Scribble Style.
To insure the drawings actually sold, Martin offered to sign each one, and it this was the best selling drawing of the six Old School BMX Freestyle drawings I've done. This is Martin with one of the drawings, right after he signed it. Most of them went to diehard fans of Martin, around the world, including Europe, Australia, South America, and even one to Taiwan. Martin Aparijo is global, these days. Thanks again Martin, that was a huge help, at the time.
Without doubt, the single most influential BMX freestyle video of all time, the Eddie Roman produced Headfirst featuring Mat Hoffman. It came out in 1991. If you're an old school BMXer, this video almost certainly brings back good feelings, and a sense of awe at how far Mat (and Chase) pushed the progression of freestyle in this one video.
The reason I'm sharing this video, is to remind us all how long ago this video was made, it came out about 28 years ago. At about 34:00 in, you hear Eddie (I think) throwing things we'd all been hearing on the news, because the Gulf War, the first U.S. war in Iraq, was going on then. The SCUD that he mentions, was an Iraqi missile, for example. The war was live on CNN, back when CNN was actually a true and functional news organization. At 34:37, you can hear Eddie say, "That was for the Kurdish Rebels." The Kurds are a group of people from the area of Northern Iraq. They have long wanted their own nation, but got lumped into the country of Iraq, a nation cobbled together by the British decades ago.
The Kurds were helping the U.S. fight Saddam Hussein in Iraq way back when this video was made, and they've been an ally to the U.S. since. For the past several years, they've been the main force actually fighting Isis, with U.S. backing, in the collapsed country of Syria. Syria is adjacent to northern Iraq, and right below Turkey. Two days ago, after a call from Turkey's dictator, President Trump completely changed U.S. policy, for no apparent reason, and pulled our help away from the Kurds, which have been our allies since the early 90's, by and large.
The Kurdish Rebels Eddie refers to in the Headfirst video in 1991, are now being attacked by Turkey with help from Russia. In the volatile Middle East, for no logical reason, without consulting with the State Department, the military, or intelligence officials, President Trump just threw the Kurds under the bus. He singlehnadedly greenlighted a genocide against the people who have been fighting and dying for years in OUR battle against ISIS.
Here's a news report on the beginning of the attacks on the Kurds, from last night (10/9/2019). Many Kurds will die, few other groups will want to work with America in the future after this blatant betrayal, and we will all be less safe as Isis rises up again.
I put this in a BMX-oriented context, because us old guys (and gals) can relate to how long the Kurdish people have been working with us, by remembering just how long ago Headfirst came out. Elections (hacked or legit) have consequences. Whatever your political views, we need competent leaders and people in government, people who think things through, discuss plans with the smartest people on the subject, and try to act in the best interest of the country. That's not what's happening these days.
I almost scrolled by this clip, shared by Eddie Roman on Facebook, but it reminded me of a session I had in 1989, and I decided to watch it. Then I decided to blog about that session. Props to Felipe Nunes for landing the loop on his board, major huevos needed to make it happen.
One of my favorite times to be a BMX freestyler was 1989. I lived on the north end of Huntington Beach, California, on Sims Street. That was funny because I worked for Vision Skateboards' video company, which owned Sims skateboards and snowboards. Three or four days a week, I'd ride my bike to work. To go to work, I would ride a mile down Warner to the beach, the very end of the 8.3 mile long, wide beach, that sets Huntington Beach apart from every other SoCal beach city. It was the only city that didn't have houses built right up to the sand, except on condo complex. There was a big bike and walking path the whole length, and I'd ride that on my freestyle bike, then into Newport Shores, and up Superior, into Costa Mesa, down 17th, and over to Unreel Productions on Brioso. It was about a 10 or 11 mile ride, each way.
After work, I'd leave at 5:30 or 6 pm or so, I usually worked over a while. Then I'd head a couple blocks inland on Whittier, and head down 19th Street hill, and wind up above the sketchy oil lands where Sheep Hills jumps were built several months later. But it was just some trails through the brush and small trees then, where locals would walk their dogs, or maybe ride a mountain bike over to the Santa Ana River trail. There is a skate ditch there, and sometimes I'd ride that a little, and then ride up to Hamilton, over the river, and across Brookhurst. Most nights, I would wander around, hitting 4 or 5 spots as I wandered home through Huntington, over the course of 3 or 4 hours. It was just a fun, wandering solo ride each night, and I would wind up sessioning with different people at different spots, or sometimes I would just session alone. Ed Templeton was out on his solo skate missions at the same time in those days, and we knew each other by sight, and would run into each other now and then, and I'd see other skaters once in a while.
Although I was hitting a lot of the same spots, night after night, I wound up riding with a lot of skaters, and a few BMXers, and it was a little different every night. Then on the weekends, I'd ride to the H.B. Pier, and ride with Mike Sarrail, maybe Randy Lawrence, and the freestyle skaters, Pierre Andre', Don Brown, Hans Lingren, Jeremy Ramey, and the other locals. On the weekends, we did mostly flatland, which for me meant squeakers, flatland tailwhip variations, and my versions of mega-spins. I didn't do true mega-spins, I would pump my back wheel (I rode Peregrine Super Pro 48's), and only do a 540 or 720 spin on the back wheel. I did a bunch of variations of the mega-spin, though, one handers, barspins, no handers, barspins to one handed catch, and stuff like that. the BMXers and the skaters alternated, getting crowds of 100 or more people, then having the police roll by and tell us to stop, then the other group would gather a crowd. Each day on the weekends, we'd ride for 10 or more crowds, ususally 100 to 200 people each, sometimes up to 500 people would stop to watch us. Freestyle was anew thing then, and lots of people would watch us and the skaters do our thing.
During that year, as the mainstream money pulled out of BMX and freestyle, and as the factory teams, and many sponsored riders were let go, I was just living the BMX freestyle life. I had a decent job, I bought Mike Sarrail's old pick-up, a blue, lowered (but not slammed), Datsun pick-up, with a cap. I had also become the cameraman for Unreel, and I got to fly to all the 2-Hip King of Vert contests. So my life was more stable than the lives of many pro riders.
One of the coolest things that happened in 1989 is that the chain blocking the Huntington Beach Pier bank was taken down. There was a mellow bank, about three feet high, made of asphalt, on the north side of the pier. The big steps (of the old pier, it's all new now) came down, with concrete heading out to the bike path, and spread left, under the pier. The north side parking lot had two levels then, and the bank was next to the edge of the lower parking lot, where the amphitheater its now. There were big, telephone sized poles coming out of the bank, each about three feet high, which held this massive chain, with links about three inches across, hanging, keeping the bank unridable and unskatable.
One night, I wandered down to the pier bank, and the chain was gone. Some skaters had cut it down, and dragged the 300 pound (or so) chain out into the sand, and buried it. That was the story, anyhow. It was down, and the bank could be sessioned, for about three weeks. Then the authorities found the chain and put it back up. It lasted about a month, I think. Then, suddenly, it was gone again. And it was down for about 9 months, most of 1989. Word had it that the chain "will never be found." I think it was dragged quite aways out into the water, and pretty much buried, allowing the tide and drifting sand to keep covering it more. In any case, the bank was open to session every night.
So I started hitting the pier bank and sessioning it, usually with Ramones Mania playing on my Walkman, in my Vision hip sack, night after night. I learned a lot of stuff on that bank. I sessioned alone most of the time, and it was usually pretty quiet under the pier, in the evenings, then, with a handful of people wandering up and down the bike path. When others showed up, they were mostly skaters. Sometimes a bike rider would come by, but there weren't many locals then.
One night, well after dark, I heard a skateboard coming up the bike path. The noise got closer, and a skater came around the corner from the bike path, which was a hump of sandy ground, where grass fought to keep growing. As first I thought it was a little kid, because the skater was kneeling on the board, hands on the front of the board, pushing with one foot, like really little kids do. I quickly realized it was a young guy, larger than a little kid, maybe in his late teens. But he didn't stand up. It wasn't unusual to see complete strangers show up there, the bank had been there for a decade or more already, and word got around that the chain was down. So skaters from older days (like the 70's or early 80's) would make the trip there to session, as would locals like Ed Templton, Mark Gonzales, Bob Schmelzer (who supposedly made the chain disappear), and others.
The kid said something like, "Cool if I skate?" I said, "Sure." Despite all the skater hate against BMXers, almost everywhere I went that skaters skated, we were always cool. I never really had a problem riding with skaters. So this kid pushed toward the bank, still kneeling, and guiding the board with his hands on the front. He did a carve, or maybe a kick turn type thing, then came back towards me. And that's when I got a better look at him. He was kneeling on the board, because he had apparently been born with both feet pointing backwards. He was pushing, but his legs kind of looked like a grasshopper or something. He couldn't physically stand up. So he kneeled and pushed, the way a little kid would. As we started taking turns hitting the bank, He started planting his hands on the bank, and he'd do a hand varial with the board, or lift up the nose, like a kickturn or tailblock. This guy was a fucking skater. He had obviously spent a lot of time skating and learning tricks.
Yes, he was a physical freak, in the most literal sense. He had been born severely disfigured, his feet literally pointed backwards. I'm not calling him a freak to be mean, he was a literal freak of nature, simply born that way, far from the normal body. But skating and BMX freestyle in 1989 were weird "sports," and we were all freaks, according to mainstream society. No respectable young guy would spend hours a day riding a "useless wooden toy," or a "little kid's bike."
This kid, and I never asked his name, had found a skateboard as a way to express himself, like the other skaters I knew, and and like I had on my freestyle bike. And the dude fucking ripped. He had at least two or three dozen tricks he had come up with, adapted to the weird body nature had given him. Me and the kid with the backwards feet just had a great ol' session for and hour or so. He commented on my tricks, and I commented on his. We gave each other props when we made a trick we'd been missing. It was just like riding with any other skater in most every way, except his body was "handicapped." Myself, I was struggling with my massive shyness and personal issues then (and for many years to come), my "freak" was all on the inside. His was in the physical sense. But there, in the cool evening, at the Huntington Beach Pier bank, none of that mattered. We were just a BMxer and a skater sessioning together.
After a while, he said he was tired, and said, "Later," and pushed off back up the bike trail into the dark. I'd never heard of the kid. I never saw or heard of him again. I never heard another BMXer of skater mention a guy like him. But I never forgot him either. Because, like Tony Hawk says in the clip above, "it's just as hard for him as anyone else." I remember it just seemed cool to me that a guy with such a serious physical issue could truly become a skater, and on the bank or at a skatepark, he could be "just another skater." In a world where his physical condition set him apart from everyone else, both obviously and continuously, it was probably pretty cool to be "just a skater," while on his board.
As the years passed, I later saw a few other people with serious physical issues, that became good skaters. And now, with YouTube,I know there's a one legged BMXer out there somewhere who rips, and one armed one, as well. I've met another skater years ago, with no legs, who ripped it up at the Van's park. And you can't have that in football (OK, one exception I think), basketball, soccer, or hockey. Well maybe hockey, they're all fucking mutants to start with. But that's another issue.
But in a creative sport like skating, BMX, surfing, or rock climbing, where "adapting" to terrain and conditions is something everyone has to do, people with "handicaps," can grab a board or bike, and just figure out their own style and tricks. And that's pretty fucking cool. When it comes down to it, we all have our handicaps, big or small. Most people's are just in their head, or heart, when it's hard to see them. a big part of life is working to get beyond whatever handicaps you have, visible or not.
So, mad props to Felipe Nunes above for being one of the very few skateboarders to master the loop. And props to Felipe and everyone out there who doesn't fit the norm, in whatever way, and uses a bike, board, or whatever, to adapt and to create, play, have fun, and progress, in your own weird way. Weirdos make the world go round, and drive most progress. Keep the world weird... and creative, and fun.
Borrowing this great scene again, this time with the further appearances by Fawkes. Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, goes up in flames, and is reborn. In the last post in my personal blog, I predicted a major event will happen this month that will make it obvious that we're in for a serious economic downturn. I think we're in the verge of a "Lehman Brothers moment," something in the business or economic world to make it obvious things are NOT as they should be.
It is part of the natural order of things that there are times when something old must die, it simply must collapse, it must go up in flames, its time is over. And then, also part of the natural order of things, that at that point, something new will be born, and will grow in its place. The mythical phoenix is a symbol of that period of change. I think we're at a major point like that in Western society as a whole. Writing that last post, I realized, I see this next recession as the flaming of the phoenix. While tough economic times are hard for most everyone, I see the potential for something great to be reborn from the economic ruins.
"May you live in interesting times."
-Ancient Chinese curse
If you read my personal blog much, you know I've been drumming on about this coming recession for a couple of years now. The reason is because I see this next economic downturn as much more than a slow economic period. Being the weirdo I am, I've been drawn to little known and often overlooked social theories, and ultra long term trends. There are several long term trends ending right now, in our little piece of human history, and the best way to describe this time is a transition of many transitions. That's why my overall theory is something I call, The Big Transition. Not a creative name, but it fits. We truly do live in "interesting times."
On one hand, we are simply near the end of a bull run in our stock markets, and in the real estate markets of the most vibrant urban areas. The stock prices and real estate prices (in prime areas) have been going up since early 2009. The stock markets have been nearly stagnant for the last year ans a half, but hover near the high water mark. Things are overpriced, and we're heading into a recession that will shake out, prices will drop dramatically, some businesses will collapse or go up in flames (if they have good insurance), and new ones will be born.
On another level, we are still in the long transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. The rise of many new technologies, particularly communications, computers, the internet, and biology, are rapidly changing what's possible in many ways, and changing our everyday lives, the way we interact with each other, who it's possible to interact with, and how business and organizational structures work. We're leaving an economic model based on factories in nearly every town, making physical goods, and selling those goods in mass market stores nationwide and worldwide.
We're going into an economic model based on nearly every person having a voice in society, a model where every person carries a small device that is a phone, a publishing company, and a TV studio, and a comedy club all in one. One person can now share funny cat videos with a stranger next door and another in Spain, publish a video or blog post that can be viewed by billions, and can sell a homemade item and ship it to South Africa, or nearly anywhere else. It's a world of tiny niches of interest, of many and multi-cultural voices, and a world that's extremely scary to a lot of people. It's a world where old business models from the Industrial Age are collapsing, and where new, tech-enabled business models, are being created, and disrupting the old. It's a world where the old school power structures are straining to keep control, while many of their long hid secrets come to light. We're in a period of massive change at a frightening pace. In a word, it's chaotic.
On yet another level, the United States of America, the grand experiment created unlike any other, where any individual, with hard and smart work, could create a business or idea, and move up in society, has reached a point of peak corruption in many businesses and political scenes. After a full, generation of seeing the rich get much richer, while the lives of the majority of people have stayed financially stagnant, or have gone down, the common people are pissed off. The average people have had enough, and we've been seeing the beginnings of a worldwide populist movement. The people, in the U.S., and everywhere, are remembering they have the numbers, and ultimately, the strength, to change things to a more fair system. It's never pretty, and it can be brutal (like in Hong Kong at the moment), but it will keep happening.
On yet another level, America has been built on the idea of common people as business people. Originally (after stealing the country from the Indians), Americans were farmers, traders, and shopkeepers, creating their own destiny. Born in the early stages of the Industrial Age, America saw, and dominated, in the rise of the factories, and reigned as a super power in the late Industrial Age. But with that came the rise of jobs, and most Americans went from being small businesses in the late 1800's (whether a farmer or shopkeeper), to being workers, punching a time clock ,and relying on a paycheck. Now, with the rise of new technologies over the last 50 or so years, many Americans are turning back into entrepreneurs again, or trying to. So that's another major shift that's happening.
Another transition is that we've been a country that looked up to the business people for 350 years. But now the common people are rising, and standing up to the large scale corruption in many businesses, and other institutions. As that rise bubbled under the surface, a new mentality has been rising to dominate the American collective psyche. This is what P.R. Sarkar, philosopher and theorist from India, calls "The Warrior Mentality." These are people who prize physical abilities and courage, more than the salesmanship and manipulation of Industrial Age business culture.
People doing scary and courageous shit have been slowly and quietly rising up in stature for several decades now. Some of these people are the obvious, when you think of the core values of courage and physical ability, the soldiers, police, firefighters, and professional athletes. We all know these jobs take physical ability, and courage, at different levels. But courage is also needed, and demonstrated, by action sports athletes, activists, artists of all kinds, pioneers of all kinds, and entrepreneurs.
The Warrior Mentality is becoming the dominant mentality, and the wishy washy fence sitters are getting the boot. This is why nearly all of us hate most of our old school politicians these days, no matter what political party you belong to. Our long term politicians are schemers who will flip at the drop of a hat, they are not leaders. As all of this chaos happens, the average people are looking for courageous leaders, or (as we've unfortunately learned the hard way in the last couple of years), people that pretend to be courageous leaders, and can con a large part of society into following them. But those types show their true colors soon enough, and most people see through them before too long. Ultimately, the truly courageous, they will become our new leaders, in business, in political circles, and in other organizations.
So, in my geeky, big picture view, all of these forces and changes are coming together to make this next recession a time of incredible change. And incredibly scary. That's where the courage part comes in. I think this next economic downturn, which will be severe, as the major shakeout of our lifetime. A lot of major change will happen in a short amount of time.
Like the phoenix, one thing after another that we know well, will burst into flames and die off. That will be catastrophic on many levels, and painful for many people. But this is all to make way for new things that are, and will continue to be, born.
Welcome everyone, to The Phoenix Recession.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, abandoned, and unused buildings, as well as the economy, and commercial real estate in general. Check it out!
A great visual depiction of the idea of a phoenix, burning up then being reborn from the ashes, courtesy of Harry Potter. That phoenix, Fawkes, gave a feather that is the core of Harry's wand.
It's October 1st, 2019. For a couple of years now, I've been writing and talking about the coming recession. Back in early 2018, when the financial market thought the economy was going to surge for 3 to 5 more years, because of Trump's massive tax cuts, I disagreed. I predicted that the stock market would start to turn down a month or two after the tax cuts were signed, because the promise of that massive windfall to corporate America, and the super rich, was the main force driving the markets up (here's one post, January 2, 2018). President Trump sign the tax cuts on December 22, 2017. Almost a month to the day, January 26thm 2018, the stock market turned downward, you can check the chart.
What I got wrong was the incredible manipulation that was going to take place to try and keep the market moving up, mostly to make the economy appear vibrant, and get Donald Trump, and a lot of Republicans in other offices, elected again. Nomi Prins and her explanation of the collective central banks actions after 2008 helped me, and others, understand this weird financial Never Never Land we find ourselves in now. There are trillions of government bonds paying negative interest rates, for example. Are wealthy individuals and institutions really going to keep investing in bonds that cost them money? I doubt it.
As I write this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is only 26 points above where it was on January 26th, 2018. Overall, the Dow is up 26 freakin' points in 20 months. Not 26%, 26 points! Healthy and vibrant economy? Nope. The bond yields have been dropping, and are now below the dismal inflation numbers, by and large. And that's the strong part of the economy.
Across rural, small town, and mid-size city America, things have been pretty dismal economically since 2008. There are some exceptions, of course, but much of this country has missed out on the 10+ years of expansion that did happen. For many rural areas and small towns, they've basically been in a great depression, a geographic great depression, for 11 years now.
I've been interested in futurist thinking since I was a kid. I've been interested in economics since high school, and I'm 53 now. This is my geek zone, long term social dynamics and economic trends are the weird stuff I find fascinating.
So now, I think we'll see this recession's "Lehman Brother Moment" happen this month, during October 2019.
I think we are very likely already in "the next recession." But recessions are officially labeled months, maybe even years, after they actually happen. So it's always arguable that we're in a recession, while we're in one. But I think we're due for the big moment, a Lehman Brothers-style moment, this month, that will make the economic downturn obvious to everyone. It may be a collapse of GE, based on the allegations from about 6 weeks ago. Or it could be the impeachment, the trade war, or something else. But I think the big moment will happen in October 2019. And yeah, that's going to suck for most people. That's the bad news.
The good news is that the long term forces in play here are the collapse of the remaining parts of the Industrial Age infrastructure, and our long, messy, sticky transition into a functional Information Age world. That's the phoenix part.
Things like our education system, particularly the college system, largely held up by $1.6 TRILLION of student debt, will meet the Disruption Monster. College as an institution will collapse, much in the way we see the Retail Apocalypse now. And then it will have to be rebuilt. Colleges won't go away completely, we need them for certain jobs and career paths. But many colleges will go under, or be absorbed into larger, more viable ones.
A perfect example is that Mount Ida College, where hardcore entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk went to school, is now out of business. But Gary Vaynerchuk isn't, he's not only thriving, he's looking forward to this economic downturn, and the incredible amount of opportunities it will bring about. Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki is also looking forward to the coming opportunities, and talking openly about it. Warren Buffet is too, I imagine, but he doesn't say it, although he drops a little hint here and there.
This economic downturn will be much more than a typical recession. This is the Phoenix Recession, a collapse of much of the obsolete parts of the Industrial Age world, businesses, power structures, and systems, and new, Information Age businesses and systems will be built, taking their place. That's the long term Big Picture that I see, and have been writing about as I have been able. My question for each of you is, do you want to ride the collapse down and be crushed, or do you want to look ahead and help build a viable future, using today's technology, platforms, and opportunities?
Personally, I'm in a really down and out place financially, and there's a long story about that, a story I won't get into. But I'm looking to build something cool with some of the opportunities this economic downturn, this Phoenix Recession, will provide. We're at the top of the roller coaster hill, are you ready for this ride?
A day later... 10/2/2019- The markets were down a couple hundred points yesterday, and I didn't expect a huge drop right away. But as of close of the stock markets today, the Dow Industrial Average was down over 800 points. It's a really rough start to Quarter 4 of this business year, and a lot of traders and investors are feeling a recession is more likely. But this post was to predict that I believe the big event no one can deny, the "Lehman Brothers Moment" of this economic downturn will happen this month. The markets will rebound a bit tomorrow or the next day, but the think the big economic bomb will drop later this month, and we'll be on our way down do about Dow 17,500, and similar percentage rate declines in the other averages.
