For about 20 years now, I've been fighting Saruman the Silver Tongued and the Orcs. That's a metaphor. The Orcs don't believe in metaphors (or science for that matter). Silly Orcs. I had a poorly written blog post here about that fight, but the last 20 years of my life can't be explained in a blog post. So here's a scene from The Lord of the Rings as a metaphor for that fight... my against the douchbags of the real world. Saruman got the upper hand early on, but he loses in the end. Here's how he goes out, he gets stabbed in the back by one of his lackies. That's probably how the real world saga I'm referring to will play out as well. Time will tell.
I'm focusing on two new blogs these days...
Crazy California- This blog's about weird, cool, funny, historic, and interesting locations in California.
This short and well made little video says much of what I wanted to say about IQ, and it does it well, with graphics. IQ scores are a test score, put through a formula. That's it. There are many different tests, that test a couple aspects of intelligence, on one particular day. But these scores have been amplified over time in importance, so people think an IQ score means far more that it really does. At the end, this video turns into an ad for Wix websites, but I'm OK with that, it's a great overview at why IQ scores aren't really as important as so many people make them out to be.
As most of you probably know, I.Q. stands for "intelligence quotient." Your IQ score is supposed to be a measure of your "intelligence." So that's a good place to start. There is no consensus agreement on what "intelligence" is. There are all kinds of ideas, from many thinkers and people who've studied human thinking, intelligence, and psychology. So the first problem with the idea of an IQ score is that the top people in the field can't agree on what intelligence means. How do you measure something that can't be clearly defined? That's a good question.
What we now call IQ tests got their start in 1883, when English statistician Francis Galton made the first attempt at a standardized intelligence test. In 1905, Alfred Binet, Victor Henri, and Theodore Simon came out with a standardized test aimed at finding low intelligence children who should be taken out of school and sent to asylums to live. In 1910, an American Henry Goddard, made a translation in 1910. German psychologist William Stern coined the term "intelligence quotient" in 1912. Then American psychologist Lewis Terman, of Stanford University came out with a revised version, called the Stanford-Binet test, which became the most widely used "IQ test," for much of the 20th century. But it was far from the only test. These days, the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is the most common now, but there are several other "official" IQ test being used. You can find these facts, and much more in the Wikipedia article on "Intelligence Quotient." All those IQ tests you see on the internet, those are not legit IQ tests, just clickbait for geeks.
The Stanford-Binet test went into widespread use in the United States during World War I (1914-1918). The test was used to find soldiers of higher intelligence who would possible officer candidates. It was very likely also used to weed out soldiers who just weren't considered smart enough to be soldiers at. To this day, the U.S. military can not enlist anyone with an IQ score below 83. The general IQ level considered to be "mental retardation" is 80. So the U.S. military did a lot of the early work on using IQ tests to assess and categorize large groups of people.
In those days, the IQ score would find your "mental age,"the age that you were as smart as, basically. If you took the test at age 11, but you scored equal to a 17-year-old, then your score would reflect that you had the thinking capacity of a 17-year-old. This is also why a few child prodigies scored 250-300 IQ scores, scores impossible for an adult.
After the 1994 book, The Bell Curve, IQ tests have been divided along the Bell Curve. So the median score is 100, and about 68% of people must fall within 1 standard deviation (15 points) in either direction, of a 100 score. So for the last 20-25 years, IQ scores have been judged on a curve, and roughly 2/3 of people must score from 85 to 115. Certain percentages fall above and below those levels, as well. Another aspect that I kept seeing while doing a bit a research, is that the IQ system doesn't work well on the very high, and very low parts of the scoring range. The most intelligent people commenting about IQ scores say we shouldn't take scores above 160, or below about 60, very seriously. The test isn't just very accurate in those ranges.
Here's where we get into more issues. To set the median score at 100, then you have to group all the scores together, which appears to be judged on all the people who took the test that year, or more likely, the year before. I haven't found a good explanation of just how this is done. So your IQ score is judged according to the other people who took the test that year (or the year before), not everyone who's ever taken the test. That means your IQ score can not be accurately compared to scores from people who took the test in a different year. Those would be apples and oranges comparisons. One article I read says that that same is true of countries, so a person in the U.S. is grouped with other people in the U.S. that year, and people in India for example, are judged against other people taking the test in India that year.
Your IQ score is not a one and done thing. You could score a fairly different IQ score on a different IQ test, or in a different year, or in a different country. Very simply, most IQ scores are not accurately comparable with each other, to start with.
In addition to that, much of the initial idea of finding IQ scores was created by people who believed in eugenics. That's the idea that some groups of people, and some races are inherently superior to others, and believers in eugenics (like NAZI leadership in the1930's-1940's) are generally trying to "improve" the human race, often by eliminating the groups believed to be substandard. So in the U.S., black people (largely uneducated in the late 1800's and early 1900's), as well as impoverished due to systemic racial suppression, generally scored lower in the early years. White eugenicists saw this as "proof" that white people were superior. Poor whites also tended to score low. Many wealthy whites, including some that were involved with inventing these tests, believed that intelligence was hereditary, that certain families were just more intelligent than others. So from its very start, IQ tests have been used to reinforce systemic racism, and amplify prejudice against other minority groups. As these concepts have been studied in more detail over the decades, none of these ideas have held up. Heredity has very little effect on intelligence, socioeconomic status means much more. Groups of people who are well fed, and educated as a kids, are likely to score higher on an IQ test.
Another major flaw of IQ tests is found in what is called the Flynn Effect. Over the 100 years since IQ tests began to be widely used, average IQ scores have gone up an average of about 3 points per decade. This is believed to be mostly because fewer people are in abject poverty than 100 years ago, so people generally are better fed, and got more basic and higher education as the 20th century and early 21 century progressed. So if you feed people and send them to school as kids, they get smarter, generally speaking, on IQ tests. Imagine that.
One other trend I noticed in doing the basic research for this post is that the people who tend to talk about IQ the most, and see that score as really important, are almost always highly racial, or prejudiced against one group or another. The people right now, in today's world, who spend a lot of time talking about IQ scores, often still believe in white superiority, or want to use lower IQ scores to persecute one group or another.
So IQ scores do test certain cognitive problem solving abilities, which are good to have in general. The scores have some value in that respect. But peoples IQ scores over a period of time, from different countries, different years, different ages, and taken on several different tests, ARE NOT really comparable to each other. Yes, someone who scored a 135 IQ score on a legit test is better at cognitive problem solving than someone who scored a 103. But that's about all you can say. The 135 person isn't necessarily twice as smart, though the score is more than two standard deviations higher.
Another thing still believed by many people, is that IQ scores predict financial success or achievement in life. Yes, people with 130 IQ's are much more likely to get a college degree, than someone with a 95 IQ score. But there are so many other forms and types of intelligence that play into "success" in life. A person may have an mediocre IQ score, but be good with people, and make a great salesperson, or maybe a great manager of people.
A genius may be exceptional at math, but doesn't understand how to change the oil in their car. I have a higher than average IQ score, but suck at fixing mechanical things that people with much lower scores can do practically blindfolded. We probably all knew a stoner kid in junior high or high school who got C's and D's on tests, but had memorized the stats of nearly every pro baseball or football player. Your IQ doesn't mean you have personal drive, are a self-motivator, can run a business, be a good parent, a good employee, or can do highly creative work like art or writing. One correlation that does exist (at a small level) is that kids that took music lessons as kids tend to have somewhat higher IQ's. So bring back music in schools!
The whole idea of IQ scores started to prove certain groups of "well born" people are inherently smarter than other groups. Over 100 years, those ideas haven't held up. In the "Nature versus Nurture" argument over intelligence, "nurture" (environmental influences) make so much difference, that no serious case can be made for intelligence being hereditary.
By and large, people raised with enough to eat and a good basic education can become highly intelligent. If your family prizes intelligence, then you're more likely to wind up above average, generally speaking. And over all, it's a bit better to have problem solving and good cognitive abilities in life. But it's probably much more important to be motivated and hardworking, when it comes to traditional standards of "success" in life.
Why am I writing this post on a blog that I retired about 10 months ago? Because the whole concept of IQ seems to have had an incredibly negative effect on my own life. Also, this blog has 699 posts, and making it an even 700 makes sense.
In the late 1970's, in 7th grade (maybe 8th), at Willard Junior High School, in Willard Ohio, I scored 132 on an IQ test. I was bummed. Since I sucked at sports and everything cool in junior high, I wanted to make it to "genius" level on the IQ test, which I thought was 145, then. For what it's worth, I didn't finish the test, I completed about 5 out of 7 pages, because I worked really slow as a kid. I also got my braces tightened that morning, before the test, which meant I was in mild pain all day. So that didn't help. I thought a 132 IQ put me in about the 10th or 15th percentile, and out of range of MENSA, the society for people in the top 2% of IQ scores. A couple years ago, I actually looked it up, and that 132 score put me in about the top 2% to 3% of IQ scores.
I went through the next 40 years of my life not thinking much at all about my IQ score, which was 132, as far as I knew. But in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, things began to get weird in my life. About 3 weeks after 9/11, my bank account got shut down or no apparent reason, and the manager of the bank seemed to be physically afraid of me. It seemed someone had told her something really bad about me. That just seemed weird at the time.
In the months after, I began to get people who seemed to be plain clothes cops, or undercover federal agents, questioning me, every 2-4 weeks. In March of 2000, I was put under surveillance for about 2 weeks, because of an incident involving a taxi driver I knew. So I had experience with undercover officers and agents. In 2002, they started showing up again. Ultimately, I got investigated for every kind of crime. I was questioned about drug use and dealing, sexual perversion, theft, getting prostitutes for taxi passengers, and even terrorism. It was nuts. I'm basically really boring, and don't so any of that stuff. But the investigations, and other weird stuff, kept happening.
I also had trouble finding good jobs, and there just seemed to be some great deal of outside pressure on my life. Back then, I thought I had been flagged as a "suspicious person" after 9/11, because I talked about conspiracy theories a lot back then. Conspiracy theories then were much different than now, they were basically "New World Order" stuff, which is now out in the open, the Globalists' agenda. As I became a taxi driver again in 2003, the undercover types kept showing up to ask me weird questions, time after time. I kept a rough count of the undercover-type people in my life until I hit 600 of them. That was in about 2006, I think. There have been at least that many since. Once I became fully homeless in 2007 (after having lived in my cab for most of the previous 4 years), I got a huge amount of harassment from uniform cops as well, primarily in Orange County, California.
In 2008, while homeless, at the Newport Transportation Center bus stop, an undercover who'd been hanging around, told me that "every homeless person with a high IQ was a potential terrorist suspect." "Great," I thought, like being homeless wasn't lame enough. But at the time, I thought there were millions of Americans with a 130+ IQ, how could millions of Americans be suspect? The whole thing seemed ridiculous. I literally I got so much pressure put on me in 2007-2008, that I just fought to simply survive, day by day, from late 2001 to late 2008. Any level of actual "success" was impossible. Survival against whatever was happening, was the best I could manage.
I could not find any viable job, or get any kind of money making gig going, while homeless in 2007-2008. They even put undercover cops where I panhandled, after a while. So I accepted my family's offer to go stay in North Carolina for a while. I grew up in Ohio, but my parents and sister's family wound up in central North Carolina years later. Moving to NC was the single biggest mistake I made in my adult life.
When I got to North Carolina, in November of 2008, I couldn't find any job. I lived in the spare bedroom of my parents' tiny apartment, and my life hit its worst situation in my adult life. I had no one to talk to, I was an intelligent, creative, entrepreneurial-minded person in North Carolina. The culture there is anti-intellectual, anti-creative, and anti-entrepreneurial. I'd spent my adult life in, and around, action sports world, and that world didn't exist in NC. I went into a deep, nearly suicidal depression, as soon as I got to North Carolina, and struggled with that depression until I escaped NC in 2018.
I left my parents' apartment, and lived in a homeless shelter in Winston-Salem, in 2009. The first week in the shelter, three different local snitches (as informants are called there), followed me around all day. All three, part way through the day, asked out of nowhere, "I wonder what it would be like to have a 170 to 180 IQ?" All three times, I answered, "Why the fuck are you asking me?" I asked the third snitch why he was the third one to ask me about high IQ scores. He said a counselor at the homeless shelter told him to hang out with me, and ask about my IQ score. Since I have a 132 IQ score, as far as I know, that didn't make sense. He said, the cops probably were the ones who told the counselor that I had a really high IQ score.
While in NC, the harassment by uniform cops stopped, and I would occasionally have some random person ask me about world events. But it was just a living hell for me. I couldn't get ANY job, even a cashier or restaurant job. I got hired as a taxi driver from 2011-2012, barely made $200 a week, on a good week, and lived in my taxi for a year. I quit after my dad had a stroke, and realized he was dying.
After an arrest, and three days in county jail for 2nd degree trespassing in 2017 ( I literally got arrested for buying donuts), I left North Carolina, escaped, in August 2018. I landed in Richmond, Virginia, a city I'd never been to. I just had enough money to take a Greyhound to Richmond, from NC. It was totally random.
About a month after I got there, I heard uniformed police officers talking right outside the little porch where I slept at night. One was asking another why they had to keep an eye on me, since I wasn't doing drinking, doing drugs, or any other shady stuff. The second cop said the chief had been told that I had the single highest IQ score in the United States. Night after night, when I got to my little sleeping spot, two or three police cars would roll by me, and park behind the building. Since there was a wall across from my spot, I could hear their conversations, 20-30 feet away, just around the corner. Night after night, one cop would tell the new guy, that I had the highest "legitimately tested IQ score in the U.S.," and they were told to not talk to me, not ticket me, not arrest me. They simply had to keep an eye on me. It took several days to actually realize it was me that they were talking about. The whole scenario was absurd. After a few days, I heard the IQ score, they were told I had a 198 IQ score. Then a few days later, a higher level officer said, "He actually scored a 216, but today that would be equivalent to a 198 score." For reference, Walter O'Brien, the real guy that the Scorpion TV show was based on, claims to have scored 194 on an IQ test at age 9. But he couldn't back that score up with paperwork, which makes sense. Not too many 9-year-olds keep good records.
After a couple weeks of the police talking about me near where I slept homeless, word had got around, and they talked about other stuff. But I started getting woke up there in the early morning, hearing 2 or 3 people walking close in the parking lot. I'd hear one person tell another, "That homeless guy over there has the highest IQ score in the country." This happened every two to four nights, from late September 2018, into December 2018. Yes, I know how crazy this shit sounds. But it happened. The whole scenario is so ridiculous, I was panhandling to eat at McDonald's, and people were coming out to lok at me at night, talking about this absurd IQ score.
I didn't remember taking another IQ test, except in 7th (8th?) grade, in Ohio. It finally occurred to me that I took a whole bunch of tests when I joined the Marine Corps reserves in late 1984, early 1985. I was in the delayed entry program, and ultimately got dropped, and never went to boot camp. The weird thing I remembered about that was that my recruiters told me the CMC made the call on my case. I didn't know what a CMC was, and the recruiter said, "Commandant Marine Corps." I remembered thinking, "Why would the head guy in the Marines look at the file of a pretty normal 18-year-old kid form Idaho?" That never made sense to me.
So one of two things is true. Either I have been fighting some weird force behind the scenes, struggling to survive, for about 19 1/2 years now. Or I'm completely delusional. Hey, I was a taxi driver, I am kind of crazy, no sane person would do that job. Maybe I am completely delusional. But all this weird shit happened, and it's still happening. I don't drink any alcohol, and haven't for years. I don't do drugs, legal or illegal. I 'm smart, and I'm a hard worker. Yet I haven't been able to find ANY good paying job for 20 years. I've lost all my teeth, they've literally broken off, piece by piece, in the last ten years. I struggle to survive every day. And the only explanation is this crazy story I've heard, 2nd hand, that I have "the highest legitimately tested IQ score in the United States." Seriously, that DOE NOT seem possible to me. Look at all the smart people at Google, and other tech companies. I do not know what's really going on.
My best educated guess, is that some group of powerful people on the East Coast started a program to get high IQ people from California to move to the east, shortly after 9/11 happened. This group, is a group that believes IQ scores are very important (remember what I said about how unreliable high IQ scores are), and this group can get federal agents, local cops, and people in other jobs (like my bank in 2001) to do things to make my life hell.
That's the best I can explain the last 20 years of my life. I don't know what the truth is. I've been homeless, in one form or another, for over 12 years, and fully living on the streets for 4 1/2 years, total. I can't live a whole lot longer like this. I doubt I'll ever know what this is all about. I've never been told to my face that my IQ is higher than 132. But if I did score higher on the Marine Corps test, those results could be classified, I guess.
I don't know why all this happened, but it did happened. And I'll just keep plugging along, day after day, trying to survive on the streets of Southern California. That's my story...
I have two blogs going right now:
Crazy California- This blog's about weird, cool, funny, historic, and interesting locations in California.
WPOS Kreative Ideas- This blog's about creativity, writing, art, blogging, and promoting creative work.
Kobe Bryant tribute drawing mounted on skateboard deck.
Biggie Smalls.
Close up of a Sumatran tiger drawing. #sharpiescribblestyle
I've written a 20 chapter "book/blog thing" about the ultra long term trends that have led into the Tumultuous 2020's. (Blogger's note: I wrote "Dystopia" between October 2019 and the first week of June 2020)
Is this the haggard face of the highest IQ guy in the United States? Perhaps.
Starting in September 2018, while homeless in Richmond, Virginia, I physically heard police officers talking. They had been told I had the single highest legitimately documented IQ score in the United States of America, a score of 198, and that they needed to keep an eye on me. But they weren't supposed to actually talk to me. They couldn't figure out what was going on. Last June, in 2019, while sleeping homeless at the Newport Transportation Center bus station, I heard both Newport Beach Police and Orange County Sheriff's deputies saying the same thing. When I first came to Hollywood last September, and slept over the hill in Studio City, I physically overheard LAPD officers who had been told the same thing. So it is true? I don't know. I've never been told that I have a 198 IQ score to my face, officially.
In January of 1985, shortly after enlisting for the Marine Corps Reserves to get money to go to college, I took some tests at the Military Enlistment Processing Center in Boise, Idaho. Those tests, to the best of my knowledge, included a test for IQ score. I was never told what my score was. I took an IQ test in junior high in Ohio, and scored 132. I worked really slow as a kid, and didn't finish the test. To the best of my knowledge, from the late 1970's, until late 2018, I thought my IQ was 132. Pretty good, but not in the genius range. So I never thought much more about it.
When time came to ship out to boot camp, in early 1985, I was back at the MEPS Center. The first day I went there, I didn't ship out. I was told the UPS truck with my orders got stuck in s snowstorm in Oregon. I was picked up by the recruiters the next morning, and spent another 8 hour day at the MEPS center. On that day, I was told that the UPS truck carrying my orders actually slid off the road, in Oregon, and crashed. The recruiters seemed to find that pretty weird.
On the third day I was supposed to ship out, halfway through the day, a recruiter took three of us into a room, and asked if we had done anything, like maybe smoked some weed, during our time in the delayed entry program. He also said that some jobs in the Marine Corps require security clearances, and that Marines may go talk to our high school friends at some point, to find out background info on us. That was the first time I heard a recruiter mention talking to my friends.
A couple years earlier, I sold "speed" for a couple of months, to make some money. Crosstops and Black Beauties, were what we called the pills. I think they were actually ephedrine, a bit stronger than caffeine. I later found out they could be bought out of an ad in Hustler magazine, but were illegal in Idaho. A friend of mine was selling them, and making some money. So I did it for a couple of months. My best day as a drug dealer in high school, I made $33. I wasn't a good drug dealer. So I quit, and went on with my life. I got a job setting and pulling trap at the local gun range instead, a couple nights a week. Not much money, but it was something, and kind of fun.
I didn't tell the recruiter about my time as a bad drug dealer during my initial paperwork. But when they said they might go back and talk to my friends, I decided I better come clean, and tell them about it. So I did. I told them my story. Then they had me write it down. Then I was interrogated by two Marines for six hours on the subject. It was the truth, I was completely honest, and my story didn't change. They took me into see their colonel, and told him the story. I was taken back home, and told to wait to hear if I could go on to boot camp, or not. The decision took a week.
I was finally called and told that I could not go to boot camp, I was being dropped from the delayed entry program for "fraudulent enlistment." Basically, for lying. OK, fair enough. I was also told by recruiter that the CMC made the call on my case. I didn't know what a CMC was, so I asked. He told me CMC stands for Commandant Marine Corps. For some reason, the top general in the whole Marine Corps, looked at my file, a geeky, 18-year-old recruit from Boise, Idaho, and said, "No." I could never figure that out. Why would a guy, who's a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, take time to look at my file? It made no sense. I ended up getting into BMX freestyle seriously, and that turned into my career. I never took a single college course. I wanted to start my own business at some point, and I didn't need a degree to hire myself. College simply didn't enter the picture again, as far as I was concerned. I went on with my life.
Now, 35 years later, if I actually scored the highest IQ in the U.S. while in the delayed entry program, in 1985, it makes sense that the CMC might have seen my file. IF that is the truth. I don't know for sure. I don't know if I ever will know. I don't know if I will have a fatal "accident" soon because I wrote this blog post. I do know it won't go over well in some circles.
I also know that I've overheard multiple police officers, from 4 agencies in two states, that were told I have the single highest legitimately documented IQ score, a score of 198, in the United States of America. I also know that an incredible amount of pressure has been put on me, since about 3 weeks after 9/11, back in 2001, for some reason. That's 18 1/2 years of weird events, being denied for jobs, and hundreds, literally hundreds, of undercover officers or agents, of some kind, questioning me. The one at the bus stop last night was the last straw. I'm sick of this bullshit. I simply want to live my own life, and make a living as an artist, blogger, and writer. That's all.
I don't know the truth, and this story of the high IQ, that several police have been told about me, is the only explanation I have. This pressure is the reason I haven't been able to escape homelessness. Somebody somewhere seems to want me to fit into their agenda. That's not cool with me. So I've tried to live my own life, and work as a blogger, artist, and Old School BMX Has Been guy. It hasn't gone well. We'll see where it goes from here.
My advice? If you're a smart person, NEVER, EVER take an IQ test. EVER.
Blogger's note- 10/7/2021- I believe the story being told about me behind the scenes has changed, since the powers at be figured out I'm never going to go to college. Now I think people are being told I'm just delusional, and none of this stuff that happened ever happened. I can only officially have a high IQ if I work for the Right side of the political spectrum, or their associates. If I do my own thing, my IQ score from 1985 will never become public. That seems to be the story... for now.
Thank you for reading my blog. There are over 600 million blogs in the world now, and 2 billion blog posts get written annually, according the the most up-to-date stats I just searched. The vast majority of blogs probably never hit 1,000 views in their lifetime, although I couldn't find stats either way. People start a blog, often planning to get rich through ads or affiliate marketing or selling some product of their own. And then they fade, they don't promote their blog, then give up, and hardly anyone reads it. That's the fate of 99%+ of the world's blogs. This isn't one of those blogs.
I started this blog three weeks after moving into a tent, in the woods, in Winston-Salem North Carolina. I moved out of my crazy mom's apartment, bent on either making a living from my Sharpie artwork, or dying while trying. It's been a toss-up between those two, but I"m still alive and blogging. I'd sold maybe 20 of my Sharpie drawings at that point, most for $20 to $50 each. I couldn't get hired for even the most lame job in North Carolina. I was flat broke. I didn't really think very many people would read my new blog. But I like blogging, and it was a way to promote my Sharpie art for free.
I don't buy links or pageviews, I don't game the system. I don't blog just to "monetize" my content and get you to click on ads for shit you don't need, or follow links to buy junk, just to put money in my pocket. I'm not against making money blogging, but blogging just to make money always results and a real spammy and lame blog. That's just not me.
I write about shit I'm interested in. This blog brought three wildly different subjects into one blog: Old School BMX freestyle stories, thoughts on the future and the economy we all take part in, and my weird, unique, Sharpie scribble style artwork.
Much to my surprise, many of my former readers from my earlier BMX blogs (Freestyle BMX Tales, and FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales) hopped on for the ride. For that I thank you. I blog about things that matter to me, and stories I think might be worth sharing.
Just under three years later, I'm still homeless. But now I'm homeless in the San Fernando Valley of California, which kicks ass over North Carolina. Fer shur... like totally. I'm now known mostly as an artist and blogger, mainly because I've drawn well over 120 Sharpie drawings, most taking 35 to 45 hours each. I've sold over 80 major pieces of ar in the last 5 years, and my originals or prints are now on 6 of the 7 continents. That just makes me laugh. It's a really weird world we live in these days. My blogging and artwork is not a good living... yet. But it's a much better spot than I was in three years ago. I've got a long way to go in this world, if I manage to survive long enough, and a ton of ideas for projects I want to create and make happen.
I did some soul searching recently, and I've decided to go in a couple of new directions. I have two new blogs that I'm just starting, and now that Steve Emig: The White Bear has hit a nice, big, round number of 100,000 pageviews, I'll be focusing on those two.
Thanks for coming along on the journey of this blog, I may add a few more posts here, I'm not sure yet. But most of my work will be on the other two heading forward.
In addition, I've written a book/blog thing about the long term trends that have led us to the Tumultuous 2020's, which I believe will be a pivotal decade across the world. There is change happening at so many levels right now, everything seems crazy. We've started off this decade three months into a financial breakdown in a the little known Repo Market. Most people paid little attention to that. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit American shores, it triggered the already shaky financial world, leading to a massive stock sell off, and now the craziest economic scenario since the Great Depression of the 1930's is upon us. I did not see a pandemic coming, but I did see major economic turmoil coming, and I called the massive stock market drop before the market peaked, and about three weeks before the 10,000 point slide began. My book/blog thing, Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now- Book 1, explains why I saw trouble ahead in the 2020's. 19 chapters are up as I write this, I'll publish chapter 20, and clean the whole thing up, before long.
Thanks again for checking out my stuff. I hope you find more of my future content worth the time to read and watch. As always, let me know what you think on Facebook Twitter, or in an email.
Here's the latest drawing I finished, the enigmatic Frank Zappa. #sharpiescribblestyle
I have a new blog I'm focusing on now, as of May 2022:
Keith Treanor. New Jersey born and bred. Moved to Huntington Beach with his Mom, brother & sister in 1990. Got known for a hot temper BITD, but also a fun, occasionally even goofy, rider who was always down to push the limits. I'm stoked that Keith with this huge fakie wall ride shows up when you pull this video up.
"The first time I saw you was in the video that fat guy made."
-Pete Augustin to Keith Treanor, in 1993 or so. Keith shared the line with me, some time later, and I thought it was hilarious, since I'm the fat guy (I wasn't fat then, but wasn't ripped abs thin, either), and the video is The Ultimate Weekend.
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OK, it wasn't exactly 30 years ago today, but pretty close. It was just about this time, late April or early May, of 1990, when I rode up to the Oceanview flyout jump in Huntington Beach. It was early evening, maybe an hour before sunset. You can see the Oceanview segment in the The Ultimate Weekend, above at 23:22. There were a couple of guys there that I didn't know. Those guys turned out to be recent New Jersey transplant Keith Treanor, and English vert rider who moved to SoCal, John Povah.
I'd lived in Huntington Beach, California for three years then. Bob Morales brought me to H.B. to edit the AFA newsletter in January 1987, and got me into video work, kind of by accident. That led to a job at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear's video company. Being socially retarded, and not having a girlfriend most of the time, I spent my evenings hitting street riding spots, or doing a little flatland by the Taco Bell at Bolsa Chica and Heil. I spent weekends doing flatland for the crowds at the H.B. Pier, hanging with Mike Sarrail, and freestyle skaters Pierre Andre', Don Brown, Hans Lingren, Jeremy Ramey, and whomever showed up.
The Oceanview jump, located at Oceanview High School, on the corner of Warner and Gothard, was the perfect freestyler's jump. A long, concrete sidewalk led up to a 6 1/2 high flyout jump, under a huge tree. At that time, jumping contests were just becoming a thing, mostly held at BMX races. Chris Moeller was about the craziest jumper of that time period, and he had just taken over his little garage bike company, S&M Bicycles, from co-founding partner, Greg Scott. Greg was the "S" and Chris was the "M," their last initials. They had different ideas on how to run the company, and Chris went solo with it in 1989, I think. Chris changed the name to S&M Bikes, and worked like a mad dog to sell BMX bikes actually made for dirt jumpers.
The S&M guys, like Chris, Dave Clymer, and John Paul Rogers, summed up racer jumping at that time. Tricks like X-ups, nac-nacs, no footers, no handers, and 360's over big (for the time period) doubles were what the serious racers that jumped were doing. But the freestylers, like myself, were still partial to flyout jumps. Ride up to the jump slower than the racers did when hitting doubles, get some hang time, and try to weirder tricks, like a one-hand 360, or maybe a tailwhip (which hadn't been pulled on dirt then) or even a decade attempt. There was still a big chasm between pro BMX racer jumping, and freestyler jumping. Over the next few years, the styles blended, as dirt and street comps progressed during the ramen days long recession of the early 1990's. Racer jumpers started trying crazier tricks, and freestylers learned how to pedal. Then the next generation, like th eSheep Hills Locals in the H.B. area, rose up as dirt jumpers. Most didn't race much, and rarely, if ever, did flatland freestyle, just street and dirt.
I think my first reaction to Keith jumping at Oceanview was something like "Holy FUCK!" Nobody, no-fucking-body, even came close to getting as high off of this jump as Keith Treanor did. It's not an accident that a high contrast shot of Keith jumping over John's uplifted hand was on the box of The Ultimate Weekend video. Keith is 9 or 10 feet off flat ground in the Mike Sarrail photo I used for the video cover. I personally saw Keith get a full two feet higher than that once or twice, but not when I had video running.
John Povah was no slouch either. He was a solid vert rider from England, who moved over here a year or so earlier, I think. He was riding street and some dirt then, and hitting backyard ramps, when possible.
We had a good session that day I first saw Keith and John, and in typical BMXer fashion then, I had no idea what their names were when I rolled away. I'd been shooting a little bit of footage on my RCA S-VHS- camera on the weekends, and I was thinking about trying to produce my own freestyle video. Unreel Productions had been dissolved a few months earlier, in January 1990. All of the main people were let go, and I was moved to the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear main offices in Santa Ana. I worked cheap, compared to the rest, and knew how to work most of the equipment. That's why they kept me.
At Vision, I sat in a room all day, alone, and got called to shoot some video every week or so. I got a good check for doing nothing, which is a dream job for many people. But it was driving me crazy. I wanted to produce my own video, to show BMX freestyle as I saw it. The Vision videos, like Freestylin' Fanatics, were goofy, the footage was old, and I pretty much hated it. Fanatics was cool because it gave some props to a bunch of younger riders, but it didn't show what riding was really about in my opinion, and missed the rapid progression happening in riding then.
Eddie Roman made Aggroman a year earlier, which I saw as a funny, goofy, movie-made-on-video of freestyle. Us riders didn't make freestyle videos then, just companies like GT or BMX Plus! made freestyle videos then. I wanted to create my own take on riding. I wasn't actually sure I could even produce a video from start to finish. The idea scared the hell out of me. But around the time I met Keith and John, I was getting pretty serious about the idea.
I saw them again at Oceanview a few days later, we had another session, and I think that's when I got their names and numbers, and started calling them to go session and shoot footage for this video I wanted to make. And that turned into a few months of taking my big video camera, using full size S-VHS tapes, around to our sessions, and hitting a bunch of places we may not have normally.
In October of 1990, I rented a video editing system for $25 an our, located in the back of a video shop. I spent 40 hours, $1,000 out of my pocket, to edit The Ultimate Weekend. The whole video producing process cost me $5,000 of my own money. OK, a grand was borrowed from Mike Sarrail, and then paid back. That's what making a self-produced video cost in 1990. I made about $2,500 back, selling VHS tapes through a surf video distributor. I lost my ass, then lived off my credit cards for a while, when I was working freelance. Why did I did I live off my credit cards? Because I was only working part of the time, and because I was 24 years old, and I was an idiot. I lost money on The Ultimate Weekend, but I'm stoked I made it. I had a crazy idea, I gave it a shot, and I finished a big project, something I really struggled with then.
This year is the 30th anniversary of The Ultimate Weekend, my first totally self-produced video. Over the next few months, I'm going to do a series of posts about making that video. I really wanted to make a sequel ten years ago, for the 20th anniversary. But I was broke in North Carolina, and it just was not going to happen. I wanted to make a 30th anniversary sequel this year, and... well, we'll see. Maybe it'll happen. Either way, I'll tell some of the stories of the making of this video, as I wind down this blog, and start up my next main blog... Stay tuned.
I have a new blog about BMX, skateboard, and action sports spots, check it out:
Skyway's Master of Balance, Robert Peterson, at the AFA Masters comp in Columbus, Ohio, in 1986, showing off is signature balance tricks, and signature style.
The irony of today's world is kind of weird, from my point of view. A virus, one of the tiniest things on planet Earth, has mutated into a form infectious to humans, and is wreaking havoc on hundreds of millions of us intelligent, sophisticated, technological, human beings. This is something that happens in nature, generally when animal populations get too numerous for the environment. Human scientists, understanding how viruses operate, have decreed a bunch of rules to keep this virus from spreading to more people than absolutely necessary. Because of this, most of you have been mostly cooped up in your house or apartment, very likely not working, for 4 to 6 weeks, or so.
Meanwhile, since years of really weird events have led to me being homeless right now, I'm wandering the streets of Los Angeles county, primarily in the San Fernando Valley. Like oh my God, fer shur. Homeless people have largely been left outside to die in this pandemic, myself included. Most of the businesses and places we rely on to survive, like fast food restaurants, and the libraries, have been shut down. So basically, while you were bummed about having to watch 17 hours of Netflix a day, I was trying to find a bathroom to take a dump. While most of you are chomping at the bit to get outside, and move around and ride, eat out, go to a club, and shop like normal, I'm working towards the day when I have my own apartment again, and can hole up and draw and write 14 hours a day... on purpose. Irony. On both sides of this equation, we have adapted, dealing with the weird rules, as this pandemic plays out across the U.S., and much of the world. As it turned out, being stuck outside turned out to be a blessing, since many communal living places, like homeless shelters, nursing homes, jails and prisons, are turning into virus hot spots, with many people dying.
In March and April, I spent a month seeking out power outlets where I could charge my laptop, and wifi guest spots still open, since McDonald's and the library, my usual work spots, are closed. I was barely able to keep up with posts and comments on Facebook, while most of you consumed more media than ever. Because of this, at a time when I really wanted to be writing the most I could, I have been blogging the least.
Searching my mental data banks for a blog post subject for all of you still cooped up, Robert Peterson came to mind. I first heard of Skyway's Master of Balance in an article in FREESTYLIN', in 1984, I think. Most pro rider' tricks seemed beyond me then, though I was full bore into freestyle, my skills on a freestyle bike were just starting to build. Bert's balance tricks showed me something I could start on that day, and then build upon. I could balance on my front peg, with my bars turned sideways, and soon climbed up, standing on the front wheel, and got the hang of balancing there.
I spent the Idaho winter of 1984-1985 in my small bedroom, in Boise, balancing on my bike, moving around from peg to front tire, learning to move around my bike in a tiny space, indoors. I learned to do The Peterson, the no-footed trick you see Bert do at :39 in the clip above. I also learned Dave Nourie stomach stands, and other balance variations. When I slipped and fell, I'd hit my bed, with one arm, my dresser with the other, and sometimes hit my head on my nightstand. That's how small my riding area in my room was. I learned to balance on the bike and juggle three tennis balls that winter, which became a signature trick for me in shows and the first contests. Then I learned to balance on the bike, and juggle two tennis balls and a bread knife from the kitchen. Balancing and juggling became a standard part of my trick show and contest routine. I even had "Go for the Juggler" printed on the butt of my leathers. Really. Go ahead, laugh, it's pathetic. But it was the 1980's, we were just making all this freestyle stuff up, a lot of goofiness ensued.
The next August, 1985, I moved to San Jose, California, with my family, and became a part of the San Francisco Bay Area riding scene. I met the Skyway guys, Robert Peterson, Maurice Meyer, Oleg Konings, and Hugo Gonzales. Later on I got to know Eddie Roman and "little Scotty Freeman, " as we called him then, as well. Since I was riding a Skyway T/A then that seemed epic.
San Jose was much warmer than Boise in the winter, and I could ride outside much of the time. But that winter of 1984-85, sessioning my bedroom, doing balance tricks, helped shape my early days as a BMX freestyler. I even invented a third version The Peterson. Bert invented the trick, hold the front brakes, and take both feet off the front tire, while balancing over the front end. Then he came up with version #2, doing The Peterson, one handed. My third version was to do a Peterson, but lift the back wheel off the ground, balancing no footed with only the front wheel touching the ground. I could balance 10 to 15 seconds, like that. I showed Robert my variation outside of Beach Park Bikes one day, and got his official approval on The Peterson, version #3. I was pretty stoked, as we both spent a few minutes doing my variation of his trick.
BMX freestyle, as we used to call this sport-type thing, is all about adapting, to begin with. Bob Haro took a standard BMX bike, adapted to its form, and started inventing tricks on that little machine. A whole bunch of us other weirdos thought it looked fun, and joined the party. So now, 35ish years later, a tiny virus has upended our lives. I thought a blog post about sessioning in my bedroom all one winter, doing Peterson-inspired balance tricks, would be a good reminder that whatever life throws at us, we have to adapt to it. So if you're cooped up and jonesing to ride, this may give you an idea. Get the bike in the family room, in the garage, the back patio, or up on the roof, and see if there are any balance tricks left in your trick bag.
In other blog news, I think this blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear, has pretty much run its course. I'm going to let this one creep up to 100,000 page views, which it's real close to. Then I'll let it sit here, for anyone who follows a link to one of the nearly 700 posts. I've started two new blogs, and I'll start focusing on those two soon. Here are the links to thenew blogs:
I have a new blog about BMX, skateboard, and action sports spots, check it out:
