Bike industry slow down in 2023?

Too much inventory?  Slow down in demand?  How will the recession affect the bike industry (including BMX)?  Rob here give you his thoughts.

I'm way outside the actual bike industry, totally out of the loop on traditional industry insider news.  But I'm an amateur futurist, among other things, who's been blogging about a "the next Great Recession" since 2017 or early 2018.  I just geek out on economic and future trends.  Covid should have been the start of a LONG major recession, but The Fed (Federal Reserve), created $5 to $6 TRILLION dollars in 2020, and threw it at the economy.  Bailouts, "Quantitative Easing", super low interest rates, stimmy checks, PUA, PPP, and all sorts of other programs tossed loads of money at Wall Street, big banks ,businesses, city, state, and county governments, and most of us individuals.  Yep, even I got some.  We were all hood rich for about a year, when this current recession should have been happening.  All that money is why we have the current high inflation.  Big influxes of new money devalue a currency, and in 12 to 18 months, prices rise to adjust to the lower value of the currency.  Hey, the party was fun... while it lasted.  That's the nature of parties.  

But now The Fed (and other central banks around the world) is stuck.  They've been raising interest rates to fight the 40 year high inflation.  But that has caused a major drops in the inflated prices of stocks, crypto, and the downturn of the real estate market in many areas.  If they back off and create more new money, inflation takes off and goes even higher.  So they're driving us into a major recession, intentionally, to fight the inflation they caused by bailing us all out of the pandemic business shutdown crash.  So things are all out of whack, in nearly every business category, in nearly every investment category, in ost of the world.  Uh... bummer.  

The bike industry is small, pidly compared to the really big industries, like food, oil, chemicals, telecommunications, cars, and of course, high tech.  But it's still a decent sized industry, and employs (and sponsors) a lot of people.  It looks like we're in for a slowdown.  From my vantage point, this reminds me of heading into the early 1990's, which became a loooong recession/stagnant period.  BMX "died" in 1989.  Sponsors dropped nearly every freestyle team, except Haro and GT, as I recall.  

I know nothing of this youTube channel above, but Rob in the video makes a lot of sense, and does it in under 5 minutes.  If you ride, work in the industry, or are sponsored by anyone in the BMX, MTB, or other parts of the bike/action sports world, watch this video.  Then do some research with the industry people you deal with.  See how things are in your part of the industry, and if you need to make some changes in what you do.

I just found another video on this subject, recorded on Black Friday, November 25, 2022:

GC Performance- "The Bike Industry has a Big Problem Coming!"

Here's a written article in Bicycle Retailer, by Rick Vosper, from October 2022- "2023 may be new, but it definitely ain't normal"  

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New and incredible Gary Young edit

Christmas is over and "Ho, ho, holy shit there's some crazy lines in this video."  Just watch it.  It's not like you're working at work this week, anyhow.  

I had a good solo Christmas

 One serious, and free, Christmas dinner.  Heck yeah!

While I am still homeless in the San Fernando Valley, I still managed to have a really cool Christmas.  I spent the morning working on the latest drawing, and then headed to a church that had a free Christmas meal.  Salad, turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and homemade cranberry sauce, with pumpkin pie for dessert.  As a rule, I don't travel all over for free meals, because the homeless people who do usually spend all their time just doing that, and nothing else.  I call that the "Homeless Merry_Go_'Round.  They get free food, but never get much else accomplished.  I'm too focused on getting some creative work done every day.  

But there's one place that has a great weekly meal, plus holidays, that I recently started going to.  I got stuffed, so thanks to all the volunteers!  

They even gave everyone a packed stocking full of gifts, which I didn't expect, and they had a raffle for some gift cards as well.  So I had a great Christmas meal, then went to another spot, and did some more drawing for much of the afternoon.  Good day all around.  Hope all of you had a good day, and didn't get stuck in airports from all the crazy weather in much of the country.  

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Merry Christmas 2022!

Just of found this Christmas BMX video from Mongoose, from a few years back.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Here are some of my picks for Christmas soundtrack ideas, while wrapping gifts, drinking eggnog, or hooking up with Mrs Santa's Sister:

Partridge Family Christmas Album

Dropkick Murphys- "The Season's Upon Us"

Bad Relgion Christmas Album

Brian Setzer Orchestra- Christmas Extravaganza

And for any Jewish readers of my blog, here's my favorite Jewish Christmas song (that wasn't done by Adam Sandler)- 

Monique Powell/Save Ferris- "Christmas Wrapping"

And if you're a sarcastic weirdo like me, who grew up in a family where Christmas wasn't usually very merry, this link is for you.  (NSFW- or anywhere else)

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The 2022 Omnibus Bill- Just how much is $1.7 trillion dollars?

It's December 21, 2022.  Congress is trying to pass the $1.7 trillion Omnibus bill before leaving for their holiday vacation.  Above, David goes into a few of the things in the bill, how it will cause more inflation, and thoughts about it. Obviously, he doesn't really read the whole thing.  

$1,700,000,000,000

That's the number.

How much is $1.7 trillion?  Here's one way to try and put it in perspective, that I just figured out.  For $17.4 billion, the federal government could give every single one of the 580,000 homeless people in the U.S., $2,500 a month, to pay for housing, for a whole year.  $2,500 a month should be enough to rent some place to live, for one person, in pretty much any part of the country, even here in Los Angeles area.  That $17.4 billion would be 1.02% of the Omnibus bill, housing every single homeless person for a year, in a room or apartment they pick, and leaving almost 99% of the money for other purposes.  

$1.7 trillion is the same as giving $8,100 to every one of the 209 million adults in the U.S.  

I know... booooooooring!  

How' bout this?  The $1.7 trillion in the Omnibus bill could by a new, 2022, Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, for every single one of the 19 million men, women, and children in the entire state of New York. 

19 million all American mucle cars in one state.  Just a way to put this amount of money into perspective.  In 2018, 66,717 Dodge Challengers were sold, the peak year of sales for that model. 

To be clear, I'm not saying the Omnibus Bill should or shouldn't be passed.  I'm sure there's a lot in there that needs to be spent, and I'm also sure there's a whole bunch of "pork barrel" spending that doesn't really need to be spent.  My point in this post is just to try and put the huge amount, of $1.7 trillion U.S. dollars, into a frame of reference, so we get some idea just how much money that is.  Yes, it will help cause more inflation down the road, 12 to 18 months, on average, after the chunks of money are spent.  It won't increase inflation in the next few months, though.  It takes a while for large blocks of new money to work into the everyday economy, causing inflation. 

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I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, unused, and abandoned buildings, as well as the economy, and commerical real estate in general.  Check it out!

Adaptive Reuse SoCal

Vicky Vickers, Deanna Caulkins, and Robin Logan- Skateboard Hall of Fame women with my drawings

  1970's era skateboard Hall of Fame women Vicky Vickers, Deanna Caulkins, and Robin Logan, with drawings I did for them.  This happened a while back, but I just found the photo, misfiled in my hard drive.

About 4 or 5 years ago, a friend of mine, who was also a friend of Robin Logan, had me do a drawing for Robin's birthday.  Robin is from the Logan family, that put out the Logan Earth Ski skateboards in the 1960's and 1970's, and they are still putting out boards.  Robin later had me do a couple of other drawings for her, including one for older brother Bruce.  She also had me do these two drawings from classic photos of Vicky Vickers and Deanna Caulkins, when they got inducted into the Skateboard Hall of of Fame.  I was stoked on this project, because these women were teenage girls, already top skaters, tearing it up on skateboards, back when I first got into skateboarding, during the 1970's boom.  It was just a really cool project for me to be a part of.  So that's Vicky, Deanna, and Robin above (L to R), the day she gave them the drawings.  

As I improved, and became a bit better known for my Sharpie Scribble Style, after I started seriously selling drawings in late 2015, I began to get a few special projects.  Yes, they're all cool, but I was asked to do 2 or 3 drawings for people's birthday's, a couple of memorial drawings for people's friends who had died, and then projects like this, for women who were defining skateboarding when I was a kid, just getting into it.  Those are the projects that have more weight, where I really wanted to do my best.  

Like any artist, I'm never 100% happy with any drawing I do.  There are screw-ups in every one, in most cases, that only I notice.  I shade in ink, and I very rarely use any whiteout to touch up.  So I have to blend in any tiny mistakes I make, or start the drawing all over if it's a big enough mistake.  The pressure is on, artistically, in every drawing.  But certain projects hold a bit more pressure.  

In any case, I just found this photo above, misfiled in a folder, and wanted to share it, since it's cool to see women that had a lot of influence in early action sports with my work on their walls.  Thank you Robin Logan for tapping me to do these two drawings.  

Video as we know it now didn't really exist in the 1970's, and there isn't a lot of film of individual skateboarders then.  But here's an intro piece of Deanna Caulkins from her induction into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.  

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I'm back.

 Laptop just wouldn't power up a couple of weeks ago.  Couldn't figure out why.  Tried the basic tricks the online tips videos showed, and they didn't work.  Couldn't access anything but Twitter ( @steveemig43 ) for 2 weeks.  Learned today that static electricity can cause this issue.  Maybe that was it, it's been pretty dry here at times.  Anyhow, battery drained naturally over time, recharged it today, and laptop powered back up.  I'm back, and will be up and blogging again soon.  

My page view counters aren't working on any blogs for some reason.  Dang.  43.