This is me as a cameraman for Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company, back in 1989. This photo was taken 3-5 years before this poem was written, but I don't have any photos handy of myself in the early or mid 1990's.
AirFireEarthWater
A FEW there that find the path
A FEW there be that hear the call
A FEW there be that wake up to
The mystery and wonder of it all
-The White Bear
This poem above was written somewhere between 1993-1997, when I was reading and digging into religion, spirituality, mysticism, the Rosicrucians, Pythagoras, the mystical meaning of the 3-4-5 right triangle, and other weird shit like that. This poem was in either my 2nd or 3rd poetry zine, Mush (1996) or The Poet (1997), I'm not sure which. Around the same time I also came up with this little poem/saying.
Quotes
I read the businessmen's quotes
And they quoted the philosophers
I read the philosophers' quotes
And they quoted the mystics
I read the mystics' quotes
And they quoted Nature
So I walked out into the woods
And found that everything quotes God
-The White Bear
I recently wrote a big post on my Substack about poems, writing poetry, and how I became a poet. If that sounds interesting, check it out:
If the world's a stage, show it what you got. Street performing dance team, The Damn Team, who used to perform right next to where I would sell artwork on Hollywood Boulevard. 2019. #steveemigphotos
Play
The world's a stage
Just grand in scale
Drama erupts
From our travails
It's one Great Play
Go find your part
Some day you'll realize
The world is Art
-The White Bear
written somewhere between 1992-1996
I just wrote a bunch of my ideas on poetry and becoming a poet on my Substack. If that sounds interesting, check it out:
Wall ride over my sister Cheri's head, Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, 1990. These two poems were written in the early 90's, the height of my BMX riding days.
Become
You must risk
If you're to succeed
For when you grow
Sometimes you bleed
Each much climb
Over the fence,
For the only cage
Is Ignorance
Each Jedi knight
And Shaolin monk
evolved from
A lowly punk
Don't get caught
In the world's throws
We must become
Our own heroes
-The White Bear
I just wrote a big Substack post about writing poetry (before my recent stay in the hospital), if that interests you, check it out:
This is me carving a line in the Nude Bowl, in the spring of 1990, a few months after writing this poem. The Nude Bowl is an abandoned swimming pool out in the middle of the desert, legendary in the BMX and skateboard worlds, in the Palm Springs area. It's a relic from a 1970's era nudist colony. I have very few pics of myself from that era, so this will have to do. Video still from The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990 BMX video.
In late 1989, I dated this weird punker chick who used to hang out at the Huntington Beach Pier on the weekends, where a handful of us BMX freestylers would hang out and session. It wasn't a serious relationship, I think she dated me mostly for the food, I took her out to Denny's almost every night.
She was really weird, and told us a different name nearly every time we saw her, for the first several weeks she started hanging out. We took to calling her Jezebel, I'm not sure why. We listened to The Cure a lot while hanging out, and she liked to watch horror flicks. The one thing I will say about her, this weird punker chick had an amazing rapport with animals. She had a rat that would drink off of her (or my) tongue. The thing that really freaked me out, though, is that she would cuddle with my roommate's 25 pound, mean as hell cat. I never even petted the cat, in two years of living in that apartment. I still managed to get bit by it once. But, within five minutes of walking in the living room, Silus the furry, mean, basketball of a cat was on his back, in her lap, and she was rubbing its belly. My roommate, who owned the cat, could rub its belly maybe once a month, without getting bit. So she was a really weird, kind of interesting, very crazy punker chick. But she had an incredible way with animals. Near the end of of our short relationship, I wrote this poem. I was probably kind of drunk, I can't remember. I wanted to break it up, but was kind of worried since she was kind of suicidal at times. I wrote this poem when I was thinking about how to break up with her.
Looking back, I think this is the oldest poem of mine that has survived, unless someone finds a copy of my first poetry zine, We're on the same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing. This poem was in that zine, which I published in 1992. But there were poems in it going back to 1988, when I really started writing a lot of poetry. Obviously, it's not a great poem, but since I memorized this one, I still had it, when I lost nearly all of the 400-500 poems I've written, in a move in 2008. In my head, the way I would read it, the rhythm of this poem goes to the tune of the song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Yeah, not the best relationship when that's the song that comes to mind while thinking about it.
Jezebel
The words that I want, well they just aren't around
And I can't look into your eyes
What we once felt, I don't see anymore
Like a ship when the fog fills the skies
The moments they come, and the moments they go
But the right moment just won't come 'round
I can't go on feeling just how I do, and I can't risk leaving you down
You're all that I wanted, before I knew what I had
And without you I'd never have known it
You captured what little love I had inside, even though I may not have shown it
But here we are now, in the dark and the gray, two rowboats adrift in the mist
And maybe our paths, they will cross once again, if not this world than in the next
-The White Bear
I just wrote a big post with thoughts about poems, and writing poetry, on my Substack. Check it out:
Scooby-Doo was my favorite cartoon as a kid, and I come from Generation X. We were the kids who spent every Saturday morning in the 1970's as a kid, lying on our stomachs, four feet from the TV, eating our cereal, watching 3 or 4 hours of cartoons, and weird live action kids' shows (like this one).
Many years ago I was talking to some friends, as adults now, we were trying to figure out just what was going on in that van back then, for the whole week between shows. They had to be smoking some weed. It was the 1960's and 1970's, and Shaggy and Scooby were always hungry. That conversation led to me writing this poem, speculating on what happened back then, in the back of this van. Here's what I came up with.
Mystery Machine
Here's a ghost, there's a witch, Scooby's looking for a bitch,
Shaggy's hiding in the kitchen with a big sandwich
Spooky green, it's a crazy scene
In the back of the Mystery Machine
The van's slower than molasses, Velma lost her glasses
Shaggy's in the back seat, checking out their asses
Spooky green , it's a crazy scene
In the back of the Mystery Machine
It's a van dogpile doing Daphne doggy-style
Velma's got a mouthful of Fred, all the while
Spooky green, it's a crazy scene
In the back of, the Mystery Machine
-The White Bear
I just wrote a big post on my Substack about poems, and my thoughts on writing poetry. Check it out:
The Ultimate Weekend, my first self-produced BMX video. In 1990, after working for 2 1/2 years at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, I wanted to make a BMX freestyle video that showed "real riding." Only a handful of BMX freestyle videos had come out, up until that point. But the wave of early prosumer video equipment made producing my own BMX video possible. For the first time, average people could produce their own videos. Armed with my $1,100 S-VHS video camera, I spent about 8 months shooting footage on weekends, and $5,000 of my own money to produce The Ultimate Weekend. At the time, it was a pretty good rider-made video, the best edited of the bunch at the time. In the process, I hada punk band called The Stain, from Ohio, produce and record two "punk songs" of lyrics I had written. Thanks to Jon Stainbrook, Mark Mickel, and Jeff Kollman, John from Government Issue, and friends, for humoring me, and making these highly questionable songs happen.
"Cottage Cheese Disease" - 10:39 (in video above)- In 1988, 1989 and beyond, I wrote lyrics to a bunch of "punk songs." My friend Mike, a Huntington Beach Pier local, Mike, started taking me to punk rock shows, and properly introducing me to punk music. I was already writing poems at the time, after dating a woman who was the lead singer in a local band. I didn't tell anyone about the poetry slowly filling notebooks in my closet.
The punk songs were just other ideas that I'd get, and write down, funny, sarcastic little ideas. I never really wanted to start a band, I just liked making up fucked up, funny songs. At one point, I started writing a series of short stories that included a fictional punk band called U.I., Unpardonably Ignorant, a line from the book Think and Grow Rich. In those stories, the characters would reference the band, and my songs were the band's songs. But those stories never got finished.
"Cottage Cheese Disease" was what a former roommate of mine called women's cellulite. We were riding at the the H.B. Pier one weekend, and some large woman walked by in a smaller than necessary swimsuit, and I made a joke "Whoa, she got the cottage cheese disease." Over the next hour or so it turned into a song. I thought of it as a song, not a rap. But when The Stain took it, they turned it into a rap. Now, 35 years later, I'm fat from my years working as a taxi driver, and have my own cottage cheese disease. Karma got the last laugh.
"Mom's Imagination" - 44:07 (in the video above)- For this song, I was thinking back to high school in Boise, when I was just getting into freestyle. My mom had a pretty good imagination when it came to what I was up to. I was a shy dork getting shot down by pretty much every girl I talked to at parties, yet my mom always seemed to think that when I came home on the weekends, I'd been to a full blown drunken orgy or something. My best friend in high school, Darrin, and I used to joke about this. One day I laughed, "Man, I wish my life was half as great as my mom's imagination." He laughed, "Yeah, no shit." The line stuck in my head, and I turned it into these song lyrics. The Stain, again, turned it into an actual song. What I like about this song is that "Mom's Imagination" actually sounds like a song you might here in a show by a young punk band.
"California Bitch" lyrics
Refrain
She's a... California bitch
in her bleach blond hair
California bitch
but I don't care
California bitch
in her Cabriolet
California bitch... No way!
Daddy pays the rent
She has a good time
Party with her friends
Maybe do a few lines
Find a new guy
'cause she's got an itch
She's a California...
She's a California... BITCH!
Refrain
There was another verse or two, I can't remember them now. "California Bitch" was written about the hot, stuck-up, blond girls that we'd try to talk to at the beach, and who would either ignore us, or make fun of us. A lot of them drove convertible Volkswagen Cabriolets then, that was the trendy, stuck-up, blond, rich girl car then. Being a BMX freestyler was definitely not cool in the 1980's, and most of the hot girls walking by would totally blow us off. So "California Bitch" was my "Fuck you bitch" song to all of the hot girls who waned nothing to do with me.
I've been doing a lot of writing lately about creativity, art, writing, Creative Scenes, and stuff like that on a platform designed for writers, called Substack. Check it out. You can even subscribe for free, and get each post sent to your email.
For any of you who didn't catch it, here's the Our BMX Finals Highlights edit of the Triple Challenge BMX dirt jumping contest in Anaheim, California last weekend (January 6, 2024)
Supercross racing in Anaheim in January is a big tradition in Orange County, California. Just over 30 years ago, my first "real" TV crew guy job was working on the 1991 Supercross season. While I heard about people going to check out Supercross races before that, I'd never actually gone to see a race live. It's a freakin' insane thing to witness, and I tried to catch the Anaheim races in the years after that whenever possible.
Years ago, they added a BMX jumping contest out in the pits area, in the parking lot, to each Anaheim race. Now called the BMX Triple Challenge. The jumps, as you can see above, look like a small mountain range, with the mega roll-in heading into the three ginormous sets of doubles. I haven't made it to check out this event since I've been back in CA, the last few years, but that's what the video is for.
I captured this still off the Our BMX footage from the video above. This is not R Willy, it's Jaie Toohey, front bike flip that almost got away from him, but he actually landed this. Video game stuff in real life.
A Supercross story from the P.O.W. BMX House days... 1992 or 1993...
Back in the early 1990's, the first real BMX house formed. In a house on Iroquois street in Westminster, California, a bunch of pro BMX racers moved in, and out over a 4 or 5 year period. The early guys called it the P.O.W. House, for Pros Of Westminster. Rent ranged from about $95 to $120 a month, with guys sharing bedrooms in the 4 bedroom house. The backyard was turned into a little jumping line, and later filled with mini ramps. Alan Foster, Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, John Salamne, Lawan Cunningham, Jai Lonergan, and Brian Foster were some of the 22 official residents of the house. Pretty much every BMX traveler from around the world crashed on the couches of the floor during those years, at some point. I lived there twice, for several months each time, in 1992-93,
In January, either 1992 or 1993, our crew from the P.O.W. House headed out to watch the Anaheim Supercross, and we got there late. The only tickets were way up high, and kind of expensive to our meager wallets, $14 each or something like that. The other guys took off, I told them to leave me there. Since I had worked on TV crews the year before, I had an idea.
I walked around the stadium, found the TV camera crew, told them I was a good P.A., a production assistant, and offered to work for free. I was believable enough, and the producer hired me on the spot, saying he'd pay me $50 for the night's work. Deal. He pointed me to a cameraman I'd be helping, and I was soon helping unroll cables for the cameras.
I wound up getting a free spaghetti dinner, and then working all evening with the starting line cameraman. Instead of watching the motos from the nosebleed seats, I was literally standing in front of that motorcycles, on the track, as they revved up, right before the start of every moto. My cameraman was right in the middle of the first straight, getting the head on shot of all the racers. I was about a third of the way across the starting straight, holding the camera cable, there were no wireless cameras in TV back then. When the model turned the starting card sideways, we had something like 30 seconds to run off the racetrack, and I had to pull all the camera cable out of the way before the riders raced by, so they wouldn't get tangled up in it.
It's a hell of the way to see the Supercross. After each start, we'd run through the infield to the third turn, dodging all the assorted people down there, and I'd unwind the cable along the way. The camerman took position on the backside of the berm, on the third turn, and the racers would be coming at us each lap, through the whoop-de-doo section. Then they would charge through the berm, right in front of us. It was hard work, but man, that was the coolest way to watch a Supercross race ever.
The celebrity guest that night was David Faustino, Bud Bundy from the TV show Married with Children, so I saw him walk by, surrounded by security (he's a really small guy), at close range. He waved to the crowd, and said a few words on the mic, I think. Then it was back to racing. Standing on the berm, watching all the top MX racers bouncing through the whoops right at me, was a sight I'll never forget. Amazing night.
After the race, it took maybe 45 minutes to coil all the cables, and pack up the camera gear, and I learned the over/under technique for coiling the coax cable used for video cameras. It was a solid 6 or 7 hours of work, but fun work. I wound up getting either $75 or $100, I think. A check came in the mail a few days later. They asked if I wanted to help them at the next Anaheim race, a year later. I caught a bunch of buses back to the P.O.W. House, getting home like 3am, with a hell of a story to tell the next morning. My crazy idea to not only watch it for free, but get paid to watch the Anaheim Supercross, paid off. If you've never seen a supercross race live, go see one when you get the chance. It's about the most insane sport ever.
OK, not the biggest, gnarliest thing in the best trick jam, but definitely innovative. Tucker Smith with a nac-nac seat spinner. He loosened his seat, and spun it around mid air. I'm 57 years old, never seen this one before. Video still from the Our BMX edit.
I've been doing a lot of writing on a platform called Substack, designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
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