Kobe Bryant's top 50 plays

Last Sunday, longtime L.A. Lakers star Kobe Bryant, and 8 other people, were killed in a helicopter crash, during a morning of thick marine layer fog, just northwest of L.A..  It' s Friday now, and I've watched several videos of Kobe playing, and interviews with him.  I was never a huge mainstream sports fan, and I never saw a Lakers game live, but I watched a lot of them on TV.  Kobe was my favorite basketball player, with the possible exception of Harlem Globetrotter, Meadowlark Lemon.  Anyhow, here's a 20 minute video to remind us just how freakin' good Kobe was on the court.  He was, by and large, a class act off the court, as well.  R.I.P. Kobe, his daughter, and the others, mostly from here in Orange County, who died tragically in that chopper crash. 

Predictions: As we head blindly into 2020

What do I see coming in the financial world in 2020?  I see a bunch of dominoes all lined up, the big dominoes are the biggest levels of debt in human history.  Government debt, corporate debt, student debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt, auto loan debt.  The seizing up in the Repo market back in September was the beginning of the dominoes falling, and now many forces are trying to hold back the inevitable.  I don't bet on sailing ships, I bet on the tide, it's always there, and when it turns, everything else begins to change.  You can swim against the tide for a while, but it always wins in the long run.  Shit's gonna get crazy(ier) this year.  Some people say I'm a doomsayer, but really I'm just sharing the news that a storm is coming, a big one, like I did in this blog post on January 2, 2018, when I said this:

"Something, maybe Trump's looming impeachment and leaving office, (and Pence might get the boot, too), will trigger a collapse like 2008." 

-Me (Steve Emig), January 2, 2018

I have a history of being a bit early on predictions.  But I wrote that one a few days after President Trump signed the huge tax cut bill into law.  If you listen to the news clip embedded, former CNBC show host, and current presidential advisor, Larry Kudlow, says, "I believe we're on the front end of an investment boom."  He also went on to say that the GOP (Republicans) had nothing to worry about in the 2018 mid-term elections.  We know how that turned out. In this same blog post, I predicted that  the stock market would go a bit higher, then we'd head into a recession.  Everybody in the financial world, at that time, seemed to think Dow 30,000 was just around the corner, and all assets would surge higher for 3 or 4 more years.  My opinion was ridiculous to anyone involved in the financial world.

In reality, Larry and I were both wrong.  The stock market, as you can see in this Dow Jones Industrial Average chart (click to "5 year" chart), the Dow peaked less than a month after this clip, January 26th, 2018, at 26, 616.71.  By Christmas 2018, all the main stock averages were down 10% to 20%.  They climbed back, spurred by The Fed's lowering of interest rates.  The Dow did not get back above 26, 616, and stay above it, for another 19 months, until last September, when the Liquidity Now Known as QE4, began.  Larry Kudlow was getting high on his own supply, so to speak, in in January 2018.  On my side, we didn't go into a recession in 2018.  The Dow, S&P 500, and Russell 2000 went a bit higher for about three weeks, then started heading down, as I predicted.  The Nasdaq surged until September, then headed down hard.  I completely underestimated The Fed's drive to prop up the economy through November 2020, to get Trump into another 4 year term.

That said, here are my much more specific predictions for the financial world in 2020:

I predict Donald Trump will be forced out of office before the 2020 election in November.  This may not be from the impeachment "trial," it may come from some other reason later on.  I also predict that Vice President Mike Pence will not be able to step into the role of president, for some reason.

In the financial markets, I see us hitting or passing these numbers before December 31st, 2020:

Dow Jones Industrial Average:  It will go below 19,000
Nasdaq: It will go below 5,600
S&P 500: It will go below 2,250
Russell 2000: It will go below 1,125

Gold:  It will surpass $2,750 per troy ounce
Silver:  It will surpass $60 per troy ounce

Bitcoin:  I have no fucking idea, that's shit's crazy.  But it will likely be higher than it is now.  Young people will throw money in Bitcoin and other cryptos as things head downhill, most likely.

I predict Deutsche Bank will go into some form of bankruptcy this year.

I predict GE (General Electric) will also go into some form of bankruptcy this year.

I predict that Warren Buffet, despite losing several billion in net worth, will be one happy camper.  He and Charlie Munger finally be able to start putting Berkshire Hathaway's $120 cash pile to work into really good investments.

OK there are my predictions for 2020.  As of this writing on January 26, 2020, all but the two bankruptcies seem very unlikely, to just plain ridiculous, to pretty much every intelligent person.  Those two seem pretty unlikely, at this point, but possible to a few people.  In 11 months and a few days, you can call me out for being wrong, trolls.  If I am wrong.  Time will tell.

Remember... a recession is when the whole world goes on sale, and almost no one wants to buy.

I think we are entering one of the greatest times for financial opportunity in human history.  The trick is to weather this storm, and not end human history in some stupid way.  I'm calling this coming decade "The Phoenix Great Depession."  A big crash, with some really cool things rising from the ashes... eventually.

Blogger's note- About 12:00 noon, PDT, Monday, March 9, 2020- I have not edited a word of this post since originally writing it on January 26th, 2020.  But today, after a couple of tumultuous weeks, the Dow is down 1,813 points at the moment, after being down over 2,000 earlier today.  This 6-7% one day drop is due to a collapse in oil prices, brought on by a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.  To be honest, the stock market started dropping sooner than I expected this spring, but this is largely what I saw coming this year, at some point. 

But looking back at this post, I didn't write the levels the stock markets, and gold and silver, were at, at the time I wrote this post.  So I'm adding that information now, using internet price charts.  When I wrote this post on Sunday, January 26th, the Dow was at 28,989 the previous Friday, and expected to soon reach 30,000 by nearly everyone.  My predictions seemed ludicrous to most, and went completely against prevailing wisdom.  So here are the approximate stock index levels when I wrote this post on January 26th, 2020:

Dow Jones Industrial Average- 28, 989.
Nasdaq 100-  9,314.91
S & P 500- 3,296.47
Russell 2000- 1,662.23

Gold- $1,571.10 per troy ounce
Silver- $18.06 per troy ounce

The gold and silver prices I predicted seem crazy to me, but we have over 9 1/2 months left in 2020, and things are already crazy this year.  I'm sticking by all of my predictions above. We'll see how close I am on each of these at the end of the year.  Then you can wonder how a broke, homeless man in L.A. made these predictions when nearly everyone else saw a much different future in the markets, back in January.

Blogger's note- 3/18/2023- Just for the record, I have not changed anything in the original text of this post, or the first Blogger's note, above.  I have a new blog now called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, abandoned, and unused buildings, as well as the economy, and commerical real estate in general.  Check it out!

Adaptive Reuse SoCal

H.B. Tuesdays - Weekly Old School BMX freestyle- 1/7/2020

The main guy spearheading H.B. Tuesdays every week, longtime GT pro back in the day, Martin Aparijo.  Backwards wheelie in a circle.  I still haven't learned everybody's names, so just enjoy the remaining photos.

 The Huntington Beach Pier area is a skateboarding spot going back the the late 1970's.  BMX freestylers started riding there regularly, on the weekends, in the mid-1980's.  I was one of the locals there, nearly every weekend, from 1987 through about 1992.  SoCal flatlander, Mike Sarrail, though living in Covina, far inland, was the main local then, and Randy Lawrence rode there a lot for a while.  The Lakewood crew, Ron Camero, Nathan Shimizu, Jeff Cotter, Ron McCoy and a couple more, came by once or twice a month.  Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, and other flatlanders, came by when in the area.  The current H.B, Tuesdays jam goes back 7 years (maybe more).  Because it's a known scene, and gets covered in social media and websites (like my blog, now), people from all over the world may show up on any given Tuesday.  If you're an Old School freestyler, stop by and session when you're in the area. 

Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now

I have a couple of new blogs I'm getting off the ground.  Check them out:

Crazy California

H.B. Tuesdays- Weekly Old School freestyle jam - 1/7/2020 Post #2

H.B. Tuesdays is a weekly Old School flatland jam, spearheaded by Martin Aparijo and Eddie Fiola.  I snapped these photos two weeks ago yesterday.  Here are the "chamber of commerce" style beauty pics.  "Come visit beautiful vacation spot, Huntington Beach, California.  Business people love our thriving economy and relaxing on our wide sand beaches.  Tourists travel here from worldwide to see Martin Aparijo do backwards wheelies with palm trees in the background."

 Martin, with a Captain Morgan framestand.

 H.B. Tuesdays scene from up on the Huntington Beach Pier, just north of the pier, on the wide part of the bike path, in front of the amphitheater.

Forkwheelie, backwards, I think, out of a fire hydrant?  Can't remember, I was just trying to get the photos in frame while we had that cool golden light just before sunset.

Check out my new blog:

The Phoenix Great Depression

One Love Jam 2020

A kid.  A BMX freestyle bike.  And a parking lot.  That's how freestyle started for so many of us across the U.S., U.K., and other parts of the world, in the 1980's.

The crazy series of events that led me to wind up staying within walking distance of this year's One Love Jam in Newport Beach kind of blows my mind.  But the Universe is weird like that some times.  From 1982, to 2003, I spent a couple hours or more, every day, on a BMX bike, learning tricks or street riding.  The exception in that period was late 1999 and early 2000, the beginning of my taxi driving career.  I stopped riding in 2003, when driving a taxi driving became a 7 days a week thing, and left no time for anything else.  For me, BMX began in Boise, Idaho, in a trailer park, in 1982, sitting almost exactly at 43 degrees of latitude.  Really.  Before the whole 43 thing happened.

We had BMX magazines for inspiration.  A lot of the early riders from outside Southern California were inspired by seeing the BMX Action Trick Team, or the Haro ot GT factory teams do a show.  We didn't have Pipeline Skatepark or Del Mar.  But we had parking lots.  We all had a parking lot somewhere.  So those early magazine trick how-to's from Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn, Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, and a few others, gave us a starting point.  The AFA Masters constests gave us a justification, a reason.  We needed that, because in 1984, or there-abouts, you couldn't tell your friends and parents, "I'm spending three hours a day learning tricks on a BMX bike, just because it's really fun."  But we could say, "I'm practicing for a national contest," people could understand that.

At the early AFA contests at the Velodrome, in Carson, California, this weird morning ritual would take place.  A few of us would get there long before the contest, and we'd walk into the Velodrome, and sit on the first few bleachers.  There would end up being 15 or 20 people, from all over, just looking forward to the days events.  And we'd see someone we hadn't seen in a few months, and ask, "You still riding?"  Because it kind of surprised all of us that we were still doing tricks on "little kids' bikes" then.  There was always a couple guys who said, "I got a car, and stopped riding a month ago," or "I got a new girlfriend, and haven't ridden in a couple months," but I wanted to come see the new tricks."  The rest of us would say, "Yeah, I'm still riding."  It kind of surprised us.  None of us really believed then that we'd be riding for more than a year or two.  There was this feeling of, "OK, let's do this freestyle thing for a year or so," then we'll all go back to college, get some job we don't like, and do "adult life."

But BMX freestyle started growing.  The Californian guys were super entrepreneurial, and little businesses began to pop up to make frames or components, or something else needed.  Bob Haro came out with a freestyle bike.  Bob Morales started putting on contests.  R.L. and Mike Buff toured doing trick shows, as did the Haro and GT guys.  Nearly all of us had local trick teams in our town.  Some of us produced zines.  Some started shooting photos.  A couple years later, some people started producing our own videos.  For a few of us, actual jobs in the industry came along.  For the rest, freestyle never stopped being fun.  It just kept going.  And going. 

Being a dork among the dorks, I spent more time thinking about the future than most of us early riders.  But I never imagined a day when BMX freestyle would be in the Olympics (like it or not), or a day when 100 or more riders, ages 40 to about 55, would show up next to the ocean and session all day.  There were a handful of the SoCal riders who got us other guys across the country stoked on freestyle in the early 80's.  We all, collectively, rode the first big wave of popularity in the late 80's, and a new crew came up in the 90's.  We didn't know what the fuck we were doing, we just knew it needed to be done.  We had ideas, tricks needed to be invented, and that meant time in the parking lot day after day.

As things progressed, we needed better bike parts.  We needed better frames.  We needed better places to ride.  We absorbed the punk rock/D.I.Y ethos (thanks Dave Vanderspek and the Curb Dogs), and just began to start doing the things that needed to be done to keep progressing.  When the bicycle industry at large said, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing," in early 1989, we saw the money drain from the BMX world and leave us in the lurch.  That sucked at first.  We had to get real jobs and learn to cook ramen.  But it also freed us, nobody gave shit about BMX freestyle except the most hardcore riders at that point.  So we just took it over.  The progression on the bikes progressed at hyper speed, and riders took over the industry.  It was a lifestyle to so many of us at that point, and we forged ahead, each in our own directions, and built an industry.

BMX splintered into flatland, ramps, dirt, street, and park riding.  By that time we all had some models for doing our own thing, and making things happen.  We had other people to look up to.  Collectively, we built a group of sports, and culture and industries to support those sports.  That's pretty fucking cool when you stop and think about it.  It wasn't a 35 year plan.  Bob Haro didn't sit down in 1981 and say, "OK, here's the 40 year plan to take BMX freestyle worldwide."  It happened organically, bit by bit, day by day, session by session.

Ultimately, we set the stage for guys in tight jeans, who hate brake,s to make $50,000 for winning a single contest, by doing a quad tailwhip double backflip to fakie over jumps the size of a small mountain range.  Yeah, not what we had in mind, but the riding has progressed far beyond most of us now.  But all of us who rode back in the day, played a roll in making that happen, some to big degrees, most of us to much smaller degrees.

Now, 35 years after those first AFA flatland and ramps contests, we are still leading in a way.  We're showing the younger generations how long it can go on.  OK, not me, I got sidetracked for years.  But the group of the riders at the One Love Jam yesterday is still pushing boundaries.  They're showing younger people, a few in person, and many more in videos and various posts, like this one, that BMX freestyle is a lifestyle.  None of us knows how long you can keep doing it, because we're the group that is figuring that out.  The oldest of us is about 55, and we're not there yet.  A bunch of guys are still riding hard in their 50's.  Many in their 40's.  Where does freestyle end?  65?  70?  103?  We don't know, but we'll let you know when we get there.

The One Love Jam was an epic day.  I had no bike, but Kid Fruhmann let me borrow one of the Fiola Former Pro bikes (like the ProFormer, but dsylexic), which rode great, I must say.  I managed a lame infinity roll right off the bat, and three other tricks over the course of a couple hours.  Lame as it was, I got my nearly 300 pounds and a bike to bunnyhop.  Barely.  It's been a LONG time since that happened.  I scraped my calf, got a little blood to the surface, and called it a session.

I also spent time talking to Martin Aparijo, Ron Camero, Gardo and their crew (thanks for the spaghetti and egg rolls), Bill Nitschke, Rick Coronado, Dave Nourie, Ruben Castillo, Todd Lyons, Dave Voelker, Brian Blyther, Edgar Plascencia, Ivan from New York, James who I just met, and several more guys.  It was an epic day all around.  Thanks to the promoters, I don't even know your names, but it's was a great jam.  The weather was perfect.  Much stoke was manufactured and consumed.  I can't wait until next year's jam.

Here's Sean Ewing's drone footage of the event, and links to a couple other early edits.  Check Facebook and Insta for more.




I told you Pete Brandt is an animal.  Jeez...

Edit by The Drain Dude

More drone footage and some good stills by James Allender

If you were a freestyler in the 1980's, I can only think of one thing missing from the One Love Jam yesterday, this.  

One Love Jam - photos #2- 1/18/2020

Straight outta Indiana, lifelong rider, man who invented the Whopper (the bunnyhop tailwhip, not the burger), and still doing shows and showing people how much fun BMX freestyle is, Bill Nitschke.

Pete Brandt is a freakin' beast.  He's in the midst of a hyperfast pedaling spin here.  He was just riding at an insane level, all day long.  If the Pacific Ocean was fresh water, he probably drank half of it, just to stay hydrated.

 

Another rider I don't know the name of, 90's era combo that's freakin' impossible.

Pete Brandt again, forwards rolling circle, no hands, bars spinning, physical laws of the universe temporarily suspended.  This is not possible. 

Guys. bikes. Asphalt.  Ride some.  Talk some.  Ride some more.  Somehow it turned into a lifestyle.

Looking down the groups of people on the periphery of the riding area.  I didn't think there were this many old school flatlanders left in the world, let alone so many who are still riding at a really serious level.

Vert legends hanging at the flatland jam.  Brian Blyther and Dave Voelker.  Dave's got a big ride in San Diego coming up on the 25th, check his Facebook for info. 

One Love Jam- photos #3- 1/18/2020

The Chairman at a board meeting.  Martin Aparijo, drinking a coffee to make his Pepsi jealous.  Don't tell anyone, but Martin's actually a really cool guy, helping all kinds of people step up their game in and out of riding.  He also has a million great stories of the days before most of us started riding.  If you ever get the chance, ask him some old school question and just sit back and listen.

San Diego flatland legend, big influence to most of us guys, longtime touring pro at Haro, Dave Nourie.  He's still ripping it up and laving fun with it all.

Nourie, doing his thing.

Close-up, mid trick.  Dave Nourie again.

Cru Jones was in the house.  Some of the guys at One Love Jam were riding hard when the movie Rad was released in 1986.  But many of the young bucks, you know, those guys in their 40's now, got into BMX because of the movie Rad.  Here's a little clip of Bill from 2014, talking about how he ended up starring in Rad, and his life since. 

One of my most popular blog posts ever was "Why I hated the movie Rad when it came out."  I had nothing against Bill, Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and the riders, I just hated that the plot was so goofy, for the vert first American movie to have BMX freestyle in it.  I was so invested in freestyle in 1986, and such an uptight dork in general, that when I saw Rad in the theater, I was just completely bummed.  Except for the credits, that was "real riding" in my book.  I actually liked Quicksilver, the bicycle messenger movie, a lot better.  The jam session in Quicksilver was actually a lot closer to an actual BMX session, just on different bikes.  And it had Martin and Woody in it.  In the early 90's, when I heard the Sheep Hills guys talking about how much they liked Rad, like Sean Butler, I began to realize how many people wound up getting interested in BMX because of Rad's popularity on home video.

I liked BMX Bandits a lot, too, which was on HBO all the time in 1987.  That movie had that cute redhead, Nicole something...  Whatever happened to her?