Brett Downs birthday is today. Here's his compilation video from the last year of riding. There were a few "WTF did he just do?" moments in this for me. Thanks for the inspiration to ride, Brett.
Since about the time I turned 50, 5 years ago, I've been telling friends: At age 50 we stop aging, from now on we Level Up, like in a video game. Welcome to Level 50, extra man (or woman) added, rage accordingly. Brett live what I say. Props man!
Saul Hudson was born in July, 1965. He's a year older than myself, or Dennis McCoy, to put him in a BMX perspective. But he's known to all of us as Slash the legendary guitar player. About 4:00 minutes into this 131 minute documentary he talks about his time as a BMXer.
Yes, he was a BMXer, and he could JUMP. He got seriously into it around ages 12-13, while living in the Laurel Canyon area of L.A., between Hollywood and The Valley. Both of his parents were involved in the music industry, so he grew up around known musicians and industry people. There's one photo of Slash jumping in the documentary above that I've never seen before. You'll have to watch it to see it.
In the documentary above, he gets into his BMX riding about 4:00 minutes in, right after a bit by Alice Cooper. It's a short bit, but he talks about how BMX was his thing until he got into guitars. There was an old BMX industry urban legend in the late 1980's that Slash and Duff (or someone) met while riding BMX bikes at a bank. It turns out that, Like many legends, there's some truth to that.
Slash was a BMXer, and Steven Adler was a skater at his junior high. Later in this doc they talk about Steven eating shit on his skateboard, and everyone ignoring him. Slash thought he might actually have been hurt, and walked over and said something like, "Dude, you OK?" That struck up a friendship, and they started hanging out. It was Steven who later showed him a guitar, which changed the direction of Slash's young life around age 14-15. Nearly a decade after meeting on bike and board, Slash was the lead guitarist, and Steven was the original drummer for Guns n' Roses. This doc also explains where the nickname Slash came from. Welcome to the jungle...
I watched this documentary last night, and while there's very little actual playing in it, it's really interesting if you're into Guns N' Roses, Slash's later bands, or music and guitars. Check it out if those things are up your alley.
Free meme for making it to this blog. Share all you want.
Days ago, as I write this, Mike Varga landed the first 1260 air (that's 3 1/2 spins folks) on a BMX bike, on a halfpipe. It was so crazy, even Mike's tire had its mind blown. As fate would have it, I happened to be there when Mat Hoffman landed the first 900 on vert in a contest, 32 years ago, in the Spring of 1989, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. As an Old School BMX blogger guy, I decided this would be a good time to go back and look at the history of aerial spins (not flips, just spins) in BMX history. Here goes.
Bob Haro- forwards 540 on wedge ramp and rollback 360- 1980- This video says Bob is 22 years old, and he was born inJune of 1958, so this is 1980, or early 1981. That's the very early days of BMX freestyle as a demo activity, years before the first competitions. The rollback to 360 by Bob Haro (1:22) is probably the first spinning trick on a BMX bike. I'm pretty sure the front wheel 360 spin came later. Bob also does a solid forwards 540 on the wedge ramp at :27.
360 flyout attempt, out of a concrete banked bowl, 1980???- 1:03 in this clip. Reportedly near Sydney Australia, according to the comments. Riders unknown.
Andy Ruffel- 360 jump in 1983- 26:05 Andy also does Old School 360 bunnyhops, also called 360 floaters BITD, at 25:32. He also does a front wheel 360 on a wedge ramp at 21:44. Oh, and don't play chicken with airplanes, they have propellers.
Eddie Fiola- 360's over small doubles (by today's standards) in races in 1983? 1984? I remember reading an interview with Eddie Fiola in 1983 or maybe early 1984, where he said he had done 360's in BMX races over doubles. I actually asked Eddie about this a few months back. If I remember correctly, I think he said they were about 2 foot high doubles, maybe 8 feet apart, standard for BMX tracks in that era. No photos or video for this, but I did get the story straight from Eddie himself.
R.L. Osborn, front wheel 360 on a quarterpipe on video, 1984. This Mountain Dew commercial, which featured R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, Ron Wilkerson, and bike stuntman Pat Romano, aired nationwide on network Tv in the summer of 1984. I was about a year into learning tricks on BMX bikes myself, and RAN to the TV to see this commercial, every time I heard the music start. As a high school kid in Idaho then, I'd never seen a 540 on a quarterpipe, or a front wheel 360, which is what R.L. does here at :27. It took me all summer to figure out what R.L. was doing, we didn't have a VCR, and no one I knew to tape the commercial in those days. Also R.L. with a 360 lake jump at the end.
Legend has it the Woody Itson did the first 540 on a quarterpipe, about halfway up the ramp, sometime about 1984-1985. While known as mainly flatland rider to us younger guys of that era, Woody rode jumps, skateparks, and ramps, as well, in the early days. I can't confirm this, so if anyone can, let me know.
Eddie Fiola- 360 flyout on quarterpipe to deck- 1984. It's at 1:33 in this clip. This one is at the AFA Master contest in the old Surf Theater parking lot in Huntington Beach, in the late summer of 1984.
Hugo Gonzalez- 360 out of the halfpipe into the banked area at Del Mar skatepark- 1985- It's at :43. 540+ jump off pier into ocean at :37, alley-opp 270 flyout onto roof at 1:22.
Eddie Fiola- 540 in the Pipe Bowl, Pipeline Skatepark in 1985. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first 540 on video in a skatepark, though not the first 540 on a ramp. Leave it to the original King of the Skateparks, Eddie Fiola, to bust this one first.
Josh White- One of the first 540's on a quarterpipe, on video- 1985- It's at 1:29 in this clip. This is the Huntington Beach, CA AFA Masters contest in 1985, in the old Surf Theater parking lot. At the time of this contest, Josh White was a completely unknown amateur from Oregon, so you can bet he turned some heads blasting huge airs, and a 540, at this comp. He debuted to the rest of us in a feature interview in FREESTYLIN' magazine, in the August 1986 issue, and was riding for the GT factory team by then.
Brian Blyther- One of the first 540's on a quarterpipe on video- 1985-
It's at 2:11 in this clip. This one is also at the AFA Masters contest in Huntington Beach in
1985. Brian Blyther was a Haro team rider, and one of the top
skatepark/vert pros at the time.
Mike Dominguez- 7'-8' high 540 (judging by sprocket height)- 1987- It's at 9:33 in this clip. AFA Masters contest in Oregon. This was in the 8 foot high by 8 foot wide AFA quarterpipe, with no vert.
Craig Campbell- Wall ride to 360 (aka 540 wall ride)- Spring 1988- It was the first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California, at one of Dave Voelker's favorite riding spots. Street had been emerging, but there had been only one contest in NorCal, no one really knew what to expect at this comp. Craig Campbell blew everyone's mind pull this wall ride to 360 out of nowhere, at 4:53 in the clip.
Jeremy Alder- the world's first barspin air- 1988- In a small East Coast contest at the Crownsville Fairgrounds in Maryland, Jeremy Alder, largely unknown to West Coast riders, stepped up the game with the world's first barspin air. It's right at the end of the video, go to 3:50. He also does a couple of half barspin airs early on, a couple really big 540's for that era, and a 360 flyout to abubaca. Jeremy was sponsored by Haro Bikes for a couple of years. Progression.
Mike Dominguez nearly lands a 900 in fall 1988- 4:55- Mike Dominguez claimed to have landed 2 or 3 900's on his own ramp, months before Mat Hoffman landed the first one in a contest. But there was no video and no photos. Some people believed Mike, some weren't sure. At 4:55 in this video, shot at the 2-Hip King of Vert finals in September or October of 1988, Mike hucks a 900 attempt and just barely misses landing it. I believe Mike on nailing the 900. About six months later, Mat did it with several camerasrolling (including mine, as Vision cameraman), and made the 900 official.
Mat Hoffman- first 900 on vert in a contest- 2-Hip King of Vert, Spring, 1989. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. (My angle of that 900 is at the end of this clip- 14:43). None of us knew he was planning to try that (except Steve Swope), until he tried the first one. Mat missed the first attempt, and landed it on his second try.
Mat Hoffman- First no handed 540- 1989- It's at 1:34:00 in this video. Mat actually pulled the no handed 540 the contest before this, at Woodward in Pennsylvania, but I couldn't find video on YouTube. This is the 2-Hip King of Vert after that, in Colorado Springs. I was the cameraman on this shot, and the video (Ride Like a Man) was edited by Eddie Roman.
Craig Campbell with the first dirt jump 720 on video- 1989- In this Ozone freestyle team segment on Home Turf, a local San Francisco Bay Area TV show for kids, Craig lands a 720 at the Calabassas jumps in San Jose, at 1:49. This video has interviews with Craig Grasso, Craig Campbell, and Pete Brandt, I believe, and there's some funny stuff. It's worth watching the whole video.
Ride Like a Man- 2-Hip/Eddie Roman directed video- 1990- 3:32- Maurice Meyer- 360 street abubaca. 4:02- Eddie Roman and ?, 360 down 6 long steps. 7:06- Rider?- 360 nsoepick over spine. 13:04- Rider? Flatland body varial spin thing around the seat. 22:06- Vic Murphy?- fastplant to 360 on flat. 24:44- Mike Krnaich- tailtap 540 on spine. 28:34- Bob Kohl- tailwhip drop-in on 8 foot ramp.
The Ultimate Weekend (my self-produced video) 1990- Chris Moeller with the biggest 360 over doubles on video at that time- 35:45 (Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson lands a toe dragger earlier, same session). Keith Treanor with the first 360 over a spine on video- 22:12. Gary Laurent also does one at- 22:56 (same session). Josh White, lookback 360 (on a flyout)- 23:59. Josh White, one hand one foot 360 (flyout)- 24:13. Keith Treanor, big one hand 360- 25:25
Eddie Roman's Ride On video-1992- Intro- Huge 360 over doubles(rider unknown). Dave Voelker(?)- turndown 360- 1:39. First no handed 360 on video (?) Rider unknown- 1:55. There will be more, I need to watch this whole video again...
Mat Hoffman jumps three flaming cars on Stuntmasters- 5:53. 1991or 1992? Crazy as it sounds, I got this idea underway, but never knew the stunt actually happened. I was working at a TV production company in 1991, and sent some footage from the 2-Hip King of Dirt at Mission Trails to motorcycle distance jumper Johnny Airtime, who worked in the other office. Much to my surprise, the BMX stuff blew his mind, and he wanted to know what kind of real stunts a BMXer might be able to do. Johnny and I threw ideas back and forth over the phone, and came up with a 360 over three flaming cars. I was trying to hook up Chris Moeller or Dave Clymer for the gig. Johnny had sen footage of Mat Hoffman, and asked, "Could Mat do it?" I said, "Yeah." I quit that company about a month later, but the Stuntmaster's show happened, and Mat did the stunt with ease. In a side note, according to Mat's book, it was Johnny Airtime, on this stunt show, who told Mat that if he wanted to do bigger airs, he needed a bigger ramp. Mat and Steve Swope built the first 20 foot tall mega quarterpipe soon after.
Todd Lyons- fastplant to 540- dirt quarterpipe jump- 1993- It's at 20:10. Todd Lyons boosting a new spin at Twin Palms in Riverside.
Jay Miron- First public 540 tailwhip- 1998- at 8:24. There's a lot of vert ripping in this clip, by Miron, Dave Osato, Tony Hawk, and others. That rollback nosewheelie tailwhip to drop back in thing Jay does? WTF? Never seen that trick. I'll make you watch the whole clip to find that one. The info says this was a small comp. at BC Place. Sponsored by Kokanee beer! Canada, eh.
Mat Hoffman with the first no handed 900 ever- 2002- At the X-Games.
Mike Spinner- First 1080- 2007- He talks about the whole thing in this 27 minute video.
Mike Hoder- 360 down El Toro 20 step- 2012- At 3:20. There are a ton more big 360 and 180 drops in this video as well.
Daniel Sandoval- First 720 tailwhip to barspin- 2012?
Crazy Shurva- bunnyhop 720 and 360 tailwhip bunnyhop- 2014.
Nitcholi Rogatkin- mountain bike 1440- 2017- That's 4 full spins, corked out. That's the record right now on a jump, and 3 1/2 (1260), in the video at the top of this post, is the reigning record on vert.
Dennis McCoy- Longest span being able to do BMX 900's on vert-1990-2021? First 900- Summer 1990- in Indianapolis, IN. 900 at age 52 in 2018.
That's a 28 year span of being able to land one of the craziest vert
tricks ever, on video. I believe he has pulled at least one 900 in
2021, stretching that span to 31 years. DMC continues to amaze us
all.
What about the women? BMX freestyle has been a boy's club from the start, but since girls like racers like Deanna Edwards and Cheri Elliot, and freestylers Krys Dauchy from Ohio and Alma Jo Barrera from Texas in the 80's, there have been some women riding hard on BMX bikes. So here are some of the best women's clips of spinning tricks from recent years.
Women spinning tricks in 2019- Mexico City Van's comp-2:28- gnarly backflip attempt. 3:06- Macarena Perez- Tailwhip air. 7:00-Natalya Diehm- tailwhip jump.
Top Ten Women's BMX tricks compilation- 2021- :02 Macarena Perez- backflip over box jump. :07- Nikita Ducarroz- 540 on vert. :16- Charlotte Worthington- Flair on vert. :20- Shanice Silva Cruz- front flip on box jump. :26- Hannah Roberts- tuck no handed 360 jump. :29- Hannah Roberts- double tailwhip jump. :39- Hannah Roberts- triple barspin. :43- Hannah Roberts- double truckdriver jump (360 barspin to barspin). So yeah, there are a lot fewer women riders than men, but they're holding there own out there at the parks.
This blog post got out of hand real quick. I did a similar post about backflips a while back, but there are a lot more spinning tricks. I could watch and dig into old videos, and add 100 more variations to this list. But I'm going to stop it here. I did say a "brief" history of spinning tricks. The idea for this post, after seeing Mike Varga's insane 1260 on vert, was to show the long and continuing progression on the basic idea of spinning your bike around, one way or another. I seriously never thought a 1260 on vert would happen.
The craziest thing about this post is that I couldn't figure out who did the first truck driver, a 360 over a jump with a barspin. Logic would say Chris Moeller might have been the guy, but I was roommates with Chris for quite a while in the earl 90's, and I think he was the 2nd or 3rd guy to do one. Maybe Tim "Fuzzy" Hall did it first? But I'm not sure on that, the first and most basic 360 variation.
I also found tricks and clips I had no idea existed, like Andy Ruffel doing a 360 on film in 1983, and the Australian video supposedly from 1980. This post is not complete, by any means, but I've got a lot of the firsts, or firsts on video, in a timeline in one place. That was the basic idea, to see when spinning tricks and certain variations began, and how they fit into the 43 or so years that BMX freestyle has been a thing. Thanks, as always, for checking out my blog post. I'm not going to do as many Old School BMX posts as I have in years past, I've written well over 1,000 already. But I'll try to make the ones I do good ones.
What's a Spinaroonie? Listen to Eddie Roman's color commentary, 4:58 in this clip. I was the cameraman for that footage, by the way.
Pro skater, rapper, and the guy behind Pro Rider's Org., Chris Gentry, rappin' about the 2014 Boozer Jam at Sheep Hills.
In January of 1990, we had a meeting at Unreel Productions, where I worked. Unreel had about 12 employees, and I was the lowest guy on the list, The Dub Guy, I spent most of my time making copies of different videos for people across Vision Skateboards, Vision Street Wear, Sims Snowboards, and the rest of the Vision empire. But skating had peaked in 1988-early 1989, and things had been going downhill for close to a year. So at that meeting, we were told. Unreel was being dissolved, all the producers were getting the boot, and the two lowest level employees, myself and a woman named Laura, would be moved to the main Vision building in Santa Ana (a block away from where S&M Bikes is located now). Laura found a "real" TV job in about a month in "Hollywood." And I sat there for about five more months, and got a call to shoot video of something once every week or so. Meanwhile, every Friday, major people at Vision were getting laid off, or quitting. We had "going away parties" every other week for someone.
I was literally getting paid for doing almost nothing, but it was driving me crazy. So I quit in July of 1990. On my last day, one of the women from the Vision promotions department came up to me. "What are you planning on doing for the next couple weeks, Steve?" I told her not much, I had money saved to pay rent for a little while. I was planning on riding my bike a lot, and work on my own video (which became The Ultimate Weekend.) She said, "Would you like to drive the ramp rig across country, on a little tour with some skaters?" I said, "Sure." A little road trip sounded fun, and a good time to think about what to do next. Plus it was a couple more weeks pay, while I figured things out. I wound up driving Gale Webb's old dually pick-up, which Vision bought, and the trailer mounted mini ramp, best known for its appearance in this music video. A skater I'd never heard of, Mark Oblow, rode out from Santa Ana with me.
We left on a Tuesday morning, and had to be in Atlanta, Georgia by Friday afternoon to set up at Stone Mountain park. What nobody realized was that the dually was geared super low to pull a trailer. It would only go 55 mph, no matter what. I was planning on cruising at 65-70 the whole way. So we got way behind schedule quick. By the end of night one, we were barely on the other side of Arizona, on I-10. Day 2 got us to about 200 miles west of San Antonio. We were running way late. Day 3 melded with Day 4, and turned into a 30 hour straight drive. We picked up young buck vert skaters, Mike Crum and Chris Gentry in Houston on Day 3. I wound up driving the rig 24 hours straight, which is a really bad idea. But we didn't die. I let Mark drive for 3 hours after that, so I could get some sleep. But he'd never pulled a trailer, much less a 24 foot one, and his driving freaked me out. I got maybe half an hour sleep. Then I drove the final three hours, setting a record I never want to break, of driving 27 hours in a 30 hour period. Don't try that kids. Then we hit Atlanta at Friday evening rush hour, and I was doing head nods in stop-and-go traffic, on the freeway. But we made it to Stone Mountain and set up the ramp by dark on Friday. The skaters did a week of demos there, then we did a few more demos in Texas, on the way back to California. And that's how I met Chris Gentry, the rapper in the video above.
So what does that have to do with my new blog? Weird shit happens in California. Like getting asked to be the driver/manager of a cross country skateboard tour the day I quit a job. But more like the fact that surfing first hit the mainland shores here, and later the SoCal surf scene took surfing mainstream in the 1960's. Skateboarding was born here. BMX racing and BMX freestyle were born here. Snowboarding, arguably, was born here, thanks to the late Tom Sims. Mountain biking was born here, in Marin County, above San Francisco. And that's just some of the Action Sports world.
There's that little brown boxy thing, what was it called? Oh yeah, the Apple Macintosh computer, that changed civilization, was born in California. Steve's Jobs and Wozniak weren't smart enough to look up how to spell McIntosh apples, but they were smart enough to start what's now a $2 billion (or so) company.
When I got stuck in North Carolina for a decade, from 2008 to 2018, I missed hanging out with BMX and skate friends. I realized how freakin' cool the SoCal music scene was. Things like, "Do we want to see The Dickies in a bar tonight, or Social Distortion?" Those were normal questions in the 90's here. California is fucking huge, it has the ocean, hundreds of miles of beaches, big cities, deserts, mountains, farmlands, and every kind of people imaginable. More than anything, California has a lot of weird freaking people. Some are just weird. I mean, the guy who was on the Wheaties box when we were kids is a chick now. That's weird to think about. But there are also a lot of weird people, who work hard, and try new ideas. Like computers, actions sports, and all kinds of other stuff. California has a huge number of people trying new things, and a culture of bringing weird, crazy, and bringing new ideas into fruition. It's just not like that in most other places. And the weather is pretty awesome. The video of Chris Gentry rapping about the Boozer Jam (2014) at Sheep Hills is a good example of that California crazy inventiveness to me, from my friends and my world.
All of that makes for a lot of interesting stories. And after telling hundreds of weird little BMX industry stories, and being away from Cali for a decade, I just want to go explore all the stuff I never did in my first 22 years here (1985-2008). So the new blog, Crazy California 43, is about places, spots, locations, that have some kind of story I find interesting. The general idea is that people who read the blog, and check out the social media tied to it, will find a place or two worth going to check out in person once in a while.
The other part of the equation is that I was really bored in NC, and I spent a TON of time blogging, and learning how to promote ideas and my art (#sharpiescribblestyle), with blogs and social media. As I looked around, I realized that hardly any small businesses, and many medium and large businesses, don't use blogs and social to anywhere near their full potential. So I started looking for ways to help small business people get better at new media promotion. But most of them don't really want to change, or take the time to learn when they're so busy already just running their business.
So I said, "Fuck it," I'll just take this drive I have to go explore, find a cool name, and promote the fuck out of my own idea." In three months, Crazy California 43 has over 1,900 page views. That's a record for me, for a new blog. Even Steve Emig: The White Bear, which has over 125,000 page views now, started off much, much slower. So that's why I'm doing this new thing called Crazy California 43.
Hey, it's a holiday weekend, maybe there's some place on the blog you might want to go check out this weekend. Check it out.
For progress in anything to happen, someone, one person, some freak, geek, dork, or weirdo, has to have a new idea. They usually get laughed at. A lot of people have new ideas, but someone has to actually go for it, whatever it is, and try it. Whether it's Evel Knievel jumping motorcycles with no suspension in 1968, or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak making homemade computers in 1975, or Bob Haro inventing BMX tricks in 1977, or Mat Hoffman building a 21 foot high quarterpipe in 1992, someone has to go first. And there's always a price to be paid. Sometimes it's physical pain, sometimes it's years of social ridicule and living cheap. But some ideas work out, and other people begin to take notice, and something new, some new idea or direction begins.
I discovered Josh Bender a couple years ago, while doing a blog from a friend's online bike website. I was looking up all different kinds of bike riding every day, and had all these great clips popping up on my YouTube feed day after day. One day there was this Josh Bender clip, and it blew my mind. Then I found the longer clip above.
Mountain biking started with single speed cruisers bombing down hills in Marin county, California in the 1970's. In the 80's, MTB was trying to figure out what it was, with cross country, downhill, even dual slalom happening. Then, in about 1989, the bike industry decided BMX was over, and mountain biking was the cool "new' thing, and started putting money into the sport, and the bikes and riding began to evolve faster.
Out in Utah, by himself, Josh Bender started pushing the limits, and started trying drops on natural terrain, and pushing his own limits, and of the equipment of the time. As word and video of him seeped out of the Utah desert, he began blowing minds in the MTB free ride world. As the Red Bull guy says in the short clip above, Josh Bender is basically the inspiration for the Red Bull Rampage, the craziest mountain bike event for the last 19 years. Somebody has to go first, somebody has to be the pioneer. For big drops on mountain bikes, Josh Bender was that guy.
My name is Steve Emig, if you don't know, and I'm the guy who publishes this blog. Like many kids of Generation X, I learned to ride a bike at age 5 1/2, in 1971, it was a Schwinn Scrambler clone that my dad pieced together from garage sale bought parts. In today's world, we'd call it a rat bike. My first new bike was a red, white and blue banana seat bike, which cost $50. That was the first bike I jumped, brick and piece of wood jumps. Then I had a 26 inch ten speed, as we called road bikes back then, I jumped that bike, too, on little vacant lot jumps.
When the bike thing changed for me was in the summer of 1982, when my family moved to a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho. There wasn't much to do there, several miles outside of town, out in the desert. So us teenage boys got more and more into jumping our BMX bikes. Jumping turned into BMX racing, and then into the brand new, emerging sport of BMX freestyle. That became the driving force in my life for the next 20 years. BMX freestyle gave me a place to focus my energy, and my creativity, which shaped my whole life.
As pathetic as it sounds, I've been fighting to just get back to where I can go out and ride a little daily, for several years now. Life's been really weird for a long time, but I'll get there eventually. Here's most of the few photos I have of me riding over the last 35 years.
For this Father's Day, I figured I'll blog about my dad, because he's the guy who taught me how to draw. As a little kid growing up in small town Ohio, a career in art, or making a living at any kind of creative work, was out of the question. Art was for "those weirdos" in New York City and L.A.. The kids I grew up expected to either work in a factory, on the assembly line, or in the office next to the factory. My dad, Tom Emig was a draftsman, he drew huge pictures of machines, and machine parts, which the guys in the shop used to build the items. Drafting was as "artsy" as you could get away with, back then, in the Midwest. As I grew up, dad worked his way up to being an engineer, despite not having a college degree. He was a mechanical genius, he deeply understood how machines worked. I did not inherit that. But I did love to draw.
One day, on a camping trip, when I was 8, I was sitting outside our little camper drawing something, probably a curvy car, like all us kids drew. My dad sat down next to me, and asked, "Want to see how to draw a Jeep?" By Jeep in those days, he meant the classic "Army Jeep," originally made by Willys. Movies and TV shows about world War II were big in the 1970's, along with the TV show MASH, which all featured Willys Jeeps, so they were a cool thing to us 70's kids to draw. My dad showed me how to draw a side view of a Jeep in about 2 minutes. He drew one, which I'd never seen him draw before. Then he got a piece of paper, and I had one, and he showed me, step by step, how he did it. One tire, then the other, then draw the body around the tires. In ten minutes, I was drawing really cool Jeeps.
Seriously, it was freakin' amazing. I was in 3rd grade, and Jeeps, tanks, and halftracks, were our favorite things to draw in school, when we were supposed to be doing classwork. There were about 5 or 6 of us boys who were good at drawing, always competing to outdo each other. My dad's simple way to draw a Jeep blew my mind, and I practiced it the whole weekend on the camping trip. I probably drew 10 or 20 Jeeps that weekend.
But the best part came when I went back to school that Monday morning. From being about the #5 drawing kid in class, I sat down and drew a Jeep before class, and blew the other kids' minds. My new Jeep drawing skill catapulted me into the #2 spot, of the kids in class. One kid could draw really good tanks, so he retained his title as #1, in the other kids opinion, but I was a solid #2 suddenly. That totally helped my confidence in art, and I quickly used the Jeep drawing skill, and started turning out solid halftrack and tank drawings, vying for the #1 spot in class. While shy and dorky in most cases, I became "the kid who draws Jeeps really good," which was a cool status back then.
Looking back, my dad sitting down for a few minutes, and teaching me to draw a good Jeep, also helped me find something I was good at. I was a smart, dorky, super shy kid, who sucked at sports (except dodgeball), and I caught a lot of crap from other kids. But drawing was something that commanded some respect in school, and becoming "officially" good at something many other kids respected, helped me cope. And it got me drawing even more. Drawing pictures became a go-to for me when overwhelmed by all the other B.S. in life. It also helped me keep in touch with my creative side as most other kids were losing their creativity to "growing up."
Two or three years later, my dad taught me basic drafting skills, how to draw the top, side, and front view of an object, using the 45 degree line in the corner to transfer lines and points. He also taught me to draw isometric and oblique angles, another basic drafting skill. This led to getting straight A's in drafting in high school, and also led to me being a "creative dude," in general, which led to getting into pottery in high school, something else I got good at.
More than anything, getting "good" at drawing as a young kid, encouraged me to spend a lot of time doing creative things. I was a huge daydreamer, and always had big dreams, but never really tried to make them happen. But I could sit down and draw for 45 minutes, no problem. This kept me in touch with, and experimenting with my creativity as I grew up. That later led to publishing a zine, which was the first longer term creative project that I really committed to. That zine led to a BMX magazine job at age 20, and that changed the entire course of my life.
From there, I wrote for magazines, edited and shot photos for a newsletter. Then I got the chance to produce videos, and that got me into video and TV production. My point here is that helping a kid learn to draw for ten minutes, or do some other creative activity that they're interested in, helps not only their self-esteem at the time, but helps them learn to work with their creativity in general. And that has lifelong, lasting effects. While I don't make a decent living (at the moment), I'm now one of those "artsy weirdos in L.A.." I'm now best known as a Sharpie artist and blogger. And in today's world, creativity has huge value, and much of our culture and economy is based on creative activities. So teach your kids to draw, or paint, or sculpt, or play music, or whatever, when they're kids. In this post, you can see that I've evolved from drawing Army Jeeps.
So... we're finally coming out of shutdown mode after about 15 months of shutdowns, but things are still pretty weird...
Blogger's disclaimer: I'm an economics and futurist geek, I've spent most of my life studying these subjects. But I AM NOT a financial planner, CPA, accountant, or investment professional. The ideas in this blog, and in this post in particular, are my own thoughts and beliefs, and are for educational and entertainment purposes only. They should not be taken as advice or recommendations. When making financial or legal decisions, talk to a professional in those areas, and please do the necessary due diligence to make informed decisions on investments.
A year ago, about 35%-45% of Americans weren't working. Others began working from home due to the unexpected shutdowns. A hundred year pandemic hit, and the Presidential administration at the time completely blew it by not responding seriously. The health issue led to business shutdowns, and social distancing protocols, as we all know. At one point, 30 million people were on the verge of being evicted from their houses of apartments. The eviction moratoriums set in place are coming to an end. The added unemployment programs are coming to an end. Will most people be able to catch up on back rent? Or will we have a huge wave of new homeless people? We don't know.
A lot of upscale people fled New York City, and other big cities, a year ago, heading into the suburbs, and to Florida and other locations. Will most of them move back to the big cities? We don't know. Most office-type workers became adept at working by Zoom calls, and using other tech, to work from home. Will there be a mass migration back to office buildings to work? Or will huge chunks of office buildings remain empty. We don't know. In the past few months, roughly 1/3 of U.S. adults were getting some kind of "official," direct payment from the federal government (myself included). Will most of those people be able to find decent paying work again? We don't know. My educated guess is that we'll see 3-8 million people stop working, and get Social Security Disability, or some other form of assistance, to keep from working. There were already 7-10 million people in this group, former workers who dropped out of the workforce. This is one of many major societal issues not really being addressed.
There are "help wanted" signs on restaurants everywhere right now. There are at least an estimated 8-10 million people still out of work , and probably quite a few more. But they're not rushing to those low wage jobs. Will restaurants be able to find all the new (or returning) workers they need? Can people who've survived without a regular, low wage job, for the last year, even afford to work for minimum wage again? We don't know. Will low wages jobs have to start paying more money to find enough workers? Maybe. We don't know, yet.
The Federal Reserve, the non-government entity that has printed our unconstitutional U.S. dollars since 1913 (look it up, that's a fact), created more new money in the last year, than at any time in U.S. history. The M2 money supply went from under $15 trillion, to over $19 1/2 trillion, in about a year. That's like your $600 paycheck getting upped to $800. Would that help? Sure it would. That's what The Fed did for banks, Wall Street, and major corporations. This huge amount of new dollars, some printed, but most digital, has flooded the banking and investment industry, but largely avoided the real world, every day economy. This is THE reason stocks rebounded to new highs after the 2020 crash, and that real estate never crashed, like it does in a normal recession.
Very simply, every single person AND every single business in the U.S. (and most of the world), are "on welfare." Every person. Every business. The whole system is getting unearned financial aid.
The Fed has propped up a weak economy for the last 19 months, by creating huge amounts of new money. Without all that new money, the crash would have been much deeper. But that new money comes at a cost.
The problem is, when a government, or central banks like The Fed, create excessive amounts of new money, the value of every dollar (or euro, yen, pound mark, yuan, etc.) goes down. With more money around, it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of stuff. Prices begin to rise. That's what inflation is.
If a government or central bank prints way to much money, the country gets really high inflation (10%-30% a year or so), or maybe hyper-inflation (10% rise in prices a month, a week, maybe every day, or more). Every time a country has done this, EVERY SINGLE TIME IN HISTORY, the currency collapsed. There's a lag time of 1-2 years after they create the new money, until it really starts circulating, and prices start to take off and really rise. That's where we are right now. The people in charge don't want you to know that.
So, as we're all trying to find a new normal, and decide whether we work from home (OK, I don't have a home, but that's a different issue), whether we go back to the old job, or stick with the government checks, side gigs, small business, or stock trading, or whatever got us through this last year. As we're all trying to do that, prices are just starting to go up on many items. They won't all go up in unison, the price on one item will spike over here, and something else over there, sporadically. But a year from now, pretty much everything will cost you more, probably 10% to 30% more on average, that's a really safe bet. So take that into account.
Food, gas, electricity, water, insurance, clothes, everything, will go up in price a fair amount, and WILL KEEP going up in price, for the next 2-3 years. At the same time, the huge speculative bubbles in stocks, real estate, and other investments (baseball cards, exotic cars, Star Wars toys, grandma's Elvis plate collection) will crash. Boom. Downhill. Pretty much everything is a speculative bubble right now, and bubbles pop. Prices on most investments will drop dramatically in the next year, as prices are going up on day to day stuff. The real solid investments items will begin to go up again, once they hit bottom. Shadier investment items may just not be worth much anymore. That's what recessions and depressions do, they shake out the poorly run businesses (except the huge ones, they get bailed out), and shady investments.
So what can we, as average people, do? Get the day to day life stuff figured out. The old job? Or the side gigs? Work from home still, or back to the office? Keep sleeping in mom & dad's spare bedroom, sharing the bathroom with Grandpa, or get an apartment? Just keep in mind, prices will keep rising for a while, so YOUR INCOME WILL HAVE TO KEEP RISING, TOO. That's just the place we're at in the long term cycle of things.
Once you get that figured out, it's not a bad idea to stock up on basic, everyday supplies. I'm not saying to hoard 150 big, 24-packs of toilet paper. But buying a couple extra makes sense. Whatever food you buy that can keep for long periods, canned food, packaged foods, stuff like that, buying a little bit extra makes sense. It's a good time to full stock the pantry (and the bar, if you drink much). All of those things will probably cost more 3-6 months from now. There you go drunks, I just saved you a bunch of money. Send your "Thank you" checks to...
As for investments... there's a reason that, throughout human history, smart people have bought gold and silver, particularly in turbulent times. As dollars (yen, euros, yuan, etc) go down in value, gold and silver tend to hold their value... over time.
For example, a 1964 U.S. quarter, that was 90% silver, would buy my dad a gallon of gas for his Ford T-Bird (coolest car ever), in 1964. One of those 1964 quarters today, because it's made with 90% real silver, is worth about $4.68 now. Fifty-six years later, the silver in one of those average quarters, will still buy a gallon of gas. Think of how much the world has changed since 1964. The silver in that 1964 quarter will still buy about the same amount of gas. That's what I mean by "holding value."
So gold and silver, in today's weird world, are good things to look at, and see if it makes sense for you. An ounce of .999 silver is $28 or so right now, and you'll pay, $3-$10 premium on top of that. Most of you reading this can afford a $31 investment. So that's one thing to consider. (I've been encouraging friends and relatives to buy silver since it was $14 an ounce, BTW).
Another thing specific to really crazy, high inflation times like these, is debt. Long term debt makes sense, IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS. Yeah, I know, debt sucks. But the people who buy something with LONG TERM debt right now, will pay it back with dollars that are worth less. Maybe a little bit less, maybe A LOT less. That's what the government, and many mega-investors, are doing right now. Robert Kiyosaki, (the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy) writes and speaks a lot about this.
The basic idea is, find a rental property that is already a good deal (NOT totally overpriced, like most properties are now). Buy that property, so the rent covers all your expenses, and buy it with a 30 year, fixed rate mortgage, because interest rates are still (for now) historically low. As your renters pay you rent, and you pay that mortgage, and as the value of the dollar goes down, you pay off that loan with dollars that are worth less. You'll probably be able to raise rents as prices rise, and you use cheaper dollars in the future, to pay off that long term debt. In effect, it's a way to "short" the dollar, as it drops. It's like you're buying a bunch of dollars for 50 cents each, and then using them to pay your bills. That's basically what is possible in these next 2-3 years.
You'll need to do some serious research and due diligence, find the right property, and all that. But that's one of the best ways to use this crazy dollar devaluation period to YOUR benefit. Look up Robert Kiyosaki's videos, and You Tube videos on "hyperinflation," to learn the basics. And always do the necessary due diligence on any investment.
The years from 2020-2024 will provide many of the best investment opportunities that we will ever see in our lifetimes. And most people won't take advantage of them. That's a bummer. If you made it this far in this blog post, you're ahead of the curve.
I'm totally dialing back writing about economics and stuff. But we're at another one of those huge inflection points in history. March 2020 was on big inflection point, and I wrote about what was coming (the economics, not the pandemic), for 2-3 years before hand. We're at another big inflection point right now. Some of my old friends, despite my current sketchy situation, have realized that much of what I've predicted has happened. There are big opportunities in this craziness. I hope many of you will take advantage of the ones that make sense for you.
Meanwhile, I'm dialing back doing artwork (I'll just do less), and focusing on this new blog:
Check it out.
OK, so it wasn't THIS much of a lock down... But let's face it, we all feel a little bit like Jake right now. It's time to get the band back together. Hell, it's time to see a band play live again. A LOT of live bands...
The pandemic lock down in California is now officially over. The pandemic is not over, but we can start opening back up fully again. In theory, everything will open back up, we'll get back to "normal," but it will definitely be a new normal. Over 34 million Americans got sick, over 615,000 Americans, and over 62,000 Californians, died in the pandemic. The smart people are pretty much vaccinated now, but there's still hope more stupid people will die from it.
In addition, over 400,000 small businesses went out of business in the last 15 months. Millions of Americans are losing the unemployment that helped keep them alive soon. Millions more will be affected by the ending of eviction moratoriums, and we could see a huge new wave of homelessness nationwide over the next few months. It's been a rough 15 months for everybody. But on the bright side, the super rich are now much more superricher than they were a year and a half ago. Doesn't that make you feel better? Yeah, me neither.
I was homeless when the pandemic hit U.S. shores. Pure and simple, we were left outside to die. And there were definitely a lot of people hoping this pandemic would wipe out most of the homeless population. Not all of you, I know, but there were definitely people in that mindset. Cue Nelson.
As it turned out, that virus doesn't travel well outdoors, and living outside, as fucked up as it is, helped keep us homeless people at less risk, much of the time. The Universe has a weird sense of humor. Still, last August I got sick, and wound up in a negative pressure hospital room for a couple of days. I didn't have the virus, I had bacterial pneumonia (from a bacteria they could not identify- WTF?), and cellutitis, which I've been prone to since my taxi driving days. I got shipped to a warehouse turned homeless shelter for sick people (decent food and Netflix for 5 days), and bailed back out to the street as soon as my medicine ran out. The streets are better than the shelters, but that's a whole different issue.
Before that funky looking little virus attacked us, I had a general plan. I would squeak through the chilly California rainy season, and start promoting my artwork to local galleries in the Spring of 2020. So... that didn't quite work out. Instead, the shutdown closed most of the bathrooms I used, it closed down the library where I could plug in and get wifi at the same time, and actuallyt work to get my life back on track. It shtudown most of the power outlets I used to charge my laptop and phone. I'm an artist and blogger. I'm actually pretty damn good at those two things. But it's hard to blog with a dead battery. The same goes with promoting my art on social media. Luckily, a bunch of people came through and ordered drawings, or just plain helped me out last spring, and to a lesser level since.
I seriously was worried that I wouldn't be able to survive one month of businesses being shutdown, last March. That's because my whole existence depended on fast food restaurants, the library, and other places that got shutdown. For 15 months, I've actually been working more hours than at most of the jobs I've ever worked. My life became a continuous search for useable bathrooms, power outlets to charge up (nearly all of them outside), and wifi spots, so I could communicate, blog, and keep selling some artwork online.
For over a year, I've been taking a bus one place to use a bathroom in the morning, then another bus to another place to plug in, sit there for an hour and a half, and charge my laptop, and sometimes my phone (when I could afford to pay for service), and then take another bus (luckily the buses have been free) to another spot, where I would sit outside, on the ground, and check my social media, and blog when I had enough battery life. There were many hours of sitting outside blogging in 50-60 degree weather, shivering. The only times I've had 24/7 power and wifi were when I rented a motel room.
I did manage to qualify for pandemic unemployment, which got me a room for about 10 weeks over the winter. That helped a lot. But my unemployment got frozen 5 weeks after it got approved, which was 4 1/2 months after I applied for it. I got about half of the total I qualified for, and lost $1,500 when it got frozen.
So here I am 15 months after this all got going. I have more drawing orders than I can handle at the moment, but I make about $2 an hour doing my drawings. I'm now pivoting to earning money from writing, rather than art, because that's my only chance of ever making a decent living again. To make that happen, I have to turn my little creative work into a legit business.
What about a job? It would take a $20 an hour job, 40 hours a week, to be able to rent a weekly motel room, the only room I could get these days. And afford food. There's no job anywhere near that pay scale I could get these days. An apartment is completely out of the question. Renting a room in someone's else's house or apartment is technically possible, but that conversation would start with, "So I'm homeless now, and I make money from Sharpie art and blogging..." That's not likely to go very well. If I go get a restaurant job,then I'm a fat, homeless guy with no place to wash my uniform, making less than I make from artwork, and spending more hours doing it. You NEVER... EVER get off the streets with a low wage job, period. The cost of living is just too high, unless someone lets you stay somewhere for free for several months.
So that's where I'm at. Sounds depressing. But I'm stoked on my new ideas. The new blog idea, Crazy California 43, is taking off, and will offer multiple ways to make money in the coming months. Yesterday I went to three banks, looking to get a "real" bank account, the next big step to getting my life back on track. None of them would let me open an account, without "proof of residence." So I need an apartment to get a bank account, so I can make enough money, to afford an apartment. Catch-22. I need to figure that one out... My life has been one obstacle after another for so long, that's just my normal now. Anyhow, another day of working doing the shit I'm meant to do. Onward!
"Art is not what you see, it's what you make others see."
Brett Downs birthday is today. Here's his compilation video from the last year of riding. There were a few "WTF did he just do?...
