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.
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