It's been 36 years since the first little shot of me doing BMX freestyle (sort of) in this Maurice Meyer segment from a local San Francisco TV show. That's me chasing my Skyway T/A with hoopty parts at 5:07. When this was shot at Golden Gate Park, I was just getting ready to move to Southern California to take the job my little BMX zine led to, at Wizard Publications.
I started my first zine in September of 1985, right after moving to San Jose, from Boise, Idaho. I had just turned 20. The clip above was shot in late June or July of 1986, when I was one of the Bay Area BMX freestyles that rode in Golden Gate Park, when I could get up to The City on the weekends. My self-publishing career started with my San Jose Stylin' zine, and continues today, December 2022, as I write this. My self-publishing includes about 40 zines, staff writer/editorial assistant/or proofreader at three BMX magazines, nearly a year as the editor/photographer of the AFA newsletter, American Freestyle, over 400 poems written (and nearly all lost), and somewhere over 2,500 total blog posts written (2007 to present), which have dragged in over 450,000 total page views. I call myself a writer, you're free to disagree, if you like.
Since my incredibly bad taxi driver blog in 2007, I've tried over 50 blog ideas, I think. My big 5 blogs, in popularity, have been FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales (2008-2009), Freestyle BMX Tales (Original version- 2009-2012), Make Money Panhandling (2010-2012), Freestyle BMX Tales (3rd version- 2015-2017), and Steve Emig: The White Bear (2017-present). Those four have pulled in over 397,000 page views. Not bad for personal blogs, mostly about Old School BMX Freestyle, art, and a little economics. I deleted the first four of those blogs when I got stupid one night, during a dark time in my life, shortly after my dad's death in 2012.
This blog, Steve Emig's Street Life, filled a spot when I had retired Steve Emig: The White Bear for a while, and tired of the four blogs I replaced it with. Eventually, I decided to go back to "White Bear," since I didn't really want to write about homelessness, which I've become far to experienced at.
One post on "White Bear," about some guys talking about fucking with me while I slept homeless, got ALL my blogs banned from linking on Facebook and Instagram, for some reason. Even the blogs I started later on got banned. One post.
So I decided to end this blog with links to a bunch of my main blogs, if you want to check out more of my stuff, after stumbling into this blog.
The Damn Team, street performing dancers, Hollywood and Highland, where I used to sell artwork, or try to. One of my many photos taken on the streets.
In this TEDMed talk from a few years ago, Lloyd Pendlton explains how Salt Lake City, and the state of Utah, used the Housing First and Harm Reduction models, to reduce its chronic homeless population by 91% over ten years. He also explains how his understanding of the homeless issue, and homeless people, changed during that time. Most importantly, he explains the importance of trust in dealing with homeless people. This is the best video I've seen on dealing with homelessness in today's world.
Part of the change in thinking about homelessness in the last 25 years or so came from a Malcolm Gladwell article called "Million Dollar Murray." Here's a quick video explaining that idea.
"Million Dollar Murray" was first an article by Malcolm Gladwell that appeared in the New Yorker (February 13, 2006), and later was repreinted in his book, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. That's a collection of Gladwell's articles from the New Yorker, that was published in 2009. I read the story in that book several years ago.
Since the 2nd post of my Steve Emig: The White Bear blog, way back in June of 2017, I have been blogging about the loss of jobs to new technology, and other big, long term issues with our economy and fianncial and social world. I've blogged about a lot of other things, as well, mostly BMX freestyle and my Sharpie artwork. Since sometime in 2018, I've talked about the major recession, perhaps a full blown great depression, that I saw coming within a couple of years. I thought the major market downturn in December of 2018 was the start of it, but back in the Trump era, The Fed bailed things out, and propped the economy back up. In August of 2019, they had to lower interest rates, a sure sign that a recession was coming soon. I wrote a post in the "White Bear" blog, in August of 2019, called "The Beginner's Guide to the Next Great Recession." The Repo Market crisis happened about a month later, and the flock of black swans that was Covid-19, with its business shutdowns, hit six months after that post. Then came The Fed's helicopter money era, which was much bigger than I ever imagined, and turned Americans into a bunch of Stimulus Ballers, Robinhood stock traders, and dramtically overpriced home buyers.
Basically, from my own weird take on things, using theories no one else puts much faith in, I saw a huge economic downturn coming down the pike, about four years ago, and tried to warn people in the ways I could. But being broke, homeless. and having to fight the American Free Speech suppression forces at work in the social media world, I didn't get my ideas out to to many people. And hardly anyone cared to hear the "bad news" anyhow. Personally, I see recessions and depressions as good news, because that's when the best deals on big ticket items and investments happen, if you have some cash or resources to invest.
But I'm still homeless, I have no money to invest, and The Phoenix Great Depression, as I've come to call this 5 to 7 year (or more) economic downturn, is here. We're heading into the craziest part of this economic mess right now. Finally, everyone in the financial world sees it as well. So I'm going to stop writing about it. Everyone and there uncle is writing, blogging, talking on YouTube or TV about the economic recession or collapse that's happening. These are the exact same people, (with about 5 exceptions) that told you that we might have a mild recession in 2020, back in late 2019. They were wrong then, and will mostly be wrong again. If you want to jump on the Ark and go down like the Titanic, go for it. That's your choice.
So, I'm done on that subject. I've written a 20 chapter book/blog about The Tumultuous 2020's, as I call them, Welcome to Dystopia, The Future is Now, and a few dozen blog posts, over the last three years or so. You can find them if you want. My thoughts on where things are heading, and why they're heading that way, are out there, for anyone interested.
I'm done with this blog, I'm focusing on my new idea, The Spot Finder, writing about, and documenting BMX, skateboarding, action sports, and art spots, locations, that have become known in those worlds.
It's been swell... but the swelling's gone down. I'm out.
-Steve Emig
September 26th, 2022
P.S. If you're not sure what to invest in, may I suggest ranch dressing in containers that will last a long time. If the overhyped Apocalypse actually does happen, ranch dressing will be a great barering item. Everything's better with ranch! OK, almost everything.
Tony Hawk, during the best trick jam at the 1999 X-Games in San Francisco. I think it was on the 11th attempt he landed the first 900 on a skateboard ever on a skateboard. He'd been trying the trick for nearly ten years.
Ride a bike, it will take you places. SE Bikes brand manager Todd Lyons says that a lot these days, and he's right. There were about 5,000 stories of Tony Hawk landing this 900, the first ever on a skateboard, that night on a pier in San Francisco, a different story for each person in that crowd. This is my version. I was standing behind the pro skaters, less than 20 feet from the side of the ramp, talking to San Francisco BMX freestyle legend Maurice Meyer. My Sony Digital8 video camera was in my hand... with a dead battery. I'm glad actually, that was a moment I was happy to just stand there and witness, without trying to capture it on video, and keep him well framed during each try. More than a decade later, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Sean Penn's character sums up that feeling better than I've ever heard it described.
I had finagled a press pass to the X-Games that year, planning to write an article or two for Dig Magazine in the U.K. about the contest. Maurice had nabbed a VIP pass, too. I rode with him and the other Golden Gate Park locals, most weekends, during the one year I lived there, in 1985-86. We ran into each other near the end of the BMX vert practice, and started talking about "the old days" and how much BMX and action sports had changed over 12 or 13 years' time.
While we were talking at the bike halfpipe, a red helicopter with a World Industries logo on the side of it, hovered near the ramps, and started dropping stickers. The handful of kids around the area ran around picking them up. Then we realized that something else was getting thrown out of the chopper, little wadded up pieces of paper. Because of the breeze, most were falling on the empty BMX ramp area, where we were, not on the skateboard crowd. Someone grabbed one of the pieces of paper, and unraveled it. "It's money" they said. Suddenly all of us jaded Old School guys were picking them up, too. Mike Dominguez Jr., amped up after an afternoon of free Mountain Dew, sprinted around and grabbed 30 or 40 of the wadded up dollar bills, I think. I wound up with four of them, each with a World Industries skateboard character, like Flame Boy or Wet Willie, rubber stamped on them. We laughed at yet another example of Steve Rocco's crazy promotion methods. When in doubt, just throw money on the crowd. I literally had real helicopter money in my pocket when Maurice and I decided to walk over and watch the skate best trick jam, which had just started.
Dusk was descending on the huge pier that housed the 1999 X-Games, next to San Francisco Bay. With our passes, we just walked over and stood behind the rows of chairs there for pro skaters and their girlfriends, wives, and a few kids. In some of the wide shots in the clip above, you can see two really bright lights, that look lke stars on the video. We were right below, and maybe 20 feet in front of those lights, they were shining over our heads, lighting up the skate halfpipe for the TV cameras.
Maurice and I kept talking, as the world's best skaters tried their newest and best tricks. As I recall, Pierre Luc Gagnon was trying to land a heeflip Caballerial, as Steve Caballero himself sat 10 feet in front of me. Bob Burnquist was trying a one footed Smith Grind to revert, I believe. Other skaters were trying their "Merry Christmas" tricks, the things they could land once in a while. For Tony Hawk, that was the varial 720. About 12 or 15 minutes into the half hour jam, he landed one. Then he went back up, and just stood on deck a few minutes.
Skaters dropped in, sometimes snaking each other, to try to pull that one big trick. It was the closest thing I'd seen to "real," everyday skateboarding in a contest environment. The best trick jam was a concession to the vert skaters, who still weren't really happy with ESPN's take on skateboarding, in their 4th year of the putting on the X-Games. The big TV contest idea for action sports was evolving, as skaters got more involved and vocal about how they were portrayed to millions of viewers.
It was obvious the bigwigs at ESPN didn't give a shit about the best trick jam, but they had a big crowd, around 5,000 people in the stands on the other side of the ramp, so they kept the cameras rolling. It would make for soem good highlight clips, I think that's how they saw it. Old School skater and announcer, Dave Duncan, called the action out live from the deck. Maurice and I watched and talked.
Then Tony Hawk dropped in again, and no one paid that much attention. Until he opened up out of what looked like a over-rotated 540. We stopped talking, "Did he just try a 900?" one of us asked the other. I can't remember who said it. Tony walked back up to the top of the ramp, and did the same thing a couple of more times. The second rotation got tighter and tighter. After the 3rd or 4th try, he walked off the side of the ramp, facing us, He was 15 or 20 feet away, and we could totally see his eyes, he had the stare, the "thousand yard stare," as I've heard some call it. He was looking right towards us, but saw nothing. Pure focus. I asked Maurice, "Did you see his eyes? He's serious. He's either going to land it or go to the hospital trying." Maurice agreed.
The whole aura of the place shifted. Other skaters stopped dropping in. The skaters on the deck knew Tony really wanted the 900, and stepped back in respect. It wasn't planned. No color commentary guy had to spew stats and percentages to hype people up. The energy in the whole area changed. This was real skateboarding at it's best.
A top skater just got a taste that tonight was the night to land the unlandable trick, and Tony just laser focused on it. Everyone stopped skating after a couple more attempts. It wasn't about trophies or prize money anymore. We all wanted to see Tony Hawk progress vert skating to the next level. Tony kept trying, getting more and more determined, and closer to landing it. Dave Duncan kept talking into the mike like only a hardcore skateboarder could. This was a moment, one way or the other.
I think it was on the 7th attempt that Tony landed on the board, made it a few feet, then washed out on the flatbottom. I jumped up in the air screaming, I gave that one to him. But he didn't ride away, it wasn't clean, he wanted it 100%. He kept trying. On the 11th attempt, I believe, is when Tony Hawk landed the first skateboard 900 air, totally solid. Everyone went nuts.
If you freeze that video above at about 6;03, you'll see Maurice right behind Tony, in a white hoodie, with sunglasses. He ran up there with all the skaters to congratulate Tony. I, for some reason, stayed right where I was, 30 feet away, watching the pandemonium. The place went nuts. But I had seen that happen before, 10 years earlier, up in Canada.
Mat Hoffman's first 900, at 14:43 in this clip, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, in the spring of 1989. After the intro with Eddie Roman's girlfriend, this is the footage that I shot from that contest, with Eddie and friends doing their funny color commentary over it. This is from the 1990-2-Hip video, Ride Like a Man, edited by Eddie Roman.
Riding a bike did take me places. I was a dorky, unathletic kid who grew up in Ohio, spent 9th grade living in New Mexico, and then lived in Boise, Idaho through high school. The summer after my sophomore year, I got into BMX riding, then BMX racing, and then new sport of BMX freestyle, in 1983. A year after I graduated high school, my family moved to San Jose, California. I worked at Pizza Hut, started publishing a freestyle zine, and met the Bay areas freestylers, like Maurice, Dave Vanderspek, Robert Peterson, Hugo Gonzalez, and a couple dozen more. My zine led me to a magazine job in Southern California. I wasn't punk rock enough for that place, and I got laid off. I got a job editing a newsletter, which led to working at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, in late 1987. I was out riding three hours a night like everyone else, but didn't have the balls to make it to pro caliber as a BMX freestyler. By 1989, I was Unreel's camerman, traveling to all the 2-Hip vert and street contests to shoot video, because Vision Street Wear sponsored the contests.
While I was bouncing around the BMX and industries, the early skatepark riders inspired a bunch of great quarterpipe riders around the U.S. and Europe. In 1987, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson started putting on halfpipe contests. Riders like Todd Anderson, Josh White, Joe Johnson, and this kid from Oklahoma, named Mat Hoffman, moved up the amateur ranks and into pro. They pushed the older guys like Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, as vert riding progressed.
The first 2-Hip King of Vert of 1989 was in Kitchener, Ontario Canada. The less than epic 2-Hip halfpipe was set up in a college gymnasium for the weekend, and the riders, amateur and pro, gave it their best. The talk of the weekend was that this crazy, unknown guy from Canada, called The Terminator, was going to do a backflip abubaca or fakie or something. No one except lake jumper Jose Yanez had done flips on a BMX bike then. No one had even tried them on vert. The Terminator was an amateur, and when his final run came up, he did a high fakie, leaned back a little, and crashed hard. The weekend up hype fizzled.
The rest of the amateurs rode their runs, blasting high and pulling their best tricks. Joe Johnson landed the first double tailwhip air, which was amazing. I was on the deck, with a $50,000, 35 pound, rented Ikegami Betacam, shoulder checking photographer John Ker for a good angle to shoot from. I was doing my best to get good footage of the days events.
Then came Mat Hoffman, in what I believe was his second pro contest. He won his first pro contest. At the end of his final run, with about 300 people watching, mostly Canadians, he nearly landed a 900. Mat got up, and went for it again, landing the first BMX 900 in a contest, and the first recorded 900 in any action sport. Even snowboarders hadn't pulled a 900 air at that point. I caught it on video from the deck, and Eddie Roman and another guy caught it from two angles below. Mat Hoffman, new pro vert rider and wonderkid, broke the 900 barrier in action sports, with video and photos to prove it. Word was the Mike Dominguez had landed a 900 or two on his own ramp. But there were no photos or video. Mat made it official, the 900 was possible.
By some weird quirk of fate, me, the goofy kid from Ohio and Idaho, was there to get video. And by an even crazier quirk of fate, I was in San Francisco a decade later to watch Tony Hawk do it, live, on a skateboard. The only other two people that I know were in both places were Mat and his buddy Steve Swope. But they were running the bike contest in 1999, and I don't think they were watching the skate best trick jam. I'm not sure. There may have been a couple of people who saw both happen live.
We live in a weird Universe, and really crazy coincidences happen now and then. It still trips me out that I somehow saw both of these happen live, right in front of me. Riding a bike did take me places, for the first 20 years of my adult life. I met alot of cool people, traveled around the U.S., and into Canada a couple of times.
Then I got injured, became a taxi driver, and things went into a downhill spiral. I think life wanted to kick my ass for a couple of decades to teach me some other lessons. One of the things I've learned is that there are a lot of ways to spend your time in life, and goofing around on bikes is one of the best ways. You never know where it will lead you. Ride on!
Emmett Crooms, nothing at Sheep Hills, 1999, I think.
In 2000, after 5 years of riding on my own nearly every day, but being away from the BMX business, I bought a Hi-8 editiing system, and made a super low budget, fast paced, bike video. I had been going to contests, and shooting random "lurktographer" footage, as well as going down to Sheep Hills once in a while. The idea was to make a practice video out of footage I had shot over the past few years, plus a bit from 1991. Then get a bunch of the hot young riders of the day to want to go out and shoot some new footage for a much better video, to get back into the game.
Chris Duncan, one handed tailwhip at a Core Tour event in Huntington Beach, 2000, I think.
That idea didn't work. Just before Christmas, 2000, my driver's license got suspended, which turned out to be a clerical error at the DMV. But since I was a taxi driver who had just gone Christmas shopping, that left me broke and unable to earn money. No driver's license, notaxi driving, no income. Plans screeched to a halt, and I wound up working a sketchy telemarketing job for a while. I edited this video, Animals, in 2001, and it sold about 10 VHS copies. Most of those I sold to to A-1 Bike Shop in Westminster, the old POW House local shop. I handed a few copies out. The follow-up video never got made, and I wound up homeless for a while, and finally got my license, permit, and got back into taxi driving on Labor Day weekend 2003. The taxi industry was going down the tubes, and so was my life. So my return to making BMX videos failed.
Alex Leech, wallride off the stage at Huntington Beach High, 1991.
In 2008, fate forced me out of Southern California, and to North Carolina, where my family wound up living after I moved out. I grew up in Ohio and Idaho, so I had no connection to NC, except my parents and sister's family. What little I owned then was in a tiny, 5 foot by 5 foot storage unit. I lost everything, including all my BMX master tapes, 18 years worth of raw footage, my bike (Dyno race bike), my whole BMX magazine collection going back to 1982, (including complete collection of FREESTYLIN' magazines), and all my videos and DVD's. I went into a deep depression as soon as I landed in NC, which was November 2008, as the economy was collapsing. Bad time to find a job anywhere.
The Animals video was totally lost, until Alex Leech posted a couple of stills from it a year or so ago. Somehow, one of the few copies wound up on BMX Movie Database, where you can watch today- link above (if you're really bored).
Dave Mirra, one handed toothpick over the spine at speed. X-Games qualifying comp in Anaheim, 2000.
While things didn't go as planned 22 years ago, they never really do. I was really stoked that this, my "lost" video, resurfaced. A bunch of my lost footage was in this video, though there was about 35 more hours, shot from 1990 to 2008, that was never seen by anyone. Through the rough years of the 2000's, I planned to someday make a BMX documentary from that footage.
Two or three weeks after landing in North Carolina, after losing everything from my BMX days (except my Haro brake lever keychain), I started blogging about BMX. All I had left was memories, so I started writing them down online, not sure if anyone would ever read them. That's how my BMX memoir blogging career began. At the time, there wasn't really any media in the Old School BMX community, just a lot of chatting on that new thing called social media. Luckily for all of us who rode in the 1980's and 1990's, sonce then the OSBMXR, books, and podcasts sprang up, allowing a lot more people to tell their stories from those days, which I think is awesome.
Bill Nitschke, one of the first Whoppers (bunnyhop tailwhip) to be captured on video. The Spot in Redondo Beach, 1991.
I captured all these stills, and a bunch more, several months ago, to do something with them on Pinterest, I think. They've been sitting on my hard drive. While they don't have the photo quality, or the age, of Bill Batchelor's great photos in his new book (Concrete and Smog), they are a few snippets of the BMX that happened in front of my video lense over the years.
Big Island Mike, drawing on Mat Hoffman's arm with a Sharpie, with Steve Swope checking it out. A hint at things to come, perhaps. The X-Games in San Francisco, 1999. Mat's bike and uniform got lost by the airlines, so he borrowed Rick Thorne's bike and gear. With no sleeves, Mat decided he need some ink to do Rick's jersey justice. So Mike grabbed a Sharpie and gave him some right before riding.
Dave Clymer, AA pro racer, dirt jumping pioneer, P.O.W. House O.G., and street rider with white boy dreads. Huntington High in 1991.
John Tesh on piano, and a whole bunch of musicians, jamming in the ballroom, on the fourth floor of the classic Casino building in Avalon, on the island of Catalina. Sitting 20-some miles off the coast of L.A. and Orange Counties, Santa Catalina island is a popular boating destination, and the only place where wild buffalo (OK, American bison) roam in Southern California. This show was taped live and aired on PBS in the 1990's. Skip to 29:00 in the show, that's a pretty jamming section, where several musicians do solos.
One day in the mid-90's, I got a call from the grip company who worked on American Gladiators, and a couple of other shows I worked on. Steve, the crew chief, said something like, "You live in Huntington Beach, right?" I said, "Yeah." He continued, "You want to go work out on Catalina for a couple of days?" I said I would. I was on the B-list of crew guys for that grip company, when their normal 8 or 10 guys needed help now and then. I got called to work for a day here and there, after working with them tearing down the Gladiators set for the four years I worked on that crew.
I was told we would take the ferry out early in the morning, help unload and set up for a concert, come back, then go back three days later to tear down. I made their base rate of $150 a day, which was good money for me back then. But knowing how production work can change, I took a small backpack with a change of clothes and stuff needed for a couple of days, just in case.
The show wound up being the John Tesh concert you see above. self produced to air on PBS. John Tesh was best known as the long time host of Entertainment Tonight, but also loved playing piano and keyboards. So this show was a self-financed, self-produced on his part, to show off his musical talent, and play with some really high caliber musicians. The lead guitarist was the house guitarist on Saturday Night Live, that's the only one I recognized. His name is G.E. Smith, which I didn't know until just now.
As things worked out, I go tasked to stay over, along with a few other guys, who had never done grip/roadie work before, and help more the next day. We all pitched in on a room, which came to about $15 each or something. Then we got asked to work the spotlights during rehearsal. Then we were told we were the spotlight guys for the show. We had al lfigured there were "real" lighting guys coming over that night. Then we tore down the set that night and the next day.
During the concert itself, I was 25 feet up on a platform, stage right, audience left, and my job was to keep a back spot on Charlie the lead violin player, the guy in the green pirate captain jacket. He ran all over the stage, so keeping a light on him kept me busy in the fast songs. Three of the spotlight guys were actually hanging above the audience on a 20" wide piece of truss, you can see them in a few shots. I said "no way," to that. I was up on the tower with sodas and snacks during the show, munching out when we weren't busy.
It turned out to be a fun gig to work. I wound up working six ten hour shifts in 3 1/2 days, three of them back to back to back. I caught a couple hours sleep halfway through. I came home with $600 cash in my pocket, and another $300 coming in a check. It wa also the only time I've ever been to Catalina. I need to get back out there at some point, it's a cool place. It seems like you're a million miles from anywhere, but it's 30 or so miles from downtown Los Angeles. It was a fun three days, followed by a solid day of sleep back at home.
The Damn Team, street performing dancers, Hollywood and Highland, where I used to sell artwork, or try to. One of my many photos taken on the streets.
