HUGE air over KOD line. Not sure who this is, but he was blasting off of KOD, a line which hasn't seen a lot of love in quite a while, I believe. For those of you who don't know Sheep Hills, the takeoff is right behind the kid's gray helmet, and the landing is where the American flag is. If you look close, you can see that half of him is higher than Sean Ewing's drone, which is to the left.
I'll be writing the #1 blog post in this series today or tomorrow. If you know any of the riders I don't have named, or want to share these pics to the riders in the photos, go for it. I have an Instagram page, but I don't update it, since they made it laptop inaccessible. I like Pinterest better, anyhow. #boozerjam2022, #sheephills, #steveemigphotos, #SEstreetlife
Tucker Smith was on fire yesterday. Here he is with a big Superman no footer over KOD. I was a little late snapping this shot, sorry, didn't get the full stretch.
Hucker, aka Mike Clark, with a big, old school BMX tuck over KOD. Pay no attention to the guy with the chair in the foreground.
Here's the guy I can't identify with another huge loft over KOD.
Backflip over Titties (it's the name of the jump, people). From the landing, it looks like most riders are really low when flipping this jump, But it's a big step up, so they're higher than it looks.
Big one footer with the tents and upscale Costa Mesa view houses in the background. #boozerjam2022, #sheephills #steveemigphotos, #SEstreetlife.
One footed Hannah, Griz Air, or something else? Freakin' rad, whatever you call it. Rider unknown. Let me know if you know who any of these are that I don't name. More pics from Boozer Jam 2022, May 28th, 2022, Sheep Hills, Costa Mesa, California.
He was doing these all day, Seat grab arched whip thing that looked cool as fuck. Rider unknown.
Big nac-nac oozing with style.
Mike "Hucker" Clark with his trademarked nosedive 360.
Big one footed tweak, from the backside, showing how big this jump is.
The usual suspects at the command and control center, helping Dogger and just watching the riding. #boozerjam2022, #sheephills, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
These are a few more of my photos from the Boozer Jam 2022, a BMX jumping jam at Sheep Hills every year, to honor the memory of Mike "Boozer" Brown, hardcore BMX racer, and longtime Sheep Hills rider and builder. Not sure who this is, or what trick he was trying, but it didn't work out this time.
Mike "Hucker" Clark, ejecting from a cliffhanger flip attempt. He was limping a bit after this bail, but got up and kept riding.
Another one the didn't work out.
The May Gray clouds burned off around 12:30 or 1, and it was hot and dusty at Sheep Hills after that. Remember, always stay hydrated while riding. Modelo Especial. Hora le!
From behind the launch of Titties (don't yell at me, that's what this jump is called), showing almost how tall the lip is, and the huge landing. The run is actually in a trench, about two feet below the guy standing with the water sprayer backpack. Not sure who the rider is flipping. What you don't see is the 20-21 foot, long and low approach jump you hit to get to this takeoff. I saw Hucker 360 long jump, then opposite three over this. I also saw him tailwhip the long jump, then trick out. Skills.
Classic turndown style. All my photos. #steveemigphotos, #boozerjam2022, #sheephills, #SEstreetlife.
Chris Duncan over the English Channel jump at Sheep Hills, Built and named by Stephen Murray, this first jump was 26 feet tip to tip, about 27 feet to the landing, and I think it's the longest doubles every built at Sheep Hills. I think I shot this footage in 1999 or 2000. This weekend, May 28th 2022, if the Boozer Jam, a memorial to longtime Sheep Hills local rider and builder, Mike "Boozer" Brown.
The legendary BMX jumping spot now known as Sheep Hills was first built in late 1990, by Hippy Jay and Hippy Sean, as most people called them at the time. They started building jumps in this little, hidden meadow in sketchy oil land jungle between Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa. You had to walk your bike down a tiny rabbit trail, after crossing the creek, which had water in it then, to get there at first.
Now, 32 years later, the area is officially Talbert Regional Park, there are Jeep trails all over, and you're just as likely to see a Yuppie riding a and overpriced mountain bike with no scratches on it, or pushing an offroad stroller through the area, as seeing a BMXer huck a big 360. Most jumping trails get plowed within a couple of years, since they're almost always built on someone else's land. But Sheep Hills, first ridden by the S&M Bikes posse from the P.O. W. (Pro's of Westminster) House, and then the young bucks of the mid-1990's, who became the original Sheep Hills Locals (SHL), is still being actively ridden three decades after that first shovel of dirt was dug.
Despite producing most of the best dirt jumpers of the 1990's, Sheep Hills rarely got much footage in videos. In 1997, I bought a new Sony Digital8 video camera, and took it to San Diego Zoo to shoot a bunch of footage of animals, to get used to it. Soon after, I started wandering down to Sheep Hills once in a while to shoot some footage. The best of that footage wound up in a video I edited and produced in 2001, called Animals. Times were sketchy, and I only sold about 10 copies of the video. But it had some good, solid footage of that era of Sheep Hills, from 1997-2001. I lost the original master tape, and raw footage in 2008, in a move, and thought it was lost.
A few months ago, the video popped up on BMX Movie Database (thanks BMXDB guys!), and you can watch it at this link below. Below the link are the clips that have Sheep Hills footage or riders, if you want to check it out.
Intro- 1:08- The English Channel jump and Shaun Butler watching.
3:53- Emmett Crooms
5:48- Lucas Borgio (Borzio?)
12:04- Midget Cory Walters
12:38- Shaun Butler
24:10 - Brian Foster (not at Sheep)
26:11- Cory Nastazio
28:12- Sheep Hills segment
I was going to add the Team Soil video to this, but a bunch of other stuff came up. So here's some more Sheep Hills video footage from different years/eras. Enjoy!
N.W.A.'s 1987 Gansta rap anthem, "Straight Outta Compton," that made them a public enemy to people in power, and instant heroes to millions of young people in 1987, across racial lines. Let's face it, when you listen to this rap, you feel tougher than you really are. Everybody growing up wants to feel like a bad muthafucker at some point.
From goofy white kids in suburbs and trailer parks to Latinos to the millions of young black kids living in the urban suburban hoods of America, as well as other ethnic groups, this rap, and this album made Thug Life and Compton cool and famous. Suddenly a huge chunk of my generation wanted to not only become rappers, but thugs and gangstas as well. I didn't listen to rap much, but I heard this from many different friends playing it over and over. I heard that first line, "You're about to witness the strength of street knowledge," dozens of times, because producer Eddie Roman sampled it in the 1992 Mat Hoffman BMX video, Headfirst, the most influential BMX video of all time. And I watched that video more times than I can count.
Yes, an album that had suddenly had millions of teens and young adults wanting to be thugs had a lot of bad influence. Definitely. But this album became so popular, in part, because it gave a voice to millions of the voiceless living in poverty, ghettos, and really tough circumstances, around the U.S. and the world. That's why it resonated, and it broke a ton of new ground in the music world. It got kids in the hoods, all kinds of hoods, interested in writing rhymes. Expressing themselves. Poetry. Words became important to millions of kids who probably weren't the best students. That, in my opinion, also had a tremendous positive affect on lots of young people.
Yes, Straight Outta Compton and the whole gangsta rap culture glorified guns, selling drugs, thug life, gangs, misogyny and a lot of bad shit. At the same time, it gave hope, of sorts, to a whole generation of poor kids, black, white, and every other color and background. While these raps sparked a lot of negativity, they also talked about those that never got talked about in mainstream media. This rap, and the others of the era, helped spark urban street culture, graffiti, all forms of hip hop, break dancing, slam poetry, clothing companies, and a lot of hustlers turned entrepreneurs. That happened in places where most kids saw little hope of a successful future.
Along with the explosion of wannabe rappers and thugs, came an explosion of African American-centric slam poetry, hip hop and R&B music, videos, dancing, and the emergence of multiple entire industries. That's my point in this blog post, Straight Outta Compton, came from guys on the streets, and, among other things, was innovative. These crazy young thugs in this video, which is how most of us saw them then, invented something new.
What they invented, like a lot of new things, was something many people of the time though didn't need to exist. All kinds of parents and authority figures hated rap music then. But hip hop resonated with young people, all kinds of young people. That happens with all kinds of innovations. Gangsta rap eventually led to thousands more mainstream rappers, writing and rapping about their personal world, and that happened all around the world. The hip hop/rap culture of the hoods of America, that NWA helped create is not only still around, it's worldwide, it's a whole world of businesses bringing on over $15 billion a year in 2014, with estimates of $30 to $60 billion a year these days, and predictions of $130 billion in annual sales by 2030. It's still growing, and evolving, 35 years later. To put that in perspective, the total revenue of the NFL, (all 32 teams together) was $12.2 billion in 2020, down from $15.2 billion in 2019, pre-Covid. By total income, hip hop has been bigger than the pro football for 5 or 6 years now.
Innovation is nearly always frowned upon when it's new, whatever direction is comes from. The powers at be usually see only trouble, if they notice the innovation at all. They miss the opportunities that come with the fresh, new, and often crazy-looking, innovation. Hip hop was scary, especially for old white people, in the late 80's and the Gangsta Rap/East Coast-West Coast rivalry of the early 90's. And then suddenly it wasn't, and the corporate bucks started rolling in.
Innovation, new ideas, look weird and crazy and scary at first, and then, if they resonate with people, they become the mainstream a generation later. Then something else innovative comes along and freaks people out.
Nobody around the young geeks Bill Gates and Paul Allen, in the mid 1970's, really understood their vision for the future of writing computer software. IBM, the computer behemoth of the time, didn't see what they saw. They were true geeks back when geeks got harassed and beat up just for being geeks. Young Steve Jobs was a vegetarian, sometimes fruititarian, who often went without showers and didn't wear shoes much of the time, in his 20's. He co-founded Apple Computers with fellow geek Steve Wozniak, in a San Jose garage, the trillion dollar plus business now simply called Apple. Mark Zuckerberg and friends were dorky rich kids who created a software site to get laid at Harvard, called The Facebook. Jack Dorsey and cohorts, at what is now Twitter, were working on becoming the kings of podcasting in the early 2000's, when almost no one was really into podcasts. Then this idea for a short, "burst" message platform came up in a weekend brainstorming session. They blew off the podcast business and started Twitter. If any of us had seen these guys in their early years, we would have said, "What a bunch of fucking losers!" They were all weird, in different ways, and they were all innovators. So were the thugs in NWA, and the other early rappers in the 80's and 90's, to mainstream, "normal" adults.
There are a lot more people on "the streets" than thugs. And I am anything but a thug. This blog post is about the breadth of what you might call "street knowledge," and how that ties to innovation and creativity. A lot of thugs die young, and while most of us do some really stupid shit in our teens and 20's, we don't want to die young. N.W.A.'s debut album in 1987 threw black rappers rhymes about ghetto reality at the world with an attitude that still resonates. This album introduced us to Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Arabian Prince, and DJ Yella, as young guys, all in their late teens or early 20's.
Most respectable adults in 1987, if they saw the video above, would expect those guys to either die young in gang violence, or spend most of their lives in prison. That's all most adults, and the major record labels at the time, could see. But it's now apparent that there was a lot more to these young rappers, and many other innovators in hip hop, than we could see back then.
It's 2022 now, 35 years after Straight Outta Compton came out. These guys have families now. They also have successful businesses. Arabian Prince is an author and radio host, as well as a rapper. Ice Cube is now listed as an actor, producer, and writer on IMDB. He's also got a professional 3 on 3 basketball league, Big 3, going. A Google search shows his net worth is estimated at $160 million. MC Ren is married, has five kids, and has been involved in music and some film work most of his life. He's doing well financially, as well. Eazy-E became a legend of gangsta rap, in the late 1980's, and early 1990's, He was married and had one kid, and another on the way when he died of pneumonia in 1995. NWA member Dr. Dre is now listed as a rapper and entrepreneur, he co-founded Death Row Records, his Beats headphones are everywhere, and he produced the 2022 Super Bowl LVI halftime show at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, a handful of miles from Compton. Oh yeah, and he sold his Beats headphones to Apple for $3 billion in 2014, becoming a subsidiary of Apple. His net worth is listed at $800 million now.
What's my point? There's something to be said for "street knowledge." The guys from NWA haven't spent their lives in prison, and much to the surprise of many "normal" people who first saw them in the late 80's, as a group they're quite successful now. In some cases, they became incredibly successful in music, TV, movies, and business. How did this happen? What is "street knowledge" anyway?
Hustling- When you live in a poor community, whatever the ethnic background, and you find something you want, you need either steal it, or come up with money to buy it. Poor kids learn early how to hustle. Find something you can sell, then buy low and sell high until you have money for the things you want. Yes, it could be drugs, but it could also be T-shirts outside the basketball arena, or soda, water bottles, and candy on the subway. It could be CD's or single cigarettes or selling electronics at the local swap meet. Poor kids learn a bunch of ways to come up with money, whether legal or illegal. When hustling is channeled into legal activities, it's called sales, and sales make money.
Self-motivation/self-starter- If you're poor, and you want something, and you know no one will buy it for you, the YOU need to get busy to get it. If you're in a really sketchy living situation where there's not enough food sometimes, YOU have to do something to to get food to eat. This is horrible, but it also gets kids used to making something happen, one way or the other. If you go hungry, or never have decent clothes. electronics or whatever unless you go after it, you learn young to go after things. Getting yourself motivated and going out and doing something, even if it's not the best thing, becomes a habit. Why are business entrepreneurs entrepreneurs? Because they motivated themselves, and started a business. Becoming self-motivated or a self starter, transfers to the work world and business world later in life.
Creativity- Not only is writing rhymes, rapping, a form of creativity, but so are many of the related activities of street culture. Breakdancing and later forms of dancing, creating beats and music, graffiti and other artwork, actual singing, costume/wardrobe design, making flyers and advertising for shows, and much more. It takes a whole group of creative activities to put on a local hip hop show, or to record a single or album back in the day. All these forms of creativity can lead to other types of creative work once some money starts rolling in.
Do-It-Yourself ethic- 1970's punk rockers showed young people the power of Doing It Yourself, whatever "it" is. No one would record or produce their albums, so the punkers figured it out, and recorded and produced albums themselves. By the late 80's, when hip hop exploded, the DIY idea was popular in hardcore punk and rappers seem to have followed that lead. If no one will do what you want done, Do It Yourself. Like the other skills above, doing stuff yourself becomes a habit. That's another habit that transfers to business world.
Facing fears- There are all kinds of things and situations people are afraid of. But the kids growing up in a really tough neighborhood are much more likely to be threatened physically on a regular basis, and have to learn to deal with it. In adult life, starting anything new, a business, an organization, creating a project of some sort, brings people face to face with some of their fears. For the kids who learned to deal with physical fear at a young age, something like starting a new business, or recording a record is much less scary. Having learned to act in the face of fear, even if it's not the smartest type of act, gets people more used to facing their fears in other areas of life, like art, music, or business.
I grew up pretty much the opposite of the guys in NWA, I was a dorky, pudgy, smart kid, bouncing around small towns in Ohio. I was afraid of everything as a kid. Later, while in high school in Boise, Idaho, I got into BMX bikes. That led to street riding, and when we moved to San Jose, California, running into the characters on the streets of the big cities of San Jose and San Francisco. Little by little, I spent more time riding in sketchy neighborhoods, particularly when I moved to Southern California later on.
Most of the best bike and skate street spots seemed to be in sketchy neighborhoods. My friends and I slowly learned to interact with the wide variety of people you see in the urban world, from homeless guys who wanted a beer or a cigarette, to local gangbangers who wanted to steal our bikes. Much later, in adult life, I drove a taxi for years, and then became homeless, first living in my cab, and later alone on the streets. I've met and see hundreds of different characters on the streets, and learned that these skills above are part of what we generally refer to as "street smarts," When it comes to starting new projects and small businesses, these skills, and other aspects of "street smarts" will usually get you much farther than book smarts.
I've been an avid reader my whole life, and there is a tremendous amount to be learned from reading, and these days, self-directed online learning. But when it comes to building a business, street smarts are a key part of what it takes. I think that's a big part of the reason for the continued success of people like Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, the other members of NWA, and so many other rappers and people who rose out of street cultures and rough childhoods.
While I'm definitely not saying kids need to become thugs, sell drugs, and write gangsta raps, there are skills learned, and traits inherited from street culture that do really help in life later on. Yes, there is definitely strength to be found in "street knowledge."
These four photos are ones I shot in 2021, while we were still in full Covid-19 restrictions mode. What you see in the pic above is an actual homeless hammock set-up in a fucking tree. I'd thought about doing this at times, but I'm a really fat dude these days, so it wasn't feasible. This was right in front of where I had my storage unit, and pretty much unnoticed by most people. Anyone remember Swiss Family Robinson? This set-up didn't look that comfortable, but it was definitely creative. Below is the same tree see from a short distance away. Other than a sign this guy hung on the tree, most people, even those walking their dogs under the tree, didn't see this spot. He had it up there, and actually slept up in the tree many nights, for about two months, I think. There was a big homeless encampment right across the street at the time which is now all cleared out.
The tree with the homeless hammock in it, well hidden from sight. 2021. #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
The bag car. There are many levels of homelessness, something I'll explain in more detail in a future post. There are A LOT of people living in their cars these days, like in the movie Nomadland, but locally. Many of these people do have jobs, but don't earn enough to pay rent, and all other bills, associated with having an apartment. This guys really needs a van. OK, he needs an apartment, but he could use a van or bigger car in the meantime.
The Park-N-Ride in my area turned into a Park-N-Live during the Covid era. Here's an older limo, being used as a bedroom/storage unit, in one group's campsite. This encampment, which had 6 to8 RV's and maybe 15 ramshackle huts, has been declared off limits to camping since. Most of the people went into the local neighborhood, camping on the sidewalks, afterwards, and others when to the edge of the park, across the freeway from this site, which is in the East end of The Valley.
I call this "Homeless Pinball." A group of city leaders in one city will get the police and outreach workers to push homeless people out of an encampment site, which usually sends them right into the local neighborhood, a park, or other empty lots nearby. Pretty much everyone from this encampment moved to new locations within 200 yards of this site, when pushed out. But they weren't visible from the freeway, which is what mattered at the time. Sweeping bums under the rug, and out of sight, so to speak. Several months later, as we began to come out of the Covid restrictions, they were all pushed to move elsewhere. Some may have got housing (local motels, then on a list for apartments, paid with tax dollars), and some may have simply moved across city lines to another outdoor spot in a nearby city. The only guy I really talked to got a motel room to stay in 30 minutes away.
As we open up completely out of the Covid era, there's a massive push to get people into "housing," and get homeless people out of sight in L.A. "Housing gives people a roof over their head, a bathroom, a shower, TV, and power to charge phones and other devices. These people keep social program money, like EBT (food stamps), and other programs. most of the time. But they wind up with very little money to live on for personal expeneses, and very little to do, but binge watch TV. "Housing" usually comes with curfews, searches of personal property, not having the key to your room (security lets you in in some cases) room searches, and bans on weed/cannabis, alcohol, and possibly cigarettes. which are all legal. "Housing" leads to addiction and mental health programs, but rarely leads to ever making an actual decent living, where you can rent your own apartment again. So even long term housing is still a temporary fix. People going through these programs don't become what most people would consider "productive people" again.
For those and other reasons, a lot of homeless people prefer to remain on the streets, which allows much more personal freedom. There are a lot more nuances to these issues, which I'll probably dive into deeper in future posts.
In this KABC News report from yesterday, May 20th, 2022, you can see a mountain lion (aka cougar, puma), that was roaming Newport Beach, California. I think they caught this one in the Spyglass Hill area, which is close to a big wild area, that extends down to Laguna Beach. This cat appears to be a juvenile, maybe 2/3 grown, and 70-90 pounds, would be my guess.
When you think about homeless people and homelessness, wild animals are usually not the first thing that comes to mind. But wild animals encounters happen a lot while homeless, usually small mammals, like rats, squirrels, raccoons and opossums. While I was homeless and living near the Newport Beach Bay Back, in the bushes, in 2008, I had three mountain lion encounters. I think it was the same young cougar all three times. The first two sitings were by the Newport Transportation center bus stop, near Fashion Island, and a small mountain lion, maybe 35-40 pounds, was sneaking by. That's a few hundred yards from the lion caught yesterday.
That mountain lion was far more afraid of me than I was of it, and was trying to cruise by quietly, when I caught sight of it, both times. Two to three months later, I had another encounter where I slept, in a opening under some trees, near the old Fletcher Jones dealership on Jamboree and the back of the Back Bay. That time the mountain lion was pretty close in size to the one you see in this video, and ran past where I was was in my sleeping bag, about 15 feet away. I think it was the same mountain lion that I'd seen before, but I don't know for sure. Anyhow, that's one more thing that can happen while homeless that most people never think of.
I've seen mountain lions in the wild two other times, one out near Coto de Caza in the late 90's, while working as a furniture mover. The other one was crossing the road late one night, I think it was on Alicia Parkway, in Laguna Niguel. I was working as a taxi driver then, in about 2005, and headed down to the former St. Regis Hotel. Both of those were full grown mountain lions.
More photos I've taken while homeless in the San Fernando Valley/Hollywood area. Above we have a very apocalyptic looking dawn over Universal Studios. I shot this from across the 101, on Cahuenga. This photo has not been retouched, it really looked this crazy that morning, 2021. #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
And that was the day the squirrels figured out nuclear fusion... OK, not really. Just a cool shot of the sun peaking through a tall palm tree.
Double rainbow in front of the NBC/Universal office building. That building has a rhombus shaped base, which makes it cool looking to start with. Then there's the double rainbow, the most bright one I think I've ever seen in Southern California. I didn't find a pot of gold, so I'll settle with a cool photos.
A huge percentage of our days in SoCal are governed by high pressure systems, where there are no clouds at all in the sky. The pattern of clouds on this day made for a cool photo.
If you just had Steve Tyler's voice pop into your head, then you know why I snapped this photo. An old painted sign in a back alley seldom seen by most people. Studio City, 2021. #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
This video is from March 2022, it appears. I picked it for this post because as a currently homeless artist/blogger, I talk to one Postmates driver nearly every day, and see several more in my area, either sitting in their cars waiting for deliveries, or picking up food and rushing out to drop it off. Full disclosure, this Gig Nation YouTube guy just got a 9 to 5 job 3 weeks ago, a month or so after he made this video.
On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, back in 2007, I walked into the taxi office of the company I worked for, dropped off my cab and keys, and walked out to live homeless on the streets of Orange County, California. I literally went from working 80-100 hours a week to full blown homelessness. I became homeless by working hard in a declining industry. I don't want any of you in that position.
I had just worked from 70 to 110 hours a week, as a taxi driver, from September 2003. For about 7 months during that time, I lived in an indie art gallery (really) and drove the owner's taxi on the weekends, clocking in about 40 hours over 2 1/2 days. The rest of the time I spent 7 days a week in the taxi, working 13-18 hours most days. When I dropped off my taxi that Sunday morning, I weighed about 365 pounds, was in horrible health, and had survived three bouts of cellulitis (severe leg infection) that year, the first of which nearly killed me. Taxi drivers were a main part of the gig economy before anyone called it the gig economy. I know the struggle. And just for the record, I liked being a taxi driver, at least the first 50 hours a week. It's the second 50 hours a week that sucked.
The younger people reading this may not really remember the Great Recession of 2007-2009, because you were kids, and didn't have to deal with it on a worker level. The older people remember it. In my case, business was struggling before that. The taxi business took a big hit from new technology around 2002-2003, when dispatch computers replaced the old CB radios we used to communicate. This allowed the companies to ditch the old time human dispatchers, and put far more taxis on the road. More taxis, less business per driver, more hours in the cab for less money. If you do gig work now, you understand that part.
Now, in May 2022, inflation is raising prices on almost everything, except your pay, interest rates are rising, and the stock market is trending down, The Federal Reserve, aka The Fed, is literally trying to drive the U.S. near, or into a recession, to slow down inflation and to try and force more people back to the millions of open jobs, many of which don't pay enough to live on comfortably, if at all. I am many things, a currently homeless artist blogger, and also a futurist thinking geek who loves economic trends and tries to figure out where society is heading. Among other things, I predicted the stock market collapse of 2020 before it started going down, in this blog post.
I believe that inflation is here for at least 6 to 12 more months, although it may be close to peaking, officially it's about 8 to 8.5% annually. In my opinion, The Fed fucked up (again!), and inflation will be 6% to 10% for the rest of this year. It will probably trend down in the next 2-4 months, but I doubt it will get below 6%. The Fed is late to the game, trying to tame the inflation that created, by not raising interest rates sooner. They have raised the Fed Funds rate 3/4% so far this year, driving U.S. treasury, mortgage, and consumer interest rates up 1% to 1.5% so far. This makes loans harder to get, and makes it more expensive to borrow money, which does slow down the economy to some extent. This rise in interest rates finally got Wall Street's attention, and that's why stocks are heading down so much recently.
The Fed has already said it will raise interest rates at least 1/2%, two more times this year. So every interest rate goes up at least another 1%, maybe 1.5 to 2%, from where we are now. This will cause the stock markets to drop much further, slow down the real estate market, and cause more corporate layoffs, and send us back into a recession almost certainly. Basically, business, overall, slows down. That means your business as a typical gig worker, will likely go down, to some extent in wealthy areas, and probably get quite a bit worse in working class areas and small towns and cities. That's going to be the general trend for much of 2022.
But gig work, like giving people rides, delivering food and groceries, and doing online work on a platform like Fiverr, are mostly localized. Some gig jobs may do better in coming months, while most slow down.
That slowing down is what happened to me in 2007. The taxi business in the Huntington Beach area, where I drove, slowed down dramatically in August of 2007, more than a year before the collapse of investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the big collapse of September 2008, of the Great Recession. That's when I had to walk away from taxi driving in late 2007, I just couldn't pay $550 a week for my cab, and $300 for gas anymore.
As an amateur futurist, who has been reading, learning, and watching economic trends for over 30 years, I think a serious, fairly long recession is inevitable at this point. So what do you do as a gig worker? Start thinking about options if your particular gig does slow down.
The whole "Gig Economy," as it's now called, barely existed in 2008. Grubhub started in 2004, Amazon's Mechanical Turk started in 2005. Task Rabbit in 2008, Uber in 2009, Fiverr in 2010. Postmates in 2011. Lyft and Instacart in 2012, GoPuff in 2013. Uber Eats in 2014, and E Scooter companies Bird and Lime in 2017, for any of you nighttime scooter wranglers out there. We're in new territory as a society, and millions of gig workers are doing jobs that didn't even exist during the Great Recession. People will still need rides, and order food to be delivered. But there will be less of both, in most areas.
What you can do now is ask yourself some good questions. How can I do this more efficiently? In my area (San Fernando Valley, CA) there's a Postmates guy who works on an Electric scooter in an upscale area. He's a serious gig guy, works hard, and will probably be just fine. I've seen another delivery guy on a motorized bicycle, he's not spending much on gas. Most of you can't do that, but there may be ways for you to be more efficient. Other good questions... Can I get needed car repairs done now, while I have the money? Can I do some form of work online while sitting in my car? Can I study a new job or business idea while waiting? You can learn all kinds of skills on YouTube, and even more in depth ones at a site like Skillshare*. Can I get personal customers to hire me to do the same, or similar jobs ("personals" were a huge part of taxi driving)? Can I get into a more efficient car or truck? Is it time to consider a 9 to 5 or more traditional job? Should I go (back) to college instead?
All of you in the younger generations (I'm an old Gen. X guy), that's you Millennials and Gen Z, seem to have this thing against people being "negative." There's a big difference between being negative, and being realistic. We're in a downtrending economy overall right now. That's just reality. You can whine about it, but gas prices will still go up some, and many businesses will slow down. Accepting the reality of what's happening will help you make better decisions in the months ahead. This blog is about looking at the chaotic world we're in, and trying to find ways to make the most of the crazy times we're all in now, and those ahead. So what are the best options for you in the months to come? Think about it.
Look at things differently. My perspective of a Jimi Hendrix mural in North Hollywood, CA. 2020. #steveemigphotos, #SEstreetlife
This is my last post on my former personal blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear. I started that blog days after leaving my mom's tiny apartment, and moving into a tent in the woods, in late June, 2017, moving to Winston-Salem, NC. I simply had to get off on my own to give myself a chance to at least try and get my life going again. There are over 800 posts on that blog, and 135,000+ page views on that blog, which you are more than welcome to check out. It was simply time for a change, and I felt a new blog was in order. We'll see where this one goes.
Sometimes you can take life by the horns and force it where you want it to go for a while. Sometimes life decides to kick your ass for a while, just to see what you're made of. If you don't believe me, try to remember what you had planned on January 1st, 2020. Your life's been a bit different the last couple of years than you imagined, hasn't it. For over 20 years now, life has been kicking my ass, with the help of a few douchebags here and there. Things didn't go as I planned. But then, things never go as we plan.
I first became homeless, for an extended time, in late 1999, right after I started working as a taxi driver, I got out of it a few months later. But I've been in and out of homelessness, on and off the streets, at various levels. since then. All together, I've lived about 15 years without an apartment. I've lived in my taxi for 5 1/2 years, I've lived in a tent in the woods for 9-10 months, through intense Carolina thunderstorms, suffocating heat, and even snow and temperatures down to 12 degrees F. I've slept outside in bushes, on loading docks, porches of abandoned buildings, at outdoor bus stations, and even an old slave cemetery.
Homeless man with couch, Studio City, 2021. #steveemigphotos, #SEstreetlife
Want some street cred? I'll sell you a kilo. I've got far more than I need. I've dealt with all kinds of people, weather, animals, bugs, and a small rat snake that found its way into my tent. Living on the streets, while Life itself pummeled me in one way, and then another, molded me into someone different than I was 20, 30, or 40 years ago. I survived a few things that should have killed me, nearly missing a head-on car crash at 55 mph, a horrific bout of cellulitis, and a suicide attempt 7 years ago, in North Carolina, where I took enough lithium to kill an elephant. God, The Universe, or whatever you want to call it, gave me a bonus life. I've focused on being much more creative since, and unapologetic about being creative. Since then, I have sold over 100 original pieces of my Sharpie scribble style artwork. I've written half of the 2,400+ blog posts I've published in my life, since then, drawing in another 200,000 page views, across my blogs.
As we began coming out of the Covid-19 period this spring, as we all struggle with inflation, and now head into a stock, crypto, and real estate collapse, and into a long recession, I pondered where to focus my creative efforts. I've been writing about "the coming economic downturn" for 4 years now. It's here.
Two days ago, sitting at my sleeping spot, watching the first light of dawn, on Friday the 13th, I realized that life on the streets, in all its facets, has been the main theme of my life for over two decades. At the same time, I saw this crazy period of economic crisis and massive change barreling down on all of us. Then 2020 came along. Then 2021. Life has been pimp slapping damn near everyone for a couple of years. But it's not over, there's a lot more change to come.
Coyote in the early morning, about 60 feet away from where I was sleeping. There are urban coyotes all over Southern California. As a general rule, they leave people alone. #steveemigphotos, #SEstreetlife.
I realized if was time to talk about what I've learned, dealing with the lessons of the streets, and coming into my own creative work. We're all going to have to get more creative to survive, and thrive, in the next several years ahead. So the idea for new personal blog popped into my head. Steve Emig's Street Life, hashtag #SEstreetlife. I'm leaving Steve Emig: The White Bear, with over 800 posts, and 135,000 page views, behind. I'm starting fresh, with a new vibe, and more creative content. #SEstreetlife is about building new lives, in what I believe will be one of the most chaotic and crazy decades in history, The Tumultuous 2020's.
In September of 2018, shortly after I landed randomly in Richmond, Virginia, I learned old BMX friend, and founder of FBM Bikes, Steve Crandall, lived there. When we met up, he gave me some food, some coffee, and his old iPhone 5. I've been snapping photos of things I see on the streets with that phone ever since. These are a few of those photos. Huge thanks to Steve for that phone, and all of his help while I was in Richmond. It's been cool to document bits of the craziness of my life these last 3 1/2 years.
You up for a crazy ride? I hope so. You have now found Steve Emig's Street Life blog, so let's figure out how to make this world a cooler place. Let's go create some shit.
Rich kids with a little spray paint, a little creativity, and a hidden parking deck. Is this real? Or just some bullshit? Time will tell. #steveemigphotos, #SEstreetlife
What's a good visual metaphor for a massive economic collapse? The world's biggest witnessed glacier calving fills the bills, in my opinion. This is pretty crazy to watch, particularly when they show you the scale of it at the end.
I'm a homeless guy who is also an amateur futurist and economics geek. I have been predicting another Great Recession, and possibly a great depression, for over four years now. Initially, I thought it would start in 2018 or 2019, so I was ahead of the curve, timewise, and off on the timing. The longer it took to happen, the more I have become convinced that this will at least feel like a great depression, and maybe meet the textbook definition of an official great depression (3-5 year economic contraction). Here are a few of my blog posts about this economic downturn I saw coming, why I saw it coming, and why I think this 2022 recessionary wave, will last much longer than the 2020 downturn. It won't be as deep, but this will last much longer, and will be catastrophic for many people and businesses.
Our economy is powered by unicorn farts- March 21, 2019- "At this point, I believe our economy is about as stable as a house of cards, resting on egg shells, sitting on the back of a unicorn, standing on stilts."
Larry Kudlow's wishful thinking- January 2, 2018- "We may even see the markets go up, as most of the country slides into recession in the next few months." This interview with Larry Kudlow happened a few days after President Trump signed the tax reform bill into law, which was a windfall for major corporations. OK, so I was way ahead of the curve on the recession starting. The stock markets went up a lot since then. For the record, though, the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked on January 26, 2018, less than a month after this, and stayed pretty much level for about 19 months. The stock market did not surge to Dow 35,000 then, like many business people, and most Republicans, expected. The Dow did not rise above that January 26, 2018 mark, until October 2019. The market began going up again then because The Fed started throwing huge amounts of money into the economy, basically handing it to Wall Street, in response to the Repo Market Crisis.
Gary Vaynerchuk is known for many things, hustling, cuss words, bravado, and using social media in entrepreneurship, top the list. He often talks about how he was a "C and D student" in high school. As a businessman, Gary's known for taking his dad's New Jersey liquor store from $3 million to $60 million in annual revenue in 5 years, using Google Adwords, SEO, and his YouTube channel, "Wine Library." Since leaving there, he's created Vaynermedia, bootstrapping it to around $150 million in revenue in a decade. In the same period of time, Gary's college, Mount Ida College, went out of business in 2018, and was eventually bought by the University of Massachusetts. Irony.
This 13 minute video above is clips of Gary, from his enormous collection of content, from recent months, talking about "the next financial meltdown," which appears to be happening right now. This "C and D student" is beginning to look pretty smart. Unlike many CEO's he openly talks about how recessions are inevitable. He didn't know when it was going to happen, he just knew that it was going to happen, at some point. Watch what Gary does in the next 2 to 3 years. By the way, he's been buying a lot of NFT's, many from small, unknown artists, as well as launching his own NFT-based community, VeeFriends, which are 10,300 computer generated pieces of Gary's really sketchy doodled characters. He also sold a few original doodles for over a million bucks through Christie's. For real.
Through most of 2021, Gary has been getting people hyped about NFT's. But for that whole period, he has also been saying that there will be a "crypto winter" when believes "98% of NFT's go to zero." As a junior high kid, Gary made thousands of dollars a weekend, selling baseball cards. He's also a diehard garage sale picker from his high school days. The guy knows collectibles, and he's been predicting the crypto and NFT crash, while getting people hyped on the underlying technology. He believes NFT's will come back, in a more viable form, and the "blue chip" ones will rise again, as the garbage gets washed out by the recession.
My point here is that beyond the cussing and bravado, there's a damn smart, and really experienced business guy. Now that we seem to be in the beginning of the Cryptopocalypse, stock market collapse, and all around recession, Gary Vaynerchuk is someone to keep an eye on. He's been waiting for this...
This is Goldie, the puppy, a couple of months ago. One of the guys I know from the streets got housing, and once in an apartment, got this cute as hell little puppy. Now she's about three times this size, and runs his life. Bitches, man. Check out my #SEstreetlife Pinterest board for more of my photos from life on the streets. #steveemigphotos
Open carry. Guy at the Universal City bus station with a chihuahua in a hip holster. Armed and loaded.
I managed to dodge Covid-19 from March 2020 until January 2022, but right when Omicron was peaking, it got me. I got both Pfizer vaccines in the spring of 2021, and I really think they helped me deal with it. That's me, on the little piece of sidewalk next ot a parking lot, where I spent 5 days sick with Covid. It knocked me on my ass for the first two days, and then I was pretty sick the next two or three days. I was back in action after that, though I was still coughing up gunk for a couple of more weeks.
OBEY nine pack in Studio City. We got top shelf street art in that area. You know whose work this is.
Generally speaking, I never really have trouble on the trains. But I've seen some weird shit at times, usually at night. This was one of the craziest. Christmas Eve 2021, this guy just started smoking crack right on the train, 7-8 feet away form me. Why does he have an orange construction vest on? I don't know. Nothing inconspicuous about this guy. Holidaze.
This is the full video of The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990, self-produced BMX freestyle video. This was the 8th BMX video I produced or edited, and cost about $5,000 of my own money to produce. It sold about 500 copies in the U.S., through a sketchy surf video distributor, and I sold him the foreign rights. I think he sold quite a few more overseas, but I have no idea how many.
This video idea actually started in 1986, when Andy Jenkins, my boss at FREESTYLIN' magazine, asked us other editorial guys if we had any ideas to produce a FREESTYLIN' magazine video. Bob Osborn, aka "Oz," forked out a reported $40,000 to produce a video of the BMX Action Trick Team in 1985, Rippin'. While it was well produced and had good riding, it didn't sell well, and lost a bunch of money. So in 1986, if we mentioned video to Oz, it brought back bad memories.
In that era, when you wanted to make a video, you hired a professional video production company, usually the kind that made TV commercials for local businesses, and industrial videos. A mid grade professional camera could run $10,000 to $20,000 then, and a mid level editing system could run $50,000 to $100,000 or more. "Broadcast quality equipment, like the local TV news and networks used, were much more expensive. VHS home video cameras were still relatively new, and VHS editing systems weren't available. To produce a decent quality video in 1985, you had to hire a pro team, and they were expensive. Those teams didn't have a clue about BMX, so when they made this video for the BMX Action Trick Team, they did it in the traditional documentary style, with lots of cool close-ups, visually interesting shots, and a lot less riding than videos today. While the video had great riding for its day, it just wasn't super exciting to BMXers. In addition, a 30 minute VHS video could easily sell for $30-$40, retail price A 1985 dollar is like $2.67 today, so paying $30 then for a 30 minute video back then is like paying about $80 today, for a video we could watch for free on YouTube, or stream for $9 a month from a service. So that's the other reason they didn't sell a ton of those videos, they were really expensive for that time.
So when Oz thought about videos in 1986, he thought of a big expense with little return. But times were changing in video technology, VHS cameras were falling in price, and the smaller Video 8 camcorders were just becoming available. It was the very beginning of the D.I.Y. video era. A friend loaned Gork, the BMX Action editor, and my roommate, a video 8 camcorder. Gork, assistant editor Lew, my other roommate, and me shot a bunch of BMX riding, and goofy little comedy ideas with it. Gork edited a compilation, by tying it to our VHS VCR, and made a pretty cool home video. It was entertaining enough that Andy got the idea to pitch Oz with the idea of producing a FREESTYLIN' magazine video, shot partly with Gork's camera, which would save a lot ton money in production costs. So Andy called us other three editorial guys into an after work meeting, and asked us to come up with ideas for the video.
My idea was simple, just follow our real life. We spent our weekends going to contests and BMX events, or riding with some of the best riders of the day. So in my concept, we would get off work one Friday night at 5 pm, and wander around riding with all top pros, on flatland, ramps, and maybe pools, all weekend. Then we crawled in, tired from a great weekend of riding, back to work Monday morning, the end of the video. Since we worked at the top freestyle magazine, and we all rode ourselves at some level, we did that anyhow. The video would be us magazine guys having the ultimate weekend of BMX freestyle fun. The other three guys promptly shot down my idea. Their ideas were more exciting, and a couple sounded like they could be a cool video. As things worked out, the idea never got pitched to Oz, and no FREESTYLIN' magazine video was ever made, except Gork's homemade video, which I'd love to see today, if it still exists.
I got laid off a few months later, I just wasn't the right fit at Wizard Publications, and a couple months later they hired 17-year-old Spike Jonze. He was the right guy for Wizard then, I went on to become editor at the tiny American Freestyle Association, or AFA. The AFA was three people in a small industrial unit, in Huntington Beach, and we put on the local and national BMX freestyle contests at the time. There were about 3,000 members of the AFA, and they all got the newsletter I edited every month.
A few months into that job, Bob Morales, my boss, had me produce a 30 second TV commercial to air on local MTV, for a national contest in Austin. Local commercial spots were cheap then, something like $25 each. The commercial we not great, but pulled some more people to come check out the contest. I later went on to produce six contest videos for the AFA that year, 1987, shepherded through the process by the people at Unreel Productions, the Vision Street Wear video company. Vison sponsored our contests, and sent a cameraman to all the nationals, and part of the deal was that both Vision and the AFA could use the footage. They did the editing for our videos, and I logged the footage, and picked the shots, and made sure the videos got made.
After working on several AFA videos at Unreel, they hired me, when they needed extra help. From December 1987 to early 1990, I was basically a production assistant at Unreel. WE made all the videos needed for the Vision empire, which included Vision, Sims, and Schmitt Stix skateboards, Sims snowboards, and Vision Street Wear clothes. Unreel had about 8 people, four of them producers, and I was everyone's assistant. I spent most of my time making copies of video footage for people across the Vision group of companies, and running to pick up equipment or supplies.
Unreel was weird as production companies go. Most production companies then were centered around one TV series, or made super cheap home videos. Unreel was living off the crazy profits that Vision Skateboards were making during the 80's skateboard boom. We shot a lot of footage, and then tried to figure out what to do with it afterwards. We produced all the trade show videos, commercials, and random footage that promotions, the art department, or another department might need. The company put out several home videos of skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX freestyle, and body boarding, like these: Psycho Skate, Snow Shredders, Freestylin' Fanatics, Barge at Will, and Mondo Vision.
Unreel also put out a syndicated TV series of six, one hour shows, called Sports on the Edge. Action sports rarely got on TV in the 1980's, and usually only as a quick news segment. ESPN didn't want to touch that series, though they had aired a couple earlier skateboard shows. The quote from the suits at ESPN in 1989 was, "Nobody wants to watch skateboarding on TV, and what the hell is snowboarding?" Unreel Productions was ahead of the curve.
Unfortunately, in 1989 and 1990, skateboarding faded in popularity, the third big wave of popularity crashed, and Vision Street Wear went down in popularity, and BMX pretty much died. The corporate money pulled out of those sports, and the business dropped dramatically. While the Sports on the Edge series aired nationwide on local stations, thanks to our syndicator, and got good ratings, there wasn't money to do follow-up series the next year. Instead, Vision dissolved Unreel in early 1990, and one woman and me, the two cheapest people on the payroll, were moved to the main Vision building. She quickly found another job in Hollywood, leaving me sitting alone in a big office, with very little to do.
I didn't really like the videos Vision was putting out. There were pretty cool, but a little hokey, with older skating or riding, not the most current stuff. Even though BMX freestyle had collapsed as an industry, the riding was evolving as fast as ever, particularly street riding. The first well covered street contest was in the 2-Hip Meet the Street in the Spring of 1988, less than two years before. I bought an $1,100 S-VHS camera on credit, and started shooting my own footage on the weekends in early 1990, just going wherever sounded interesting. The idea of The Ultimate Weekend concept was still in my head, and that became the theme for this video.
Initially, GT rider Jess Dyrenforth, who lived in Huntington Beach then, was going to be the main rider that the video followed from spot to spot. But Jess was getting into inline skating then, which was still surging. So when I called Jess to go ride and shoot video, he was usually busy. A couple months into shooting, I met John Povah, an English vert rider living in H.B., and Keith Treanor, an unknown and super hungry rider, who had just moved to town from New Jersey. Keith didn't have a job at the time, and was always down to go ride, and he ripped wherever we went. So Keith became the standout rider of the video, with John close behind. My flatland riding buddy from the H.B. pier, Mike Sarrail, went most of the places on the weekend, usually driving. Mike was a really good flatlander, but didn't like being in the video.
Little by little, word got around, and we went all over southern California, from the P.O.W. House backyard in Westminster, where guys like Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, and John Paul Rogers lived, to the local jumps at Edison High school and Magnolia in Huntington Beach, to the Tijuana Skatepark, Mission Trails near San Diego, and the Nude Bowl, way out by Palm Springs. There were no skateparks in southern California then, and street spots and backyard ramps were the main riding areas.
I shot video from February or March of 1990 until the beginning of September. I quit Vision out of boredom in July, but was immediately hired to drive their dually and ramp cross country on a three week skateboard tour. As soon as I got back, I flew myself to Indiana for a 2-Hip halfpipe contest, and shot footage at Bob Kohl's halfpipe, in Chicago, on that trip. I also met my music guy, Jon Stainbrook, in Toledo. He was a guy in a punk band who could get music out pretty cheap, from several Ohio musicians, Jon's house was a waystation for touring punk rockers, and he knew everyone in that world. He and his guys even recorded two songs that I wrote the lyrics to, for the video. While I was visiting him, The Stain was the stage band for comedian Howie Mandell, back when he had hair. I was a roadie for that gig, and got to meet Howie. The guitar and bass playing at the end of the video, with Jeff and Mark, is from backstage at the Howie Mandell gig. The shot of Jon is out front of the theater, in Ann Arbor Michigan, as I recall.
I paid $1,000 out of my own pocket to rent a 3/4" editing system, in the back of a video store in Redondo Beach, and spent 5 long days editing this video. I actually paid for the music (OK, I still owe Jon $400but I paid for most of it), because I was afraid of bootlegging music and getting sued.
The thing to know about this time period is that regular people, BMX riders, didn't make videos then. BMX companies, like GT, BMX Plus! magazine, and Bully Bikes, made videos. Only a couple riders had made super cheap videos. Eddie Roman had put out the super low budget BMX movie on video, Aggroman in 1989, and Mark Eaton had put out Dorkin' in York, and Dorkin' 2, which I think were edited with two VHS machines, in that era. I hadn't seen either video. There were only a handful of BMX company made videos coming out at the time, like 2-Hip's Ride Like a Man (produced by Eddie Roman, with a bunch of contest footage I shot while at Unreel, at the end), and the Bully Slow Ride video were the main two. Crazy as it sounds today, magazines still ruled as the BMX media, and videos were just starting to be a serious thing. Everyone kept asking me why I was making a video, since it wasn't for a bike company. "I want to make a video that shows the real riding we do everyday," was my best answer. No helmets while riding flatland, no balance tricks on a miniature golf courses while wearing leathers (like BMX Plus! magazine videos), just what I thought of as "real" riding.
Because of that, every video in that era had a lot of firsts in it. The Bully Slow Ride video, for example, had Mike Krnaich pulling the first tailwhip jump. 2-Hip's Ride Like a Man had the first 900 air by Mat Hoffman, and the first street peg grind on a rail, along a walkway. I think Dennis McCoy pulled that. In The Ultimate Weekend, I had several BMX video firsts as well. Keith Treanor did the first handrail slide down steps. I had the first the mini ramps in a BMX video, the H-Ramp, skaters Primo and Diane Desiderio's backyard ramp, and Mouse's ramp near San Diego. Keith and Gary Laurent did the first riding over a spine ramp at Primo and Diane's , in a BMX video, followed later in the video by Jess Dyrenforth, Chris Day, and Mike Tokemoto riding the big spine at Mouse's ramp. Keith did the first 360 over a spine, followed minutes later by Gary Laurent. John Povah did the first ice pick grind down a street rail, the small rail at the Regional Pool. I was the first guy to have BMX footage of The Nude Bowl, an abandoned nudist colony out in the desert, with a pool that was already legendary in the skateboard world. Along with Keith, John, and myself riding, I got skatepark legend Brian Blyther to come out and ride there, along with former Pipeline local Xavier Mendez. I also had Mike "Crazy Red" Carlson doing the first tailwhip jump over a set of doubles in the video. He dragged a foot on the landing, but rode it out. There are a few more tricks that were firsts on video in BMX, most technical tricks.
I also managed to get several top 80's pros in the video, like Martin Aparijo, Josh White, Todd Anderson, Ron Wilkerson Woody Itson, Pete Augustin, Jess Dyrenforth, Bob Kohl, and my personal favorite, Eddie Roman. This was the first video to get footage of pro racers and top dirt jumpers, Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, and the P.O.W. House (Pro's of Westminster) backyard. Even the now iconic S&M Bikes shield logo was first seen in a video here, spray painted on the side of a VW bus as I walked into the P.O.W. House backyard.
BMX freestyle, the initial explosion of the 1980's, with helmets and motocross style leathers being standard attire in contests, was fading after its first wave of popularity. Street riding and dirt jumping were just turning into their own genre's, and riding was going underground, into what became the long, ramen-eating recession, of the early 1990's. "BMX is dead" we were told, but us hardcore riders wouldn't accept that, and kept riding anyway. We didn't know what the future held for BMX freestyle.
As it turned out, Chris Moller's tiny garage company, S&M Bikes grew during the recession, and Hoffman Bikes, Standard Bikes, Eastern Bikes, and FBM were all rider owned bike companies, started during that recession. Most of those, possible all, got their bikes built in the U.S., by the time the recession ended. Even ESPN came around, near the end of the recession, and started the Extreme Games in 1995, changing the name to the X-Games a year later. BMX, other action sports, and TV finally merged in a big way, and BMX freestyle exploded into its second big wave of popularity, with rider owned companies and rider-made videos now at its core.
Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, myself, and the Alder Brothers, who produced our own rider-made videos in 1988-1991, had no idea what we were doing at first, and no idea we would spawn a movement. By 1993, every fledgling company was making their own videos, with Hi-8 video cameras and "prosumer" equipment making video production possible for everyone willing to do the work of shooting, logging, and editing videos.
The Ultimate Weekend was not a blockbuster video like Eddie Roman's later videos,Headfirstwith Mat Hoffman (1991) and Ride On (1992). But everyone who rode then saw this video, at some point, and it had the best production quality of the rider made videos when it came out, in October of 1990. Us early video producers in BMX freestyle, skateboarding, and snowboarding, made the kind of videos we wanted to watch, and the way we made our shot and edited our videos, crazy as it was, changed the TV and video production industry to some extent. More action shots, showing people land tricks fully, close-up shots with wide angle lenses, riding skateboards with the camera to follow riders for tracking shots, and fast editing, and raw, punk rock influenced, DIY editing, and crazy comedy bits, all rippled into other productions in the years since.
I started working on The Ultimate Weekend not sure I could actually produce a video on my own. Just getting a finished video that was "pretty cool," with fresh, innovative riding, was my goal. I did accomplish that. I sucked at sales, so I didn't sell a ton of them, but the distributor did pretty well with them. All in all, I lost about $2,500 making the video. While this was not a monumental video in the history of BMX freestyle, it was solid for its day, and I'm proud to have it on my reel, as they say in video production. In the years after, I went on to produce and edit the first two videos for S&M Bikes, Feel My Leg Muscles I'm a Racer (1991), and 44 Something (1993). I also stumbled into TV production work, and wound up as a crew guy on American Gladiators. Just over a decade later, I self-produced another video, Animals, to try and get back into the BMX world. It didn't really work, though I did a better job putting the video together. So that's the basic story of The Ultimate Weekend. in my Freestyle BMX Tales blog, I tell about some of the sessions for T.U.W. in more detail, starting with this post, and going back, earlier in the 2016 posts.
I totally wanted to do a 20 year anniversary follow-up to The Ultimate Weekend in 2010, but life was super sketchy then, and it didn't happen. Same thing goes for a 30 year anniversary video in 2020, I just couldn't make it happen. I'd still like to do The Ultimate Weekend II at some point. But it'll be a while longer. Maybe along while. We'll see. I need to get my personal situation stabilized first, and that's a whole different issue. Will it happen someday? I hope so.
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