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.
In 1953, a woman started walking from Pasadena, California, to spread peace. She carried no coat, no backpack or supplies, and had no team helping her. Only a blue tunic announced her purpose. She walked until given shelter, sleeping in a busstop, truck stop, or outside, wherever she was, if no one offered her a place to stay. She fasted until given food. She did this, using the name Peace Pilgrim, until her death in 1981. She walked over 50,000 miles, often 50 miles per day, to spread and teach people about peace.
Street life? You can't get much more in touch with the real streets of North America, than actually walking them for 27 years, every day, well over 50,000 total miles total. She walked as a pilgrim, to help people across the U.S. and Canada find inner peace, peace among individuals, peace among groups and nations, and world peace. Many of her sayings, along with an interview by KPFK radio, are in a small booklet titled "Steps Towards Inner Peace." You can see it online at this link.
In 1991, I got a job duplicating videos in a small, family owned business, in North Hollywood, California. I had put myself about $7,000 in debt the year before, self-producing a BMX freestyle video, and living off my credit cards for a while. BMX freestyle, which had been my life for about 8 years at the time, had pretty much died. Money left the BMX industry, and poured into a new thing called mountain bikes.
While I had managed to stumble into the BMX and skateboard industries, the video company I worked at, Unreel Productions, had been shutdown in 1990. I was kept on at the parent company, Vision Skateboards, but had almost no work to do. Bored out of my skull, I quit after six months, and found some freelance work at a surf video distributor for a few months, while I spent $5,000 of my own money producing my own video, The Ultimate Weekend. It sold about 500 copies, through that surf distributor, and I got about $3 per sale. Being a young guy, I didn't pay off my credit cards, so I was in what seemed like a ton of debt for that time, and found video work sporadically.
I got hired in the office of a TV production company, my first "real" TV production job, a production assistant at a company manking supercross and monster truck shows. That gig lasted for about 3 months, and one of the producers helped me find the duplication job. I moved to a sketchy apartment in the hood of North Hollywood, where I rented a bed, not a room, week to week. There were about 12 total roommates, some of then kind of sketchy. But it was cheap, and about a mile from my new job. So I would go in at 5:00 pm, and run two systems, with 45 total VHS machines, making copies of all kinds of videos, until 1:00 am. The first night I made copies of an automatic bowling lane sweeping machine. It would sweep one lane, and then "walk" to the next lane, and sweep it. Boring.
As the nights went on, I dubbed videos about different kinds of corn for farmers to grow, about marine navigation, and all kinds of promo videos for different businesses and products. One guy wanted copies of all the old "Blaxploitation" movies, so I made copies of Dolomite similar movies for a few days. We dubbed a few martial arts training videos, and a whole bunch of really boring business videos, like meetings and in house business conferences for different companies. Sometimes I would be busy making 500 five minute videos in a night. But most nights I had longer videos, where I didn't have much to do while they were running. So I had a lot of time to think, to read, and to be depressed.
I was depressed, not making much headway paying off my debt, making $7.00 an hour, and rethinking everything about life. Working that job for several months, I started reading a bunch of self-help books, and trying to figure out what life itself, and my life, were all about. I wound up reading well over 150 books in the next several years, looking for answers, and seeking a life that made sense. That year working at the video duplicator was a big turning point for me, the beginning of a search for meaning, and my own inner peace, that lasted about 14 years.
Among the videos I dubbed, were three or four videos with this crazy sounding lady with white hair, Peace Pilgrim. We duplicated her videos for a group of her supports, called Friends of Peace Pilgrim. That's when I first her of this woman who walked alone, until offered a bed, and fasted until offered food, for nearly 30 years. While much of what she said didn't make sense to my 25-year-old self, there was no getting around how tough her pilgrimage was, and her incredible faith. Her ideas stuck somewhere in the back of my head, and made more and more sense as time passed.
About seven years later, living in downtown Huntington Beach, I walked over to the laundromat on 17th street to wash clothes one day. Someone had left several copies of her little blue pamphlet, Steps Towards Inner Peace (link above), on a counter. I picked one up, read it, and read it many more times over the next several years. I finally lost it in a move, I think.
As my own thinking about life, and why we're here on Earth, expanded over the years, I realized Peace Pilgrim's thoughts were true, and I just wasn't ready to accept them. It was well over 20 years after I first heard about Peace Pilgrim, that I found this documentary above on YouTube, which shared a lot more background about Peace Pilgrim, who's ideas began to influence me 31 years ago. She is one of many people who have had a positive influence on my weird path through life. So that's how I came to know about Peace Pilgrim.
You can read, or download and print out her pamphlet, "Steps Towards Inner Peace," at this link. There is also a book you can get, for free, about her life and teachings. The Friends of Peace Pilgrim do accept donations to help this work continue, at this website: Peace Pilgrim Now you, too, know about a woman who called herself Peace Pilgrim, and walked over 50,000 miles to teach and share peace. Perhaps her life and thoughts will help you as well.
This is a meme I made, poking a little fun at today's crazy rent prices, which is part of the whole issue of homelessness. #steveemigphotos
For well over 20 years now, there's been a repetitive series of P.R. campaigns promoting the idea that homelessness boils down to two main issues, drug addiction and mental illness. Yes, a huge number of people on the streets have those issues. But here's the problem with that argument as a fundamental cause of homelessness. MOST drug addicts (prescription and illegal) have a place to live. MOST alcoholics have a place to live. MOST mentally ill people have a place to live. Ever notice we have never had "supply chain issues" with psych drugs, like Xanax, Zoloft, Celexa, Prozac, and all the rest? There'd be a revolution in about a week if that happened. More people in the U.S. are on Xanax than on Food Stamps. The number on Zoloft is just below the number on Food Stamps. Over 48 million Americans on Xanax, over 41 million Americans on Food Stamps (EBT-food), and an estimated 552,000 homeless people in the U.S. right now. That's 95 mentally ill housed people for every homeless person. Hmmmmm...
MOST people with some level of mental illness, and MOST people with addiction issues, ARE NOT homeless. Those are not the primary causes of people winding up on the streets. They are contributing factors in lots of cases, but not sole causes. Homelessness is complex, and there are lots of reasons people wind up without a place to live for some period of time.
The single most universal issue I've seen among the homeless people is that most people on the streets do not have the social networks of people to help them through a serious crisis. Speaking from 15 years of homeless experience myself (over half of that while working full time), it's a lack of a strong family or friends network that lets people fall through the cracks and into some level of homeless living. That type of living maybe be in "cheap" weekly motels, living in a car or van, living in a shelter, or fully on the streets.
So what do all these people NEED? Here are some of the most universal, basic, daily needs among the homeless:
-Access to clean, working bathrooms
-A place to plug in and charge phones and other devices
(you need a smart phone to get government services, which means you need to charge it daily)
-Money- actual income, IN CASH, to buy bus passes, food, medicine co-pays, personal items, to go to restaurants (heat/air conditioning, bathrooms/wifi), do laundry, women's needs, and other everyday expenses
-A safe place to store their personal belongings
-A place to store food items
(So they don't waste so much money buying single servings of food items)
-Access to showers and basic toiletry items
-A safe place to sleep
AND THEN...
Help with housing, counseling, help with addiction issues, help with mental health issues, help with physical health issues, learning 21st century job skills (think Linked-in, computer skills, today's work skills, not working part time for minimum wage as a janitor, while having their rent and food paid for by tax dollars).
This is the basics of homelessness. Did you notice that "conforming to someone else's religious beliefs" is nowhere on this list? Yeah, because that's not necessary to house people. It may help some people, but also drives tens of thousands of people away from programs.
I wrote a big blog on panhandling and homelessness in 2009-2010, that pulled in over 60,000 page views. It was actually the #1 blog on homelessness in the world, at that point. It was one of the blogs I deleted in the Fall of 2012 (which I regret doing). I have a lot more to say on this subject. But this is a good starting point.
So... The backpack I bought in Palmdale in May of 2019 was getting pretty worn out. OK, that's the understatement of the year. It was pretty much obliterated, but still getting me by day to day. I definitely got my $7 worth out of this pack. I bought it used in Palmdale at a Goodwill, over three years ago. By the time Covid hit in early 2020, zippers were beginning to pop, but it was still usable. This was it today, as I finally retired it. I seriously wanted to burn it in a little ceremony, but lighting fires on the streets tends to be frowned upon.
Both straps were hand knotted to keep them working, all zippers were broken, but it was still functioning day to day. The buckle straps on the outside kept it going.
It wasn't like I didn't try to get a new one. But I'm cheap AF, and I usually try to find a good quality backpack at either a swap meet, Goodwill, or Salvation Army. There are no good swap meets in The Valley that I know of. Every time I had some money to buy a new pack, I couldn't find a decent one in a thrift store. So this old pack just kept getting sketchier and sketchier. I had resigned myself to saving up $70-$80 and buying a good quality one at a camping store when I could.
While being homeless is a situation where people always think cheap products are fine, in reality, backpacks, coats, and sleeping bags really get a workout. Having basic items you can rely on means a lot. I mean, when's the last time you went camping for 1,200 days straight? Honestly, outdoor equipment companies really should give some product to homeless people for R&D and testing purposes. We put that stuff through hell.
In any case, I started talking to a couple women from one of the homeless organizations, and they told me they had a backpack I could have today. I told them I'm REAL picky on backpacks, and I blow through backpacks like a NASCAR driver blows through fenders. I carry a lot of stuff daily, I needed an outside strap for my blanket (strapped to side, in trash bag), and I need lots of pockets to keep different things handy. A few people have offered me packs, but none that would do what I needed. So I always politetly declined. These ladies today had a pack that fit the bill, so I'm stylin' again in the backpack department. Thanks a ton ladies. I'm stoked on the new pack, and hope it's up to the challenge. While my old pack seems like a champ for its durability, it's not my personal record holder. In 2007, I bought a backpack for $4 at Orange Coast College swap meet, and used that crazy little pack until the summer of 2018. This old pack above ranks #2 in my backpack durability archives.
The new pack looks and feels good, so I hope it lasts until I can get a roof over my head, and work on making an actual living again. Onward!
A couple of the drawings I put up at Gallery 5043 in North Hollywood in 2020.
It all started with some daydreaming, in early 2020, I think. One day I looked up industrial properties for sale, here in The San Fernando Valley. The dream was that I'd be able to get a legit business going, start making som edecent money, and then buy a industrial or old retail property, when the prices dropped in the recession. Yeah, big dream for my situation, but it led to me finding this old, legendary music studio that was for sale. I found that The Alley music studio building was for sale. Here's a news report about it from a couple years ago.
It was, and still is, a very plain looking place in North Hollywood. But it's a place where Michael Jackson had recorded four albums, Prince recorded two, and dozens of other legendary music groups had practiced, written music, and recorded albums over 43 years. Still daydreaming, I went to check out the property. I wound up meeting a neighbor who had rented rooms to many of the musicians, while they were practicing there, and it was a really cool day. Obviously I didn't get a business together, the recession got put on hold by tons of stimulus money, and a cabinet making business later bought the property.
At the time, I was selling some of my drawings on Hollywood Boulevard, and thinking about putting a few up somewhere outdoors, just for people to check out. Call it low intensity street art. I walked across Lankershim to a bus stop that day, and there was an abandoned building there, three or four small units in one building. The door closest to the bus stop had the address 5043 on it. You BMXers know that 43 is the lucky number of BMX. The little light went on, "I should put some drawings up there." It was an old nail salon, and the glass door was recessed, giving it a little cover from any weather. A couple weeks later, I made some copies of my drawings, and put several up on the glass door. "Gallery 5043" was born.
The first time I put a few drawings up, I took an orange traffic cone that was sitting on the sidewalk, and made a carboard sign that said, "Art Show," to get people's attention. It was just an experiment to see if anyone actually stopped to check the drawings out. I sat at the bus stop nearby, and watched people walk by. Most didn't even notice the drawings, but a handful stopped and checked them out. That's all I was hoping for. Get a few people to look away from their phones for a moment and go, "Hey, what's that?"
That was my first pop-up art show at Gallery 5043. Total cost, Maybe $4 for copies at FedEx Office and a little shipping tape to tape them to the door.
As time went on, as people began to emerge after the initial Covid shutdown, I put more art up at Gallery 5043, from time to time. I even taped up original drawings 3 or 4 times, just to see how long it would take for someone to snag them and take them home. Sometimes I would put a post on Facebook, "New art show at Gallery 5043, show runs until all art is stolen." I did this now and then there, and at a couple other locations, so people could just randomly check out my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings, through 2020, and much of 2021.
This is a black & white test print, full size, 18" X 24", of the Notorious RBG, aka Ruth Bader Ginsberg, drawing I did shortly after her death. While I've drawn a few BMX and skaters, and dozens of rock star drawings, this one was, by far, the most popular drawing I've done. The original ended up in Wisconsin, I think, and there's a full size print up in a lawyer's office in Colorado, and a handful more spread other places. Someone scored this print after a couple of weeks. This was the only large black & white print made. #sharpiescribblestyle
Then came 2022, and I caught Covid myself in January, and moved farther west in The Valley. Being homeless, as I healed up, I just stayed in the same area, where I camped out while sick. It was just a good spot with the basic necessities I needed to get by, day to day. There were a couple other people who crashed out at the same place at the time, who were pretty cool to get along with. I would eat breakfast in the area, then take a bus quite a ways to a library, and write, blog, draw pictures, and do my social media stuff, during the day, then come back to sleep.
Recently, I decided to take a break from drawing the Sharpie pictures for a while, I just need to find work that pays better. After 10 years unable to find any job in North Carolina, I have no official work history. I've been doing creative work the whole time, but didn't have a "real" job. So a traditional job is out of the question at this point, for that and a few other reasons. So I've been working on trying a couple of new ideas to begin earning day to day money soon, hopefully, and then work from there.
I've also started to think about all these weird photos of homeless life I've been taking since 2018. I have 200 or 300, or more, photos. Some of them are of weird stuff I've seen, some are just artsy pics of sunsets, buildings, or other things. So I printed out a few of the photos on paper, and decided to put them up in an outdoor location or two, so random people could check them out. It's pretty non-destructive street art, just photos on plain paper, taped to walls. I put the first group of photos up in Hollywood, in a little, out of the way nook. For the second group, I trekked back over to my original spot, Gallery 5043.
Cannabis dispensary Budega, now in the site of my former Gallery 5043.
I hadn't been there in a few months, and a lot has changed. The building was leased or purchased by a cannabis dispensary, a weed shop, and the door where I hung my art in 2020 and 2021, is now the main door of their store, Budega. Like "bodega" but for buds. Clever.
So now my personal art show spot, Gallery 5043, is now just an idea in my head. So wherever I put art up outside, it's "Gallery 5043" to me. They even changed the number on the door, to 5041, which is the main address number of the whole building. So if you need some weed in the NoHo Arts District area, check out Budega, at 5041 Lankershim. And if you want to see my photos or Sharpie art in an outdoor location, check my twitter feed (@steveemig43), I put the locations up there... sometimes.
So that's the story of my personal art gallery, Gallery 5043. It started with a daydream of owning a cool building, led to the discovery of a legendary and little known music studio, then became my little "outdoor art gallery" for a while. If I ever do get a building and open my own art gallery, it will probably be named Gallery 5043.
I just saw this TikTok video pop up on Facebook, which I thought was hilarious. It's a TikTok remake of a sarcastic comedy bit by Aaron Woodall, explaining why Harry Potter is a remake of Star Wars. Here's the whole bit (3:26).
With this quick, and well done, one minute piece, Woodall has his audience thinking, "Wait, it is pretty much the same story." Raised in the era of rise of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books being released in print, and then as movies while they were kids and teens, the Millennial/Gen Z audience sees the connections they never noticed before.
Meanwhile, a fairly typical Gen X person, part of my crew, now in our middle age, just nods. "Yep, George Lucas told us that story first, as the original Star Wars, now known as A New Hope or Episode 4, thanks to 8 sequels and prequels. Except our version had warp speed spaceships and blasters, not an old train from the 1800's, and pointy sticks." Hey, we're Generation X, sarcasm is our thing. We were named after a book that wasn't even about our generation, it was actually about the people in every generation, who drop out for a while because they don't fit into the culture everyone else seems to want be a part of.
But if you dig a little deeper on YouTube, there's another video that shows us how our Star Wars was really a knockoff of grandpa and grandma's fantasy novel trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Wait... what?
Yep, here's a guy, who sounds like a wizard from Dungeons &Dragons land, explaining the parallel plot lines of J.R.R. Tolkien's great trilogy, published in 1954-55, with Geroge Lucas' original Star Wars, which premiered in 1977. Huh? It's the same shit. Almost. And The Lord of the Rings is Frodo's adventure, which is an offshoot, a sequel, and also a parallel to, his uncle Bilbo's adventure, told by Tolkien in The Hobbit, published in 1937. So who's going "WTF?" at this point? Even most of today's writers, whining on Twitter all day, don't even realize this. And they write novels and screenplays... sometimes.
The reason all of these stories parallel so close in plot and themes is because they are all versions of "The Hero's Adventure." The late comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell explained that concept in his 1949 book, The Hero With 1,000 Faces. I'll go into a lot more detail on Campbell and his theory in one of my next posts.
Star Wars 1977 trailer -A small movie, with unknown actors, that the studios didn't expect to succeed.
Star Wars: A New Hope modern trailer - A now legendary movie that spawned one of the greatest franchises of all time, completely recut, with hints of "The Hero's Adventure" included.
As you may have guessed by now, many of our other favorite novels and movies are also forms of The Hero's Adventure. Like these...
Monty Python and The Holy Grail- 1974 The many variations of Holy Grail stories, which go back 1,000 years, are Hero's Adventure stories, this one is a parody, but a version of the idea, none-the-less.
The ancient Persians were incredibly intelligent, excelling in math, science, astonomy, astrology, and many other things. Remember the Three Wise Men from the Christian nativity story? Yeah, they are believed to have been Persians. Anyhow, this video explains the wind catchers they developed to cool buildings in desert cities. These wind catchers catch hot wind, cool it, and get it to flow through houses and buildings, to cool them. No electricity and no air conditioners needed, and they even predate swamp coolers, which do one of the same functions, humidifying and cooling hot air. As we in Southern California sweat through the last few days of a 100 degree plus (F- 37.7+ C) heat wave, this is a really cool idea. Sorry, my brain is melted, I had to go for the pun. Chill out.
I've never heard of wind catchers before, but in the last week, the American Southwest has dealt with extreme heat, as well as power grid issues, which taught us one big reason why electric cars are still not a really good idea, until we have much more reliable, sustainable eletricity capacity. There's a place for electric vehicles, but we're not ready for mass adoption yet, as a society. Anyhow, building technology that cools homes and buildings in hot regions, with no technology, no energy needed, and minimal regular upkeep, that a great idea. These wind catchers are something we should look deeper into.
Shot and produced by my one time boss at Vision's Unreel Productions, Don Hoffman, this video is a look at skateboarding "streetstyle," about a year after the first contest, I think. Roots.
On Facebook a couple days ago, BMX legend Dave Voelker asked, "Who invented street contests first, BMXers or skaters?" Since I was at the Oceanside street skating contest in 1986, a year and a half before Wilkerson's first 2-Hip Meet the Street in Santee, in 1988, I knew it was skaters. Dave Vanderspek put on a bike street contest in NorCal before that, but skaters still did it first. When I went looking for an early street skating contest video, this one came up. This was when skateboarding was ruled by vert skating, and the freestyle skaters were a sideshow, off to the side, as talented as they were. Freestylers got their revenge a few years later, by becoming the guys running the industry. Street skating was just begining to be a thing, and people were trying to figure out just what could be done with a skateboard in an urban setting. Thirty-seven years later, that mission continues.
Another little milestone for this, my new main blog. It just hit 1,500 pageviews yesterday. That's about the way Steve Emig: The White Bear blog started off, in late June 2017, when turned a new leaf, literally, by moving into the woods in NC. Within the next few months, a local music shop called Earshot Music had an art show for me, and I started drawing my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings full time, and became a part of Winston-Salem's Trade Street art scene for a while.
This blog started with me looking at the fact that I've managed to remain homeless, and not making a living, while putting out a ton of content for free. Not being able to get a "real" bank account to get my online store up and running in 2020, and the pandemic in general, put a damper on much of what I was trying to do. So I just said, "OK, I'm this fat, ugly, weird street guy now, let's just roll with that." We'll see how this works. Thanks for checking out this blog, and I'll try to keep putting out posts worth reading.
As most people have figured out, we are either in, or heading into, a recession, as I write this in early September of 2022. Quite a few companies are beginning to lay off workers, and that means a lot of people will be looking for part time work, side hustles, or completely new ways to earn money. I like this guy's ideas because they can be done in small and medium sized towns, as well as large metro areas, like where I live. These five ideas do not take many special skills, if any at all, and start-up costs range from almost nothing to a few hundred dollars. Plus it's a solid, well made video, showing the pros and cons of each idea. If you're looking for a side hustle that can be done nearly anywhere, check this video out.
Want to know how NOT to make money? This is me, on the right, working for $3.10 an hour, in 1985. I was the manager of a tiny amusement park in Boise, Idaho, called The Fun Spot. While it had some perks (free Pepsi and popcorn), I was, 18, still living with my parents, and could barely afford to keep gas in my huge land yacht of a car, a 1971 Pontiac Bonneville.
Feel like you're going around in circles trying to pay bills, like the Ferris wheel I'm running above? Yeah, we've all been there. With the recession building as we head into fall, here are a bunch of ideas to help you put some money in your pocket, legally, this week. No illegal stuff like selling crack, putting granny out on the corner to turn tricks, or stealing a small airplane to start your own airline. Strictly legit ideas that could put some cash in your pocket, or account by the end of this week. If you're in a bind, hopefully you'll find one or more that will work for you.
Yes, you know many of these already. But most people have 3 or 4 go to ways to scrape up some extra money. By making a bigger list, maybe I can expand your thinking, and help you find an idea you haven't thought of, to get you through a tight spot.
(One) Have a garage, yard, or inside sale. I know, this falls in the "Duh!" column. But a lot of people still don't do it. Everyone has junk they don't use laying around, many items of which could be sold quickly, and put cash in your wallet. Garage and yard sales are pretty self explanatory, and an "inside sale" is for people living in apartments. This works best if there's no gate to your complex, and putting a big "SALE" sign on your car, parked in front of your unit, tells people where to go. Have friends help, to keep an eye on everyone. I've done this a few times, while Back east, and we didn't have any problems, and usually made $100 to $200, or more, without much work.
(Two) Take a bunch of your stuff to a swap meet or flea market. Basically this is a garage sale on location where lots more people will see what you're selling, and by extension, by more of it. There's probably one in your area. What's the difference between a flea market and a sawp meet? In my experience, somewhere around the east side of the Rocky Mountains, flea markets start getting called swap meets. Same thing, different location.
(Three) Take your vehicle, drive around and pick up free stuff, then sell it. Where do you find free stuff? Check out the stuff sitting on curbs, by dumpsters, or from the "Free" section on Craigslist, and then sell that stuff at a garage sale, yard sale, swap meet, or flea market.
(Four) Sell something on Craigslist
(Five) Sell something on LetGo
(Six) Sell Something on Facebook Marketplace
(Seven) Sell something on Ebay
(Eight) Sell something on PoshMark
(Nine) Sell something on OfferUp
(Ten) Sell something on NextDoor
(Eleven) Sell something on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or other social media
For all of these online personal sales, use common sense. Meet the buyer in a public place, take a friend with you, preferably a big, burly looking one, and don't try to scam anyone. If you don't know how to use any of these websites or apps, check on YouTube, or google it for a how-to to help you figure it out.
(Twelve) Sell Stocks you own and cash out
(Thirteen) Sell crypto you own and cash out
(Fourteen) Start doing work on Fiverr
(Fifteen) Start doing work on Mechanical Turk
(Sixteen) Set up on Etsy and sell art, crafts, or vintage stuff
(Seventeen) Start working at a food delivery side gig, like Postmates, Grub Hub, or Uber Eats.
(Eighteen) Start a people delivery side gig like Uber, Lyft, or even driving a taxi, like I used to (they're still around). You need a car, for the most part. In some cases you can rent one to do these jobs. Make sure you'll earn enough to make it worthwhile, if you really want to try that.
(Nineteen) Sell your children to a slave trader (Just kidding, I just wanted to see if you're really paying attention and actually reading this list. Really, I mean it, I'm just kidding. Most of your kids wouldn't get you much money, anyhow).
(Twenty) Cash in a life insurance policy. This is a pretty extreme step, as is the next one. So only do these if you're in a really serious bind.
(Twenty-one) Become a stripper. OK, I'm joking again. Mostly. But their ads do say, "Cash Paid Daily," which is the same thing taxi driver ads used to say back in the day.
So there are 20 actual ways to put some cash in your pocket, wallet, purse, bra, or G-string by the end of this week. And one idea just to make you laugh. I hope this list expanded your thinking, and maybe even helped you get through a tough time. That's the point.
NOT Hawaii. This footage is from Black's Beach, in Southern California, during the January 2021 epic swell.
After nearly passing out from heat exhaustion the day before yesterday, I've been thinking about life a bit more than usual, which is a lot. Thinking about the best parts of life, I had this random thought at 4am this morning, when it was still about 80 degrees outside.
The Stoke is real, everything else is bullshit.
The colonists that landed in Hawaii in the 1800's tried to stop the indigenous islanders from surfing. It nearly worked, there were very few people left surfing in Hawaii in the last half of the 1800's. Around 1900, a half-Irish half-Hawaiian in Waikiki, named George Freeth, along with a few other guys, notably the younger Duke Kahanamoku, brought the ancient sport of kings back. Around 1907, well known writer Jack London, the same guy best known for writing the novels White Fang and The Call of the Wild, wrote a travel article for a women's magazine about the Waikiki surfers.
In the next few years George, and then Duke, both traveled to California, to demonstrate their skills as swimmers, divers, and surfers. That was the beginning of surfing in California, and Duke later took it around the world, setting the stage for the wave of action sports from the 1960's into the 2000's, where skiing, motocross, big wall climbing, water skiing, skateboarding, BMX, sport climbing, Boogie boarding, snowboarding, bouldering, mountain biking, inline skating, wakeboarding, kite surfing, and several variations of skydiving, among other new sports, blew up and went global. Yeah, you could call the last 50 years the Rise of Stoke.
These sports often weren't dropped when people hit 22 years old and left college. Many people do one of these sports, or another, in their 60's, 70's, and even 80's for a few surfers, I think. While contests, trophies, championships, and the notion of "winning" is part of all of these sports, they are all done by most participants just for the pure stoke of the act itself. This sets them apart from the traditional team sports, like soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and hockey.
There's also a creative apsect to all of these sports, and a personal reward, often called stoke, that comes whether the move is done in front of friends, in a contest, videotaped, or done all alone, with no one else around. It's that moment of stoke when first landing a new trick, riding that epic wave, or stomping a move perfectly, that is something like the creative high artists or musicians get. Much to the dismay of traditionally oriented people around them, action sports enthusiasts often reorganize their lives around these sports. Traditional goals and achievments often lose meaning in this world. A lot of people just don't understand that. But the draw of pure stoke is growing, as these sports keep growing, and spreading, to the far corners of the Earth.
What is life all about? Here's my favorite quote from the late comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, whose ideas inspired George Lucas when writing Star Wars, and who actually learned to surf from none other than Duke Kahanmoku himself.
"People say what we're seeking is a meaning of life, I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive."
-Joseph Campbell, in the Power of Myth interview by Bill Moyers
So that's what was going through my head, when I woke up at 4 am this morning. What can I say, weird stuff wanders through my head in the middle of the night. For about 19 years, life has pushed me away form action sports. My stoke over this period has come mostly creative work, like blogging, my Sharpie scribblestyle artwork, and wandering around the streets shooting photos of whatever seems interesting. But the more life pushed me away from BMX freestyle, the more I want to go ride.
This is fascinating, how ramen is the main barter item in prison. There are many groups of people with deep ramen cultures. Obviously Asians with "real," homemade ramen is the main one, But for cheap packet ramen, jail and prison inmates cook with it, college students usually discover it early on, and in my case, it was as a BMX guy in the early 90's recession. I've managed to only spend three days in jail in my life, but I did enjoy a big prison ramen meal cooked by a former inmate once, in a Christian biker house I crashed at for a night. That recipe is below.
This is the 100th blog post on Steve Emig's Street Life... Whoop whoop!
Ramen isn't food, it's starvation insurance. The pack of simulated noodles made out of God knows what, along with the little silver packet of magic dust, makes your stomach believe you are eating real food. But you're not. For a quarter or so, that pack of ramen will transport you through an afternoon, maybe even a whole day, until you have money to buy real food again.
In about 1993, I wrote an article for Dig BMX magazine in the U.K., about ramen. Dig was pretty new, and coming out sporadically, as money allowed, at the time. If I remember correctly, my ramen piece wound up as a full page article, on the inside back page of one of the early issues of the magazine. Living in a series of BMX houses, with 2 to 12 roommates, packets of ramen had become a part of BMX and skateboard culture in the long recession of the early 1990's.
My personal record is when I lived primarily off ramen for about three weeks straight. Being the dork I was, I bought a speed reading course for $300 at a business conference, while I was living at the infamous P.O.W. BMX House. I couldn't afford to eat for about three weeks, and lived almost entirely on ramen for that time. I think I had two real meals in three weeks. But it was worth it, The speed reading course led to me reading about 100 books, totaling over 27,000 pages, in the next 5 or 6 years. That helped turn me into the highly intelligent homeless guy who predicts stock market crashes, that I am today (September 2022 is gonna suck for stocks, I think).
Staple meals for BMXers and skaters in the early 1990's were 23 cent packs of ramen, 49 cent tacos at Del Taco, and 59 cent tacos at Taco Bell (ask the H.B. guys about the "smoky burrito" day). Even Tony Hawk, in his first book, talks about living off $5 a day in the early 90's, much of that spent at Del Taco, as I recall. Now we are 30 years older, and heading into what looks like another gnarly recession. So I'm sharing a few of my favorite recipes using a cheap packet of ramen, available at grocery stores, liquor stores and mini marts, colleges, and prisons across this great country. For all of you young people out there looking to fill your belly for as little money as possible, during this coming recession, here you go.
How to cook a standard packet of ramen
You don't just cook ramen. There is a basic protocol for standard ramen. (1) Before you open the pack, grab it with both hands, and twist a little, to break up the block of noodles into smaller pieces, Sure, big long noodles look cool in cookbook photos, but they're a pain to eat in every day chow down mode. So break up the noodle block into 6 or 8 big chunks, that gives you shorter noodles, which are easier to eat. (2) In a cooking pot, pour about an inch and a half of water, and bring it to a boil. Only amateurs put the ramen in when the water is cold or warm. Don't put the noodles in until the water is boiling. They don't cook any faster if you put them in earlier. Set the silver packet aside while cooking the noodles. (3) Cook the noodles until they begin to soften up. Don't over cook them. They will continue to soften up because the broth will stay hot, as you add the magic dust, and then eat them. If you overcook the noodles, they eventually turn into a gooey mass, not good. So once the noodles begin to soften up they're done. (4) Open the silver packet of magic ramen dust, and pour into the still boiling water. Use a long spoon or spatula to stir them until the dust is fully dissolved. This should only take maybe 30 seconds or so. Once the flavor packet dust is dissolved, turn off the heat. If you're fully ghetto, like we were back in the 90's, grab a fork and head into the living room to watch TV while you eat out of the pot. Since the pot is still hot, don't set it directly on the coffee table or couch. Put an old porno mag or piece of wood under it, to keep from burning the furniture. If you're not ghetto, pour ramen into a good sized ceramic bowl, and eat. Enjoy.
Ramen with frozen vegetables- Add some frozen vegetables, like peas, corn, carrots, lima beans, mixed vegetables or whatever, while cooking. You'll have to experiement a bit to figure out just when to add them to the boiling water, so they heat up, but don't over cook.
Ramen with fresh or canned vegetables- Got some fresh veggies in the fridge? Or a can or two in the cupboard? Carrots, celery, corn, peas, onions, and potatoes could all work well. I think I've done this a couple of times. In my case, I'd fry some celery or onions in a pan with a bit of oil, so they're partially cooked, but still crisp. Then add them into the cooking ramen while it's boiling, right before adding the seasoning packet. Boil for another minute or so, while stirring. You could also nuke veggies in a microwave, or just add canned veggies. Experiment, see what tastes good. For potatoes, nuke them in the microwave for a 2-4 minutes, cut into small pieces, then add into soup right before adding the flavor packet, and boil for a minute or so.
Ramenetti- I did this one quite a bit in back in the early 90's. Basically it's spaghetti with ramen noodles, when you're too broke to go buy pasta, but have ramen packs and spaghetti sauce in the fridge. Cook the ramen noodles until done, then drain them in a strainer. Heat up spaghetti sauce in a pot, and pour on top of noodles on a plate when done. You can also add cooked hamburger, make meatballs if you know how, or fry up some vegetables to add in. I like to chop onions and green (bell) peppers in big chunks, and fry them in butter with some basil added in. Sautee' until cooked but crisp, then add on top of the ramen noodles and sauce. Low budget epic goodness.
Ramen noodles with butter and lemon pepper- Cook the ramen noodles until done, and then strain. Put them on a plate. Then melt some butter in a pot on low heat, and shake in a bunch of lemon pepper (find it in the spice aisle). Just get the butter melted, and stir the lemon pepper, then pour over the noodles, and mix them up with a fork. If you've never made this, you'll be surprised how freakin' good this simple dish tastes. Lemon pepper is also good on chicken, halibut, and probably a bunch of other things I don't know how to cook.
Stoned Soup- This is one to cook if you live with a bunch of roommates. If you've never heard of the children's book Stone Soup, check it out here. I got this idea when living in a house full of BMXers back in the early 90's, where half of the guys smoked weed. I was going to write my own version of the story, in a world with lots of roommates who were stoners. But I never got around to writing it. The basic idea is to cook a big pot of ramen, and everyone throws something into the mix. A couple people put in a couple packs of ramen each, others donate a carrot, potato, onion, other veggies, rice, maybe hamburger, and maybe something for desert. No stones necessary, just hungry stoners and non-stoner friends. Cook up whatever people donate to the cause, and everyone eats well. Poof! Stoned Soup. I actually ate real stone soup, cooked with actual stones, at a church I went to in North Carolina. An actual chef, a member of the church, led the cooking crew. It really was good.
Ramen stew- Cook up ramen noodles, and strain them. In another pot, heat up a can of Dinty Moore, or similar, beef stew. Mix the stew in with the noodles, and chow down. For a large group, more ramen noodles, and more cans of stew.
Crunchy ramen stew- Remember above when I wrote that I had an actual prison meal cooked by a former convict? This is it. One day, while I was homeless back in 2008, I ran into a Harley biker guy. He asked if I was homeless, and if I wanted a place to stay for a night or two. It turned out to be a Christian biker house, where most of the people living there had done time for one thing or another, then became religious, and turned their lives around. Several had overcome drug issues. They lived together, an informal group, devoted to helping the group, and other people coming from similar situations. The cook for that night was a guy nicknamed Little Man, as I recall. He made a huge pot of ramen stew, like I described above. But right before serving it, he took a big bag of flaming hot Doritos, crunched them up inside the bag, then poured the bag into the stew. He stirred it around, and the chips added some crunch and heat to the stew. There was plenty for the ten or so people living in that house, and me, the guest of the night. I stayed there for one night, and was asked if I was interested in becoming part of the group. I said that it wasn't exactly my scene, and moved on. They were a cool group, and not officially affilated with a particular church. And several were still bikers. But it was a cool night, I reapp appreciated their hospitality, and I learned how to make Little Man's Crunchy Ramen Stew. Personally, I think I would go with Frito's, or tortilla chips, if I made it. I'm not big on super hot chips. If you make this, try any kind you like, and see how it tastes.
Chili ramen- This is the same idea as the ramen stew above, but instead of beef stew, use a can of chili. Cook the ramen noodles, and strain them. Heat up a can of stew in another pot, and mix the noodles into the chili, and eat up. Yummy goodness. Saltine crackers optional.
Ramen broasted taters- This is my own invention, and I've never heard of anyone else doing it. I would often cook two packs of ramen, usually chicken or beef, but only use flavor packet. So I wound up with a few extra flavor packets in the cupboard. One day I got creative. For these, take a couple of potatoes, and cut out the eyes. Then nuke them in the microwave, whole, for about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. Then take them out, and cut them into big wedges. It helps to have an oven mitt to hold the hot potatoes while cutting them. You can cut them first, but it never seems to work quite as well. Then open a chicken ramen flavor packet, and sprinkle the powder on the inside, cut faces of the potato, not the peel. Rub the powder around with your finger, so it covers those cut parts. Then put the potato wedges on plate, peel side down, and put back into the microwave for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. The ramen powder makes a coating on the potatoes, and when done right, they taste a lot like broasted potato wedges. You may have to play with cooking times, to find what works best with your microwave.
So there are some good meals, that are freakin' cheap to make, based on packs of ramen. Take these ideas, experiment, use your own creativity, and see what you come up with. There are lots more ideas online these days, once you get the basics down. These ideas may help you get through some lean times in the coming recession, or maybe just for fun. One more good thing about eating a lot of ramen, it makes you appreciate when you have enough money to eat better food. At least for a while. Enjoy!
I don't usually share or promote things that come up on Facebook ads, but this one looks pretty cool. The L.A. Project is an event on the evening of October 23, 2022. They're going to project a bunch of photos of downtown Los Angeles, shot by 34 different photographers, on to the side of a building. The tickets are free, and there will be "food trucks, fun, and theater style seating." Sounds like a cool night in my book. Click the link to check it out.
I picked a few names at random, and looked up their stuff. Seriously, they take some great pics. Now I want to go. Maybe I'll see you there.
This is one of the best minds on the economy around, Chamath Palihapitiya. This talk by him, about 11 minutes, is from a few weeks ago, but goes into the macroeconomic picture in the world today, going back to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. There are some unrelated photos edited over most of this, but the audio is solid.
I've been writing about a long, sticky, major economic downturn for about 3 1/2 years now. The trends I have been watching for many years, began to merge, suggesting really crazy times ahead. I've grown to be pretty good at forecasting the coming econmic climate, but haven't been able to build a business to take advantage of the trends I've seen building. I'm a broke homeless guy now, and it's easy to make the case I have no clue what I'm talking about, despite some pretty solid predictions over the last couple of years. I've been watching and studying financial markets, and several long term social trends that affect them, for 30 years now. This, right now, is the biggest part of the downturn we're heading into, in my opinion. I think the rest of 2022, 2023, and 2024 will be the craziest years of this recession and in business and financial worlds. But I don't want you to take my word for it.
In this post, I'm putting several links of talks and interviews by actual, respectable, mostly really wealthy, investors, econmists, and economic analysts. What they're all saying in the last month or two is getting pretty similar. Check out any of these that interest you, and their thoughts on this recession. This will give you a better picture of where we're at, to gain a much better understanding of what's happening now, and what will likely happen in September 2022, and the months and years beyond.
These are a few of the best minds in economics, investing, and business in todays world. These are only a few of the many people sharing similar ideas, in the last few weeks and months, and are ones I believe really have some solid thoughts to share.
If you want to get an idea of the future of the financial markets and business climate, look at the best minds looking forward, who actually run a business or have a history of making money actually investing (not trading). Generally speaking, they see asset bubbles and more pain ahead financially. But that also means there are amazing bargains coming, at some point, when stocks, crypto, real estate, precious metals, and other assets hit bottom.
But for most people, recessions mean a struggle to pay bills, with credit card, car/truck, student, and home debt, that they owe, becoming a much bigger issue than in good economic times. Most people struggle through recessions, some worrying about losing jobs, finding a new job when they get laid off, and cutting back on expenses at home. For some reason, few average people want to think about a coming recession, much less prepare for one, yet there will always be another one before long.
One huge thing that is different about 2022, compared to previous recessions, is we now have the internet, and in particularYouTube, many popular platforms of social media, and all kinds of people doing research and putting out information about what is happening in the financial and business worlds. The internet was around in 2007-08, but we didn't have the huge amount of content creators we have now, and social media was still pretty new to most people. The level of communication between people now means that there are far more smart minds out there, researching, thinking, and talking about what's going on, than during the Great Recession.
Yes, we had the recession of 2020, technically a short depression, but the pandemic caused downturn, and The Fed's response, kept it from being the recession it should have been. Things got all out of whack with $5-6 trillion of new money flooding the economy, and millions of people turning into Stimulus Ballers for a while. So now we get the more traditional recession that should have happened then, with high inflation heading in, as an added bonus.
The level of good information available, and our hyper-connected level of communcation with each other now will change the way this recession plays out. Yes, there is a lot of bad information out there, but there is also a lot of goodinformation out there. When you watch videos or read blogs and articles, look at someone's background. If they're older, and have been successful at business or investing through several recessions, like Ray Dalio, Jim Rogers, Robert and Kim Kiyosaki, and Nomi Prins, in the videos above, they usually have some solid advice and thoughts. Don't believe every word they say, but take a successful background as a sign that they have learned a lot over the years. When several established business people start saying very similar things about where the economy is going, then it's smart to take them pretty seriously. Then do your own thinking. Check with other experts, see what they say. This will help give you a better idea of the Big Picture of the world of investments and business, and hopefully help you make better decisions in your life. That's the point here.
This blog post, and all of mine about business, economics, and investments, is for your entertainment and education, and should not be taken as investment advice. My full Disclaimer for this blog is linked above.
Joe Brown has an incredible working knowledge of the current economic world that comes through in his videos. While I would have to see more details to totally back this plan, it's a great place to start the conversation. I totally agree with the underlying themes of his plan, which is to cut out bloated parts of the goverment, and force people, businesses, institutions, and local/state governments, to be more responsible economically.
Coming from, me, a guy who has spent a long time homeless, I know that sounds totally hypocritial. But his plan would defund many of the douchebags of the current system, who live off organizations doing mediocre work for huge government contracts or subsidies. That would free up trillions of dollars to actually flow through the real world, everyday economy. That would help myself and all kinds of other people who have run into corruption, red tape, and other bullshit currently alive and thriving in the system, things that have made it harder to make a decent living.
It would also siphon trillions of dollars away from busniesses, cities, and towns that arehighlydependent on government contracts, that are not in the best interest of the country as a whole. This plan would wind up with a huge part of both businesses and local governments in rural, small town, and small city America going bankrupt. But those areas would be a bargain then, and attract and embolden the creative and hardworking people in those regions that have new ideas, to rebuild their town, city or area in today's fast changing world. I firmly believe that the people needed to rebuild every struggling town or city are already in those towns and cities. In most cases they are simply held back by whatever local, entrenched network runs the show now.
I've spent 28 of my 56 years in small towns and small to mid-sized cities, in five states, spread across the U.S.. Most of those places are currently run by people working with outdated ideas. They may or may not be very corrupt, and most are probably reasonably decent people. But they're running on the ideas and with the small cliques of people that worked 30-40 years ago, and haven't fully adopted to today's technological and social realities.
And while we're at it, what if the U.S. Senate actually represented the U.S. population, and not arbitrary boundaries from 100-300 years ago. There are nearly 330 million people in the U.S., so each senator should represent about 3.3 million people. Here in California, we have 39 million people, a huge state, a huge economy, and two senators. Across the country, dinky Rhode Island has a tiny area of land, a much smaller economy, and 1.1 million people. We have multiple counties in California that are larger than Rhode Island in area, some which also have more people.
San Bernadino County is 8 or 9 times the size of Rhode Island, AND has twice as many people. Nothing against Rhode Island, they just happen to be the smallest state to use for comparison. The point is, redstricting the U.S. Senate, as fair as possible, would even out the representation to actual people, and much more accurately represent the U.S. population, which would have enormous positive effects on this country going forward.
If you watch this video, let me know your thoughts on Facebook or Twitter. This plan isn't perfect but it's a great place to start the conversation on jumpstarting America as a functional democratic republic again.
You guys all sold out of this last false hope rally a week or two ago, right? Again, here's my March 2022 blog post, on the old blog, with my thoughts on the economy for 2022. This year, 2022, is the year of big change. 2023 will be the "I'll take Things That Suck for $1,200, Alex" year. Unless you pay attention to this stuff, and have some cash. Then you'll be able to get insane deals on all kinds of assets in late 2022 and 2023.
My March 2022 predictions for stocks were Dow- will drop below 27,000 in 2022, Nasdaq- will drop below 10,000 in 2022, and S&P 500- will drop below 3,500 in 2022. I'm sticking with the predictions in that post from March. I also wrote about interest rates, and a couple of other things. Here's Joe Brown from Heresy Financial with his take on today's remarks by Jay Powell of The Fed, from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that sent the markets plunging. Yes, today's market numbers are still quite a ways from my predictions, but they're 3%-4% closer than they were this morning.
In other financial news, September 6th has been set for the beginning of the Ethereum Merge, which will switch it from a Proof of Work blockchain into a Proof of Stake blockchain. Ethereum, due to the ability to create smart contracts, and build apps on it (like NFT's, for example), is far more useful than Bitcoin. With the Merge, providing everything goes well, Ethereum will use something like 99% less energy to operate. How will this evolve in the future? That remains to be seen. But it sets Ethereum up as the top blockchain with smart contracts and other functions. So The Merge is just something to keep an eye on, if you are interested in crypto and NFT's.
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