#SEstreetlife photos- Creatures on the streets

As if rats, coyotes, skunks, opossums, raccoons, mountain lions, gangstas, and street zombies (tweekers and crackheads) aren't enough, apparently now we have to worry about gremlins on the streets.  Gremlin on a shopping cart, panhandling for change with his tin cup.  The Valley, 2022.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.

Repeat, but I love this photo.  Passed out street penguin.  The Valley, 2022.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.

California gull, looking for another snack after finishing his Diet Coke.  The Valley, 2022.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.

Homeless woman and homeless dog, chillin' on the bus one night.  2022.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.

Teddy bear rim.  I wouldn't want them on my car, if I had a car.  But hey, it's creative, and I'm all for creativity. The Valley, 2022.   #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.

One of my favorite street riders in the early years.  BMX freestyle, street, and video producing pioneer, Eddie Roman, with sprocket grind on a ledge in San Diego, 1990.  Still from my 1990 BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigvideos.

 

The Streets and me over the years- Part 1

Big man rolling.  Me, Steve Emig, riding backwards, with a bit of style, on my Schwinn BMX cruiser, in 2009.  Remember when BMX cruisers weren't cool?  Some readers of my Freestyle BMX Tales blog, from the Midwest, hooked me up with this cruiser, and some T-shirts, when I landed back east.  After years lost riding, and many pounds gained driving a taxi, this was about the only trick left in my trick bag at the time.

Warning: Shameless namedropping ahead 

(like usual in my blogs)

When you say "The Streets" these days, a whole lot of things may pop into people's minds.  But a lot of it will probably revolve around rap, hip hop, jewelry made for maximum bling factor, and people in expensive clothes posing, wearing Supreme gear, or something like that. The other thing many people picture are rows of smelly tents with lots of sketchy looking homeless people milling around.  "The Streets" is a pretty vague term, but it sounds fucking cool.  Tough, urban, gritty, scary, wild.  

That stereotype is why I'm kind of surprised myself that I wound up doing this blog.  I grew up as a kid in rural and small town Ohio.  I was listening to John Denver records and wandering the woods half the time.  Some of my early memories on streets or roads involve herding cows off Route 603, outside of Shiloh, when they got out of the pasture of the farm we lived on.  I was 9, and we rented a farmhouse, but the owner actually did the farming.  But when the cows got out, I helped herd them back into the pasture, a little bit.  

My sister Cheri, My dad, Tom Emig, and me, ready to head to church.  This is about 1972, in Massillon, Ohio, I think.

A year later, shortly after we moved to nearby Willard, a new friend showed me a skateboard for the first time.  His dad, a fabricator, made it out of aluminum plate.  The aluminum was rolled over on the edges, with steel roller skate wheels.  Months later, I had my own board, a green plastic Scamp that I bought at Western Auto for $11.92.  I was learning back wheel 360's and we were tandem sit skating , our feet on each others boards, down the little hill, in front of that house on Laurel Street, where I saw that first skateboard the year before.  

We moved almost every year, around Ohio, sometimes just to a new house, sometimes to a new city.  My first thing to do was explore the new area on my red, white, and blue, three speed, stick shift, banana seat bike.  Soon I would meet a new friend or two.  Usually we were wandering around the woods nearby within hours.  I was pudgy, I sucked at sports, super shy, smart, dorky, and about as far away from living a "street life" as you can imagine,  

Then I got into BMX, in a trailer park outside Boise, Idaho in 1982, the summer before my sophomore year in high school.  A year later we moved back into town, and I was riding the big New York canal banks, and wandering Boise, looking for little jumps and stuff to ride.  BMX trick riding was just beginning to turn into this thing called BMX freestyle.  There were only three of us freestylers in all of Boise.  Nobody in my school new who Eddie Fiola or Martin Aparijo or R.L. Osborn was.  I was the only freestyler in my high school of 1,200 kids.  Pushead, the artist and skater, lived in Boise around that time, but I never met him, or even heard of him, although I saw the halfpipe he and friends used to skate.  It was a no BMX scene. 

BMX is what led me to really explore "the streets," although there was not much urban in Boise, except the fairly small, downtown area.  But there was a cool tabletop built into the lawn of the office building next to the state capitol building.  We'd hit that in 1984 and 1985, on occasion.  

I graduated high school, worked at a Mexican restaurant, and hung out with my outdoorsy friends, often going fishing, doing some shooting, and trying to meet girls, like any 18-19 year old guys.  I was also beginning to practice freestyle tricks on my bike nearly every day.  Boise freesytler Jay Bickel, and me, did a few shows, and rode in parades in the Boise area for about a year.  

Here I am, on my Skyway T/A, doing a Robert Peterson inspired balance trick.  Uh... yeah, the shorts.  We thought all the guys in California wore OP cord shorts.  We were wrong.  This is at the Boise Fun Spot, a little amusement park, where I was manager, in the summer of 1985.  Photo by Vaughn Kidwell

Then my dad got a job in San Jose, California, and I followed my family down there, right after turning 19.  By publishing a zine, I got to know the riders in the San Francisco Golden Gate Park scene, and the Beach Park ramp jams, held by Skyway pro freestyler, Robert Peterson.  Before long, I was riding up to The City and sessioning with Dave Vanderspek, Bert, Maurice Meyer, Rick Allison, and the other locals, which included John Ficarra, Chris and Karl Rothe and Mark McKee, among other,s at the time.  

On those afternoons, I'd wander down the road in Golden Gate Park and watch the skaters for a while.  Tommy and Tony Guerrero and friends hit the launch ramp, blasting several feet up, and blowing my mind.  I also watched Maurice's brother, Ray Meyer, freestyle skating.  Within a couple of months of landing in San Jose, I was riding with those am riders to the Embarcadero after Golden Gate Park sessions, bombing down the occasional San Francisco hill, and hearing about bike and skate spots like The Dish, China Banks, and Calabassas jumps.  Those guys were my introduction to "the streets" in a real, big, crazy, urban environment.

Being the uptight, complete fucking dork that I was, riding around downtown San Francisco scared the living shit out of me.  But it was a blast as well.  I learned that an ollie over a homeless person was called a vollie, for "vagrant ollie."  I did a poll in my zine, and we settled on the term "bummyhop" for a BMX bunnyhop over a bum.  And yes, I did a handful of bummyhops in the wild, following all those other riders through The City.  

That was on Sundays.  On most other days, I was wandering around San Jose alone, exploring on my bike, like I had done since I was about 7-years-old, in every other new town or area.  But in San Jose I was looking for natural urban jumps and stuff to ride.  I started to run into shady characters now and then, the occasional homeless person, and getting a little more used to the urban world of a large city. 

My zine, much to everyone's surprise, especially mine, landed me a job at Wizard Publications, in Southern California, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  That happened in August of 1986.  Though the job was short lived, I was thrust into the BMX industry, and riding nightly with magazine guys Gork and Lew, and locals Craig Grasso, Chris Day, and sometimes R.L. Osborn.  We sessioned at The Spot, by the Redondo Beach Pier nightly, and wandered off street riding fairly often.  

The South Bay, as the Torrance/Redondo Beach area is known, was a new, huge, urban area to explore.  I met skater Rodney Mullen on my second night in Redondo Beach, and got to know him a bit.  I saw Mark Gonzales for the first time, when he skated up one night to hang with Rodney.  Rodney practiced his freestyle tricks with knee pads and socks pulled up to his knees, and taped fingers, in those days.  He was 19, the same age as me, but already 8 time world champion in freestyle skating.  Mark "Lew" Lewman was my roommate, and he got me checking out skateboard magazines for the first time.  Vert was where the money was then , Pipeline and Del Mar Skateparks were still open then.  Rodney and the other freestyle skaters were the low paid, kind of dorky guys of skateboarding, if you asked vert skaters.  Those guys admired the technical abilities of freestyle skaters, but vert was way cooler to most.  So as I was beginning to hang around the pros and top amateurs that I had been reading about in the BMX magazines, I was also seeing some of the early street skating pioneers.    

What is now called street skating was just beginning to turn into a thing in 1986, led by Gonz, Natas Kaupas, and Tommy Guerrero primarily.  As a dorky BMX freestyler, working at a magazine that also covered some skateboarding, I began to learn about the hardcore skating world, checking out Lew's skate mags, and some we had at work.   Rodney stayed at Steve Rocco's house while in California, and Rocco hated BMX.  One night Lew gave Rodney a stack of "I (heart) BMX" stickers, and Rodney plastered them all over Rocco's place, driving him nuts.  It was months before he found the last couple stickers.  We all got a good laugh out of that one.  Rocco was pretty much a washed up freestyle skater at the time, but within months, he would start World Industries, and dominate the skateboard industry, years later.

We were just young guys riding and skating, at a time when, even in California, you were weird if you spent a lot of time riding or skating as a teen or 20-something.  None of us realized just how big street skating or BMX freestyle would become.  Andy Jenkins, as FREESTYLIN's editor, and a skater, was heavily influenced by skating, punk rock, and the D.I.Y. culture that was a key part of those worlds.  That influenced Gork, Lew, and me, as we started covering early BMX street riding.      

I got laid off at Wizard after a few months, I just didn't click well with those guys.  We got along as friends, but I wasn't the right guy for Wizard.  I landed in Huntington Beach, writing and shooting photos for the American Freestyle Association's newsletter in early 1987.  Some BMXer/skater kid named Spike Jonze filled my spot at the magazine.  He was a good fit for the magazines, and started shooting photos a lot.  That wound up working out really well for him.  

Meanwhile, I found myself in a hub of surfing, skateboarding, punk rock, and BMX culture.  I soon began to spend my weekends sessioning at the Huntington Beach Pier, hanging with Mike Sarrail and a couple other local freestylers.  That was in early 1987.  Also hanging at the pier were some more freestyle skateboarders that I became really good friends with, Pierre Andre' (Senizergues), Don Brown, and Hans Lingren.  Bob Schmelzer was around at times.  There was also this whole crew of young street skaters, Ed Templeton being one of the most notable at the time.  Mark Gonzales lived in the area, and would come by now and then.  The scene was just all day sessions every weekend.  The skaters would get a crowd watching them, then the police would break it up.  Then us BMXers would get a crowd, and the police would break it up.  That happened every Saturday and Sunday if there, if we didn't have a contest to go to somewhere.  I figured out once that I rode in front of over 140,000 people, 100 or 200 at a time, in all those years of weekend sessions at the Huntington Beach pier.  We didn't put out a hat for money, it was just practice, and trying to impress girls, for us.  So I got a bunch of experience as a street performer, of sorts. 

This is me, doing a Shingle shuffle, under the Huntington Beach Pier, in 1987.  I don't know what was going on with my hair.  I was cheap, and let it grow for  about 3 months, before getting a haircut.  

 

I wound up spending more time riding with skaters than other BMXers, from 1987 into the early 90's.  I would play SKATE with the skaters at the pier, but on my BMX bike.  SKATE is like playing HORSE in basketball, except doing tricks.  I could do backside bonelesses, no comply's (footplant to 180), wall rides, and I became the first BMXer to really get into doing nollies (nosewheelie at speed into a speed bump or small curb, bouncing up off the ground), in addition to my own, weird brand of BMX freestyle. 

Like skaters, when I traveled to contests back then, groups of us would go street riding late into the night, in some other city, with the locals.  At the same time, I was exploring Huntington Beach and Orange County, looking for cool riding spots.  How many of you reading this know that there are 4 full pipes in Huntington Beach?  Yeah, I didn't think so.   They're small, 8' - 9' diameter, but they do exist.  I found those, and rode them a couple of times.

While living there, Pierre Andre' gave me one of his old freestyle boards, so I started skating some, mostly when my bike was broken.  Mike Sarrail not only became a great riding friend in those days, but he slowly led me into the world of punk rock. That opened me up to a whole new world of music, and he took me to clubs to see bands live.  We even saw Joey Ramone at the lunch truck in front of Scream , in a sketchy-ass part of L.A. one night.  

My job at the AFA led me into producing videos, which led me to a job at Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboards' video company.  My boss was Don Hoffman, whose parents owned Pipeline Skatepark.  I met a ton of top skateboarders working for Vison, like Gator, Gonz, Ken Park, Joe Johnson, Johnee Kop, Paul Schmitt, Marty "Jinx" Jiminez, as well as Chuck Hults, Chicken, and the other wood shop guys.  I didn't know any of them well, but I did find out where a lot of backyard pools were, and went to ride my bike in a couple.  When the Huntington Pier bank chain got cut and "disappeared" in 1989, I sessioned there all summer, nearly every night, with dozens of different skaters, and a few BMXers.  

Vision closed down Unreel Productions in 1990, but kept me on.  I started shooting a video of my own.  Along the way, I met Keith Treanor and John Povah, and we all went street riding a lot, sometimes with me shooting video, and sometimes just riding.  That became my first self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend, which came out in October of 1990.  Rider-made videos were still a really new thing back then, and mine was one of the first, along with those by Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, and the Alder brothers Back East.  BMX as an industry was dying, but street riding was evolving faster than ever.  Every video that came out had some brand new tricks in it.  

While I drifted away from the BMX industry, I wound up roommates with S&M Bikes owner, and pro racer/jumper Chris Moeller, through much of the early 90's.  I also lived in the P.O.W. (BMX) House a couple of times, where guys like Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, Alan and Brian Foster, Todd Lyons, Jay Lonergan, Lawan Cunningham, and several others, were living cheap and riding a ton.  Those guys were mostly racer/jumpers, but they were crazy, and groups of us would hit street spots pretty often.  I sucked compared to the jumping skills of those guys.  We had a lot of fun riding dirt and also street spots, and made trips to random ditches, and schools with banks, like Kenter and San Pedro.  As BMX street riding was evolving, I was around some really great riders, watching it happen, and doing a little bit myself.

 
 

This is me, doing a double peg grind on a ledge in Huntington Beach in 1990.  It's a video still from The Ultimate Weekend.  What's really crazy about this shot is that this is either the 2nd or 3rd double peg street grind, in any BMX video.  I wasn't a great rider, but managed to be ahead of the curve on this trick.

In 1995, I headed off on my own, away from the BMX industry and most other riders.  But I rode solo, nearly every day, until I became a taxi driver in 1999.  I still rode a lot until 2003, when I started working 7 days a week as a taxi driver, and began to gain a ton of weight.  I also first became homeless, living in my taxi, in 1999.  That led to a whole different side of getting to know "the streets."  Riding around jumping curbs and doing wall rides is one thing.  Sleeping alone in a taxi, in different parking lots, is a whole different thing.  

My driver's license got suspended in 2000, due to a clerical error at the DMV, it seemed.  And I became fully homeless, on the streets, for the first time in 2001.  I finally got back into a taxi in late summer of 2003, and spent 2  1/2 more years, working 7 days a week, drivng drunk people home every night, and living in my cab.  My long run of going in and out of homelessness had begun.    

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#SEstreetlife photos- Random pics from the streets- 6/19/2022

Above, someone doesn't like art, or at least street art.  Obey poster in The Valley, 2021.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.  Below, a job offer?  Hmmmmm.  Sticker on a highly stickered taco stand in Costa Mesa in 2019.  

Above, this so reminds me of high school in Boise in the 80's.  Her name is Becky (seen on another sticker of her), and she's drinking out of the paper bag, Generation X style.  On a sign in the Universal City area, 2020.  Below, wider shot of that sign.  

mAbove, homeless amputee veteran on his power chair, charging his cell phone at one of the Red Line train platforms during the Covid shutdowns.  I was there charging my devices as well.  At that particular spot, we often had to hang out while people smoked meth or crack on the bench, while we were charging.  Most or all of these charging outlets have since been plated over, making it much harder for homeless people to charge their phones.  This particular spot, in Hollywood, was used by dozens of people every day.  

Heroin addict sleeping standing up at a bus stop.  I was sitting there eating my breakfast, as I often did at the time.  This guy wavered back and forth, mostly asleep, without falling over, for at least 20 minutes.  I had to ask other homeless people how tis happened, later on.  They told me that heroin addicts sometimes can literally fall asleep standing up, and somehow not fall over.  2021.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
 

A history of roads themselves... and my history on The Streets

When you talk about "street life" in today's world, most people probably imagine homeless people, drug dealing thugs, rappers, or something like that.  The Streets  has that type of connotation, thanks to gangsta rap, hip hop, graffiti, and other street cultures, over the last few decades.  But streets began with ancient paths to get from one place to another.  Here are some of the oldest highways in the world.

Human beings have been traveling since we became humans.  Some traveled in canoes, kayaks or other boats, along waterways.  But many traveled on foot or by horse, and later with carts and wagons, to trade with people in other areas, to explore, or to migrate for one reason or another.  As dirt paths became more highly traveled, someone realized that by laying down stones, they could make the paths more durable and stable in adverse weather, and for longer periods of time.  According to this report, some of the oldest constructed roads were made about 3,800 B.C., or 5,800 years ago, near Glastonbury, England.  Those are much older than the better known Roman built roads, some of which are still in use.  Yeah, "The Streets" go back to the days of the Druids and Celtic tribes in the U.K.  The oldest trails mentioned in this short video were wooden trails through marshlands, connecting  islands of higher land in the area.  

The ancient Romans are known for their road building and architecture skills, and built tens of thousands of miles (or kilometers) of paved roads, starting over 2,000 years ago.  This video gives a good idea of how they built them, and that they even had mile markers, way stations, the the ancient equivalent of roadside markets and other needed artisan shops along the way.  Some of these highways are still in use to some degree, 2,000 years later.  

In the early 1800's, in Scotland, the Macadam style of road building was devised.  This used small, angular rocks of similar size, combined with rock dust, to form a durable form of road for carts and wagons.  These took far less work to build than Roman style roads.  These seem very similar to the "chip and seal" roads we had a couple of places I lived as a kid, gravel roads, but macadam roads didn't have the oil sealant on top.  With macadam roads, the travels of horses, carts, and wagons would press the small rocks tighter together over time, ultimately forming a fairly solid surface that also drained water well.  The first macadam road in the United States was built in 1822, and called the Boonsboro turnpike, in Maryland.  

Bringing it all together, here's a quick video, under 5 minutes long, that gives you a look at road building techniques, and where the roads were built, over the last 6,000 years of human civilization.  Now primarily asphalt and concrete, streets are found in every city, and larger highways connect nearly every city on Earth.  

As a human born the late Industrial Age here in the U.S., my family moved nearly every year growing up.  The factories of our native Ohio were still thriving then.  One of my first experiences of the streets, was riding my bike around each new area and town to learn my way around, when we moved in.  We lived mostly in small towns in Ohio, and later New Mexico, and Idaho, as my sister and I grew up.  A year past graduating from high school, I followed my family to San Jose, California, after working my summer job in Boise.  

I was seriously into BMX bikes then, drawn in by the brand new sport of BMX freestyle or trick riding.  It was 1985, and riding around the emerging Silicon Valley area, alone, on my Skyway T/A, was my real introduction into the streets of a major American city.  Some weekends, I'd go ride with the pro and amateur freestylers up in San Francisco, Dave Vanderspek's Curb Dogs, Skyway pros, and others.  After performing for crowds in Golden Gate Park, we would usually head into The City, to the Embarcadero, or some other fun street riding spot.  It was there that I really saw the hustle, bustle, homeless people, addicts, and crazy subcultures that come with the street life of major cities.  It was a bit like Luke Skywalker going into the Cantina in Star Wars with Obi-Wan Kenobi for the first time.  Suddenly I was seeing all these people who inhabit big cities, up close, the people who spend their days in, on, and moving along the big city streets and sidewalks.  

A Xerox zine I produced about freestyle landed me a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, in Torrance, southwest of Los Angeles, a year later.  I moved in with a couple of my co-workers, in Redondo Beach, and began riding around that region every weekend, usually alone, looking for banks, little jumps, ledges, and interesting things to ride.  In the skateboard world, street skating was just becoming a a thing.  Skaters like Mark Gonzales, Natas Kaupas, and Tommy Guerrero were discovering that the whole urban landscape was a potential skatepark, with a bit of imagination.  I'd make a huge plate of pancakes, watch Powell-Peralta's 2nd Bones Brigade video, Future Primitive, every weekend, and then go exploring, if there wasn't a contest to go to.  Much like in the San Jose area, I began to ride the street spots my friends showed me, and then found more of them on my own.  I kept doing this for another 15 years, throughout L. A. and Orange County, California.  

I became a taxi driver in 1999, my license got accidentally suspended in 2000.  I started driving a cab again in August of 2003, and had to start working 7 days a week.  My experience with "street life" moved to a different phase.  I didn't have time to ride my bike, because of my work schedule.  But I wound up working late nights, often all night, driving thousands of miles on the surface streets of Orange County, and a bit of L.A., picking up strangers. I was giving rides to all kinds of people, from homeless people, to typical weekend partiers, to business people, sketchy people doing sketchy things, and even a billionaire.  For a few months in 1999-2000, and then most of the time from 2003 to 2007, I lived in my taxi, sleeping in parking lots every night.  I saw the full spectrum of people who roam the streets at night during that time.  I have have dozens, probably hundreds, of taxi driving stories, and I'll share some in this blog, as time goes on.  

I was driving a taxi when new technology, dispatch computers, completely changed the business, and made it much harder to earn a living.  That's why I couldn't afford an apartment during that era, the taxi business was in a downward spiral, even before Uber and Lyft sprang up.  By late 2007, I weighed over 350 pounds, compared to about 185 when I started driving a cab in 1999.  My health declined, and finally I just couldn't make enough money to pay $550-$600 a week to lease my cab, and another $300-$350 a week for gas, let alone earn money for myself.  

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, in 2007, I dropped off my taxi, and walked out onto the streets of Orange County, fully homeless, with about $15 in my pocket.  I'd been homeless, living in some bushes, for a while in 2002-2003, but had a low wage restaurant job.  In 2007, I had no income, no home, and only some personal belongings packed up, in a 5' X 5' storage unit.  I lived almost a year on the streets in SoCal, ranging form Orange County up to the San Fernando Valley.  

In November of 2008, my family, who had wound up in North Carolina, flew me there, to live with my parents, in their small apartment.  I couldn't find a job there... at all..., and wound up homeless and living in shelters for a couple more years.  More homelessness later on there eventually led me to leaving North Carolina in 2018.  I landed in Richmond, Virginia for close to a year, and then a friend helped me get back to California.  But I've been homeless most of the three years I've been back.  I make some money doing my Sharpie artwork, and blog and write continually to help promote my artwork.  But I haven't been able to get back to making a legit living yet.  Obviously the Covid pandemic made things much harder, as it did for everyone else.  But things are looking up again, as we emerge from the Covid era, although things are crazy right now, with high inflation and soaring rent prices.  

Altogether, I've spent about 15 of the last 23 years in some form of homelessness, of which there are many levels.  About 5 1/2 years was spent living in my taxi, working 70+ hours a week that whole time.  A couple more years were spent in North Carolina shelters, unable to find any job there, except another year of taxi driving, also while living in my taxi.  I spent close to a year living on the streets while working a restaurant job.  I lived in a tent in the woods of NC for over a year, making some money as a working artist.  The rest of the time I've been living on the streets of Richmond or SoCal, earning some money as an artist, using my blogging and social media to promote my work.  I've sold around 100 original drawings, most of which took 40 to 45 hours to draw, and some prints.  Sharpie art has kept me alive, and obviously I'm pretty damn prolific, but don't make near enough to rent an apartment.  Not yet, anyhow.

When I talk about my "street life," it's the 20 years of riding BMX bikes around urban areas, 6 1/2 years of driving a taxi, which overlaps with about 15 years of homelessness, that I'm talking about.  Life decided to kick my ass for the last 20 years or so, and there are always people willing to help out, when life does that.  I'm not a thug, a drug dealer from The Hood, a rapper, or that kind of street level person.  I don't drink at all these days, and didn't drink that much when I did drink.  I don't do any drugs, legal or illegal, even weed.  I'm weird and creative enough naturally, I don't need drugs.  

But I have spent an ridiculous amount of time wandering the streets, driving people around them, and living on them.  I decided to finally embrace all these years of street life, and begin to share what I've learned from it all.  That's where this blog comes from.  I've got a lot of stories, and lessons learned, and thoughts about homelessness, and where our society, as a whole, is headed.  I also get sick of all the stereotypes and misinformation about homeless people, and the streets in general.  So I decided to put my thoughts and some of my stories out on this wide array of street oriented subjects.  Much more to come.  Stay tuned, and thanks for checking out this new blog.