Yeah, we all know who Tony Hawk is now. But way back in 1986, pretty much only serious skaters knew who he was. Here's 18-year-old Tony Hawk, two years after the first Powell Peralta Bones Brigade video, skating and talking in front of his first house in Carlsbad, California.
Where were you in 1986? Many of you may not have even been born yet. I'm a couple of years older than Tony, and 1986 was the year my BMX freestyle zine in San Jose landed me a job in Southern California, at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines. I barely knew who Tony was in 1986, although I had been goofing around on skateboards since 1976. My co-worker and roommate at Wizard, Mark "Lew" Lewman is the guy who showed me his skate magazines, and got me more interested in skateboarding, along with my boos there, Andy Jenkins. We covered skating in FREESTYLIN', and Lew introduced me to 19-year-old Rodney Mullen my second night in Redondo Beach, who happened to practice at The Spot, by the Redondo Pier, where we practiced our flatland on BMX freestyle bikes every night.
As big a name as Tony Hawk was in skateboarding in 1986, skating was still not cool to most people. Skaters and BMXers were still weirdos back then, though Tony was already making more money than most of the old geezers telling him to "Go get a real job, punk." That is something we all heard in our late teens and early 20's, while riding skateboards or BMX bikes, in the 1980's. Action sports has come a long way since 1986.
While he's a bit frantic on screen, Nick at Reventure Consulting keeps making solid, data driven videos, telling where the hot spots and cold spots are, in real estate across the United States. I found his channel several months ago, looking for real estate trends, to see how they compared to other trends I saw happening. He has called a lot of what's now happening, months in advance.
As I mentioned in a recent video, one day at the grocery store, early in the pandemic, both the guy in line ahead of me, and the cashier, were talking about the "coming real estate crash" here in Southern California. That was in late April or early May of 2020, and they both expected housing prices to drop dramatically by late 2020, when they each planned to buy a good, 4-6 unit rental property. I totally agreed with them on where things were headed for L.A. area real estate.
But then The Fed started creating bailout money, which progams distributed to nearly everyone. Altogether, 5 or 6 trillion dollars began to wash through the economy, while interest rates were still at historical lows. The stock market kept heading up, and millennials, in particular, got FOMO fever about homes, and real estate blasted off to the moon. Nearly two years later, in early 2022, most people in real estate expected the party to keep going, despite some annoying inflation that wouldn't go away. Then, in March 2022, the official inflation rate jumped above 8%, to 8.5%, freaking out everyone who watches it. Though it just dropped back in July, it's again at 8.5%, after hitting 9.1%, the highest since 1981. This caused The Fed to take action, and raise interest rates .25%, to start battling inflation. Inflation stayed high, over 8%, and The Fed made bigger interest rate hikes this summer, which rippled over, raising mortgage interest rates as well.
Now, mid-August 2022, 30 year fixed mortgage rates are 5.5% to 6% for most buyers, about twice what they were in January of this year. Higher rates mean higher monthly payments, which, along with the recession or near recession (depending on who you ask), has had a huge effect on the housing market.
The effect is much bigger in the cities where prices really soared in the last couple of years, like my old high school era hometown of Boise, Idaho, along with spots like Austin, Tampa, Seattle, Nashville, Sacramento, and several others. In the video above, Nick shows where the home inventories have soared the most, in recent months, over 150% in some cases. Real estate in several U.S. cities now have high inventories of homes, and falling prices already. Spoiler alert, Boise, leads that list.
It may surprise many people, but California's largest major metro areas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego are not in the top ten cities where real estate is slowing down right now. Neither is New York City or Miami. This regions are well known for huge ups and downs in real estate in the past cycles While the biggest California cities are slowing down, the smaller cities, mostly in the West and Mountain region, several with big tech sectors, are leading the way down in real estate right now.
Meanwhile, the Northeast, most of the Midwest, and the Plains states, overall, have real estate markets that didn't go as crazy in 2020 and 2021, and are much more stable now. You can see the national inventory heat map at several points in the video above, and get a feel for how real estate is doing in different regions. You can also sign up to gain access to that data through that video, in his info section below the video (not a paid link).
What about all of us here in Southern California? OK, I'm not in a position to even come close to buying a house, but I geek out on watching trends and seeing how multiple economic and social trends seem to be playing out. If you've read my blogs for a while, you know I've been writing about this big "coming recession" since 2018. For SoCal real estate trends, I've found that Christian Walsh, below, is a great source to see where the Southern California real estate market stands.
Christian Walsh of Wire Associates comes across like a guy next door, who happens to be a real estate agent. He's not all hyped up like many YouTubers. I've been watching his videos for well over a year now, and he puts out solid, straightforward videos, with the latest SoCal data, speaking to trends with his many years of experience.
Personally, my interest in real estate began when I moved ot Southern California during the late 1980's real estate boom, and in a couple of years, two people I worked with each made $100,000, in a single year, off their homes. I started learning about real estate, just in time to see the 1990 crash and long recession happen. My interests moved more to trying to figure out long term fianncial trends at that point, which I've been learning about and watching ever since.
As you'll see in Christian's video, SoCal real estate is slowing, but it's still in a seller's market for the time being. Watch the video, and his other videos, to get a fuller picture of what's happening in this region.
As Redfin, OpenDoor, and other major, tech real estate companies have found out, real estate is a very regional, local, and often neighborhood-based market. In most of the U.S. right now, the market is still strong, but that's in cities and regions where prices didn't take off to the moon. In 15-20 cities and areas, the crash is beginning, and in many other major metros, like here in the L.A. area, homes sales are still happening, but things are slowing down pretty quick. These videos should give you an idea where different regions and cities fall in the spectrum, right now, in August of 2022.
I'm adding one more link, another real estate agent and YouTuber, Kristina Smallhorn, "The Real Estate Whisperer." She has a ton of great videos on many aspects of real estate, and does long streaming videos with other real estate professionals, like the one linked below. She's from Lousiana, where the market is much different than cities like Boise, Austin, or Nashville. But she interviews and talks with pros from all over the country, so her videos are another great source of info on real estate in today's weird and crazy market.
I have no connection to Nick, Christian, or Kristina, and receive no compensation for plugging them. I've watched several videos form all three, and find them to be good, solid sources of info on different apsects of the national and regional real estate markets.
As life in general keeps getting crazier, and mosre expensive, here's a little comic relief. Tom Green is funny, but he also skates. Here's a cool little fan edit of Tom's skating in different TV shows, movies, and videos. Enjoy.
Flowers in the afternoon sun, on a hot summer day. Tarzana, CA, 2022. #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
Flowering bush in Tarzana, 2022.
Flowering tree, Tarzana, 2022.
Flowering bush again, different angle. Tarzana, 2022.
This whole little session of shooting photos started when I walked up to a bus stop, and saw a hummingbird really close up. Of course, by the time I set my bags down and got my phone powered up to take a photo, the hummingbird was gone. But there were several bees working these flowers. There's one in this photo, if you look close. Do you see it? Tarzana, 2022. #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
While this looked like a carpenter bee in size, I'm used to seeing them with gold and black coloration. So I looked them up real quick. This appears to be a Californica carpenter bee, which is generally all black. The lighting's not great, but when I can get a photo of a moving bee from 3-4 inches away, I'll take it. #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos
The iconic opening scene of the 1978 movie Grease, a musical play, first performed in Chicago in 1971, and which later scored 3,388 performances on Broadway, starting in 1972. Though it's officially called, Summer Nights," a lot of us think of this song as "Summer Lovin'" because of the repeating lyrics. John Travolta and Olivia Newton John starred in the movie. She just died a couple of days ago, at age 73.
In the beginning (1988 or 1989), there was the HBP apartment. S&M Bicycles owner Chris Moeller, and about three other guys, rented an apartment on Huntington Street, near Adams, in Huntington Beach, California. I think it was Chris, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers, and either Alan Foster or Bill Grad living there to start. Four riders and two bedrooms equals no privacy, cheap rent, and a ten minute ride to the beach. Not a bad set-up for young pro racers always needing money to get to the next weekend's race.
The HBP crew stepped things up in 1989 or 1990, and rented a four bedroom house, on Iroquois Street in Westminster, the city just inland of Huntington Beach. They soon dubbed themselves the Pros Of Westminster, or P.O.W's, for short. No disrespect was meant to actual military P.O.W.'s. The name came up, and it stuck. It was the first hardcore BMX house, and it became legendary in BMX worldwide in the 1990's. You can see the house in this clip of Dave Clymer in 1990 and 1991, first the backyard with the jumps, and later the front yard, with a glimpse of the front of the house at 1:15.
The P.O.W.'s were mostly pro racers, and the number of actual residents of the House ranged from 8 to 12 guys, sharing the four bedrooms, which kept rent down to about $90 to $120 a month, plus a share of utilities. Renting a normal room in a house then cost $350-$400, so living there saved residents a lot of money.
The best known residents of the POW House were Dave Clymer, Chris Moeller, Alan Foster, John Paul Rogers, Todd Lyons, John Salamne, Lawan Cunningham, Jason Lonergan, and Brian Foster. All together, I think there were 22 "official" house members, including myself, over the 4-5 year span of The House. Pretty much every traveling BMXer that came through SoCal in that era spent a night or two on the floor or couches. Any rider who spent a night there, and had a full page photo in a BMX magazine, could put it up on the living room wall. There were 147 full page photos of different BMX riders in the living room, not counting house residents, the last time I counted them.
There were so many good riders living at the POW House in those days, that BMX magazine editors and photographers would just show up at times, with three or four different articles to shoot pics for. Whichever guys were least hungover that morning got photos taken for the magazines.
It was the long recession of the early 1990's, BMX, as an industry "died" in 1989. There was hardly any money in the sport for even the best riders. We could all make at least 8 different meals out of a packet of ramen. Street riding and dirt jumping were evolving into their own genre's, and the whole idea of BMX riders making their own videos was just getting going. The POW House was dirty, crazy, stupid, awesome, and hated by "Miss Iroquois," the neighbor across the street. We were a bunch of young, single, BMX guys with drinking problems, or a bunch of drinkers with a BMX problem. It sort of depended on what day you showed up. Suave, sophisticated, clean cut, and respectable, we were not.
Into this house of mayhem, the current residents and former residents would gather each night, in the living room, in the early evening. We were looking for really cheap places to go party, drink, and try to meet women. On one of those nights, I was sitting on one of the four couches when "Summer Nights" from Grease came on the TV, and the volume was set pretty loud. For Genreration X kids like us, the movie Grease was etched in our brains, though none of us would ever admit it.
Within the first few bars of "Summer Nights," two or three guys started humming along. Now I'm talking guys in BMX T-shirts, thrashed shorts, with billy goat 90's goatees, and holding Mickey's bigmouth beers. We were the polar opposite of Broadway musical fans. But within 30 seconds, every single one of us was singing along with this song. Guys sang the Greasers parts, other guys sang the girls parts, in bad falsetto. We were all dancing around, acting it out, like it was the most normal thing in the world. This song was such an ingrained part of growing up as a 70's 80's kid, that we just all rolled with it, singing like a bunch of idiots, and loving every minute of it. It was seriously one of the craziest, funniest moments I remember of the POW House.
Then the song ended, and we were back to being 10 or 12 dirtbag BMX guys, deciding whether to go to see T.S.O.L., Clawhammer, All, or whatever the punk show of the night was, or to a bar with cheap pitchers of beer. As soon as the song ended, I just sat there looking at everyone, thinking, "did that just happen? Yeah. it happened. That's how big Grease, and Olivia Newton John and John Travolta were to our generation. Even punkers sang along to "Summer Nights," if no one was watching. Another random night at the P.O.W. House. "Lawan, hurry up! We gotta get there before 10 or pay full price!"
Rest in Peace Olivia Newton John.
For those looking for a little BMX nostalgia, or who have never heard of the P.O.W. House, here's the P.O.W. video that never got made, in the form of a blog post. "You are (Fo)R(G)otten."
This is an insane jam. Highlights from the Van's Waffle Cup Best Trick Jam, a couple of days ago in Huntington Beach, CA, held in conjunction with the U.S. Open of Surfing contest, right on the beach. This jam is a cool combo of street and park riding. Man, I should have gone down to H.B. to watch. My loss.
I'll go with the rail nosewheelie as my pic for best trick. It's all nuts. I'm an Old School BMX freestylers who was doing nollies and half-Cabs and similar tricks when those were just dumb, not even considered tricks, So all the on off stuff on the "lifeguard tower" roof here is my favorite stuff. But it's all nuts. Just watch.
Just before sunrise, looking east over the James River while it really high in the spring. I was camped under the huge I-95 bridge for a couple of months, on the south, Manchester side, and shot this photo on my walk out one morning. For many years in the late 1700's, and 1800's, slaves were unloaded about a mile downstream, marched up this river bank, across the Manchester Birdge, to the slave markets adjacent to downtown. Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans were the main slave ports during that terrible part of American history. A walking and bike path now runs along part of the old slave trail. Manchester District in Richmond, Virginia. #RVA, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
Another pre-dawn shot of the James River in flood stage, from the Manchester side. The first European attempted settlement in North America, Jamestown, is about 30 miles downstream, to the east. Richmond, VA, 2019. #RVA, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
Another pre-dawn shot of the James River, looking east from the Manchester Bridge. Richmond, Virginia, spring 2019. #RVA, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
There are huge flood walls on both sides of the James River in this area. On the Manchester District side, there's this little lookout area on top of the floodwall. I've seen fishermen pull 4-5 pound blue catfish up on the bridge, and land 20+ pounders on the near bank in this photo. Here's the Manchester Bridge, looking across towards the Shockhow Bottom District and downtown Richmond, Virginia, 2019. #RVA, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
Looking west across the James River from the Manchester Bridge area, towards downtown Richmond. Crazy as it sounds, it's not unusual to see opsreys and even a bald eagle or two here. Richmond claims to be the only state capitol with bald eagles nesting in the city limits. There are also otters living in that river. I had no idea there were bald eagles or river otters on the East Coast. Richmond, Virginia, 2019. #RVA, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
"The Mighty James River" mural, in the Richmond arts district, on Broad, 2019. #RVA, #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.
