If you build it, they will come... and ride

Did you know that Cleveland, Ohio, recovering industrial city, has become a destination for mountain bike riders?  When I talk about building scenes and how those scenes can turn into businesses (among other things), this is what I'm talking about. 

In late 2004, a mountain bike rider and good carpenter, Ray Petro was bummed about not being able to ride his mountain bike all winter.  So he rented a room in an empty factory, and built wooden mountain bike obstacles.  The first ones were pretty simple.  But the idea took off.  It turns out there are a lot of mountain bike riders, and some BMXers, who wanted to ride during the winter as well.  According to Wikipedia, Ray took $50,000 in savings, raised $25,000 more, and went all in on his idea of an indoor MTB riding spot during the winter months. 

Ray's MTB in Cleveland now fills 92,000 square feet of old factory buildings, attracts thousands of riders a year, and has people traveling from across the country to ride there.  Every year Ray and his crew rebuild it, putting in new lines and obstacles.  After the success in Cleveland, Ray teamed up with Trek Bikes to open a second mountain bike park in Milwaukee, WI.  It was popular for several years, but closed in 2016 due to a dispute with the building's owners.  The original park is going strong. 

With a love for his sport, some savings, and carpentry skills, Ray created more than wooden paths for MTB riders, he created a scene.  He created a great space for mountain bikers and BMXers to come together.  In one video he referred to it as "a big bicycle party."  As an old BMX guy, I think this is one of the greatest ways to recycle old, empty buildings that I've seen.  Props to Ray for following his dream and getting so many people psyched to ride in the Midwest. 

Here are a bunch of links of people riding at Ray's MTB in Cleveland:
2010 Local Cleveland TV segment on Ray's
Interview with Ray at Grand Opening of Ray's in Milwaukee 
BMX phenom Scotty Cranmer at Ray's (1:21 in clip)
My favorite Ray's "Odd Couple Contest" video

Welcome to the Retail Crash... MALLPOCALYPSE

The Oak Hollow Mall in Highpoint, North Carolina just closed a few days ago.  As I wrote a couple of posts ago, I happened to wander through the huge, empty, but still clean and intact mall a week before its demise.  The recent Business Insider clip above gives a good synopsis of why so many malls are dying.  No one seems to know just how many malls have died at this point.  Obviously Amazon.com and other online shopping sites are part of this picture.  But they're not the whole story.  Here's some info to the Retail Apocalypse I've found.

There were about 1100 enclosed malls in the U.S..  Four hundred of those malls have closed already, like Oak Hollow, or are expected to close in the next few years.  There are about 300 "high performing" malls, which seem to be mostly the high end malls, which are still doing well.  The remaining 400 malls are questionable but alive at this point.  A massive shift in retail shopping habits seems to be the main factor in this huge Retail Apocalypse.  Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT's) own about half of the U.S. malls, so this will be a huge hit to them.

In addition to the hundreds of malls and retails stores that have closed since The Great Recession in 2008, hundreds more are scheduled to close soon, which will put even more pressure on struggling malls and shopping centers.  Here's a partial list:

-Macy's announced it will close 100 stores in August 2016.   Three have closed, 63 more are scheduled to close in early 2017.  Management expects those store closings to save Macy's $550 million.
-Sears/Kmart is closing 150 combined stores soon (as of January 2017)
-Walmart has closed 269 stores worldwide, 154 in the U.S..  (Jan.2016)
-J.C. Penney has actually made a bit of a comeback in the last couple of years, but plans to close up to 140 stores in the U.S. to continue streamlining its business.
-Aeropostale went into bankruptcy in May of 2016, and has already closed 113 stores.
-H H Gregg has closed or is closing 88 stores.
-Abercrombie & Fitch is closing 60 stores.
-The Limited has closed all 250 stores.
-Crocs is closing 160 stores.
-Wet Seal is closing 171 stores.
-American Apparel is closing 110 stores.
-BCBG is closing 120 stores.
-CVS is closing 70 stores.
-Family Christian (bookstores) is closing 240 stores.
Pac Sun is out of bankruptcy after closing 110 to 120 stores so far.

Get this, the German supermarket Lidl is OPENING 150 stores in the U. S., spurred on by the success of German grocer Aldi (which is an awesome store).


The vast majority of the stores and malls closed or closing are in rural and small town America.  Yeah, all those people that voted for Trump because they can't find local jobs are about to lose tens of thousands more local jobs and tens or hundreds of millions in local revenue.  Rural America, by and large, is dying in the tech heavy 21st century.  This is a HUGE issue we need to address as a nation.  These store closings will have a huge ripple effect on other chain stores because of reduced foot traffic to malls and shopping centers.  I think we're likely to head into another recession soon.  That's just a hunch.  We'll see.

We, as a country, have far more square feet of retail space per person than other developed countries.  A report in Business Insider says we have 23.5 square feet of retail space per person in the U.S., compared to 16.4 in Canada and 11.1 in Australia.  Another report I found claimed 48 sq.ft of retail space per American.  In any case, it's a lot, and millions of square feet of retail space under roof is either already empty or will son be empty.

What should we do will all those empty buildings?  If you have a good idea, now's the time, because those retail stores will be available for pennies on the dollar of their former value.  

The website deadmalls.com writes about the closed malls.  Their list contains well over a hundred.

Source info:
Business Insider article
Retail stores closing- Clark.com
Hundreds of shopping malls at risk- Clark.com 

Still not sure this is a problem?  Check this out:

Major Retail Stores closing by the hundreds

Macy's, Sear's/Kmart, Radio Shack and other once retail chains closing lots MORE stores in 2017.  Now what?

Death of a Mall

I took my mom to a doctor's appointment in High Point (NC) Thursday, and headed to McDonald's to get a drink and do a little writing while she was there.  It happened to be the McDonald's on the periphery of Oak Hollow Mall.  I was drawing a blank on the writing, and had this urge to go into the mall.  So I grabbed a refill and headed over.  I didn't have a camera, I don't even have a smart phone these days.  As luck would have it, I parked a few spaces away from where the guy in this video parked.

I was met at the mall entrance by a sheet of paper taped on each door.  In a couple of paragraphs, the mall ownership said that Dillard's, the last anchor store, was moving, and that the whole mall would close in about a week.  So I wandered end to end, much like the guy in this video.  I saw about a dozen people near the only restaurant in the food court, a soul food place.  I saw about a dozen more people in the whole mall, all of them were either employees or elderly mall walkers.

In front of one of about five stores still open, a store manager leaned against the railing outside her shop, scrolling through her phone.  That's what's happening in a picture, I thought.  The era of huge malls filled with thousands of shoppers is fading.  We now live in a world where people can buy nearly anything with a few taps on their phone, tablet, or laptop, and have the item delivered to their door.

When I moved to North Carolina in late 2008, as the economy was collapsing, my parents took me to Oak Hollow a couple of times.  It was about half empty then.  It seemed so weird to me that a mall, the foundation of consumerism in my lifetime, could possibly go under.  In the eight years since, things have only gotten worse for malls.  Hundreds of them have closed down in the U.S., I've heard.  With the malls go the jobs, the income for the community, and local tax dollars, among other things.

I walked around the mall, thinking of the thriving malls of my childhood, and an abandoned mall in Ohio I saw recently on the Viceland TV show Abandoned.  We live in a world cluttered with empty factories and retail space.  While the (mostly) old white men running our country argue about how to try to bring back the good paying manufacturing jobs of decades ago, millions of other jobs are being lost to all kinds of technology.  Finding well paying work for people is one of the huge and overlooked issues of our country right now.

Is there anything that could bring Oak Hollow Mall and others like it back to life?  What few people know is that the city of Highpoint paid $400,000 to an urban planner named Adres Duany a couple years ago to help them figure out how help the city survive and hopefully thrive again.  His team suggested relaxing the zoning at Oak Hollow, and allowing live/work spaces for artists and entrepreneurs.  He even suggest bringing in lots of big shipping containers and letting people turn those into work/live spaces as well.  He said the mall would best serve the city as a creative and high tech business incubator.  It was a brilliant idea.

Like many brilliant ideas, the civic leaders of Highpoint completely blew it off.  Now the mall is closing, the city is still struggling, and a huge abandoned property will start attracting all kinds of people for sketchy reasons.  The lack of understanding of what's really happening in our country is one of our biggest problems right now.  Because of this, hundreds of towns and cities of the Industrial Age are struggling, if not actually dying.  Old ideas won't solve this problem.

I'm writing a book with many of my crazy stories from taxi driving and lessons learned in my first 50 years.  You can pre-order a copy on my crowdfunding page here: Level 5: Getting Shot Sucks... and other things I've learned in 50 years

Don't Mess With the Women of Huntington Beach

The woman in I'm writing about looked a lot like the woman in the car at :50 in this clip.


It was a slow Tuesday evening in downtown Huntington Beach.  I think it was the summer of 2003.  I picked up a couple guys in front of Perq's in my taxi, and was headed slowly inland on Main Street to drop them off.  As we neared the bike shop at Orange Street, we saw a young couple, with what I called the "Rockabilly look" back then.  The guy was in new Levi's, a white T-shirt, and had his hair slicked back.  His girlfriend was in a beige print retro dress, had jet black hair with bangs, two inch heels, and her bright red lipstick was shining.  It looked like the couple was walking home after a trip to one of the bars. 


In front of the couple were two guys with dark hair and naturally tan skin, maybe Indian or Persian guys from Irvine, I thought.  The two guys were walking backwards in front of the couple, waving their hands around like gangstas, and obviously giving the couple a hard time.  The couple seemed to be trying to ignore the two guys.  As I got within about 80 feet of the couple, the woman in the dress stepped forward and punched one of the guys in the face.  He dropped to the ground.  Then her boyfriend stepped forward and dropped the other guy, also with a single punch.  "That's why you don't mess with the girls in Huntington Beach," I said to the two passengers in my cab.  We all started laughing. 


I drove past the couple and the two guys on the ground, and went another mile inland to drop my passengers off.  On my way back down Main Street, I was surprised to see not only police cars, but an ambulance where the "fight" had been.  The Rockabilly couple was sitting on the curb talking to the police, and one of the guys who had been harassing them was getting loaded into the ambulance.  That may just have been the best thing I've ever seen as a taxi driver. 


This is just one of the taxi fight stories that will be in my upcoming DIY book, Level 5: Getting Shot Sucks.  Click the link to pre-order a copy.  And don't talk shit in downtown Huntington Beach, even to the women.

Annoying Rodney Mullen in 1986

In the last post, I told about meeting Rodney in August of 1986, and shared the short interview I did with him, along with a ton of links.  Here's a bit more.

In those days right after meeting Rodney, Lew spent his spare time at work trying to figure out some trick that Rodney wouldn't be able to do.  Then Lew and I would head down to The Spot in Redondo for our nightly sessions.  After we'd been riding for an hour or two, Rodney would roll up on this black, rickety beach cruiser he called Agnes.  He'd tape his fingers and get ready to skate.  Then he'd get to practicing.

Up until that time, every BMX freestyler or skater I'd met went out and sessioned.  We'd ride around, try some old tricks.  Go get something to drink.  Hang out for a while and heckle our friends, and then maybe try some new trick for a bit.  Rodney PRACTICED.  He would warm-up and then skate non-stop in a little area for 2 1/2 or 3 hours.  In that time, he MIGHT step off his board two or three times back then.  The word "perfectionist" doesn't even begin to describe it.  It was like watching an Olympic athlete training on a skateboard.

After Lew and I were tired out.  We'd roll over and watch Rodney for a bit.  Then Lew would challenge Rodney with his impossible trick idea of the day.  The only one I remember was when he asked Rodney to pop an ollie and then land in a one wheel wheelie.  Rodney immediately replied, "I don't have the balance for wheelies."  Really.  Then he tried the trick.  He was a freestyle skater, and they rode their trucks so tight that there was almost no movement.  On the second try, Rodney landed on one back wheel and set it down pretty quick.  On the third attempt, Rodney snapped an ollie, landed directly on one back wheel, and then rolled a good fifteen feet before setting the other wheels down. After five or six days of thinking up "impossible" skate tricks, and watching Rodney land every one in a few tries, Lew gave up.

He would usually talk to Rodney a minute or two when done riding, and then head home.  I started hanging out longer watching Rodney, and we'd wind up talking for a bit.  One of the first nights, Rodney let me try his board.  I rolled about four feet then fell off because the trucks were so tight.  He laughed.  A couple nights later, Rodney showed me how to do the original kickflips.  Before he did ollie kickflips, he did them as a pressure flip.  He'd start with both feet pointing forward on the board, and then press down to one side.  The board would flip sideways and he'd land on it in a normal stance.  With his help, I landed a couple that first night on his board.

One night I finished my session, and headed up to the pier to get a Coke.  Riding back down the bike path, towards where Rodney was skating, I heard another skater rolling through the parking garage on my right.  The sounds got closer until some dark haired kid on a street board ollied the curb high, four foot wide concrete island between the parking garage and the bike path.  "That must be that Gonz guy," I thought to myself, as he skated up the bike path towards Rodney.  It was.  I had heard Lew and Andy Jenkins talk about Mark Gonzales, THE street skater then in 1986, although Tommy Guerrero was a close second.  Mark rolled up to Rodney, and they started talking.  I decided to sit on one of the concrete benches and hang out as the two of them talked.  They start comparing tricks, and at one point, Rodney started showing Mark how to do ollie impossibles.  Nobody did those on the big street board then.  Mark came pretty close, but never landed one that I saw.  They went on trying different stuff as I chilled with my Coke 50 feet away.  Mark skated off after a while, Rodney went back to his intense practicing, and I headed home.

A few days later, Lew and I were both talking to Rodney, who was staying with older freestyle skater Steve Rocco at the time.  Rodney mentioned that Rocco absolutely HATED BMXers.  Lew replied, "You know, we have a bunch of I heart BMX stickers at work that some guy gave us."  We all decided it would be hilarious to give Rodney a pack of 50 of those and let him stick them all over Rocco's house.  The next day Lew gave Rodney the stickers, and we all brainstormed crazy places to stick them.  Rodney got to work on Operation I Heart BMX the next day.  He plastered all 50 all over Rocco's house, including one right smack in the center of a canvas Rocco was about to paint.  According to Rodney, Rocco went ballistic and searched the house ripping them up.  But he didn't find all of them.  When Rodney headed back to Florida a couple weeks later, there were still BMX stickers he hadn't found.  We all got a good laugh out of that.  What's even more funny is that when Rodney flew back out to stay with Rocco about three months later, Rocco found two stickers in places he never thought to look, and flipped out again.  I <3 BMX, but Steve Rocco doesn't.

In those few weeks hanging out with Rodney, I saw him learn some new tricks.  Fingerflip daffy ollies (later called fingerflip ollie airwalks), half flip underflips, and handstands to inward flips to board.  That's in addition to the double kickflips, helipops (flat ground Caballerial ollie), 720 shove-its, 360 flips, and all the other stuff he was doing then.  He even mentioned that Stacy Peralta, creator of the Bones Brigade, was trying to talk him into doing some street skating.  Rodney said he had no intentions of ever doing that.  And then Mark Ternasky slowly and steadily talked Rodney into it.  then Rodney Mullen completely changed the game in tech street skating.  For years afterward, every time a young street skater told me he wanted to get sponsored, I gave him the same answer.  "Go watch old Rodney Mullen videos, pick three Rodney tricks that no one does, and learn them down a five step."  No one ever actually did it.  But it would still work today.

30 years ago I met this kid name Rodney Mullen...

This clip above is the legendary and innovative skateboarder Rodney Mullen all you skaters know of, the guy who invented most of the elemental tricks street skaters rely on.  But this is the Rodney Mullen my roommate Lew introduced me to in August of 1986 at The Spot in Redondo Beach, California.  The thing about rolling up on some skater or BMXer is that you never know what that kid is going to do in the next 20 or 30 years.

Rodney talked in a kind of a weird, soft voice.  His board was flat and he put lots of wood screws in the ends of his board so it wouldn't delam too quick when doing pogos.  He pulled his socks all the way up to his knees, and tucked them into his knee pads.  Again, that helped on the pogo tricks.  He had already invented the flat ground ollie, the pressure flip style kickflip, the ollie kickflip, the 360 flip, the double kickflip, the ollie impossible (technically a pressure flip) and a bunch of other stuff.  He was the 8 or 9 time world champ of freestyle skateboarding.  He was the undisputed top freestyle skater in the Golden Age of vert skating.

 I started hanging out after I was done riding my bike and watching Rodney skate.  We'd hang out and talk when he was done.  After a while, he started asking me how a new trick looked or if this trick should follow that trick in his next contest routine.  We were both wound pretty tight, and we hit it off.

I was stoked when the crew at FREESTYLIN' said I could do a little interview with him.  At the ripe old age of 19, Rodney was heading back off to college and debating between a future in engineering or medicine.  He was staying nearby in Hermosa Beach at the home of then washed up freestyle skater Steve Rocco.  This was about a year before the whole Santa Monica Airlines/World Industries idea happened. The interview landed on page 56 of the December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN'  Here it is:

Steve: "First of all, let's get some basic background on you.  Age, how long have you been skating, sponsors, etc."
Rodney: "I'm 19 years old and I've been skating for 9 1/2 years.  I go to school at the University of Florida.  I skate for fun.  Oh, and I'm sponsored by Powell-Peralta, Independent, Sundeck, Swatch, Style Eyes, and... that's it... I think."
Steve: "Speaking of school, what are you majoring in?"
Rodney: I don't know, I've been in engineering.  It's kind of weird... thinking about growing up.  I'm going to check out medical school, 'cause my grades are okay.  Plus my dad says I should try it, 'cause engineers work to hard for their money."
Steve: "I heard you have like a 4.0 average."
Rodney: "Yeah, it's like 3.98 now, I think, 'cause I got a B+ in physics, but it's still okay."
Steve: "Yeah, that's okay (laughter)."
Rodney: "I can't stand humanities, though!  I can get through all the physics and calculus, but..."
Steve: "How long do you plan to keep skating?"
Rodney: "I don't think about it, it's sort of scary.  Just as long as my body will take it.  I'll skate forever, just playing around.  As far as pushing hard goes, I don't know."
Windy (Osborn, the FREESTYLIN' photographer): "How many hours a day do you skate?"
Rodney: "About three."
Windy: "Do you have a special place you skate at?""
Rodney: "At home (in Florida), there's this church where I skate.  It's perfectly lit and it's just heaven."
Windy: "At night, right?"
Rodney: "Yeah."
Steve: "This place (Redondo Pier-The Spot) is pretty good, too."
Rodney: "Yeah, it's nice here."
Steve: "Okay, let's get into some 'Lew type questions.'  What's your favorite smell?"
Rodney: (Laughter) "Uhm... rain.  No, uhm... kittens."
Windy: "You can smell the rain?"
Rodney: "Yeah."
Steve: "Oh, let's see... any other profound thoughts?"
Rodney: "Just try to be an individual when you skate.  Don't look at others, don't think about others... it just brings you down."
Steve: "So do whatever you think?"
Rodney: "It comes out of you... that's how it gets good."
Steve: "Any favorite music, groups, anything like that?"
Rodney: "I'm getting more diverse now, I guess.  Joy Division is my all time favorite.  New Order.  I like Stiff Little Fingers, Marginal Man I like now, and Beethoven and Vivaldi."
Steve: "Pretty wide range."
Rodney: "Yeah, I guess so.  That's about it."
Steve: "My trademark question here:  What is the meaning of life?"
Rodney:  The meaning of life is... kittens playing with yarn."
(Long pause)
( Windy laughs)
Steve: "Okay, thanks. (Click).

This was the first and only interview I did at my short stint at FREESTYLIN'.  I'd done a bunch of interviews for my zine, but never a real magazine.  My interviewing skills left a lot to be desired.  When Rodney said the meaning of life was "kittens playing with yarn," I thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard.  But I never forgot it.  As the years have passed, I've come to think he was right on the mark. 

 Rodney on video:
Rodney in 1980 in San Diego
Rodney and Stacy Peralta in 1980
Rodney skating the banks at Del Mar in 1983
Rodney at Del Mar freestyle contest in 1984
Rodney at Del Mar in 1985 (rare bail)
The Bones Brigade Video Show ( 1984- Powell-Peralta) 8:04, 22:59
Bones Brigade 2: Future Primitive (1985-Powell Peralta) 19:58, 41:05, 41:54
Rodney at Oceanside contest (1986- Unreel Productions) 
Bones 3: The Search for Animal Chin (1987-Powell-Peralta) 41:12, 42:16, 43:57
Bones 4: Public Domain (1988- Powell-Peralta) 21:26- Triple kickflip
Rubbish Heap (1989- World Industries) He's at The Spot in Redondo (BMXers know) at :39, and is dragged kicking and screaming into street skating at the end
Questionable (Plan B- 1992)
Virtual Reality (Plan B- 1993)
Second Hand Smoke (Plan B- 1994) The beginning of this clip was shot at the exact spot where Windy Osborn and I did the photo shoot and interview above for FREESTYLIN'
 Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song (1997- Dwindle Distribution)
Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song Round 2 (1999- Dwindle Distribution) at :37 you can see the photo Rodney got on the issue of  FREESTYLIN' that my interview with him was in.
Opinion (2001-Globe Shoes)
Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song Round 3 (2004- Almost)
The Man Who Souled The World (2007- Big Entertainment/Whyte House Productions)4:43, 13:46, 17:30, 20:14, 23:19, 31:02, 34:58, 38:37, 39:35, 40:32, 41:12, 43:51, 44:06, 1:00:20, 1:01:05, 1:02:17, 1:02:53, 1:04:05, 1:07:14, 1:08:10, 1:09:19, 1:15:43, 1:19:17, 1:20:40
United by Fate (2008- Globe Shoes) 4:01
Rodney Mullen 2008 (raw footage) session
Rodney Mullen on Innovation (2012- The Smithsonian's Lemelson Center)
Rodney Mullen sits down with Tony Hawk (2012- RIDE Channel)
Rodney Mullen- From The Ground Up (2013)
Rodney Mullen and Tony Hawk in conversation (2013- Innoskate/Smithsonian's Lemelson Center)
How Context Shapes Content (2013- TEDx USC)
On Getting Up Again (2013- TEDx Orange Coast)
Rodney's Bones 1 video outtakes, narrated much later by Stacy Peralta
Crazy Rodney stories from Bones Brigade documentary
Rodney Mullen- A Beautiful Mind (2014- The Berrics)
Pop An Ollie And Inovate (2015?- TED Talk)
Rodney  (2016-Vogue)

I'm touring the country this year on The White Bear's Let's Make a Scene Tour, spreading ideas that your city's future depends partly on it's art, music, and action sports scenes.  To learn more, or get me to your shop or city, check out my Go Fund Me campaign at the link above. 

Robots ARE stealing our jobs... Here's one idea on how to deal with that

In this well researched, well thought out TEDx Talk in Vienna, super smart guy Federico Pistono explains how we need to create a new kind of society to deal with the fact that robots and automation are taking over millions of our jobs, and will eventually take almost all of them.  He sees the answer in what he calls an "open source, DIY, self-sustaining world" with technology doing all the drudgery work. 

Its a bold and bright idea.  But here's why it won't work.  What we call "civilized society" is really a small number of people using fear, intimidation, corruption, and propaganda to control a huge population.  His concept would only work if an elite few could find a way to control everyone else, because that's what civilization is.  

Here's where I do agree with Federico, we need to find new forms of human work until the inevitable collapse of society happens.  And it always does.  Pretty pessimistic, but that's the reality we're facing in an age of exponentially growing technological advances. 

This is why I'm blogging about building Creative Scenes

About four months ago, October of 2016, a new Cheesecake Factory restaurant opened in Greensboro, North Carolina, ten miles from where I live.  If you check out this news clip from WFMY News 2, you'll hear that over 7500 people applied for 255 restaurant jobs.  That's not a typo, 7,500 people, enough to populate a good-sized small town,  applied for jobs at a SINGLE NEW RESTAURANT.  Greensboro has about 285,000 residents, so that's a big chunk of the population. 

This kind of thing is happening across much of the country.  We have a huge jobs issue in this country, and the main issue is that towns and cities that thrived during the Industrial Age don't know how to create jobs in the new Information (or Digital or Creative) age.  The old rules don't apply any more, and many civic leaders are so busy with day to day issues that they haven't learned this yet. 

Creative Scenes, like art scenes, music scenes, video/filmmaking scenes, action sports scenes, boutique shop scenes, and entrepreneurial scenes are now a significant part of the job creation process.  They create and incubate small businesses, and they also help attract the clusters of tech workers that major tech firms look for when opening a new facility.  This is a HUGE issue and not many people are really working on it at the grassroots level.  So now I am.  Stay tuned for more on this subject.

Scenes These Days: Bike Life

I ran across this clip over the weekend while looking up what all my former roommates from the P.O.W. BMX House in the early 90's have done.  Todd Lyons, who is now brand manager for SE Bikes, narrates this clip about a ride out in Philadelphia last year.  I'm in a tiny Southern town these days, and largely out of touch with big city happenings.  So when I saw this, it amazed me how big the scene is, and how guys doing wheelies on cruiser sized bikes has become an urban movement. 

From my years in and around the BMX world, I know how a little scene can grow into something much bigger, even an entire industry, as the years go by.  I don't know where the Bike Life movement will go, but as an old school BMX rider and former industry guy, I know the vibe of having a bunch of guys (and gals) getting together and having fun riding. 

Props to Third Eye Productions for putting this clip together, and to Todd and SE Bikes for giving some props and support to a new kind of bike scene emerging.  Also, props to the police in Philly for taking a positive approach to the scene.  There's so much negativity these days, it's great to see good vibes on bikes happening in a new way.

How four broke BMXers accidentally turned into a highly influential bike scene

In 1989, at the main bicycle trade show early in the year, a mantra was being said over and over, "BMX is, mountain bikes are the future."  Yes, the mountain bike industry took off.  But BMX racing and BMX freestyle weren't dead, they just had most of the bike industry money siphoned off and put into mountain bikes. Dozens of pro riders in both racing and freestyle suddenly lost sponsors and their income.  But us hardcore riders kept riding. 

Four pro BMX racers rented a two bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach, California, shared bedrooms, and cut living expenses to a bare minimum in order to keep riding and racing.  Those guys, Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, John Paul Rogers and (I think) Alan Foster, discovered a way to live cheap and keep riding every day as the U.S. slid into one of the longest recessions ever. 

Before long, other riders liked the "BMX House" idea, and those four and a few others rented a four bedroom, two bathroom house on Iroquois street in Westminster, California.  Westminster is the city just inland of Huntington Beach, and is quite a bit cheaper to live in.  For the next four or five years, a series of BMX riders and industry people lived cheap in that house.  The riders named themselves the Pros Of Westminster or P.O.W.'s for short.  They meant no disrespect to the true military P.O.W.'s, but the name fit and it stuck.  In those few short years, the P.O.W. House scene changed BMX riding forever.  The scruffy bunch of guys became known as some of the best dirt jumpers in the world, and some top racers as well as street riders.   I know, I was one of the guys who lived in that house. 

But before I needed a cheap place to live, I was the first video producer to shoot video of the P.O.W. House and riders in their backyard in 1990.  That is the clip above, from my 1990 self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend.   None of us had any idea just how big of an influence that crazy house would have in the bike world.  We just wanted to live cheap, ride a lot, and try to pick up women. 

The other day I scoured the You Tube for clips of the guys who lived in that house, and here's the blog post that led to.  Even I was amazed by how much stuff I found.  And even though I've written well over 1500 blog posts about those early BMX days, this post is my most popular ever, getting over 800 page views in less than 48 hours.

This blog is about building, nurturing, and growing creative scenes, and the P.O.W. House legacy is a prime example of how a few people pushing each other to progress can turn into much more in later years.  

It's official... Donald Trump has been named a threat to the global economy

Here's the link to the article.  Only took him 20 days.  That has to be some kind of record.  OK, enjoy your weekend...

Big Island Mike Castillo and Tattoos in BMX

Here's "Big Island" Mike Castillo wearing what I think is one of his Where? Wear T-shirts at 2-Hip contest in Arizona in '92 or '93.  Mike was one of the few BMXers who flew over from Hawaii in the early 90's and wound up in Huntington Beach for a while when S&M Bikes was still a pretty tiny company.  I'm not sure who dubbed him "Big Island," but it was probably Chris Moeller, who's known for throwing out nicknames that stick.  Mike's actually from Oahu, which is one of the medium sized islands, but "Medium Island" doesn't have much of a ring to it.  He's in the S&M Bikes video 44 Something, shooting video of Keith Treanor (3:01) at the commercial shoot and riding the mini ramp (17:38) in Arizona.  He wandered east at some point, and worked for Hoffman Bikes for a while. 

In 1995, when S&M Bikes owner Chris Moeller bought a condo, and I was renting a room there, Mike rented a room for a while, and we sessioned on our bikes regularly.  He was a pretty mellow guy then.  That time period, the early 90's, was when some BMX guys started getting tattoos, usually really bad ones.  It's hard to imagine now, but when we were kids, tattoos were almost always pretty simple line drawings in dark green ink, and most often found as a single tat on the forearm or shoulder of a military veteran, or on bikers.  The old school, hardcore Harley bikers, before the Yuppies started buying Harley's.  Most tattoos came with stories of drunken nights in Singapore or something while on leave in the military.  Upstanding citizens didn't get tattoos in the 1970's and 80's.
Then something started to change in the 80's.  Musicians, like Brian Setzer, and a few others showed up in music videos with visible tattoos.  Skateboarders Art and Steve Godoy and Duane Peters started showing up in magazines with tats.  In the early 1990's, members of the infamous P.O.W. House of pro BMXers started getting really bad tattoos from some guy with a handmade tattoo gun made from a HO gauge model trail engine.  One guy got "P.O.W." (Pros of  Westminster), but it looked more like "D.O.W."  We joked that it was for the Dow Jones stock average.  Soon after, Dave Clymer got a target tattooed on his shin, so every time he slipped his bike pedal and gouged his shin, he could score the scars.  It seemed funny at the time.

But that broke the ice in the BMX world.  Throughout the mid 90's, more and more people in the action sports world started getting tattoos.  Tats also became more prominent in the music world, and by the late 90's even super models were starting to get little ankle tattoos.  The art form exploded, as did the creativity and ability of tattoo artists.  I could see the trend taking off, and decided not to get any.  I wrote a piece in a zine once that while tattoos were starting to become flat out amazing in quality, I never saw a piece of art I wanted to carry around for life.  And if I did, I'd probably just make a copy and put it in my wallet.  Obviously, I was one of the few standouts as tattoos and piercings lurched from the counter culture into the mainstream.  I did finally give myself a brand at work on night, but that's another story.

Big Island Mike drifted away from the HB scene, and word got around that he became a tattoo artist.  I heard he worked at the Shamrock Social Club in Hollywood at one point.   Years later, I was driving a taxi in Orange County, and on the radio morning show, then hosted by Dicky Barrett of The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones.  He had a Tat-Tuesday segment every week.  He announced that BMXer Rick Thorne was in his studio getting a tattoo from Big Island Mike.  Since I knew the guys, I called in to the show, and Dicky answered during a commercial break.  I said, "Tell Big Island you have The White Bear on the phone," so he did.  Mike took the phone and we talked for a minute or two.  Dicky came back on the radio, "Big Island?  The White Bear?  What... am I on a reservation?"

Several years later, I ran into Mike at a BMX contest and we were able to catch up on what we'd both been doing.  But he looked a lot different.  Like most of us he gained a few pounds, but he also had years worth of tattoos visible.  When I first saw him at a distance, I thought some Mexican gangster was at the contest.  Then I walked up and realized it was Mike.


Here's Big Island Mike Castillo in this clip at the Hale Nui tattoo shop he works at in Honolulu,  Hawaii.   I haven't talked to Mike in years, but last I did he was still the chill guy I was roommates with in '95.  Mike's just one of the cool and highly creative people I met through my years in the BMX world. 

Bushwick NYC: From drug dens to art hotspot to gentrification

I just ran across this documentary about a great scene I'd never heard of, Bushwick in Brooklyn.  It's a great documentary about the power of art helping to rebuild a neighborhood, and all the good and bad that comes along with that.  NSFW. 

Christian Hosoi video stills from 1990

Back in 1990, vert skating legend Christian Hosoi teamed with Vision Skateboards on a company called Tuff Skts.  I got the job of following Christian and his crew around with a camera for three days hooting video and then editing a promo video.  The original promo I edited was about seven minutes long.  The women in the Vision promotions department didn't like all of it, so I cut the "official" version down to about 4 1\2 minutes, with background music from Muddy Waters and Bad Brains.  I lost my copies of the promo, so the sole version left I have access to is this super short version with lame music that appeared on Sk8-TV on Nickleodeon in 1990.

 And here's a few stills of video I shot of skater Christian Hosoi in 1990.

 Frontside tail grab at height at his ramp in Echo Park.

 Frontside grind with hands behind his back in a big rectangle pool off the 14 freeway.

 Hosoi was not known for lip tricks, but he'd been working on a few before this photo/video shoot.  Alley-oop nosegrind.

 Frontside 5-0 in a pool next to a crack house in Van Nuys.

 Blunt on the 9 foot section of his ramp.

 Watching his boys ride, rectangle pool off the 14 freeway.  That's John Swope on the right.  We met him at the Van Nuy's pool the day before, where he was doing some of the best Smith grinds I've ever seen.  In 1990, Christian Hosoi partnered with Vision Skateboards in a new company called Tuff Skts.  It didn't last long, but I spent three full days shooting footage with Christian and his guys Block, Joey Tran, and Little Man, and we met John Swope along the way.  On the first day at Christian's house, high on a hill in Echo Park (outside downtown L.A.) surfer Christian Fletcher was hanging out and skating and his dad, surf filmaking legend Herbie Fletcher, was shooting film.  Pretty epic day.

Obsolete knowledge: Where will millions of jobs come from?

In this clip of then presidential candidate Donald Trump, we hear a distinguished college graduate, a chemical engineer, lament about not being able to find a job.  Trump, in his typical fashion, goes complete off topic for most of the response.  But then he says he'll "bring the jobs back."  In this case, he declares he will get Apple to make its iPhones in the U.S.  Like usual, he gives no details on how he would do that.  But is that the way to create millions of good paying American jobs?

Here's the problem: If Apple did manufacture its iPhones here, they'd probably cost $5,000 each.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump, and most of the old white men in power, are working from "obsolete knowledge."  That's a term coined by the late futurist Alvin Toffler and his wife Heidi.  They called it "obsoledge."  In a world with rapidly changing technology, amazing communication and connectivity, global markets, and cheap labor in many foreign countries, those manufacturing jobs are just not going to come back.  Globalization has already happened, the genie is out of the bottle.  No one is going to completely un-do international trade at this point.

In addition to that, the United States has been moving out of the Industrial Age and into a new age for decades.  Some call it the Information Age.  Some call it the Digital Age.  Some call it the Creative Age.  Whatever you call it, this new era we are entering operates much different than the Industrial Age.  How do I know this?  I've read three of the books by Professor Richard Florida, who did years of research into the changes in how new businesses, particularly tech, form, evolve, grow, and create jobs in this new age.  His first book on the subject, The Rise of the Creative Class, was published in 2002, and became a hit among city planners worldwide. 

Florida found that these tech companies move to where the talented people are, which is much different than old school manufacturing companies.  In addition, since tech workers are creative people, they congregate in places that already have strong creative scenes, like art and music.  These people also congregate in places that are diverse and tolerant of all different types of people.  Some of the top places are the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Austin, Seattle, Southern California, New York City and Washington D.C..  So the tech start-ups flock to those places, because there are a lot of good tech people already there.

As crazy as it sounds, because the leading politicians in most areas are still trying to woo old school manufacturing companies, they're fighting the wrong battle.  They're barking up the wrong tree, because they are busy doing what's always been done, and not bothering to read up on the people studying how business is changing.

Apple, the company Trump names in the clip above, is a product of a creative scene of 70's tech geeks called the Homebrew Club.  Long haired dorks Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak hung out with other nerds, and came up with the idea of an easy to use, personal computer.  The company they started in a garage, Apple, now employs thousands of people and has changed the course of human civilization.  But in 1975, people like Donald Trump and bankers and politicians completely ignored Jobs and Wozniak and their cohorts.  They couldn't see the potential of the weird little box those guys built.

No one will bring the millions of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from other countries.  But lots of little creative scenes, spread across the U.S., will create thousands, maybe even millions, of new jobs, while the old white guys in suits are arguing with each other. 

Just to be clear, I wholeheartedly support making anything that's feasibly possible in the U.S..  But going after foreign manufacturing jobs is the wrong plan.  The politicians won't listen, but you can. New jobs come from new ideas.  And new ideas come from groups of highly creative people hanging out, tossing out ideas, and dreaming big. 

You don't have to work from obsolete knowledge.  It's up to you.

Become poem

Skateboarder Chris Miller, Pro-Tec Pool Party, 2009

You must risk

If you're to succeed

For when you grow

Sometimes you bleed

Each must climb

Over the fence

For the only cage

Is ignorance

Each Jedi knight

And Shaolin monk

Evolved from

A lowly punk

Don't get lost

In the world's throws

We must become

Our own heroes

-The White Bear

I wrote this in the mid-90's.  I've written over 500 poems in my life, and lost all of them.  Except this one.  Long story.

Haiku I wrote when I was nine

g

In the grass I lie
gazing at the blue heavens
I lie wondering

-Steve Emig

If there's a deep, underlying theme to my life, that's it... wondering.

Why We Need Creative Scenes

The clip above is a short look at Guy Laliberte', the founder of Cirque du Soleil.  Cirque is one of the many creative scenes I've worked at, and the most amazing.  It's also the best run business I've ever seen.

It's late January of 2017 and tens of millions of Americans need a new and better way to make a good living. 

Our new president and his cronies are going to town to make the U.S. a better climate for multi-national corporations.  They say they're going to bring back "the factory jobs."  They're attacking the problem with a 20th century Industrial Age mentality.  But there's a problem with that, we're no longer in the 20th century and the Industrial Age has ended.  How can I say this?  Am I smarter than the politicians running our country?  No.  (Well...maybe.)  I've just read these books:

Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin and Heidi Toffler
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
The Great Reset by Richard Florida
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Free by Chris Anderson
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Tribes by Seth Godin
Linchpin by Seth Godin
CTRL ALT DELETE by Mitch Joel
3@%&*#$!!! Gary Vaynerchuk

I've read these books, and many others, written by experts in the future, economic development, the effect of technology on business, and 21st century marketing.  Because I've read these books and the politicians haven't, I'm working with a much more up-to-date worldview than they are.  If you read these books, you , too, will have a better picture of today's working world than the people running our country. 

The Fortune 500 companies are not going to create the tens of millions of good paying jobs in the United States to replace the jobs they've sent overseas and the jobs taken over by new technology. 

To be brutally honest, we don't even need millions of jobs.  What we need is a way for tens of millions of Americans to do meaningful and fulfilling work, and make a decent living doing it.  Richard Florida says we need to make the service jobs into better jobs.  I agree.  But I don't think that will happen fast enough.

The more I look at the issue of jobs, the more I think that millions of Americans will have to create their own jobs.  And not just "jobs" but meaningful work. 

So where does "meaningful work" come from?  Dreams.  A person, like street performer Guy Laliberte', in the clip above, has a big dream.  He and his performer friends wanted to create a new kind of circus.  That dream led to brainstorming and new ideas.  Then, the magic part... they took action, brave action, and brought the dream into the physical world.  Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun), was born.  A dream in one guy's head was shared with a creative scene.  The scene worked together and pushed each other.  They worked and shared their dream with other creative people in many disciplines.  Progression, as we call it in the action sports world.  Cirque du Soleil now employs about 4,000 people from 40 or more countries, and has 15 or 20 different shows around the world.  One man's idea turned into 4,000 jobs directly, and probably thousands more indirectly.

in the late 1950's, surfers built boards with wheels to surf sidewalks when the waves were flat.  Skateboarding now happens around the world, and employs thousands and stokes millions.
Tom Sims wanted to surf on snow.  He built a snowboard in 8th grade shop class.  It sucked.  But he kept with the idea, and now snowboarding is a worldwide activity, sport, and industry.  Personal computers.  Video cameras.  Cell phones.  Cable TV.  BMX and freestyle.  Video games. Mountain bikes.  Laptop computers. Kite surfing.  Wakeboarding.  The world wide web.  Social media.  Smart phones.  Tablet computers.  Rat rod cars.  Custom motorcycles.  Drifting cars.  Wingsuit flying.  Cross Fit training, Mixed Martial Arts.  The list goes on and on.  These things didn't exist when I was born 50 years ago, and now millions of people make their living in those industries.

This is why we need to build creative scenes.

The common threads in all those things is people with dreams, creative scenes, and hard work.

 The unemployed and underemployed people of the United States don't need more minimum wage jobs.  We need meaningful work that also pays well and contributes to our world.  So... let's get to work.

If you don't have a good job... create your own job.  Build your creative scene.  Progress.  See where that leads.  You may find a good living doing something you enjoy.  You may end up employing thousands of people.  Who knows?  

Got an idea?  Get to work.

Make Money Panhandling #5: Street comedy and performance art

Back in 2010, when I started really learning about blogs, I started a blog called "Make Money Panhandling," just to see if  I could get that phrase to the top of Google results.  It was a total joke.  A photo of me holding the "bikini wax" sign above got over 10,000 page views alone on that blog.  And the blog topped the Google results for a couple years, until I took it down.

Once I wrote a couple of posts, I realized that I had a lot to say about panhandling and homelessness.  I even got contacted by the producer of the John Stossel Show when they did a show called "Freeloaders."  We traded emails and I answered all his questions about panhandling and gave him a bunch of background info on how people wind up in that situation.  In the show, John Stossel himself dressed up (ok, dressed down) and panhandled himself. 

I started panhandling for food money in Orange County, California to simply survive.  I soon found that with a funny sign, I could actually make complete strangers smile or laugh.  Try it some time, it's really not that easy.  I could actually give something to the hundreds of cars going by, even if they didn't give me anything.  I was the homeless guy, but all the people driving to and from worked always looked way more depressed than I felt.

When I wound up panhandling legally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I could stand on the same ramp, day after day.  I actually had fans.  There were commuters and route drivers who told me they looked forward to my signs every day.  You've never thought of panhandling that way, have you?  I've come to see funny panhandling signs as a form of folk art.  The same is true of protest signs.  After a while, I didn't think of myself as a panhandler, I thought of myself as a homeless stand-up comic and performance artist.  Some days I just mess with people, I'd hold a blank sign, or a sign that said, "Don't give to panhandlers," or I'd turn around with my back to people.  A couple times when people rolled down their windows and talked, I gave them a dollar if they seemed to be having a bad day.

As a writer, I've spent my life learning about human nature, and panhandling turned out to be a really educational experience.

Don't panhandle unless you're really homeless or down and out, OK?

Make Money Panhandling #4: Target

One time while I was flying a sign (legally, with a permit) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I had the top Twinkie sign.  Some guy in the second lane yelled.  When I looked over, he hucked a pack of cupcakes at me.  Yum.

These bottom two slogans were on the opposite sides of the same sign.  When cars rolled up, I had the quarter side up.  When someone honked, yelled, or took a photo, I'd turn it around.  I got a lot of laughs with that sign.  But of all the funny signs I tried, the "I see you texting" sign had the most photos taken of it, always by women ranging from about 18 to 45.

Don't panhandle unless you're truly homeless or down and out, OK?

Make Money Panhandling #3: Better off than Britney

After a month of scraping by on the streets, I was getting the hang of things.  In mid-January 2008 I saved up enough money for a cheap motel room and a Chinese dinner.  The motel I stayed in was so sketchy that there was actually an AA meeting at the motel organized by the "permanent" residents.  I put my feet up in the bed, turned on the TV, which didn't have cable, and watched TMZ as I thoroughly enjoyed my Chinese takeout.

As fate would have it, that happened to be while Britney Spears was going crazy, shortly after she shaved her head.  On that particular day, TMZ had footage of Britney coming out of a court appearance, speaking in a bad British accent.  In the middle of all the cameras, a homeless guy walked up and asked Britney for money.  As a seasoned panhandler myself at that point, I thought that was hilarious.  But it wasn't as good as her answer.  "You're probably better off than I am," Britney replied.  I laughed so hard I almost dropped my dinner.  After eating, I pulled my panhandling sign out of my backpack and grabbed my marker.  It read "Hungry and homeless" on the front.  Just to amuse myself, I wrote "Better off than Britney" on the back of my sign.

The next day, I was out at one of the best ramps panhandling.  A group of cars pulled up to the light.  I looked around, no one signaled to give me money.  So I turned my sign around, showing them the "Better off than Britney" side.  Within seconds a guy in the second lane honked.  I ran over and saw it was a big, burly guy with lots of tattoos.  He handed me a five dollar bill and said, "I saw that on TV last night.  Dude, that sign is soooo funny."  I used funny signs the rest of the time I was panhandling.

Don't panhandle unless you're really homeless or down and out, OK?

Make Money Panhandling #2: When technology bites

Of all the funny signs I used panhandling in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the "Lexus" sign above got the best reaction from people driving by.  Even cops rolled up and took photos of it.
 
I went back to taxi driving in 2003, focusing on Huntington Beach, California, but it took me all over Orange County, and occasionally into L.A. County.  But right after I got started again in '03, the taxi company put dispatch computers in our cabs and took out the old radios.  That changed everything, LITERALLY overnight.  The computers were programmed to take rides from the good, veteran drivers, and give rides to the lame ass new guys.  The computers also allowed the taxi company to put an unlimited amount of cabs on the road. 

More cabs meant less business per cab, but our weekly lease stayed the same and gas prices went up.  I knew I needed to escape soon, but just wasn't able to.  I'm just one of the millions of people whose job was destroyed by technology.  So, without drugs or alcohol in the picture, I literally worked my way to homelessness.  To be completely honest, after working so many hours for so long, homelessness kinda felt like a vacation.  Well, except for the constant threat of death or dismemberment by cops, thugs, wild animals, stray dogs, spiders, and snakes. 

Make Money Panhandling #1: When hard work doesn't pay off

Are you looking for a new way to make some money?  Are you a self-starter?  Do you like to work on your own?  Do you like the outdoors?  If you answered "yes," then maybe panhandling is for you.

Back in 2007 after years struggling to get by as a taxi driver living in my cab, I had some serious health problems.  My sluggish lifestyle of working 14 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, led to me gaining over 150 pounds and getting a serious bacterial infection called cellulitis.  The first bout nearly killed me, because I didn't have health insurance, so I just lay in my taxi with a fever of about 105 for five days.  I finally went to the emergency room, and luckily I was covered by some insurance for homeless people.  Three days in the hospital and a week on my boss' couch, and I was back to the crazy taxi lifestyle. 

I had that happen two more times that year, and went straight to the ER both times.  On my last visit, the ER doctor told me that if I kept up my crazy taxi lifestyle of not enough sleep, bad food, no exercise, and high stress, I was going to die.  "In months," he added, "maybe weeks."  After another month in the cab, I decided I needed to quit.  After four years of working 70 to 100 hours a week, paying $550 a week for the taxi and $300 a week for gas, I gave up.  I rolled into the taxi yard, threw my stuff in my backpack, turned in the keys, and walked out onto the streets of Orange County, California with $15 to my name.  I weighed 365 pounds, I could barely walk because of severe athletes foot (which is pretty funny when you think about it), and I expected to die within a few weeks.  I started panhandling for food money, just asking people for change at bus stops or gas stations.  I slept in the bushes.  After a few days, I decided to "fly a sign" as we say in the panhandling business.  A piece of cardboard, a pen I had in my pocket, and an off ramp, and I was in business. 

Don't panhandle unless you're really homeless of down and out, OK?

Finally, all my weird ideas in one blog...

This clip is from the first video I ever edited, called 2-Hip: The '88 Adventure.  It's the contest season video for Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip King of Vert and this first Meet the Street contest.  Later it became known as 2-Hip BHIP, which is what it's called on You Tube now. 

In the spring of 1988, BMX freestyle pro rider and contest promoter, Ron Wilkerson, decided to put on a bike street contest.  Nor Cal legend Dave Vanderspek put one on a while earlier, but there was no media coverage and a lot of us never heard about it.  But that afternoon, behind a shopping center in Santee, California, a bunch of BMX freestylers and dirt jumpers came together to see what could be done with "street" obstacles.  We'd all been doing this kind of riding on our own for years.  But that afternoon most of the best riders in the world came together to push ourselves and each other.  The BMX freestyle scene of Southern California was trying something new.  What happened behind that shopping center that afternoon changed bike riding forever.  That wasn't the goal, just a cool effect of the day.  I'm proud to say I was there.  I'm the dork ghost riding my bike into the wall.  Much of what happened that day we'd never seen before. 

This is the underlying theme of this blog.  When you get a bunch of creative people together, when you form a scene, cool things start to happen.  Street riding is now a fun activity in both the BMX and mountain biking world, it's a competitive sport, and an industry that has spread around the globe. 

Creative scenes of all types have become a driving force in our economy.  Creative people are not just creating high tech stuff like social media sites, smart phones, and apps, they're creating new styles of art, crafts, music, sports... AND BUSINESSES, AND JOBS.  This is a key part of the 21st century economy that the big business world is largely ignoring (except for tech).  While Washington D.C. and Wall Street fight over how to TRY to bring back millions of manufacturing jobs, it's up to us, YOU AND ME, to create our own jobs. Are you up for that?

I've spent my life in a series of different kinds of scenes, many of them creative, some not.  I've read hundreds of books on related subjects that most people find boring.  In addition to being a writer/blogger/artist, and an old school BMX, skateboard, and TV production industry guy, I'm also a futurist/big picture/macroeconomics geek.  Basically, that means I'm a geek even among the geeks.  I'm OK with that.  My actions sports background and experience in creative scenes has merged with my intellectual geek side, and I realize I need to share what I've learned about creating, nurturing, and building creative scenes.  Sound boring?  It can be when you talk about it.  But making creative scenes is a blast when you actually do it, like we all did in the video above.  It's time to make a scene... YOUR SCENE.