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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.