Crazy Taxi Stories: Cop a Squat

I was driving a couple of young women home from downtown Huntington Beach in my cab late one night.  We were somewhere in the subdivisions off Magnolia, maybe a mile from the beach.  I dropped the first woman off, and was driving out of the subdivision, back to one of the main roads.  Suddenly, the chick still in the car told me to stop in the middle of the street.  She hopped out, and ran to the back of the cab.  I could feel her sit on the back bumper.  I thought she was lighting a joint or something.  I could see the back of her head in the rear view mirror, but no one had ever jumped out of the cab to light a joint before.  Usually they just lit up, passed it around, and then asked me if they could smoke. 

After a minute or two, the woman ran back around and jumped back in the cab.  "I had to cop a squat," she said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to pee in the middle of a street at 2 am.  Then she gave me directions to her house, and we headed there. 

It got me wondering.  Why is it that men piss, or take a leak, but women "cop a squat."  OK, I get the squat part, but where did the word "cop" enter that phrase?  It's like suddenly, when a woman has to pee, the police have to be involved.  Do you need a cop to direct traffic or something?  "Move along, move along people, there's nothing to see here."  I never could figure that out. 

Cash Paid Daily, my first zine full of my crazy taxi stories is coming soon, for sale in the Club White Bear online store.  Details soon...

Big Wheel Drifting: Another possible use for dying malls

Since I recently learned about how many shopping malls are slowly dying and that 3,500 retail stores are closed or closing soon, I've been looking for ways to use all those empty buildings.  Here's one.  Adult Big Wheel drifting courses.  I never have a Big Wheel as a kid, but I thrashed several friends Big Wheels doing front wheel and back wheel slides.  Now that idea is all grown up.  This just looks like a blast. 

My Recent Stuff

In an upcoming post, I'm going to link a bunch of the stuff I did back in my BMX/skateboard industry guy days.  But for those of you who've never heard of me, here's what I've been doing the past couple of years, along with not really making a living.

Freestyle BMX Tales blog- This is the reborn version of a blog I started in about 2009.  After living a year on the streets of Southern California (which followed years of taxi driving as the industry tanked), my family flew me to North Carolina.  I'd never lived there, and I lost all my video footage, video masters, poems I'd written, and everything else.  I was deeply depressed, unable to find a job in NC, and started blogging just to vent.  My first blog was called FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, and I wrote over 200 posts about my short stint at FREESTYLIN' magazine, the bible 80's BMX freestyle, in 1986.  I was laid off there, mostly because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  Then they replaced me with some East Coast biker/skater kid named Spike Jonze.  He fared much better there.

Writing the FREESTYLIN' blog, I reconnected with many of my old friends from BMX freestyle in the 80's, and I started another blog, Freestyle BMX Tales, to continue telling my stories from those early days in the BMX freestyle world.  I wrote over 700 posts on that blog.

Shortly after my dad died in 2012, I went into a real dark period in my life, and I took down all my blogs, the two freestyle memoir blogs, Make Money Panhandling, my blog about homeless and panhandling that got over 60,000 page views, and several other blogs where I tried out different ideas.

Later I started Freestyle BMX Tales again in a somewhat nicer version on blogpress, but I faded on that one.  I finally re-started Freestyle BMX Tales on blogger again, and that's the version I'm still adding to today.  This is the blog I'm best know for.  I still have several years worth of stories that I haven't shared.

Steve Emig Art blog- It's a long story, but in 2005 I came up with a unique way to draw using markers, Sharpie markers in particular.  I draw an outline of the picture in black marker, and then color and shade using scribbles of several colors of ultra-fine Sharpies over each other.  So every color in my drawings is actually 3 to 8 colors scribbles over each other.  Now, 12 years after coming up with the technique, I'm still the only one I know using this style, and I've found drawing athletes and musicians from photographs is a great way to use my technique.  I've been selling my drawings (cheap!) for over a year now, but it's nowhere near a full time living.  I started this blog as a place to house my work online.  But not I've decided to being my drawing, blogging, writing, and everything (except the old BMX stories) into a single blog.  So I'll be putting my newer drawings in this blog from now on, as well as on Facebook.

Dan Bell- the Dead Malls video guy- Ted Talk

For any of you who are fans of Ted Talks or Dead Malls, this is worth your time.  On one hand, we have Dan, a filmmaker who lost his desire to film.  On the other hand, we have a weird and huge trend in the U.S., the "dead malls."  For those who don't know, dead malls are malls that have either closed and are in some state of deterioration, or malls that are struggling to stay alive with few stores left in them. 

As I mentioned in the last post, my walk through a dead mall a month ago got me really looking into the issue of America's retail shop collapse.  This is happening all over the country and the world.  Dan gives his impressions above.  I have just written a 24 page, self-published, funny zine about ways to use all that empty space in dead malls and abandoned buildings.  You can get a copy here:

43 Ideas To Reuse Dead Malls zine

3,500 + retail stores closed or closing

Normally I don't embed videos from You Tube channels like this, but this guy sums up what's happening in a few minutes.  There are now over 3,500 retail stores closed or closing in the U.S. soon.  When I started looking into this issue a month ago, the number was just over 3,000.  This is a big deal.  Is this the end pf the world that religious nut jobs have been predicting for the last 20 years or so?  No.  Is this the end of the world?  But it IS a real big deal.

MALLPOCALYPSE.  Malls across the U.S. have been dying a slow death for years.  The Oak Hollow Mall in Highpoint, North Carolina, about 15 miles from where I live, just closed down a month ago.  Walking through that mall a week before it closed is what got me looking into this issue.  No one has exact numbers, but generally speaking, 400 of the 1,200 enclosed malls in the U.S. have either closed, or are expected to close in the next few years.  And that's if we DON'T go into a recession.

What does this mean to you?  1) If you work in retail, look up your employer and see how they look long term.  It might be time for a career change.  Thousands are already losing their jobs.  Personally, I think we're teetering on the edge of a recession, and it could be a serious one.  Get your act together financially as best you can.  We still don't know what this massive amount of store closings will lead to.

My latest zine: 43 Ways to Reuse Dead Malls and Abandoned Buildings

Here's a clip of some guys exploring the abandoned Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio.  This is just one of many of the "dead malls" in the U.S. right now.  When I looked this mall up, after seeing Rick McCrank explore it in his Viceland show Abandoned, I got a surprise.  I was born about five miles 13from where this mall was built.  We moved away when I was about 2 1/2, but my grandma lived ten miles away.  So I know this was one of the malls I spent time in as a kid.

Then, just over a month ago, I happened to walk through Oak Hollow Mall in Highpoint, North Carolina, a week before it totally closed down.  As I looked into why entire malls were closing down, I found that 400 of the 1200 enclosed malls in the U.S. are either closed, or expected to close in the next five years.  In addition, well over 3,000 major chain store locations have closed in the last couple of years or are scheduled to in 2017.  We are witnessing Mallpocalypse.

So I made a zine about different ways we could take these dead malls, empty factory buildings, and other vacant buildings, and put them to use.  Here are three of my ideas from the zine:

#2  Adult Big Wheel Drifting Course.  You've seen those things on You Tube.  Build some downhill ramps, or maybe use the multi-level parking garage to let people drift those adult sized big wheels.

#9  Vintage shops that sell real old people.  Seriously, there are way too many elderly people in the world.  We all know of one or two we'd like to sell.  Here's a place to find them a good home.  

# 13 Boy band shooting gallery.  Real boy bands, live ammunition.  They perform, you shoot, society wins.

Those are just three of the 43 ideas in my zine for putting the thousands of empty buildings we have back to use.  To see three more ideas and order a signed and numbered zine, check out my Go Fund Me page for this project:

43 Ideas on how to reuse dead malls and abandoned buildings

Slash and Janis Joplin drawings

 If you're a Facebook friend of mine, you know I draw pictures in a weird, unique way with Sharpie markers.  These are my latest two, both by request.  The photos are kind of sketchy because our 10 year old camera is dying.  And I don't have a phone right now.  ANYHOW...  both drawings were done from photos, I transfer the outline is pencil, ink with with a typical black Sharpie fine point, and then color with Sharpie ultra fine points and sometimes highlighters.  Every color is scribbles of 3 to 8 colors over each other.  I developed this technique in 2005, and I've been doing different styles of drawings ever since.  Both are 18" X 24" and take 22 to 25 hours each, on average.  I also like to listen to the person's music and interviews while drawing to try and get a better feel of their personality.  Contact me on Facebook if interested in a drawing.

The SE Fat Ripper: A big man needs a big bike

The first time I saw a fat bike, I thought it was stupid.  What's the point? I asked myself.  At the same time, I'm still carrying an absurd amount of weight from my third go at taxi driving.  It was a fun job at times, but sitting in a car all day and eating too much fast food doesn't work well with my metabolism.  So now I'm a guy the size of a novice sumo wrestler who's jonesin' to get back out riding a bike again.  Luckily, I have old P.O.W. House co-habitator Todd Lyons as a Facebook friend.  For a couple of years I've been watching his posts doing wheelies around the world on different SE bikes. 

Several years ago, Nick Zielger and friends put their efforts together to send me a great Schwinn cruiser for free.  It was great to get back riding again, at least as much as my big body would allow.  But I was under pressure almost immediately to sell the bike since I wasn't working at the time.  I wound up pawning the bike, and I'd just pay the interest every month.  With the bike out of site, it was out of mind, and the pressure to sell it died down.  Then I wound up in the hospital for several days, and I wasn't able to make that little interest payment to the pawn shop.  Bye bye Schwinn.  That really bummed me out.  I think it bummed Nick out even more. 

As the time passed since then, I've hovered at a ridiculous weight, and I know I need to start exercising A LOT to take the pounds off again.  I lost 130 pounds at one point, but I gained much of it back during my last tour as a taxi driver.

In any case, being a fat guy may qualify me for the Bubbalympics here in North Carolina (there really is one), but that doesn't interest me.  I need to get my big butt riding again.  Over the last month or so, I've been watching SE's Fat Ripper video with Todd Lyons doing the riding (above).  I want one of those bikes.  My income is sketchy, but I'm gonna get myself on a Fat Ripper as soon as I can.  Let the savings begin...

It'll be a long time before I lose enough to ride a 20 inch again, and this bike just fits the bill for me.  Check out the SE video above, as well as this bike test of it on Seth's Bike Hacks. 

Alex Leech and Rob Lawrence on holiday in 1991

 This is Alex Leech, English BMX freestyler, when I first met him in 1991.  Like many riders from the U.K., he and skater friend Rob Lawrence saved money for months to com to the U.S. on holiday and ride for a month.  I ended up shooting video of him for the first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer.  these are stills from that footage.  Above, Alex rocking braids held tight with Super Glue 4.

 Alex, in a epic T-shirt, and Rob, chilling at the H-Ramp in Santa Ana, CA.

 On a trip to a San Pedro high school known for its banks, Alex knocks off a bench abubaca.

 In 1991, a barpsin drop-in on a five foot ramp was a big deal.  Keith Treanor, watching nearby, freaked when Alex did this.

 Downside footplant on coping gone wrong.  These looked great, until his toe slipped on this one.

Alex hitting the ejection button at the H-Ramp.  I lost the footage.  But Alex and Rob borrowed this sketchy ass old van with about 220,000 miles, and used it to tool around Southern California during their trip.  We took it out to the Nude Bowl in the middle of the desert on day for an epic session.  Good times.