Journey of The white Bear #14: The corridor concept

Before you play the clip above, in the still image, you can see a cameraman just to the left of the rider's back wheel, wearing black shorts and a white shirt with big black circles on it.  That's me in 1989, shooting video of the 2-Hip King of Vert for sponsor Vision Street Wear.  At 1:06 in the clip, Mat Hoffman does a barspin disaster right in front of me.  The way I stumbled into video work is an example of the "corridor concept."

Life Lesson:  When you set a goal and head towards it, other opportunities spring up along the way.

I first heard of the "corridor" or "hallway" concept at a business seminar I went to in about '91.  The speaker was talking about goal setting, which is a big theme in business and success lectures.  But he threw out an idea that I'd never heard before.  He said that when you set a big goal, and start working towards that goal, you will often have great opportunities come out of nowhere.  He compared it to walking down a long hallway in an office building.  Your big goal is the door at the very end of the hallway.  But as you work towards your goal, walking down that hallway, a door will open on the side and present you with an opportunity.

When that happens, you have to decide if you should say "no" to that opportunity, and keep working towards the original goal, or take the opportunity.  The speaker said that this happens continually to people who set goals and work hard toward them.  Sometimes the door that opens, the opportunity, is just a minor distraction and you need to keep going towards your goal.  Other times the opportunity may be much greater than your original goal.  In each case, you have to decide which way to go.

My big goal when I started seriously getting into BMX freestyle in Idaho was to become a pro freestyler, get a factory sponsor, go on tour across the country, and meet lots of girls.  Instead, my family moved to San Jose, California, and I started a zine.  My goal in self-piblishing my zine was to meet and ride with the great riders in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I soon achieved that goal, and focused again on becoming a pro freestyler.  But I liked doing my zine, and kept at it.

Several months later, I got a call from Andy Jenkins, the editor or FREESTYLIN' magazine, asking me to write an article about a contest for them.  A door opened out of nowhere, and I took that opportunity.  Then they offered me a job at Wizard Publications, the publisher of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  Another door opened as I walked down the corridor.  But I kept working towards being a pro freestyler practicing two or three hours nearly every night.  Then I got laid off at the magazines.  I was still a long way from being a pro caliber rider, but I found a factory sponsorship with Raleigh.   I got free bikes for a year, but didn't get paid and we didn't tour.

 I found a job at the American Freestyle Association, editing their newsletter.  A new job, and I kept riding to improve my abilities.  One day, after working a few months, Bob Morales, my boss, walked in and asked me if I wanted to produce a TV commercial for the upcoming contest in Austin, Texas.  I had absolutely no idea how to produce a TV commercial.  Another door opened up along the corridor, and I took the opportunity.  I produced the commercial, with tons of help from the people at Unreel Productions, the video company owned by Vision Street Wear. I went on to produce six contest videos for the AFA that year, and spent a lot of time at Unreel.  In December of that year, Unreel offered me a job.  Another door opened and I took the opportunity.  a couple years later, I was the Unreel staff cameraman, and I wound up on the ramp in the video clip above.

I never became a pro freestyler.  But I did have a factory sponsor for a year, even though it wasn't a company that focused on BMX.  I also wound up going on a summer tour for three weeks with Vision skateboarders Buck Smith, Mike Crum, Chris Gentry, and Mark Oblow.  When Vision got into business trouble, another door opened, and I wound up working on TV shows.  I worked on over 300 individual episodes of a dozen different TV shows in the 90's.  I produced my own bike video, which led to the opportunity to produce and edit the first two videos for S&M Bikes.

As a kid in Idaho, I had what seemed like a ridiculous dream of becoming a pro BMX freestyler, getting a factory sponsorship, and going on tour.  I didn't achieve that goal of becoming a pro.  But  I did get sponsored, and I did go on a tour, and I met a few women along the way.  More important, because of that initial goal, I had opportunities pop up that went far beyond my initial dream.  That's the corridor concept in action.

Sometimes you set a big goal and avoid all distractions to achieve it.  But sometimes even greater opportunities come along on the way to that first goal. Either way, the initial goal and work is worth the effort.

Journey of The White Bear #13: Goal setting works... sometimes

You'd think an old school, has been, BMX guy like me would show some amazing BMX feat as an example of goal setting.  But this amazing move by Kyler Storm sums it up better.  I worked on the crew, I was one of the guys in the black shirts and shorts with the big pads, like those you see in the background.  I saw this happen live.  Kyler spent the night before visualizing this move over and over and over in his head.  I know this because he told me.

Life Lesson: Goal setting works, but not every time

In my four seasons working on the crew of the American Gladiators TV show, I met a wide variety of people with great athletic ability.  But Kyler Storm stands out among them.  He was a good athlete.  But he was also a guy who was really into using goal setting and visualization to achieve an amazing feat.  In his first season on the show, Kyler pulled off this crazy move on our Hang Tough game, where the contestant swings across rows of rings and attempts to get past the gladiator to the opposite platform.

For us working on the show, especially my crew of spotters who actually practiced the games with the contenders, we spent several days working with them.  Most of the contenders, and the Gladiators themselves, trained hard at weight lifting and other athletic pursuits, in order to win the weird games on the show.  But Kyler Storm stood out as a person who took visualization and goal setting to a much greater level.  He told us this as we practiced with him.  I remember him telling me, the year before about trying the flip over the Gladiator like in the clip above.  It wasn't a spontaneous move, he spent a long time visualizing that particular move until he felt he could pull it off.

So in the course of competing on the show, Kyler pulled a couple of the most amazing moves in the whole eight years of the show.  He set very specific goals, he visualized these particular goals over and over and over until he was able to pull them off.  It was a great example of the power of setting a goal and visualizing that goal until it was achieved.

Every human being has the power to set very specific goals, visualize those goals over a period of time, work towards achieving those goals, and ultimately succeed.  But there's another part to goal setting, and that's deciding if your goal is truly worthwhile.  Over the course of my adult life, I've seen entrepreneurs on TV infomercials, and now on the web, talking about how they can help you get rich and live your dreams.  Then these guys take you on a video tour of their huge, but empty, house and garage full of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and other expensive cars.  Those guys have achieved their financial goals.

But, are they better people because they have achieved their goals?  Is the world a better place because they have achieved their goals?  Maybe, maybe not.  It's easy to judge these guys and say they're just materialistic and shallow.  But maybe they're donating to a good cause and just not telling us.  Maybe they're teaching other people new ways to make a decent living and that leads to positive outcomes for a bunch of people. In most cases, those "get rich quick" guys come across pretty materialistic and the world's not a much better place because they have a Lambo for each day of the week.  But they do show us that goal setting can work, like Kyler did for us on the Gladiators set.

Just because some dorky guy makes a fortune in real estate or affiliate marketing, and spends the money on a big house and fast cars to attract women, doesn't mean that goal setting and visualization are bad things.  Each of us can learn these skills practice these skills, and use these skills how we want.  Or we can not use them at all.  We can use them in the ways we think can have a positive impact on those around us and the world, or we can just try to accumulate lots of stuff.

Goal setting, visualizing, and achieving goals are a set of skills.  A big part of that set of skills is stepping back and considering whether that particular goal is really worth achieving.  I've spent much of my life struggling with self esteem and self worth issues, and was afraid to set big goals.  I'm now, finally, starting to set some pretty big goals again, but I'm carefully evaluating whether the goals do some good for more than just myself.  It's hard to achieve a goal if deep down you don't think you deserve it.  Dealing with that and other issues is one part of goal setting.

Goal setting can work.  But it's a skill that you spend a lifetime working on.  Goal setting, whether they're written down, thought out goals, or more intuitive goals, is probably the main thing that sets apart people who achieve a lot from people who cruise through life but don't get or give much out of it. 

Journey of The White Bear #11: Handshakes not autographs

This clip is a San Francisco Bay Area local program that aired in September, 1986.  I actually moved to Southern California after this was shot and before it aired.  You can see me chasing my bike at 5:07, that's a trick I used to do in parades in Idaho.  It's a lame trick, but it got me in the clip.  At 1:39, on the left, you can see me going into a trick called the quickspin, which was a pretty good trick at the time. 

Life Lesson: Handshakes not autographs

When I started riding with Idaho's only trick team in 1984, I was a completely shy guy who was suddenly doing shows in front of crowds, getting the occasional mention in the newspapers, and even showing up on local TV.  That was all intimidating, but it helped me to start breaking out of my shell.  It also was a time when people started giving me advice on how to succeed, which is pretty funny, because no one saw a future in BMX freestyle.  But random people at shows, adults much older than me, would walk up and say I should do this or that to promote myself and the team.  Luckily for me, my teammate Justin's mom was very extroverted, and booked all of our shows. 

One thing I decided on my own was that when I started meeting sponsored and pro riders, I would shake their hand and introduce myself, rather than asking for an autograph.  Most riders from places away from California would ask pro riders to sign their jersey or number plate or a magazine cover.  But from my first trip to a big event in Venice Beach, California in 1985, I just started introducing myself to the riders and industry people I met. 

To be clear, they were all pretty approachable, it wasn't like walking up to Lebron James at a game today.  But I never asked for an autograph.  I don't know just how much that helped me, but as luck would have it, my dad got a job in San Jose, California in 1985.  The family moved in early summer, and I worked my summer job at a little amusement park in Boise, and then drove to San Jose in late August.  I met Skyway pro freestyler Robert Peterson, who lived in the Bay Area, at a contest the year before.  It took me about a month to track him down in that huge area in those pre-internet days, but I eventually started hanging out with him, Maurice Meyer, the main guy in the clip above, and many other great riders.  I'll go more into how I met these guys in the next post.

Though I wasn't near as good of a rider as most of the Golden Gate Park locals, they welcomed me and I became part of the crew.  I learned several things from hanging out with those riders, but one was that there's a whole different mentality to asking a "famous" person for an autograph (or selfie these days) and introducing yourself.  Even if they meet lots of people and forget you, if you see them again sometime, you can say "I met you at ________ last year and introduced myself."  It's much easier to get a conversation with them than, "You signed my neck at a show last year."  It's a lot less creepy for them, too. 

In every field of endeavor, there are a relatively small number of people who really make things happen.  Taking 20 seconds to introduce yourself may lead to an opportunity down the line.  You never know.

I'm starting up an online store soon to put out my writing and art.  If you like anything you've read here and would like to contribute to my start-up, you can do it here.

Journey of The White Bear #9: A tiny change can change the course of your life

This clip is the first BMX track I ever saw in person and raced at, built behind Fort Boise, in a drained sewer pond, at the edge of the foothills on the north side of Boise.  I went with three guys from the trailer park to a race in October 1982, and watched as the other three raced.  The next weekend we piled all the BMX kids and bikes into my dad's van, and we all raced the last race of 1982.  We all won trophies, much to the dismay of the points chasing locals.  No one could figure out where all us kids on cheap ass bikes in T-shirts a blue jeans came from.  They really couldn't figure out why we were all so fast, considering we were all new to racing BMX.

Life Lesson: A tiny change in direction can lead to a completely different future

We just didn't have anything better to do outside of town in the trailer park, so we rode our BMX bikes every evening for six months, constantly pushing each other.  For me, what began as just another activity to do after school, turned into a vendetta against a couple of the guys in the trailer park that always made fun of me.  When I raced that first race, in the 17 novice class in 1982, my life turned slightly in different direction. That tiny change in direction, starting to actually race my BMX bike, changed the course of my life.  It happened at the sketchy little track above, a place unknown to nearly all of the 100,000 people living in Boise at the time.

In 1982, BMX bikes, because of their small wheels, were considered "little kids bikes" to most people.   Spending a couple hours a day riding one was considered a complete waste of time by my parents, my high school friends, and everybody except the other junior high and high school kids in the trailer park.  Obviously my BMX thing was just some crazy teenage phase, and I'd soon outgrow it, because there could not possibly be any future in it for me.

But it felt right to me, and I kept riding.  And then I came home with a little third place trophy from my first race.  Suddenly, BMX wasn't just something kids did to avoid homework, it was a sport.  A sport that I was kind of good at.  I started riding even harder, and started to dream about a future in the BMX world.

That's what I encouraged all of you reading this to do with the workshop in the last post.  Dream.  Dream BIG.  If you took the time to go through my workshop, then you now have a list of things you would like to do if you won the lottery or get an inheritance of your Uncle Bill's Apple stock.

Look at that list.  What really sounds interesting to you?  Let's say you listed a trip to Greece while answering the questions, and you later wrote that you'd like to see the ruins of ancient Greece and photograph them.  I'm just using this as a random example.  If that's what interests you, what can you do TODAY to start heading towards that goal?  You probably don't have money or time at the moment for a trip to Greece.  That's OK.  What can you do TODAY?  Look up Greece on Wikipedia.  read a little about the history.  Do you know what happened to Santorini Island back then?  Look it up.  Could you get a book or watch a video about Greece?  Could you make a trip to a Greek restaurant and ask the owner about the country?  You can't go wrong with a piece of baklava, trust me.

Now I know most of you probably didn't list Greece on your dream vacation list.  But look at the things you did list.  Take one small, but interesting, step towards those goals today.  Even if it's just a few minutes looking that subject up on the web, do it.  Or maybe you could print out a photo of that spot or activity to hang in your cubicle.  Take one small step today.

The reason I mentioned Greece was because when I first created my Clarity workshop, a trip to Greece was one of my dreams.  I saw the movie Summer Lovers while in high school, and wanted to go to Greece after that.  I never went.  But I did read up on Greece in the encyclopedia (Google it kids), and I rented a couple of documentaries about Greece.  I later tried some home made baklava at a convenience store near my house.  Years later I even worked for a taxi company owned by a Greek family.  For me, that was enough.  It was a subject that interested me, and I followed that thread for a while, but other interests seemed more interesting, and I followed those.

You'll find the same thing to be true.  Some of the things you wrote down in the Clarity workshop seem like things you really, really want to do right now.  When you start following those dreams in a small way, you may find that those things are just a passing interest, or something you want to experience.  That's just fine.  As you evolve and grow in life, some interests will come and go, and some will grow and become an important part of your life, like BMX did for me. So take a small step today towards one of your dreams today.  Then check back with this blog tomorrow.

I'm at a transition point in my own life right now.  For a variety of reasons, I haven't found a job in this area of North Carolina.  My eclectic work history doesn't play well in this conservative area.  That's fine.  I decided to create my own job.  I'm turning my art and writing into a small business.  I'll also be moving out of my current apartment, and will be homeless for a while as I get my business going.  If you have found this series of posts helpful, and would like to contribute to my future work, you can do it here.

Journey of The White Bear #7: A new hobby learned in an old trailer park

Old School BMX freestylers know the name "2-Hip" well, but many forget it started with a two man trick team in San Francisco.  Ron Wilkerson and Rich Avella, in a TV clip from 1984, the year BMX freestyle became its own sport.

 Life Lesson: Everybody needs an outlet

As my family moved from town to town as I grew up, when things got tough at home, I headed to the woods to get away.  In New Mexico, I headed to the edge of the desert.  Then in Boise, Idaho, in high school, we moved to a trailer park outside of town.  Technically, the area around Boise isn't true desert, it's steppe, but we called it desert.  Waste high sagebrush stretched for miles.  I started wandering and exploring on foot, and then on my BMX bike.  It was a Sentinal Exploder GX, basically a "Kmart special" bike I bought from a friend in New Mexico for $5 right before we moved.

All the young guys in Blue Valley Mobile Home Park had crappy BMX bikes.  Every summer evening, as it cooled down outside, we gathered to play whiffle ball, basketball, football, or to ride our BMX bikes on the little jumps some motorcycle rider had built.  As the summer passed, we got more and more into BMX.  It was simple, we all tried to out ride and out jump each other.  We began to push each other day after day.  As our cheap bike parts broke, we mowed lawns or babysat to earn money to buy better bike parts.  Or we stole them.  It was the summer of 1982, and BMX became our thing. 

In addition to hitting our little 18" high jumps to flat and carving through berms in the evenings, I rode for miles on the Jeep trails, exploring the desert.  In the beginning it wasn't about being a great rider, it was just about getting away from drama and frustration at home, and burning off the energy of a teenager. 

But it quickly became something else.  We started buying BMX magazines and reading about the pro riders, far off in California.  We found the Boise BMX track and started racing.  BMX became our thing.  We practiced racing each other and we built our jumps bigger.  We also started to learn simple tricks from the magazines.  BMX trick riding and skatepark riding was in the magazines.  Then, the next summer, my parents bought a house in town.  By that time, BMX had become my thing.

In the spring of 1984, I heard about a show of an actual freestyle team in Boise.  I went to the show, met local freestylers Jay Bickel and Wayne Moore, and soon forgot all about racing.  I was graduating from high school, getting a summer job, and planning to go to college to become a wildlife biologist.  But I spent most of my free time practicing tricks on my BMX bike.  At that time, EVERYONE thought that was stupid.  That little bike wasn't going to take me anywhere.  But it felt right to me, so I kept riding and improving.  By the summer of 1984, I took Wayne's place on Idaho's first BMX trick team.  That changed the course of my entire life, and set the stage for all kinds of adventures to come. 

What started as an outlet for frustration turned into the thing that set the course for many years of my adult life.  I followed my dreams... and that has made all the difference.

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

Cernicky of Death: still from Barge at Will video

 This guy with the weird smile is skater Mark Cernicky in 1989 at the Yorba Linda ramp.  This was the only section in Vision's 1989 video, Barge at Will, that I shot all the footage for.  I was totally stoked how that section came out, and Mark was, too.

Here's Mark a few years ago, he started racing motorcycles, and has a great gig now, it seems.

Crail slide on a mini

Remember when you had friends in the 80's that said, "Dude! I just got a tattoo gun!"

Stalefish on vert.

Pivot fakie

Toed out (on purpose) frontside air.  These shoots were a couple of fun days with the big ol' 35 pound betacam.

Professional Sidekick

 My name is Steve Emig, and in 1991 I got tagged with the nickname, The White Bear, by my then roommate BMXer/entrepreneur, Chris Moeller.  That's become my penname over the years.  I've spent much of my life as kind of a professional sidekick.  The photo above is a still from the 1989 Vision Skateboards video, Barge At Will.  I'm still not sure who Will was, but we were supposed ot barge at him.

 The skater on the left, above, is Ken Park, airing over the spine and channel on Tony Hawk's Fallbrook mini ramp.  I'm the guy sitting on the rail to the right.  I was hoping to actually meet Tony that day, working as an assistant for Don Hoffman.  But Tony was off doing a demo.  I did have lunch with Don and Frank Hawk, Tony's dad, which was pretty epic day in the skateboarding world then.

 Here's skater Joe Johnson, same video, same spine.  This is from the Super 8 footage I shot that day, while Don Hoffman was shooting amazing 35mm footage that the skaters didn't like because it didn't show their whole body.  Can't please skaters.

 Same video, with Kele Rosecrans snapping an ollie over a little banked hip at a school.  That's me in the background, with the 35 pound, $50,000 betacam over my head.  Video cameras were beasts back then.

Ken Park again, boardslide over the same spine.  That's me standing against the pole on the far left, shooting Super 8 footage, I think.  I've done a lot of things in my 50 years on this planet.  It's time to stop being a sidekick and do my own thing.  Welcome to my blog of my stuff.