Bunker Hill United Methodist Church

In the last year, as I worked through a whole slew of issues, Ann Tester from our church has become a good friend.  She donated some money to me after hearing of my Go Fund Me campaign, but didn't even want a drawing.  When I pressed her, she said she'd like a drawing of our church.  This is the first building I've done in this style, and it worked out pretty well.  Thanks Ann for all your help.  Sharpies on paper, 8 1/2" X 11."

RIP Dave Mirra drawing

After the tragic and untimely death of BMX and X-Games legend Dave Mirra a couple weeks ago, BMXers everywhere have been sharing photos, stories and painting their pedals gold in his memory.  My old friends Randy Lawrence and Keith Treanor held a memorial jam in Menifee, CA, that drew hundreds of riders.  I couldn't make it out west that day, so I spent the day drawing my favorite photo of Dave.  There are dozens and dozens of great photos of Dave riding.  But for some reason, his tail tap on the basketball backboard blew my mind when I first saw it.  RIP Dave.  #goldpedalsformirra .

Tuti playing soccer

Since I started a Go Fund Me campaign a few weeks ago to crowdfund my new business, I've been shamelessly hitting up my Facebook friends to do drawings.  BMX racer and former roommate Mike Haupt hit me up to do this drawing of his daughter playing soccer.  "Tuti" isn't her real name, it's her nickname.  This is the first soccer player I've drawn, and it came out pretty well.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18." 

In the early 1990's, I was roommates with S&M Bikes founder Chris Moeller for about five years.  During that time, we had literally hundreds of wayward BMXers sleep on our couch and floor.  One of those guys was Brendan Thompson. Here he is back in the day with a tree ride fakie on one of Chris' favorite palm trees in Huntington Beach, California.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18."  Moeller used to do fakies on this palm tree on his beach cruiser, with loose handlebars and a coaster brake, while drunk.  Night after night, beer run after beer run.  I don't know how he did it.  

Carolina Panthers Linebacker Luke Kuechly

I did this pic for a local Panthers fan.  As crazy as it sounds, it was hard to find a good photo of Luke to work from.  He's usually in the middle of a pile making a tackle, which doesn't make for a great photo of him alone.  I guess this pic is of Luke running after catching an interception.  That's something he does on a regular basis.  I was pretty stoked on how this pic came out, and even got a positive comment on it from the local WFMY sports anchor.  Cool.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24."  Luuuuuuuuuuke!  Did I mention he sacked Peyton Manning in Super Bowl 50.  Oh yeah, he did. 

In BMX Superman Doesn't Wear Spandex

This is one I did just to see how it would look.  This stretched Superman seat grab by BMX jumper T.J. Lavin was one of those photos that changed the way we all think about BMX.  People saw it and thought, "Oh crap, that's possible?"  Nowadays you can see this trick in FSMX, on vert, and on mountain bikes.  But T.J. was the first to really stretch one out like this.  I'm not real happy with this drawing, but, like I said,, it was an experiment.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18."

More Cowbell

"More Cowbell" is one of the classic old Saturday Night Live sketches.  I'm not a big SNL fan, but I see their stuff from time to time.  Yesterday I was in WalMart and walked through the craft aisle.  For some reason they had cowbells there.  I think they were to paint logos on or something, like for a cheerleading squad or fans at a football game.  Just down the aisle were big wooden letters.  I grabbed four letters, spelled the word "MORE" on the floor, and sat a cowbell beside the "E."  I don't have a phone, so I couldn't take a pic.  I could only hope that whomever found it watched SNL years ago.  Art is where you find it. 

How Panhandling Turned Into Performance Art

You've all seen poor people with cardboard signs asking for money.  Panhandlers.  Most are homeless.  Maybe you've even given these people a dollar or two.  I was one of those people (to see more of my funny panhandling signs, click here).  When I first did it I was unemployed and having trouble finding a job.  It was humiliating... until I got my first $20 bill.  After that, it didn't feel so bad.  The money helped me buy food and pay bills during a tough time.  Years later, when the taxi industry went downhill, I wound up on the streets of Orange County, California, and I had to panhandle to survive.  There simply was no other viable option at that point.  But like many other jobs I've had, I wasn't content to do it the way every other homeless person did.  In fact, at the time, I was toying with the idea of doing stand-up comedy to escape the floundering taxi industry.  I wrote pages and pages of comedy material while sitting in my cab, and worked those ideas into comedy bits.  But I never made it onstage at an open mic night.  I chickened out.  Before I got the comedy idea going, there came a point where I could no longer afford to keep driving a taxi.  I was also having severe health issues caused by my crazy taxi lifestyle at the time.  One evening I dropped off my taxi and walked out onto the streets with about $15 in my pocket.  I expected to die on the streets within two or three weeks.  Obviously, I didn't die.  I started "flying a sign," as we call it in the panhandling world.  I survived entirely on the gifts from strangers.  I hated relying on other people.  But the generosity I saw also rekindled my hope for humankind.  Then one night, things changed.

It started with Britney Spears

After a couple months of homelessness, literally sleeping at bus stops or in the bushes, I had enough money to get a really cheap motel room for the night.  I had a warm bed, a hot shower, and good meal from the Chinese restaurant across the street.  After two months of being continually cold and miserable, it felt amazing to be indoors.  It's amazing what most people take for granted every day.  But the motel was so cheap, that it didn't even have cable.  So I sat in the chair, my feet up on the bed, my take-out food in my lap, and I watched TMZ.  As it happened, that was the time when Britney Spears had her famous meltdown, shaved her head, and acted completely nuts for a while.  On that particular night, the paparazzi caught her coming out of a court appearance and swarmed around her car.  For some reason, Britney was talking with a bad British accent.  In the midst of that chaos, a homeless man walked up to her car and asked Britney for money.  "You're probably better off than I am," she replied in the accent.  I just started laughing.  Then, on a whim, I pulled my panhandling sign out of my backpack, grabbed my marker, and wrote on the back of it, "Better off than Britney."  I put the sign back in my pack, and didn't think much of it.

The next day, I left the motel, and went back out on the streets.  I went to one of my favorite panhandling spots, and took my position with my sign.  When people driving ignored my "Homeless and Hungry" sign, I flipped it over and showed them the "Better off than Britney" side.  The second time I did this, a big, burly, tattooed guy in the second lane motioned me over.  He handed me a $5 bill and said, "I saw her on TMZ last night, your sign is hilarious."  After that guy, other people responded to the sign as well.  A group of college girls, probably from nearby Cal State Fullerton, hung out their car windows, laughed, and tried to take my photo.  That same group of girls went around a really big block, and drove by me three more times, saying they wanted a pic for Facebook, they, too, thought my sign was hilarious.

I realized something that night when I thought about it.  There was a way I could give back to the people in all those cars driving by me while I was panhandling.  With a few words on a cardboard sign, I could make complete strangers laugh.  Think about that.  In a sense, I was no longer just begging for money to survive, I was performing for these people.  People who tried to ignore me.  Most people simply don't want to see the homeless.  Most people want to think those people are there for a reason.  Just for the record, I didn't drink while I was homeless.  After years of being a taxi driver where random drug and alcohol tests could happen at any time, I just stopped drinking.  I didn't have a drug addiction either.  I became homeless by working 80 to 100 hours a week as a taxi driver.  The industry started to change drastically because of technology (sound familiar to anyone?), and it became harder and harder to just survive.  Finally there came a point where I had to walk away.  Every homeless person has a back story, and a lot of those stories would surprise you.

Panhandling in North Carolina

After almost a year on the streets, trying several different legal ways to make money or get a job, I knew it just wasn't going to happen.  I called my family, who had wound up in North Carolina, a place I'd never lived.  I hadn't talked to my family much, and at one point, they reported me missing because I didn't call them during the Christmas holiday season.  After my call, they rallied together and flew me to North Carolina.  I stayed in the spare bedroom in my parents' small apartment.  After a couple weeks of decompressing, I started looking for a job.  I knew no one in NC.  The two well paying industries I'd worked in the most, BMX/skateboarding and the TV industry, didn't really exist in NC.  Even worse, I landed in North Carolina in November of 2008.  The Great Recession, as it would later be called, was in its early stages, and nobody knew what was going to happen.  And nobody was hiring in this small town.

Ultimately, I took off, and went to nearby Winston-Salem, a larger city that I hoped had better job prospects.  I landed in a homeless shelter, and tried to look for work.  Over the next couple of years, I panhandled some more.  I even got a permit to panhandle legally when that became necessary.  But panhandling in The South was a whole different ball game.  It may sound counter-intuitive, but people here in the Bible Belt actually gave a lot less to homeless panhandlers than people in California did.  There are many reasons for this, which I won't go into here.  But  I soon learned that I made about the same amount of money (usually $6 or $7 an hour) no matter what my sign said.  So I started  using funny signs exclusively.  It actually got to the point where I had fans.  I literally had people who would drive by day after day and thank me for making them laugh.  For me, I was no longer a beggar, I was a performance artist. Very few people can relate to that idea.  But I eventually found one person who experienced similar interactions while working as a human statue.  You can hear her story here, in Amanda Palmer's TED Talk.

What's my point in all of this?  It's this.  In one of the lamest situations, I was able to reframe the way I looked at my situation, and actually give something to the people I was begging money from.  It wasn't a huge thing, but several people actually told me that making them laugh during their daily commute helped them.  I suspect there were many more who felt the same way, but didn't tell me.  Even in the worst of situations, there are ways to make something positive out of it.  It just takes a little creativity.  And a sense of humor.

Kickflip

I met Athene years ago in the Huntington Beach BMX scene, when her son was still a toddler.  Now he's a teenager who can land kickflips.  Thanks Athene for supporting my effort to turn my scribbling into a legit little business.  Hope he's stoked on this pic.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18."

Shout out to the U of Delaware students I met tonight

I just found this clip above where director Spike Jonze talks about his early days of BMX and skateboarding and how that turned into a legendary movie career.  I too, got my big break from Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman and Gork at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  I only lasted five months there, and was laid off mostly because I was really uptight back then, and because I didn't like the band Skinny Puppy.  A couple months later Spike moved into my old job, and my old bedroom in Hermosa Beach.  He's just one of the BMXer/skater kids I met back then who turned out pretty well.  Yes, it's easy to name drop, but here's an article someone I don't know wrote about my blog about my days at FREESTYLIN' magazine.  I took that particular blog down in 2012, so there are only a few excerpts floating around from it.

We got a phone tree call from church the other day telling us there were 30 college students coming to our church tonight for dinner.  These students, from the  University of Delaware, are in our area for a week working for Habitat For Humanity, a non-profit that builds houses for people who really need them.  So props to those students for spending their break volunteering for a good cause.  Our small church goes all out for these occasions, and we had a potluck dinner that gave these students a good meal and some cartons of leftovers to take with them.  I hope you all enjoyed the food.

I took my recent Cam Newton drawings to show some of the church people what I've been doing lately.  I showed it to one guy, who I knew was a Denver Broncos fan, and we ended up in a big political discussion.  While I was talking, my mom grabbed my drawing pad and showed it to some of the visiting college students.  Sorry guys, I forgot your names already.  But that led to a long conversation about my Sharpie art and my weird path through life.  Meeting a 17-year-old Spike Jonze while working at FREESTYLIN' was one of the stories I shared.  It was really cool to meet complete strangers who like my weird artwork, and to share stories of how life can lead to things you can't possible imagine when you're 20-years-old.

To give you guys an idea of how much doing a weird little project can lead to other things, here's two videos that are older than you are.  The first one is my first self-produced BMX video from 1990 called The Ultimate Weekend.  The other video is Spike Jonze' first skate video, Blind Video Days from 1991 (I think).  The lesson here, get around the people who are making stuff happen, and opportunities will come.  The sole skateboarder in the middle of my bike video is Pierre Andre Senizergues, best known now as the founder of Sole Technology, the parent company of Etnies shoes (among other brands).  One of the skaters in Spike's Video Days is Jason Lee, who has acted in all kinds of roles, my personal favorite being the lead in My Name is Earl.  You never know who those motivated young kids will turn out to be. Another thing you may notice is that both of these videos really suck by all technical standards.  But they were stepping stones for both of us.  So why is Spike so much more successful than me?  First of all, he's damn near fearless.  Second, I had had a lot of issues to deal with back then.  I had more hang-ups than Kim Kardashian's closet.

OK, enough rambling.  Thanks again to all you students for checking out my crazy Sharpie drawings.  Right now I'm doing them cheaper than normal through my crowd funding campaign here.  Good luck working the rest of this week at Habitat, it looks like the weather will be better than today.  The last thought I'll leave you guys with is a book I think you should read.  Yeah, I know, you're in college and do way too much reading already.  But I think the book Linchpin by Seth Godin describes really well the kind of person who will thrive in today's and tomorrow's fast changing working environment.  You students are the future, make the most of it and have some fun along the way.  Have fun working this week and have a safe trip back to school.