My work that's available online for free

Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip King of Dirt at Mission Trails near San Diego in the spring of 1991.  We were deep in the grips of the 1990 recession, BMX was "dead" according to the bike industry.  Only the hardcore riders were left.  And this happened.  Personally, I consider this the first Mega Ramp.  None of us had seen a huckfest like this before.  It was one of those contests where we all walked away knowing that much, much more was possible on a BMX bike.  This is footage I shot that was later used in the S&M Bikes video Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer.

My current blogs:

Steve Emig Art
In 2005, while actually living in an indie art gallery in Anaheim, California I developed a way of shading with Sharpie markers I call "scribble style."  As far as I know, no one else in the world uses this particular technique.

How to Make Your Lame City Better, Part 1
This blog is where I'm exploring ideas in public which I will ultimately self-publish in a book.  The theme is about why creative scenes (art, music, film, action sports, etc.) are a major force in today's economy, and how to build, nurture, and enhance those scenes.

Cash Poor Story Rich 
I've got lots of stories from the early days of BMX freestyle, working on TV crews, being a taxi driver, and being homeless.  This is where I put those stories.

Steve Emig Thinks
Every once in a while I write a post about current events or ideas.

Check Out Downtown Kernersville
Kernersville, North Carolina, where I currently live, has a cool little scene of shops in the old downtown area.  Since I'm working on a book about creative scenes, I realized I needed to blog about the one closest to home.

My four best known BMX freestyle videos

44 Something
Made for S&M Bikes, 1993, I produced and edited the video.  Total budget, about $750 including beer money, the video sold about 8,000 copies, one of the best selling BMX videos of all times.  44 Something was named one of the Top Ten BMX videos of the 90's by BMXPlus! magazine.

The Ultimate Weekend
This is my 1990, completely self-produced BMX freestyle video, featuring about 40 top riders.  Along with Eddie Roman and Mark Eaton, I was one of the first three BMX freestylers to self-produce videos, pioneering a major trend in action sports.  I'm in the intro doing a wall ride over my sister's head, and wearing the Vision Street Wear T-shirt riding the Nude Bowl much later.

Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer (1991-sections)
Chris Moeller
Dave Clymer
Alex Leech
Jimmy Levan
This 1991 video the I produced for the fledgling BMX bike company S&M Bikes.  The company was being run out of a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach, California at the time.  I edited the video with my camera and a VCR, sitting on the floor of that apartment with a 40 of Mickey's.  Crazy night.

2-Hip BHIP
 This is the 1988 2-Hip season video that I produced for Ron Wilkerson, pro freestyler, contest promoter, and later founder of Wilkerson Airline Bikes.  I made this in early 1989, and the original title was 2-Hip-The '88 Adventure.  I made $500 for editing this video, which I immediately sent to my sister who needed money at college.

A few random video clips I'm either in or had something to do with

In this 1986 clip of Maurice Meyer and the Golden Gate Park freestyle scene, you can see me chasing my bike at 5:07.  Seriously, that was a trick back then, mostly used to make people laugh while riding in parades, I'd jump off my bike, run after it frantically, then jump back on at speed.

My video career began in the summer of 1987 when I worked at the American Freestyle Association, writing their newsletter and doing a bit of everything for $5 an hour.  My boss, Bob Morales walked in one day and said, "I just found out I can buy local spots on MTV for the Austin contest for $25 each, do you wanna make a TV commercial?"  After producing that really bad commercial, I got the job of producing flatland and ramp videos from three of the contests we put on that year.  We only sold about 30 to 50 of each of those six videos.  But somehow, a handful of clips from those videos made it into the BMX documentary Joe Kid on a Stingray many years later.  I had absolutely nothing to do with the documentary, but the shot of Mat Hoffman at 2:17 in that trailer, and the shot of Kevin Jones right after that, are from those early AFA videos I made.  


I edited this video of the first 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee, California, and you can see me ghost ride my bike into the big wall at 3:07.  This was one of those contests that changed riding forever. 

As luck would have it, I was on the deck shooting video during Mat Hoffman's first 900 on a bike in 1989 in Kitchener, Ontario Canada.  I'm on the opposite of the ramp wearing black and white splotched Vision Street Wear "cow" pants with the big betacam video camera.

In this clip of Joe Johnson at Wooward BMX camp in 1989, you can see me shooting video.  I'm on the near end of the right side of the vert ramp, white shorts and a white Vision Street Wear T-shirt, with the big betacam on my shoulder.  I think Joe was still an amateur at this point, and he and Mat Hoffman battled it out every contest.   You see Joe pull the first double tailwhip in a vert contest near the end of this clip, and then try a triple tailwhip.  Joe was way ahead of his time.

Here's another 2-Hip King of Vert contest in Colorado in the summer of 1989.  I'm shooting video, on the far side of the left deck with the big betacam.  Mat Hoffman stopped being The Condor and became Thor for this contest.  I never did find out who was making up the rider's nicknames on the scoreboard.

2-Hip Meet the Street contest at the legendary Brooklyn Banks, 1989.  that was one of those contests that stands out in everyone's mind.  I'm somewhere on the ground, in the chaos, shooting video for Vision with the big betacam.  The reason that contest is really memorable to me is because Vision rider Rich Bartlett and me shared a room.  We let a few guys crash on the floor of our room since money was tight.  Those guys on our floor included Dennis McCoy, Mat Hoffman, Steve Swope, Rick Thorne, and a couple other Kansa City riders.  Just riding Manhattan with those guys was insane.  Oh, and the contest was pretty cool, too. 



Tom Petty's "Freefallin'" video, 1989, I think.  I had nothing to do with making the music video, but since they used the Vision Skateboard's mini-ramp, and I worked for Vision's video company, I got the job of shooting behind the scenes footage all day.  Fun day, craft service table and no stress. Tom Petty's a cool dude.

In this clip of skater Ken Park, from the 1989 Vision Skateboards video, Barge at Will, you can see me sitting in the background a few times wearing all white.  This was shot at Tony Hawk's Fallbrook house, and I had lunch with Frank Hawk, Tony's dad that day.  Good day.

In early 1990, Unreel Productions was dissolved, and I was moved into the Vision Skateboards main office.  But I had one last project before we cleaned out Unreel's $500,000 edit bay.  Legendary pool and street skater Christian Hosoi teamed up with Vision for a new company called Tuff Skts.  I spent three days hanging out and shooting video with Christian and his guys, and then I went back and edited a 7 minute promo for the company.  The women in the Vision promotions office said that my video made Hosoi and his guys look like a bunch of hoodlums.  I replied, "They are a bunch of hoodlums, but they're great skaters."  So I cut the 7 minute promo down to four minutes, using music from Bad Brains and Muddy Waters in the background.  I lost my copy of the Tuff Skts promo, so here's the only surviving version, shortened even more with crappy music.

Mat Hoffman's 360 over flaming cars on Stuntmaster's.   This one still kind of amazes me.  In 1991, I was working at my first real "Hollywood" job, a PA at GRB Motorsports, an offshoot of GRB Productions.  My office was working on that season's Supercross and Monster Truck shows.  But at the main office worked Johnny Airtime, the motorcycle stuntman who spanned the years between Evel Knievel and Seth Enslow.  After the Mission Trails contest at the top of this post, I sent Johnny footage of that contest through our interoffice mail.  He freaked over it, called me up, and we brainstormed a BMX stunt on the phone.  I was trying to hook up my roommates Chris Moeller or Dave Clymer for the stunt, but Johnny brought up Mat.  Things in the TV world always get changed, but somehow this stunt happened just like the original idea, even thought I moved on to another job and didn't know it until a couple years later.

Wesley "2 Scoops" Berry versus Kyler Storm on Swingshot on American Gladiators.  If you pause this at :24, you can see me on Wesley's tower in the background.  Hey, when you're a crew guy, you're not supposed to show up much.  I worked four seasons as a spotter on the show, two years as the head of that crew.  It was a really fun place to work, though we worked really hard doing the biggest set changes in the history of TV at that point, 7 times a day.  By the way, Wesley Barry is undoubtedly the best athlete I've ever worked with. 

Long before Game of Thrones there was Knights & Warriors... which pretty much sucked.  Yeah, it didn't last long, but I was also a spotter on that show.  I'm probably in the background somewhere, but I'm not going to watch the whole thing to find myself.  Interesting note, Lady Battle Axe was played by Dot Jones, the funniest woman I've every met.  She went on to play Coach Bieste in Glee a couple years back.

Keeping with the theme of goofy 90's competition shows, I was also a spotter on Blade Warriors.  We're the guys in all black with the crash pads throughout the obstacle course.  The best thing about this show was getting to work early and skating the ramps.

In 1993, while living at the crazy P.O.W. BMX House, I opened the newspaper a couple weeks before rent was due to find a quick job.  I answered an ad for some new circus.  It was the first Orange County, California appearance of a fledgling French Canadian circus called Cirque du Soleil.  I got a job in the box office, a converted semi trailer that housed about 15 people, where we sold all the thousands of tickets for the run.  As soon as I saw the actual show, on dress rehearsal day, I was an instant fan.  Cirque came to Orange County every 2 to 3 years, and I worked on Saltimbanco in 1993, and the next four tours through O.C..  Those were Allegria, Quidam, Dralion, and Varekai.  Cirque du Soleil is not only the most creative group of people I've ever worked with, by far, it's the best run business I've ever seen.   For all you old school BMXers reading this, the guy in the big wheel at 1:20 in the Quidam promo is Chris Lashua, old school Northeast freestyle pro.

Sometimes fate just puts you in the right place at the right time.  I was standing at the bottom of the ramp, talking to old school freestyler Maurice Meyer, when Tony Hawk landed his first 900 at the 1999 X-Games.  THAT was an amazing moment to watch.

In the spring of 2000, I was living in my taxi in Orange County, California.  After a bunch of taxi drama, I took a solo road trip up Pacific Coast Highway to the redwoods for a week.  It was awesome.  I stopped at Denny's in Huntington Beach for a good meal before I went back to taxi driving.  I overheard some guys at another table saying they needed to find someone to build skateboard ramps for a movie.  With no home, no tools, and little money, I walked over and introduced myself.  I wound up getting the job to make a couple of big launch ramps for the horrible Christian propaganda movie Extreme Days.  I built the ramps the next day using borrowed tools in my old roommates' driveway.  I worked through the night out of a Uhaul truck behind a grocery store in Studio City to make the 5 am call time the next day.  I made $500 in a couple days, got a day on the set with free food, and some Powell Peralta skater ollied a dumpster and the actors in the VW Thing car from my ramp.  The movie totally sucked, but may be historic as the first Christian movie to have a three minute long fart lighting scene.

 After a couple years of furniture moving, I got back into the entertainment industry with a job at a lighting company called ELS.  I worked in the warehouse mostly, prepping lights to go out to films and TV shows, corporate parties, or concerts.  Every once in a while I got to go out and work in the field.  Two times that stand out are the day I spent working on the set of Viva Rock Vegas, the second Fred Flintstone movie.  I spent a very hot day inside the giant hamburger in Bedrock, setting up lights for a Flintstone fashion show that was hyping the movie.  Man I wish I would have had a camera with me that day.

I got called later to work tearing down after the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets movie premiere.  Emma Watson's plane was late, so I made an extra $32 while sitting on a road case and eating tacos waiting for her to show up.  Thanks Emma.

At one point, I decided to try to get into film work, as opposed to TV production.  So I bought a list of names of producers from an ad in the Hollywood Reporter, and I cold called the list looking for work.  About ten names in, a woman told me, "We need PA's (production assistants) in downtown L.A. tonight, how soon can you get there?  I got there in an hour, and worked 17 hours straight on a music video.  I'd never even heard of the singers.  That night they shot the alley fight scenes in the rain for K-Ci and JoJo's "Crazy."  My job was standing at the end of the alley and keeping homeless people from walking through the shot.  I saw the biggest rats I've ever seen that night, and I made $225.  Hollywood is crazy.  I planned to keep doing that kind of work, but my car got towed for parking tickets a few days later and I couldn't afford to get it out of impound.  I eventually went back to taxi driving.

Here's me getting interviewed by the Winston-Salem Journal for being the first person to draw a picture in the Forsyth Central Library's "Leave Your Mark," project.  2011?

Richard Johnson and AAA Electra 99 Gallery in Anaheim, California.  I'm not in this clip, but in 2005-2006 I was the janitor/artist/kitten wrangler at Electra.  I drove Richard's taxi on the weekends, and hung out in the gallery during the week.  That's where my Sharpie "scribble style" of art was born.

My Three Top Blogs

I started seriously blogging after coming to North Carolina at the beginning of The Great Recession, in November 2008.  My first blog was called FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales, and was over 200 posts about my short stint working at FREESTYLIN' magazine in 1986. I followed that up with a blog called Freestyle BMX Tales, which was tales from my days in the BMX freestyle world in the 1980's.  I wrote over 500 posts on that blog.  Then in 2010, I started a blog called Make Money Panhandling as a joke.  I just wanted to see if I could get that title to the top of Google results.  I realized, having been homeless for quite a while, that I had a lot to write about the subject.  These three blogs together got over 160,000 total page views, and each blog was #1 in the world in its niche.  During a dark time in my life, after my dad died in August 2012, I took down all my blog posts, over 2,000 across several blogs.  I'm really bummed now that I took them down, but... that's life.

 Eulogy to my FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog by ESPN BMX editor Brian Tunney.

Write up about my Freestyle BMX Tales blog by Bart DeJong, publisher of FATBMX.com in the Netherlands

 The Vision videos

I got a job a Unreel Productions in December 1987, because I spent so much time there working on the AFA videos.  Unreel was the video production company owned by Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear.  I was just a production assistant, doing a little bit of everything, and I didn't have much input on most of the videos.  But I was part of the crew that made all these a bunch of videos.  Unreel also made the first syndicated action sports TV series, called Sports on the Edge.  Back then, when my bosses tried to sell a show to ESPN, the suits at ESPN said, "Nobody wants to watch skateboarding on TV... and what the hell is snowboarding?"  They changed their mind six years later with the "Extreme Games" which became the X Games a year later.  We at Unreel were ahead of our time.

Vision Street Wear commercial (This was shot on the same stage where Motley Crue shot their "Girls, Girls, Girls" video two weeks earlier).

Vision Skate Escape (1989)

Red Hot Skate Rock (the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988)

Freestylin' Fanatics  (I wrote the voice overs for the Dave Vanderspek and Brian and Dave sections)

Mondo Vision

Psycho Skate

Sims Snow Shredders  I came up with the "28 hours a day, 9 days a week" line in the intro

Sims Snow Daze

P.O.W. BMX House video... COMING SOON... since 1992.

I've merged most of my ideas and blogs into a new blog:
The White Bear's Making a Scene
You can find my new stuff there.