Chapter 2: The Future the Media Shows You is Not the Future You Get

In this trailer from 1982, for the film noir, dystopian future, science fiction classic, Blade Runner, we see the familiar face of Harrison Ford, and hear his exposition...

Written by Steve Emig, The White Bear

"A blade runner's job is to hunt down replicants, manufactured humans you can't tell from the real thing."

He goes on to say that he's searching for " six people in a city of 106 million."  It's a good introduction in a movie about the far off, distant future.

About a month ago, I woke up about 4 am, with an idea for a writing project in my head.  I woke up in a parking lot, just over the hill from Hollywood, California, where I usually sleep as a homeless man.  I've been a writer for 34 years now, and I've learned how my creative process works pretty well, so waking up early in the morning with an idea is not unusual.  Part of the idea involved going back to my childhood and teenage era, and looking at futuristic TV shows and movies we saw then, to see how they envisioned the future.

I got on YouTube, and watched trailers for about 20 well known movies, from the classic 1927 Metropolis, all the way up to the Hunger Games trailer from 2012.  I wanted to see how these movies, mostly from the 20th century, envisioned our future, and compare those futures with the weird world we actually live in today.

A lot of my current ideas that I want to write about, are about our collective future, the period we're heading into right now, and what's going to happen in the next 5-10-20 years.  To give my ideas a context, I wanted to re-visit the futuristic ideas of my childhood, made in that era before computers, cell phones, the internet, and so many other technologies, entered our everyday lives.  It was an incredibly low tech era by today's standards.

Going through all those movie trailers, I saw a couple of main themes.  One theme was a future with an all powerful, authoritarian state, using massive surveillance and massive pressure towards conformity, to control the population.  George Orwell's 1984 exemplifies that theme.

 Security camera bubble, so common now, we don't even consciously notice them, subway train car, L.A., 2019. Photo by Steve Emig

The other main theme, and the one I actually remembered seeing more as a kid, was the "post apocalyptic, wander the desert and fight crazy people" theme.  That idea was almost expected by the time I was in high school in the early 1980's.  We half-believed that there would actually be a nuclear holocaust, and some of us would survive and wander the aftermath looking for other people... and food.

I remember sitting around the living room of my best friend's house, in Boise, Idaho, when a commercial, it might have been for Mad Max II: Road Warrior, came on TV.  One of my friends joked, "Man, I hope the apocalypse happens soon, because if it doesn't, we're going to all have to go get real jobs."  We all laughed, and mused about how cool it would be to wander around the ruins of a destroyed civilization, looking for the other few survivors.  In 1982, that lifestyle was far more appealing than the future we all faced, 40 years at a miserable office or factory job.

 Industrial age urban jungle area, Shockhoe Bottom district in Richmond, Virginia, searching for its place in today's transition growing Information Age, 2019.  Photo by Steve Emig

As I went back and watched the Blade Runner trailer a second time, I noticed something I missed at first.  The trailer starts with a silent title, "Los Angeles - November 2019."  I thought, "Oh shit,  I'm now living in "the future" of my high school self."  All of my generation, Generation X, is.  We are now living in the future era we dreamed about in high school.  We are now in the future imagined in movies like Blade Runner.

The craziest thing is that I was a high school kid in Boise, Idaho, dreaming about becoming a wildlife biologist in 1982, when Blade Runner came out.  Today I'm writing this in an actual paper notebook, in a McDonald's, in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, on November 26th, 2019.  I'm in Los Angeles county.  The actual city of L.A. is just over the line of small mountains behind me.  By some weird quirk of fate, I'm in the setting, in the exact time, the makers of Blade Runner were trying to imagine.

There are no replicants.  I don't have a flying car, nobody I know does.  Blade Runner, and all those dystopian futuristic movies of my youth, got "the future" almost completely wrong.  And yet, right now, "the future" of my high school self, is far different, far more amazing, and far worse, than everyone imagined.  Well, almost everyone.

"2019 is only a few years away, meaning Blade Runner will likely go down as another sci-fi film that failed to accurately predict the future."

-"Top Ten Futuristic Movie Cities," WatchMojo.com, in 2015

(Blade Runner's L.A. ranked #1 on the list, BTW)

The real new skyscrapers going up in downtown Los Angeles, juxtaposed with a bible verse on the side of a homeless shelter, late 2019, the exact time the 1982 movie Blade Runner was imagining.  Photo by Steve Emig

Written by Steve Emig (aka The White Bear)

The opinions above are mine, and are not officially endorsed by anyone in the videos shared, or anyone whose work I mention.  

Blogger's note- 8/26/2023- I have not changed any of the wording in any of these posts, not even the typos I originally missed. "Dystopia" makes a lot more sense to more people now that we have seen 3 1/2 years of chaos.  You can read more of my thoughts on my Substack:

Steve Emig: The White Bear's Substack

Chapter 7: The Power of Creative Scenes (what I did instead of college)

Instead of going to college after graduating high school in Boise, Idaho, in 1984, I rode my Skyway T/A BMX bike when not working, learning tricks on it.  I'm not dissing college,  I simply couldn't afford it, and my intuition and BMX freestyle led me in a far different direction.  A year later, my family moved to San Jose, California, and I wound up hanging out with these guys above, and riding at Golden Gate Parkevery weekend that I could. 

Written by Steve Emig, The White Bear

 In the summer of 1986, when this clip was shot, we were just a bunch of guys really into the emerging new sport of BMX freestyle.  We had no idea where the tiny sport was going, but it caught all of us, and most of all, it was fun.  The Golden Gate Park BMX freestyle and skate crew, known best for the Curb Dogs and Skyway factory teams, was what I now call a "Creative Scene."  We were a small group of people, all interested in something weird, new, and creative, BMX freestyle, in our case.  We hung out, we rode with each other, we fed off each other, we competed with each other, we pushed each other, and we helped each other.  That's what people in creative scenes do, whether it's a music scene, an art scene, or a tech scene, or any other creative scene.

The thing about creative scenes is that they attract highly creative people, often pretty weird and geeky people,and often shy, at first.  But those people push the limits, they try new things.  They fail often.  And sometimes they succeed, and break new ground in some way.  Ultimately, people in creative scenes progress.  Progression becomes a way of life.  When people progress, they invent new things.  In our case, in the mid 1980's, it was new tricks on BMX bikes, and new types of riding.  But something else also happens.  Us individuals in creative scenes begin to unlock our potential, we begin to learn, and understand, our personal creative processes, and that usually leads to other creative opportunities down the road.

In the NorCal/Golden Gate Park bike/skate scene, BMXer/skater Dave Vanderspek was the visionary leader and chief promoter.  He started the Curb Dogs, a freestyle (and skate) team that was so popular, it ranked right among the BMX factory teams in magazine polls.  Seen on local TV in this 1985 clip, Dave came across a lot like Jeff Spicoli at first, the crazy, stoner, surfer character that put actor Sean Penn on the map in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  It was easy to dismiss Dave as some crazy kid.  But along with founding and promoting the Curb Dogs team, and doing many shows, Dave promoted the first BMX halfpipe contest, the first BMX street contest, and was one of the pioneers of BMX street riding, and brought the punk rock and skateboard influence into BMX.  Dave died unexpectedly in 1988, apparently from pushing the limits in a very negative way.

Maurice "Drob" Meyer, was kind Dave's assistant manager, a solid pro rider for Skyway, though much quieter and less in the limelight.  Maurice went on to build the Curb Dogs website, which tells the story of Dave and this small team that inspired so many early BMX and skateboard riders.  What doesn't come across in these news segments or the website is all the time Dave and Maurice spent talking to and coaching us younger riders, and helping us improve.  At a time when most freestylers were all about themselves, just trying to get sponsored, Dave somehow intuitively sensed the importance of building and nurturing a true scene, a community of riders, and continually worked to make sure everyone was having fun and improving, no matter how good or new they were.  That was another area where Dave Vanderspek was far ahead of his time, and why so many riders and skaters were influenced by him and the other NorCal pro riders.

Maurice's brother Ray was a pro freestyle skater, but the standout skater from the Curb Dogs was young Tommy Guerrero, who became part of the legendary Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade, and one of the first pro street skaters, as you can see in this early clip from 1985.

NorCal's BMX vert guy, and Skyway team pro Hugo Gonzalez, made a name for himself by trying the craziest tricks and stunts no one else even dreamed of doing in those days.  For Hugo, landing was optional, and no one wanted to miss a chance to watch Hugo ride, because we never knew what he would try.  "Huck" should have been Hugo's middle name, as you can see in the clip.

Robert Peterson, another pro on the Skyway factory team, was best known for inventing BMX tricks that involved balancing in one place.  But 'Bert was also an inventive genius type, who designed and built his own hovercraft, and then went on to help invent several BMX parts as the sport, and bikes progressed. 

Maurice Meyer, the focus of the clip above, was a Skyway pro then, and still lives in San Francisco and works in tech now, and is still a great guy and all around solid human being.  He's the only pro rider in the video above, the rest of us were hungry amateurs then.  You can see me (Steve Emig) chasing my bike at 5:07, a trick I learned while riding in parades in Idaho.  A month after this was shot, I got a job at the publisher of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines.  I later helped put on contests, wrote and shot photos for a newsletter, and made BMX and skateboard videos for the AFA, 2-Hip, S&M Bikes, and self-produced a couple, like this one.

Karl Rothe, who you see at 4:22 in the clip above, went on to become a Mongoose factory rider, and the editor of BMX Plus! magazine for several years.  Chris Rothe, Karl's brother, is talking at 4:34 in the clip.  Chris is now big into electric bikes, and creates huge private parks for ebike riding with his company, Eco Bike Adventures.

Marc McKee, who you see riding in the yellow shirt at 4:43 and 5:05, became the main graphic designer at World Industries, the skateboard company created a year after this clip, by skater Steve Rocco.  World Industries tapped into the emerging street skating movement, of which San Francisco skater and Curb Dog, Tommy Guerrero was a major influence.  Marc's amazing, and often fucked up, but epic skateboard graphics, changed the skateboard world forever.  You can see Rocco and Mark talking about the provocative skate graphics, in the documentary, The Man Who Souled the World, at 37:24.   Their effect is still rippling through the art and design world today, so many other creative people were inspired and influenced by Marc's designs.

My point here is that a Creative Scene, a small group of people stoked on some new idea or creative form, who get together and push each other, can have incredible long term effects, on themselves, and the world at large.  The 8 or 10 riders in this clip above didn't affect the world to the incredible extent that another little Bay Area Creative Scene did, the tech scene of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Apple Computers.  Our little scene was a major influence on both BMX flatland, BMX vert riding, BMX street riding, and street skateboarding, all of which are worldwide sports and industries now.

Look at us then.  Just a weird little crew of guys goofing around on bikes, having fun, and doing tricks for the crowds at Golden Gate Park.  Never underestimate the potential your creative work, and your Creative Scene, can have on the world, and on our collective future.  Throughout history, but even more so in today's world, Creative Scenes think up, and then build the future.

Written by Steve Emig: The White Bear

Blogger's note- 8/27/2023- I haven't changed anything on these posts since I wrote them in 2019-2020, except these notes at the bottom.  I even left the original typos in.  My thoughts about the 2020's make more sense now that we're 3 1/2 years into the chaos.  you can read more of my writing on my Substack:

Steve Emig: The White Bear Substack