AFA Austin Pro Flatland- AFA Masters Round 3- 1987

This is the third video I produced for the AFA in 1987.  AFA Masters Round 3, Austin Texas, late spring of 1987.  

Three things that actually happened in my life

 I've had a lot of weird stuff happen in my life, particularly in the last 23 years or so.  While I've been living my odd life, and trying to make a living, here are three weird things that actually happened.  

Late September 2001- I went into my bank one day, Union Bank, then on the corner of Bolsa Chica and Heil in Huntington Beach.  It was two to three weeks after the 9/11 attacks happened, and people were pretty freaked out and paranoid about other events potentially happening.  I was about $4 overdrawn in my checking account, an account I'd had for 12 or 13 years, since I worked at Vision/Unreel Productions in the late 1980's.  The bank teller didn't take my money, and went to talk to a supervisor.  After several minutes, she directed me to another area, saying the bank manager needed to talk to me.  The bank manager, a woman I'd never talked to before, said I couldn't add money to my account.  She gave me a check for $18, seemed visibly afraid of me, and said I couldn't have an account at that bank anymore.  I was confused, and couldn't figure out what was going on.  Over the next couple months, it seemed some group somewhere was putting pressure on my life.  Things have been weird since.    

Spring of 2008- The weekend after Thanksgiving in 2007, I dropped off my taxi for the last time.  The company had flooded the county with cabs, and I just wasn't able to make any money any more.  My weekly taxi lease was about $550 per week, and I had to spend about $300 per week on gas.  So I had to make over $850 in fares just to break even, and then make money for myself beyond that.  I just couldn't do it any more.  I'd also gotten sick, because I'd been working 80 to 110 hours a week, living in my taxi, and not eating healthy because I was always stressed out.  So, after living in my taxi for most of the time between 2002 and 2007, I went from working more than 80 hours a week to fully homeless and living on the streets LITERALLY overnight.  I WORKED my way into homelessness.  Yes, that sucked.  

Within a couple of days, while living on the streets of Orange County, California, I started panhandling to scrape up money to live day to day.  Within a few weeks, I found an obscure freeway off ramp in south Orange County where I could usually get a decent amount of money, which helped me to get a motel room for a night about once every two weeks.  The local police that covered that ramp rolled by at times, but I dodged them by hiding in the bushes every half an hour or so, while they rolled by.  After several weeks, the officer eventually drove several miles out of the way, parked on the opposite side of the freeway, and walked up on me, catching me panhandling on the ramp.  Instead of yelling, or trying to arrest me, he walked up quietly, and asked, "Who ARE you?  I've never seen them come down on anyone the way they're coming down on you."  At that point, I'd been experiencing weird, behind the scenes pressure on my life for several years.  I asked the officer, "So there IS a them?"  He just nodded.  He didn't explain who "THEM" was, but said he'd never seen anything like it in his 20+ years as a cop.  He didn't ticket me, he just said I had to leave the off ramp, which I did.  

September 18th or 19th, 2008- I lived homeless on the streets of Orange County, California from late 2007 until November 15th, 2008, when my family flew me to North Carolina, where both my parents, and my sister and brother-in-law wound up living.  I wound up living in my parents' tiny, two bedroom apartment, and I never did find a real job in NC, I worked for a taxi company for close to a year.  I got stuck in NC for ten years, and I don't want to set foot in that entire state for the rest of my life.  

All that aside, before I went to NC, while homeless in Orange County, California, I often rode a couple of the all night buses, end to end, to get some sleep.  Lehman Brothers Investment Bank went bust, and closed down on Monday, September 15, 2008, sparking the visible start of the 2008 Great Recession crash.  

One of those nights, either the Wednesday night or Thursday night after the Lehman Bros. collapse, I got off the Katella Avenue bus about 1:30 in the morning.  That bus stop was at the corner of State College Blvd. and Katella in Anaheim.  I walked over to the 57 bus stop, in front of an AM/PM gas station, to wait of that bus.  There were five or six other homeless people who were also waiting at that bus stop.  I sat on a  boulder in the lawn there.  There was a closed (for the night) McDonald's across the street, and a Denny's, that was open, caddy corner to where I was.  

A young guy, maybe 24-27 years old, in a dark suit, cross the street from near Denny's, and walked right up to me.  OK, people rarely wear suits in Southern California, unless they work in banking, finance, or are going to a funeral.  Nobody wears a well-fitting suit at 1:30 in the morning.  I knew something was up.  

As I said, the guy ignored everyone else, and walked right up to me.  After standing there awkwardly for a few seconds, he asked, "Have you seen the  news about the economy?"  I told him I had, saw the headlines on the newspapers in the newspaper machines.  Then, in an almost pleading voice, he asked, "What's going to happen?"  Keep in mind, I was an overweight, disheveled homeless guy, and if was 1:30 in the fucking morning, on a weeknight!  I had talked to dozens and dozens of people, usually in pairs, in my taxi over the previous 6 or 7 years, as well as some who walked up to me at bus stops while I was homeless.  

I gave him a disgusted look, because I really didn't want to talk to anyone about that shit.  Obviously, any knowledge I had of an economic or financial markets nature WAS NOT helping my life out.  I wasn't mad at the young guy in the suit, but mad at whomever sent him, and dozens, probably hundreds, of others people like him, before that.  After pausing a bit, I told him my thoughts.  "A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money," I began.  I told him I thought it was a good time to buy gold and wait out the chaos.  Stocks were dropping, and I thought there was a much bigger drop coming.  I told him I thought there would be a major bailout.  "Buy gold, sit on it for 6 -18 months, as things crashed, and look for good buys when values dropped, on stocks, on real estate, on vintage collectible cars, whatever.  People sell all kinds of things at big discounts during recessions.  The young guy in the sharp suit asked a few more questions, then walked away, back across the streets, and disappeared into the parking lot behind Denny's.  Fucker didn't even give me a dollar or two for breakfast in the morning.  They never do.  

So now, as it looks like we're about to see a replay of September 2008 in the economy, I just wanted to put these three weird things out there.  Looking back, these were three inflection points in the weird shit happening in my life over the past 23 years or so.