Bonds tied to shopping malls could be the next Big Short

Any other economy geeks out there?  If that horribly boring title means anything to you, here's the article.   

Apparently the writer of the article hasn't looked at the student loan SLAB's very closely.  

Would you buy a mall for $100?

THIS MALL SOLD FOR $100 AT AUCTION.  REALLY.

Should you buy one? What would you do with a whole shopping mall?  Do you think there's a way to make a mall worth going to again? The more I look into this issue, the more I see that there are dead malls all over, and a lot more dying out with the rash of retail store closings this year.

OK, Pittsburgh Mills Mall sold for $100 at the bankruptcy auction in January to Wells Fargo, who is owed $143 million in back payments on the mall.  So now the bank is sitting on a million square foot mall running at 55% occupancy.  The J.C. Penney anchor store IS NOT one of the 138 Penney's scheduled to close this year, so that's good for the mall.

Will Wells Fargo get their $143 million back from this mall?  I guess time will tell.

The Concrete Monster: DIY Skate Spot in Vienna

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the last post, here's The Concrete Monster in a Vienna cellar.  In that last post, we learned that turning old R.J. Reynolds cigarette factory in Winston-Salem, NC into the Wake Forest Biotech place took 20-some years and $350 million.  This DIY (Do It Youself) skate spot took Philippe Schuster and a handful of friends two months of hard work.  It started with an idea that morphed into a plan.  As they say, there was no initial budget, no focus groups, no city council meetings, no permits.  Just a bunch of guys with shovels and determination. 

The term "DIY" started getting thrown around a lot in the late 70's and early 80's punk rock scene.  Nobody wanted the punkers to play in their clubs, so they found their own places to play.  No one wanted to make their records, so they learned how to record and make records on their own.  No magazines wanted to cover their scenes, so they self-published Xerox zines to cover their own scene. 

But as the old skater explains, skateboarding was a Do It Yourself thing from the start.  The first skateboards were old boards with roller skate wheels nailed on, hand made by Southern California surfers in the late 1950's.  "Sidewalk surfing" was something to do while the waves were flat.  Within a few years, sidewalk surfing evolved into its own thing, skateboarding.  There has been a DIY ethic in skating, and all the action sports, since the beginning. 

This project is a great example of what a handful of friends on a mission can do with an unused space in an old building, an a lot of sweat and determination.  I love this video, brought to you, of course, by Red Bull, who's been backing weirdness since the 90's.

The Adaptive Reuse of the old R J Reynolds Tobbaco Plant

This is the promo video for the Wake Forest Biotech Place, in the newly refurbished R.J. Reynolds tobacco plant in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  This is a great example of putting an abandoned old building to a great, productive new use.

First, let's deal with the irony here.  No, Winston-Salem is not named after two brands of cigarettes, The cities of Salem and Winston grew together, and the cigarette brands were named after the city.  The old nickname Winston is "Camel City," after yet another cig brand.  Now, the factory that once provided coffin nails to millions of people around the world is a biotech research and business incubator.  Yeah, it's funny when you think about it.

For those not from this area, Wake Forest is the upscale university in W-S.  The college tied hospital, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, does cutting edge research on growing tissue and organs.  They can grow a bladder or veins in a lab.  Some day this technology may grow new organs with your old tissue to replaced diseased ones.  So that's the one area where Winston-Salem leads biotech in the world.  Not bad for a small city hit hard by the loss of factory jobs over the last few decades.

Will this research and business center help rebuild the economy of Winston-Salem?  Time will tell.  This complex, part of Winston's Innovation Quarter, is looking to make the city a worldwide center for biotech.

I spent a lot of time in Winston walking around downtown before this huge renovation happened.  I also spent time driving a taxi there during the construction.   I know the area well, and this project has also helped get several other nearby abandoned factories rebuilt into nice apartments and condos.  This is the thing you want to see happen in a city that struggled with the loss of lots of manufacturing jobs. That's the great part of what you see in this video. 

But I'm going to bust their chops a bit.  First, the Innovation Quarter has put $350 million in funds into this area, from the city, state, and private sources.  Basically, the project above is what happens when the good ol' boy network of this area decided to build an enormous and costly project to help jump start the city's economy.  My thought is, could that amount of money (or much less), be used more efficiently in other ways that would help the city grow?  Yes.  Will this project give good jobs to thousands of former factory workers?  No.  It will definitely lead to many well paid science and tech jobs, no question.  But the large working class population of the city doesn't get a lot out of this particular project.  Even many of the construction workers used in these projects were from out of the area.  I know this because I used to drive some of them in my taxi, and they told me.

Another thing about this project, it took 20 years to happen.  The early stages were done sooner, but this major stage took decades.  When the idea was first thrown around, biotech was pretty new and looking for places to set-up shop.  In the 20 years it took for this facility to get greenlighted and built, other cities surged ahead and landed early biotech companies and scientists.   

On a personal note, the city started this project and quickly outlawed skateboarding in the Innovation Quarter.  Anyone who knows actual, serious skateboarders knows they are some of the most innovative people on the planet.  Pro skateboarder Rodney Mullen has given multiple Ted Talks to high tech people like the ones this facility wants to recruit.  Really. 

So in this Wake Forest Biotech project we see some some of the great things, and the mistakes that can be made on a project of this type.  This huge project has done a great deal to rebuild downtown Winston-Salem, no doubt about it.  But they lost an edge in the long time span it took to make it happen.  It will create good jobs, but not many that will directly employ the city's working class.  And it cost a ginormous sum of money to build.  Some of that money may have done more good on other types of projects.

For those out there looking to do these types of projects, from the local activist to civic leaders to developers, take some time to think about these issues.  With the huge glut of retail space opening up soon, and the industrial/warehouse space that comes with it, cities will need to come up with good ideas and be able to implement them quickly to weather the 2017 retail collapse of many chain stores, shopping centers, malls, and other commercial real estate. 

How a once great mall died: the story of Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio

It's weird to hear this mall called legendary in the Urban Exploring (UrbEx) world.  I was born within five miles of this mall site, nearly a decade before it was built.  We moved out of the area when I was two, but my grandma lived in Wadsworth, Ohio, about ten miles away.  I asked my mom, and she remembers this mall.  Without a doubt, this was one of the malls I went to with my family as a kid.

Rolling Acres is also the mall that sparked my interest in dead malls recently.  I stumbled across skater Rick McCrank's Abandoned TV show on the new Vice channel.  The first episode I saw he explored this mall, having heard about it on the internet, I presume.  I figured I'd been to the mall, but didn't know for sure.

Malls were a major part of my childhood.  Many weekends were spent going to malls with my family, whining to get a big, hot pretzel, and sitting with my dad, people watching, as my mom shopped with my little sister.  I knew there were a lot of abandoned factories and warehouses and houses around the Eastern U.S., but dead malls weren't on my radar until I saw that Vice show featuring Rolling Acres.

My first question was: Why couldn't anybody figure out a way to reuse all this space?  Then... How does a mall die?

The guy in this video tells the story really well.  But what's the bigger picture here?  On one hand, malls were the capitals of the over-consumption economy of the 1970's and 1980's.  Buy some cool stuff to impress your neighbors, so they will go buy even better stuff.  Then you go to the mall and buy even better stuff... and the U.S. economy thrives.

"A house is a place to put your stuff, why you go out and buy... more stuff." -George Carlin

 The over-the-top consumerism itself has died quite a bit over the past three decades. That's one big part of the picture.  Today's young adults tend to want more environmentally friendly products.  The Millenials grew up in a tech-enabled world that didn't exist when I was a kid.  The youngest of that group, and the post-Millennial kids, now in their teens, have come to age in the struggling economy of the Post Great Recession years.  Only a small fraction of them have had the money for excessive consumption.  Most want to spend their money on better tech gadgets, video games, and experiences.  They want to spend money in a place worthy of a good selfie or two (or 50).  Wandering around retail stores isn't that exciting.

In addition, Generation Xers, like myself, brought on the big wave of action sports.  I spent my teen and 20-something years learning tricks on little bicycles and skateboards.  That was a geeky thing in the 80's, but the action sports have spread around the world, continued to evolve, and were TV fodder for most Millennials.  People pushing themselves physically and having adventures and pranking is what they grew up watching.  Malls are fucking boring... until a fight breaks out.

Another aspect of this whole picture is that it's hard to sell anything for high retail prices anymore.  The exceptions seem to be new hit video games, crazy looking sneakers, and for a decade, the latest Harry Potter book.  Everything else can be found online or on an app at a huge discount.  Why go to a mall with insane space rents and pay super high retail prices?  Oh... and then there's Amazon.com.  It was inevitable that some bright group of people would use tech to reinvent shopping, and Amazon led the way, and continues to progress online shopping.

 Then there's the last reason I can think of why Rolling Acres Mall, and so many others, have died.  They made their money selling overpriced, name brand, mass marketing crap that was boring as fuck.  Boring doesn't sell anymore.  Not well, anyhow.  The mass market world of my youth has shattered into millions of niche markets.

As the entire business and social world went through one technological revolution after another, the old school retail giants kept doing the same old thing they'd done forever.  It just doesn't work anymore.  Those business empires of my youth, like Sear's, J.C, Penney's, Montgomery Wards, K-Mart, and all the rest, didn't innovate until it was way too late.  Then they pushed whatever good ideas they had through corporate committee after committee until the ideas were completely lame.  Our current, rapidly changing, highly connected, social media rich world is a realm they can't function in. 

These are the big lessons I've learned recently from looking into this retail collapse that I wrote about last post.  The questions now are: How many of these buildings can be reused with new ideas?  And how many will die and be demolished?  That's what happened to Rolling Acres Mall in the last few months.

MALLPOCALYPSE... The U.S. Retail Collapse of 2017

About three weeks ago, I wound up walking through this very place, Oak Hollow Mall in Highpoint, North Carolina.  It's about 15 miles from where I live, and I wandered by while my mom had a doctor's appointment in the area.  I was pretty stoked to find this video of its final hours.  My walk through this mall got me looking into the state of malls in the U.S., and what I found blew my mind.

As of today, March 24, 2017:

3,024 to 3,134 retail stores 
in the U.S. have closed in the last couple of years, are are now scheduled to close.  I didn't coin the term, but this is the Mallpocalypse if there ever was one. 

Here's a fairly comprehensive list stores either closed over the last couple of years, or scheduled to close this year.

Macy's- Scheduled to close 68 stores in 2017, about 3 already closed.  This will save the company an estimated $550 million.
Sears/Kmart- 150 combined stores closing
J.C. Penney- Closing 138 stores.  They tried to make a comeback a couple of years ago, it didn't work.
H H Gregg- Closing 88 stores, "bankruptcy rumors." 
Staples- Closing 70 stores

That's 514 large "anchor stores," closed or closing.  Those are the ones that used to be the main draws at malls and shopping centers.  When those stores close, it makes life much, MUCH harder for the rest of the stores in that mall or shopping center because less people come without the big stores there.

Walmart has closed 269 stores worldwide and 154 U.S. stores (Jan. 2016 article).  Walmarts don't anchor malls or shopping centers, they anchor whole areas or small towns.

Smaller size stores closed or closing:

Radio Shack- 552 stores closing, it filed bankruptcy (again!) in March 2017
Payless Shoe Source- 400 to 500 stores closing, said to be planning bankruptcy filing soon.
The Limited- closed all 250 stores.
Family Christian (bookstores)- closing 240 stores.
Wet Seal- closing 171 stores.
Crocs- closing 160 stores
BCBG- closing 120 stores.
Pac Sun-closed 110-120 stores, out of bankruptcy.
Aeropostale- Has closed 113 stores, into bankruptcy May 2016.
 American Apparel- closing 110 stores.
CVS- closing 70 stores.
Guess- closing 60 stores.
Kohl's- closed 19 stores last year as a test.  Now it's planning to shrink the size of 200 stores.  It already has 300 smaller size stores, out of 1,160 total.

This list has grown considerably in the last month, and I think it's safe to safe to say it will most likely grow in future weeks and months.

-multiple sources, but the best overall source is this recent article at Clark.com

What about the malls themselves?

I haven't found really good numbers yet, but there were about 1200 enclosed malls in the U.S. until recent years.  About 400 of those malls have closed or may close soon.  About another 400 of those malls are thought to be struggling.  The closure of all the stores above will tip the balance for many struggling malls, and likely cause lots more mall closures.  Most of these have been and will continue to be in smaller cities, towns, and more rural areas of the country.

The website deadmalls.com has over 743 "site updates" about different malls that have closed or are struggling.  Some of these are repeats of the same mall, but most are not. 

I'm not saying that this is the start of the Trump recession, because every Republican knows that he's going to bring back the American economy.  But if there was going to be a Trump recession, the start of it would look a lot like like this.  Just sayin'.

Here's another little note from someone who has watched the economy for the last 27 years, when we go into a recession, the financial news networks spend the first 6 to 12 months assuring everyone that we're not in a recession. 

So what does this mean for you?  If you own a business of any kind, I'd say put a bunch of cash aside, and step back and think twice about any major expenses.  There will be a HUGE ripple effect from all these store closures, which will probably lead to many more smaller store closures, particularly in the malls and shopping centers where the bigger stores are leaving.

Whomever you are, SAVE SOME MONEY, both for the proverbial "rainy day," and for bargains at all levels.

If you're working in retail, consider looking for another career unless you work in one of the high end malls that are still doing well. If you're an average person in small town America, you're probably in for a higher unemployment rate and a tough  recession in the coming years. 

If you work in high tech in one of the major tech areas like the Silicon Valley (San Francisco Bay Area), Boston, Seattle, Austin, Southern California, New York City, or Washington D.C., you're probably in pretty good shape.

What about entrepreneurs?  If you're an entrepreneur of any kind, this is a HUGE opportunity.  There is just WAY TO MUCH commercial property out there, especially in the smaller cities and towns.  You'll be able to find INCREDIBLE bargains on leasing or buying commercial properties now or in the next year or two.  Get your ideas together and go bargain shopping for buildings.

What it you're invested in the stock market?  It's been looking pretty toppy for a while now.  We're probably in for a major correction, if not full on bear market over the next couple of years.  We'll see.  If major corporations find a reason to being back all the money sitting overseas, it could stay stable.

If you're an Urban Explorer, break out the Go Pro and hit the road.  There will be big empty buildings galore for the next couple of decades or so. 

All fun aside, this will probably be a REALLY hard time for millions of people, particularly in the more rural and small town areas of the U.S.  There are several other factors (like $1.3 Trillion in student debt, much of which is not being paid on time) that could turn this into a catastrophic financial meltdown.  We could be in for a pretty standard recession, or it could turn into something like 2008, or even worse.  In any case, we're in for a complete revolution in shopping, with companies like Amazon taking more and more market share from the old school retailers.  The business world needs lots of good new ideas.  Do you have any? 

I looked up the stock price for Simon Properties, the largest mall operator in the U.S., this morning (3/24/2017), it was about $168 a share, it's lowest price since about September of 2014.

Amazon.com stock, on the other hand, was $850.48 when I checked today, not far from its all time high.  That pretty much sums things up.

A developer's look at Adaptive Reuse of old buildings

The last post was some insane BMX riding in an adaptive reuse project of a swimming pool that was closing in London.  This post is a great interview on the Commercial Real Estate Show where Michael Bull interviews developer David Cochran of Paces Properties in Atlanta, on the ins and outs of actually putting old buildings to new uses.  Now, if we can get developers like this working with action sports people....  some really cool things could happen. 

Nike 6.0 BMX Pool Project

As a HAS BEEN BMX guy, I ran across this video looking up my one time roommate from BITD, Brian Foster.  As I start this new chapter in my life, I see this as an amazing, short term, adaptive reuse of an old property.  Nike made a great idea happen here at the Dagenham Swimming Pool.  Oh, and old timer Brian Foster topped the young guns for the best trick.  Gotta love that.

Who is Steve Emig and why am I doing this blog?

This is me in the photo, carving tile on my BMX bike in a pool called the Nude Bowl in the Southern California desert in 1990.  For many years when there were no public skateparks, skateboarders and BMXers would travel to this spot in the middle of nowhere, high on a hill, to ride this empty pool.  The graffiti decorated place is the ruins of an old nudist colony, that's where the name Nude Bowl came from.  This still is from my 1990 self-produced BMX freestyle video, The Ultimate Weekend.  Here's that video and some other things I've done over the years:

-My footage from  the 2-Hip King of Dirt comp at Mission Trails, near San Diego, CA, 1991
-The Ultimate Weekend, 1990, my first full length, completely self-produced BMX video
-My edit of the first 2-Hip Meet the Street, BMX street contest, in 1989

Vision Skateboards' Barge at Will, 1989- I shot the video for Mark Cernicky's section at 19:06
I'm also sitting on the rail in the background of Ken Park's section a few times.
Tuff Skts Promo- This is the sole remaining piece of a 7 minute promo video I shot and edited in 1990 for Christian's Hosoi's then new company Tuff Skts.  Those were three fun days of shooting video.

-Las Vegas Supercross, 1991, I worked on the crew in the office and on site for this one.
-Working as a "spotter" on American Gladiators, 1992, with then Superman actor Dean Cain kicking some butt.  If you freeze this clip at 9:51, I'm the guy in black, under the silver framed tower, to Dean's left.  Dean was a really cool guy, and one of the best celebrities ever to compete on the show.
-44 Something, the 1993 video I edited for the then tiny BMX company S&M Bikes.  This video was rated as one of the Ten Best BMX videos of the 1990's by BMX Plus! magazine.

I'm now 50 years old, and I weigh over 350 pounds.  I gained the weight working crazy hours as a taxi driver.  At one point I lost over 130 pounds in a couple of years, and then went back to work driving a taxi, and gained it back.  I live in a small apartment in the quiet town of Kernersville, North Carolina, with my mom, who currently pays all the bills.  I do a number of things to help her out, but not enough I'm told.  I'm officially unemployed, and have been for years.  I've been making a little money from selling artwork, but not much. 

That's the "cover of the book" that most people around here see.  Remember when you were told as a kid not to judge a book by its cover?  I'm a good example of that.  The people of this area have mostly lived very traditional lives centered around Industrial Age jobs, family, and church.  For a variety of reasons, I haven't been able to find any job here, let alone a good paying job.  When I fill out those damn online job applications, with the 20 minute long bullshit personality profiles, I look terrible.  Potential employers see "old, taxi driver (sketchy!) and gaps in employment." I never get called.  After years in California, my attitude has been, "OK, I'll create my own job."

On the way to becoming an old, fat, former taxi driver, I've self-published over 30 zines, published three blogs that were #1 in their niche in the world, produced/edited 15 low-budget action sports videos, and worked on the crew of over 300 episodes of a dozen different TV shows.  I've written over 500 poems, some pretty decent, but nearly all were lost when I moved to North Carolina in 2008.  I've even written lyrics to a couple of songs and had a friend's band record them for use in a video I produced.  I'm a pretty creative guy.

But there are lots of creative people in the world.  Everyone has creative potential.  I've also worked years as a furniture mover, restaurant worker, tiny amusement park manager, landscaper, shooting range worker, porn store clerk, video store clerk, and telemarketer.  I know what it's like to grind it out in a "normal" job day after day.  I've moved about 40 times myself, and moved over 900 houses and apartments full of other people's furniture.  I know what hard physical and mental work is.  I've paid my dues... and your dues... and a few other people's dues.  In 2000, I worked weekends as a taxi driver in the Huntington Beach area of Southern Cailfornia.  At the time, I made enough money in three long days to live cheap, pay my bills, and spend my time off riding my bike or at the beach.  But technology hit the taxi business, just like most every other industry.

Long before Uber and Lyft came along, computer dispatching replaced the old CB radios, and changed the taxi business.  For most of the time from 2003 to late 2007, I lived in my taxi, working 80 to 100 hours every week, didn't take any full days off, took showers at the gym, and struggled to survive as the companies put more and more cabs on the road.  Finally, Thanksgiving weekend of 2007, I could no longer drive a taxi for both health and financial reasons.  I dropped off my taxi and walked out on the streets of Orange County, California with $15 in my pocket.  I had athlete's foot so bad that my feet were cracked and bleeding, and I could only hobble along slowly like an old man.  My family had wound up in North Carolina a state I'd never lived in, and I didn't talk to them much.  As a taxi driver, I'd drifted away from my friends in the BMX, skateboard, and TV production worlds.  I expected to die on the streets within a few weeks.

Obviously, I didn't die.  I wound up living, fully homeless, panhandling for food money and bus fare, for a year in Southern California.  In all, I've survived 8 1/2 years of varying levels of homelessness, and I worked full time for 6 1/2 of those years.  Being in the "working homeless" category is, by far, the worst form of homelessness.  Most of that time I was a taxi driver.  I don't do drugs and very rarely drink anymore.  I was randomly drug tested in my cab days.  I know that surviving all those years of homelessness is the biggest success of my life.  I should have died on several occasions. I didn't.  But the vast majority of people don't see surviving homelessness as an accomplishment.  Most people never take big chances that could lead to serious failure.  I have.  Most people go with the flow... until something catastrophic happens, like losing their job or getting a serious illness.  Or something like The Great Recession of 2008. And then they act surprised when they're suddenly upside down in their morgtage or their retirement disappears.

As a kid moving around small-town Ohio when it was still thriving, I was a dork, and a big dreamer.  As a young man, I got into the then obscure sport of BMX freestyle, doing tricks on little bicycles.  I followed my dreams, and accomplished many of them, much to everyone's surprise.  I began to dream big and accomplish some things.

 I also began to work on my multitude of personal issues.  When I moved out of my family's house in 1985, at age 19, I had more hang-ups than Kim Kardashian's closet.  I had more issues than the National Geographic magazine warehouse.  My crazy path through life, working lots of different jobs, was my way of learning new skills and working through my intense shyness, and learning to make things happen.

In the action sports and TV production worlds of California, I've seen many people go from down and out to being quite successful.  I know it's possible.  But here in the very conservative and traditional world of central North Carolina, most people haven't seen those personal success stories that I have.

With my old school BMXer and skateboard roots, and having been close friends to many entrepreneurs, when I see an old, abandoned building, I think of building a skate and bike park, an art gallery, or some other entrepreneurial idea.  As I write this, literally HUNDREDS of shopping malls in the U.S. are either dead, dying or struggling.  The huge retail shops of my youth like Sears, J.C. Penney's, K-Mart, Radio Shack and others are closing stores left and right.As these anchor stores leave malls, more malls are falling into financial trouble.

This huge "Mallpocalypse" comes after decades of Industrial Age factories closing, and after thousands of houses going into foreclosure and being abandoned after the 2008 recession.  To put it very simply, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of abandoned buildings, and thousands of bricks and mortar businesses struggling across the U.S..  We actually have much more space under roof than we need, due to a number of factors.  I'm publishing this blog, and devoting my intellectual and writing abilities, to this issue to try and find legitimate ways to productively use as many of these buildings as possible.

What's in it for me?  Well, there's at least one book to be written here, and I've always wanted to create a space that brings, BMX, skateboarding, rock climbing, mountain biking, art, music, and interesting lectures into a single place.  No one has done that yet.  Maybe this will lead me to find a way to make that big dream happen, as many other dreams of mine have in the past.

If you find any of this interesting, hop on for the ride.

Ten great examples of Adaptive Re-use of abandoned buildings

Looking for examples of old, abandoned buildings that have been re-purposed successfully, I came across this article on Urban Ghosts of 10 great examples of "adaptive re-use" of old buildings from around the world.   With thousands of abandoned buildings of all types standing in the U.S., and hundreds, probably thousands more struggling, we need lots of people doing projects like there where possible.

Underground Mountain Biking And More

First, let me say thanks to everyone who checked out this new blog on day 1.  I got over 100 pageviews, just from the BMX world, which is great.

Keeping with the mountain bike theme, here's a clip of MTBer Tommy Board lofting some style in the Mega Caverns Underground Bike Park near Louisville, Kentucky.  Yes, this isn't an building, but it's another great re-use of an abandoned man-made place.  I think this has been around since 2015.  Looks awesome.  Check out their website, they have a lot more than bike trails down there.

Louisville Mega Cavern 

For all the owners of struggling shopping malls out there, this may give you some new ideas to make covered spaces pay again.

Do you trust your siblings?

I'll be honest, my sister never trusted me much after I ACCIDENTALLY rolled my go kart over on top of her when she was seven and I was twelve.  Even so, I did manage to get her to sit in front of the Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach in 1990 while I did a wall ride over her head (photo below).  I thought that was pretty cool at the time, and I put the shot in the intro of my 1990 BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend.

There has been a whole lot of progression, particularly in the action sports world, since 1990.  I just stumbled across this clip of the brother/sister team of Emma and Matty McFerran blowing minds with another step up in FMX progression.  These three tricks are just plain nuts.  Another few firsts from the Nitro Circus.

DUH!  I just totally put this post in the wrong blog.  I meant to put it in my OLD school BMX blog.  Oh well.

My Absolute Favorite Re-Use of an Old Building: Ray's MTB

Here's one of many clips of someone riding their mountain bike at Ray's MTB in Cleveland.  The story goes something like this.  In 2004, Cleveland area carpenter and mountain bike rider Ray Petro decided he was sick of not being able to ride his bike during the tough Cleveland winters.  So he rented a chunk of an old, abandoned factory, and built weird little wooden tracks and ladder trails to hone his mountain bike skills during the winter.  Lots of other riders thought that was a great idea, and paid to ride there as well.  For those who don't know, "MTB" stands for MounTain Bikes.

Here's a look a Ray's MTB in 2007: Pabst Video Zine #1

The park is open during the six colder months, in the old factory shown in the beginning of that video zine clip.  Last I heard the park is now 92,000 square feet, highly successful, and they rebuild it every summer to keep it fresh.  Here's a bunch more clips from over the years.
My favorite "Odd Couple" Clip  (Pro riders doing things not allowed normally)
 Ray's in March 2008
Women's Weekend at Ray's- February 2009
Riders from Columbia Missouri- Spring Break Trip 2010
Ray's MTB Cleveland 2011
Ray's MTB Milwaukee 2011  It has since closed due to issues with the building owner.
Ray's MTB 2012
Ray's Cross Country Loop in 2013
Ray's MTB 2015
Ray's Old Fools Jam 2017

If you're an old school BMXer, watch that last clip.  If you're an urban planner, commercial real estate agent, mayor or city council person, search "Ray's MTB" on You Tube.  Ray's is profitably using a huge old space, there are people from around the country who actually travel there just to ride Ray's, AND there are dozens and dozens of You Tube videos by everyday people from Ray's.  In addition to showing off their riding and promoting Ray's MTB, all those videos are promoting CLEVELAND.  Think about that.

Urban Exploring is a Thing Now

NSFW.  If you're under 30 or so, then you know this.  But you older folks checking this out might not realize "urban exploring" (or UE) is a thing now, and has been for quite a while.  People have been exploring abandoned places for centuries, there's nothing new about that.  We're all familiar with photos of Roman, Mayan, and other ruins.  But now people, LOTS of people, are going out on little expeditions to explore paces that have been abandoned in our lifetimes, and many in very recent years. 

As a BMX freestyler from the mid 80's, and occasional skateboarder and longtime video guy, I've been exploring urban places much of my life.  I can remember sneaking into an abandoned (and supposedly haunted) house when I was 10 in Ohio.  Abandoned houses were a novelty back then in the thriving industrial economy.  Now one of the factories my dad took me in as a kid is rotting like the place in this video.  Huge chunks of big cities are in decay for a variety of reasons.  The bad part is, there's a lot more to come. 

This blog is about trying to find legitimate uses (not meth labs, crack houses, or homeless toilets) for all the buildings that still have a chance out there.  I'm going to look into the reasons why places wind up abandoned, delve into the economy and see what the future looks like, and scour the web and other sources for the people putting old buildings to good use.  If any of this interests you, hop on, it should be an interesting ride. 

The 10 Most Ghetto Cities in California

Hey, nobody said this blog was going to be politically correct.  Here's a fairly racist, but damn funny look at the most ghetto places in Cali.  These guys did some actual research to come up with this list, so I'll give 'em props for that.  I'm proud to say I've been to three of these cities as a taxi driver, at night, and lived to tell the tales.  One of those three was Compton.  Really.  That car in the still above looks a lot more like the "box Chevy's" here in North Carolina, though.

For those of you upset with this video, here's the same crew with their list of:
The 10 Most Redneck Cities in California.  Feel better now?

The 12 Worst Places To Live in the U.S.

According to Destination Tips You Tube channel, these are the worst places to live in the U.S..  Apparently these people have never lived in a really boring small town like the ones I grew up in. 

Abandoned Military Bases Montage

I lived in Orange County, California (just south of L.A.) in the 1990's when the Tustin Marine helicopter base and El Toro Marine air station were closed.  Those are just a couple of dozens of bases closed, and in some cases completely abandoned over the years.  This clip shows a montage of other bases left to decay.

The Real District 12 Site from The Hunger Games

The real District 12 site from The Hunger Games is the abandoned North Carolina village of Henry River Mill village, near Hickory, NC.  It's not 21st century urban decay, it's a taste of earlier times.

The Large U.S. Cities That Have Lost huge Chunks of Their Population

Here's the Big American Cities with the largest population declines from 1950 to 2010.  This one hits home for me, because I grew up moving around Ohio as a kid, and actually lived in Cincinnati when I was about four.  It was a time when the factories were booming, most women were stay-at-home moms, and a single paycheck family could buy a house fairly easily if they handled their money well.  This is the ruins of the world I grew up in, the fading remnants of the Industrial Age that most of our current political and business leaders (aka The Old White Men running the show) are trying to recreate.  Sorry guys, it's not coming back.  But there are a ton of hardworking, tech savvy, younger people out there with big ideas looking for a place to set up shop. 

Medium Sized U.S. Cities in Serious Decline

From the same You Tube channel as the last post, here are ten  mid-sized American cities that have lost huge chunks of their population.

Modern Small Ghost Towns of the United States

The Industrial Age of the Untied States has withered away into a new age dominated by ideas rather than building physical objects for consumption.  Some small towns have lost some factories, businesses, and people.  The towns above have lost most of their population for a variety or reasons.  We have a glut of abandoned buildings in the U.S. these days.  Some a slowly crumbling into ruins and will never see a viable purpose again.  But there are thousands of old buildings that may be able to find a new life.  That's what this blog is about, looking for ways to re-purpose old buildings, form creative scenes, and create much needed good jobs and businesses in the withering areas of the country.