Ideas, ideas, ideas, for what else is there for the creative mind…

One of the things I’ve been big on doing over all these years is coming up with ideas for names for different things I am involved in…which I often discover would be awesome business names. Although I’d love to take credit for naming the old High Voltage BMX Freestyle Team that I headed in the 80’s that distinction goes to none other than Dan “The Man” Menapace, who blurted out during a playing of AC/DC’s classic “high voltage”, that it would be an awesome name for a trick team…so we took it! …and didn’t do much more with it than do local shows and make shirts and stickers. My next naming endeavor would be in the early 90’s with my ramp park that I dubbed “The Ramp-Ateria”. WTF kind of name is that? Well the park was layed out with all kinds of different ramps strewn all over…like a “cafeteria” lunch area, so…use the old imagination there. Around this time I would also rename High Voltage to “The Road Crew” after hearing a Motorhead song off one of their tapes. It seemed to sum up the feeling of BMX at the time with street riding taking over the scene. When the web came into being I soon discovered that this new medium would democratize media and how information was consumed. My first thought after doing some work with a local music promoter was do my own graphic thing! I came up with the name “Cane Designs”, an homage to my grandfather on my mother’s side who was an artist in his own right and an awesome word worker.

What I did with this name…made a logo. LOL, never one big on the follow through…

After a few more years and a nice little divorce I went back to something that I really loved doing, BMX. I scoured the web on sites about BMX in New Jersey and finding none, decided to start my own. Realizing that NJ needed a name descriptive of how we are on riding, the words “brokenspokes”, popped into my head and brokenspokes.net was born. brokenspokes lasted a couple of years in a few incarnations including a webshow. In 2008, I disbanded the brokenspokes name after well…doing the same thing I always do, making some shirts, stickers and a website. I decided this time to come up with something that sounded a bit more mature for BMX. I went with BMXNJ. BMXNJ was a good learning experience on how to grow something through promotion, contacts and networking. It grew to encompass not only a website but also a full color magazine that was available in local bike shops. Unfortunately with it being local to New Jersey only and it also being BMX only…there wasn’t much growth potential there and I shuttered it in 2012. At one point I was going to attempt a full onslaught of web BMX domination with BMXNE.com (northeast) and BMXUS.com (united states). Realizing how small and insular BMX was, I decided against pursuing these ideas.

After that more ideas came into my head. My girlfriend Christine was making home made dog biscuits and with her being a pagan I came up with the name “Biscuit Witch” dog biscuits. For awhile they went over well and were bought up by local pet stores but the time and effort put into making them outweighed the monetary benefits. I also came up with a name for her pen and ink artwork of incredibly detailed trees called “DeadTreeWalking”. Her artwork of trees has actually been bought by local tattoo artists. Again though, the effort to make something substantial out of mine and our ideas just did not jell.

For awhile we had decided on doing a online store of all our varying artistic hobbies, from my bulb exposure
photographs and pinup art (which I had named CGPinups…yea the mind never stops clicking…) to her art and candlemaking (yep, once again…name: Smiling Cat Candles) which was named “Chateau Woo Woo” which was what we dubbed our home in Brick.

Another idea we mashed together on a road trip… Being a kid and having a big wheel in the 1970’s. This eventually evolved into “little britty and the big wheel” where a little rebel kid with his friends and family take on the nefarious baink stur and his hench bainksturs. Still ongoing…baink stur is now running for president…apparently in the comic and in real life.

So…yea coming up with names and then backing off a bit is something we have a tendency to do.

Be that little tale as it is, creativity is something you are born with. Some people just wake up every day with a new idea in their head and want to see if they can get it done. For those who have this impulse it can both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that you always have something just out of the corner of your eye that you want to do, a curse in that you always feel as though you are never doing “enough”. It gets to the point where you have to quite literally find time to do nothing. There also comes a time when you have to say, which of these creative endeavors can become a true reality.

Well, I am very ecstatic to say that we have finally decided on a venture together and it is the aforementioned, “CGPinups”. We both have always loved fantasy art and fairy types of figures and drawings and lately my artwork within the pinup realm has evolved into that area. We decided to order in a few shirts to see what the designs would look like actually displayed and after going into some of the spiritual – pagan – wiccan stores in the area we received a positive response on them! So going forward we hope to have the art in small shops everywhere. Time will tell the tale…

But the rule of the day is, keep your creative spirit open. When a new idea seizes your mind and it is a positive one, go with it, see where the winds of free thought take you on this journey of life..

…because for the creative mind there is nothing but boundless ideas to bring into fruition!

viva la créativité

ideas we have formulated:

middaugh.org– My personal blog-showcase.