Rags-to-Riches Memoir Is a Wild Ride that Speaks to Society’s Misfits

My Socially Hazardous Life by Laurence Neal Pokras

Like listening to the life story of a talkative stranger sitting next to you in an airport lounge during a long layover.

Biographies and memoirs consistently rank as top-selling genres. The usual subjects of these books are the famous or infamous, but everyone has a story to tell. It’s just that some stories are more entertaining than others.

Laurence Neal Pokras is a man of strong opinions and a counter-cultural streak, which he recounts stream-of-consciousness style in My Socially Hazardous Life. This rags-to-riches story is an unflinching, gritty autobiography of an entrepreneur who went from eating sardines and ramen to making $6 million in less than 5 years. “It’s what happens when you ignore the rules and take life into your own hands,” according to his webpage.

“In this book,” he writes, “you will find my experiences of debauchery, struggle and the quest for truth. While this is my story, it reflects a universal need in all of us to journey and discover truth.”

Suddenly Living the Dream

Pokras youthful dream was to be an artist, but after agreeing with his father that he might need a trade, he chose architecture. He graduated first in his class from the New School of Architecture San Diego but quickly became disenchanted with the business of architecture. Using his technical design skills, he helped invent a safety strap for glasses and sunglasses.

Clashes with his business partners sent him back to living at his parents’ house, where, desperate to find direction for his life, he decided to “do a stupid but innovative line of stickers. I mean, it’s art, right?”

Irreverent, crass and funny (some of the first were BFD, KMA, SMD, you fill in the blanks), the stickers sold out in stores like Charlotte Russe, Wet Seal, Magic Mountain and Levi’s. Inspired by a chance meeting with Mike Ness from Social Distortion, the California punk band, Pokras named his company Socially Hazardous.

Pokras added refrigerator magnets, keychains and t-shirts, and soon had 35 employees and a dream house in Hawaii. International trade shows took him to 45 different countries in 5 years, many in Asia with islands where the scenery, surfing and women were spectacular.

Like Talking to an Energetic Stranger

With his chaotic use of punctuation, including a startling amount of question marks, reading Pokras is like listening to the life story of a talkative stranger sitting next to you in an airport lounge during a long layover. “Sorry, I got off topic — yes, I do have slight ADHD. Shall we go on?” he writes.

After making millions, Socially Hazardous declared bankruptcy due to thieving or unreliable employees (“I was too nice of a boss,” he confesses), and the attacks of 9-11 putting an end to the trade shows. Next up, a successful cell phone store in Las Vegas that sold every carrier under one roof. Then, it was back to architecture.

He’d grown up in the busy port of Long Beach, California, with its plethora of shipping containers. “I had always been drawing artful ways to use the shipping containers as architectural homes and wanted every poor person who couldn’t afford a house to move into a work of art,” he writes. Photographs of his designs for fanciful and futuristic housing illustrate the book. “I’m trying to make affordable housing artistic,” he says.

Wild Dreams and (Mis)Adventures

Pokras connected with a company in Thailand that manufactured containers and modular homes and soon became their US representative. But first, he spent several years in Asia, revisiting his favorite places.

Thanks to COVID and its travel restrictions, it became a longer sojourn than planned, and the last section of My Socially Hazardous Life is filled with his (mis)adventures there. (Warning to animal lovers: there is some discussion of how dogs are on the menu in some places. He did not partake.) 

Pokras hopes his book is inspirational for young people or people ready to break the chain of working at a job they hate. He’s still drawing and dreaming, and working on a second book that will include more illustrations of his container homes. “Each country had a dramatic effect on my designs and my style,” he writes. And judging by his experiences, he himself had a dramatic effect wherever he went, too.