This DNA made it into Dirt Rag as we were creating it in 1988. Should we call it “America’s Only Mountain Bike Magazine”? That would have been a stretch, so we went with “For the Mountain Biker of the Northeast”.

In 1973, National Lampoon created one of the most memorable magazine covers of all time when they photographed a dog named Cheeseface with a gun to its head, with the caption "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog". Needless to say, the Lampoon had many an outraged subscriber cancelling their subscription while at the same time selling many magazines on the newstand. Newstand was a game we played at Dirt Rag, not only to build circulation but to appear legit. We would print 40,000 magazines to sell 4,000, give or take, but it was important to be out there (National Lampoon peaked over 1 million copies circulation).

So it’s February 2008. Dirt Rag issue 133 coming up. I’m not sure who’s bright Idea it was. Probably me, because I was the oldest guy around and probably the only one who had been a National Lampoon reader in the 70s. But words were said, and the next thing you know, we had a dog named Maeve and a Smith and Wesson pistol present in the Dirt Rag photo studio. Maeve was a good dog (No longer with us 18 years later) and cooperative. Looking at this now, I see that the U.S. Price should come first, but that’s another story.

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Of course, we all know that that would never fly today. Did it fly in 2008, when we published that subscription ad? Yes. And No. We received many letters on the subject, initially most against us. Being reminded that we printed the ad without regard for the latest school shooting, well, I did not really feel so good about that aspect of things:

But we were encouraged by the following issue’s letters, where some more jaded readers stood behind our decision:

And we even ran another subscription ad in a later issue, indicating that Maeve is doing fine:

Well, that’s about all. Please keep in touch! Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

-Maurice

We start with that dear old standby, Perfect Day, by Lou Reed. Great song, great album, Transformer is. And always will be.

Then, on the newer side, as well as the other side of the coin, a woman’s perspective, we have Object As Subject, a project of Paris Hurley. Very intense. Words can’t describe.

Next, being a Sun Ra fan, I could not help but take notice of the Oakland Elementary School Arkestra, who put out a record on the Modern Harmonic label. Go kids!

A bit of Mazzy Star/Opal in tribute to David Roback, who had passed away in 2020. Big fan here.

And much amusement with Lee Scratch Perry’s album, Judgement In A Babylon, where he describes how Chris Blackwell drinks the blood of Chickens and killed Bob Marley. With some great art.

Kitty Kats, Polish Metal, and Todd Rundgren round out the mix. A Wizard has been a favorite of mine since it came out in 1973.

Here’s the playlist: Including Artist, Song, Album, and Label.

Lou Reed Perfect Day Transformer RCA

Dissemblance Transfuge Over The Sand Mannequin

Object As Subject Benediction Permission Lost Future

Object As Subject Sinner Permission Lost Future

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Innocence Mission Movie See You Tomorrow Therese

Juliana Hatfield Canary In A Coalmine Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police American Laundromat

Ursula 1000 Intro Esoterique Insect Queen

Ursula 1000 Hello Darling Esoterique Insect Queen

Meow Meow And Thomas Lauderdale Mausi Hotel Amour Heinz

Common Holly Joshua Snakes When I Say To You Black Lightning Barsuk

Oakland Elementary School Arkestra The Saga Of Padani The Saga Of Padani Modern Harmonic

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Mazzy Star Flying Low Seasons Of Your Day Fontana

Opal Rocket Machine Happy Nightmare Baby SST

Kendra Smith Space Unadorned Five Ways Of Disappearing 4AD

Mazzy Star Rhymes Of An Hour Among My Swan Capitol

Lee Scratch Perry Judgement In A Babylon Judgement In A Babylon Lion Of Judah

Dennis Alcapone DJ's Choice Soul To Soul DJ's Choice Trojan

Bob Marley And The Wailers Soul Rebel Soul Rebel New Cross

OOIOO Asozan5 Nijimusi Thrill Jockey

Yoko Ono/IMA Talking To The Universe Rising Mixes Capitol

Hikari Saotome Lullaby Of The Birds Cafe Tokyo Not Now

Melt Banana Candy Gun Fetch A-Zap

Ex-Girl Disco 3000 Kero Kero Kero Secret

Yin Yin Nata Ni Thale The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers Bongo Joe

Yin Yin Pingpxng The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers Bongo Joe

Meow The Cat Thai Beat A-Go-Go Subliminal Sounds

Zywiotak Morski Krol Wendzki Sznyt Karot Kommando

Percival Schuttenbach Sargon Oj Dido

Michal Jelonek A Funeral of a Provincial Vampire Jelonek

Todd Rundgren Sometimes I don’t know what to feel A Wizard, a True Star

Yo La Tengo Sometimes I don’t get You I am Not Afraid of you and I will Beat Your Ass Matador

Zombies Sometimes Zombie Heaven

DMX Sometimes The Great Depression

Odetta Sometime I feel Like A Motherless Child Odetta at Carnegie Hall

There’s more but I seem to have lost the further playlist, Oooopsy! Thanks for listening and reading.

But I digress. First of all, let me just say how stoked I was to be working with Stephen Haynes as Art Director. He got it. I mean, come on, Hunter S. Thompson epitomised everything I ever hoped or dreamed Dirt Rag could be. And Stephen captured that relationship. Yeah, H.S.T. was a caricature of himself, but he was also a great journalist. And a guiding force for me. Here’s the ad that ran in the issue with the story:

The key to the contest was getting a hopefully-complete bike to give away as first prize. GT (RIP) was happy to oblige this year. This made The Publisher (Me) very happy as I considered it a supreme vote of confidence on their part. I was always fearful that we were not delivering enough for the advertiser, but we were usually able to get a bike as first prize.

Judging the contest was a blast. Reading tons of stories, some bad, many good, some really great. Debating the merits of each story around the conference table was of the heart and soul of the Dirt Rag team.

So I’m getting back in the groove after a dry spell. Thanks for waiting. I’ve been looking up cool Dirt Rag stories to share. This one struck a nerve with its radness. Let me know if you read the whole thing, and how it works out for you. I picked this story for its Edward-Abbey vibe, and because I was able to gather the assets away for my fascist overlord Google. Fight the power.

Here’s how the first spread looked. Great art by Julia Wang.

And the 2nd:

But here’s each page in a hopefully readable size. Or you can scroll down for a text version of the story:

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Here ya go with a text -based version of the story. Prolly better for those of you looking at your phone. Let me know.

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Green Bean’s chest hurt. Again. He didn’t quite know how

to describe it—pressure, kind of, almost like something was

overflowing inside him, but sharper. Not that he had tried to

explain it to anyone. The lexicon of pain that Green Bean’s friends

employed had no room for things like “tension” or “discomfort.”

Theirs was a language of shiners and sharkbites, hang-ups and

hairline fractures. Once, when getting over a sinus cold, Green

Bean had told JJ that he had a headache. JJ had nodded, as

though he felt it too, and said, “Yeah...how did you slam?”

Sophomore year was almost over, and for the first time that he

could remember, Green Bean didn’t know how he was going to spend

his summer. Everyone else from Dialed Krue was going to Woodward

to ride the new dirt jumps and street course, but Green Bean’s parents

had already told him that if he wanted to go, he’d have to fund it

himself. With no job and, unlike some of the other guys in the Krue,

no sponsors to hook him up when he blew through tires and grips,

the outlook was bleak. Green Bean was beginning to get used to this

feeling: sitting at his desk, staring a hole through the whiteboard and

wishing his upper body would stop feeling like a compressed spring.

None of this would be happening if they weren’t tearing down Post.

Green Bean went to Post for the first time when he was 8. That was

when his brother Brady first got his learner’s permit, and thus became

Green Bean’s de facto guardian, more or less excusing their father

from the position. Green Bean didn’t have a bike then, so he watched

from against the fence as Brady and his posse rode laps, floating over

the lips of impossibly steep dirt faces, the better riders maneuvering

their airborne bikes in different directions before landing into towering

mounds that were mirror images of the ones they took off from.

One of the first sessions at Post Green Bean ever witnessed

took place on Easter. One of the older, sponsored riders, called

Boogie, was rolling around with bunny ears duct-taped to his helmet

and a can of Pabst in his back pocket. Green Bean watched as

Boogie took a handful of hollow plastic Easter Eggs and jammed

them between his spokes, then dropped into the park’s A-line of

jumps. On the first kicker, Boogie rotated a backflip, and as he

spun, the eggs shot out haphazardly from his spinning wheel. Green

Bean reached out as a single red egg fell toward him. Cracking it

open, he found a single dollar bill and what he would later learn

was a used brake pad. That night, after their parents had gone

to sleep, Green Bean snuck down the hallway from his bedroom

to his brother’s. In his hand were the contents of the egg.

“Hey, Brady,” he whispered. “Will you sell me your old bike?”

“Pinnacle Brazilian Carnauba Paste Wax, 3 oz. Jar. $49.99.” Chuck

clicked “BUY” and stood up out of his chair, then reached up and

gave the fluorescent light above his head a firm punch. It flickered,

then clicked into a brighter setting, illuminating the unadorned white

walls of the office so that they glowed. Chuck sat back down and

was just beginning to fantasize about the blemish-free shine that he

would now, in four to seven business days, be able to evoke from the

fuel tank of his Harley-Davidson Sportster, when the phone rang.

“Chuck. This is Bernie. Got a dozer gig for you.”

“I’m listening.”

When Green Bean was 3 years old, his father had been in a major

downhill skiing accident and was in a medically induced coma for

five days, during which time doctors performed 11 different surgeries

to alleviate massive internal bleeding and brain trauma. The incident

left him with frequent migraines, an increasingly reticent disposition

and a dependence on Doxepin. No longer able to perform the

formerly mindless tasks at his job as a real estate broker, the burden

of supporting the family fell to the boys’ mother, who began working

weekends as a housecleaner in addition to her job as a stylist.

Once, when Green Bean was a freshman, he had punched a

classmate in the stomach so hard he vomited after the boy had asked

Green Bean what was wrong with his dad. Word quickly got around

Rio High, and it wasn’t long before the only people Green Bean spoke

to on a daily basis were the other members of Dialed Krue: Ollie,

Shayne, JJ and Harry. They had all met at Post in sixth grade, and they

had been riding there every day after school for the last five years.

Legend had it that JJ’s cousin, Flare, had

scooped the first shovelful of dirt at Post

more than 25 years prior. The spot had initially

consisted of a single jump on a slight downhill,

gradually evolving into a set, then an entire

line, until eventually it had assumed its current

form: a labyrinthine brown square sprouting

from the middle of an empty lot across the

street from the local post office. For years, a

local developer who had conditionally agreed

to leave the jumps untouched had owned the

land, but now, in anticipation of the arrival

of an organic grocery chain, the developer

had announced that the entire lot would be

leveled. After the news broke, riders from all

over the state had come to the city council’s

open forum, pleading for a chance to start a

petition or fundraise a counteroffer. Magazines

ran stories. Pro riders from around the world

flew in to film segments. Forty-person jam

sessions became a regular occurrence. And

yet, as the day drew nearer, the death of Post

began to take on the brutal weight of reality.

Rumor had it that the winning bid for the lot

had been more than half a million dollars.

Chuck’s father, Daniel, started Ramirez

Rentals when Chuck was a boy. The original

rental fleet had consisted of four push-

mowers, two 50-horsepower utility tractors

, and a single 10-ton dump trailer. When his

father died in 2002, Chuck had taken over the

company, and under his guidance, Ramirez

Rentals grew to be the largest equipment

company in Salinas County. Then the

recession happened. And then Janice had

asked for a divorce. Or had it been the other

way around? Chuck sighed. It was not a

period of his life that he cared to revisit if he

could help it. And anyway, after reducing his

fleet and downsizing to a smaller, shabbier

office building, Chuck had just had his first

profitable quarter in more than a year. He

had a bitchin’ new Harley to show for it, and,

as luck would have it, a bulldozer job that

weekend just down the street from where

his new girlfriend, Leah, lived. Something

about a vigilante bike park—quick work.

He would bring the dozer up tomorrow, a

day early, to give himself time to prep and

then make a surprise entrance at Leah’s.

On the phone, Bernie mentioned more

than once how many people would be there

to watch the place go down. “A big send-

off,” he called it. But it wasn’t like there was

an official schedule to adhere to. Chuck

figured if he got cracking early enough, he’d

get the whole place to the ground before

the punk kids were even out of bed.

The day before The Official Last Day was

a Saturday. Green Bean and the Krue had

made plans to meet up and ride at 9 a.m.,

and when they rolled up to Post, there

were already a handful of riders taking laps

through the morning fog, their silhouettes

bleeding into the gray sky around them.

“Yo, check it,” Shayne said, pointing to

a slender rider whose bright-blue helmet

bore the words “Red Bull.” “B-Rad is here.”

“Whaaaat! I thought that dude was

shooting for the new 2-Bit video in Egypt.”

“Yo, I heard he manualed

down a pyramid.”

“No way, dude. You’re not even supposed

to touch those things. It’s, like, Egyptian law.”

“Red Bull probably just bought Egypt,

dude. They can do whatever they want.”

“True that. B-Rad probably got

flown in here on a private helicopter

and ate caviar the whole way. Check it

out, his filmer has a Red camera.”

Green Bean kept his eyes locked on

B-Rad the whole time, keeping a mental

inventory of his line. No-hander. Tabletop.

Barspin. All of it flawless and casual—a

warm-up run. Still, it woke something

up inside of Green Bean. He grabbed

his bike and started jogging to the top

of the roll-in. Deep breath—drop in-

No-hander: clean takeoff, let go of the bars.

Keep them pointed straight ahead. Then

grab. Land. Tabletop: Use every ounce

of momentum. Boost it, contort the bike.

Flatten it out. Land. Barspin: Keep your

speed! Right hand flicks to the left, left

hand releasing, watch the rotation. C’mon,

c’mon, here comes the landing. Grab for the

bars. Air. Slap: Rubber hits dirt, chest hits

the handlebars. Airborne again, for a split

second. Another impact, then, stillness.

The pure adrenaline of embarrassment

took over as Green Bean dragged himself

and his bike off the course and slumped

against a fencepost. The Krue exchanged

glances with each other as they hurried over.

“You good, dude? That was heavy.”

“Yuh,” Green Bean grunted. His body

was just beginning to process the massive

ache radiating through his torso.

“That’s what you get for trying to show

up B-Rad, bro,” JJ said, punching him softly

on the shin. The Krue mercifully dispersed.

Once they were gone, Green Bean hurled

his helmet across the field and then stared

down at his feet, not caring to follow its

trajectory. When he looked back up again,

a bearded man with a crutch under his left

arm stood in front of him, Green Bean’s

helmet dangling from his right hand.

“Chin up, lil’ homie.” It was Boogie.

He had torn his ACL on an over-rotated

cork 360 almost a year ago; Green Bean

hadn’t seen much of him at Post since

then. Green Bean reached out and took his

helmet from Boogie’s outstretched hand.

“Th-thanks, man.”

“No worries, bud. Tough to

let this place go, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s like home.”

“Well, hey, just be glad you’re getting

some last runs in. The doc says I’m still

two weeks away from getting on a bike.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, life’s a bitch, but what’re you gonna

do? We’ve tried everything—nothing any of

us can do to stop ’em now.” Boogie pulled a

bottle of beer from his shirt pocket and popped

it open against his crutch in one fluid motion,

then clinked it against the side of Green Bean’s

helmet. Green Bean looked up at Boogie, and

for a moment a wave of sadness seemed to

pass across the older man’s face. Two weeks

from now, Green Bean realized, was Easter.

“It sucks.”

Boogie turned and began to hobble away.

“Have fun out there, homie.”

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When Chuck arrived at the address Bernie had

sent him, he realized what his friend had meant

by “a big send-off.” Kids on bikes were flying

through the air in every direction, while dozens

of people formed a circle around the cluster of

dusty obelisks. And this was the day before!

As he backed his trailer up into the adjacent

empty field and began to unload the bulldozer,

Chuck felt the crowd’s eyes on him and heard

a faint chorus of boos. He pretended not to

hear, keeping his head down as he fired up the

dozer, positioned it and ran through his safety

checklist: ignition. Brakes. Oil and coolant, idlers

and rollers. The machine hadn’t been used in

months, but Chuck knew it was ready to go;

during a lull last winter, Chuck had personally

overhauled all seven crawlers in his fleet.

As the sun began to sink and the air began

to chill, Chuck sat in the cab of his Silverado

and watched the riders flip and spin and

sometimes come crashing down in explosions

of dirt, the dramatic failures only serving

to accentuate the grace of the successful

maneuvers. It seemed like something that

would take a whole lifetime to master, Chuck

realized, and he wondered how those pint-sized

Preteen riders had possibly gotten so good.

Screw it, Chuck thought. They’ve got

other places to ride anyway, right?

Green Bean painfully hoisted his bike

up and into the bed of Brady’s old truck.

He’d had his permit for only a month, and

now he felt grateful not to have to pedal

the 3 miles back to his house. It still hurt

to breathe. As soon as he was back in his

room, Green Bean locked his door and laid

himself gingerly facedown on his bed. He

heard a knock and his father’s murmuring

baritone from beyond the door, but said

nothing. The last thing he ever wanted

to bring up around his father was injury.

There was a pause, followed by his father’s

footsteps trailing off down the hallway.

Green Bean must have dozed off for

several hours, because when he awoke,

it was dark, the only light in the room

emanating from his phone’s home screen.

“New Snapchat: from Ollie,” it read.

He slid his finger across the screen and

punched in his security code without

looking, then peered down once the video

had loaded. Across the screen, Ollie had

written: “Yo. Scope.” The screen was mostly

dark, but Green Bean was immediately

able to make out the silhouette of Post.

And there, parked alongside and pointed

directly at the center of the first berm,

was a hulking Caterpillar bulldozer.

Green Bean sat up a little straighter on the

edge of his bed and checked the time. 10:24

p.m. Life’s a bitch, but what’re you gonna

do? He grabbed a jacket from his closet,

slid his Vans back on and rushed down the

stairs. Nothing any of us can do to stop ’em

now. On his way out the door, Green Bean

called out across the living room, “Later,

Dad, I’m going out. Back in a few hours!”

By the time his father had turned to

look, Green Bean had already grabbed his

mother’s gardening gloves and some pruning

shears from a planter box outside the door

and tossed them into his truck through the

open passenger window. By the time his

father was standing, Green Bean was gone.

The building nearest Post contained

several businesses, including a yoga studio

and a liquor store; at the corner of the latter

was a single security camera that angled

toward the northwest corner of the jumps.

Green Bean had parked a few blocks away

from the empty field, and as he loped across

it toward the bulldozer, he remembered the

camera and quickly yanked his hood up

around his head. Glancing over toward the

building, Green Bean felt his heart rate start

to blast like a techno song. Had he been in

range of the camera? He didn’t think so, but

still. Shit. The absence of the Krue suddenly

weighed heavily on Green Bean—but no, he

didn’t want them here now. His ribs still ached

with every step, and his neck refused to turn

more than a few degrees to the left. No, not

this time. He would see them tomorrow.

It didn’t take long for Green Bean to locate

a section of important-looking wires in an

open exterior compartment underneath the

bulldozer’s control panel. His dexterity limited

by his mother’s too-small gloves, Green Bean

chopped wildly with the shears until at least

four of the wires were completely severed.

Several others dangled, partially frayed, lilted

like dehydrated plant stems. He shoved

the shears back into the pocket of his jeans

and then paused. He was completely alone,

and the field was perfectly, oppressively,

still. Post rose up into the night like a hand

breaching the surface of a body of water.

Green Bean pulled out his phone, opened

Snapchat, and clicked a single photo of the

cluster of neutered wires, then began to run.

When I took a radio production class in college, the project I created, with cassette tape and razor blades, was called “No Commercial Potential: The Frank Zappa Story”. I felt the need to repeat myself with this hour-long presentation, made with a computer instead of tape. It’s music from their first three albums. In between songs, I talk about the Mothers, but not too much. Enjoy!

Please stay tuned for more Dirt Rag Magazine and other bicycle-related ramblings. I’m working on some good stuff, really. Thank you for your support.

Hello again! When we (Meaning I) left off a month or so ago, Version 1.0 of SOPWAMTOS was tapering off around 1997. Maybe it had run its course under the management of the main characters of Bruce Gordon, Mark Norstad, and David diFalco. You might want to check out part one here…

But in 2005, another character had the character to step forward and bring back the Golden Tiody awards. Which, by the way, was spelled “Toity” by Dirt Rag magazine at the time, and “Toiddy” By both Velo News and Bicycle Retailer. Thanks to everyone who helped me “correct” this. Again, I will mention that alternate versions of these stories are highly welcome, and I am more than happy to edit accordingly to include your thoughts and comments about the time at hand. And to hear of your personal experiences.

Mark Norstad recalls: “Well, eventually it was just so much work it kind of ran out of gas. Then one year, Sean Walling said, “Hey, do you guys mind if I get the thing off the ground again?” And I said, “Go for it, man. If you got the time and the energy, do whatever you like.” So Sean, for one year there, really did a great job. That’s when he had the golden fist that he gave Cannondale. They weren’t there at the award ceremony to receive it, so someone walked over to their booth and handed it to them, and they were apparently quite offended by it. And then someone found the Golden Fist Award in a Dumpster outside of the show. I don’t recall the exact details, but apparently someone grabbed it out of the dumpster, put it on eBay, and sold it for a ton of money. Wow."

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So yeah, Sean Walling. An integral part of the Nor-Cal builder scene. Sean came up through the ranks of Bikedom by working for the likes of Bruce Gordon and Ross Shafer, and had started his own bicycle company, Soulcraft, when Ross sold Salsa to QBP. The important thing is that Sean had two high-level senses, humor and satire, required to pull off something as ridiculous as the SOPWAMTOS Golden Toidy awards. In a powder-blue tuxedo.

To create this post, I started by digging through the old Dirt Rag archives, where I found a younger Sean Walling handing out the “Enough already” Golden Toidy award to the entire bicycle industry. It’s a carbon fibre toilet seat.

Another honor was given to Chipps Chippendale of The Outcast ‘zine, for “Magazine most likely to feature pictures of a man’s penis”. I spell Fibre like that because Chipps would have it that way.

Checking in with Mark Norstad: “And so stuff like this, first we’d figure out, okay, Chips obviously needs an award. He’s a piece of character in the bike industry. Yeah. And he’s well known, and he can take a joke. So we dreamed up this category of, you know, what magazines would show a penis? Well, then we thought of all the other ones. I think Dirt Rag was a contender in there, probably. So we’d figure out, you know, two or three other publications that might feature a penis. And then, since we already wanted to give an award to Chips, we just filled in the blanks. Yeah, nice. So that was the process.”

Dirt Rag published the results of the 2005 Toidys. Here’s how the awards appeared in the magazine:

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But then, there was the Golden Fist. A story of epic proportions.

Mark Norstad: “Yeah, the Golden Fist Award came after Cannondale did something really nasty to all their dealers. They did the motorcycle thing, went bankrupt, and left everyone holding the bag. Kind of ruined everything. From what I understand, it really put their dealers in a hard position.”

Yes, Cannondale, a great bicycle company, had entered the motorsports industry. Unsuccessfully. The ballsy attitude of the company had served it well up until now, but to compete with the likes of Honda and Yamaha was foolish. Here’s a photo of the award being awarded on the show floor, with Patrick O’Grady of Velo News and Matt Wiebe of Bicycle Retailer taking notes.

But now it’s time to let Sean Walling tell the story. You’ll be glad you read this far. I’ll put a link to the audio and a link to the history of Cannondale down at the bottom.

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“Yeah, 2005 is when we revived it. In Vegas at Interbike. Okay, so this Golden Fist thing, so the story is, we decided to bring back SOPWAMTOS for that year. And. I was on the phone with Gary Prange from Screen Specialties, which is the company that made everybody’s frame decals, and still makes decals to this day. And I was calling him to order decals, and we started talking, and I mentioned that I was going to bring back SOPWAMTOS, and I believe I was asking him about making SOPWAMTOS stickers. I asked if he had any suggestions for Awards? And he said, oh yeah, I got a suggestion, and he told me about how Cannondale had stiffed him for like 70 Grand in decals and almost put his company under. And I thought, wow, that is beyond any Award category that I had seen Bruce do in the past, and I thought this needs its own special award. So, I don’t know how it came about, but separately, on a bachelor party up in Bend, Oregon, some friends had stopped at an adult store and picked up this fist. The rubber fist as a joke for the party? And so it made its way to a campground. At Waldo Lake, and then it kind of traveled around with us to various places. On the McKenzie River Trail, it was with us the whole trip. So, the trip ends. That thing gets thrown in a trailer and ends up going back to Moab with some of the guys that were at the party. And then, I don’t remember exactly how I figured out that this would be the thing to use, but I emailed or texted my buddy in Moab and said, hey, do you still have that fist? He said Yeah, so I said, okay, we’re gonna make the award out of it. So, my friend there built a base for it, and I had a plaque made here in Petaluma with the engraving on it at a trophy store. We met in Vegas. And the night before, we assembled the award. So, before the awards happened, one of the guys who came out from Moab worked at a shop there that was a Cannondale dealer. And he found their rep and said, hey, you should come to this awards ceremony. Cannondale is getting an award, and the guy said, oh yeah, what? What is it? And he said, uh, well, it’s kind of more for the business end of things, you know, and he goes. Oh yeah, the reorganization, yeah, that’s uh people are talking about it. That’s great. Yeah, so he goes. Yeah, that’s absolutely what it’s about, so the awards ceremony happens there in the back corner. And we ask if anyone is here to receive this award from Cannondale. There’s no one there. And so, after the awards, we walked it over to the Cannondale booth, and I’m wearing this old 70s powder blue tuxedo, and the other one of the other guys is wearing the same kind of version of that tuxedo. We obviously look kind of odd walking up to the booth holding this fist. So this woman is there, like, it’s a reception desk. And we say, hey, uh, we’re here to present this award to Cannondale, and she, we just put it right on the counter in front of her, and she kind of looks at it, and she goes. Oh, um, well. I, I think, maybe I can find somebody to receive, you know, accept it if you want. We said, absolutely. That would be great. So we stood there, and she walked back into the booth, and you could see her walking, you know? It was open booth and she goes and talks to this guy. And he’s got this look on his face, like a fuck. You look, and then he picks up his phone, and he calls somebody, and then you could clearly see probably 30 feet from him, the guy he’s calling picks up the phone. They don’t know they’re standing right near each other. That guy picks up his phone, turns around, and looks at the desk where we’re standing, and he’s got that same fucking look on his face, so we just stood there for a few minutes waiting. And they just looked at us, and then they hung up, and then they kind of milled around, and so we just said, all right, we’re just, we’re gonna leave. So we walked away.

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So later, someone told us that they saw the award in the garbage can right next to that desk. So, we thought, well, okay, you know, whatever. so, Months later, Someone emailed me and said, hey, check out eBay, and the award was on eBay. A rep from Cannondale had pulled it out of the garbage, and I think he was in Florida, if I remember, put it on eBay. And so, here it is. There’s people bidding on it, and I think, Maurice, I remember, you were one of the people that were bidding on it. Like (Mike) Ferrentino and some other people. So, finally, it goes to somebody, and I didn’t know who it was. It gets bought, and then the next year at Interbike, someone says, hey, you should go over to the Kona booth because they have the award. So, I walked over there, and I tried to like, describe to the woman I was talking to, like, Okay, so I heard that you guys have this award, and it’s, it’s. You know, what? I was just trying to like dance around the thing, and she goes, yeah, maybe someone here knows about it. So she goes and finds this guy, and I can see her talking to him. It was, like, the exact same type of deal, and then he looks at me from afar, and he just got this big smile on his face, and he just starts pointing at me, so he walks over. He’s like, dude. Yes, you’re the guy who made the award. And I said, yeah, I heard that you guys have it. He goes, Yeah, and so we walk over, and he pulls this curtain back. And there it is, sitting like, kind of awkwardly on a box of like, Brochures or something, you know, and. And there it is, so they go, Yeah, we hate Cannondale, and so they bought it, and they had it just in their office, so. They had it for years. I don’t know how. Many years ago, when Kona was going through one of their many kind of going-out-of-business deals, Steve Smith was buddies with them, and he went to the office, and he grabbed the thing because he knew it was going to end up in the garbage again or whatever. So he got it and sent it to me, and I brought it home, and now it lives in my shop on, uh, one of my mills, and yeah, that is the story of the Golden Fist.

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Sean’s audio: https://recorder.google.com/b9631925-4903-482f-9aac-99737cd46c09?pli=1

Zap’s interview with Scott Montgomery: https://zapbikemedia.com/columns-1/f/the-true-unofficial-history-of-cannondale

History of Cannondale at Escape Collective: https://escapecollective.com/overnight-success-a-brief-history-of-cannondale/

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There used to be this thing called Interbike, for many years (Vegas- then Anaheim-then Vegas again), where all these real friends would meet up once a year to pick up where we had left off, just as if we had just seen each other last week. It was the best week of the year.

Certain booths had a magnetic attraction on the show floor. And one of the most magnetic booths was the Bruce Gordon-Paragon Machine Works-King Cage-Two Fish, etc, etc. booth. Where My People were posted up for all four days of the show. Sometimes up to 11 different people would exhibit in this space, at once. Punks.

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Bruce Gordon himself, Mark, diFalco, Robert, Ron, and a cast of others (Apologies). I would stop by numerous times a day to get away from the suits and chill with my homies before the next Publisher appointment. This booth also served as HQ for SOPWAMTOS: The Society of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit. The primary function of SOPWAMTOS was to award the Golden Toidies, the awards meant to call out companies in the industry who needed calling out. And not for good things.

In the early days, the awards celebration was held on the floor of Interbike. Later, as crowds were getting out of control and the party got too big, they moved to parade over to a Las Vegas motel parking lot.

The SOPWAMTOS motto was “Standing for Rudeness and Truth in the Bike Business.”

As this post is turning into a bit of a beast, I’m going to try to break this into pieces. First, the early years. Feel free to help me with any additional information, or to make edits. So here we go…

The Bad Idea

In 1992, Bruce Gordon and Mark Nostad attended the 2nd-ever Eurobike, where the seed was planted. I asked Mark about that…

“We were definitely fish out of water at that show. Bruce was trying to sell these expensive bikes that would have had a whole lot of import duties, and I was trying to sell frame-building components. And again, the same thing. It costs a lot of money to import them, and the handmade bike stuff hadn’t caught on in Germany, the way it had in the United States. So neither of us got any sales. So we sat around in the booth all day and drank beer. The one saving grace is that I had brought a ton of little Paragon pipes and bottle openers and sold them all for cash. So that was good. I went home with a pocket full of European money. So we were driving in the rental car, and we were both kind of complaining about how so many people get stuff manufactured, put a sticker on it, brand it, and then claim it as their own. And, since both of us were actually manufacturing stuff, we felt that if you’re going to put your sticker on it, you should at least make it. You know, have something more to do with the manufacturing process than just writing the check. Although that was kind of a fantasy on our part, I guess we were still a little naive at that time, too, because you know, that’s how all manufacturing gets done right now. You know, I mean, I would look at the iPhone. That’s a classic example of that, designed in California, and then it says nothing else about it anywhere on it. But. So we were grumbling about it, it’s like, yeah, we actually made our own shit. Like, yeah, we should form a society. People who actually do this. And so we started throwing around some words, and finally came up with SOPWAMTOS. It was all in the fun of it. We didn’t come up with anything other than the name on that trip, you know, and the concept. And we thought it was a great concept. So, probably over beers at Dempsey’s in Petaluma later on, before Interbike. I said, you remember that thing about SOPWAMTOS? We should get this thing going.”

David DeFalco was a co-conspirator. He told me:

“Mark would come up to Petaluma, and he and Bruce and I would go to Dempsey’s, the beer pub where Bruce was every night. As we talked more about it, Bruce said we should call people out, you know, and expose them and give them an award, and that would be funny, and then they wrote out the first list on a bar napkin. I had been going out to the recycling center every morning, literally every morning. And I saw all these toilets there, and I said oh yeah, the toilet seats can be the awards so I brought them. They started saving me toilet seats, so I brought hundreds of them back to the shop; that’s not an exaggeration. I had stacks of toilet seats. And my wife and I did all the painting and decorating on them. You know, once we had the list, it would take a couple of nights of painting and decorating to get them ready.”

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The Awards Get Going in 1993-1994

In 1993, we think, that maybe the first Golden Toidy Awards were held. Not sure what happened that year. But there’s a bit to tell about 1994, as Dirt Rag Magazine was there. I know this because some photos were taken by me. Let’s check some out, and if you want to fill in any blanks, I’ll be happy to add to the story.

First, the three guys in the Fezes here are David diFalco, Mark Norstad, and Bruce Gordon. Gary Helfrich is looking at an award of some sort. Chris Paretich on the far right (RIP).

Jack Witmer accepted an award for Cook Bros. Racing.

A young Bruce offers an award to Erik Koski. diFalco at far left.

Betsy, who may have worked with John Parker at Yeti, with Cannondale’s “Smoke and Mirrors” award, which I believe was awarded for the Pong bike exhibited by Cannondale that year.

Scot Nichol good-naturedly accepted awards for Tom Ritchey as well as himself.

So help me out if you recall anything from those days. Let’s move on.

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1995 the awards grow in Anaheim

This was the year that the awards got kicked out of the show just as they were finishing up at the booth. Codes, shmodes, I say. As illustrated below by Bicycle Retailer.

To quote Patrick O’Grady: “First time I saw the SOPWAMTOS crew at Interbike Anaheim, I knew they were my people. And what a kick in the bibs it was to receive a Golden Toidy for “Excellence in Bad Taste.” Just four years into being a “cycling journalist” and there I was, getting all like honored an’ shit. When they got rousted from the show floor and took the act to a cheap motel down the way, I went with them. And I have been with them in spirit ever since.

These were people who knew the score. They had heard the music and were dancing to it (remember your Emma Goldman). Bicycles were their meat and potatoes, for sure. Bread and butter? Most definitely. But also dessert. Always eat dessert first. Then go for a ride.”

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1996 Shit is Blowing Up

1996 featured Belly Dancers. Sure wish I had a good belly dancer photo. How about a scantily-clad Geno Oberpriller and Dave Blakney?

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Finally, thanks to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, we have some results!

What little I could dig up in Dirt Rag.

And Velo News.

That’s About All, Folks.

No, wait. I have evidence of some 1997 awards. I’ll wrap this up by saying that the next installment is going to blow your mind. It will cover when Sean Walling of (Soulcraft at the time), took over the awards. And then the time after that when Robert Ives took the awards to Sacramento during the NAHBS show. Stay tuned!

Further Reading

Our old buddy Mud Stud, Patrick O’Grady.

https://maddogmedia.com/2011/11/09/sopwamtos-lives/

The Mountain Bike Hall Of Fame is having a bruce Gordon Exhibit soon.

https://mmbhof.org/

Coco is keeping the dream alive.

https://www.instagram.com/sopwamtos/

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In the meantime, I thought I’d remind y’all that I am still here with a Bob Weir post. Yeah, that guy. The Kid. Rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead. Generally, I am most interested in the younger days when Pigpen was alive, and Bobby was pretty, but that’s another story.

Pitch time

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So, based on the number of back issues available (zero) and the fact that even I don’t have a copy, Dirt Rag #23 (May 15th, 1992) was, at the time, the best-selling Dirt Rag ever. Why? Because a certain interview made the magazine reach a much larger audience than usual. Deadheads.

Yeah, the Bob Weir interview. I would be remiss if I did not send you to Charlie Kelly’s website to read it LATER. LINK

And I would also be remiss if I did not share this bit from our old rival, Zapata Espinosa. I’m not sure if Zap still hates The Dead, but this is definitely worth looking at, after you’re done here. LINK

But now, here is another piece of Bobby in the ‘Rag. A Specialty Files article by our dearly departed Jeff Archer (Yet another story). Issue #147, published 2/15/2010. Text version below the Pdf. Thanks for looking!

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Specialty Files: Bob Weir’s Bike

Words and photos by Jeff Archer

In the early 1970s, Gary Fisher was a member of the Grateful Dead Party Krew and spent time with the band. Later in that same decade, Fisher became better known for MountainBikes, a company he formed with Charlie Kelly. MountainBikes was one of the earliest companies to sell complete mountain bikes. Kelly and Fisher took frames built by Tom Ritchey and others, assembled them into complete bikes, and sold them to the public. When Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead, wanted a new mountain bike, Fisher seemed to be the natural source.

By this time, Fisher was having Tom Teesdale build many of his top model bikes, including this one. Prairie Prince, a graphic artist who was also traveling in the music world as a drummer for The Tubes and Journey, was asked to come up with a unique paint scheme for the bike. He designed and applied Grateful Dead-themed graphics for the bike, including vertebrae and bones along the frame tubes. It was then built up and delivered to Weir.

In May of 1993, Trek purchased Fisher and got the company’s history as part of the deal. For the 1995 model year, Trek decided to take advantage of the Gary Fisher–Grateful Dead connection and offer a band tribute bike. The bike is a regular Hoo Koo E Koo with Grateful Dead graphics applied to the frame. The graphics pay tribute to the original Weir bike with a vertebrae decal along the top tube of the bike and bones decals along the down tube and stays of the frame.

From a single custom bike made for a band member to a mid-priced production bike for the largest supplier of bikes to bike shops: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Frame: Chromoly

Rims: Specialized BX25

Crank: Cook Bros. Racing

Derailleurs: Suntour XC Pro

Shifters: Suntour XC Pro

Handlebar: Fisher Bulge

Hubs: American Classic

Brakes: Pedersen SE front, Roller Cam rear

Serial#: TT 21T077

Size: 21”

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One such story was that of Team Hugh Jass. Written by Vince Hedger, the story in the April 1998 issue (#64) described an epic trip to the 24 Hours of Moab, an event that rests warmly in my heart (We were there for the first 24 Hours of Canaan). Indeed, many were offended by various aspects of Hugh Jass’s behavior. And many of these activities would be even more frowned upon today.

So here’s the story as it appeared in the magazine. Plus, I have added some letters near the bottom, as well as a follow-up piece from issue #179 in which we later sing the praises of Team Hugh Jass’s advocacy efforts in Harrisonburg, Virginia. And if you scroll further, you’ll find poorly formatted text versions of both stories. Please let me know how it works for you.

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So there you have it. I hope you were able to read the story if you wanted to. I am on a computer, not my phone, so I can read it just fine. And if you have any memories of these days, please do share.

The letters were great. Let me just share some with you….

Team Hugh Jass? Back to Nature? Corporate America? This is mountain biking? Team Hugh Jass sports a $35,000 truck loaded with technology and drives 80mph (while smoking dope and sucking booze). They use the federal highway system, charge cards, excessive fuel, excessive money over-packaged, over-processed food, excessive everything to drive across the country to shun technology. And this will get more people to ride bikes? Without corporate America and technology they couldn’t exist. They are relying on technology to be anti-technology. They ridicule their own purpose. Thomas says in the article, “I don’t think we have a message.” Team Hugh Jass needs to look at their implied message. They need to differentiate between what they say and what they do. Driving dangerously isn’t making the road safer for cyclist. Cross-dressing isn’t going to get more people riding their bikes to the grocery store. Super fit riders riding non-technological bikes isn’t going to inspire more people to ride their bikes either.

Team Hugh Jass is confused. Team Hugh Jass is about getting a reaction. What percent of this article was actually about riding bikes? What percent of Hugh Jass is even about riding bikes? Obviously smoking pot and partying are a part of mountain biking for some people. But, mountain biking is not necessarily a part of smoking dope and drinking. Anyone can smoke and drink. So how about if Dirt Rag gets focused on people who actually help mountain biking—people who maintain the trails, help new riders get started, and people who offer a broader “benefit” to the sport. Team Hugh Jass, in their present state, offers no benefit to the sport of mountain biking.

Myron Lind

Harrisonburg, VA

(Issue #65 May 1998)

BTW, we reprinted the Hugh Jass story in issue #176, resulting in this letter…

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And then, Hugh Jass came up in another Dirt Rag story in issue #179. For their good deeds in advocating for bikes in Harrisonburg, Virginia. People grow up. What can I tell you? Here’s that story. Frank McGuire was our access editor. He knows how to put words together for sure. Scroll way deep for a text-based version.

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I’ll leave you with this random Hugh Jass rider photo. Thanks for sticking around.

Huge Jass story text, poorly formatted.

One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing; the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of time weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But get drunk... -Charles Baudelaire

and returning, all within a space of five days time. This is not my

usual thing, but Hugh Jass is not your usual race team ... at least

not in my experience. From what I have gathered in the weeks

prior to our departure, Hugh Jass is part bike racing, part perfor-

mance art, and part inarticulate rage. Inarticulate at least to the

average trailer park dweller or employee of a major American cor-

poration, living amid the endless suburbs which stretch the length

and breadth of our land and fretting over retirement plans or the

impending insurance payment. I am here to share in the drugs and

beer, and to explain for the dwellers of status quo land what Hugh

Jass is all about, to articulate their inarticulate rage, to make their

performance art accessible.

Before I can do this, I have to understand Hugh Jass myself.

But how to go about understanding, and then explaining? I have

five days to answer these questions ...

As a former high school running coach, I am struggling to

come up with a plan for ‘coaching’ these drunken dharma bums of the off road bike racing

scene. I am anticipating a strategy of going with the flow, doing what seems to need doing ...

Case in point is my outfit, which consists of white silk slacks, low cut to expose my

red shorts, a pink tank top, accented by a pink silk warm-up jacket. Thomas, the unof-

ficial team leader (he’s the most organized, and he kicks ass on the trails) picked out my

ensemble. “It’s important to be comfortably dressed for a long road trip/’ he told me while

digging through the Hugh Jass wardrobe bag and handing me the items of clothing prior

to our departure. Jamie, riding shotgun next to Thomas, is dressed in a psychedelic 1970’s

ensemble, complete with bell bottoms and vest. He is the only member of the team not

sporting dyed hair.

So it goes. Sitting in the back seat, I gaze to my left and notice Jeremy Wimpey’s attractive

inner thighs exposed to my view, as his bright red

nightgown rides up his legs while he drinks a beer

and looks out the window. Yes, red seems to be a

dominant theme this evening.

We drive at a steady 80mph down 64, passing

endless miles of Appalachian forest, the leaves

turning yellows and reds, past decrepit barns in

fallow fields to our right and left. Except for Thom-

as at the wheet we are in full party mode.

Team Hugh Jass sprang from the minds of Tim

Richardson and Mike Carpenter in early 1996, and

has been nurtured by the fecund atmosphere of

the Harrisonburg biking and arts community since

them. Local riders had been using fixed gear bikes

(when the wheels turn, the pedals also must turn -

there is no such thing as coasting) for many years

as a primary means of transportation around town.

Likewise, unconventional modes of dress and be-

havior had long been common among local riders

and artists. But it was Tim and Mike who came up

with the idea of taking it all out to the race course.

In true anarchist fashion, other Hugh Jass trade-

marks, like the use of a single pair ofbiking shorts

(with the well padded rear end), were added as

they were inspired by conversations during epic

rides in George Washington national Forest. Since

the debut of Team Hugh Jass at the 1996 24 Hour

event at Canaan, West Virginia, this anarchistic

mutation has continued as various members of

the team made their individual contributions of

energy and imagination.

This year’s team consists of Mike Car-

penter, Jamie Keehner, Thomas Jenkins,

and Jeremy Wimpey. As with each suc-

cessive team, the current lineup has never

raced together as Hugh Jass. It is Jeremy’s

first time racing a fixed gear on a cross

country course.

When he is not on the racing circuit,

Thomas works at a local bike shop. Mike

and Jeremy are students at James Madi-

son University, and Jamie is a bike bum, the

summer equivalent of a ski bum. He rarely

races, because, as Thomas puts it, “racing

would get in the way of his riding.” With the

exception of Jeremy the rest of the team has

raced as Hugh Jass at least once before.

Riding through West Virginia, about one

am ... Mike opens another bottle of cold

beer. There is a cooler full in the back of

the truck, which, outfitted with a sturdy cap

and large bed, serves as sleeping quarters

and food, beer and equipment storage for

the team. He takes a long pull from the

bottle, swallows, and grimaces.

“Fucking Price Club, fucking corporate

America gave us the dick sandwich on that

Dominion .. .it takes like dick.” He goes

into the back in search of something else

to drink.

We use a liter size bottle as our primary

toilet facilities, pulling down pants, skirts,

pulling up nightgowns, and inserting the

appropriate body part into the neck of the

bottle, filling it and then disposing of the

warm contents through an opened win-

dow. Thomas, at the wheel, pulls down his

shorts with one hand, fills the bottle, and

passes it back to Jeremy for emptying.

After five minutes, Thomas remembers to

pull up his pants, while I imagine a state

trooper stopping us and asking him to get

out of the truck in that condition. In the

64 Dirt Rag #176 4.1.14 25 years | Dirtragmag.com 65

back seat, Mike and Jamie pass the pipe and discuss

the relative merits of shrader and presta valves.

We eat, drink and smoke constantly, not from hun-

ger, but from drunkenness - not the drunkenness

which comes from beer consumption, but on life and

freedom and movement, the drunkenness to which

the French poet Baudelaire referred. Our drunkenness

is contained within the walls of Big Red, confined to

the endless stretches of interstate, amid millions of

fellow Americans for whom these grey stripes define

daily reality, whose millions of autos carry them back

and forth on the daily commute, keeping nature out-

side, at bay. We race along the highways in vehicles

that kill thousands of us each year through accidents

and environmental pollution, while holding the opinion

that riding bicycles through singletracked wilderness

is unsafe ... How could one not instinctively cringe in

the face of such madness? And this Hugh Jass reality,

contained in Big Red, traveling these same highways

toward Utah, is part of this insanity. Despite our dyed

hair, alternative dress styles, and the rest of our seem-

ingly anti-social behaviors, we are not separate from

our fellow travelers. We are connected by language,

by familiar dreams, by desire for love and apprecia-

tion and desire to do something with our lives. There

is no escape from this connectedness.

6:30am just outside of Kansas City, with Mike at

the wheel and Jimi Hendrix on the CD player. Every-

one else is asleep. Breakfast for us is Oreo cook-

ies and Mountain Dew, followed by a few pipe hits.

Outside the stars are visible in the still black of pre-

dawn. Except for Big Red and steady stream of 18

wheelers, the interstate is deserted.

Mike and I talk about school, and that leads to

other topics. He is studying to be a teacher. This may

be a new direction, motivated in part by thoughts of

Lindsay, Mike’s daughter, entering the less than ex-

cellent, less than open-minded environment which is

the American education system. At present, Lindsay

may be distinguished by having more adult freaks

as friends, playmates, and babysitters than any oth-

er two year old in the country. She seems to be hap-

py and thriving, and Mike wants to keep it that way.

When I ask him how he thinks he will feel in years hence about Lindsay learning

the full extent of his debauchery as a member of Hugh Jass, he is quiet for a while

before answering that he really isn’t sure.

Eventually the discussion turns to race performance and preparation. I note

that Mike is drinking much more water than Jamie, if urine output is a reliable

indicator. When Jamie awakens and joins the conversation, I try to assume the

role of coach and suggest that Jamie will perform better if properly hydrated.

Shrugging his shoulders, he gives me a “who gives a shit” look and dives through

the window opening into the back in search of another beer. What is a coach to

do with such incorrigibles?

By afternoon, it seems that there is no longer a noticeable effect from increased

on continued ingestation of drugs or alcohol. There is only one reality, the one

which these four bike riders have squeezed into Big Red, har-

vested from the madness and creativity of the Harrisonburg sub-

culture. Bits of madness spill out of the truck, sucking others into

it for brief moments along our way - gaping truckers who glance

over at Big Red just as Mike, with his lime green hair, is turned

around in the driver’s seat, pants down, having a piss while I steer

... gas station attendants, not quite sure how to react when we all

stumble out of the truck to pay for fuel or get more beer.

The conversation turns to sponsorships ... both Thomas and

Mike are sponsored, and Jamie thinks that he would like to try it.

But sponsorships can present a subtle trap - the lure of “going

corporate” in order to continue the life of a bike bum.

“It all depends on who your sponsor is,” says Jamie. “You

know, some sponsors will offer you a sponsorship because you’re

a fucked up, pot smoking rider who doesn’t want to do the corpo-

rate races ... but there aren’t too many sponsors like that...Still, it’d be fat to be

paid for doing nothing but riding ... “ Jamie remarks that when all is said and done,

the pot smoking is not key, but the riding is, the fat four hour “dawn patrols” the

afternoons amid rippling oak leaves and sunshine, and night rides with nothing

but a full moon to illuminate the rutted switchbacks. Also key are the friendships

for which riding is the common denominator.

Passing through Kansas, Mike notices an abundance of signs commemorating

the birthplace of various astronauts. This prompts us to speculate as to whether

Kansas breeds a high percentage of bright, determined, capable individuals, or

whether the center of America’s breadbas-

ket simply produces an unusual number of

residents who grow up vowing to themselves

“When I grow up I’m going to get as far away

from this place as possible.”

After too many hours of note taking, I want

to sit and just be here for a while, not listening

as a reporter, not attempting to find meaning

in the words and actions of the team. I just

want to spend a little while as the semialco-

holic, semi-employed, semi-freak, still normal

looking enough that a return back to status

quo land remains an option if I so choose.

Thenagain, this experience might cause me to

slide further into the life of the irredeemable.

Really, what am I doing here? What am I doing

with my life? These guys provoke me to enter-

tain such thoughts. They seem like questions

well worth pondering.

Saturday, 30 minutes prior to the start of

the race. This morning came as a welcome

thing, after several hours of sleep, which felt

like a vacation from the intensity and madness

inside of Big Red. But five hours was enough va-

cation, and now we sit in our compound, amid

hundreds of others gathered together here in

the Utah wilderness, taking multiple bong hits,

drinking beer, Mountain Dew, and Jim Beam (to

take the edge off the morning chill).

Team Hugh Jass is in full glory this AM, to-

tally out there, totally focused, an indescribable,

uninterpretable mixture of bike racer techno-re-

ality, counter-balanced by Hugh Jass inhibition.

As we sit around on milk crates and coolers,

the talk ranges from which clothing combina-

tions will make the strongest fashion statement,

to optimal fixed gear ratios, to race day alcohol

and drug use strategies. Mike, who has been

suffering cold symptoms since leaving Harrison-

burg, sums up his race strategy ... “My game

plan is seeing Thomas off, riding up for bong

hits at Matt’s (a Hugh Jass sympathizer and

fellow rider), and cranking out some sub-three

hour laps.” Despite his cold, despite (or perhaps

thanks to) the high percentage of drugs flowing

through his veins, Mike will turn in consistent 1

hour, 21 minute laps.

We leave the compound and head to the start area amid

flashing cameras and chants of “Hugh Jass, Hugh Jass ... “ On

the surface, we are no different than many other athletic teams

which I’ve observed during my coaching and racing years. We

are loud and obnoxious, provoking other riders by making fun

of their expensive bikes (the team’s bikes are assembled from

used or discarded parts ... Jamie’s cost less than $20 in cash

outlay), teasing them about their tight, expensive clothing. But

everything is meant in fun. In this team’s company, it feels like

we are at a party, not a bike race.

The race announcer acknowledges our arrival by stating that

“The really scary thing is that they probably dress that way all

the time.”

As the riders line up for the LeMans start, I yell encourage-

ment in broken French, as instructed by Thomas. He has been

introducing me around as the team’s French riding coach,

someone that they picked up hitching in Kansas. When not

cheering for our team members, I wander throughout the start

area and taunt other riders, race officials and spectators in the

best French tradition.

After the first riders run to their bikes and head out onto the

course, we return to the compound for more bong hits. Despite

a set of high rise handlebars which slide a foot forward each

time Thomas takes a difficult downhill section, he turns in a

respectable 1:25 lap. The event is finally underway.

Mike goes out second, completes his first lap and hands the

baton (and the riding shorts) to Jamie. Riding my conventional

mountain bike, I head out onto the course with him. Keeping

up with Jamie is only possible because of the heavy dosage of

depressants in my system which keeps me from whimpering in

pain at the pace which he sets. I remind myself that I am riding

a state of the art racing machine, while Jamie is astride a $20

fixed gear with a rigid fork.

Jamie rides furiously - for me it feels like an all out sprint that

continues for far too long. I just try to hang on while

he cleans technical sections that 99% of the field

(including myself) cannot get through. Riding be-

hind him, I have more than an hour to ask myself

what made these guys conclude that racing on

fixed gears was something other than insane.

Out here, Jamie clearly has a huge mechanical

disadvantage. Still, he passes far more riders than

pass him. But there is something else happening

here that transcends the mechanical. It seems

that Jamie is far more in harmony with the uni-

verse than the rest of us out on the course.

The fixed gear offers no illusions about the hill

that you are climbing. It is not a machine which

relates the mountain to you - 60 rpm regardless of

terrain - it is a machine which provokes the rider to

ask “who am I, what am I, where am I,” in relation

to the mountain, and by extension, the universe.

This is not human centered, but taoistic riding.

When the terrain is steep, there is no possibility

of pretending that it is not steep through a combi-

nation of gears. On a fixed gear, the rider cannot

ignore or mitigatethe force of gravity, or the issues

that are bigger, more powerful than them. On the

trail, the effort is proportional to the terrain, the

pain is proportional.

Jamie finished his lap in 1:23 and Jeremy heads out on the

course. Jeremy, quiet and into his own thoughts for a day and

a half, finishes his lap in 1:15 and comes in as we are leisurely

wandering toward the exchange area. Smiling and relaxed as he

meets us on the road, he asks, “Where were you guys?” As Jer-

emy removes the shorts, Thomas works to change the pedals,

replacing them with a pair that will fit his shoes (one bike was

disabled an hour prior to the start, so the team must share three

bikes). Jeremy stands around naked from the waist down for a few

minutes until Jamie notices and offers him a pink furry bathrobe.

Saturday afternoon musings at the compound ... Hugh Jass is

not about riding bikes under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

It is about remembering what the concept of competition is all

about. Competition as the Greeks understood it, seeking a com-

mon goal. Not about corporate sponsorships, one rider against

the others or against the clock, not about taking things like bike

racing seriously. For Hugh Jass, the beer and drugs and the outfits

66 Dirt Rag #176 4.1.14 25 years | Dirtragmag.com 67

Panaracer

help to strip away the illusion that racing is about anything other than

embracing life and one’s fellow humans joyfully, that people are al-

ways more important than anything else, that happiness comes not

from having an expensive, state of the art bike, but from relationships

with others. Hugh Jass is about promoting relationships with people,

and recognizing that the desire to possess things (nice bikes, expen-

sive clothing, money) can lead to the weakening of relationships. The

training regimen of beer, drugs, hard riding and simple living is the

Hugh Jass prescription for getting beyond the veil of craziness that is

status quo reality, and into the realm of infinite possibility.

2:30am Sunday, and Team Hugh Jass is quiet, dozing, warm under

layers of blankets and sleeping bags. Warm and cozy inside the team

tent despite the intermittent snow and freezing temperatures. Warm

and cozy...

At least 75% of the team can be described thus, while the remain-

ing 25%, Thomas Jenkins, is out on the course somewhere, stoned

and drunk, if his chemical state at the start of his lap can serve as

any indication. Thirty minutes earlier, while waiting for his turn to ride,

standing amid dozens of grim faced athletes looking out from under

the tent and scowling at the weather, Thomas turned to me and said,

“This snow is so awesome I might need to smoke another bowl be-

fore I start.”

After seeing him off, I give up my night vigil and sink into sleep.

When I awaken, it is to the sound of Mike stomping around and talk-

ing outside the tent. “I can’t believe it’s not against the law to have that

much fun on a ride.” It is 7:30am when I look at the clock.

The team goes down together when it is time for Thomas to finish

his later morning run. On the way down, Jamie talks about his early

morning lap, about how many people he made smile, about helping a

fellow riders who’s light had gone out. While waiting in the exchange

zone, one of the riders that Jamie had assisted comes up to us with

the other members of his team and introduces himself and his team-

mates. They admire Jamie’s bike, asking him how it’s holding up.

“It’s fucked,” Jamie says “ ... the back rim’s bent, it’s got a broken

spoke, the back hub’s shot...front hub’s shot, I think the bearings in

my headset are shot...I’m basically waiting for her to fold up under

me... but fuck, the pedals still work.”

The four riders nod, say their goodbyes, unable to find a more appro-

priate response, and leave smiling, turning their heads back toward us

to admire our pink and red bathrobes before getting back to their bikes.

For Team Hugh Jass, the 24 Hours of Moab ends with

Jeremy finishing his final lap by trying to clear the triple

woopdy just outside of the exchange area, almost suc-

ceeding, and then flipping his bike inside the tent, which

results in the rider behind him sustaining a cut lip and ex-

pressing severe disapproval of team’s behavior. Confused

apologies are offered, but not accepted.

By that point, the rest of us are fully into the spirit of

the moment, ready to wander around, to meet as many

people as possible, make as many friends as possible,

and create as much of a ripple in the fabric of corporate

race reality as possible. At one of the vendor’s booths,

Jeremy asks is there are any left over hot dogs that could

be given away, only to be told that whatever is left over will

go to their dogs, not to mooching riders who lack suffi-

cient capital. But most everyone else that we encounter is

happy to talk with us, to share a few jokes, to compliment

the team’s lighthearted demeanor on and off the course.

Unfortunately, the cold weather of the night before has not abated.

Despite the team’s desire to stay and party, the near freezing tempera-

tures have everyone in the mood to retreat to a more comfortable en-

vironment. A group meeting is held at the compound, and it is decided

that rather than accept an invitation by two New York journalists to

join them back in their hotel rooms, we will take our party back to the

interstate. With the bikes and gear loaded, and with everyone’s blood /

alcohol levels well above the legal driving limit, the team drops its trash

bag off at a dumpster (why no recycling bins for bottles and cans,

race promoters?), says goodbye to new and old friends, and joins the

snaking line of bike laden autos on the road to Moab and parts east,

west, north and south.

As the miles roll by and the sun merges with the western horizon, the

team smokes, drinks and talks, again an eclectic melange of technical

fixed gear vernacular and musings on the true nature of friendship, the

value of things, giving and other such issues. Eventually, Thomas asks

me what I think of Hugh Jass now that the riding is over.

Chemically liberated or cold sober, that is not a question which I

can answer in 25 words or less. In order to corne up with a meaningful

response, I have to ask myself how well the message of Hugh Jass,

if it can be called a message, is understood by the racers, sponsors,

vendors, and spectators at Moab. And what if everyone there were to

display the same seemingly rude, immature, irresponsible behavior as

the Hugh Jass team? Could organized riding survive?

Upon reflection, however, it seems that given an increase in cheap,

fixed gear bike usage, cross dressing, and more of a party atmo-

sphere, organized biking events might change somewhat in terms of

focus and ambience. Riding and racing are inherently good things,

and are in no threat of destruction by an increased performance art

/ party attitude to racing. If events like Moab are essentially about

people corning together to enjoy one another ‘s company, then rid-

ing simply happens to be the excuse (and a damned good one), the

cornmon bond which makes corning together possible. By their

presence, Hugh Jass challenges the assumption that such events

can only happen, or are enhanced by the presence of profit driven

corporate sponsors and vendors. One may go even further and ask

whether it is necessary or desirable for such events to include com-

merce as part of the package.

After five consecutive days with the team, this is where I find that my

thoughts and experiences have taken me.

But I am still curious to understand how the team sees itself. So late

one evening after our return to Harrisonburg, I ask

Thomas what he thinks Hugh Jass is trying to say.

“I don’t think we have a message,” he tells me.

“We’re just having fun ... but people can forget how

to do that when they get into the race scene. It’s

something I forget, and that’s one of my reasons

for doing Hugh Jass. People forget that riding isn’t

about looking good or having the most expensive

stuff. It’s about being on your bike, about pedaling

to the grocery store on a cheap fixed gear instead

of driving a car. That’s one of the big problems with

the corporate, consumer mentality. It can make

people forget that being a rider is more important

than being a racer. We don’t want to forget... we’re

just trying to be ourselves and have a good time

without hurting anyone else.”

Message or no message, it makes sense to

me.

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Text of follow-up story by Frank McGuire:

In 1996, Tim Parr of Swobo, Mike Ferrentino of Bike magazine,

and some other NorCal luminaries came to the 24 Hours of

Canaan in Davis, West Virginia, to ride singlespeeds and wear

wool jerseys—a completely foreign concept in the neon/ano “more

is better” race scene of the day. Their intention was not only to

have a good time, but also to thumb their noses at convention.

Much to their surprise, though, they were massively upstaged

by an (at the time) unheralded band of brothers from nearby

Harrisonburg, Virginia—riding Dumpster-dived bikes, swapping

one pair of shorts between them each lap, and generally being a

rolling party. Parr was oft quoted in the aftermath as saying, “We

were out-weirded by Hugh Jass.”

Back in Issue #64 (and recently reprinted in our 25th Anniversary

issue this year), Dirt Rag ran a gonzo-journalism-style profile of Team

Hugh Jass, a drug- and alcohol-fueled look at its cross-dressing,

hoopty-riding assault on 24-hour racing. It may have been easy

at the time to think that such debauchery had to have a limited

appeal and that the participants were slouching toward Gomorrah.

But the truth was that Team Hugh Jass became more than a

one-trick pony with a large revolving cast of characters who had

been drawn to Harrisonburg for different reasons and decided

to stay. Now, approaching 20 years on, that group of friends has

transformed the small rural town in the heart of the Shenandoah

Valley into one of the best places in America to be a cyclist.

If you pull off exit 247 on Interstate 81 and are expecting the

cycling capital of Virginia to look something like Boulder, Colorado,

you’re in for a bit of a letdown. The east side of the highway looks

like just another suburban sprawl, while the opposite side is a

collection of businesses that have seen better days. It’s not until

you get to Main Street and Court House Square that you start to

see some redevelopment and quirky businesses that give any

indication that this is a vibrant town. Yet Harrisonburg shares

(with Park City, Utah) the distinction of being one of the only

communities in the world that is both an IMBA Ride Center and

a Bicycle-Friendly Community. The key people who shocked the

cycling scene by being willing to share a single chamois for 24

hours also quietly worked to make their home into the place that

lives up to its nickname as the “Friendly City” to cyclists.

Back in the early ’90s, when the people who came to be the

mainstays of the cycling community arrived, the town was not

much to look at. Solidly in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley,

Harrisonburg was known more for its poultry processing than

for being a mountain resort. To most, the new crop of cycling

immigrants—people like Thomas Jenkins, Chris Scott, Tim

Richardson, Mike Carpenter, and Jamie Keener, along with many

others—coming from the sprawling suburbs of Northern Virginia,

the town probably felt like the forgotten frontier. But to repeat

a cliché of the great American narrative, the West is a place to

reinvent yourself, even if “West” is just a short car ride from home.

Most of the various characters associated with Hugh Jass came

to Harrisonburg to attend James Madison University, and like many

poor college kids obsessed with bikes, they got jobs at bike shops

to feed their addiction. In Harrisonburg, Mark’s Bike Shop was the

touchstone for the mountain bike community. Regardless of shop

affiliation, a solid group of riders developed that was able to ride all

day, pushing themselves to get better. Unlike many other college

towns, the core people in the riding scene stayed to encourage

and challenge the next wave of arriving mountain bikers. A crucial

mix of nearby mountains, viable service-industry jobs, and low

cost of living kept the transplants local. The inclusive nature

of the riding community, though, is strictly an outgrowth of the

personalities that created it.

By 1995, names from Harrisonburg began to be crowded at

the top of the race results throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Seemingly,

an unconscious decision was made to focus on the competition

amongst themselves: Why travel to compete if the homegrown

talent just keeps getting better? Several people started riding fixed

gears around town and trying to hurt each other on them. Fixies

were fun; they were difficult and they were not the norm. In this

way, the mountain bikers of Harrisonburg managed to encourage

competitive handicapping as a virtue. It was not too far of a stretch

from here that riding them for 24 hours off-road sounded like a

great idea.

One of the longest-running events in the Harrisonburg

community is the Six-Pack Downhill, an underground, winner-

takes-all race held on Fridays in the fall. “It started out as the Dollar

Downhill, but it wasn’t too cool giving your dollar to the same fast

guys every week,” said Jeremy Wimpey. “With the Six-Pack, there

was a good chance he would share his winnings with you.” For a

long time, the entry fee was a six-pack, which the winner would

collect at the end; the catch, though, was that the winner then

had to host the after-party. The rides have since outgrown the

size that a spontaneous house party can handle, but the spirit of

inclusiveness continues. Typically, the group sticks together on the

climb to the top of the trail, usually at what’s locally called “party

pace” (more on this in a bit), with conversations and boasts to

accompany the spin uphill. Once the race starts, the group cheers

on the departing solo riders until they can regroup at the finish line

and relive the eight- to 10-minute downhill. Nowadays, in an effort

to handicap the fastest riders, the winner must submit to riding a

Trek comfort bike at the next week’s competition. This has the nice

effect of both rewarding and humbling the fastest in town.

There is also a strong undercurrent of a “ride to the ride”

ethic, which grew when the core group would start their five-hour

assaults on the George Washington National Forest with 90- to

120-minute spins out to the forest. Thomas Jenkins has long been

a proponent of bikes as transportation, which he credits to his

time as the team manager and racer for the Breezer mountain bike

team in the mid-’90s. For him, a ride with the team to D.C. in 1997

sums up the appeal: “We ended riding back in the dark with no

lights, laughing most of the way.” Rather than letting adulthood

and time constraints change their commitment, the mountain-bike

community found places in town that were more approachable

than the main body of the G.W. National Forest to continue the

ride. Today, Hillendale Park has an award-winning trail system in the heart of the city, and Massanutten Resort has allowed the club to greatly

expand its trails on the Western Slope to a system that

would be the envy of any community. Both are easily accessible

from Court House Square by bike.

In most towns, group rides serve only to separate the

wheat from the chaff, or make newcomers feel left out. But in

Harrisonburg, a simple edict of “party pace” by ride leaders means

keeping things together, slowing down so that you can talk to

everyone around you. Party pace is often declared in effect on

road sections of group rides; you might want to get the road over

with, but at the same time this is the chance to actually meet those

who are on the ride. It also helps that the ride leaders are strong

enough to put the screws to anyone who’s feeling frisky. Party

pace gets reinforced every July at the Tour de Burg, a long-running

underground weeklong stage race cruelly organized by Mike

Carpenter. According to Carpenter, “Eventually folks realized they

better rest up in the [party pace], because the tour would be plenty

hard when the real racing started.”

None of these ideas or events, though, would have a chance to

take hold if there wasn’t some stability in the community. And as

much as it may come as a shock to those whose first exposure

to Hugh Jass was through Issue #64, not only have most of

the protagonists in that story stayed in cycling, they have put

down roots and become pillars of the larger community as well.

Thomas Jenkins and Tim Richardson struck out on their own in

2000, purchasing an old Sears warehouse on Main Street and

starting Shenandoah Bicycle Company, a Trek 100 dealer that is

routinely rated as one of the best shops in America. Carpenter

and Chris Scott formed Shenandoah Mountain Touring in 1999,

a touring and race-promoting outfit that promotes some of the

most well-regarded (and toughest) endurance races on the

East Coast. Jeremy Wimpey, the fresh face of Hugh Jass as its

youngest member, went on to get a PhD in recreational ecology,

but, probably more importantly for the community, made the

trail map for the western slope of Massanutten, the local riding

area. In 2013, Scott rallied the broader cycling community to help

purchase the Stokesville campground, home of the Shenandoah

Mountain 100 and the long-running mountain-bike festival. Plenty

of communities have cyclists that over several beers will dream big

about making a permanent impact. In Harrisonburg, words lead to

actions no matter how pie in the sky.

There’s a plaque on the wall of Shenandoah Bicycle embossed

with the Margaret Mead quote, “Never doubt that a small

group of committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is

the only thing that ever has,” as well as a carving of Tim and

Thomas shaking hands in their Hugh Jass finery. This may be

one of the few visible reminders of the party that once was, but

the iconoclastic spirit of the team inhabits hundreds of locals

who weren’t around for the original incarnation. One of the key

employees at SBC is Lindsey Carpenter, Mike’s daughter and

a current JMU student who has long been a fixture in the bike

community. And that may be the greatest lesson of this entire

story: The party gets better only if it keeps getting bigger.

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Some of you might not know that I graduated from the University of Dayton with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography sometime in 1980. I soon followed my college sweetheart, Elaine, to her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, and started my career as a photographer by driving school buses and shlepping hot dogs at the “Dirty O” from 9 pm to 5 am. In between shit jobs and trying to get paid for taking pictures, I would take to the streets in “Artist” mode to do street photography in the vein of my photographic idols.

I was a fan of all the great “Shooters”: Frank, Erwitt, Winogrand, Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, Weegie. It was Weegie that led me to shoot with a strobe in daylight. And don’t forget my Lord, W. Eugene Smith, who just happened to spend quite a bit of time in The Burgh. And Vivian Mier, who, upon discovery in 2009, was like looking in the mirror. What did I take from these people?

Weegie: Push in there and blast ‘em with a strobe. Like Weegee, I had a police scanner in my car.

Elliott Erwiit: Whimsy, irony, and absurdity.

Diane Arbus: Weirdness. If I have any “predatory” or “voyeuristic” tendencies, I thank Diane and Weegie.

Eugene Smith: Audacity and perseverance. “I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?”

Robert Frank: America and Americans.

Vivian Maier: Anyone can do this. “If you really have something to say better to be behind the camera than in front of it.”

Gary Winogrand: “A photographer’s responsible for two things. Once you put your body where you want it to be, what’s in the frame, and when you snap the shutter. That’s what the photographer does. The camera does the rest.”

I loved the deer-in-headlights look I’d get when strobing people. I guess in retrospect, it was kind of an aggressive way to make photos. These days, I am not sure if I would want to attack people in this way.

So the show was on Blatent Image Gallery on Carson Street. It was a group show. I had the back room, where I printed and hung four prints on the walls. A Kodak Carousel projector cycled through 80 slides on a wall. We had snacks and drinks. Friends came. These are the first 20 slides. Take a peek. And thanks for looking.

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Thanks for looking this far! I appreciate you!

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Dirt Rag. Right up front in the magazine was CHEWING THE FAT, the letters section, where readers could share their thoughts on stories they read in recent issues or just spout off about whatever they wanted to. I thought it was an incredibly important section of Dirt Rag, as it was the section that really made Dirt Rag a community. And sometimes the letters were the most entertaining words in “The Book” (Magazine industry slang). Not to mention filling space and saving us from writing more stories ourselves.

This letter, from Issue 14 in February 1991, was probably referring to the boingy Cannondale mentioned in the previous issue. At the time, we had just reviewed the Rock Shox RS-1, our first suspension review and arguably the first well-marketed suspension fork:

One thing in your last issue that annoyed me. It was your claim that rear suspension was a positive thing in the evolution of mountain bikes. Rear suspension sucks! It’s heavy and ugly. It also takes the fun and challenge out of mountain biking. You should have to rely on skill, not technology, to get down the mountain. If suspension is what you want, buy a motorcycle. Suspension goes against what mountain biking stands for. Go back to the original frame and test yourself, NOT THE BIKE. But I must admit, I have not ridden a rear suspension bike, but as someone who loves mountain biking, I must say something against making it into a war of technology, not skill.

Thanks,

Simeon Bayles

Lawrenceville, NJ

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Next up, we have a letter from Philip Keyes, who was on his way to writing our “Land Access” column for many years. He became a very good friend. In fact, he inducted Elaine and me into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame while at Interbike in 2002. Rest in peace, Philip. (From Issue #22 April 1992):

My point is minor—hopefully insignificant—but then again, it may belie something more. Last issue, my hair bristled over the abbreviation “DR” used to replace the more down-to-earth epithet “The Rag.” Those two seemingly innocuous letters sent up red flags in my head (hence the bristle) that things were changing within The Rag. Indeed, things are on the move: new place, new editors, new advertisers, new fonts…someday it may even get to us faster! Hey, growth is great, and you all deserve hearty congratulations. However, there’s an obvious downside to growth. The strains on quality and the pressures to commercialize require greater editorial determination and vigilance, especially when The Rag’s own advertisers start to quote its product reviews. After “DR” becomes daily parlance, what’s next? Does Team Dirt Rag become the TDR Wrecking Crew and do we get DR exclusive shootouts about “High Speed Carbos: The Chicken Enchilada vs. The Hoagie?”

At the risk of blaspheming the elder statesman of woodsies (whose feature is the one I turn to first), even the OC is exhibiting signs of LC (latent consumerism). A running tally of his “cheap” suspension solutions (tires, stems and seatposts) already surpasses a number of real suspension systems (albeit not the rear). And though I hate to say it, we’ll probably hear he’s bought some RS 20s before summer’s end. Beyond this, whining to Santa and begging for free stuff ain’t too dignified.

Lastly, your section promoting camaraderie between Dirt Pals is fast becoming a Dirt Pail. Is it appropriate to print bike crimes and unveiled threats of violent revenge? This seems the antithesis of your original intent. I thought the Ibis incident brought home the need for increased editorial activism.

I hope you take the criticism in the positive way I intended it. I write out of respect for The Rag and the integrity of the editors. (I certainly wouldn’t waste ink writing to MBA). My only suggestion is that as The Rag grows, please remember that your readers are a bunch of hardcores who want an alternative, radical, anti-hype, no BS magazine (woops, another abbreviation!) that fills the void in an otherwise glossy, commercial, brain dead world or product peddling (sorry about the pun).

Philip M. Keyes

Acton, MA

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Then there was this one from Issue #51, which came out in July of 1996. I could not find the original article because I am missing some back issues, but here’s the cover, which was not paid for by the good folks at Fat City Cycles. Apparently, we suggested that people support their local bike shop or something. Whew!

Where in your feeble mind did you find space to formulate the idea that it’s my fault that you have had a lousy life? I now realize the fact that someone has followed you around your entire life with a gun to your head, forcing you to work for minimum wage at “sweatshop” bicycle dealerships. You are pathetic! Let me guess, your parents were brother and sister. Not only am I a consumer but I am a capitalist. I always ask for a 10% discount on accessories. I will call 50 shops to save $1. If a mail-order company is selling an item for less, including freight charges, they are going to get my money so I can buy more stuff for my biking habit. What a concept. I also know you must never use coupons or ask for or accept discounts, and you always pay full retail. That is why you are a financial wizard, right?

You also forgot to figure in approximately 6% inflation into your chart, which means you really lost about a thousand bucks. To sum it up, I’ve heard better sympathy pleas from a used car salesman. Every time I go into the local bike store I’m going to look at the guy/gal behind the counter and ask myself if this person is as (bleeping) stupid as Alexander J. (for jack-off) Bier?

P.S. Tell your Rag bosses to cancel my subscription. You now rank less than Mountain Bike Action, which I am currently using to line the bottom of my bird cage.

Mark Gale

Phoenix, AZ

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Then there was the Shaun Palmer interview, which went over pretty well. We were pretty stoked that we got an interview with this media star. Here’s a letter from issue #61, October 1997. My brother, Mark Tierney, drew us a wonderful piece of art to go along with the story in the previous issue.

I just got #60 today and read up to the Shaun Palmer interview. I would like to comment on his belief that kids should, “do what ever they want.” What B.S. Our prisons are over populated by youth rapists, murders, burglars; AIDS is spreading, people are afraid to go out at night for fear of gangs and others, graffiti is everywhere because, “kids did what they wanted.” What happened to self control?

We have an over abundance of laws/rules/regulations because people, “Did what they wanted.” Ever wonder why it’s illegal to yell “fire” in a crowded theater? I bet it’s because some A-hole did it and people died trying to escape a non-existent fire. And I’d bet that many laws/rules/regulations have a similar history. Think about it. If people exercised some self-restraint and common sense we wouldn’t need laws at all. Of course there are laws of nature that cannot be escaped. Like gravity. Death. What would happen if a river stopped following the rules? If it spread over its banks it would no longer be a river, it would lose its identity. Many people lose their identities as humans by acting like animals, or actually worse than animals (let’s not insult well behaved cats and dogs). What would happen to, say football, if no rules were made? Could it even be called a sport or game? How about mountain bike races? No rules? No race. What would be the point? Could any satisfaction be gained by such an activity? Life is rendered meaningless without rules and self-control. May I paraphrase a statement made by Missy Giove a year ago in a competitor’s magazine? Basically, she said that our freedom ends when we impose on another’s freedom. Following rules doesn’t mean not enjoying life or not having fun. Missy obviously enjoys life and has fun yet her “philosophy” is a “rule.” Similar to the Golden Rule she said. So kids, choose your role models carefully. Missy is rad, yet understands life. I choose to dress differently from her and many of her lifestyle choices are not mine, but I have the utmost respect for her because I know she respects me and you. Palmer? I’m not sure he even has any self-respect.

Rita Randolph

Phoenix, AZ

We received a few more letters on Shaun. One more above. Well, that’s all, folks. Enough of this silliness. I promise more good posts to follow.

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There was always some great highjinx at the booth to get attention. The show-us-your-scar contest with polaroids pinned to the wall for judging. The Tattoo contest, similarly polaroided. Four PM happy hours with beers we snuck in to avoid the exorbitant fees for pouring beer in the convention center, later, happy hours featuring Gin Gimlets as they were easier to sneak in. It goes on.

Long days on the floor, working it. Then back to the Vagabond. A two-level motel with a pool directly across the street from Treasure Island on Las Vegas Boulevard, “The Strip”. Here we could hang with buddies, drink, derby around the pool, and pretty much do whatever we wanted.

Every room opened to the courtyard and pool, which sure beat spending half an hour every day searching through slot machines to find your room, only to be enclosed inside a casino.

For a couple of years, 2000 and 2001, our Dirt Rag work/fun ethic created a beautiful thing poolside over beers, The Dirtier Daily, modeled after the Show Daily put out by Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. What a hoot. I hope the BRIAN guys weren’t too upset. They were doing a great job of covering the real news so we could goof around with our little ‘Zine.

The DD was old school, scraps of paper, stuck to a larger sheet of paper with the old waxer we used had to launch the magazine, pre-digital. Contributed to by various people using various techniques. All while watching Treasure Island Casino’s pirate show across the street, several times per evening. Derby’s around the pool ensued. Alleycats to Old Vegas, and more. Of course, someone had to go to Kinkos, thanks for doing that.

Here’s the cover of the first issue, first day of the 2000 Interbike show. I love how Karl Rosengarth typed his story legibly so we could read it, unlike some other jokers. You’ll also note that Karl is wearing a Tyvek suit, which we all donned that year in a tribute to Devo, as well to stand out on the show floor.

By day two, we had a Vegas-style Critical Mass ride under our belts. Again, note the Hazmat suits worn by all.

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On day three, we published Hevi Kevi’s ticket after he had been arrested during the Critical Mass he had created. I asked Kevin what he might remember from that time… “I produced and distributed flyers in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish (which, in the pre-Internet Moab days, was a lift). In addition to the night in jail, I spent one night hanging out with Butch from the Melvins and Hank III”

I will continue to share more random pages as we move forward. In 2001, we were on a Dirt Rag World tour that involved Porcupine Rim, as well as Mystic Hot Springs, in Monroe, Utah, where we helped with the hot spring maintenance with the owner to earn our stay.

Here’s the cover from 2001, Day 2. This is a photo of the original paste-up, with Polaroids stuck to it—Shoutout to Rapper Dan K. Harvest and his Redneck Battletruck CD.

Another page from 2001, Day 2. Some of my favorite people here, Geno, Chipps, Zo, Snarl, Browne, Thanita, Ritchie, Barry, and more.

Here’s the cover from 2001, Day 3. Apparently, 29ers were a thing. BTW, no ads were sold in the “Daily”; we just stuck random logos of people we liked into the layout.

Let’s see what else we have here. Memories of Kona’s Buck-A-Bowl for IMBA, but maybe that’s a whole ‘nuther story.

I’m going to go ahead and wrap this up as I have been thinking about it way too much. Kevi also had this to say… “Everyone was hyped on the Dirtier Daily and they became harder to get a copy of as the show went on. The DD was a big part of the DIY ethos that started with MTB at Anaheim and still lingered at Interbike in the Vegas years”.

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Back to our regularly scheduled program…

The four point black line around this column is a boundary. Inside the boundary is one person’s personal opinions. If you’re easily riled by potentially controversial opinions, now’s your chance to turn the page or otherwise avert your eyes.

Blows Against The Empire

An album put out by Paul Kantner and Grace Slick (With members of the Grateful Dead and C.S.N.Y. sitting in) in 1970. Like Einstein’s theory of relativity, I thought of a song from it while riding my bicycle...

A child is coming

A child is coming

A child is coming to you

What are you going to do when Uncle Samuel comes around?

Asking for the young one’s name.

Looking for the print of his hand

For their files in their numbers game

I don’t want his chances for freedom

To ever be that slim

Let’s not tell ‘em about him

A child is coming...

Later I went home and googled “The Draft”, worried about my thirteen year old’s prospects for early death.

And that’s why I take this space.

Not necessarily to bring you around to any particular way of thinking.

Just asking you to take some time.

Get some knowledge.

Read, beyond your daily newspaper or TV.

Then take action.

Others are counting on you.

Time to think about the kids.

And what you want to leave behind for them.

What do I think today? Twenty-one years later?

Well, today I think I was a little heavy with the words, but they still ring true today. My son is over the current draft age, but I do worry about the future for him and his contemporaries, even more now. I also note that the lyrics have a bit of Libertarian, Homeschooler, Don’t-Tread-On-Me vibe, but I do have a bit of alignment for those folks despite my leanings.

I also could have gone on about the album, which remains a favorite. I mean seriously. Jack Casady, Joey Covington, David Crosby, David Freiberg, Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Paul Kantner, Bill Kreutzmann, Graham Nash, and Grace Slick. San Francisco royalty at the time. Can’t go wrong. I’ve got a link to a nice review down below my final money-grab. Enjoy!

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https://beardedgentlemenmusic.com/2016/02/24/adopt-this-album-paul-kantner-and-jefferson-starship-blows-against-the-empire/

Thanks for reading!

Maurice

PS: Here’s what it looked like in print.

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Back to our regularly scheduled program:

On the day in question, I figured I would pedal through the local skatepark to see if anyone good was riding. Often it’s just kids hanging out, but Ya never know. Magic did indeed show itself though, in the form of a figure on the ground with a blanket over their head, surrounded by trays of liquids. Being a photographer, and observing a large-format camera on a tripod nearby, I deduced that some photographs were being made in a less-than-modern fashion. It was Jenny Sampson, doing some wet plate collodion process at the skatepark, of all places.

Here’s a subject, holding still with Jenny under the focusing hood. A ground-glass screen behind the lens allows the photographer to compose and focus, in case you were wondering.

After focusing, a wet metal plate (wet with chemistry —collodion and silver nitrate) is inserted in the back of the camera, on the same plane as the focusing screen.

The Wet Plate Collodion process requires longer exposures than what is typical with modern photography. Hence, sitters must remain still for long periods of time (One to 30 seconds, depending on conditions), which, in part, explains the serious visage of most people photographed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

About the wet plate process…. From Jennysampson.com…. “Wet Plate Collodion involves hand-coating a metal or glass plate with a viscous, salted collodion (which acts like a glue) and then submerging the plate in silver nitrate to sensitize it. While it is still wet, the sensitized plate is put in the camera and the exposure is made. Immediately following exposure, the plate is processed by hand-pouring the developer onto the plate, then washing, fixing, and washing again. The resulting tintype (metal) or ambrotype (glass) is a one-of-a-kind photographic artifact; beautiful, sometimes hauntingly so, and possessing a silvery exquisiteness.”

Below you’ll see Jenny giving a subject their first look at themselves. Tintype has a way of accentuating freckles, as well as blue eyes. I asked Jenny about this. And she replied via email that “The chemistry used in the wet plate collodion process is different than that of traditional black-and-white photography. It renders colors differently than we see with our naked eyes, and differently than the way traditional black and white photo chemicals translate color. It’s almost as if there is a blue filter on the lens, hence blues render very light, like your eyes. And as such, yellows and reds often render darker than we might expect. This is why freckles pop in tintypes.”

A little reflective fill light never hurt.

Two more skater girls.

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Tintype does that crazy thing to blue eyes. This might be the best portrait ever taken of me.

Jenny travelled all over California, Washington, and Oregon to create her book, Skater Girls, which is available here. Buy Jenny's Book. Or check out her website.

Thanks for reading, and please hit me up with your questions, comments, and concerns.

First, let us begin with this interview from February 14th, 2011, at his shop in Petaluma. Jeff Lockwood conducted the interview, but I was the photographer that day.

How did you get started building frames? I was in graduate school as an art major and dropped out in 1970 or 1971. I moved to California and started working in bike shops. Albert Eisentraut was teaching bike-building classes, and I signed up. Joe Breeze and some other influential people were also in the classes. I enjoyed making stuff, and eventually became part-owner and vice president of Eisentraut, Inc. I wanted out after a few years and moved to Oregon in 1976, and started Bruce Gordon Cycles. I’ve been doing that ever since.

But first…. Could someone try out these buttons and make sure they’re working? I have a few subscribers who have thrown down the full $50/year, but I’d like to see some smaller funds…

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What's the best thing about your job? This is all I’ve ever done for most of my life. I’ve been doing it since 1974. I really like bicycles. I like thinking about them, and I like building them…And riding them, of course.

What's the toughest part of your job? I hate the bike business and the bullshit that goes on with the whole thing. I’ve hated marketing my whole life, and there’s a lot of stuff the bike industry doesn’t want you to know. Through creative marketing, these companies twist the truth and make you think how they want you to think. I like making bikes, but I dislike the fact that this is a country that, in my lifetime, really makes nothing. When I started, fancy bikes were made in Europe and then in Japan…. We’ve gone further from making things in the United States. Most people don’t even interact with someone who physically makes something with their hands. As a result, they don’t really have a concept of something that’s really well-made. We live in a country where if someone tells you it’s the best, then it’s the best.

What was the first frame you built? 1974, when I was in Albert’s class…it was a road bike that I still have. I have a collection of about 30 bikes I’ve made that have state-of-the-art parts of the time…all my prototypes.

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Where is your favorite place to ride? I ride mostly by myself out here in Petaluma. I can ride from my house, all the way to the coast, along rolling pastures. I love that.

What are your interests aside from bicycles? I like to travel. I have a few old English motorcycles. I also have an old MGB from the 1960s. And I like making stuff. I’ve made some weird vehicles for Burning Man.

What would you like to be known for in the bicycle world (or outside it)? To bring more manufacturing and bike parts back to the United States. Things have changed dramatically since I started in 1974…we now have 14-pound carbon road bikes, full suspension downhill bikes, and all sorts of other exciting, innovative stuff. All this stuff started with small, independent American guys. If we were going to wait for the Taiwanese or the Chinese to invent the mountain bike, we’d still be waiting. I need to do better marketing on my part…I need to get the message to people that there’s a lot of good stuff being made in America, but if we don’t buy things made here, there’s not going to be anything left to buy here! I’m hoping to set up a system where you can actually make stuff in the US and be cost-competitive, but you have to remove a lot of the middlemen.

BTW there is still a website offering Bruce’s tires as well as a few other things at bgcycles.com -Ed.

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A Fine letter from Stevil

Following Bruce’s death, Stevil Kinevil wrote a letter to Dirt Rag’s Chewing the Fat: The Love and the Loss of Bruce Gordon

When referring to people who have, to some degree or another, made an indelible impact on a scene, the term “legend” gets thrown around with some frequency. In the late Bruce Gordon’s case, from my perspective, that particular title doesn’t begin to truly cover the life he led. One of the founders of the wholly irreverent SOPWAMTOS (Society Of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit), from the time he first lit a torch in the 1970s, the artistry of American frame-building was of vital importance to him. Besides being a meticulous craftsman, he set the stage for the following generation of bike-riding derelicts, myself included. It was always with a quick wit and a sharp tongue that he returned a greeting. He was always the first to downplay his skills, even though he was one of the most talented individuals in the game. His humility bordered on self-deprecation on his best days, but he was always there to take a quiet ride or hold up on some bar stools together. He never wavered in his warmth and adoration for bicycles and the people he knew through them. Though “gravel riding” is a bona fide thing now, back when most of us were busy just being born, learning how to walk or possibly wrestling with puberty, to Bruce and his cronies, taking the less-paved path was simply riding bikes. He lived his life never wanting accolades, never injecting himself into any spotlights. Though he rarely gave unsolicited advice, he was fond of offering the following to any folks within earshot who cared to listen: “Do it on your terms.”

Ever committed to his doctrine until his final day, on his terms was precisely how he lived.

Rest in power, Papa Bruce. 6/7/2019

Bruce Gordon’s Memorial

Thank you, Stevil. Later that month, a memorial was held for Bruce in Petaluma, including a bike ride. Many were in attendance, and Bruce got what he had coming to him, a Golden Toity from his fellow degenerates at S.O.P.W.A.M.T.O.S, The Society Of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit.

Offerings to Bruce…

A shrine on the side of the road.

Charlie Cunningham was riding tandem with Jaquie Phelan and stopped to chat with Joe Breeze.

The ride stopped here for some reason.

Uncle Ross Schaeffer said a few words.

I’ll just leave you with this vandalism found in the bathroom at the park that day. Thanks for reading. Please, please comment if you have anything to say. I’d appreciate it! -Maurice

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As you may have noticed, there was extensive use of the clip art that came (On floppy disks) with the Mac. Seriously, we just launched the program and said go. So let’s see… what do we need? A race schedule would be important, so everyone would know where to go.

Of course, we had to sell some ads first, so I took a poorly printed prototype around to some shops and promoters and was successful enough to sell enough pages to print the magazine. At this point, our only investment was time. And it was a good thing that Elaine, had a day job. People like Barry from Dirty Harrys and Jerry Kraynick were key supporters in the beginning and forever after. BTW, race results were key for many years when Dirt Rag was more local to the east.

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That wasn’t too hard, was it? If it is too hard, I’d love to hear from you. Thank you!

Michael Chikiris was a local photographer friend who also rode bikes. When we weren’t mountain biking, there would be many C&O Canal rides, as well as the Gap Trail when it finally opened.

From Day One, land access would always be a key mission of the magazine. We were lucky to have a great trail system in Pittsburgh, but other places had more conflict. Paging Chip Schiede!

Ads were made with scraps of paper, scissors, and wax. And Trail Mix was a great way to engage readers.

Jim Sota was the promoter of the Hidden Valley race, which happened twice a year. A race where we handed out the first copies of Dirt Rag and cemented our first friendships in the cult of MTB.

And a women’s column attempted to keep the scales balanced.

Of course, there was a Q and A column. After some rejection, Chip Scheide was the first bike shop guy who was willing to talk to me. He introduced me to Lee Klevens and the Thursday night “Urban Assault” ride, which would become a long-time part of my mountain bike diet. It was at Lee’s house that we folded and collated the first issue of Dirt Rag. Lee was subscriber #1, handing me 6 bucks that night.

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A place to ride article. Another mainstay.

We even managed to get some “Content” from our neighboring state, Ohio. Yes, Dirt Rag started with Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio as its territory and expanded from there. At some point, Dirt Rag had international reach.

Chris Cosby was another riding buddy who threw down a little to make the first issue special. Chris remembers, “What I do remember is folding the magazine by hand on your ping-pong table with beer and pizza, and Elaine was going around the room making sure everyone’s thumb was clean and not smearing on the paper. I think Chip Scheide didn’t use a napkin or something.”

Snitger’s had the biggest ad. I think they paid $100 or was it $200?

Some people hated mail-order companies, but we didn’t care where the money came from. Nashbar was kind enough to advertise their physical store rather than their mail-order business.

Barry Jefferies from Dirty Harry’s bicycle shop was another long-time advertising supporter, even after we had grown well beyond the Tri-State area. And Barry was kind enough to contribute to the first issue.

One major decision we made from the get-go was to charge money for the magazine. one dollar to start. This gave it value, relative to the option of a free newsprint-style zine that would wind up in the trash. Glad we did not follow that route.

So there you go. Thanks for reading this far. Want to encourage me to keep the paywall down? It would be great if a few folks would send some beer money. And do let me know if you have any difficulty with that.

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As time passed and Dirt Rag became a viable business, we still relied on reader submissions. Not only was it a cheap way to fill the pages, but it is a big part of what made Dirt Rag Dirt Rag. A sense of community.

Let’s start with this take on the A-Team. Who doesn’t love Mister T? The art is by Brendan Dee from Blackstonebicycles in RI, and it looks like 1996. Note the R.G.M.C. belt buckle!

Here’s another great one, I believe by Leslie Carter. So much work went into this. And it is so beautifully reflects the vibe of the great Mountain Bike gatherings like Mountain Bike Weekend and Dirt Fest. As I recall, it was submitted for a cover, but did not fit the format. From 1996. Paging Leslie Carter!

BTW, Would you like to send money to support me in continuing this work? I have tried to make it as easy as possible and available to any budget!

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That wasn’t too hard, was it? Thank you!

What else do we have here? I always liked this one. We used to set up all the art on a table each issue and pick what we wanted to use for the cover. As I recall, this one was put on the judging stand for many months but never made it. We may have made a postcard out of it. By Stibbs, 1992. Paging Stibbs!

Wow, right?

This one’s prettier. I can’t tell who the artist is, though. Any ideas? It is really fantastic.

Then there was Coolradbro. We’d occasionally get an envelope stuffed with art in the mail, and we did meet Larry at a bike show somewhere along the way. We hear that he lived in the woods. Like with all these great artists, I have tried to look them up on the internet and have found little, but check this interview out. SWCC.

I’ll stop now and give you another opportunity to subscribe. Thanks until next time and please comment!

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Artist/Song/Album/Label. Enjoy!

Ornette Coleman And Prime Time Three Wishes Virgin Beauty Portrait

Rahsaan Roland Kirk Voulunteered Slavery The Vibration Continues Atlantic

Jerry Garcia Catfish John Reflections Round

Kacy & Clayton The Light Of Day The Siren's Song New West

The Byrds Al I Really Want To Do Mr. Tamborine Man Columbia

OCS The Fool Memory of a Cut Off Head Castle Face

Vic Chesnutt Sponge West Of Rome Texas Hotel

Vic Chesnutt Where Were You West Of Rome Texas Hotel

Benjamin Clementine Better Sorry Than Asafe I Tell a Fly Barclay / Virgin

Moody Blues Qestion This I The Moody Blues Threshold

Murder Vibes Filth Filth s/r

Laurie Anderson O Superman Live t Town Hall NYC Nonesuch

The Stooges 1970 Funhouse Elektra

Lou Reed Perfect Day Transformer RCA

Courtney Barnett And Kurt Vile Fear Is Like A Forest Lotta Sea Lice Matador

Firesign Theatre Drink To Me With Only Thine Fox How Can You Be In Two Places At Once... Columbia

Mamas And The Papas Go Where You Wanna Go If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears Dunhill

Pauline Oliveros Alien Bog Alien Bog /Beautiful Soup Pogus

Sun Ra Round Midnight Greatest Hits Evidence

Sun Ra Rocket #9 Greatest Hits Evidence

Rasputina Gingerbread Coffin Cabin Fever Instinct

Doors Peace Frog Morrison Hotel Elektra

Doors Blue Sunday Morrison Hotel Elektra

Charles Manson Home Is Where You're Happy Ultimate Collection ?

Johnny Cash The Talking Leaves Bitter Tears Columbia

Holiday Ghosts In My Head Holiday Ghosts PNKSLM

John Maus Teenage Witch Screen Memories Ribbon

Motorhead Heroes Under Cover Planetary

Roy Orbison Crying With The Royal Philharmonic Sony

Buzzcocks Why Can't I Touch It Singles Going Steady I.R.S.

Gloria Steinem Address to The Women Of America Great Speeches Of The both Century Rhino Word Beat

Public Image Limited Poptones Second Edition ?

Cranberries Dreams Everybody's Doing It Why CantWe? Island

Protomartyr A Private Undestanding Relatives In Descent Domino

Cowsills Captain Sad And His Ship Of Fools Best Of MGM

Arncorps Kindergarden Cop The Unbelievable Alternative Tentacles

Kris Kristofferson The Pilgrim-Chaper 33 The Silver Tounged Devil And I Monument

Johnny Cash Custer Bitter Tears Columbia

Yes, the power of the clip art that shipped with the 1988 Macintosh SE.

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How do you like my buttons? I am trying to make it as easy as possible for you to subscribe on some level. How am I doing? I like how this page talks about the combined effort of making this magazine. I think that community was a cornerstone of Dirt Rag. Contributions from everyone. And I hope the community will contribute to my endeavors here on Substack as well. We can’t rely on my memory alone, can we?

While we had some ideas for stories as indicated by the headlines, the text had to be Lorem Ipsum so that we could show potential advertisers as soon as possible. You’ll also notice that land access for mountain bikes was an important part of Dirt Rag from day one…

Ad sizes were created…

And we finished it up with a subscription offer. It’s Neat. It’s Elite. It can’t be BEAT! I’m not sure what that mess of art is. probably some trees, but I will tell you that the decision to charge money for the magazine was a big one. It could have been free but then what value would it have had? Until the end we did our best to keep it affordable fore the average person.

Speaking of subscription offers…

And please subscribe at any level, or for free. NOTAFLOF.

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OK, see you soon!

After graduating with a BA in Fine Art photography from the University of Dayton, and before getting into mountain bike magazine publishing, I followed my college sweetheart Elaine back to her home in Pittsburgh, PA, and started hitting the streets. My college degree had left me ill-prepared to make a living, so one of my first jobs was working at Original Hot Dog Shop from 9 pm to 5 am while listening to Blondie sing Rapture over and over on the jukebox. Later on, I drove a school bus in the morning and then hustled photo work the rest of the day. I would photograph anything to pay the bills. There was the old “Grip-and-grin” shot of people shaking hands while passing a certificate of some sort or a giant donation check. There was high school football in the rain, popping the camera bodies and lenses into the film drying cabinet at the Valley News Dispatch to keep them running (No electronics at the time). There was a scanner in the car, listening to reports of police and fire activity because “If it bleeds it leads”. It was the 1980s, things were different then, and I had the privilege of documenting that special time.

There was plenty of spare time to wander the streets looking for artistic opportunities. The images of Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, and Weegee danced through my head as I strolled the streets of Pittsburgh. Here are some of my more “Artistic” photos:

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As time went on, the Alternative newsweekly In Pittsburgh gave me many opportunities to photograph local luminaries in their environments for potential covers. It was a great time, as I fancied myself as the Annie Liebowitz of this small town paper. Later, the folks at In Pittsburgh allowed me to use their 300dpi, $3000 laser printer to make camera-ready art for the magazine we were starting, Dirt Rag.

It was great getting embedded into the community. Meeting politicians, artists, and other luminaries was all part of a day’s work. And led me to more paid work as people got to know me. I was never the most established professional photographer in the city, but I did get to the point where I had a day rate I could charge commercial clients. Below are some portraits I took for In Pittsburgh. I only wish I could recall who everyone is! Maybe y’all could help me in the comments. Of course, I recognize Jimmy Roach from WDVE, Patty Burns, Mad Mike, and Mayor Tom Murphy, but I could use some help with the others.

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Lastly for this installment, there were musicians. No surprise that I don’t remember who anyone is, but if I can ever get my old Filemaker database to work someday, I could tell you. Ed Masley I remember, and John Lee Hooker. Help me out?

So part of this post is about me getting in touch with my past, part of it is celebrating Pittsburgh in the 1980s, and part of it is keeping it all alive as a document of the time and place. There’s a bunch more. Kodachrome slides I haven’t even looked at yet. Commercial work, Architecture, and more. Thanks for looking.

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I love this love letter Geoff wrote for us for the Dirt Rag media kit to be presented at Interbike 1990. What a guy. We had asked a few advertisers to give us testimonial quotes, and Geoff’s was the best. Our back cover, “Anchor Tenant” advertiser. Yes he was. The support was so gratifying.

Then, at the end of 1992, Geoff called and wanted to buy a full-page color ad, the back cover specifically. We had never printed 4-color at that time, and Geoff provided the impetus for us to print a color front cover with his ad for multi-color anodized parts on the back of the “Book”. We were totally game, and came up with a deal that would work for both of us while pushing Dirt Rag into the world of color printing. These were heady times. Soon there would be 4 pages of color, then 8, then 16, and so on until the day we were on presses that were 100% color.

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Beth Covington provided the art. Of course, it was the first issue of 1993, coming out in February, and Beth surprised us with some well-themed art. And Jeff got his ad.

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Here’s the 2nd ad Ringlé ran in Dirt Rag. The first ad featured Indy Car driver Paul Tracy, an avid mountain biker. The 2nd ad featured the miryad of parts and colors offered by Ringlé.

Anyhoo, we became friends with Geoff. I remember listening to the older/better Steve Miller albums at Geoff’s home in Trenton, New Jersey. As well as having a few huge dinners with a bunch of MTB luminaries. Great dinners with people like Richard Schwinn, John Parker of Yeti fame, and John Grafton of Grafton Engineering. There’d also be famous racers around, due to the fact that Ringlé and Grafton were sponsoring Yeti.

That’s all for now. Want to see more? Leave a comment, I’d love the dialog.

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