Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Regardless, the nex t few months went by in a blur of hard work and sheer del ight. I go t to kn ow a nd like Goldsm ith and severa l o th er riders and rac ing o fficia ls - Skip Van Leeuwen, Red Ludford , Bru ce J ackson, Eddie Mulder - a nd I began to feel a lmost as if I were a part o f th eir odd but fa cinatin g co m m u ni ty. I also grew qui te fond of m y fellow worker s - Charl ie, d esp it e hi s ra bid ly right-wing politi cs - and J oe Lopez and th e pa per's two other staff photographers , Al Melanson and Pat Russell , a nd , especia lly , Roxy Rockwood, a mot orcycle cop who announced th e Friday night flat tra ck rac es a t Ascot. Frank wa s a special character, tho ugh - funny , delightful , warm, crea tive, disorgan ized, a genuin e free spiri t. H e was also a longtime motorcycle enthusiast and th e form er ed i to r of a pio neering motorcycl e magazin e, Cycle {tction, (Unfortunately, Chuck Clayton tells me that Cycle Ne ws doesn 't have libel insurance, so I wo n 't be able to tell. you a bout Frank's most interesti ng ex ploits. Bu t there was th is blonde bombshe ll who just ha ppened to be a customer a t my market a nd . .. ) After I' d been o n the job about six months, Charlie approached me as I was about to leave the offi ce one da y and asked ' me to ta ke a look at th e last dozen o r so issues of Scrambler - which had by th en ch a n ged it s n am e to M ot o r CYCUNG NEWS, a forerun ner of th e ultimate transm ogr ification to today's Cycle News. Charlie wanted me to put m y initial s o n every story I'd written. I figured he was going to evaluat e my work and g ive me a ra ise, a nd wh en I finished marking, I wa s surprised to see that I was writing most of th e paper every week. When I came back to work th e next da y, I went looking for Frank, wh o gave me most o f my ass ig n me n ts. He wasn 't around. I went to Charlie. "Frank doesn't work here a nymore," he said. "Y ou're th e new editor. " " Me?" I squeaked. I was on ly 16 years old; how the hell cou ld I be th e ed ito r of anything - least of all a newspaper covering an area I still knew very little about? Ch arlie patiently explained tha t I had been wri ting so much of th e paper I might as well be th e editor. Besides, he said, I surel l' co u ld see the pa per was co n tin ui ng to lose money, and he just co uldn' t afford to pa y Frank's sa lary a nd a ll the other expenses. I was still stunned by m y p ro motion bu t I had enough presence of mind this tim e to as k abo u t money. He offered me $40 a week; I as ked for $60. We settled o n $50 - which figured out to about $2 or $2.50 an hour for th e 20 o r so hours a week I figured th e job wou ld ta ke. It wasn't exac tly the same salary the New York Times was the n paying its editor, but I hadn 't even started shaving yet, so I didn 't figure I could complain. Besid es, with th is raise, I could fin all y quit m y bu tcher's job. A year lat er, just after I gradua ted from high school, the paper sponsored a ma tch race be tween th e best riders in the East a nd the best in the West. I went Eas t wi th th e Western conti ngen t - m y first trip to the East Coast. We flew to New York, with - as I reca ll - severa l stops in betw een to save money o n th e p la ne far e. Some one p icked us up a t the airport in New York, a nd while dri vin g th ro u gh the stupefy i ng traffic of m id-town Manhat tan, this someone volunteered to show us how to make better time. He positioned our car so that it straddled two lanes o f traffi c. Then h e acce le ra te d, . slow ed and accelerated again; our front bumpe r hi t, simu ltaneous ly, the ri gh t rea r bum per of the car in the left lan e a hea d o f us and th e left rear bum pe r of the car in the righ t lan e ahead o f us. Reflexivel y, the driv er on th e left p ull ed to his left, a way from th e im pact; the driver o n the righ t pulled to hi s right, away from th e impact. That left a wid eopen lane right in front of us. O ur driver zipped straight a head , into that o pening, betw een th e two o ther cars. He repeated this tac tic - a nd tried a few others - block after block . We made very good time. I don 't remember much else abo u t the trip - I think th e East won most of the rac es, in places like Fayetteville, North Ca rol ina, a nd Pearly Be ll 's C ycl e Ra n ch in Grafton , Vermont - but I do seem to reca ll that we all got taken to the police station in Fayetteville after Skip Van Leeuween started squirting the occupants of another veh icle with a fire extinguisher. As best I can reca ll , I on ly worked for Scrambler for three or four years, during whi ch tim e Charlie hired an advertising manager na med Don McCall , who ultimately bought the paper from Ch arlie. My dad urged me to go with Charlie, wherever Charlie went. My dad had never met eithe r man, but from what I'd told · him , he said, it was clear that Ch arlie would make a lot of money and Don wouldn 't. I told m y dad I was more interested in being a newspaperman tha n in ge tti ng rich. I stayed with Don. Bu t as with most things, m y dad was right. Charlie became a motorcycle deal er - Long Beach H onda - a nd was soon a multi-gezitlionaire. I think he retired to Ari zon a a t an ea rly age. Don, meanwhile, floundered ; so did Mot or CYCUNG N EWS. In tim e, I left to concentrate o n m y co llege studies a nd, briefl y, a job o n my college newspaper. Mu ch as I' d e n joyed working for Mot o r CYCUNGNEWS, I never did really co me to understand anyth in g abo u t th e mechanical side of the sport, so leaving was n't th at diffi cult. I rem ained (and rem ain) a mech anical ig nora m us, a nd I kn ew that severely ha nd ica p ped m y reportage a t times. Once, I recall . I was cove ring a race when a rider was fo rced to leave the track early because o f mechan ical p roblems - not exac tl y an u ncommon occurren ce. of course. I as ked what th e pro blem was. He mentio ned so me part of the mot orcycle. " O h, yes," I sai d, nodding sagely a nd look ing at th e bike as if I were studying th e malfunction and perhaps even had a remedy in mind. " It's on the o the r side, dumbshit," he said. Su ch embarrass me n t were n ot uncommon, but most o f th e riders went out of the ir way to help me and to ex pla in things to me a nd even to defend me aga inst my critics. I can recall one in stance, for exa m p le, when I wrote some harsh things a bo u t th e Galloping Gooses, th e rabb le-rousing precursors to the H ells Angels. A group of Gooses (G eese? ) cam e roaring into the parking lot at the next week's event, looking for me. T hey were mea n and ugly and they were carrying chains and kn ives. It seemed unlikely that they had come sim p ly to offer a professi onal assessm ent of my prose style. But th ey never got near me. Several of th e brawnier competitors in that da y's event marched out to the parking lot a nd th e Gooses were soo n go ne. I long retained a specia l feel in g for th e so u the rn Ca li fo rn ia mo torcycli ng co m m u n ity, a nd a year or two after I' d left th e pa per, I got a call o ne even ing from Don McCall. H e was sell ing th e paper ' to the grand o ld man o f motorcycle p ubl ishing, Fl o yd Cl ymer, founder of Cycle magazine. Don sai d Cl ym er would bu y the pa per o nly if I would edit it. I liked Don a nd I didn 't want to see the paper fold, so I agr eed to come back on a n interi m basis. T hat d idn't last long; Clym er 's idea of journalism an d min e were in compatible. H e sa id tha t wh en I wrote cri tica lly o f a particula r rider - a ny rider - I not o n ly upset th e rider but al so the mak ers o f hi s mach in e, hi s helmet, hi s l eath ers, e tc. All th ese people were potentia l advertisers. Cl ymer started cutting all criticisms out o f my copy. The fir st week he did that . I co m plai ned. The second week, I q ui t. My farewell speech to Cl ym er so im p ress ed o ne of the you ng wo men wor ki ng for him that she follow ed meinto th e stree t to tell me so. For a ll m y p rofessional bluster, I had always been sh y - and singularly unsuccessful - with women. but I somehow ma naged to ask her to have d inner with me that night. She accepted a nd when - after dinner. in her apart me nt - I realized she was available for far more than dinner . I co u ld barely contain m y sense of yo u thful triumph. H ere I was, romantic flop David Sh aw , just 20 yea rs o ld, quitting a job on principle - and getting m y ashes hauled on a first date - a ll in one incredible day . Except for the one aft ernoon with Frank and the blonde bombshell , it was my most memorab le experience in the motorcycle world. f-j B ~ ~ 00 ....... Dav id S haw is a distinguished journalist w hose ana lysis and criticism of the media appear regularly in th e Los Angel es Tim es. His writing is publish ed in several national magazines and he is th e author of four books, most recently Press Watch A Provocative L ook At H ow Newspapers R eport th e News. The saga of the wee kly motorcycle newspaper in th is half of the T wen tieth Century ru ns [rom th e nov ice Scrambler to th e expert Cycle New s. The strin g has been broken on ce or tw ice, but somehow, someone alwa ys p ick ed up the loose ends and tied th em together. The result is the newspape r you are holding - no t just a sout hern Caliiom ia paper. but a full -fledged national publication , one that's been running consisten tly for nearl y 25 years Wider the same management. N o ot her . motorcycle publication can make that statemen t . . . Ed itor. • Shaw recalls the days when the men. their machines and rid ing gear provided but a hint of things to come. (Left to right) Jim Hood. Bill Riley. Jim Hunter. Don Spargur an d Jim Goldsmith relax before the start of a race which took place in the early 60s in southern California. 19

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