Cycle News

CN III FRIENDLY FIRE P134 BY STEVE BAUER REMEMBERING THE FACTORY SPECTATOR "H is name is Steve Bruhn, but he calls himself 'TFS', The Factory Spectator, because he works for the airlines and flies to all the races for free… like a factory rider." I knew I was going to like Bruhn from the moment our friend Sondra Peters introduced me to him with those words. That was 16 years ago… Steve "TFS" Bruhn was a true renaissance man who played a pivotal role in bringing moto journalism into the digital age. A rocket scientist by trade, he managed to turn his hobby and love for motocross into his profession, something most of us would consider a crowning achievement in life. He questioned everything and was probably the best I've seen at "stirring the pot" among frequenters of Internet message boards. Bruhn suffered a massive heart attack on May 2 and passed away five days later, without regaining consciousness. He was just 52 years old. From the first news of his heart attack, through the days following his death, the massive outpouring of affection for TFS from the entire motocross community might have humbled even him… although he probably would have smiled and said it was all part of his "evil plan." When I met him, Bruhn was a 36-year-old airline employee who sat at his desk all night, troubleshooting problems with planes and dictating fixes. He called it Band-Aid engineering, because the focus was on getting the plane to the next stop with minimal downtime. In between problems, he surfed the Net all night long. He also flew for free. A former MX racer himself, in 1996 he bought one of the first digital cameras and started going to Supercross races and Nationals. He hit up a couple of Texans named Hutch and Lucky, who owned a web site: www.motonews.com, with a novel idea. For some expense money, he would upload digital photos and race results. The site was a hit with motocross fans all over the world and the message board that it spawned, Mototalk, soon became the go-to place for the latest industry inside information. Steve and I hit it off right away, with similar views on politics and religion, a deep love for motocross and a twisted sense of humor. With the first six rounds of the Supercross series located in the Southwest, Bruhn lived in my house in So Cal for the first month and a half of each year from 1999 to 2002 and was by far the best houseguest I've ever had. Bruhn was like a fly on the wall… completely painless. My daughter and I were always sad to see him go in mid-February, when the series headed east. Before long, The Factory Spectator had clients and accounts all over the world… so many that it made more sense for him to quit his job at the airline and work full time as a moto journalist, even though it meant no more free flights. In 2004 he bought a huge motorhome from David Vuillemin, which he had wrapped in a caricature of himself, camera in hand, and a picture he'd taken of Vuillemin looking back at the camera while whipped. He loved that motorhome and promptly christened it the "Egomobile." For the next five years, Bruhn's motorhome was where you could find every photographer after the races, using his Wi-Fi to upload their photos. Steve's ability to be at the right place at the right time was a product of just how hard he worked. He never owned a camera before picking up his first digital, yet within a couple of years he had singlehandedly changed the way the motorcycle magazines did business. He was the first to have

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