cruiser revolution

It all started innocently enough.

Back in the late 80s/early 90s, Freestylin’ magazine would run articles on zines (small, indy-style, xeroxed publications) that riders were producing for their local scenes.

I was intrigued by them and managed to get a few through the mail. It was cool seeing the different scenes out there and the unique ways that people would put stuff together.

Time passed and one summer, while catching a freestyle team doing a bike shop tour (was it Haro, GT? I can’t remember…) someone handed my a copy of the iconic AGGRO RAG zine.

Wow.

I was blown away.

It was so good.

I had to get in on this action.

I quickly started amassing pictures, images and anything else I could think of.

I threw it together old-school style with scissors and glue-stick and took it off to a local printer to do a print run.

I handed them out whereever I could, mailed them off to people and even sent a few off to the big mags at the time, GO and BMX Plus.

Then…nothing

I’m not sure what I expected at that point but I was hoping for some kind of response. I heard back from a few people that they liked it but that was it.

A few months passed.

Then…out of the blue…I started getting multiple letters a day for people asking about the zine (remember this was before email took off). I couldn’t figure out why.

Then finally, someone gave me a clue…”I read your letter in BMX Plus!”

BMX Plus! had printed my letter, address and all, and people were into checking out my little old zine.

I was stoked.

And then I realized I had to make issue #2.

That started off a 6-year journey of sporadic publishing, writing about contests and crazy road trips and all the associated shenanigans that come with it.

It was  a good time.

I miss it sometimes.