Although he isn’t the editor anymore, I will probably always think of John Ker as the face of BMX Plus! magazine. And now because of his magazine’s seemingly hot and cold treatment of cruisers in recent months I feel compelled to write him this (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) “Dear John” letter.
John Ker: no love for the 24?
Dear John,
I thought we really had something. After not reading your magazine in what seemed like forever, I picked up your magazine at the local store and noticed you had changed over the years. No longer were you associating with Radical Rick or doing “who’s radder” features….you were actually showing some honest to goodness riding once in a while. More importantly, you showed some love for the cruiser with a couple of 24″ bike tests in 2009.
Your advertisers seemed to have noticed this too. One of them rewarded you with not one, but two 2-page ads for their cruisers.
But your self-destructive nature got the best of you, didn’t it? Out of nowhere in your April issue, you featured an article called Cruising into Oblivion: The Death of the 24.
How could you do this? Both to our fledgling relationship and to your advertisers? For the love of God, there’s a 2-page ad for Redline‘s top-of-the-line Flight 24 in the very same issue that you say 24s are cruising into oblivion!
It makes me so mad…and I imagine Redline isn’t any happier. I wrote a post about it, hoping to salvage things, to help you see the error of your ways and to let you know that 24s are not dead yet. After that I didn’t hear from you for a month.
Now all of sudden, in the June issue it seems that the ‘love’ is back with a 10-page race cruiser shootout. While it’s a grand gesture, after declaring our relationship essentially over, to try to win me back with a 10-page article, it seems just a little to late. I guess you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, right?
I know what you’re going to say, that you’ve changed.
But I’m not sure if I can bury the hatchet just yet. I think you’ll have to prove to me that you want this relationship to work.
How you ask?
A full-on 24″ freestyle cruiser shootout.
I think that’s what it will take to win me back.
So John, what do you say?
cruiser revolution 
