#Magazines

Brave New World is the title of a 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley with a dystopian view of a hypothetical future society that is disoriented by new ways of being. This has some parallels to the motorcycle publishing industry, especially in the medium of printed magazines.

One cool thing about working at print magazines in the good old days was that there’d be new magazines every day, from all over the world: Australian Motorcycle News with Fred Gassit on the last page, Bike from the UK along with SuperBikes and Performance Bikes; Motorrad from Germany, PS from Belgium or someplace, Cycle Canada, a French magazine or two. Even if you didn’t speak the language, there was a little foreign culture lesson in each one, tied to the favorite thing we all had in common. Cycle News came every Wednesday, I think, or was it Tuesday? I never understood how Paul Carruthers could put that thing out every week and still par-, er, celebrate as hard as we did at various press events. With all those mags lying around, if you needed a fresh story, well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They’re also where much of our information came from in those days. Bike magazine and Motorcycle News still seem to be doing pretty well, mainly because their websites only exist to tease you with what’s in the current print issue. Which you have to buy.

A side benefit to riding motorcycles is that a rider’s age is fairly easily obfuscated by riding gear and a full-face helmet. Thus attired, I could pass myself off as a 20-something even though I’m carrying around a number twice as large.

As print magazines continue their long slide into the abyss, the competition between them only grows more heated. The smaller the pie, the more the rats fight for the biggest pecan. It’s even more fun to watch than the UFC. Wait, I hate the UFC.