Inspiration

Cycle Source Magazine came today. 

I buy a magazine a week, The Horse, DICE, BSH, GK to name a few, even 100% Biker when I'm desperate. The blogs I've joined are my daily reading matter, I'm consumed, I need my fix.

Finding 'the magazineman' got me addicted again, after all the dross in newsagents outside Soho.

Today I was reminded of a big storage box that had followed me from house to house through the years.  One day in 2005 I was loading a truck up, moving yet again, and there was no more room. 

My brother was there at the time and along with other stuff that would'nt fit in, said he would take it to the dump. I can't blame him, in fact in the seventies when I lived in Teddington he came down from Peterborough and picked up said box, when I was on the move yet again, and homeless. 

                                   

That box contained every magazine I had bought and kept since sixteen.
In 1970 my dad came home with a magazine, he worked for EMAP a big printers in Peterborough and it was the first proof of BIKE.
I remember walking back to school in my lunch break reading this, dodging lamposts. In it were fantastic pictures of the exotic creatures called 'choppers', Ray Leon was featured in that first mag. I used them and others as reference for my O'level Art Entry.
Anyway I bought Bike Magazine for few years after the free copies my Dad would bring home.

Later I would buy Custom Car Magazine, when I lived in London, naked women, cars and bikes, that timeless combination.
I followed that with Superbike. I did a few Adverts for Jake at 'Motique' in Chertsey where I got my Sporty in '77. He had started importing Drag Specialities in '78. The Ads were for Superbike, not many people were doing Ads for custom stuff from the states back in the day.

Then came Easyriders.
I was working in Marylebone High Street then and for some reason was in Debenhams store in Oxford Street. Browsing the magazines, and there it was - Easyriders 1978. Weird, in Debenhams!
Fuck I couldn't put it down. For years.

I first bought Supercycle and other naughty biker mags in California 79' - reading material for our road trip.
So apart from the mid eighties porche 911 yuppie period it was Easyriders and Supercycle all the way. Then along came Heavy Duty, a great British custom mag with Maz Harris to 96ish or so and the mags went off a bit in 2000 and so did I.

And now the wheel has turned full circle.

Fuck I'd love to go through that box.