Huh?

 Sometimes it seems like more of an honor to be excluded than to be included.  Heh, heh, heh.

46:25 in This Clip.

Interview of Rodney Mullen I did on page 29 of the scan at This Link, in 1986.  Also a great photo of Vision freestyle skater and longtime H.B. local Don Brown on page 28 of the scan.  

The perils of writing your own thoughts in a blog...  Whatever.

Blogger's note- 10/2/2024- Since you may be wondering what this post is about, I'll explain it.  In late September of 2024, the staff of FREESTYLIN' magazine got a rare group induction into the USA BMX Hall of Fame.  Andy Jenkins, Mark "Lew" Lewman, Spike Jonze, Don Toshach, Janice Jenkins, Valerie Adlam, and Dian Harlan were all inducted.  I heard about this a couple of days after the ceremony, when one of my Facebook friends had some photos of the event.  

I worked at Wizard Publications, on both BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, from August 1 to December 31st 1986 (roughly the December 1986 through April 1987 issues).  I replaced, best I could, Don Toshach, a real professional magazine guy, with an actual English degree.  The most important part of my job was proofreading each issue, of both magazines, during my time there.  Ultimately, I just didn't fit the scene there, and they laid me off.  Nothing crazy happened, I just wasn't the right fit for Wizard, and they hired Spike a couple of months later.  He definitely was the right fit.

I worked on five or six issues of FREESTYLIN while I was there on staff, plus I had my first freelance article, and a piece about my zine, in the August 1986 issue.  For whatever reasons, I was not included in the induction.  This could be because someone thought I didn't work there long enough, but more likely because of my 2008-2009 blog FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales. In that blog, I told a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes stories about working there.  I completely deleted that blog in October of 2012, but I have written some stories about working at Wizard in later blogs.  Whatever the case, I just started laughing when I heard I had been excluded from the Hall of Fame induction.  I was not contacted by anyone before the ceremony or since.  To be honest, I just find the whole thing amusing.  Whatever, guys...  So that's what this post is about.