About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

31 Replies to “This kid is a Baller”

  1. When I look at a photograph like that, stories play out in my head. The older sister in the overalls who shares the bike with her brother. The younger sister with her cat. The younger brother looking out from the kitchen. He wants that bike for his own one day. Like I said, stories. And dialogue:

    “Dad! Can I go ride my bike?”

    “Did you rake the yard”

    “Yeah!”

    “Aight then.”

  2. looks like some early prototype Roach north shore shin guards.

    that’s someone’s granpappy…

  3. …joetheelectrician…the early years…with sisters…

    …& ah, before he discovered ‘fixies’

  4. “Son, please, I was riding a fixed 29’r while you were eatin’ boogers on the schoolbus..”

  5. No sisters, bgw. And I lived in the suburbs. Other than that, it could have been me. Looks alot like my first bike, anyway.

  6. If I remember correctly this photo is by fairly well known photographer. From what I can remember they were migrant farmers. The children worked all year and were allowed to spend their earnings, the boy bought new shoes and a bike and then gave the left over money to his parents. -Love the Double toptube, he looks like an early MTB’r on Mt. Tam.

  7. “Did you rake the yard”? Maybe. But probably more like “Did you plant the back 40?”

  8. It looks like a Dorothea Lange photograph, but I am not sure. It’s not in my book of her photos from that time period.

  9. Swing the stem backwards, rotate the bars 180 degrees forward, and you’ve got the country-bumpkin version of Graeme Obree

  10. …noticed today that graeme obree ‘came out’ & stated he had more in his ‘closet’ than a few old world championship jerseys…

    …not that…well, you know the drill…

  11. rogbie, yes it was Dorothea Lange. Next to Ansel and Diane Arbus, my favorite photographer.

    bgw, Dr Seuss said “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind”. Is that the drill you were talking about?

  12. …ahhh, ummm, ahhh ya, ya, now that i think of it, i’m sure it was…

    …besides, ol’ doc suess remains not only my favorite author but my most trusted philosopher as well…never steered me wrong…

  13. Funny co-inky-dink, that, bgw. “never steered me wrong”, you say. I posted the exact same words about the exact same quote on the exact same subject on a forum nominally dedicated to appreciation of the fixed gear bicycle. “fixedgeargallery” or some such. Check it out if you don’t believe me.

  14. @sommer— considerable, thx 4 tha link.

    hey, what week are you at Tahoe? I’ll be there until 3/6, maybe a couple days longer…

  15. …@booka…i’m not an ‘early era klunker ‘ historian (like a lotta guys out here) so i can’t identify that particular bike but i guarantee you a few of those gave their lives on the slopes & surrounding hills of mt tam, over the years…

    …my old kick-back brake, new departure hub, one-speed klunk made it through a lotta ‘marin dirt’abuse but it was stolen 3 times for friday night joy riding (damn joy-riding kids, go steal a car, goddammit)…

    …you’d think after getting it back twice, i’d be careful, ya ???…

    …fool me one time, your bad…fool me two times, my bad but fool me three times & i’m a card carrying member of the ‘clue nada – morons club’

    …& don’t i wish i still had that bicycle nowadays…ohhh ya !!!…

  16. …@ joetheeletricion…clearly a case of ‘great minds think alike’

    …or ‘fools seldom differ’

    …hmmm, just sayin’…

  17. …despite what the ‘ladies of the evening’ tell you, i believe brewmeister is the oldest profession…so, of course beer…

  18. Mikey…quick hit for us…arrive at like midnight on 3/17, rolling out on 3/20. Wife can’t get any more days off…the youth of ‘Merica need to be taught.

  19. @Sommer— well, as a bona fide Burden to Society, I’m off the Schweitzer for four days, then nine days in the B.C. interior, then 12-14 days to Tahoe, Sun Valley on the way back, and another shot to Tahoe in April. Winter’s so short— you gotta hit it hard.

    Yesterday I skate-skied my homeward 7.5K leg in thirty minutes flat— averaging just under ten miles an hour. For me, that’s fast, it was a fucking hoot. ( For perspective, last year’s Olympic gold medalist skied the entire 15K in 37 minutes. No, no doping problem in nordic skiing… why do you ask?)

  20. Meanwhile I’m alternating between a fixed Monocog with studded tires and a full dress fixed Crosscheck on these grimy streets in a podunk shithole of a town. And I think my seasonal affective disorder is starting to kick in. Oh well, at least there’s booze.

    So who wants to shoot groundhogs tomorrow?

  21. I thought he picked up the girl in the overalls because he’s the local hotshot. She rides side saddle on the toptube while he fills her with stories of his exploits on the bike and where he’s going someday to get out of this shithole.