I’m in the wrong business

My man Dirty sent out this one via email earlier tonight. When I typed “business” in the title of this piece, I pretty much meant to type “racket.”

usacFU

None of these fuckers had better be asking me for money any time soon. Actually, none of them had best ask me for money ever.

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

17 Replies to “I’m in the wrong business”

  1. What a bunch of tools. I bet at least one of em have a ‘we are the 99%’ sticker on the bumper of their audi turbo diesel wagon.

  2. damn son. you wouldn’t happen to have a link to the rag that publised that would you? I would like to read the whole thing …

  3. I don’t see anything wrong. We can’t all live on $10.75/hr working at the local bike shop.

  4. If you’ve ever had a job in the nonprofit sector, you’ll be kind of encouraged seeing that people can make real money doing good work. These salaries are competitive with the private sector. Most nonprofit jobs pay next to squat.

  5. The confusion here arises from the erroneous assumption that these dudes are cyclists. They are policy wonks and chiseling money-grubbers.

  6. Mr. jefe— not to quibbler, sir, as I agree wholeheartedly, but I believe you mean “35,400%.”

    No one earns ten million dollars a year. These are guys who won the lottery… and they behave like assholes.

  7. Hey all,

    For what it’s worth, I used to work with the now Executive Director of Bikes Belong and the Finance Director when they were both at IMBA. I can tell you from personal experience that both those guys are incredible at what they do. Tim Blumenthal, the ED, has been in this business since the 1980’s and is one of the best advocates for cycling alive. He has the perfect melding of knowledge, diplomatic skills and political know how. He is, simply put, the best boss I’ve ever had. He works long hours and takes things to heart. He is irreplaceable in my book. Erik Esborg, the Finance Director of Bikes belong, isn’t just a bean counter. He’s been in the advocacy world for nearly 15 years and plays an integral role in:
    A. Making sure the money used by the organization is used responsibly.
    B. Leading the staff with amazing H.R. and impeccable service.
    These guys rock. Any of us would be lucky to work for them. They earn those salaries.

    Cheers – Dan

  8. Hey Dan,
    thanks for chiming in with that bit. I don’t doubt that most of these guys would OK to drink a couple pints with. Well shit, i don’t find anything wrong with making money either…
    it’s just the knuckleheads from USA cycling making $300K while being completely out of touch and slowly killing our beloved sport.
    It would seem like the USAC board of directors could probably get a better return on their investment if they spent that cash on something else..
    see also:
    http://drunkcyclist.com/2013/04/09/a-drunk-letter-to-usac/

  9. If you want talented people fighting for increased funding for bike infrastructure you need to pay them. You want the best people in these jobs. As is pointed out in some of the comments above, these individuals can make more money in corporate America.

    Sure we could send in a few criticalmass guys or overly passionate bicyclists with beards and flanel shirts to represent our cause, but that doesn’t seem to have worked out to well to date. I think its great they they are starting to pay for talent and make sure we have the right people speaking on behalf of bicycling.

    For big jonny, Retro Italia (the guy selling bike parts on ebay), etc. all that amazing bike infrastructure in NYC, Boston, SEattle, Columbus, minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Fort Collins, Seattle, Austin, etc. didn’t happen by accident. It makes your ride safer and puts new people on bikes.

    We can’t all be hipsters riding old italian bikes or fixed gear bikes through traffic. Most Americans want safe places to ride. The work being done by The Alliance, Bikes Belong Transportation Alternatives, Active Trans, The League, IMBA etc. helps grow this industry by putting more people on bikes.

  10. My hunch is that BJ was referring to the USACycling part of that list…

  11. The issue isn’t that these guys (at the top level of their industry) are making 6 figures, It that the USAC guys are doing a SHIT JOB of serving their base constituents. In that regard all they are doing is protecting their backsides and riding the gravy train.