EVOLVE!

Volume 4, Issue 7, August 1997

Ohhh boy, the Funk Issue. “Starring: Rick James, George Clinton, Jamaica, South Africa, Detroit, and a hip-hoppin’ cast of thousands.” Also, note the “P-Funkin’, booty shakin’, supagroovalicious ain’t-no-white-bread edition” cover strip. Bear in mind, at the newsstand (remember them?), often the only thing visible to the perusing readers (remember them?) is the title and the skybox, that thin strip above the title. So, mountain bikers seeking something new to read were greeted with the word “BIKE” and the p-funkin’ jive. We were four volumes in at this point, and true to the sport in general, our audience was something like 92% male, and almost as entirely white as Casper the Friendly Ghost.

In spite of the incredibly beautiful David Mabry on the cover, this went down as one of our worst sellers ever, and was regularly upheld as an example of “what not to do” whenever we were contemplating risqué covers in the future. At the time, I was mortified at the thought of a bunch of white guys who had previously been mostly skiers wanted to theme an entire issue around a culture that was decidedly chocolate. It smelled like cultural appropriation. It still does, but in hindsight I can grudgingly admire the attempt to bring some color into the room at a time when mountain biking desperately needed more diversity and more texture. As it was, I wrote about Dolly the test tube sheep and wanting to have some genetically modified knees.

I now would like to acknowledge that I was wrong about the knees being the most poorly thought out joint in the human body. Shoulders make knees seem like the paragon of sensible design. The sunscreen-gland idea still has merit, though.