OPINION – Bits and pieces of 2006 worth cherishing

In the old days, they called it the cutting room floor. That’s where all the “gems” of long-winded reporters would end up: in a heap on the floor of the newspaper’s production room.
They were the roadkill of the deadline-crazed editor, who could feel the tick-tick-tick of deadline approaching and hence start slicing and dicing stories to make them fit in their respective holes. Unlike the surgeon with his scalpel, the deadline editor wasn’t necessarily taking out the stuff that didn’t work. It was just stuff that was convenient to remove.
In fact, some of the deadline roadkill was actually quite good. So in salute to those gems that never tasted the press’ ink, I offer the following: the first edition of my own Cutting Room Floor. These are pieces of conversation that I’ve had over the past year with members of the powersports industry that just didn’t make it to print. Either they didn’t quite fit the article I was working on or they fell victim, at least initially, to the more modern cutting room floor process: the delete button.
Enjoy.
The press card
Emil Gomez, the founder and CEO of EMGO International, has quite a history, and it goes beyond his memorable career in the motorcycle business. But there’s a great story that Gomez tells about one of his first jobs associated with motorcycles. Gomez lived in New York City when he was 16. It was the 1950s and the time of incredible competition between New York City newspapers. Gomez happened to get a job as a messenger rider for the New York Journal American newspaper. The job required him to go to events with Journal photographers. There he might help jot down information for the photo captions and then the photographer would hand his film to Gomez and say, “Get your butt back and make the edition.” To do that, Gomez would take his motorcycle down some pretty crazy paths in order to be on time for the next edition. That scenario led to this incident: “I got caught going down the sidewalk once in New York by a cop, and I pulled out my press card,” Gomez said. The press card is thought to be some kind of elite, special pass for the media, but it’s often much less, as Gomez quickly found out. The officer who pulled him over “told me where to put my press card, then he gave me a ticket.”
The light at the end of tunnel
How do vendors trying to break into the industry feel? Nervous? Confused? Anxiety-ridden? Probably all of the above. But John Jones, one of four owners of a new ATV aftermarket product, probably summed it up best earlier this year at a Tucker Rocky showcase. “We’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel … we just hope it’s not a train.”
What a reply!
The question, “How are you doing?” when asked over the phone is pretty much equivalent to a handshake. The answer is typical and really just a bridge to get the conversation moving forward. But not so with Richard Riley, a Maryland dealer whose response to that question earlier this year was priceless.
“Hi Richard, this is Neil from Powersports Business magazine. How are you doing?”
“Live and well, feelin’ swell, overweight and lookin’ great. How about yourself?”
To which I had no answer, only a spurt of laughter and when that let up, a question, “I love it, but why the comment about being overweight?”
“Yeah, well, I tell the truth,” Riley said. “As bad as it is, I do.”
Do the math
Fred Fox, the founder of LeMans Corp., spoke to a crowd of vendors and media at the company’s showcase event in August about his company’s 40th anniversary. “The amazing part of that,” Fox quipped, “is I’m only 42.”
The sad truth
An auction official, who shall remain anonymous, had perhaps the best line of the year.
When asked if it was important for their Internet auction site to be able to rate powersports dealers by the fairness in which they conduct their online business, they replied, “Oh no, this isn’t the car business.”
Neil Pascale is the editor of Powersports Business. Contact him at npascale@ehlertpublishing.com.