As fate would have it, I spent a fair amount of time at the New York talking to the current Jalopnik guys — Hardigree, Okulski, Patrick George, et al. No matter what you think about their content, it’s impossible to deny that the Gawker cars-and-drunk-girls-and-planes-and-construction-equipment-and-accessories-and-watches-and-whatnot site has the lion’s share of the available mojo remaining in the autojourno “space”. Much of what they do is pretty good.
Every once in a while, however, something happens to remind you what could have been.
I was standing on the carpet between Aston and Bugatti, which is sort of like standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, with CMW. Mike Spinelli walked by and I snagged him for a bit of gossip. Five minutes later, I saw Davey Johnson headed the other way and I called out to him as well. Finally, some big fellow lumbered over and joined the conversation. “I’m Mike Bumbeck,” he said, sticking out a meat tenderizer disguised as a hand.
All of a sudden, it hit me: This is the golden age of “community” Internet auto writing, right here! Bumbuck, Spin, and Davey were cult heroes back when Jalopnik was just a car website and not a co-branded, sponsored-content, dogs-and-Jezebel-and-gay-marriage delivery mechanism. These three guys, along with “Murilee Martin” and, it must be said, Jonny Lieberman, are responsible for turning thousands of casual car guys into raving fanatics. They did it. By themselves, without budget or full-motion interstitials.
At one point in the conversation, one of the guys had a great idea for a controversial and hugely funny piece. Someone else said, “Hey, you know, there used to be a website where you could write stuff like that.”
And there was a silence.
And then we continued talking, in a rush, all at once.
There once was a dream that was Jalopnik. You, as they say, could only whisper it.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West (or wherever Gawker spews from), and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Bumbeck! It wasn’t until a year or two after meeting him at El Mirage (and driving the Starlet so he could get some action shots) that I learned he had been involved with Jalopnik. I knew him from the Clunkbucket days, and still have a Clunkbucket decal on the back of my, um, bucket.
If I ran into Bumbeck I’d ask him what it’s like to work for invertebrates.
You mean now, at Hemmings? Heyo!