The Mud Stud is a top-notch wrench, but his periodic forays into entrepreneurship have rarely dollared up on the hoof.
Neither Interbike nor Bicycle Retailer and Industry News is limited to serving as a delivery system for my bullshit. There are various jobs of work being done, products being shifted, and money being made.
Or so it is to be hoped, anyway.
Yes, it’s that time of year again.
But the show is not a cheap date. And as a consequence some penny-pinchers have been known to try to cut a few corners — say, by setting up outside the show and hoping to lure a few rubes away from the big tent and into their little tipis.
The Mud Stud tried that in 1999, when the show was still at the Sands Expo and Convention Center, with predictable results. At top, you’ll find the setup, a “Shop Talk” strip that appeared in the pre-show edition of BRAIN. Below are the subsequent Show Daily strips. Click the images for bigger versions.
And where was I when The Stud and Bobbi were trying to move their respective products? I was on site like a good dog, hawking copies of my first and only book, a collection of VeloNews cartoons titled “The Season Starts When?”
• Next: There is no pain, you are receding.
Show Daily, Day 1
Show Daily, Day 2
Show Daily, Day 3: The finale.
Tags: Interbike, Interbike 2018, Interbike Marketweek Reno-Tahoe Powered by Northstar California Resort, Mud Stud, Shop Talk, The Season Starts When?
Mad Blog Media 
September 17, 2018 at 7:17 am |
Great stuff then, still great stuff now. Some things never change as I recall seeing more than one person working the Interbike halls with a product or bag o’ products slung over his/her back as recently as last year.
My fave was the guy from the local pizza joint who showed up with a stack of ’em (how he got in I’ll never know) and sold ’em off for $5 each. If you’ve been at the Sands, Mandalay Bay, etc. you know how awful and overpriced the chow is, so this guy was like an angel when I showed up starving after an 0’dark:30 flight to ‘Vegas!
September 17, 2018 at 1:21 pm |
There’s always a gang of small outfits packed into one 10×10, too. A smallish folding table, a few lawn chairs, and a cooler.
September 17, 2018 at 9:01 am |
The pizza guy probably just told the front desk he was delivering the pizzas, and he was kinda sorta. Smart guy.
September 17, 2018 at 12:13 pm |
Perhaps he gave a freebie to one of the guards, as I’m sure the stooges employed by Sands or Mandalay Bay are instructed to make damn sure no outside food gets in to dent the obscene profits they make on bland ham sandwiches and tube-steaks at their on-site concession stands. I made sure the vino and other Italian treats I brought in for my friends were well hidden!
September 17, 2018 at 1:29 pm |
The “food” available was always atrocious. Vile. Really, really bad. The only way to find proper grub was to sneak it in yourself or make The Long March to an actual restaurant.
I used to spend a fair amount of money wth Rí Rá in the Shoppes at Mandalay Place. Larry and I broke bread there. Pub grub, but worlds better than prehistoric “ham”-on-Styrofoam sammiches and wrinkled rotisserie Red Dye 40 wienies.
September 17, 2018 at 3:34 pm |
“Can’t be as bad as the cabbage roll at the Terre Haute federal pen or the oatmeal at the Cook County slammer.”
September 17, 2018 at 5:57 pm |
That was a nice lunch, thank you again PO’G!
My Italian friends would try to find us some decent food each evening but I don’t get the claims about ‘Vegas and fine dining – all the places we went were overpriced and mediocre at best. I can still remember being hosed when we asked for some bread (how hard is that?) to enjoy with salads and our friend getting whacked with a bill of $12 a plate for “toast points” or yours truly getting the drinks bill where they hosed us real good for something like $7 a head for “water service”!
I have a hard time with the realization that there are enough suckers going there to sustain those kind of obscene rip-offs on a daily basis. But you know what my wife says…
I’m happy I will never have to set foot in that place again!!!
September 17, 2018 at 10:05 am |
As a 50 year resident of Vegas, cartoons are spot on!
September 17, 2018 at 1:30 pm |
I spent 50 years there one night. But thank you anyway, Charley. …
September 17, 2018 at 11:42 am |
Good ‘tunes!
September 17, 2018 at 1:39 pm |
Thanks, K. After BRAIN quit paying my way to Interbike I quit drawing cartoons for the Show Daily. But the were fun while I was doing ’em.
Having three Show Dailies meant I could tell a little story instead of just doing one-off gags. I’d start it in the pre-show issue, which wound up in the readers’ hands either just before the show or at it, then carry the tale through the Dailies, and finally wrap it up in the post-show ish.
The ’toons rarely had anything to do with bicycle retailing and industry news. But this was true of the column, too, so I don’t think anyone was surprised.
September 17, 2018 at 8:53 pm |
Sometimes I wonder if my work has anything to do with national defense.