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Rustbelt Almanac

First issue of Rustbelt Almanac

The first issue of Rustbelt Almanac. 70+ pages of honest content with almost no ads. Plus, the guy on the cover has some really great hair! [it's photoshopped]

Back in January, two guys I had never heard of, Mike Artman and Noah Purdy, sent me an email telling me they were starting a magazine and asked if they could come talk to me.  I rarely turn down interviews–I’m always down to meet new people–but after looking at their work [here & here] I definitely wanted to meet these guys.

We got together, chatted about what I’m working on, and had a few beers.  It was lot less formal than the other interviews I’ve had.  We hit it off pretty well.

A few weeks later, I introduced them to one of my good friends, Kris Mortensen, to link them up to see if they could use his help for some video.  Wouldn’t you know they hit it off with Kris too.

Fast forward a bit.  They were telling me about their plans to run a project on Kickstarter, thinking they could raise $1,000-$2,000 to get a few of their magazines printed.  Personally, I predicted that they could do between $10,500 and $12,000–it’s a cool project, and between the beautiful photography, clean design and layout,  fresh approach, and engaging topic, they were definitively on to something.

Now, today.  The magazine is fresh from the printer and their entire print run is almost all claimed.  I keep telling Noah he will have to run another batch, but he doesn’t want to hear it.  What a horrible problem to have.

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Inspiration: Eddie Huang

From a Reuters interview, on his New York City restaurant:

“BaoHaus is about owning your identity and dictating the messaging of who you are, where you’re from, and what you represent. I saw an opportunity to use a restaurant to identify a lot of my issues and concerns with being an immigrant in America, and Asian in America, and a young person in America. I wanted to inspire people not to work under a bamboo ceiling. Whatever you are — yellow, black, white, brown — you don’t have to allow your skin to define who you are or how you operate your business. There’s not one face to anything.”

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Moab, UT – A beautiful place to break down.

On my way out to Las Vegas for Interbike, the murder-mobile blew a wheel bearing.  The good part–we were 200 feet from the entrance to Arches National Park, it was sunset, and the valley we were stuck in was beautiful.  The bad part–Moab, UT isn’t known for it’s late-night services.

We quickly realized that Moab is also insanely busy in September, and of the twenty-some motels we called, all of them were booked.  We finally found one that just had a cancellation, got some food, and woke up early to make a trip to a parts store to fix the van.

It turned out that not only did the cage holding the rollers break, but the loose rollers warped the inner race and welded it to the spindle.  After seven more trips into the store for a file, chisel, and 8-lb sledge hammer, I finally gave up, bought and angle grinder, and went to work.

Two hours later, we were back on the road and took a pit stop in Arches.

 
It took a day longer than expected, but we got to Vegas safe and sound.

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