Changing Our Relationship..............The person or persons who gave Richard Heath a new lease on publishing life with his Full Throttle News business have apparently flown..... the coupe'. Without naming names (as they have committed treachery in my eyes- and are nameless to me....), some bodies think they can run a nostalgia-industry rag without Richard's heart and soul- and mean to do so. The recent FTN was closer to Drag Strip Illustrated than anything else. Amazing first-hand accounts from people like Don "We Did It For Love" Ewald and the fueler families that inhabited the halcyon days at Lions gave content and credibility to a magazine that, even with a new generation of cub reporters, struggled against the cooperative sponsorship that racers' associations have used to leverage opinion towards their pet agendas. That nostalgia drag racing has a legendary back-biting reputation is part of its' culture-one documented since the late '80's.
Whatever....whatever prompted this change has left a nice, if battle-weary, silverhaired journalist more options. His editorial stance of trying to be friends with everyone in the southland needs to be applauded. Advertisers voting the direction of Heath and his legacy (a regular magazine dedicated to preserving what was left of So Cal dragstrip culture took monstrous godlike gonads in 1995.....) will add streetcred to them....more than Heath-who doesn't need to prove his talent to anyone, anymore.

It may be time to bring Full Throttle News online. Cole Coonce was not the only drone in the FTN hive with ahead-of-the-curve talents in that area. As an avowed luddite, I would miss a written page FTN more than most; but, then, I also miss the Holy Goof asthetic: that hairstylist Hollywood gossip girl , the first days of a bright-eyed schoolage reporter named Ellen-growing up in the sport, Professor Ginz's rhetoric, Tom Hunnicutt's light-is-right eyeball engineering, Steve Parker's straight world scene, Coonce's Twin Peaks tome's and "Racers And Fans"-featuring the previous few months at the Brotherhood Raceway--always priorities with The People.

That last part.....the grass roots part of a grass roots publication seems like history now. The notion of low buck racers running for fun and personal glory has as much to do with current drag racing business models as has a working cowboy with pro rodeo bullriding. If you're old enough to remember Paul Newman in "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean", the last half-hour of that comic-drama comes to mind......