Steve Jobs and the founding of Dirt Rag
Originally posted on October 6, 2011 at 10:56 am
By Maurice Tierney
Just a word on where we came from…
I (Me, Maurice Tierney, publisher of Dirt Rag magazine and it’s resulting compulsory website) graduated from The University of Dayton in 1980 with a degree in photography and that fine art degree was pretty useless for business purposes so I spent most of the 80’s in the school of hard knocks, shooting weddings and chasing ambulances and anything to make a buck. Thankfully I had a partner or should I say wife actually (Elaine) who was gainfully employed as a copywriter at a downtown Pittsburgh ad agency. By 1987 I had built enough freelance business to have a bit of cash flow and with the help of a full page ad on the back cover of Mountain Bike For The Adventure magazine I purchased my first mountain bike ever via mail order, a $500 Supergo Access which paid me back in spades every time I tried to make friends at the local bike shop, yes I was hooked.
The next part of the story involves the purchase of an Apple Macintosh SE30 for the purpose of creating databases for my thousands of (preferably Kodachrome) slides. Little did I know but my editor at In Pittsburgh Newsweekly where I fancied myself as the Annie Liebovitz-style star cover shot shooter had loaded up said SE30 with a bunch of software including an application called Aldus Pagemaker.
As someone who had ZERO interest in computers at this time and a shit-ton of interest in riding bikes in the woods and being someone who wanted to be on the “inside” of the whole MTB thing and not just a consumer of goods there was a lightbulb-above-the-head moment somewhere along 1988 and the rest is history.
Why am I telling you this story? This is certainly not about me, and not about “Think Different” and not about “1984” and certainly not about all the glamorous consumerism that is today’s Apple Store, no, not today, October 5, 2011. I’m writing this, and am inspired to write this, ‘cause I am thinking about a certain guy who, well, if it wasn’t for him I don’t think Dirt Rag would exist really.
Thanks Steve…