A Letter to Our Readers

Dear sweet and kind and mischievous readers:

Thank you! If you’ve received issue 211 in the mail or at your newsstand, you’ve seen that this is our 30th anniversary of Dirt Rag. We couldn’t have done it without you. Since the days of handing out ‘zines at local Pittsburgh mountain bike gatherings, you’ve been there, urging us on with your support, one way or another all playing a part in our continued survival and success.

We live in a world of disruption. The future approacheth faster and faster. Remaining a small, family organization, it’s pretty tough to keep up. Being independent has always been our thing, which means we don’t have a sugar sasquatch to ask for help funding all the great projects we want to take on that give our readers the experiences 2019 and beyond could otherwise offer.

Rather than cutting corners on our print magazine, we are condensing it into five issues this year, and four issues moving forward in 2020 and beyond. This doesn’t change subscriptions — if you’ve signed up for six issues, you will still get six issues, just on a different timeline. What are years anyway, but The Man trying to keep us down, trying to tell us we can only have one day per year that’s designated as National Ice Cream Day. That’s not the kind of world we want to live in. We want to eat ice cream every day and ride bikes and make cool art and put on mountain bike festivals.

In between print issues, keep your stems pointed to the website for more content, more bikes, more puppets, more videos, more how-to’s, more of everything we want to make that can’t live in the 2D world of print media, while still celebrating Dirt Rag’s print legacy of compelling interviews, long-form stories of adventure, and stories that compel parents to write us letters saying, “How dare you? Think of the children!” (Sir, we are the children.)

While you’re checking out the site for new content, stay on the lookout for special digital issues of the magazine and of course our incredible Dirt Rag Dirt Fests.

Thank you again for riding with us. We hope you enjoy these new trails we’re building.

Ride on,

Dirt Rag