August 29, 2024
Bad news travels fast. Yesterday afternoon the news came that Mike Lacy got five years and Scott Spear got ten years in the 14-year-saga of the Backpage trial. I have some history with the people and the page.
About two months before this photo was taken Jim Larkin—the publisher of New Times—and I were driving north on Central Avenue, and in front of the downtown post office were several free newspaper racks and several guys were standing in front of the Bachelor's Beat rack grabbing copies, while the New Times rack was packed with no takers. I said to Jim, "If you could figure out how to combine the two titles you might have something." We both laughed at the absurdity of that idea.
Here is a sample of a typical Bachelor's Beat front page from back in the day.
Bachelor's Beat, 1973
The tawdry publication, which claimed outlets in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson had oodles of strip club ads and escort service ads.
Fast forward to 2004 when the Backpage of The New Times was designed, it was meant to attract clever items, where people paid a little extra for a groovy classified section. If my memory is correct, it took some time before the ads started to drift into the Bachelor's Beat zone, but when it did, Katy Bar The Door. The ploy worked, big time, and the feds warned the boys—they called themselves "Two Micks From The Sticks"—many times, and now, one of them is dead by suicide and the other is going to prison. Crazy sad.
My good friend Craig Schepp told me that Angus Young and his brother Malcolm Young originally wanted to call their band "The Younger Brothers," as in Jesse James and Cole Younger and their siblings, but that the name was already taken. So they landed upon an electrical current, instead. And, by the way, the band was founded in 1973.
"It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll."
—AC/DC
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