Ups And Downs

UPS AND DOWNS

UP: To California’s Central Coast Motorcycle Association, which will feed USGP-hound fans for $10 a head, and use its profits to benefit the Save The Children project. The group will set up its operations from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 19 and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 20 at El Chorro Park on California Highway 1 just outside San Luis Obispo— a great place for a break, just before the Coast Highway gets truly interesting.

UP: To The National, a daily sports newspaper, for telling us all, in a promotional advert, that among the passionsof Dave Kindred.one of the paper's columnists, are small-town politics, collecting data on AnnMargaret and, yes, riding motorcycles. Our kind of guy. Now. if we can just get the paper to cover motorsports a bit more completely.

UP: A big one, in fact, to the publication AutoWeek. for recently publishing a piece with the unlikely title, “Yankee Cycle Dandies,” in which author Joe Scalzo introduced the magazine’s readers not only to motorcycle grand prix racing, but to the Americans who dominate it. An impressive effort, all the more welcome for the fact that CIV.s Feature Editor Jon F. Thompson and Editorat-Large Steven L. Thompson are alumni of A uto Week.

UP: To painter James Crespinel. for his photo-realistic images of grand prix and Superbike racing stars.

Crespinel's work, which vividly illustrates the excitement and charisma of front-line racing, is available at motorcycle shows around the country. Additionally, the artist has created billboard-sized racing images during each of the major motorcycle shows this past year. Lithographs of his work are available through Pit Crew, a sport apparel company (3700 Clifton Place, Montrose, CA 91020: 8 1 8/2481054).

DOWN: To the U.S. Navy, which has mandated that its motorcycleriding personnel must wear, among other things, a reflective vest, even when riding off-base. Penalties for non-compliance are severe. Comments one career Navy man, “1 could have on full racing leathers, helmet and gloves, but leave out that geeky vest and it's a wasted career and confinement for two years. Isn't that something?”

DOWN: To the makers of the cold medication Sudafed, for a television commercial depicting a motorcyclist as someone irresponsible enough to self-administer a product which would make him drowsy while riding. In the commercial, the driver of a car, who took Sudafed and therefore was not drowsy, takes action to avoid crashing into the wobbling, weaving rider. As evidenced by the stack of mail and numerous telephone calls we received on this one, America’s motorcyclists probably won’t be buying a lot of Sudafed in the future.

DOWN: To rapper Vanilla Ice, a.k.a. Robert Van Winkle, who claimed, among other things, to have won three national motocross championships. Student journalists at Palmetto High School in Miami, where Ice claimed he’d gone to school, dug up the truth. No motocross championships. Not much truth, in fact, in any of Ice's pseudo bad-white-kid bio. Busted, cjude. tsl

I (you eome across a motorcycle-relat eel item that you think should he singled out for an UP or DOWN, send the information to CW Roundup. 853 W. 17th St.. Costa Mesa. CA 92627.