Friday Favorite People

Not all, but some

Yesterday, a reader on jackbaruth.com wrote, regarding me:

I wonder about someone who has a bad word for almost everyone he’s ever worked with.

I admit that I took that seriously. Is that true? I wondered. It easily could be. I am a fairly contentious person and given enough time I could find a reason to disagree with Mother Teresa. Closer to the truth, however, is I feel there’s already too much mutual backslapping and milquetoast praise in this business. What we need is principled criticism, and much more of it.

Given that I’ve already had a few requests from Substack readers to identify “the good guys”, however, I don’t see any harm in calling a few people out for being on the sunny side of my opinion. The following list is deliberately incomplete; the absence of a name doesn’t indicate malice on my part, and I’ll do this again in the future to expand the roster. Some of the below names are people whose work I respect; others have earned my personal admiration; still others are just plain friends. Keep in mind as well that I am fifty years old and have had dozens of serious head injuries, so it’s possible I just flat-out forgot someone who deserves inclusion. Alright. Off to the list, which is in three parts. There’s no section for “Industry People”; I’ll do that another time.

Writers/Editors

Zerin Dube: When I was just a cycling writer and NASA racer with a quick temper, Zerin asked me to write for “Dubspeed Driven”, his VW-centric enthusiast site. I said “no” three or four times, then I said “yes”, and the rest is history. He has been a good friend to me over the years, and I’ve never known anyone to have a bad thing to say about him.

Robert Farago: An immensely talented and complex man who never suffers from a lack of self-confidence. He backed me from the beginning and indulged me with a unique exemption from his infamous “800-word” policy at TTAC. Much of Jalopnik’s best work over the years was in open imitation of him.

Kamil Kaluski: An underrated writer and thinker who never wanted to do this full-time and consequently never has.

Derek Kreindler: At twenty years of age he already had the chops to succeed, but he found greener pastures elsewhere. A disciplined and thoughtful young man with personal courage and the ability to turn a phrase.

Davey G. Johnson: He couldn’t drive or ride for shit and he was always much more of a “journosaur” than he wanted to be, but at the core he was a decent human being who, like many great writers, tapped directly into his own frailties without shame in the pursuit of his craft. We are poorer for having lost him; few people have his gifts.

Ray Wert and Matt Hardigree: Two men who applied their considerable intelligence and insight to the elevation of Jalopnik from nerd’s club to the most important auto website in history. There’s a story about how, in the early days, Ray and Jean Jennings had some sort of spat at an event where the participants were split up into “writers” and “bloggers”. History won’t remember Jean, apart from the David E. Davis “grand piano” story, but it will enshrine Ray and Matt as the two men who cracked the blogging code.

Patrick George: If Ray and Matt were Paul and John, Patrick is Ringo — but Ringo was a talent on his own. He, too, understands The Algorithm, and I respect his work. (Who was George? That would be Mike Spinelli, of course.)

Denise McCluggage: In 2008, Audi held an event at Sonoma Raceway to debut the S5 and R8. The standard of on-track driving was absurdly poor, as it always is, but there was one R8 driver who held my S5 off for an entire lap before yielding. Imagine my surprise to find a white-haired elf of a woman behind the wheel! We got so drunk that night that I can’t determine if the stories she told me were real, made up by her, or simply part of a dream. A splendid talent with wheel or pen.

Sam Smith: An enfant terrible of the business, saddled with the damming phrase “the next Peter Egan” since he was in short pants, but in truth he has always been more than that. One of the very few writers in this business with a unique voice. No slouch as a driver, although if he’d just run the laps I asked him to run in 2017 we wouldn’t have had to do a late brake change in the course of an AER win. People don’t forget, Sam!

Patrick Bedard: The single most important autowriter of the modern era, a prince among men, and beyond any superlatives I can muster.

Brock Yates, Sr.: He kept his creepy porn-star-looking son from kicking me out of One Lap in 2006, and he was as real as they came until the day he died. His pretensions to high society were unworthy of him, but the thing about greatness is that it rarely arrives in a tidy package.

Bobby Ang: The man behind every magazine worth reading in Malaysia, a true friend, and fearless in every way that matters.

Brian Makse: Long-time friend, immensely talented human being, and about as different from me as someone can be while also being quite a bit like me, if that makes sense. Always had a love for the spotlight, and was born to shine.

Phil “Murilee Martin” Greden: I met him the same day I met Denise McCluggage. We were teammates in a very early Lemons race, driving the “V8olvo” on the day that Court Summerfield died in front of me on track. Brilliant, erudite, well-read, and like no other person you will ever meet.

Sajeev Mehta: Sometimes you meet people who make you ashamed to be yourself. Sajeev is that person for me. Never anything but kind and diligent and perceptive. If I could be more like him somehow, I would be. And a great writer, in a sneaky way you don’t realize until you’ve been reading him for a while.

John Krewson: The decline of Road&Track started the day he left. To speak with him was to be confronted with intellect in the service of humor and human decency. One of the very few people I’ll permit to edit me without anger on my part.

Alex Nunez: If Hearst had made him the editor-in-chief of R&T, instead of the Web EIC, the magazine wouldn’t be in the toilet today. The master of immediate insight: into a problem, an issue, a story.

Travis Okulski: A supremely humble and gifted man who has always assumed the protective coloration of “aw-shucks” Millennial. A leader of men and as dependable behind the wheel of a race car as the Tremec TKO. He repeatedly turned lemons into lemonade as R&T’s interim E-I-C. I did not want to like him, but I do.

Alex Kierstein: He’s a fuckin’ Commie in my opinion but there is not a magazine in North America that wouldn’t be better the day after he joined the staff. And a hard worker beyond the ability of most to understand, let alone emulate.

Matthew DePaula: A gentle and admirable human being who was too good for the backstabbing and grifting of the business. I should say “is” too good. He’s not dead or anything, just too smart to waste his talent on climbing a ladder with empty rungs at the top.

Chris Tonn: Simply a nice person, which is rare nowadays.

Preston Lerner: A genuine talent from the old school. He can really drive. He can really write. And his work will stand any examination to which you’d care to put it. Nor is he a one-trick pony; his aerospace writing is brilliant, too.

Michelle Naranjo: She wrote some of the finest sentences I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, and she once crackled with a livewire intensity in every situation. We had a rather public falling-out, which I regret. Now the partner of Kristian Hahn, an ur-member of Car Twitter and a fascinating fellow in his own right.

Suzanne Denbow: In a world with any justice, she would be running Jalopnik right now. Even in her late teens her combination of motivation and wit was electric. She also sent me the most hurtful-but-delightful text I’ve ever received: It pleases me to be the one girl who refuses to sleep with you. Your loss, Suzie! (Not really.) We lost her to the world of real jobs; in her stead we have a bunch of cat ladies who make up stories about racing.

Philip Thomas: He drove me nuts for years as a contract writer and I’ve never put so much effort into someone for so little return — but he can occasionally reach into the basement of his psyche and come up with something that nobody else could produce in ten years of trying. You have to give talent its due, where it appears, and it appeared him when he was young.

Ronnie Schreiber: The opposite of Philip in many ways, I think. The hardest-working man in automotive literature, first as a retailer of it via eBay then as a creator of it at many sites. Capable of covering any subject as an expert, and thoroughly steeped in the history of the American automobile. I never got a bad article from him.

Jeff Peek: Until three years ago, I had no idea who he was, but he’s one of the greats. He just won’t admit it to anyone. God, I hate people with talent and no ego, it cuts the legs out from under everything I think I am.

“Crabspirits”: If you know, you know.

Grace Houghton: Mark my words: by the time I’m dead people will recognize her as one of the finest writers to ever play the game. Half of the reason I stayed at Hagerty as long as I did was to make sure she didn’t get poached by a real magazine like the Atlantic or something like that.

Nate Petroelje: I never knew anyone who cared as much about improving his craft as Nate Dogg does. He is one of those people who makes everything he works on or around just that little bit better. If I could start a new magazine tomorrow, I’d call him without hesitation.

Kyle J. Kinard: Sometimes you meet a young writer and think “He can go all the way, if he wants to.” Kyle is one of those people. He and Travis held R&T out of a nosedive for quite a while, when they were both too young and green to be fairly tasked with such a thing. Anywhere he chooses to go, you should read him.

Kyle Smith: Also named Kyle, but totally different — and an outstanding candidate to actually be the next Peter Egan. Maybe the next Ernest Hemingway. He has the willingness to do the thing, whatever the thing is, and a growing ability to communicate in simple but effective fashion. A man’s man, in an era where that concept has been repugnantly ignored, lampooned, and sexualized by idiots.

Don Sherman: The sort of fellow on whom you can build a million-selling magazine, and razor-sharp intellectually despite being about as old as the Fabulous Hudson Hornet. I learned more from him in a few short lunches than I learned in all of high school.

Michael Banovsky: T.S. Eliot once called Pound “il miglior fabbro” and I often feel that way about Bano. He should have been one of the greats, but like Pound in his day, Michael has been diverted from art into politics and issues of fundamental humanity. He introduced me to a really cool Ukrainian girl a long time ago, for which I will always thank him.

Blake Z. Rong: This dude sold me out in every way he could after pretending to be my friend, I’ve seen him do stuff that was too disturbing to relate on this site, and most of what he wrote for publication was utter garbage, but many years ago he crafted a substantial series of privately-distributed stories that took my breath away with their sparse perfection. Some time ago, a female friend of mine told me, regarding an ex-boyfriend, “That beautiful cock. was completely wasted on a nothing like him.” Similarly, I don’t know whether Blake deserves his talent or not, but that’s the funny thing about being well-endowed in any sense of the word: deserves ain’t got nothing to do with it.

More writers and editors next time; that’s about half the list. Let’s change topics.

Photographers/Art

Jamey Price: One of the few men in the business who can “get the shot” at speed, with no tricks, no shortcuts, and no failures. Personally, he’s a bit of an aristocrat/gentleman, which rubs people the wrong way when their self-esteem is (deservedly, in many cases) low. I never saw him take a bad photo on the street, but his true home is on the track.

Andrew Trahan: A broadly capable talent whose greatest gifts tend towards composition and a sense of lighting. He has made more crummy vehicles look good than anyone else I know. Not in any way precious about his work, his time, or his effort. And he can wrench a bit, so he understands cars in that way, which helps him frame detail shots.

Matt Tierney: One of those people who never quite mastered the art of being nice to repugnant people, which endears him to me, and a “shooter” from the old school of taking a photo that tells you something about the car itself rather than the person behind the camera. I think there was probably a solid half-year where R&T simply wouldn’t have been published without his willingness to take charge. Compared to me, he has much less hair and is not as tall.

Matt Grayson: The man behind Rolling Heavy magazine. One of the most decent human beings I have ever met, and someone who has a truly authentic artistic vision.

Mark Skovorodko: A morally admirable person who also takes a great photo, has nothing bad to say about anyone, and can put up with me when I’m literally cursing/climbing my way to the rocky top of a 14,000-foot mountain.

Farhad Samari: A fashion dude who can also shoot a car and a building, all at breakneck pace. Almost everyone in the business could learn from his example.

Last category, let’s go.

Video/Influencers

Alex Roy: Storyteller, fantasist, careless recipient of immense fortune, and one of my favorite human beings in the whole world. Like Hemingway, he is a self-conscious product of his own creative process — and like Hemingway, he will be the deserved subject of endless fascination for a long time to come.

Nick Aziz: One half of Left Lane News. Nobody has ever put up with as much pure Baruthian ridiculousness as he has; for years he hired me to do videos in which I was HORRIBLE just so we could abuse substances, get in trouble, and (in my case) enjoy the charms of various Toronto-area girls approximately half my age. He and I drank an entire bottle of Smirnoff Lime together once, in the course of two hours. But he is also whip-smart and if I’d bet money on every business prediction he ever made I could pay all of you to read this article rather than the other way around.

Matt Farah: Near the end of rapper J Cole’s Note to Self, he says

FilthE, I love you too, man
I know you feel a way about me right now but I love you

In the years since I met Matt, he has kind of morphed into the darling of Car Twitter and/or a very fashionably-Left sort of fellow, so I doubt he has any abiding affection for your humble author, his former teammate and partner in raw stupidity, but I still love the man. He has a good heart and I’ve never seen him wish ill on anyone besides Donald Trump. If I had his money and his assets, I’d be an ungovernable adrenaline junkie with a hair-trigger willingness to tell people they should go to hell. That’s why God gave the money to him and not me! In particular, Matt’s kindness to my son was so significant that John still remembers him, four years after we last met up. He’d be a great dad, which isn’t something I say about everyone.

Bozi Tatarevic: Bozi and his brother were the indispensable foundation of our extremely successful endurance-racing efforts for three long years. He’s smart and hardworking and thoughtful. Come on back to the five and dime, Bozi. The real Gs still need you.

Motoman: My son and I just spent a great day with this fellow, learning about his car and plane collections. I’m not the sort of person who watches YouTube for anything besides guitar lessons, but I bet you’d enjoy his show.

Freddy “Tavarish” Hernandez: So smart, so sly, and imbued with the work ethic of a Clydesdale. I love how rich he is and how successful he has become and how none of the limp sausages on the Internet can do anything about it.

Jeff “Speedycop” Bloch: It took me a few meetings to like Jeff, but now I’d give him a kidney. In a world of people who run their mouth endlessly about what they’re gonna do, Speedycop just goes out and does it. His new facility at the Tail of the Dragon is going to be LEGENDARY. Godspeed you Cop Emperor!

Conclusion

Just a quick read over this list makes me think of another fifty people who should be on it. There really are a lot of worthwhile players in this game. I can’t deny that the wicked prosper in “the automotive space”, and sometimes it seems like you have to be a faithless piece of garbage in order to get past a certain level, but I continue to cherish the many friends I’ve made over the past fifteen years.

It’s always more fun to cut the heads off the snakes than it is to praise the best among us, so in the future I’ll create an alternate-universe equivalent to this list where I talk about my least favorite folks out there. Stay tuned.