Whatever happened to bike magazines?

Team Benzina inadvertadley congregated in our local newsagent, but decided that the motorcycle magazine is dead. Flick through the stuff on offer, and walk out without buying anything. What's a chap to read on the khazi?

Bike magazine was the bible in the 70's. Wild Bill Haylock (where is the great man these days?), erudite Peter Watson and Ducatophile Mike Nicks served up with a healthy dose of Mark Williams. Bike nuts arsing about and telling the story. These days Bike doesn't seem to stand for anything other than a handful of egos, and lets down the writers and snappers with messy layouts and tracing paper thin stock. Shame.

And although Classic Bike might be the new Bike, I don't get the old Jap roadtests. We've all ridden this stuff, and learnt the hard way that wrestling 130mph Bull Elefants always ends badly - like flirting with other bloke's girls, it seems like fun 'till you get caught out. Surely a testing a bike more than a few years old tells you more about past owners than the bike itself.

But then there was Sideburn, a bike nut's bike mag. It's about flat track racing, except it's not. It's about bike mad folk telling their story. The bike magazine is dead; long live the bike magazine

Sideburn mag - mad as a monkey's hairdo