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MUSKEGON, MI – Muskegon County has built its burgeoning tourism economy the past two decades on the strength of some powerful events.
First, there was the Muskegon Air Fair that eventually gave way to Muskegon Summer Celebration as the big event on the local summer calendar.
Ever since Summer Celebration went by the wayside like the Air Fair, Muskegon has been looking for the next “big thing.” No doubt that Muskegon’s premiere event of the summer has become Muskegon Bike Time.
And that will become even more apparent July 16-19 this summer with a festival that showcases the industrial grittiness that is Muskegon.
Bike Time officials have announced the expansion of the event to a 90-acre portion of the old Great Lakes Downs property on Harvey Street in Fruitport Township. The high-visibility former horse racetrack property at U.S. 31 and I-96 owned by the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians will become the second venue for the popular regional motorcycle gathering that had more than 120,000 people and 75,000 motorcycles in Muskegon last July.
Downtown Muskegon critics can stop right there: Muskegon Bike Time is not moving to the racetrack property in Fruitport. It is not abandoning its original venue along West Western Avenue, which is turned into 10 blocks of Steel Horse Alley – a ribbon of thousands of motorcycles and more thousands of biker fans.
The ambience and attitude of Steel Horse Alley in the heart of the Muskegon central business district is what has created Muskegon Bike Time. It will continue.
Actually, the ongoing redevelopment of downtown Muskegon has forced the growing motorcycle festival to look for another location for expansion. The expected development of downtown vacant lots will limit the entertainment and vendor spaces for the festival.
The old racetrack property – waiting for a potential Indian casino – is a perfect location to stage a large entertainment tent, expanded vendor layouts and new activities such as motocross races. None of those Bike Time features fits in downtown Muskegon, now or in the future, organizers said.
Right now, Muskegon Bike Time is a major economic driver of the summer tourism economy. With the move to a second venue in Fruitport Township, it will truly become Muskegon County’s signature summer event if not one of the prime annual gatherings for all of the West Michigan Lakeshore.
The MLive Muskegon Chronicle Editorial Board members are Peg West, editor; Clayton Hardiman, columnist; and Dave Alexander, community engagement specialist.
Six two-wheelers parked in the basement of Ganga Metal Box Industry, a small scale industry, was gutted due to an accidental fire. The incident took place in Siddapura late on Thursday night.
The motorcycles belonged to the staff members of the industry. Some employees noticed the smoke from the cellar parking and alerted fire and emergency services.
Two fire tenders rushed to spot and put out the fire before it could spread to other parts of the industry. Electric short-circuit may have led to the mishap, the police said.
The three-car caravan was headed to a funeral, everyone dressed in their Friday best. It was warm outside, as Baghdad often is in the fall, causing their crisp shirts to wilt and sweaters to itch. The men argued over who they’d pick for their soccer dream team, the kids played games on their dads’ smartphones.
The cars were stuffy inside, packed with way too many people. Adults wedged in sideways, kids plunked on laps. Packed in there tighter than carry-on luggage, my family knows how to fill a car.
Eight to nine of them can squeeze into the average five-seat sedan — a shape-shifting gene passed from generation to generation. Or maybe it’s just that we’re Iraqi, meaning stubborn. If something doesn’t fit, we make it.
But that ride would be the last for many of them. They were killed in a suicide bombing while attending that funeral in western Baghdad. Three generations wiped out in a split second. Old men, middle-aged fathers, kids so young they had their baby teeth.
I got the news at home in Los Angeles via Facebook, from relatives who’ve scattered across Iraq and the Middle East after the 2003 invasion. We grew up miles and cultures apart, me here in the U.S., most of them in Iraq, but we came to know one another on family summer vacations in smoldering hot Baghdad.
Over and over again, I imagine the hours before that blast, what they were doing before they became casualties of war, extremism or whatever justification was used in the name of such a brutal act.
There were no major news reports regarding the October massacre, no CNN “BREAKING” banners. It was barely mentioned in news roundups of atrocities in Iraq that day: ISIS advances, explosions and more civilian casualties in towns I’ve never heard of.
Massacres there don’t make the news here anymore, even though last year an estimated 17,000 civilians were killed in Iraq, making it the third bloodiest year since the war started 12 years ago. Clearly, Baghdad is not Paris. In the wake of the war, violence is to that region what sun is to Southern California — a constant presence.
But even during the height of our involvement in Iraq, the media never really did get a narrative down about how to cover the loss of Iraqi life.
Maybe we never understood how to cover that side of the conflict because we weren’t sure about where we stood on it during the invasion — are they victims, supporters, enemies, collateral damage? And as with Vietnam or Afghanistan, our motives heading into war seemed just as murky as the outcome.
It’s no wonder the heroic and clear-cut narrative of Clint Eastwood’s drama “American Sniper” has won over war-weary audiences.
A larger problem
Based on a memoir by the late sharpshooter and Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper), the film follows the sniper through four tours in Iraq, where he eventually sets a record for the highest number of “confirmed kills.”
Hunkered down on crumbling rooftops in Fallujah, Sadr City and Ramadi, the stoic Texan picks off the enemy with an accuracy that borders on supernatural.
The authenticity of the film has been challenged (critics say some of the claims in Kyle’s book aren’t true), and Eastwood has been called out for celebrating a sniper as a hero. Detractors say it glorifies murder. Supporters of the film say these critics are unpatriotic.
But the bigger problem here is that the Iraqis in Eastwood’s production are mere props, grizzled monsters who torture children with drills, swarthy insurgents who proliferate like cockroaches, bumbling, hapless victims who can barely string a sentence together let alone protect themselves.
Their foreign “chatter” (harshly spoken Arabic) is alienating, and their values are not like ours. Would you send your child to his death in the name of blowing up convoys or hide a cache of weapons under his bed? The Iraqis here do.
Plus, their faith is downright spooky. In “American Sniper” the call to prayer — a sound more commonplace than car alarms in the Muslim world — is foreboding, shorthand for bad things to come.
By the time our on-screen hero refers to the Iraqis as “savages,” the film has already made that point about 10 times over.
If all of “American Sniper” were this lunkheaded, then the fact that its Arabs can’t even sip tea without looking like Satan’s henchmen could be passed off as an expected part of one more ham-fisted war movie. But given the care the film takes in depicting Kyle’s own struggles with PTSD, his moral conundrums on the battlefield and his complicated life as a husband and father, the dehumanization appears more a plot strategy than an oversight.
Just as the evil-versus-good narrative helped sell the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, it’s also helped sell “American Sniper.” The film broke box-office records this month, taking in around $200 million.
Finally, a success story stemming from the Iraq war.
In remembrance
One boy killed in that suicide bombing a few months ago — my cousin’s son, Kareem — is pictured in a happier time on Facebook, an Angry Bird shirt stretched across his pudgy, pre-pubescent body. I imagine him arguing with his parents for more game time before bed: “One more minute, I need to get to the next level!”
He would have got along well with my son. Someone also posted a photo of his little brother, a crooked haircut likely done by his mother as he squirmed in the chair. He’s smiling, two front teeth missing, and that’s how he’ll stay forever.
Their story is unlikely to ever make it into a film, and that’s why I’m writing about these boys I never met.
Like Americans who perished fighting in the war, or European satirists shot down in their Paris offices, or Western journalists executed by ISIS, they need to be remembered too.
They were not savages. They were people who went to a funeral to pay their respects, to let the deceased know they hadn’t been forgotten. Don’t they deserve the same?
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
This column is written by experts in the medical field and provides advice on men’s and women’s health issues.
Cholesterol is not often at the top of people’s minds until they hear the bad news from their doctor that theirs is too high. But the waxy, gel-like substance that is made naturally in the body can be a good thing. Cholesterol has many important functions, including helping with digestion, maintaining cell membranes and producing hormones like testosterone and estrogen. Cholesterol comes from two sources: the liver and food.
The liver produces all the cholesterol the body needs and circulates it through the blood. When cholesterol is derived from food, it comes from animal sources like meat, poultry and dairy; the liver produces excess cholesterol when foods high in saturated and trans fats are eaten, which can cause plaque to form between artery walls and make it difficult for blood to circulate. This is why high cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke.
While both men and women are at risk for heart disease, gender makes a difference when it comes to cholesterol. Cholesterol levels are categorized by two types: low-density lipoproteins (LDL), known as “bad” cholesterol, and high-density lipoproteins (HDL), known as “good” cholesterol.
The estrogen that women produce has been found to raise HDL cholesterol, generally giving women higher HDL levels than men. Since women produce the most estrogen during their childbearing years, premenopausal women usually have some protection against heart disease, but as estrogen production drops with age, so do HDL levels, raising the risk for heart disease later in life.
Where men are concerned, cholesterol frequently presents a problem in middle age. A Norwegian study of more than 40,000 men and women under age 60 found that middle-aged men with high levels of cholesterol have a risk for a first heart attack that is three times higher than women.
Regardless of gender, it’s recommended that all patients have their cholesterol tested every five years beginning in their 20s. Individuals with an increased risk of heart disease due to diabetes, family history, smoking, hypertension, or other factors should pay especially close attention to their cholesterol as high levels do not usually come with warning signs.
In addition, both men and women should eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly to improve their cholesterol. Patients should choose healthy fats, such as low-fat dairy and lean cuts of meat; avoid trans fats like fried foods, cookies and crackers; limit intake of cholesterol, which can be found in foods like egg yolks and whole milk products; opt for whole grains; eat plenty of fruits and vegetables; and incorporate foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, walnuts and almonds. Men and women should also aim for exercise most days of the week, which may include taking a daily walk, playing a sport, swimming laps, or even taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Recommended resources: The American Heart Association at heart.org.
Daniel Cepin, M.D. is a cardiologist and medical director of cardiology at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center.
Daniel Cepin, M.D. is a cardiologist and medical director of cardiology at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center.
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As Carol Wheeler was putting away groceries at Gourmet Station, she became increasingly aware of how cold it was inside the coffee shop.
“We … went down and looked in the basement just to see if we could notice anything wrong, and there was water,” Wheeler said.
Again. There was water again.
City crews arrived at the intersection of Mississaga and Andrew streets at about 10 p.m. Sunday after the water main running underneath it burst, said Andrew Schell, the city’s director of environmental services.
It isn’t the first time it happened.
The same water main broke in early 2013, about 20 metres east of where it did Sunday, but the city didn’t realize it right away. Eventually, there was so much pressure on the pipe, it exploded Feb. 2, propelling water into the foundation of Gourmet Station, collapsing the sidewalk and roadway and compromising the electrical utilities underneath.
While the city typically doesn’t consider replacing water mains that have broken only once or twice in the span of a few years — usually, they break about half a dozen times before that’s warranted — Schell said this water main, which runs from the hospital to the library, is a different story.
“We will definitely be looking at this,” he said. “One of the reasons we’ll look at it is because it’s in a high-infrastructure area.”
There wasn’t any infrastructure damage caused by Sunday’s incident Sunday, Schell said.
The total cost of clamping the pipe and temporarily covering the road and sidewalk in an asphalt-coal mix was between $5,000 and $8,000, he said.
But two years ago, that wasn’t the case.
The cost to the city last time was $95,000. About $75,000 went toward fixing damaged infrastructure.
In addition to the water main, the city had to repair the street lights at the intersection, hydro transmission line, ducts, sidewalk, curb, gutter and road. The other $20,000 was spent on administration and management of the incident.
The water main is between 60 and 80 years old, Schell said, but water mains typically last about 100 years.
Although he said the two breaks are unrelated, “…it could be getting to the point where the pipe is aging.”
The boiler in the building — which also houses Impression House and Man’s World Hairstyling and Barbering in addition to Gourmet Station — was damaged by the more than two feet that was down there Sunday night, said Impression House manager Carey Frantz, whose father owns the building.
Bob Frantz said in August 2013 that his insurance company pegged the repairs required to the building after the water main broke the first time at $165,000 after 10 feet of foundation collapsed.
Tuesday, Care Frantz said the water from the second water main break had been cleared out of the basement and that she has contacted the insurance company about it
The boiler should be replaced by the end of the week, she said, and in the meantime, Impression House, open both Monday and Tuesday, is relying on electric heaters.
Man’s World is closed Sundays and Mondays, but was open on Tuesday as well.
“We’re very cold in here, but we’re working,”’ said Man’s World’s Teresa Whitney..
“We’ve got little heaters going everywhere and we’ll get through this.”
Gourmet Station, which needs hot water to operate, was closed Monday and Tuesday and will remain closed until the boiler gets fixed.
The Wheelers had only been in business for 10 days when the water main broke the first time. They had been in the middle of taking inventory to secure their insurance policy and didn’t have any coverage.
The majority of their equipment was damaged by the cold in the weeks after because power to the building was cut. They estimated they lost about $30,000 in equipment and stock and paid for it all themselves.
This time they do have coverage, including for interruption to their business.
The Wheelers no longer store much in the basement.
“I really wasn’t keen on storing anything down there after the last time,” Wheeler said, with a laugh.
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Deus Bully.
In a narrow workshop off a Venice Beach alley in Los Angeles, Michael Woolaway uses a wooden mallet to shape an aluminum bracket for a motorcycle.
The metal part is one of dozens the craftsman known as Woolie will spend an estimated 400 to 500 hours hand-shaping for the custom-built bike. This one’s for actor Orlando Bloom.
When it’s done, the V-twin street racer will cost Bloom US$60,000 (NZ$80,397). It will lose money for Woolie’s employer, the lifestyle brand Deus Ex Machina.
The Ducati Dreamline by Deus.
That’s what happened with custom bikes Woolie built for actor Ryan Reynolds and singers Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Jason Mraz.
“That’s why we make clothing,” said Deus founder and owner Dare Jennings. “Otherwise, we’d go broke.”
Deus isn’t the only company selling expensive motorcycles.
The Bumblebee by Deus.
A high-end Harley-Davidson — by far, the bestselling brand in the US — costs US$40,000. In California, Arch Motorcycles, co-owned by actor Keanu Reeves, offers a KRGT-1 for US$78,000. A new replica of the Los Angeles-born classic Crocker goes for about US$55,000.
But Deus may be the only company making high-end bikes and losing money on them.
The company was born in 2006 from the riches of Jennings’ piece of the reported US$75-million sale of the Australian surf apparel company Mambo.
The Inlander by Deus.
From humble beginnings with a single storefront in Sydney, Deus now boasts retail outlets at ritzy addresses in Tokyo and Milan, and on the island of Bali, with a new shop set to open shortly in Paris.
The artful retail spaces are part cafe, part music club, part hip urban haberdashery. In Venice, locals and tourists buy Deus jeans at US$259 and hoodies at US$220, and spend hundreds more on Deus-branded surfboards, wetsuits, motorcycle helmets, boots and gloves.
The Venice shop, which calls itself an “Emporium of Post Modern Activities,” hosts a monthly Sunday “Mass,” which draws hundreds of “sinners, winners and hodads” — translation: motorcycle riders and enthusiasts — for a half-day of free music and food.
Deus SR Hardtail.
On a typical weekday, the shop is busy with young men and women who bring their laptops, dogs and children to hang out and drink high-priced java from Handsome Coffee Roasters. Julia Roberts is a regular.
“It’s a lifestyle experience,” says Deus General Manager Julian Heppekausen. “If we build a strong community, sales will come with that.”
The privately-held company does not release sales figures.
The Hawaii-born, California-raised Woolie is a surfer, motorcycle veteran and card-carrying gaffer, a member of Local 728, the union that supplies lighting technicians for Hollywood movies and TV shows.
Soft-spoken, light-eyed and limping slightly from recent knee replacement surgery, Woolie carries the scars of 10 previous knee surgeries, seven broken arms, several spinal operations and other motorcycle racing wreckage.
A youthful 55 — he looks like a young Peter O’Toole — he has given Deus the reputation for building the finest custom-made motorcycles in the US.
“It’s like a temple of custom-bike building,” said Billy Joel, who operates his own motorcycle shop and museum on Long Island but has bought four Deus hand-made machines. “Michael is a real artisan.”
The custom builds begin as stock motorcycles — a Yamaha SR500, or a Harley-Davidson Sportster — but under Woolie’s hand become retro-cool street rockets that look good and go very fast.
The artisan gives them colourful names like the Fiddler, the Ding Danger or Moto Grigio.
Unlike some designers, Woolie doesn’t work with CAD programs, design software or 3-D printers. He makes sketches with pen and paper, and works from those.
Clients have included a cable company executive who shipped Woolie two brand-new Kawasaki W650s, to begin taking apart and customizing, and a Disney executive who paid Woolie to completely re-imagine a new US$30,000 Ducati.
The line of Hollywood clients began with Reynolds, in 2008, three years before his breakout movie role as the Green Lantern.
Woolie was working on a hand-built custom bike fabricated from all-American parts and components.
Reynolds saw the bike, called “The American,” and wanted it.
“OK, but it’s US$60,000,” Woolie recalled telling him. Reynolds didn’t blink.
“It’s a crazy hobby,” Joel said. “But it’s a lot cheaper than cars or boats.”
Most of the customers, Woolie said, are “people with means.” A lot are actors — some whom he’ll name, and some not.
Joel and Bloom have each bought four, Woolie said. Reynolds owns three, and Springsteen has one.
As Jennings said, “It doesn’t hurt a celebrity to be seen on a really cool motorbike.”
Making motorbikes for high-end clients invites headaches, the Deus executives said. Some celebs are impatient, like the one who, told by Woolie that his custom build would take at least a year, called a week later and said, “How’s my bike coming along?”
Then there was the big-name musician who ordered a bike in a specific tone of green, insisted on several changes in the exact shade of green, but when he received the motorcycle said, “Why is it green? I wanted it red!”
Some of them, despite their riches, don’t want to pay for the bike at all.
“A lot of these people, they already get everything for free,” Woolie said.
“The very first thing we tell them is, ‘You are going to have to pay for this,"” Jennings added. “Please don’t tell us this will be good for our careers.”
But it hasn’t hurt Deus’ apparel sales to be connected to really cool motorbikes ridden by celebrities.
That’s why the custom bikes are an acceptable loss leader.
“We lose money on every bike I make,” Woolie said. “But the investment is not some intangible asset. It’s worth millions in marketing.”
For Woolie, making motorcycles for Deus is a full time, salaried job — except for when he’s on set, clocking enough gaffer hours to maintain his union health benefits. His official title is motorcycle design director, which sounds like something that should come with a corner office and a staff. In fact, Woolie works almost entirely alone.
Each custom build takes months of work and might include as much as US$25,000 in special parts. The gas tank alone, for the Bloom bike, required seven full days of work.
Woolie, who said he can build about five a year, was about “five bikes out” as of early December. It will take him a year and a half to finish building the motorcycles that are already bought and paid for.
Squinting at a custom part, Woolie seemed wistful about his creations.
“They’re beautiful,” he said. “But the problem is they’re so expensive. You can’t make any money making a motorcycle like that.”
-TNS/Los Angeles Times
Students in Sturgis were getting their hands dirty working on the motorcycles for the Buffalo Chip Challenge.
The students say one of the rewarding experiences is working with professionals in the motorcycle industry.
Chris Malo, owner of Black Hills Urethane, Black Hills Magster and Dirty Bird Manufacturing in Phoenix, Arizona has been assisting students with the Buffalo Chip Challenge for the last three years.
This is the first year the students are working on an Indian Motorcycle and Malo says he and the students will construct one of the nicest Indian Chieftains on the market.
Malo says, “For the first time ever we’re actually converting a 2014 Indian Chieftain. This is the first year of the bike, the company Indian was bought by Polaris and this is their first production model and my company along with John Shope, Dirty Bird Concepts, have designed a full custom kit for these motorcycles.”
The bikes have been completely stripped down.
Monday the student team has been reassembling the tail section and fenders
And doing work on the gas tank.
Malo says, “This would take a very skilled person days and days to do. We’re going to accomplish this in a bout an hour to an hour and a half. We’ve developed a glue on shell that gives the appearance, using the stock tank, of a custom stretched tank.”
Some of the students have some big aspirations after school.
Sidney May says ever since she was young her life and has been about bikes and cars.
When she found out about the bike build project, she jumped on the opportunity.
May says, “Right now I’m a technician at Queen City so I’ve been mostly cars, but I’ve worked at a few motorcycle shops in the summers and I haven’t decided if I want to do cars or motorcycles.”
Other students joined the project to try something a little new.
Kassidy Kitzmiller says working with professionals in the motorcycle industry has been very rewarding.
Kitzmiller says, “It’s awesome. Getting to know all the guys that are working on it and I’ve worked on both bikes so far and we’ve torn down the Harley and got to learn about all the different parts on it and hopefully not make a mess and working on this and meeting the other guys is really cool.”
The students will continue working on the bikes every Monday and Thursday over the next seven weeks.
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CAPE CORAL, Fla. – Cape Coral Police are investigating a fatal motorcycle crash that happened early Sunday morning at the intersection of SE 16th Street and SE 11th Avenue.
“A homeowner came out in the morning discovered the crash and notified the police department,” Sgt. Dana Coston said.
Investigators are still trying to piece together exactly when the crash happened.
“We have a couple of reports from people in the neighborhood who said they heard a noise last night between 1:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. so we aren’t quite able to nail it down just yet,” Coston said.
The skid marks on the road suggest that the rider hit the brakes well before the curve, but he lost control and hit a tree in a neighbor’s yard.
Neighbors say he recently bought the bike and was most likely on his way to his girlfriend’s house which is just three doors down from where he crashed.
“It is a dangerous curve, but this is the first time something like this has happened, no one has ever wrecked on that curve before,” neighbor Swammi Hemraj said.
Neighbors say they’ve seen other motorcycles speeding down their street.
“I live in this neighborhood for 28 years now and we have seen a lot of bikes going up and down the street here going really fast usually, midnight one in the morning, three in the morning,” Hemraj said.
They also say the street is very dark at night.
“This corner is pretty dark and they could put up another light or two or some kind of sign that says slow down or sharp turn, something,” neighbor Robert Wheelock said.
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