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Eugene A. Sloane Newspaper Article on Back of 1974 Photograph

 

Eugene A. Sloane appeared in a number of newspaper articles during the 1970s bike boom. The articles would often include a photograph that originated from an 8x10 glossy print. The newpaper would archive these photos including a clipping of the article taped to the back. In the digital age they scanned and disposed of the paper photographs which were generally auctioned off to collectors. This is the back of a 1974 photograph of Eugene Sloane. Here is the text of the article.

Eugene Sloane back in Detroit: A kid on a bike changed his life

A kid on a bike made Eugene Sloane rich. Sloane made a quarter of a million dollars in two years with "The Complete Book of Bicycling" published in 1970 (Simon and Schuster). And there is more to come since the revised 544-page edition "The New Complete Book of Bicycling," hit the book stores a month ago. When Sloane was editor of Detroit's now defunct "Air Engineering" magazine 10 years ago, he made his way downtown from his Grosse Pointe Farms home in a proper four-door-stop-at-every-red-light vehicle.

"And there was this kid on a rusty old bike who kept beating me." Sloane said during a visit to his former hometown. "It kept irritating me, not only because he got some place faster, but he was also slim and healthy, and I was fat and flabby."

So he started biking to work. Sloane moved quickly from a three-speed to a 10-speed and to the realization that "there was no book out on bicycling." So he wrote one, and for a year, his was the only one.

Today that kid is probably punching out fenders in an auto plant, while Sloane's money rolls on in.

"I make $20,000 a year just fiddling around consulting," he said. That's not to mention the money from the first book, the money from the revised edition, and all the other little prestige jobs he expects to reap as a recipient of a government grant to research bicycle safety programs for elementary schools. He also writes a monthly column.
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