Originally Posted by
cavernmech
Any doc, with the history of alleycats in mind, must begin with Johnny Jetfuel. The term "alleycat" was coined by him for a bunch of guys doing late night races in mostly underground garages. This morphed into the first open race for all comers in, I believe, 86. As far as I know, short of the cursory, minor blurbs you find online, I know of no comprehensive history being done by anybody.
That's what I thought. The first Alley Cat I went out for I ended up not being able to race for a number of reasons I won't bother with here. On my way home I ended up meeting up with a dude who asked if I was currently in the race. When I explained he said he was on his way to man a checkpoint and did I wanna come. As it turns out - and only according to him as I didn't see any need to corroborate - he was one of the original Alley Cats with Johnny and proceeded to tell me what he termed the ACTUAL history - since I told him what I'd read online and he felt it was inacurrate. I was totally floored. Having grown up around a couple of BFG's I was familiar with a lot of the people mentioned but from a different angle.
Since moving into the JetFuel hood I end up chatting a lot with Johnny and what with the fest going on, yesterday it sort of hit me that this style of race is huge around the globe now and Toronto and the people who "started" it all are being left out of the history. Not cool. Not to mention the fact that there have been messenger races in Toronto since about 1895! Plus, with the world's here next year, it would be cool to have some of that history out in the open.
Anyways, I've been muddling this idea around and wanted to know if it had already been done. I'm gonna talk to Johnny and see what he thinks. Because really, I totally agree Keith, without at least one of them involved there's no point - it would just be more broken telephone history.
Thanks all!