Ep. 69 - John Watson, owner of The Radavist
Bikes or Death
Patrick Farnsworth
4.8 • 563 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2021
⏱️ 123 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Happy 420 everyone! My guest on today's episode with John Watson is one that I've been looking forward to for a while. We had plans to record this one a while ago, but covid put it on pause. On my recent trip to AZ and NM I was able to meet John at his Santa Fe office where he runs The RADAVIST. His office is quaint and simple with merchandise bins tidily lining the walls and stacked to the ceiling. I felt a kinship immediately as I pictured him editing photos, writing articles, fulfilling orders, etc etc. Despite his obvious success, what you may not see immediately is the 15 years he's been doing, the passion that started it, and the long hours that took to fuel it.
In 2006 he began capturing urban bike culture for his blog that was at that time called "Prolly is not Probably". He was debating 650b v. 700c before you even had your first bike. He's been called a "Bike Snob", "Respected Tastemaker", a "Prolific Photographer" and more over his years in the industry. John made his mark by following his passion and using his camera and keyboard to share and shape the bicycle culture. If you are high af and want to go down the rabbit hole, google (or use DuckDuckGo) "Prolly is not Probably". You can find his original blogger page and hundreds of articles he's written or than have been written about him.
Now The RADAVIST is a staple in the bike industry for its tasteful photography, wide range of articles and resources, and thoughtful articles that cover a large swath of the bike industry and culture. And from my perspective we are all the benefactors of his 15 years of hard work.
It was an honor to meet John in person. Behind the scenes over emails he has always been very supportive of me and Bikes or Death. He has been a person that I look up to professionally for his work and personally because he's just a damn nice guy. So if for any reason you haven't been visiting The Radavist on a daily basis it's time for you to get your life together and start! Both his instagram accounts are equally worth a follow @johnprolly and @theradavist.
After the interview the light was getting good and John asked if he could photograph my bike, which was a dream come true for me. Find those pictures and a write up by John on The Radavist and you can read my blog reply on Bikes or Death.
Shred Lightly my friends.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends, and welcome to the Bikes for Death podcast. My name is Patrick and I am your host, |
| 0:05.4 | and we will get started as soon as everybody is here and seated. Cell phone's off, please. |
| 0:13.5 | Oh, wait, I guess you need your cell phone to listen to the episode. You know what I'm saying. |
| 0:17.3 | Timmy, sit down, quit messing with Jill. God damn, Tim. All right, |
| 0:22.5 | everybody. Let's get today's episode 69 kicked off. I've been trying to come out with new episodes |
| 0:30.9 | every Wednesday, but Wednesday is 421, and this is episode 69. And I thought it would be better |
| 0:36.6 | to release episode 69 on 420. |
| 0:39.5 | So happy 420 day, everybody. |
| 0:42.1 | Stay chill. |
| 0:43.6 | Medicaid responsibly. |
| 0:45.4 | Recreate responsibly. |
| 0:47.2 | Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode of the Bikes for Death podcast. |
| 0:52.2 | All right. |
| 0:52.6 | Well, before we get to this show today, let's give a huge shout out to the newest patrons of the Bikes for Death podcast. All right, well, before we get to this show today, let's give a huge shout out to the newest |
| 0:56.9 | patrons of the Bikes or Death podcast. |
| 0:59.2 | Since last week's episode with Leo Wilcox, 13 new people have signed up to be sustaining |
| 1:05.4 | members of the show. |
| 1:06.7 | And I'm happy to announce that we have reached $500 a month over on Patreon. |
| 1:32.7 | So as promised, I am going to start releasing a new segment of the podcast. I've been calling it shifting gears, call whatever you want to, but it's going to be a patron-only podcast. So I guess I got to figure out what I'm going to do with that. I know what I am going to do. I'm going to hop on that private Facebook group that I've created for patrons. We're going to have a little powwow and decide when and what the first episode is going to be. And we're going to kick it off soon. So if you want to get in on |
| 1:39.5 | that and be a sustaining member of the Bikes or Death podcast, you can head over to Patreon.com forward slash Bikes for Death, or of course you can find a link on Bikes for Death.com. |
| 1:50.0 | I'm going to have to come up with a new goal. I think the next goal is going to be help me quit my job, |
| 1:55.1 | because if I quit my real job, then that means more podcast and better. |
... |
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