Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
By Shuhei Matsuo John Stein has had many successes in his advertising career, but he now can add an accomplishment just as impressive to his resume. He is now officially an author. Driven by his passion for motorcycles, the 15-year Pacific Palisades resident published his first book, “World’s Fastest Motorcycle: The Day The Bonneville Salt Stood Still,” on August 31, thus fulfilling one of his lifelong goals. Stein will discuss his book and autograph copies for guests at Village Books on Swarthmore Avenue next Wednesday, October 24, at 7:30 p.m. Stein’s talents as a creative thinker and writer have always served him well in his advertising career. In 1988, he founded Stein Robaire Helm, which was named the West’s fastest growing agency in three years. In 1995, he founded Band of Gypsies, a creative consulting firm that has developed campaigns for a number of famous companies such as K-Swiss, Baja Fresh, HealthNet and UPN. He now serves the firm as the president. While Stein has worked on just about every kind of product imaginable, cars and motorcycles are where his passion lies. Over the years, he has created advertisements for Nissan, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Isuzu, Suzuki, Daewoo and Porsche as well as Honda, Yamaha, and Indian Motorcycles. So one day, he decided to write a book about his life’s passion. “I’ve always done advertising as a profession and I’ve always been with motorcycles as a hobby,” Stein says. “Ever since I was 12 or 13, I’ve been fascinated by them.” In “World’s Fastest Motorcycle,” Stein journeys the Bonneville Salt Flats to chronicle the history of motorcycle land speed racing and the monumental 2006 BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials, where three of the sport’s leaders campaigned for world record honors. Stein uses his advertising creativity in the book, which includes over 200 photographs and gives readers an opportunity to experience the triumphs and failures of landspeed racing alongside the fastest men in the world. Stein began writing his book about two years ago and despite the amount of information he had to cover, he says finishing it was “not that hard.” “I knew there would be information in old magazines or books,” he says. “I knew because people are so passionate about it, it wouldn’t be difficult to get them to talk. It’s not like they are hiding anything, but they are only too happy to talk about it.” Sure, interviewing those motorcyclists may have been easy, but that is only one part of publishing a book. What about the writing part? “To me it was like doing a college term paper,” Stein admits. “But just 50 times more because of the amount of the tale.” Still, Stein claims the whole process wasn’t hard to do because he knew he had a good idea. “It was just a function of hours and determination,” he says. However, Stein faced the most difficult time during the process when he lost months’ worth of work on his computer. He abandoned the project for about a month but decided to get back into it once he realized there was nothing he could do to get the lost work back. Finally, after two years of writing, Stein has a sense of satisfaction from publishing his first book and says the experience taught him an important life lesson. “Maybe it sounds like a cliche, but if you set your sights on doing something and just keep at it, the chances are very good that you’ll do it,” he says. “If you have an idea, go for it.” His wife Marilyn, is an L.A. native, plays volleyball four times a week and also teaches special education at a local school. He has a son, Nick, 26, who is learning to be a film editor and a daughter, Liz, 23, who works in advertising sales at MTV. In some ways, Stein says, writing a book is similar to racing a motorcycle in that both require the utmost discipline and determination. “These are larger-than-life guys that are kind of like in the Wild West,” he says. “You know, like an Olympian, ‘I want to be the fastest man in the world, not second or third,’ and they do it. That’s really great.” Although he has 25 motorcycles at his house, including a 50cc Grand Prix roadracer, Stein says he doesn’t ride them very often for safety reasons. Yet he has always been fascinated by them, and they are one of the reasons he moved to Southern California 20 years ago. “If you are into theater, you go to New York,” says Stein, a native of St. Louis. “But if you are into cars and motorcycles, some of the most talented, knowledgeable people are around here [in Southern California].” A stereotypical image of Southern California, especially areas like Pacific Palisades, might be someone driving a fancy car along the beach. And it is true that many people in the Palisades do drive fancy cars, but they know about their cars, Stein says. “In the Palisades you see a lot of beautiful cars, but there are also several people who are what I call ‘gear heads,’ meaning that for them it’s not just about driving a fancy car, it’s about actually knowing how to take it apart,” Stein explains. “There is an interesting collection of people around here who really do know about their cars. They can’t just write a check, but they know how to take it apart. So I found this interesting and surprising.” A “gear head” from Pacific Palisades has got his thoughts together and published a book on motorcycles. What’s his next goal? “When I went to Bonneville [in the beginning of September], I had one gentleman approach me about maybe doing some television, related to the same subject,” Stein says. “And I had other interesting books related to this, maybe biographies of some of these people, as opposed to this more general book about this subject.” Published by Parker House Publishing, World’s Fastest Motorcycle is available at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. (Editor’s note: Shuhei Matsuo is a senior journalism major at Pepperdine and sports editor of the student newspaper, The Graphic).
