Back in the day (and we're talking pre-WWII here) Bob Hoffman of York, PA reigned supreme. The previous big barbell maker had gone out of business; York Barbell stepped into the void with weights and courses and efforts to grow weightlifting in America
-
Show this thread
-
Imagine if you will: once upon a time American weightlifters *did not know wtf a squat was*
2 replies 0 retweets 5 likesShow this thread -
Hoffman and York did a lot to popularize weightlifting and one of the ways they did this was showing that guys who used York barbells won physique competitions So bodybuilding was part of the appeal. Dudes like John Grimek.pic.twitter.com/ZigDWqce61
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likesShow this thread -
York reigns supreme through the war and postwar years, and then along comes an upstart guy named Joe Weider, who becomes the Bob Hoffman of the 60s and 70s -- what's now called the Golden Age of bodybuilding. The era of dudes like Dave Draper, Sergio Oliva, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
1 reply 0 retweets 4 likesShow this thread -
Bodybuilder Ricky Wayne, a Weider guy, says there were a few reasons Weider had an opening. One was that in his view York saw bodybuilding as chiefly a way to sell tickets for extremely long and boring weightlifting meets, when the bodybuilding audience didn't want meets at all.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
The second: Wayne, a black bodybuilder from the Caribbean, was not alone in his view that Weider offered more opportunities to men of color who had outfuckingstanding physiques. York overlooked them.
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likesShow this thread -
To be fair to Bob Hoffman, he did promote and support black weightlifters, most notably the legendary John Davis. But, as Hoffman partisan Brooks Kubik notes, Davis didn't get to use the spiffy York gym. He set records training in the basement of a church.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
Anyway, Weider cannily exploited an opening, and THERE WAS A FANDOM WAR. You were a York guy or a Weider guy. Weider came to dominate, and so many new fans came in bc of Weider's guys a lot of people today don't even *know* there was a fandom war.
1 reply 1 retweet 5 likesShow this thread -
Brooks Kubik is the perfect age to have fallen in with Weider's heroes of the Golden Age of bodybuilding. Except, and God knows how or why, *he is an undying York partisan, the last Japanese soldier holding out from a long-since-ended fandom war.*
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likesShow this thread -
if you put Brooks Kubik on a retrospective BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER panel he'd be like, "okay, first thing: XANDER FUCKING LIED"
2 replies 0 retweets 6 likesShow this thread
This is (a) amazing, (b) correct.
Also, let me show you my complete collection of Dinosaur Files back issue reprints.
Also, novels? NOVELS?!?! For the love of God!
I can't unknow this.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.