Hot Cross Buns

I originally wanted the title of this blog to be Hot Cross Buns. I've been thinking about doing a blog/cross 'zine titled Hot Cross Buns forever. But for some obvious and not so obvious reasons I've been hesitant to do so. The biggest problem I had with the title hot cross buns was seasonal. Cross is a Fall sport and hot cross buns the delicious danish come out in early spring. So titling a spring classics superfan blog Hot Cross Buns makes sense, a cross obsessed one not so much. The other obvious problem is the "buns" bit. I can only imagine the traffic that would be lured to my site while the interwebs googled either "buns" or "hot" not that there is anything wrong with that.

My obsession with hot cross buns began in the Fall of 1994 when my cross addiction was in its infancy. It all started when I met one Robert Kurasawa or as he is affectionately known Pineapple Bob or P-Bob. P-Bob is and was a legend. He worked at Bridgestone back when it was The Cool bike company. They were cool before it was cool to be cool. And he was an evangelist for cross in the NorCal Bay Area. It was his idea to originally craft a zine about cross called hot cross buns. There was zero cross coverage anywhere back in 1994 so it seemed to be a great idea.

That first meeting took place in his appt in Emeryville California. P-Bob is a true artist before anything and a cross historian. He sat me down in his living room put in a tape of the 1991 cross worlds and began to impart all (as much as one can in an interview) his knowledge of cross. It was like pouring gas on an open fire. I was hooked. The article I did about P-bob was published in the long gone california bicyclist magazine. P-bob did an amazing found object art piece we used to accompany the article that to this day blows my mind. Why is cross on my mind as we hit the spring classics season? I just can't look at a hot cross bun without thinking of P-Bob and how a chance encounter began to take over every fabric of my life. Cross no longer is just a fall pursuit for me and a lot of others it is a year-long obssession.

P-Bob's Cross Shrine with Hennie's right shoe and the words "Love it and Leave it alone."