We get it—there is simply too much. So, as in years past, we are giving our editors a last-minute opportunity to plug the things that maybe got away. See all the things you really should have read, watched, or listened to—as well as more of our year in review coverage—here.
First, let’s talk about the reasons you aren’t already obsessed with Apocalypse Magazine.
For starters: It’s about motorcycles (it’s not, really—but more on that in a bit). The earlier issues are only in French (true enough, but lately they’ve been in English as well). It’s expensive—between 20 and 25 euros per issue—only comes out twice a year, and has no American distribution, so it’s quite difficult to find.
Here’s the thing, though: It’s not really about motorcycles. Maybe that’s a bit disingenuous, but if you’ll indulge me for a moment: It’s about love, and devotion, and freedom, and exploration, and taking risks, and beauty and art and community—among many other ethereal concepts. Above and beyond all of that for me, it’s about finding something unexpected in a realm (umm…motorcycles) that far too often has found itself mired in cliché and stereotypes.
You know the typecasting—maybe you even dress for it (and that’s okay): It’s a lineage that runs from Marlon Brando in The Wild One to the strong, silent, intermittently menacing and violent club members depicted in the recent Bikeriders film: Motorcycles mean black leather, dirty blue denim, and hard guys—from the Hells Angels and their fetishized, patch-laden denim to vintage hunters sleuthing out rare, beaten-up Perfectos and street-style mavens seeking out contemporary moto-chic grails.
The brilliance—sorry, part of the brilliance—of Apocalypse is that it’s really about none of that. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the motorcycle world is a big one, populated by all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds: Within a mere mile or two from my home in Brooklyn you can find a motor repair shop founded by women, a motorcycle club (now nationwide) for women founded by women, a moto restoration and customization company founded by a female historian, filmmaker, upholsterer, and producer; farther afield there’s the female-founded women’s racing team competing at the highest echelons of the sport and an international female+ riding club (I’ll stop here, but you get the drill). The acclaimed Lewis Hamilton–backed recent documentary Motorcycle Mary, meanwhile, paid tribute to Mary McGee, the first American woman to race motorcycles (who died earlier this month, age 87, the day before the film premiered).
