Bio

I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where I grew up riding bikes and playing hockey. On the ice, I was captain of the JV team, which means I was the best of those who weren’t good enough for Varsity. I attribute my lacking abilities to a combination of a minor scoliosis and the fact that I didn’t really care that much about winning. In the end, I just liked to ice skate.

In 2005, some high school buddies and I founded Big Muddy Records. The label would go on to release fantastic records by fantastic groups (such as Pokey LaFarge).

After graduating from St. Louis University High School, I went on to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. I was lured there by the promise of a “liberal arts” education and by the fact that the football team was terrible. I quickly found a home in the school newspaper office and was an editor for three years before taking the reigns as Editor-In-Chief my senior year. I made a lot of people mad, for good reasons and bad, and I learned a lot of lessons. And I never slept. Under my watch, the paper launched its first ever online edition, a completely student designed and programmed site running at TheKnoxStudent.com.

While at Knox, I also created and designed TheWikiFire.org, the free encyclopedia by and about Knox College. It’s sort of like Wikipedia, except with more attitude and less fact-checking. The site was, and still is, a big success. The site struck a chord with the school population, as people relished the opportunity to define their space.

After college, I spent the summer as an intern writing features and arts stories for The Kansas City Star. My first day happened to be the day after the paper’s first ever giant round of layoffs. People all over the building were depressed and crying because their long-time coworkers and friends were gone. And here I was, the new kid. Clearly, the impending demise of the daily print newspaper had been discussed long before 2008, but it wasn’t until I saw the carnage first hand that it really hit home. I was going to need to find a different route.

That route somehow led me to Denver, where I lived happily in the sun for a year, riding my bike, going camping and working at an awesome used book store called Capitol Hill Books (I also remade the shop’s website).

But the call of the West was strong, so my friend and I packed what we could fit in her Volkswagon, strapped our bikes on the back, and took off for Seattle. We got here in August, and I have since taken up writing for Real Change and SeattleCrime.com. I co-founded Hoot House Productions, a recording studio and entertainment production company based out of North Seattle. I often sell handmade stuff at the Fremont Market, and I am co-writer of “The Lonely Kazoo: A Synthetic Journey to Heaven,” a rock opera about coming of age as a plastic post-consumer product.

In July, 2010, I launched a career as a full-time blogger and freelance writer. I started SeattleBikeBlog.com and am always looking for new writing gigs. Contact me below if you have any ideas or work to send my way or if you have any questions about anything.

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