Bad medicine

Your love is like bad medicine
Bad medicine is what I need
Whoa-oh-oh, shake it up, just like bad medicine
There ain't no doctor that can cure my disease.
- Bon Jovi, 1988

The highway from Coffs to Grafton is pretty dull, so Beth and I headed west out of Coffs in the Beetle Evo, along the back road through Glenreagh, out into Russell Crowe country. We had a look for him, but he didn’t seem to be about the place. The road meandered through the wooded hills of the Orara Valley, almost seeming to deliberately avoid the straightest possible route in favour of showing off as much of the scenery as possible. We were in no hurry. We had all the time in the world. (And no we didn’t round the next bend to get taken out by Blofeld in an old Merc mounted with machine guns, Lazenby-as-Bond style.)

The Beetle only had a tape deck (no real idea why, cheap German bastards) and FM wasn’t happening out in the hills around Glenreagh, but Beth had ducked out of sight while I’d been filling the thing up at the big service centre south of Coffs and had raided their bargain bin of cassettes. I expected the worst. So the Stones’ Forty Licks and an old Triple J Hottest 100 from the late ‘90s weren’t actually delivering; even the 80s covers compilation didn’t look that grim as it included a couple of decent local acts, like the Living End’s version of Tainted Love. The greatest hits of Bon Jovi, though, that was a fearsome bucket of cheese and hairspray, best avoided on an unsettled stomach. And not only because I could remember it from old mate Chops blaring it constantly from the stereo of his busted-arse Toyota Corona wagon at our Schoolies camping trip years and years ago.

To which she counterargued, “The point you’re missing though, babe, is that your love is like bad medicine. However,” she added, “bad medicine is what I need…”

North of Grafton, again, there’s the highway – yawn – or a couple of back roads which will find you in Maclean, like the one we took along the north arm of the Clarence, through cane fields and along the sweeps of the river to Lawrence, then across an old drive-on ferry punt and on to Maclean, which itself is just one of those little river towns which never seems to change much, though there seemed to be more trees and landscaping along the heritage main drag and the little cafes had Vittoria and Lavazza signs out the front. Maclean’s great claim to fame is being the Scottish Town In Australia, which it had to armwrestle Glen Innes (up on the New England tablelands between Tenterfield and Armidale) for – the latter now went by ‘Capital of Celtic Country’ which sounds like a big bag of nowt to me – even the telegraph poles were slathered in tartan, those of the various clans who’d founded the settlement. We had a look around for an Alexander one for her Dad’s family, but without a lot of luck. Obviously had better taste than to hang about.

Rather than push on north, we decided to keep following the southern side of the Clarence River as it broadened and shone silver in the sunlight – under the Harwood Bridge, the local sugar mill across the water on the northside, and on to Yamba for lunch, the sunroof open, the canefields shimmering in the seabreeze. Lunch was going to be just fish and chips straight off the boat from the local fish co-op (well the fish anyway, the chips I believe they have to dig up somewhere) until I remembered the view from the deck at the Pacific. They did a good feed, too. And no it wasn’t just a scam to get myself my first schooner of Old off tap in quite some time. Afterwards we went for a walk up to the lighthouse and took silly perspective photos that made it look like we were pushing it over, as you do when you're young and stupid and in love. We’d need to stop at Byron for the complete set, of course.

And then… well, a bit of highway was inescapable, it was the only way to get to Woodburn. From where I suggested heading back out on a detour to the coast, to see Evans Head. And felt that same strange sense of electrifying nervousness showing her the streets I’d grown up on, the school I’d been to, the nursery Sam’s family used to run, the takeaway shops we used to get the world’s best burgers from, and the surf spots we used to frequent. Chinamans looked pretty inviting by 2pm on a thirty degree day. We dived into the surf without hesitation. Or much of a plan for getting dry or changed afterwards.

Which, in a roundabout way, was how we ended up on my parents’ doorstep about 20 minutes later, salty and sandy and wrapped in damp towels. Sure, I was going to bring Beth to visit my folks at some point – just hadn’t planned for it to be borrowing the keys to Jeff and Rebecca’s so we could break in and grab a shower. But it went alright. If you can call ‘staying several hours longer than you meant to and not leaving until dusk’ alright. The old man had scored a Gaggia coffee machine for his birthday – like I said before, as a farmer, he’s not your stereotypical cocky, but it’s more that he’s always been interested any process where he can put in more effort and research and get back a better result, which was true for coffee and home brew as it was for farming – so we spent a lazy hour or two sitting out on the verandah sampling flat whites and shooting the breeze. Seemed to be a much better vibe around there since Jeff had been kicked into action re launching a salvage operation for him and Beck. Being the neighbours, I got the feeling the folks had absorbed a fair deal of second-hand angst there, and I was pretty sure the old man had been in his ear about what he had to do as much as I had, while Mum would have been particularly conflicted as she genuinely did love Beck like the daughter she’d never had. Anyway, salvage op launched; it was up to them two crazy kids now.

And as for Beth… well, truth be told, she fitted like she’d always been there. Social chameleon and all, you’d expect that, perhaps. But either she wasn’t pretending any more, or I’d become particularly good at self-delusion. Either way, I was as happy as I could remember being for a long time. Even if it meant we had to ditch our plans for more stupid lighthouse photos at Byron, taking the scenic route around the back of Murwillumbah up to Nerang and so on because of failing light and foreshortened scheduling (particularly with the step-back-in-time that came with crossing the border during daylight savings… as distinct from any other time) and were obliged to point the Beetle Evo directly up the Pacific Highway in the direction of Brisvegas. Which, by the time we crested the rise at Mt Gravatt and saw the city skyline, was illuminated by night. It’d been a good day. One of the best. One you’d put in a little glass box and stash away in the archives, to bring out and savour on darker, gloomier days to come.

Beth insisted in dropping me at Mick’s, rather than my pretty half-arsed plan of dropping me at a train station near the Cleveland ferry terminal and letting me make my own way to Bardon. Made more sense, even though it meant she’d have to motor to get back there to get the last ferry; she kissed me hard and fast in the front seat of the Beetle Evo before practically shoving me and my belongings out the door and howling off into the night.

“Jeez, she’s kicked ya to the kerb already,” drawled a voice from the balcony above, beer in hand. “G’day stranger.”

“Mr Martin,” I declared. “Long time no beers.”

“Can fix that,” he nodded with a grin. He underarmed me something in a zip-up neoprene stubbie cooler. It was the keys to my ute. Wrapped in a twenty, at least. “You know where the bottle-o is mate…”

Still, there was win to be had. Win #1: my ute actually started, despite needing to brush the cobwebs off it (actually the slightly more unnerving golden-orb-weaving-spiderwebs – pretty harmless things, but fuck they’re nasty looking). Win #2: Coopers Sparkling was on special. Got to love the Spark. Win #3: there was enough gas in the BBQ to cook the swathe of snags and kebabs I’d brought back from the butchers next door to the bottle-o. Win #4: my charger had turned up. Lena had posted it up from Sydney care of the rear passenger footwell in her car from whence it had been exhumed. And Win #5: while much bollocks was talked over many beers that evening, Mick never once brought up Beth. Which meant no matter what his reservations had been or still were, he’d realised he’d lost the argument on that one and didn’t want to talk about it any more. Muahahahaha.

Still, it was a fair question. One which I picked up on a little later in the evening. Actually much later, after Mick had pulled stumps and hit the sack, complaining that some people had to work tomorrow and not everyone was on fucking leisurely rock and roll schedules like me.

“So, erm, what were you doing the night of the Gold Coast Big Day Out? Given there weren’t any midnight sessions…”

“How did you know…”

I lied (a little bit) and said I’d just been interested to see what other movies had midnight sessions that night, because I was bored and wanted to show off my iPhone to someone. Turned out there hadn’t been any. (I figured that sounded better than ‘My housemate thinks you’re psychotic and was checking up on you.’) She sighed down the phone line, admitted she’d made it all up, said she knew she’d just need to crash after the show – used up all her serotonin – said she was sorry, said I must have been suspicious because it wasn’t like she actually had friends… And I felt awful.

“Look, forget it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter now. It was a long time ago.”

“It was the Friday before last.”

“Exactly,” I grinned. “A lifetime ago.”

“True,” she said. “And I’ve changed my brand of serotonin reuptake inhibitors since then.”

“Really?” I queried. I hadn’t noticed her actually taking anything. “To what?”

“Erm, to hanging out with you?” she laughed.

“You know I’m not approved by the FDA?” I pointed out.

“Babe, you’re not even approved by my mother,” she reminded me, “but I’ll take you… and yeah, make of that whatever you want.”

“How is Mother?” I asked.

A sigh. “Good. We’re OK. Ish. Back in my own bed tonight.”

“What, no housesitting?”

“No, just for a change I thought I’d do something wild and crazy and spend a night at home with my family. Such as it is.”

“You sure?” Given how fractious and unsettled things were there, I can’t say I was thinking it was a great idea. Then again, she had to see Gerald at work tomorrow anyway. “You’re welcome to stay at my place…”

“See, that doesn’t work. Unless I feel that I shouldn’t really be there… it’s just not as much fun. Not as good for what I’m kind-of there to do…” She laughed. “Too much information?”

“Not nearly enough,” I countered. “Erm, you don’t have your laptop handy, by any chance?”

“Skype?” she inquired.

“You read my mind,” I said.

Ah, the magical wireless inter-google. Great for ‘helping’ with long-distance relationships. Even if the distance involved was only about fifty kays. It was a whole different shire council, dammit.

Wednesday, and I’m in the Valley. Not like last week though. Not making an arse of myself at the Zoo for Marty’s birthday shindig. Nup. It’s 2pm and I’m standing on the cracked concrete forecourt of an abandoned petrol station with my housemate. Glamorous. Still, it was a breather from the sudden and violent reintroduction to the media circus which seemed to come with Gasket’s BDO stay of execution – no sooner had I gotten up to date with emails and voicemail messages then I was fielding phone interviews and writing band-site blogs and Arsebooking and Twuntering away to make up for my grievous neglect of our fanbase over the past couple of days. Although the comfy couches of the coffee bar at Mount Road Motorcycles on a quiet midweek morning didn’t make too bad a temporary office. In between assignments and customers – most of which Mick’s ‘young blokes’ (his two regular staff, Josh and Taylor, both of which were aspiring racers who worked in the shop as part of broader apprenticeship/sponsorship arranements) were looking after, so Mick could concentrate on his coffee – Mick outlined his plans for world domination.

Mount Road Motorcycles wasn’t going too badly, as an enterprise. Less biased judges than me rated it the best bike shop in Brisbane, if not south-east Queensland. There were bigger ones – the Action Sports Motorcycles empire on the southside with multi-brand dealerships in Moorooka and Mt Gravatt, for instance – but bulk throughput wasn’t what kept you going in the bike game, it was the personal touch. Offering service backup as solid as the sales support. Keeping parts in stock. Doing things to support the riding community – everything from the coffee shop to sponsoring young racers. That’s what kept you afloat.

Keeping afloat though, by definition, isn’t building the business, and if you’re not building your business you’re watching it contract in real terms, as Mick learned in commerce at UQ. And with the likes of Action Sports MCs on the move north – they’d bought out the old Kawasaki/Triumph dealership in Everton Park, about ten minutes ride north of Mount Road’s base in Ashgrove – things were going to get trickier. Mount Road had happily coexisted with the other northside dealerships for many years – unless you wanted to venture up to Aspley or somewhere there wasn’t another Yamaha dealership for miles around.

“Those blokes don’t do Yamaha though,” I’d pointed out.

“They want to,” Mick had noted. “Been looking to offload their Kwaka agency and talk Yamaha Oz into giving them sole agency for them in Brisbane. That was why they bought North Star,” he pointed out, meaning the Yamaha dealership in Aspley. North Star had typically fought it out with Mount Road and the larger Gold Coast dealers for Queensland state honours in the Yamaha dealer sales awards. Presumably, that also gave Action Sports an ‘in’ with the sales and marketing bosses at Yamaha.

“Pincer movement,” I noted, seeing a future in which Mount Road was surrounded by enemy forces. “Cunts.”

“Yeah… look, I’ve never had a problem with the Vee Dubs. Had a bit to do with them over the years, and they’re not bad people.” The Vee-Dubs were the van Waalens, Dirk and his sons, who’d established Action Sports Motorcycles out of the old man’s Annerley lawnmower and chainsaw business in the 60s. Fair to say they’d done alright out of it, such that they were minted sufficiently to be pouring a fair amount of cash into sponsoring the Brisbane Roar A-League side, which had formed out of the local Dutch migrant community’s soccer team, the Queensland Lions. As well as taking over every bike dealership in town that were even slightly suffering under the early effects of the GFC, or whose owners just couldn’t compete with the van Waalen’s available fluid capital. “They’re just doing what you’re meant to do in business, if they let ya. Fuck your competitors over until you have no fuckin’ competitors anymore.”

The Yamaha thing was a serious issue, I could see, because Mount Road’s star had been tied to the crossed tuning forks of Yamaha for as long as I could remember. I was tied up with that as much as anyone, given it’d been Mick and Doug Martin who’d brokered my Yamaha promo deal in Gasket’s heyday, making me a brand ambassador for both Yamaha and the dealership. Although they’d diversified into powersports stuff – quadbikes, jetskis and personal watercraft – and of course still sold second-hand bikes from any and all brands on the market, the market perception was of Mount Road as a Yamaha dealership. Maybe not for much longer. Mount Road, at the very least, would have a branding identity crisis on its hands, as well as losing much of its forecourt content. So what to do?

“Counterattack,” Mick nodded grimly. “Hit them where they don’t have a presence.”

“That being?” I rattled through the bike brands or sales segments I could think of that Action Sports didn’t have access to. They were pretty well covered to be honest – Honda, Harley, Kawasaki and Triumph. Everything from ag-bikes to big-bore cruisers to Supersport racebikes. And said as much, to which Mick just grinned.

“Zactly,” he said. “You’ve got the same mentality as they do. And Uncle Doug, to be fair. Too compartmentalised. Locked into the prevailing economic model. Here’s what’s gonna happen in the next six to twelve months. The overall market for bikes is going to change. And by change I mean the fucking arse is going to drop out of it. Think about what people stop spending money on when the economy’s stuffed. Discretionary purchases. Toys. All this shit,” he said, waving his free hand at the Mount Road dealership forecourt visible through the windows behind us, and the several hundred thousand dollars of stock parked thereupon. “Apart from the quads and ag bikes, and what’ll happen there is the farmers will just defer buying replacements for their old nails due to lack of fluid cash, so it’ll be the same fuckin’ effect.” He then went off into some economic gibberish about indicators and bonds and bears and some other sorts of wildlife – I had no fucking idea what he was on about but presumably it was some sort of high-end economics talk. And to think I used to take the piss out of him for reading the AFR and BRW and pretending to understand the content.

“Sounds pretty fucking grim,” I noted.

“Yeah, it would. If you were a typical motorbike shop who only wanted to sell superbikes, cruisers and motocrossers to other blokes like yourselves, it’d be a cunt of a thing.” A toothy grin. He still had most of ‘em, which was probably testament to his mum insisting on him wearing a mouthguard during his shortlived-but-crashtastic teenage motorcross career. “Where do you think the only market segments will be that won’t get bent over the sink and fucking seen to?”

“Postie bikes,” I declared, with a grin. “Mail’s got to get through somehow.”

He smirked. “Yeah... not far away actually,” he nodded. “Small capacity stuff. Bikes you ride to get places. Nothin’ more than that. A-to-B. Not fuckin’ glamorous. Not discretionary purchases. Not the sort of shit the Vee Dubs sell, or want to sell. You go into there and ask for a test drive on a 250 or something, they’ll laugh you out of the shop. Specially if you have tits. Fuckin’ forget about it.”

“Nah, surely not.”

Mick nodded. “Mystery shopper. Sent Josh’s girlfriend and Taylor’s sister down there a few weekends ago. Separately. Just to see how they’d go. Didn’t do a fucking thing for them. Taylor’s mum’s been riding for years, she went with. Got totally blanked. She actually had cash in her pocket and was seriously thinking [Triumph] Speed Triple for her next bike. Much as we tried to talk her into a FZ6.” Mick frowned. He never liked trying to sell customers on product when he knew a competitor’s offering was really a better match for their needs. “She bought one, alright. From Malcolms Triumph up at Everton Park, just before they sold up to the Vee Dubs.”

It was hardly news that a lot of motorcycle shops weren’t interested in faffing about with new riders or female customers. A lot of car dealers weren’t much better. Or surf shops, skate/ski shops, computer shops, even music shops, for that matter. Anecdotally, even back when I was doing sales here at Mount Road, we got a lot of business – repeat business as well – out of not treating new customers like morons, fuckwits or cash cows. It wasn’t exactly rocket science. But then again it didn’t give you the all important smug sense of superiority that you got from sniggering with your mates at the naivety of clueless noobs.

But if anyone had one, Mount Road already had a rep for looking after people. How was that going to help?

Which was when Mick suggested I come for a drive into town. Which, via a quick feed in Ashgrove (that bakery still did excellent work), was how we ended up in the Valley, standing on aforesaid former petrol station forecourt. Good position, shabby building – smashed glass, tagged walls, even though the bones looked alright. The tanks were probably still there, but all the pipes and above-ground workings had been ripped out by the fuel company when they’d foreclosed on the (independent) operator a couple of years before. Zoned industrial, as was the rest of the block, so the apartment building vultures weren’t interested.

“So I’m gonna do my best to hang onto Yamaha, obviously,” he declared, shielding his eyes from the grit in the wind as he stared up the street to the traffic flowing down from the heart of the CBD. “But I reckon I can see which direction the wind’s blowing.” And it was, too. Fair howling through the buildings in this part of town. Wasn’t the nicest of days, truth be told. “So we’ve been talking to other people. Kwaka are keen, they also look like they’re gonna be on the outer in the Brisbane market soon enough. But the real one we want is Piaggio,” he said. “For Aprilia, obviously, but particularly for…”

“Moto Guzzi,” I nodded with a smirk. “I’m beginning to see the point here mate…” Mick, as we’ve discussed, had always been into his old Italian bikes –Laverdas, Benelli sixes, the occasional bevel-drive Ducati, but first and foremost his Guzzis. To his credit, he had the decency to look a bit sheepish.

“Yeah there is that,” he grinned, “but there’s one other you haven’t picked up on. Vespa.”

And the penny finally dropped. We were a couple of blocks, if that, from the centre of the Valley; similarly from the inner-city trendite affluentia of New Farm. Target market for scooters, particularly Vespas. I’d already seen half a dozen hipster girls (or boys that looked like girls) with Vespa handbags wandering past. Ready made audience. And when things get tight financially, that car ain’t gonna get it done re the A-to-B, whether B’s work, uni or that West End op shop with all the fantastic 70s kitschy goodness that’ll impress your friends.

Phase 1 was pretty simple. Light reno on this joint, set up shop. Same strategy as Mount Road, but even more so – barista, soft furnishings, make it more like a trendy shop and as little like your idea of a grease-monkey motorbike dealers as possible. Mick rattled off the retail concepts he reckoned had done more to capture what he called ‘branding experience’ than anything else: Apple stores, Ikea, your fashion label concept stores like Levis, and what he referred to, accurately I thought, as ‘that fucking Smiggle shite’. What he wanted to do wasn’t just a bike shop, it was more of a motorcycle concept store. Not in itself a unique idea – Frasers in Sydney, the Ducati and Harley dealers, had done something similar down there, and Mick had been down for their launch recently with eyes and ears open. He reckoned you could do 90% of what they had on 30% of the budget. Which was good. Except that only he had about 10% of the budget, having leant heavily on business finance to buy the business off his uncle. And that shit was only going to become harder to come by as the financiers went through increasing frequencies of squeaky-bum moments with every bank rescue and corporate bailout in the US and UK/Europe.

This wasn’t meant to replace Mount Road, but to be something else. Different market, different approach. Different name, too - “Scooteria,” he said, “or Scootopia, haven’t decided on that.” Timeframe? ASAP. He wanted to be in the market in time for the unmet need to be met; there was a finite timeframe around that, and hence he’d be calling in a lot of contra-deal favours from builders, painters, sparkies and signwriters in the bike community, a lot of whom were or had been regulars on the coffee-shop couch at Mount Road. He’d even toyed with the idea of running some sort of co-op or share offer to underpin the financing of Phase 2 of Scooteria, which was to pull out the old fuel tanks under the forecourt and extend downward (as the current zoning didn’t permit going up) – another showroom, AV theatre, rider training simulator, clothing and accessories boutique. As it was, integrating the bikes, helmets and gear, and rider training into packages was the cornerstone of Mick’s planned offering. “Even with Q-Ride,” he said, referring to Queensland Transport’s crash course (often literally) offering experienced car drivers the chance to shortcut getting bike licences, “there’s still a lot standing in the way of someone who’s not from a bike background like you or me – growing up on the fuckin’ things – actually getting into this. You take that barrier away, you’ve got a ready made market.”

He’d convinced me. “Well mate, if you need someone to help swing a hammer or whatever…”

He nodded. “Actually I was gonna ask a favour. Like I say, I’d like to keep Yamaha, still something I want to do, got a lot of brand equity and shit tied up there… I was thinking a high profile former brand ambassador of theirs might be helpful in bringing into discussions.”

“Yeahhh… you think that’s wise? Didn’t end well, as you’d remember. Quite a few trashed bikes. And guitars.”

“True,” he noted, “but time heals all, and you and Gasket are currently flavour of the month. Month’s almost over though, so we’d want to move…” He’d been careful not to say, ‘You’ll be back to being obscure as fuck again by this time next week so I’d like to get the best use out of you as soon as I can.’ What he did say was, “It’d be an honorary, ambassadorial role… which is a nice way of saying we can’t afford to pay you, but obviously you get your pick out of whatever’s on the shop floor at the end of the day. Other than Melissa.” Melissa was the dealership receptionist, and Josh’s girlfriend. Quite what she’d be doing on the shop floor at the end of the day was beyond me, but was presumably between her and Josh.

“You know what I reckon?” I said thoughtfully. “Fuck Yamaha. Not because they’re dumping you, but because they’re probably in the worst position of any of the Big [Japanese] Four to weather this.” With their interests in car manufacture (Honda and Suzuki) and heavy industrial (Kawasaki), the other three Japanese manufacturers were much larger companies with more corporate mass behind them. All Yamaha made, other than bikes, was basically musical instruments. W00T. “As stellar as the new R1’s meant to be, every bastard will buy Honda Fireblades if they want to go Japanese, or Ducatis or something if they don’t. And their offering everywhere else is pretty thin. Did I read the biggest selling bike this year just gone was the new Kawasaki Ninja 250? Outsold everything bar the old postie bike?”

Mick nodded, sagely. “You’ve just confirmed everything I’ve been thinking. That’s plan B. We’d be very happy hanging the big green K off the sign at Mount Road. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t a fair way down the track.”

“How far?”

“Far enough to be sorting out relative positions for everyone’s logos on the shopfront,” he admitted. “And the office stationery, and the polo shirts…”

“So basically, if Yamaha still want to be part of this, they have to say. Otherwise…”

“Yup,” he said. “We’re not waiting around to be bent over the sink here.”

I took all that in. “Mate, whatever you need, I’m keen for. Got no fuckin’ plans after this, so if you need me to get into photo ops, create a bit of marketing bullshit and name drop the fuck out of the dealership for you, consider it done.”

“Good stuff,” he said.

There was a bit of a pause.

“You’d chuck your toys if we made you ponce about on a Vespa I s’pose?”

I gave him a look.

“Yeah, thought as much.”