Blame John Tesh. Yes, that John Tesh, the six-time Emmy-winning entertainment personality—investigative journalist, actor, sportscaster, musician (toured with Yanni), former boyfriend of Oprah Winfrey—who currently dispenses insipid life hack factoids between soft rock hits nightly on the “John Tesh Radio Show.” In the mid-1980s, he anchored TV coverage of the Tour de France for CBS, the first time the bike race was broadcast in the US. After the `87 Tour, Tesh suggested holding a similar race on the East Coast to his friend Billy Packer, a basketball commentator and entrepreneur. Packer approached representatives of various casinos in Atlantic City for sponsorship—he originally planned to call the race the Tour de Jersey. One mogul took the bait and the Tour de Trump was born. (You would have known all of this if you were subscribed to Chronogram‘s almost-daily newsletter, which delivers our latest coverage direct to your inbox—plus fun Hudson Valley-related trivia questions. Sign-up now! Chronogram.com/newsletter.)
That’s why my friends and I were there in downtown New Paltz on a warm afternoon in May of `89, shirtless in acid-wash jeans, mullets blowing in the breeze. The race, which began in Albany—there’s a hilarious photo of a nonplussed Mario Cuomo standing next to a preening Donald Trump—zigzagged 110 miles south through the Catskills and over the Gunks to the finish line on Main Street in our sleepy little town. (American hero Greg Lemond, the first American to win the Tour de France was in the mix, but an unknown Russian cyclist, Viatcheslav Ekimov, won the stage. According to Sports Illustrated, some of the pros were so irritated by an amateur beating them that they “rewarded him by jamming a feed bag into his wheel.” I’ve struggled to comprehend what that means. Ekimov would go on to win three Olympic gold medals.)
We were there to protest Donald Trump, the avatar of capitalism run amok, who had published The Art of the Deal the year before and seemed to perfectly embody the odious “greed is good” ethos of the recently released film Wall Street. When I write “we were there to protest,” I should clarify: There were a couple thousand people in the street, and the mood was festive despite a small coterie of agitators with signs that read “Fight Trumpism” and “Ivana=Imelda.” I was working my way through the college just up the hill, so I took the opportunity to move some product, selling loose joints to the assembled masses. I gave a freebie to a guy with an “Eat the Rich” placard. If Trump knew, perhaps he would have appreciated the hustle. But I never saw the man.
We weren’t very good at protesting anyway. I mean we showed up to anti-apartheid rallies, yelled at Cuomo when he came to campus after jacking up our tuition, sported Greenpeace stickers on our notebooks, and went to hear excommunicated CIA operatives speak about secret US death squads in Central America, but we weren’t about to march on Albany over tuition hikes or take over the president’s office because of what was happening in South Africa. (Unlike the 100 protestors who were arrested on the SUNY New Paltz campus in May for their Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Whatever you think of their politics, these students are willing to put their asses where their convictions are.)
Though Noam Chomsky might disagree, the `80s weren’t a great decade for dissent. The Vietnam War hangover had given way to rampant consumerism. We were served up Micheal J. Fox’s yuppie-in-training character Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties” as a role model. But we had watched the ugly foreign policy sausage-making process laid bare in the Iran-Contra hearings on TV and entered college cynical and unconvinced that the juice was worth the squeeze saving the world-wise. Political engagement was out, ironic detachment was in. The Gen X of it all, as the kids say.
Fast forward 35 years. Much has changed: I pretty much wear a shirt all the time. I can buy pre-rolled joints at the store down the street. My formerly disaffected peers are now campaign donors and community organizers and desperate to create a better world for their kids. But some things stay the same—like that guy, that fucking guy.
This article appears in November 2024.
