A famous New York Photographer, Timothy White, owned the entire town of Amboy at the time. This dinky junction in the desert housed one hotel and café, Roy’s, an official government Post Office, an empty church, and a gas station. That’s it, except for a nearby set of railroad tracks and a white powder mine.
About Timothy White: Timothy White is a leading figure in contemporary photography. For over 20 years, White has been one of the most productive and sought after celebrity portrait photographers in the field. His archive is one of the most extensive in the world and includes Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Billy Joel, Julia Roberts, Keith Richards, Ray Charles, James Brown, Queen Latifah, Paul Newman, George Clooney, and Neil Simon.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, White currently resides in New York City. After his graduation from Rhode Island School of Design in 1979, White moved to New York, where he began career as a photographer.
“I was very interested in doing music and Hollywood and moving into lots of younger magazines like Guitar and little pop magazines. I marched some of my South American work to Rolling Stone and won an assignment to do Yoko Ono,” White says.
Several books of White’s work have been published: Timothy White: Portraits (published by Rizzoli with a foreword by Harrison Ford), Indian Larry (published by Merrell, with forewords by Matthew Barney, Paul Cox, and Billy Lane), and Hollywood Pinups (Harper Collins). White has also directed music videos and television commercials.
Okay, so Timothy White shot Harrison Ford with a gang of bikers, including Indian Larry and Paul Cox. Maybe that’s how Indian Larry discovered Amboy.
The party at Amboy grew until Indian Larry passed away, and then Timothy White sold Amboy to an American Indian, Chicken Man, a guy who owns a chain of Juan Pollo restaurants. At that point a rift grew between some of the locals and a handful of bikers moved their party farther along Route 66 to the no-town of Bolo Station. It’s not even listed on my map of the area, and neither is Route 66. It’s even smaller than Amboy, but annually a handful of bikers, including Jake Walvern and his wife Kaye, escape the city for Bolo.
“The water is so bad in Amboy,” Jake said, “Chicken Man must bring a cooking trailer out for grilling his chickens.”
Walt owns Bolo Station. He added a bar and grill, sinks, stoves, electrical hook-ups for 10 trailers, showers, and some makeshift cabins. “You can ride out and stay the night,” Jake said, as his wife rolled her eyes.
Jake is in the mining business and occasionally he is assigned a job in this area of Route 66 near Amboy. He hauls his work trailer to Bolo and hooks up for several days.
Next year, Bolo Station just might become the home of the Bikernet Too Broke for Laughlin Run. Sounds perfect to our massive Bikernet Events Crew, always on the lookout for a cheap hideout, anywhere away from the crowds. All we need is a cheap ghetto blaster, a greasy bag of chicken tacos, a leaky container of some brutal salsa, and another bottle of whiskey. Ya never know…