Alex Roy’s Team Polizei HQ

(Bio as submitted by David Johnson to Team Polizei HQ)

Davey G. Johnson might well be described as a man waylaid by his passions. He intended to follow in his parents’ footsteps and become a schoolteacher. But his corruption began early. In the stroller, in fact. His Irish-immigrant mother would push him down their suburban Sacramento street in a stroller and he’d rattle off the names of cars from hubcap-height. He’d clamber under the car between his father and grandfather and exclaim “Too much room!” in lieu of the more appropriate “Not enough room!” He turned commuting to school into a daily goofball performance piece by driving his El Camino down El Camino Avenue to El Camino High. But a career in education was looming on the horizon.

And then a few things happened. He discovered punk rock and read On the Road. Dangerous women began paying attention to him. As a result of said female attention, he began paying attention to alcohol. He edited his college art/lit publication for three years, teaching himself graphic design along the way. After setting up shop as a graphic designer with bonus copywriting skills, he ended up as the founding art director for the lived fast, died young, left-a-confusing-corpse Hit List Magazine under the tutelage of Maximumrocknroll co-founder Dr. Jeff Bale. To make ends meet, he took a gig doing ad design work for a local event-centric car rag, and when the publisher discovered he knew about cars and could string a few words together, he was made feature editor on a drunken evening in Las Vegas.

In between, much rock ‘n’ roll was played, consumed, breathed, eaten and even sometimes slept on. One night, after his engagement was unceremoniously interrupted by someone rather uncharitably (but not inaccurately) described by Car & Driver’s Mike Austin as a “1950s General Dynamics employee,” Johnson was propositioned by Gearhead Magazine’s Mike LaVella to take the helm of the revived seminal publication, a path that eventually led to an offer to guest-edit Jalopnik.com during Editor-in-Chief Mike Spinelli’s annual Italian vacation. Within two weeks, he narrowly avoided completely alienating Audi and getting sued by a former boss. As a reward/penance, Gawker ended up assigning him the Los Angeles Editor gig four months later. Shortly after his arrival in LA from Austin, Robert Farago of The Truth About Cars called him “The Charles Bukowski of Autojournalism.” Others have referred to him less charitably

He has worked as a camera salesman, a production designer, an art director, a photographer, an illustrator, a copywriter, a sex-and-drug educator, an editor and a summer camp counselor. At one time, he spoke fluent German and retains an irrational penchant for words featuring umlauts. He likes medium-length strolls on the beach and actually enjoys driving in San Francisco, although he walks in L.A. as much as possible. He is one of the few vegetarian autojournalists in the nation, loathes the Toyota Prius and would very much like to own a Ferrari 308. Johnson holds a B.A. in English with a minor in History from Saint Mary’s College of California. He resides in San Pedro, California.